Dan Heyman

After persisting in his questions for nearly a minute, Mr. Heyman was pulled to the side by officers of the West Virginia Division of Protective Services, also known as the Capitol Police, handcuffed and charged with a misdemeanor count of willful disruption of governmental processes. He spent eight hours in a local jail before the news service posted a $5,000 bail for his release.
from the NYTimes

Reporters, beware of Tom Price!

He doesn’t take queries too nice.

Dan Heyman found out

About Price’s clout --

By spending the night with jail lice.

Do Not Spurn at Anything the Hand of God Begins

“Wo unto him that spurneth at the doings of the Lord; yea, wo unto him that shall deny the Christ and his works!”

Do not spurn at anything the hand of God begins.

Otherwise you’re left behind with nothing but your sins.

To understand His reasons is beyond most mortal men.

But prophets can interpret with a pure and simple ken.

Never doubt the sorrow unbelievers will endure

Because the Gospel record they would choose to full abjure.

Email to a friend

I’ve got a sink full of dirty dishes, so naturally I’m putting off doing them by emailing you completely inconsequential items from my inconsequential life today.

I don’t know how you wake up in the mornings now but I am usually so stiff and brittle I could be mistaken for a bag of pretzel rods. Which, by the way, is what I keep on hand for when company comes calling -- along with lots of bottled spring water in the fridge. Nobody drinks tap water anymore and I won’t go to the expense of getting organic tidbits for all the fussy eaters in my family -- they can have a pretzel rod or go jump in the lake.  Anywho, when I get up I’m barely a viable organism until I have a glass of oj. Then my tongue rehydrates and I can go splash water on my face until I feel sensations in my brain that indicate the thought process is coming online. By then it is usually almost time to go to the Rec Center for water aerobics. I’ve decided to treat the daily class there as required therapy for me -- for my unsteady legs and my unsteady mind. If I didn’t go I’d wind up in my apartment all day and all night and turn into some kind of horrid hermit who smells like sweaty socks and stale sardine cans.

And by the way, I eat about five cans of sardines a week -- usually for a late breakfast.

I’ve been dissatisfied with my morning prayers lately. I seem to be giving a speech instead of talking to God on a friendly and reverent basis. I blame this tendency on the fact that I never had any kind of a conversation with my own dad. So I don’t really know how to talk to the Father above. I’m afraid my kids don’t want to talk to me on a serious level ever -- I’m just some silly old fellow who is good for a laugh and nothing else. So they never come to me for advice or comfort or just to pass the time of day. My fault, I guess. Anywho, so I have been trying to imagine what I would like to talk to my earthly dad about if he were approachable, and then try talking about these same things to the Man Upstairs. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. But at least it puts my brain in gear for the rest of the day.

I’m tapering off eating at the Senior Center for lunch. The food is okay as long as I don’t eat any breakfast and so am starving by noon, but what I am finding difficult is the feeling of exhaustion that comes over me around 10am every morning -- if I can’t lay down for an hour I get sick for the rest of the day. There’s no place to take a nap at the Senior Center -- if you try to lay down on one of the comfy couches a security guard comes by to tell you to wake up and sit up. The crumbs. So I try to be home by 10 am so I can fall asleep or at least rest in my recliner. Then I feel much better for the rest of the day.

Today I thought i would do some more circus memoir writing but when I began planning out a story for my blog I just couldn’t face another circus story -- my own memories are starting to bore me to death. So instead I concentrated on my poetry today, composing three decent pieces based on reporter’s stories in the NYT. I sent the poems to the reporters before putting them up on my blog and all 3 emailed with a complimentary thank you. So that made me feel pretty good. At least I haven’t lost my touch. Then I decided, what the heck, I’ll say another prayer because I was falling into a daydream where the New York Times offers me a thousand dollars a week to write poems for them -- so I can pay off my past medical bills, get all the medical procedures done that I can’t afford right now and that will make me feel more healthy and alive, and get a car again so I can drive around like a normal human being, polluting Utah Valley and making a nuisance of myself with my kids by visiting them all the time. I had a good conversation with God about that; just stating simply and directly that I would really appreciate an editor from the NYT or Wall Street Journal calling me and offering me a vast amount of money for the privilege of printing and posting my poetry. I got no definite feeling one way or the other after I finished praying, but it felt good to get that off my chest. When I am called to account on the Day of Judgement I’ll just point out that I wanted to support myself and pay my bills on time and be of use to my family, and I prayed for help, but couldn’t get any celestial cooperation to be recognized as an accomplished writer of light verse -- and whose fault is that, hmmm? Why give a man some genius if you don’t give him the opportunity to make money with it? It’s only a torture without recognition and remuneration.

I made a good Polish soup for lunch, with lots of sausage, navy beans, potatoes, and sauerkraut -- which I spilled all over myself while watching a David Attenborough animal special on Netflix. And I had just finished doing my laundry -- so now I’ll have to do another batch tomorrow. It costs me a dollar-fifty to wash and dry one load.

I spent an hour watching Ray Walston in My Favorite Martian on YouTube as the evening deepened. How wonderful to think back to those long moronic evenings in front of the TV set, with the whole family watching inane fluff like The Beverly Hillbillies or Green Acres or My Mother the Car. If I got into my pajamas and brushed my teeth without being reminded too many times my mom would reward me with a bowl of chocolate ice cream, which I would let melt until I could literally drink it out of the bowl. That’s how I liked it.

Now I’ve got a DVD from the Provo Library I’m watching -- something called City of Bones. It’s a horror, sci fi, theological mashup that I’m only watching because my mind is closing down for the night and there’s lots of monsters in it. Put enough monsters in a movie and I can usually stay awake until almost 9:30 pm.

Well, dammit, I was hoping the pixies would come while I was writing this and do up the dishes, but the little pishers didn’t show up so I’m going to have to do them. I can’t stand leaving dirty dishes in the sink overnight. It gives me the creeps. So I’ll do a half-arsed job of washing and rinsing them. Oh, and I’ll brush my teeth. Maybe gargle with a little apple cider vinegar. Joom used to complain about my breath so much when I wanted to kiss her that I started gargling with white vinegar before each makeout session, and now I’ve switched to apple cider vinegar just because I have a big bottle of it handy in the pantry. Oh yeah, and I’ve got to take some papaya enzyme pills too -- they help with the morning bm.

So that’s my day -- take it or leave it. How was your day?

James B Comey

There once was a fellow named Comey

Who kept stirring things until foamy.

The President said

Let’s off with his head!

I guess he has heard of Salome.

Data Rape

There are no secrets nowadays --

Our data’s spread like mayonnaise.

The moment you go on Facebook

There’s someone else will take a look.

The world will know your ev’ry tweet,

While Reddit is just indiscreet.

If you would like some privacy

Then be a cyber absentee.

Since otherwise there’s no escape

From automatic data rape!

Christian Governor in Indonesia Found Guilty of Blasphemy Against Islam, Goes to Jail

JAKARTA, Indonesia — An Indonesian court found the Christian governor of the country’s capital, Jakarta, guilty of blasphemy against Islam on Tuesday, sentencing him to two years in prison in a case widely seen as a test of religious tolerance and free speech.

From the NYTimes

The Governor there in Jakarta

Is finding the place a real Sparta.

Not being Islamic

Is not very comic --

And don’t ask about Magna Carta!

There are unconfirmed reports it was a Lemon Meringue Pie

It warmed the cockles of my heart this morning to read in BuzzFeed that Qantas CEO Alan Joyce received a pie in the face during a business breakfast. The perpetrator of this lovely clownish misdemeanor is an elderly Australian man, no name given as yet. All police are saying at the moment is that “There are unconfirmed reports it was a Lemon Meringue Pie.”

It is altogether meet and fit that a moneybags like Joyce should be pied, after being paid thirteen million dollars salary last year. A pie in the face keeps a man humble and reminds him that he is apt to slip on a banana peel sooner or later.  

As a circus clown for over thirty years, I have made a study of the nature and function of slapstick actions such as pie throwing. There can be no doubt that physical comedy is born of man’s innate need to see the high and mighty brought down by violent and whimsical means. And a pie is the ideal instrument to reward hubris of any kind.

In America, a pie cooling on the kitchen windowsill says all there is to say about homely domesticity and the basic goodness of simple things. Something that rich people, with their maids and butlers and fripperies, know nothing about. Pushing this bourgeoisie symbol into the face of a plutocrat thus brings immense satisfaction, and at the same time is a ringing denunciation of the everlasting inequality of the status quo. It is also highly subversive. In Laurel and Hardy’s epic pie fight film, ‘Battle of the Century,’ a moment arrives when the mayor of the city, top-hatted and frock-coated, steps into the fray to positively prohibit any more pastry slinging. He is immediately set upon by all parties and is soon wallowing in sugary goo. Would that all mayors and governors and senators and presidents could be bombarded by custard and fruit-filled tarts! There’s nothing like a lather of banana cream around the face to make a fat cat sit up and pay attention to the hoi polloi.

At Ringling Brothers we were more egalitarian -- our motto in clown alley was “A pie in the kisser for rich and poor alike!” This also held true for seltzer spray, buckets of water, conks on the head with foam rubber mallets, and detonations. Still and all, it was a recognized fact that any clown who could muster an air of authority in the ring would get the biggest laugh when pummeled with a shaving cream pie or have his pants set on fire.

Slapstick is both raw and cruel -- there is nothing refined or subtle about it. It is comic triage. It uses brutality and humiliation to make its point -- if it even has a point. Slapstick for slaptick’s sake is pretty much the modus operandi of all circus and screen clowns. But it is not terrorism. Or criminal. Slapstick does no harm in the long run and seeks no felonious gain. It is a manifestation of our pre-verbal frustrations and desires. When a child has a toy snatched away suddenly, it hits out or runs around howling in a circle. That is not the action of a terrorist or crook. Just a child’s reaction to something it views as arbitrary and unjust. The slapstick of clowns is the same thing -- you kick me in the pants and I’m obliged to chase you with a blunderbuss and shoot your keister off. No hard feelings -- it’s just how things are done around here.

Those who have been pied in the recent past include the Premier of Alberta, Ralph Klein; Fashion Designer Calvin Klein; Microsoft founder Bill Gates; Publisher Rupert Murdoch; King Carl Gustaf of Sweden; New York Mayor Abraham Beame; and James Allen Rhodes, the Governor of Ohio. None of them were seriously injured, except in their pride. For the most part both the media and the public expressed outrage at such boorish behavior. But a hard minority confessed to a profound relishment -- the ones who truly understand the meaning of slapstick.

In 2017 slapstick in the circus is pretty much gone. If you want to see someone get a pie in the face you’ll have to scan the news for more business breakfasts.  Clowns today play pretty flutes and lead the crowd in pattycake chants. Slaps and blows and falls are frowned on by parenting experts, and a good old-fashioned explosion that sends clown bodies flying every which way is deemed politically incorrect. But at the same time violence blossoms on the silver screen and on TV as never before. And violence has never been what real slapstick is about. With real slapstick you get a pie in the face, do a double-take, wipe it off, and then go about your business. In other words -- you always recover. But nobody recovers from a bullet in the head or gruesome knifing on television.

Slapstick is, at bottom, life-affirming. It certainly involves some pain and humiliation -- but that’s part of life, isn’t it? So unless Alan Joyce has diabetes, I don’t see the harm in letting him have a taste of pie in an overzealous manner. And you’re right . . . if it was me on the receiving end of an unexpected pie I would be crying up the decay of civilized discourse and demanding my pound of flesh right now. But just so you know, back in 1999 I asked a statistician friend who taught at the University of Minnesota to help me figure out how many pies I had gotten in the face during my clown career -- we came up with the sum of 9,877. Give or take a few meringues.

Without Faith

“WIthout faith among men, God can do no miracle among them.”

Quentin L. Cook

If miracles you would behold

You must find the men who are bold

In faith in the Christ,

And have sacrificed

All to protect His dear fold.

Why Everything We Know About Salt is Probably Wrong

New studies of Russian cosmonauts, held in isolation to simulate space travel, show that eating more salt made them less thirsty but somehow hungrier. Subsequent experiments found that mice burned more calories when they got more salt, eating 25 percent more just to maintain their weight.
from the NYTimes


The more salt the better is now the new phrase
of doctors and nurses, who suddenly praise
dat ol' debil sodium like it was gold --
and never again will they caution and scold!
For cosmonauts proved that with plenty of salt
you will lose weight by hydraulic default!
So pass me the shaker and anchovy sauce -- 
for brine has been taken down off of the cross! 

The Prodigal Son -- Updated

The Prodigal Son
having spent all his loot
came back to his father
and got a new suit

The son who stayed home
still got the estate
but after the taxes
he lived in a crate.