HEATHEN MILK

Last night while I was drinking a carbonated beverage at the best hamburger dive in the city while screaming obscenities about our president, someone cruised into my blogsite here and left me a comment.


At 11:26 PM, Faithful Reader said…

Hi,

I would really like you to write a post analyzing and commentarizing on the following excellent short story: https://dovbear.blogspot.com/2011/05/story-of-addiction.html

Literature. Wonderful literature. But it needs extensive footnotes, and you are the wondrfulll person to do this intellectual task.

Please.

And thank you.

End cite.

The tale he references mentions chocolate and magazines.


I'm sorry, I can't. It hits too close to home. Painfully so. After avidly reading all the articles in thirty plus years worth of National Geographic Magazine while still in my single digits, I started devouring political analyses in the International Herald Tribune, the Volkskrant, and the Eindhovens Dagblad. By the time I was fifteen years old I was reading the NRC Handelsblad, Het Parool, Nieuwe Revu, and Der Spiegel at the back table of a bar.
Plus Time, Newsweek, and The Saturday Review.
And Elsevier, Vrij Nederland.

Horizon! Now there was a great publication! Stimulating!

The pictures inside were also fascinating, yes, tasteful black and white photography, as was more common then. Moody.

Many of the Dutch and German weeklies had beautiful advertisements for cigarettes, cigars, pipe tobacco, household goods! I saw my first picture of pipe tobacco (MacBarens) while reading those.

On the other hand, I never had a thing for sugary heathen milk products.


A few passages from the relevant Dovbearian essay below.

Cite:
"As a young hassidic boy, Elya didn't have much to do while bored. Many nights he would sit in his room counting the paisleys appearing one after another on the sheet covering his blanket. Somehow the number he ended with was always different."
End cite.

Paisley is ab initio a heresy, more common as a pattern for hippie shirts with wide lapels than should have been allowed. It automatically reminds the sensitive man of tie-dye, sitar music, and horrible strawberry incense.
If there is ONE single thing that should have been outlawed from the seventies, it's paisley.

Oh, and patchouli.

Cite:
"He soon began heading out to study with his father a few times a week."
End cite.

Fond memories! Basic engineering, the internal combustion engine, aviation, French sauces, history, and proper punctuation.
Slightly unstructured.

Cite:
"Isn't that chalav akum? Where'd you get it? you can't eat it."
End cite.

Chalav akum = American cuisine. Inedible.

Cite:
"... a rack of magazines, He eyed the titles, Time, Newsweek, The New Yorker, The Economist."
End cite.

Current affairs. Very tempting to impressionable young minds.

Cite:
"He turned the page, and his heart began pounding, there it was, the reason why people buy this magazine; page after page of conservatively dressed women."
End cite.

Oh, Angela, Angela, Angela, Angela! "Ich denke an dichte fenster! Kein anderes land kann so dichte und so schöne fenster bauen."

I cannot stop thinking of fensters.

Cite:
"His favorite, the one he went back to time after time, pages worn, ink smudged, was Time magazine's 9/11 First Anniversary Collectors Edition. Endless pages of women appropriately dressed for a memorial service."
End cite.

Always dress appropriately. You are an example for the young.


Beautiful, but it ends on a sad note. Read the entire cautionary tale here: Addiction!


It's basically about the dangers of the modern world if you are a well-brought up young hasid. Why, there's chocolate and paisley everywhere!
As well as appropriately dressed women.

Plus fensters.



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