We The Aforementioned Sentence Thee To Be As Hairy As This Herd of Camels Which Will Feed A Village, With Or Without Celebrities

That title makes about as much sense as the following blog will, I fear. But it's a holiday week, and things are slow, or will be until I decide to start upheaving everything in the denette, and so I thought that just like Washington's birthday is the time to have a clearance sale on sheets and towels, Thanksgiving week shall be clearance week for blog ideas.

The big news this week is that I, and think about this because it says more about our judicial system than you could ever want to know, I have been called into service. Jury Duty. I've never done jury duty. I've never wanted to do jury duty, and I sincerely hoped I could scrape through the rest of what passes for my life without ever having to do jury duty. I would rather be punched in the face by Mike Tyson, be beaten with a bicycle chain by the Italian racing team, and have a railroad spike driven through my head by John Henry himself than do jury duty.

I received my first notice of this happy event at the beginning of September. My inaugural letter told me that I could be called into action at any time, just like the National Guard, well, anytime between October 10, 2006 and April 9, 2007. Me being, well, me, the first thing I did (after screaming "Jury duty? Awwww, man! Lord, what did I do to you?") was to start worrying about missing Oktoberfests. After that didn't happen, I stopped worrying. Damn, I should have remembered to worry.

My dates of duty are during the week I had scheduled off for vacation, shopping, and a Hackensaw Boys concert. Ever get the feeling that lady with the sword and the scales is holding you and your side of the scale is way lower than the other?

But it makes no difference, that lady with the sword and the scales (who is blind, remember, and thus easily snuck up on from behind and goosed) wants me, and she's going to get me, because she has the firepower to back it up. And see, here's the thing. This isn't local. This isn't "someone stole my goat and I know it's Zeke because I saw him with goat milk on his lip." This is federal. This is "someone stole my secret documents and I know it's Zeke because he has a Russian flag in his shed."

Which you'd think might be more interesting, and it may be. Who knows. Being from this area, I might dig a stolen goat more. Whatever the case, the real downside to all this, besides the fact that it's already fucked up my vacation, my Hackensaw Boys, my shopping, my last-ever chance to see the nephew march in the band in a Christmas parade, and that it's jury duty, for cryin' out loud, yes, the real downside is that the federal courthouse is 2 hours away from me. And I have to be there at 9:00 in the morning. Sweet Jesus.

At least I get compensated, about 1/4 of what I'd get at work and not really enough to buy my gas down and back and the coffee to keep me awake during the trial. If I get pissed off enough by the whole thing, I'll just vote "innocent." Let Zeke have his secret documents, he's probably just feeding them to the stolen goat.

But on to the Holy Bible.

I've been watching something on DVD for the past couple of days, and may I just say it's one of the odder things I've encountered. And this is for a lot of reasons which I won't go into in case I want to talk about it all on the podcast, but the main reason is that, and I don't know if this was its intended purpose, it's coming off as 2/3 biblical epic and 1/3 Borscht Belt-music hall-burlesque. If you know your old British TV shows, think "Passion of the Christ" meets "Up Pompeii."

It got me to thinking about something, and it wasn't that either the people who made this movie were on LSD or I was. It was something more serious, and that is, "In biblical epics, why doesn't anyone suffer from Male Pattern Baldness?"

Now, think about this before you giggle. Or, you can giggle, but still think. You have two types of men in BEs (biblical epics): bald of the Yul Brynner shaved head variety, or just awash in a sea of hair. Long, flowing, wind-tangled, and often accompanied by long, flowing, and wind-tangled beards. (Or as Eddie Izzard puts it, "Big fuck-off beards.") There's never a "long flowing from the ears down with bald pate," never a "bald on top and a few spiky five o'clock shadow whisps on the sides," and definitely no "hair past the neck used in a combover." I'm going by BEs I've seen, and I'm the first to admit I've not seen them all (though I have read the book, a line my brother-in-law once used that made me laugh out loud), and I'm discounting Passolini's "The Gospel According To St Matthew" because every man in that movie wears such a by-God hat you can't really tell what kind of hair he has or doesn't have. I mean really, if there was an Oscar for hats, it should be nicknamed the St Matthew.

I will leave this subject with an exception, though, the closest I can figure, anyway: Terry Jones as the hermit who breaks his vow of silence in "Life of Brian." And that scene ends with a man asking a healing from Brian because "I am affected by a bald patch." You know, I'm pretty much convinced that "Life of Brian" is the most accurate biblical epic (BE) out there, and that's including the flying saucer scene.

But on to giving animals as Christmas gifts.

Yes, Yuletime (or Yultime, if you're in the Brynner family) must be upon us, because I am in possession of my yearly issue of the Heifer International catalog. You'll recall, if you've been with me for a long time, I actually spent two blogs some years ago talking about this little nugget, wherein we look at the catalog and pick out our gifts, which are all live animals and will be sent to villages around the world. A dozen baby chicks to Tanzania. An ox to the Ukraine. A big, heaping crateful of Guinea pigs to Venezuela. I think the main gist of my blog before, besides the fact that it's just a damn weird catalog, is that most of these cute, fuzzy, baby animals are being sent around the world to be slaughtered, eaten, and worn as coats. And really, to me, nothing says "Merry Christmas" like squeezing the life out of a baby chick.

The 2006 version of this brochure of barbecuing features a new twist. Celebrities! The cover shows that married acting duo Bradley Whitford and Jane Kaczmarek, and a water buffalo. And I don't mean Fred Flintstone in his lodge hat, I mean a real live water buffalo. Susan Sarandon fancies giving the world a llama or two (she's pictured with two, but then again, she's rich), and Ed Asner is snuggling up to a heifer just a little more closely than I personally am comfortable with. Actress Patricia Heaton seems to be a goat person (as is Zeke, but I don't think he got his from Heifer International), and His Majesty of Terror, Stephen King, is pictured with the goats too, but is on the page where they want you buy pigs, which is fitting, because...well, because.

No, wait. Not because King is a pig, I've never met the man. But because for some reason, this time around the catalog seems to be going for the "milk and wool" market instead of the "eat them all up" market. Maybe they read my blog. But the pig is the first animal where it's intimated that you're buying it to actually feed some people, though they don't come out and say that, they say "eats garbage and has lots of piglets," and I guess maybe no one else would endorse such a horrid thing, and so there's Scary Stephen playing with goats on the "eat a pig" page.

Then things get all warm and fuzzy again with Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen endorsing sheep, which of course, are wool-intensive. But then things get icky again when Barbara Bush endorses rabbits, not for fabulous fur coats for the more upscale villagers, but for that Heifer International Euphemism of All Time, "An excellent source of protein." As in, you're eating Peter Cottontail there. Oddly enough, beside Mrs Bush's endorsement is this picture of a mother and son enjoying their rabbit before he becomes an excellent source of protein. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but even without my glasses I don't think this is Barbara and Jeb.

Walter Cronkite wants us to buy chicks, and this time they're not an ESP (excellent source of protein); however, their eggs are. Eggs, eggs, eggs. It's all about the eggs with Heifer International, but you tell me Walter doesn't chow down on a chicken sandwich once in a while. (Chicks are quite inexpensive, btw - $20 for a whole flock.)

Ahhh, bees. Bees are not an ESP, and honey sure does taste good, but no one would be photographed with bees. This is how I know that celebrities are big pampered babies. And please forgive me, but bees make me laugh and I can't get the picture out of my head of a South American village running amok being chased by herds of bees. I'm ashamed, especially with it being around Christmas and all.

Ed Harris and Amy Madigan are posing with a Heifer, too, and though I thought it would be, it's not wearing a beret.

And in the end, the end of the blog and the end of the catalog, here's how the whole Heifer International hierarchy stacks up in 2006. Cows, goats, and bees reign. All they do is laze around making milk and honey, which if you think about it is just right for a BE (biblical epic). Sheep and llamas are next, they just have to get sheared every so often. Chicks are next, giving up eggs, but I'm putting them below cows, goats, and bees because you know when times get tough, someone's going to look at one of those chickens with bloodlust in his eyes. Oxen, water buffalo, donkeys, and camels come in after that. They're work animals. Which, to me, is as bad as sending an animal off to get eaten, taking a perfectly happy large animal and making him break his back in a draft team. Then you've got the sad guys bringing up the rear of the animal caste system. That would be your Guinea pigs, plain pigs, geese, and rabbits. They're edible.

But who am I to be judgemental? This Thursday, will I be sitting down to a feast of eggs, milk, and honey? I think not.

I might try a Guinea pig.

Betland's Olympic Update:
* Acrowinners, we have acrowinners. So, what color do I paint the denette, according the paint people?
- Runner-Up goes to Mike, with his "Cream Of Orange Rind."
- And this week's winner goes to LilyG, with her "Central Ohio Oilfire River."
- Thanks to the two of you - now come help me paint!
* And yes, I tore that picture I used of Barbara and Jeb. Sorry.