The Refectory Manager

The refectory . . . A place to nourish the soul. A place to share the savory comestibles, the sweet confections, the salty condiments of the things that matter. A place to ruminate the cud of politics. A place to rant on the railings of religion. A place to arrange the flowers of sanguine beauty. A place to pause in the repose of shelter. Welcome, my friend. The Refectory Manager

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Location: College Place, Washington, United States

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Canned

My friend in Serbia, the Sautnerer's Journal guy, ( http://saunterersjournal.blogspot.com/ ) can ask the damndest of questions! I love him for it. Like this one!


“But before I forget, there's something I've been meaning to ask you. I know
you'll laugh, given that it's such a digression. Jockstraps. What's that all
about? I understand they are now more common in places like Britain and
Australia, but they still seem like something quintessentially American, one of
those things that, in spite of the globalization still haven't landed on our
shores. Obviously, I know what they are and what they're meant to be for. I'm
just fascinated with the idea behind the design (and vice versa), and the
eroticism of it. Any cultural notes and observations?”



Well. Yes. I did laugh!!

And maybe even blushed a little tiny bit!!! LOL

‘Cause it brought back a whole bunch of memories.

And as he so astutely observed, it is more than the “idea behind the design” and “design behind the idea!” Because of the nature of the functionality involved, it is not the “behind” that has much to do with either the idea or the design, rather, it is the “before.”

But I did do a quick little Google search and did find this interesting little rendition on the utility of jock straps.

http://www.slate.com/id/2123007/

My nephew just popped in a couple of minutes after his e-mail arrived. So I read that paragraph to him.

My nephew was so damned serious! “They are a fetish! Some guys are really hot with jockstraps! They are a real turn-on! To be seen wearing them. Taking them off. Putting them on. Sniffin’ them. They’re hot!”

And then he says he has to lose some weight so he can get back into his! LOL

But back to your original digression. The quintessentially American jockstrap.

And the memories.

As a boy of 13/14 years old, my Dad was a “community organizer” and hosted and coached a hockey team for kids from my parochial school. We were never good enough to play in the organized community leagues, but he would find “exhibition” games for us to play. He bought shirts and sticks and stuff for the 8 or 10 kids in our team, and would haul us off to games on Sunday mornings (being a SDA school, no Saturday games, which also disqualified us from the community leagues as they all had games on Saturday) or sometimes weeknights.

As a latent gay kid, I absolutely hated it. There was nothing worse. I was not athletic. Not near competitive enough. Hated my body with a passion. And anything that made reference to it.

I’m sure I frustrated my Dad.

And then that can!

I “inherited” a whole hockey outfit from some second cousin I had never met, and it included a jockstrap and a “can.” That hard metal cup thing that was supposed to fit in the jockstrap to keep your nuts from getting creamed by a flying puck.

Except I was too small, and the jockstrap and can were too big and I didn’t know how to wear it and too ashamed to ask anybody so the thing would just kind of hang on my waist, dangle down by my knees somewhere, all covered up by the big hockey pants, and the damn can would not stay in and kept falling out. Hockey outfits really are a contraption!

And it is absolutely mortifying to be skating down the ice and your can falls out and goes sliding away!! Then some bastard hits it with his hockey stick and the thing goes whistling by the goalie’s head over the boards. And then after the game, to be questioned what in hell you were looking for out in the snow bank!

Misery. Personified.

But I had been hit in the groin a time or two and so the fear of repeating that was even greater than the fear of fiddlin' with that friggin’ thing to try and keep it in place.

Then there is the use of jock straps by old guys! Yeah, really old guys. The guys who have enlarged prostate glands that make peeing a pissing contest between relief and mortification. For instead of inserting a “can” in the jock strap, they will insert one of those “protection pads” to catch that gawd awful leaking resulting from poor bladder control.

But one of the fond memories I do have of my Dad was listening to him, and watching him, tell someone who innocently happened to ask him about his tastes in music. Invariably he would respond by saying that his favorite music group was “Jacque Straup and his All Elastic Band!”

Kind of like when somebody would pressure him into telling what religion he was, and he would shut them up by saying that he went “to the Round Church, where the devil couldn’t corner him.”

Well, you are probably sorry you asked!!! LOL

But since they have not landed on your shores yet, if you have any hinkering for a jockstrap, the athletic superstores around here have a myriad of selections. I dare say I could find a nice one that would meet either/and/or/both your design criteria and your idea criteria!

Hugs

The Refectory Manager

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Something about 9/11

Watched (and listened on satellite radio) to some of the 9/11 memorial ceremonies this morning.

But it was a still image that I saw after 9/11 that has seared most deeply into my psych. It is those pictures of the people jumping from hundreds and hundreds of feet up. What kind of terror would make a person jump to certain death over being incinerated? That is a decision I cannot comprehend.

Perhaps that is when the mind just shuts down, and the raw animalistic core of being human just takes over.

And so I wonder, just how much of us is a “higher thing” where we think of soul and spirit and transcendental things. And how much of us is shear chemistry working in ways to sustain the non-equilibrium of physiological systems that separates life from death.

For why else do we eat? But to assimilate that energy that drives the chemistry that maintains the non-equilibrium environment of the “internal milieu.”

And is it all just so mechanistic? Or is there an aspect of “mechanism,” i.e. “spirit,” that is just at another frequency and energy level?

What is it that truly separates me, a naked ape, from my >97% DNA homology cousin, the hairy ape?

Do I have a soul?

Is that what separates me?

Does the hairy ape too have a soul?

Is not life precious to a hairy ape?

Do they not defend, with heroic honor, their infant child?

Is it primal biological drive that does this for both of us?

Would a hairy ape have jumped from a hundred stories up from an inferno of an environment?

Or was there some mystical moment in the recent past. God the Father standing there on a moist soil stream bank in Eden. God the Son kneeling in that moist soil. With his fingers, sculpturing the Adam. Forming the molecules of amino acids, proteins, bi-polar lipid cell membranes, the hormones, the blood transport molecules necessary to solve the problem of moving lipid material in an aqueous environment of the blood. Priming the metabolic cycles. Krebs’s cycle. The Cori cycle. The respiratory cycle. Regulating the kidney’s glomerular filtration rate to retain and reject the optimal balance of metabolic molecules. The coding of the architecture of life in stem cells. The dimple in the chin. A bit of humor with a extraneous belly button.

Letting these miniscule molecules roll by the billions and billions from his finger tips. The assembly. The forming. The sculpturing of an inanimate Michelangelo.

The brushing of the sand from Adam’s eyes. The tilting of the head back. Clearing the oral cavity. Opening the airway.

The look of the One Kneeling up to the One Standing and the mutual recognition that it was not only good, it was very good.

The pressing of lips together. The breath! The breathing! The releasing of a physiological maelstrom that defines life. The becoming a living soul.

That is what Genesis tells me what happened with the authenticity, the immediacy, the urgency of “CNN Breaking News.”

But Genesis does not record that being done with the hairy ape.

And I have to ask myself, just what is it that happened way back when.

Did God create the naked ape? In his image.

Or.

Did the naked ape create God? In his image.

And what is a god to a hairy ape? And does a hairy ape even know about a hairy ape god? Or a naked ape god?

And have naked apes simply evolved to a point where there is some kind of transceiver embedded within the very chemistry of the brain that resonates with a frequency and power we have likened to as spirit?

And how is it that I can even ask a question like this?

There is something about 9/11 that is seismic about my foundational bedrock.

The Refectory Manager