How wry is a dowry?

Three things caught my attention today, one prompted by a phone conversation with Patrick yesterday, and all were mentioned in newspapers and they are, for those readers who grew up in the television age and that is most of you, an archaic means of conveying information to the masses in a thorough, well–researched, unbiased manner. But you get your news in ten–second sound bites and do not know what you are missing and ignorance is bliss and happiness is a warm gun and my cup runneth over with love, from me, to you. The other two are: (1) This from the L.A. Times, the “flaming dowry” situation in India; (2) From a movie review in the L.A. Daily News I extrapolated: What we don’t know; what we don’t want to know; what we can’t figure out in time are the demons that will spell extinction for this inhuman race because we are on a Hellbound train that only stops at Inhabitableville and with less Arctic Ice than ever before the song “People Get Ready” takes on a whole new meaning. Oh, it will be hundreds of years from now (providing the lunatics are prevented from turning everything radioactive) so why should we worry? We will not, and that is the scariest part of all. Stupidity is alive and well and besides living in Las Vegas, oasis for the mathematically–challenged, it is in every other city, village, and hamlet except for ones where people still live the simple life and care about Mother Earth. They do not even publish the Whole Earth Catalog any longer, people are too busy polluting to take the time out to read it. (3) Sticking with the Daily News, a below–the–fold front–pager about a rally to support those six black kids in a town run by whites who are getting treated like black kids have always been treated in towns run by whites. A big rally, big people, hopefully some justice. Look this one up while I email it to Patrick. And now we will take up the first–mentioned item of this triumverate: “How to Roast Your Wife” or, “The Only Good Indian Who Does Not Have a Large Dowry Is a Well–Done Indian”. The deal here is that India’s top ten includes the hits “I Enjoy Being Ablaze” and “There Is Nothing Like a Flame” Check out the story on India
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-dowry22sep22,1,6075672.story?ctrack=4&cset=true

Concert Day. USC. Long bus ride. Assignment for “Music in the Contemporary World”. We shall see what we shall see and we shall hear… But first let us return to those thrilling days of yesterday and talk about the wonders of kerosene. That oil derivative, and did John D. Rockefeller ever envision such a wide variety of uses for his products?, is the disposal medium of choice for husbands in India who just cannot get enough money and worldly goods from that woman he married and her accursed family and now needs to marry again to increase his net worth. What? You think they are going to hire a lawyer when a quart of stuff that began life as ground–bubbly will do the job? I don’t think so. Neither do they. India. Subcontinent of Asia. Home to subhumans. Place where girl fetuses are aborted in astronomically large numbers to save them from a fate that gets worse and worse until death at an early age. Demanding dowries has been illegal for forty years in that land where, if you are a wife, you do not want your husband to affectionately refer to you as “my marshmallow”. Heck, no sense in my rehashing an in–depth story, go read it in today’s L.A. Times and I think that maybe, just maybe, the land where they wanted to hang Richard Gere over a public kiss, has some far more serious social issues that need to be addressed. From what I surmise after reading this article, the best way to put an end to the barbarism would be to wipe out the present population, plant lots of trees and flowers, and play the percentages: the group that migrates into the now–uninhabited realm may be bloody savages like the rest of us but they will probably treat their women better. So the hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world, is it? Not in Turbanville. I only knew of their mass mental imbalance from the favor they bestow upon their daughters, with momma blessing the practice, that barbarism called clitoroidectomy. Criminy. Gives me shivers. You got it Metallica, “Kill ‘Em All”. Finally we have a case where a little ethnic cleansing sounds like the way to go. Not only that, but it will be good for the U.S. economy. The unemployment figure will drop dramatically as all those outsourced jobs return to our shores. Until they find enough Taiwanese, Chinese, Burmese, and Disease to fill the vacancies. Hey, a temporary fix is better than no fix at all, just ask your friendly neighborhood heroin addict.
So why can’t we all just get along? Evolution. Two million years worth. Old habits die hard. We are species–specific only we have refined it a degree further. We are mistrustful of those who do not look like us or act like us. We are clannish. Nothing wrong with being clannish if your heart is in the right place. Just study those who study the “Torah”. They believe in bien adam v’adam. Between man and man. That is where goodness, even divinity resides. Not in the heavens, but right here on earth. In our relations with each other. It also means we have to be careful we have to treat everyone we meet with great respect because, for all we know, this man driving a cab or tottering home drunk or bothering passerby for spare change, he might be one of the righteous. Egalitarian, yes. The equal value of every human life, that is the preoccupation of the “Torah”.
So the sign says $1.75 for the lemon cake at Star*uck’s. I order it and get 15¢ change from two ones. I point out that the sign says $1.75 and he says, “I’m sorry, sir, that’s a mistake. It is $1.85.” I now have to say, “So who pays for your mistakes?” I then get my dime. Sheesh. The customer gets treated rather shabbily nowadays. Once upon a time…