Curses Again! (Or, How I Got Hoodoo'd)

There is a huge storm here today, so I skied into work with Hardingfele. That took a little longer than I expected, even minus the break to get coffee and a croissant. I figured on brownie points for just showing up, but wouldn't you know that everyone else was here too, and on time! So here I am in an old hoodie emblazoned with the name of a state I have never lived in (another thing left to me by the former owner of Sylvia and the electric mandolin) and slippers, since I didn't want to wear ski boots all day, and everyone else looks like their normal selves. And why did I bother fixing my hair??? Hardingfele was laughing at me because my mascara ran in all this driving snow. "You look like Tammy Faye Baker!" she said.

(That's for Rich, so he knows what he's missing over there in Japan.)

In the electric Mideastern band I play in, we do an Arabic-tinged version of "I Put a Spell on You." (We also do this great flamenco version of Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit.") And do you know, I have had a spell put on me! If you remember my post about curses, people often put curses on other people without thinking about what they are saying. I had completely forgotten that this had happened to me.

Some terminology: there is probably a technical difference, but in popular parlance, "voodoo" refers to an actual religion that is an amalgamation of Catholicism and African spirit possession, while "hoodoo" refers to folk magic which is often malicious. So as opposed to Voodoo Head, the benevolent little doll that improves peoples' careers (he is currently hanging out with a busmate, improving hers), I will refer to my ex as Hoodoo Head. This would be the boy I was madly in love with in college. You see, ever since returning from visiting my family for Thanksgiving, I kept having romantic dreams about him. I thought, is this payback for talking smack about that acquaintance pining for four years over a guy she dated for a month? I have always maintained that you should not mourn longer for the relationship than it actually lasted, but here I was all googoo once again about a guy I hadn't seen in three and a half times as many years as I'd actually dated him! If a child had been born the last time I'd seen him, that kid would now have to pay adult rates at the movies! So what was my problem?

To remind myself of what a jerk he was, I reread my diary entries pertaining to him. However, that was a mistake because I thought, "Hm, maybe he wasn't as big a jerk as I remembered. Maybe some of it was me being a jerk." Which is true for everyone, I suppose, when they look back at their younger years, but in my case there was a specific reason which I will discuss in a subsequent post. (To add insult to injury, he ended up with someone who was very similar to me but without this particular reason for being a jerk.) Then, to my surprise, I found where he actually once said to me, "I hope you never get over me." He done hoodoo'd me!! And I had completely forgotten about it.

I think Hoodoo Head put this curse on me without much thought, and probably at a time when he thought we might end up together forever, in which case it would make a little more sense. However, it was a cruel thing to do because he did end up with someone else, so why would he even need me to never get over him? Honestly, he would probably be a little creeped out to know that I even think about him at all after all these years. (But since he doesn't read this blog, all my readers can feel free to agree that he has nobody but himself to blame. Don't hoodoo your girlfriends if you don't want them obsessing over you! D'uh! First rule of hoodoo, if hoodoo has any rules. Maybe I should make some up so this doesn't keep happening to other unfortunate lovelorn maids.) The irony is that Hoodoo Head is one of those skeptical humanists, or "brights" or whatever they call themselves these days, in the mold of Dawkins and Hitchens, so he would never even believe that he had put a curse on me. I am too decent a human being to curse him back; all I want now is to find out how to break this curse. (Hopefully it is not as powerful as the Curse of the Bambino, or, God forbid, the Curse of the Billy Goat! Right, Hardingfele? Look for the Cubbies to take the pennant in 2035 if it lasts as long as the Curse of the Bambino.) So does anyone know how to reverse hoodoo curses? If I'd only known, I could have asked around down in New Orleans.

Famous Hat

Pro-Accordian, and I Vote!

Once a friend of mine randomly said, "Welcome to Heaven - here is your harp. Welcome to Hell - here is your accordion." (Later I found out she stole it from a Far Side strip.) I laughed for twenty minutes, but actually I do love the accordion. Polkas are OK, and that Mexican music that sounds like polka is OK, but think of all the great music played on the accordion!

Just last night I went out dancing to Cajun music with the accordion player from my contra dance band, and she was coveting the small button accordion of one of the Cajun band members. The accordion really makes the music, although she did note that it only had a one-octave range. It brought back memories of long ago, two and a half whole months to be exact, when I was wandering the streets of New Orleans and heard Cajun music blasting from every Cajuncrap tourist shop. Now anyone who knows anything about Louisiana knows that New Orleans is about Creole culture and jazz music, while Cajun culture is centered around Lafayette. However, most tourists must just think of things being "Louisianan" (is that a word?) so they throw everything together. Much like the Tropical Party they had on the cruise I went on: it was definitely pan-tropical! The only major tropical culture I didn't see represented was the Canary Islands, as a reggae band in Hawaiian shirts played and people danced the limbo while drinking rum out of coconuts under tiki torches. Unfortunately, accordions are not particularly tropical so there were none at that party. But if you get an accordion upon entering Hell, and Hell is warm like the tropics, then maybe it wouldn't be such a stretch to associate them....

Famous Hat

True Adventure: Catechism Captive!

At my church (let's call it Our Lady of Perpetual Sobriety), we have a small parking lot that is always being used by non-church folks (or, as we refer to them, poachers). I first ran into this problem one year on Ash Wednesday, when the parking lot was so crowded that I had to park someone in, figuring I would run right out the moment Mass was over and release whoever it was. To my surprise, three people were already standing by the car when I dashed out of Our Lady of Perpetual Sobriety (OLPS) the moment the priest gave the final blessing. How did they beat me out here? I wondered, failing to notice that they did not have ashen crosses on their foreheads. One man was very annoyed and said to me, "Is this your car?" I said yes, sorry, I got out the moment Mass was over. (I couldn't understand why he was so annoyed, since it had JUST gotten over.) He said to me, "Who the *@$# parks likes that?" and I said, "You know, sir, maybe you should consider giving up being a jerk for Lent!" His two friends laughed, and to my surprise so did my friends when I told them this story. They were the ones who first clued me in about the fact that I had undoubtedly parked in a poacher.

Since that day, I have been very protective about OLPS's parking lot and have chased many a poacher away. (My favorite Mary is Our Lady of Guadalupe, who looks like she could kick your @$$, and I'm sure you've realized by now why that is!) So this morning I was railroaded into teaching catechism for Richard Bonomo, who is presently on a plane to Japan, although many other people were available. I regularly taught for a number of years at OLPS but for the last two years I've been enjoying sleeping in. So this morning I dragged myself out of bed, drove through a snowstorm, and was peeved to find the OLPS parking lot completely full. On a Saturday morning?!? I spotted a guy who was clearly a slacker, with an African drum slung over his back, and I asked if he were there for church business. He replied that he was there for parking business, since it was a public parking lot, so I pointed to the sign that clearly stated it was only for people on official OLPS business and reiterated my question: "Are you here to go to church or to teach catechism or something?" He wanted to know if he should move, so I said yes, unless he was planning to teach. He told me his father was a preacher so he could do it, although he was not Catholic. So I told him he'd better.

When I came into the school building of OLPS, where we teach small Mexican children to be good Christians, the DRE told me that another regular teacher had not shown up, so he was putting that class in with Mr. Bonomo's. Nothing like having 23 small bilingual children staring at you! But to my surprise, my hostage did show up to teach catechism, and he wasn't half bad! The DRE took me aside and asked who he was, so I explained that this was his penance for poaching in our parking lot. Captive Catechist (Mr. CC) told the children the most whacked-out version of the Temptation in the Garden that I'd ever heard, but since it was basically correct, I let him do it. I was pleasantly surprised to find out he knew some Spanish (as do I) so the small Mexican children realized they couldn't pull anything over on us. One boy also has Downe's Syndrome and was bouncing all over, but Mr. CC got him engaged with a beach ball globe. He literally had the whole world in his hands! The other kids enjoyed playing on the drum, and then we took them over to the church, which somehow survived the post-Vatican II wreckovation that ruined so many other churches. Mr. CC's breath was taken away.

"This place is gorgeous!" he said in amazement. (The small Mexican kids and I were more used to OLPS's incredible beauty, since we get to see it at least once a week.) Then we sang some Advent and Christmas songs while Mr. CC played his drum and the Downe's Syndrome kid played with the whole world. We prayed a decade of the Rosary, went back to the classroom, and played Catechism Trivia and Catechism Hangman, which Mr. CC had the clever idea of showing Jesus on the Cross. Luckily, one of the kids realized the word was "Advent" before Jesus was crucified! Then the bell rang for Angelus, meaning class was over. I had survived my enforced teaching, and so had my hostage! He even said he enjoyed it.

So a word to the wise: if you plan to park illegally in the parking lot of Our Lady of Perpetual Sobriety, don't be surprised if I force you teach small Mexican children to be good Christians.

Famous Hat

The Best Years of Your Life!

Why are adults always saying things to teenagers like, "These are the best years of your life! Be sure to enjoy them!" No wonder the teenage suicide rate is so high! Have these people completely forgotten what it's like to be a teenager?? In case you have forgotten, let me remind you: Acne. Peer pressure. Hormones out of control. Everyone really IS watching what you do. Too old for kiddie discounts, too young for R-rated movies. Too young to drive, too old to play with your favorite toys without your friends laughing at you. Minimum-wage jobs. Being dumped by a significant other or shunned by the popular group is the END OF THE WORLD.

Now I really like teenagers, they are much more interesting than children, but I see no need to lie to them. I always say don't believe the hype, it only gets better and better from now on. Once you leave adolescence, you can do fun things like have slumber parties without any adults there - because you ARE the adults! - and instead of making shakes in the blender, you can make grasshoppers or daquairis. If you feel like driving to Tennessee for the weekend, hey, be my guest. Instead of saving up for stupid designer jeans that you only want because everyone else is wearing them, you can save your money for trips to the tropics or the furniture you REALLY want. Tell teenagers something like this, and their eyes light up. Remind them that adolescence is a temporary state of insanity and not the zenith of their existence, and they practically weep with relief. And they know you are telling the truth, because teens can spot BS three miles away.

I remember one example of propaganda that backfired when I was a teen: for some reason one day in our civics class we had two cute, bouncy Israeli teens just a couple of years older than ourselves show up to talk to us. Since they were children themselves and had no particular accomplishments to boast of, they just mentioned some things about their families (I remember they were both the oldest child) and their schools. One boy and one girl, they were not particularly Semitic-looking, and we were puzzled about why they were there. When the boy asked us if we knew where Israel was, pulling down the world map, a guy in our class asked them if they resented the fact that Orthodox Jews were the most hard-core about holding onto the Occupied Territories and yet they were the only ones who didn't have mandatory military service because of their religious beliefs. The two kids blanched, and the boy weakly said, "Oh... so you know something about the problems in our country." At that moment I suddenly realized that they were there to sell us on the idea that Israel is Our Friend and Palestinians are Bad. Of course, the Palestinians did not have the money to send perky, photogenic teens all over the US to tell us what great friends they were with us. And since that day I have been extremely sympathetic to the Palestinians, the Basques, the Catholics in Northern Ireland, and other suppressed peoples. (Although I do NOT support terrorism. Suppression is no reason to kill innocent people.)

In some ways, teenagers are very clear-sighted, perhaps because they tend not to see shades of gray. When I was in high school in the 80's, everyone was terrified of the Soviet Union, but I wrote a paper for that same civics class in 1988 (before the fall of the Berlin Wall) about how the Soviet Union was not the greatest threat, Islamic terrorism was. Now if a stupid little 16-year-old teenybopper could see that, it must have been in plain view for everyone to see, but the adults were too blinded by their fear of Communism to see the ensuing threat on the horizon. I'm not saying teenagers could have prevented September 11, but they may have things to tell us and we shouldn't disregard their often keen insights.

Famous Hat

Iberia? Where's THAT?

The other night I was at my choir director's house with some other friends, and one guy (we'll call him Antoshka) had spent Thanksgiving with a bunch of Coptics. The choir director had an encyclopedia of the ancient world, so we were reading about Copts, and Antoshka said how the Early Church was really focused in Egypt and Armenia. I said what about Georgia, and he said that wasn't Christian until much later. So of course we had to look up Georgia in the Encyclopedia of the Ancient World. The first thing it said is that ancient Georgia was divided into two kingdoms, one in the east and one in the west (although it gave conflicting accounts of which was which): one called Lazica and one called... IBERIA??

This struck me as fascinating because of course the Iberian peninsula is the area including Spain and Portugal, and it has been known as Iberia since ancient times. So why would Georgia also be called Iberia? Was there possibly a connection between the Georgians and the Basques? I once wrote a paper in college on this subject, but my main reference was a paper from the 1950's written in French, so I'm not sure this is seriously considered a plausible theory anymore. However, there were some interesting parallels in basic vocabulary words like sheep, wind, rain, mountain... Important words indeed for mountain-dwelling shepherding peoples! Did the ancient Greeks and Romans know something we don't know? Are the Basques and the Georgians indeed related, since they are both Iberians?

Maybe it is just a coincidence. Although many people in the state of Georgia in the US are of the Caucasian race, nobody seriously wonders if US Georgians are Caucasians. After all, they are not mountain-dwelling people. But what about Appalachians? Nobody has ever mentioned that possibility before. Since so many people seem to think the term "Appalachian" has a negative connotation, I am proposing that from now on we refer to them as "Iberians." It has more cachet, sounding slightly Continental, and if all it means is "mountain people," then they are as Iberian as any Basque or Georgian!

Famous Hat

Half a Funny Story (Or, a Half-Funny Story)

This past spring, some of the doctors I work with went to a conference in Toronto. One of them brought a gift back for the fellow she was mentoring, a half-mug that says: "Toronto was so expen$ive I could only afford half a cup!" (It's in half the vertical way, so the mouth of the mug looks like a D, not an O.)

A couple of months later I was down in the fellow's office and saw the mug on his desk. When I commented on how clever it was, he asked if I wanted it, since he was never going to use it.

"Why not?" I said. "It's my half-birthday. What could be more perfect than a half-mug given half-heartedly?"

But that's only - you knew it was coming - half the story. That afternoon I took my half-mug down to the cafeteria and filled it with coffee. When you bring your own mug, coffee costs 85¢. I asked the cashier if he would charge me half-price, since it was only half a mug, and he said he didn't have that button on his cash register. I told him I would then have to put 85¢ on my credit card, since I didn't have enough cash.

"How much cash do you have on you?" he asked.
"Forty-seven cents," I told him.

And do you know what he did then? He rang it up as "$0.47 miscellaneous." People tell me this is their favorite part of the story, that a cashier would play along. How do you think the mug scanned? I don't think it's half-bad!

Famous Hat

Driving Me Crazy!

While I was visiting my family, I did something very terrifying: I let my niece drive my car. She turned 16 at the end of the summer and has her permit but not her license yet, so my mother mentioned how a really good auntie thing for me to do would be to take out the niece (let's call her Denise) (although she is technically Da Step Niece, not Da Niece) for some driving practice. I wasn't sure how much fun such an activity would be for me, or more importantly, for Erin Caitlyn O'Honda, but on Saturday I drove to my brother's house and handed Denise the keys after telling her the following story:

I have only owned two cars in my entire life. Sydney was 17 (older than you!) when I finally got rid of her. She was being held together with duct tape. (Denise: So are Mom and Dad's cars, and they are only five. Me: True... But I take care of my cars so Syd didn't get that way till she was 15 and a half.) When my friends finally made me get a new car, I cried when I said goodbye to Syd as she went off to a charitable organization to be fixed up by troubled teenage boys (like your brothers, only these boys have been caught). [Just kidding, I did NOT say that!] (NB: Sydney was in such bad shape that they just sold her at auction for parts.) This car is named Erin Caitlyn O'Honda. I love her very much. Please take care of her.

I must have made poor Denise somewhat nervous, because she nearly drove into the mailbox as her two younger brothers were watching out the window with great amusement. However, once she got out of their view, she proved to be an absolutely fine driver. She gave me a tour of her small town and drove me to the next small town over with no incident, and I have no doubt that she will pass her driving test.

My biggest concern now? That in two years her brother (Da Nephew!) will expect me to take HIM out driving! And somehow I don't expect him to be as kind to Erin Caitlyn O'Honda....

Famous Hat