THE PHILISTINES WERE ALMOST CERTAINLY CANADIAN

Two years ago E-kvetcher alerted me to a piece of music, oddly apropos of a lobster's demise. Which, naturally, leads me directly to my ex-girlfriend's conception of heresy. She is Chinese American, and does not take kindly to white people pulling the eastern spirituality shtick, or going all wheatgerm and gluten-intolerant about food. As just two examples.

Which I can well understand. Let's start with the fact that I can validly claim to be as Dutch as I am American, and consequently despise Dutch misconceptions about the United States as well as Americans who have spent three days stoned out of their tiny little pinhead gourds in Amsterdam and on that basis claim to know the Netherlands.

You are both wrong, and may be idiots.
[Gij zijt beiden verkeerd, en mogelijk dwazen.]


There were also the people who expressed the thought that, because I worked with so many Indians, I was in a position to absorb all kinds of mysticism and ancient wisdom.

Somehow just absorbing Murgh Makhni was not enough.
Clearly I was deficient, too materialistic.

No third eye.


A THIRTY THOUSAND YEAR OLD REINCARNATED INCA PRINCESS

Some things you just don't do. Stupid stuff that you know better than, going all Asian or Dutch or American Indian mysterioso crazy, pretending to be a special kind of enlightened, smoking aromatic pipe tobacco, writing shitty meaningful free-verse, being "artistic", and doing the "I was whatever exotic in a previous existence therefore I understand what it all really means" fakery.

Or messing around with a familiar piece of music.

My Ex loves Gilbert and Sullivan. To me, meh. It's okay, I suppose.
Not particularly fond of sprightly operettas in English.


She would be horrified by the following:


SHOPPING LISTS IN SUMERIAN AND AKADIAN


[SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3x2SvqhfevE&feature=youtu.be.]

And she would be baffled. What is all that crap? Who could possibly find it entertaining? Remarkably I can think of SEVERAL people who would find it entertaining, including a few rabbis, yeshivists, Torah leyners, bookish types, and just general goofballs.

What we all have in common is that we don't take sprightly operettas very seriously, but do find philology and exegesis rather interesting. Linguistic stuff gives us secret pleasure. Oh thrill my heart.

My Ex would consider it frightful heresy.

Burn, heathens, burn.




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