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T. Michael Barclay's "Asylum Earth" takes a slightly different look at people, places and events that shape the planet we are confined to. It's overwhelming evidence that the patients are indeed running the asylum.
Wednesday, October 27, 2004
HALLOWEEN SONG* -
Turns Out, You Can’t Get Here From There . . .
For those of you that do not know that ‘song’ is the Thai word for *two, let this be a lesson. For those of you that just don’t give a rat’s ass, then just accept that this is the second part of why my two year old son is dressed like a frog. Taking a leap of faith that my son is indeed not a frog, I decided to take a look at how in the heck we got into this bazaar habit of Halloween traditions.
Assuming you have read part I and been waiting with baited breath, we were up to our hips in Druids when we left off and the Romans were coming. And come they did, somewhere around A.D. 43, if your plotting a time-line. Given that the Celtic’s were sort of between a Samhain and a really good hangover, they hardly noticed that the Romans hung around for just over four hundred years. It helped that the Romans were real party animals and just combined a couple of their festivals, Feralia and Pomona, with the traditional Samhain and ended up with the ‘killer’ of all festivals to commemorate the passing of the dead and, you guessed it, ‘bobbing’ for apples.
What’s even stranger? I didn’t make that up!
Seems that the symbol for Pomona is the apple and in the process of trying to sober up enough carriage drivers to get everyone home, they would dunk their heads in large barrels filled with apples, to sort of knock some sense in them, and wouldn’t stop until they came up with an apple in their mouth.
What’s even stranger? I made all of that up . . .
Enter the Christians . . . you knew they would. In the seventh century (you know it’s the seventh century because all the years start with eight), Pope Boniface IV, in an attempt to replace the Celtic Festival of the dead, designated November 1 All Saints’ Day, a time to honor saints and martyrs. No one had the heart to tell the Pope that he missed the date of the Celtic Festival by one day and that pretty much, saints and martyrs were dead.
Not to leave bad enough just the hell alone, in A.D. 1000, the church would make November 2 All Souls’ Day, a day to honor the dead with big bonfires, parades, and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels, and devils. In later years it was determined that three straight days of celebrating the dead is what killed most of them . . .
The American tradition of “trick-or-treat” probably dates back to the early All Souls’ Day parades in England, but how do I know, I wasn’t there. During these festivals, poor citizens would beg for food and families would give them pastries called ‘soul cakes’ in return for their promise to pray for the family’s dead relatives. Given that they were just giving you food to pray for someone already dead, it didn’t take long for some enterprising fellow to figure out that he could extract all sorts of bounty if he went directly up to the house and offered to kill that pesky brother-in-law for a sandwich and a beer.
Well, they passed laws that kind of put the kibosh on that scam, but the tradition lived on as they decide to just send the kids to do the begging and to dress them up in silly outfits so you wouldn’t know which neighbor had the candy fetish.
I may have left out a couple of things about roaming spirits, ghosts and goblins, but I think I pretty much covered the important parts.
Confused? Well, maybe that’s why my son is a frog.
T. Michael Barclay
Turns Out, You Can’t Get Here From There . . .
For those of you that do not know that ‘song’ is the Thai word for *two, let this be a lesson. For those of you that just don’t give a rat’s ass, then just accept that this is the second part of why my two year old son is dressed like a frog. Taking a leap of faith that my son is indeed not a frog, I decided to take a look at how in the heck we got into this bazaar habit of Halloween traditions.
Assuming you have read part I and been waiting with baited breath, we were up to our hips in Druids when we left off and the Romans were coming. And come they did, somewhere around A.D. 43, if your plotting a time-line. Given that the Celtic’s were sort of between a Samhain and a really good hangover, they hardly noticed that the Romans hung around for just over four hundred years. It helped that the Romans were real party animals and just combined a couple of their festivals, Feralia and Pomona, with the traditional Samhain and ended up with the ‘killer’ of all festivals to commemorate the passing of the dead and, you guessed it, ‘bobbing’ for apples.
What’s even stranger? I didn’t make that up!
Seems that the symbol for Pomona is the apple and in the process of trying to sober up enough carriage drivers to get everyone home, they would dunk their heads in large barrels filled with apples, to sort of knock some sense in them, and wouldn’t stop until they came up with an apple in their mouth.
What’s even stranger? I made all of that up . . .
Enter the Christians . . . you knew they would. In the seventh century (you know it’s the seventh century because all the years start with eight), Pope Boniface IV, in an attempt to replace the Celtic Festival of the dead, designated November 1 All Saints’ Day, a time to honor saints and martyrs. No one had the heart to tell the Pope that he missed the date of the Celtic Festival by one day and that pretty much, saints and martyrs were dead.
Not to leave bad enough just the hell alone, in A.D. 1000, the church would make November 2 All Souls’ Day, a day to honor the dead with big bonfires, parades, and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels, and devils. In later years it was determined that three straight days of celebrating the dead is what killed most of them . . .
The American tradition of “trick-or-treat” probably dates back to the early All Souls’ Day parades in England, but how do I know, I wasn’t there. During these festivals, poor citizens would beg for food and families would give them pastries called ‘soul cakes’ in return for their promise to pray for the family’s dead relatives. Given that they were just giving you food to pray for someone already dead, it didn’t take long for some enterprising fellow to figure out that he could extract all sorts of bounty if he went directly up to the house and offered to kill that pesky brother-in-law for a sandwich and a beer.
Well, they passed laws that kind of put the kibosh on that scam, but the tradition lived on as they decide to just send the kids to do the begging and to dress them up in silly outfits so you wouldn’t know which neighbor had the candy fetish.
I may have left out a couple of things about roaming spirits, ghosts and goblins, but I think I pretty much covered the important parts.
Confused? Well, maybe that’s why my son is a frog.
T. Michael Barclay
Tuesday, October 19, 2004
The Asylum Is Open For Business
Friday, October 15, 2004
HALLOWEEN Part I –
Or, Just How Did We Get Here From There . . .
Historians would have you believe that ‘Halloween’s’ origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in). Well . . . not so we would recognize it.
Everyone knows that ‘Celtic’ is just a fancy schmancy word for ‘Irish’ and all they did was festival. They would festival so long and hard that they would finally just pass out and it would take them a day to get over it. This became a month. Sometimes they would festival so hard that it would take them two days to get over it and that became a month with 31 days. Once they took a collective cold shower and sobered up early, well you know all about February. And, they pronounced these festivals ‘Samhain’, only people who could not pronounce it, pronounced it Sow-in. Sometimes after a particularly raunchy month they pronounced it ‘hangover,’ but that never really caught on.
Believing that the rest of the world’s celebration of the New Year on December 31st was pure panty waste, they celebrated their New Year on October, 31st to mark the end of summer and the beginning of a dark, cold new year that, not hard to believe for this group, became associated with human death. Given their propensity for memory lapses, no one bothered to tell them they missed the end of summer by a good Samhain and the New Year by a Sow-in and a spectacular hangover. Trying to get them to understand these small calendar differences actually caused ‘leap-year’ and we don’t want to chance that again.
Considering that their New Year began on November 1st, an absolute accounting nightmare, they believed that on the night before, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred, something they knew a lot about. This gave them a pretty good reason to start a new Samhain and watch the ghosts of the dead return to earth causing considerable trouble and damage to crops, neighborhood pubs and couple of paddy wagons. This, as you know, is now a ritual practiced after sporting events in most college towns, but I digress.
Enter the ‘Druids,’ or Celtic priests, who took this opportunity to make predictions about the future to a basically incoherent mass of humanity. But, why not, the winter was long and dark and who can be expected to remember anything they promised the little a bar ‘winch’ in the heat of passion . . .
Oh, I’m sorry, the Druids, right . . .
To commemorate the event, Druids built huge sacred bonfires, where the people gathered to burn crops and animals to the Celtic deities. During the celebration, the Celts wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins, and attempted to tell each other’s fortunes. When the celebration was over, they re-lit their hearth fires, which they had extinguished earlier that evening, from the sacred bonfire to help protect them during the coming winter.
The previous paragraph was copied, word for word, from the ‘History and Customs of Halloween’ and was done so to show you how little I had to detour from the real history to come up with my version . . .
In the next addition of, “Halloween, Just How Did We Get Here From There,” we visit the Romans, who knew a little about how to party hardy and saw no reason to dash the Samhain thing just because they had taken over. We then morph into the Christian stuff where they somehow managed to blame the whole mess on a Saint with the help from, you guessed it, the Irish, who by fleeing the great potato famine of 1846 helped to popularize the celebration of Halloween on a national scale, not to mention bringing near Sainthood to Mr. Potato Head.
I can hardly wait to see how I do this . . .
T. Michael Barclay
Or, Just How Did We Get Here From There . . .
Historians would have you believe that ‘Halloween’s’ origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in). Well . . . not so we would recognize it.
Everyone knows that ‘Celtic’ is just a fancy schmancy word for ‘Irish’ and all they did was festival. They would festival so long and hard that they would finally just pass out and it would take them a day to get over it. This became a month. Sometimes they would festival so hard that it would take them two days to get over it and that became a month with 31 days. Once they took a collective cold shower and sobered up early, well you know all about February. And, they pronounced these festivals ‘Samhain’, only people who could not pronounce it, pronounced it Sow-in. Sometimes after a particularly raunchy month they pronounced it ‘hangover,’ but that never really caught on.
Believing that the rest of the world’s celebration of the New Year on December 31st was pure panty waste, they celebrated their New Year on October, 31st to mark the end of summer and the beginning of a dark, cold new year that, not hard to believe for this group, became associated with human death. Given their propensity for memory lapses, no one bothered to tell them they missed the end of summer by a good Samhain and the New Year by a Sow-in and a spectacular hangover. Trying to get them to understand these small calendar differences actually caused ‘leap-year’ and we don’t want to chance that again.
Considering that their New Year began on November 1st, an absolute accounting nightmare, they believed that on the night before, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred, something they knew a lot about. This gave them a pretty good reason to start a new Samhain and watch the ghosts of the dead return to earth causing considerable trouble and damage to crops, neighborhood pubs and couple of paddy wagons. This, as you know, is now a ritual practiced after sporting events in most college towns, but I digress.
Enter the ‘Druids,’ or Celtic priests, who took this opportunity to make predictions about the future to a basically incoherent mass of humanity. But, why not, the winter was long and dark and who can be expected to remember anything they promised the little a bar ‘winch’ in the heat of passion . . .
Oh, I’m sorry, the Druids, right . . .
To commemorate the event, Druids built huge sacred bonfires, where the people gathered to burn crops and animals to the Celtic deities. During the celebration, the Celts wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins, and attempted to tell each other’s fortunes. When the celebration was over, they re-lit their hearth fires, which they had extinguished earlier that evening, from the sacred bonfire to help protect them during the coming winter.
The previous paragraph was copied, word for word, from the ‘History and Customs of Halloween’ and was done so to show you how little I had to detour from the real history to come up with my version . . .
In the next addition of, “Halloween, Just How Did We Get Here From There,” we visit the Romans, who knew a little about how to party hardy and saw no reason to dash the Samhain thing just because they had taken over. We then morph into the Christian stuff where they somehow managed to blame the whole mess on a Saint with the help from, you guessed it, the Irish, who by fleeing the great potato famine of 1846 helped to popularize the celebration of Halloween on a national scale, not to mention bringing near Sainthood to Mr. Potato Head.
I can hardly wait to see how I do this . . .
T. Michael Barclay
Tuesday, October 05, 2004
HOW TO PET YOUR PEEVE –
Or, Giving ‘Road Kill’ A Good Name . . .
I once owned a ‘ferret’ and was convinced that there was nothing on earth that could be more useless. That was until I ran into my first ‘peeve’! At least the ferret went to sleep and was, in that state, sort of cute. I could get in my car and leave the ferret at home. I could give my ferret away (don’t bother trying to sell one). You very seldom saw a ferret out and about. But, a peeve, they never sleep. No matter where you go, somebody has their peeve with them, always. You cannot even pay somebody to take a peeve. A ferret gets into your brain, however, you can go to sleep and dream about something else. A peeve gets under your skin and there is no ointment known to man that will get rid of it. As usual, man refuses to ask woman about this as they just might have a solution . . . but I digress.
It doesn’t matter what kind of peeve they have either. They can have the verb kind of peeve that is described as being “annoying” or “resentful”, and that is their good side. They can have the noun type of peeve whose best features are noted as being; “A vexation; a grievance.” Knowing this, why in Sam’s hell do so many people have one, some even have several? And, just how do you pet one?
Now, given the most liberal description of a peeve makes you want to smack your own forehead in bewilderment, one would think there would be a few laws at least attempting to control them. One would think that anyone with a peeve would be required to leave it at home or at the very least keep it on a leash. But, nooooo . . . no such laws exist and the damn things just run amok. And, if an amok is not enough all by itself, a peeve running amok has to be the most irritating of irritants. Well, maybe second to that sentence, but you get the point.
So, just how do you know when someone has their peeve with them? I’m sure that everyone has their own idea, but I can give you a real good idea of some of them; first merely having one in the car can cause the driver to sit idly, blocking a long line of traffic, while they wait for someone to pull out of a parking space . . . one spot from a completely open space! It seems that anyone with a peeve simply refuses to walk an extra four steps for their physical health or the mental health of the twenty drivers waiting to get on with their lives.
Another sure sign that someone has brought their peeve with them is their refusal to replace their shopping cart where they got it in the first place or even leave it in a blatantly marked ‘corral’ for such use. Apparently in order to keep their peeve from going completely berserk, they are required to park the offending cart directly behind your parked car or squarely in the middle of the adjacent open space. The fact that you may go completely berserk not withstanding.
Other signs that someone is driving with their peeve, unrestrained, is the fact that they cannot remotely find their turn signal or bother to notice that a traffic light had turned ‘red’ 200 feet before they got to the intersection. Having a peeve in the car also requires the driver to wear ear plugs so they only notice the windows shaking, but are oblivious to the bombastic level of the nauseating bass solo accompanying gagging rap references to someone’s Mother. Of course you might not notice the ear muffs at all if the windows are not up because the embarrassment of having their peeve with them makes them tent their windows darker than a moon eclipse.
This leaves us with the question of how to pet a peeve? Resisting the sudden urge to ‘key’ the offending morons’ car or liposuck their tires, the very best way to stroke the offending peeve pervert is to wave passionately at them (here I will note that this should be done with the entire hand and not just one part of it), get their attention and then mouth “Thank You” and continue driving. While this may have absolutely no affect on them or their peeve, it will go a long way in helping you remember who the rational human being is and that no peeve is worth losing ones sanity over.
Of course, if that doesn’t work, dead peeve is at the very top of the road kill delicacy list. Yum, yum . . .
T. Michael Barclay
Or, Giving ‘Road Kill’ A Good Name . . .
I once owned a ‘ferret’ and was convinced that there was nothing on earth that could be more useless. That was until I ran into my first ‘peeve’! At least the ferret went to sleep and was, in that state, sort of cute. I could get in my car and leave the ferret at home. I could give my ferret away (don’t bother trying to sell one). You very seldom saw a ferret out and about. But, a peeve, they never sleep. No matter where you go, somebody has their peeve with them, always. You cannot even pay somebody to take a peeve. A ferret gets into your brain, however, you can go to sleep and dream about something else. A peeve gets under your skin and there is no ointment known to man that will get rid of it. As usual, man refuses to ask woman about this as they just might have a solution . . . but I digress.
It doesn’t matter what kind of peeve they have either. They can have the verb kind of peeve that is described as being “annoying” or “resentful”, and that is their good side. They can have the noun type of peeve whose best features are noted as being; “A vexation; a grievance.” Knowing this, why in Sam’s hell do so many people have one, some even have several? And, just how do you pet one?
Now, given the most liberal description of a peeve makes you want to smack your own forehead in bewilderment, one would think there would be a few laws at least attempting to control them. One would think that anyone with a peeve would be required to leave it at home or at the very least keep it on a leash. But, nooooo . . . no such laws exist and the damn things just run amok. And, if an amok is not enough all by itself, a peeve running amok has to be the most irritating of irritants. Well, maybe second to that sentence, but you get the point.
So, just how do you know when someone has their peeve with them? I’m sure that everyone has their own idea, but I can give you a real good idea of some of them; first merely having one in the car can cause the driver to sit idly, blocking a long line of traffic, while they wait for someone to pull out of a parking space . . . one spot from a completely open space! It seems that anyone with a peeve simply refuses to walk an extra four steps for their physical health or the mental health of the twenty drivers waiting to get on with their lives.
Another sure sign that someone has brought their peeve with them is their refusal to replace their shopping cart where they got it in the first place or even leave it in a blatantly marked ‘corral’ for such use. Apparently in order to keep their peeve from going completely berserk, they are required to park the offending cart directly behind your parked car or squarely in the middle of the adjacent open space. The fact that you may go completely berserk not withstanding.
Other signs that someone is driving with their peeve, unrestrained, is the fact that they cannot remotely find their turn signal or bother to notice that a traffic light had turned ‘red’ 200 feet before they got to the intersection. Having a peeve in the car also requires the driver to wear ear plugs so they only notice the windows shaking, but are oblivious to the bombastic level of the nauseating bass solo accompanying gagging rap references to someone’s Mother. Of course you might not notice the ear muffs at all if the windows are not up because the embarrassment of having their peeve with them makes them tent their windows darker than a moon eclipse.
This leaves us with the question of how to pet a peeve? Resisting the sudden urge to ‘key’ the offending morons’ car or liposuck their tires, the very best way to stroke the offending peeve pervert is to wave passionately at them (here I will note that this should be done with the entire hand and not just one part of it), get their attention and then mouth “Thank You” and continue driving. While this may have absolutely no affect on them or their peeve, it will go a long way in helping you remember who the rational human being is and that no peeve is worth losing ones sanity over.
Of course, if that doesn’t work, dead peeve is at the very top of the road kill delicacy list. Yum, yum . . .
T. Michael Barclay
