| OCR Text |
Show A2 The Emery County Review, Tuesday, August 19, 2008 The News Off The Beaten Path MUG SHOT D E DA Z LIGHTER SIDE A Mouse, a Rabbit and a Hamburger No Bull! Star Grill and Fun Center held a back to school bash on Aug. 11 to give youth a chance to blow off some steam one last time before school started back up. A mechanical bull in the parking lot gave the adventurous a chance to test their cowboy mettle. James L. Davis My dad has seen a lot in his 80 years and sometimes it amazes me to think about how much the world has changed since he was born. I wonder what he really thinks of this strange new world he has watched grow up around him. Does it frighten him, I wonder? Does it worry him? The answer to those questions is, nope, I don’t think it does. But I do think the world confuses him sometimes. I say this because in a great many respects my dad has progressed along with the rest of the world, but in other ways he stubbornly refuses to believe the world is moving forward. I say this because not too long ago I discovered that when I am not in my office my dad likes to come in and make himself at home. Apparently he likes my desk. I discovered this because a while back we had a family reunion and during this family reunion my older brother came home for a visit. He had not been home for a number of years and since he was home my dad felt there was a need to give my brother a tour of the greater Orangeville metropolitan area (meaning Food Ranch to Jim Fauver’s house and selected points in-between). This tour took roughly 12 minutes. Not satisfied with the tour’s length, my dad took my brother to my office and showed him around. My office is right across the driveway from my house, which is convenient because on days when I have to work late I can stumble across the driveway in my pajamas and not frighten the neighbors. When my dad brought my brother to the office for a tour I was not there, but my children were right across the driveway and so they came over to see what their grandpa and uncle were up to. They found my dad sitting at my desk, playing with my toys and telling my brother that he could pretty much ruin my day if he pushed the wrong button on my computer. My brother agreed that he could ruin my day if he pushed the wrong button on the computer, but apparently neither of them were inclined to ruin my day, because they didn’t touch any of buttons on the keyboard. After a few minutes my dad informed my brother that he didn’t really understand computers at all. He picked up the mouse off of the computer desk and informed my older brother that while he didn’t understand computers, he did know what that little contraption was called. “It’s called a rabbit,” my dad said. At about this point my children began to laugh and informed my dad that no, it was not called a rabbit, it was called a mouse. “Well, I knew it was named after some little animal,” my dad replied. When my children informed me that my dad had been sitting at my desk, playing with my toys and calling my computer mouse a rabbit, I began to wonder if perhaps, just perhaps, my dad was pulling our leg. But I realized that he wasn’t pulling our leg in thinking that a computer mouse was a rabbit because in the scheme of things, it doesn’t really matter to him. Home computers are not a part of his world now and he has no intention of making them a part of his world in the future. I suspect that he still holds a grudge against personal computers for putting an end to his typewriter repair business, but it may not be that. It just might be that he is so grounded in the real world that the thought of a digital world holds about as much interest to him as a mouse…or a rabbit. Growing up, I remember my dad telling me that he did not have the luxury of indoor plumbing in his house until he was 19 years old. And he called it a luxury. If indoor plumbing was a luxury to him, then what is the equivalent today? To me a luxury is something you can do without and indoor plumbing is not something I can do without. In my world I don’t think DVR is something I can do without anymore. My dad also remembers the first time he had something called a hamburger sandwich. He was in his late teens when that occurred as well. Growing up a farm boy in North Carolina, he would get to town from time to time for a little excitement, and on this particular occasion he had stopped at a diner for a bite to eat when he saw a sign advertising a hamburger sandwich. So he thought he would give one a try. “It was about the best sandwich I had ever tasted,” my dad remembers, and you can still see the hint of wonder he must have felt when biting into this new meal called a hamburger. I don’t know if I have an equivalent to the kind of experiences my dad had. I don’t know that I look at things in my world with the same sense of wonder. But I think I know why a computer is not a big deal to him. To him a computer is just a glorified typewriter because it isn’t something he really needs in his life. So while computers may be interesting contraptions to the rest of the world, he could take or leave them, with or without a mouse…or a rabbit. They don’t hold a candle to indoor plumb- Photo by Casey Wood NEWS OF THE WEIRD Chuck Shepherd Lead Story Martha Padgett gave birth to quadruplets in Riverside, Calif., in July, but she only did half the work. The other two babies were born to her partner, Karen Wesolowski, using Padgett’s eggs and the same sperm donor, and whose two came along 22 hours after Padgett’s two. The women carried two fertilized eggs each only because they had failed five times before with in-vitro fertilization and just wanted to improve the odds of having at least one child between them. Latest Religious Messages -- “Someone’s getting a new spinal cord tonight!” yelled Canadian tent-revival preacher Todd Bentley in July during his crusade in Lakeland, Fla. (also telecast on GodTV and the Internet), according to an Associated Press observer. Miracles are “popping like popcorn,” he promised, punctuating each hands-on salvation with an Emeril-type “Bam!” His unorthodoxy extends to sometimes roughing up the afflicted, he admits, because that’s what God tells him to do, e.g., kneeing a “cancer patient” in the stomach, banging a crippled woman’s leg on a platform. Anyone in need of healing should, Bentley shouts often, “come and get some!” -- The most popular UK Hindu temple east of London appears to be the spare bedroom of Sushila Karia and her husband, Dhirajlal, in a quiet residential neighborhood in the resort town of Clactonon-Sea. On holy days, the line of pilgrims extends down the hall and stairs, through the living room, out the door and across the lawn, according to a May report in London’s Daily Mail. The temple, inaugurated 29 years ago to save Hindus the 90-mile round trip to London, contains 17 marble gods that were specially blessed for the occasion by priests in India. Cultural Diversity -- France’s Council of State turned down an otherwise-acceptable petition for citizenship by a French Moroccan woman in July, on the ground that her total submission to her husband The Duplex makes her “insufficient(ly)” “assimilat(ed)” into the country’s ethos of gender equality. The 32-year-old Muslim veils her entire body in public except for a narrow slit for the eyes and, for example, rejects the idea of voting, in that such matters should be left entirely to the discretion of her husband and male relatives. -- “The days of the ceramics trade here are numbered,” lamented Francisco Figueriredo, 68, and the specific ceramics trade of his region (Portugal’s Caldas da Rainha) happens to be ornamental penises. For more than 30 years, Figueriredo and his wife have been two of a small number of craftspeople who have shaped and molded various models for export (e.g., mugs with penis extensions, penis-shaped bottles, ceramic soccer figures with penises peeking out from under flags). A July Reuters dispatch attributed the decline to a general loss in the provocativeness of public sexual displays. -- The government of France announced that, starting next year, it will regulate the booming business of country-western line dancing, by, among other measures, requiring licenses of teachers, after 200 hours’ instruction. Inexplicably, at least 100,000 people in the country line dance weekly, and the popularity is growing, according to a May dispatch in The Times of London. A French Dance Federation official said he guesses the preference of line dancing over square dancing is the French preference for no physical contact. Questionable Judgments: (1) Dr. Frederick Lobati, 47, was charged last year with felony abuse of his daughter in Ozark, Mo., but in June 2008 offered the defense that, being of African heritage, he was merely applying a “konk” (a bare-knuckle punch), which is an acceptable punishment in his culture. (2) In June, the High Court in Johannesburg granted the request by a Chinese civil rights organization to switch Chinese South Africans from “caucasian” (as they were during apartheid) to “black” (which would allow them to better qualify for government benefits). Scenes of the Surreal (1) The president of Japan’s Osakana Planning Co. told attendees of the Japanese Seafood Show in July that his tuna makes superior sushi because his company administers acupuncture to each fish prior to its death, in order to reduce stress. (2) A Welsh oil painting, “Newport Nude,” which was mothballed 60 years ago for being too brazen for public display because the model is naked, drew fresh criticism when reintroduced in July at a public gallery in Wales but this time only because the naked model is holding a cigarette. Schemes Boston fire inspector Albert Arroyo, on tax-free disability since March (“totally and permanently disabled,” wrote his physician) from an unwitnessed on-the-job injury, apparently heroically overcame his condition and six weeks later finished eighth in the 2008 Pro Natural American bodybuilding championship. Said his lawyer, James Dilday, time in the gym was actually a way for Arroyo to get his mind off his depression at being forced to take early retirement at age 46. (A Boston Globe investigation in January found 102 firefighters with mostly questionable job injuries, taking full retirement, with some manipulating paperwork to retire at a higher grade than when they were “injured.”) The Weirdo-Australian Community Rodney McLagan, 48, acknowledged that a few pornographic images of children might have been among the 31,000 that he had downloaded from the Internet, but that he has never had a sexual interest in children. Rather, almost all of the images are of adults having sex with animals. As his lawyer pointed out in court in Hobart, Australia, in July, McLagan has such low self-esteem that he considers himself, too, a “beast.” Included in the sex collection were dogs, ponies, snakes, tigers and, in one case, an octopus. Least Competent Criminals In June, police in Spokane, Wash., arrested Calvin Robinson, 19, who had set up inside the lockable family restroom at a mall because he needed an electrical outlet to run the color printer he had just bought for $100 (in real money) in order to make counterfeit $10 bills. Police recovered a sheet of uncut, poorly made copies, which Robinson said he had intended to use to buy “90 dollars” worth of marijuana. Update In 2001, News of the Weird noted Hong Kong jeweler Lam Sai-wing’s monument to excess, the solid-gold bathroom (including flushable toilet), built as a tribute to Vladimir Lenin’s critique of capitalism’s wastefulness. (“(W)e shall use gold,” wrote Lenin, “for the purpose of building public lavatories in the streets of some of the largest cities in the world.”) Lam later added more fixtures, furniture and statues to his display, using a total of six tons of 24-carat gold. However, the world economy is different now, as Lam noted in a July Wall Street Journal profile, with gold that cost around $200 an ounce in 1999 now valued at nearly $900. He has decided to begin melting down the entire structure, except for the toilet, that is. “I don’t care if gold hits $10,000 an ounce,” he said. “I’m not melting (that) down.” The Jesus and Virgin Mary World Tour (all new!) Recent Playdates: Salt Lake City, July (image of Jesus in a three-gallon container of spumoni at an ice cream shop); Salinas, Calif., July (image of Mary in the floor drain of a restaurant undergoing renovation); Monterey, Calif., May (image of Mary in the leg wound of a biker who slid 50 feet along the pavement when he lost control of his motorcycle); Darlington, England, April (image of Jesus in the foil wrapping on a bottle of cider served at the Tanners Hall pub); Lorain, Ohio, April (image of Jesus in a woman’s ultrasound picture); Iowa City, Iowa, May (joint appearance of Jesus and Mary on a plastic bag used to bring home groceries from Wal-Mart). (Copyright 2008 Chuck Shepherd. Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate.) By Glenn McCoy |
