Changing Channels
Welcome, Jazz Pickles, to my ear-splitting Sunday morning. I’ll explain that in a moment, but first, here’s something to think about regarding the seance cartoon above.
Some of you may not know this but there are thousands of people online who claim to be channelling supernatural beings, everything from angels to aliens. Some do it for free, some make money, but all of them have followers who believe they are getting information from somewhere other than Earth. So here’s the thing I was just thinking about: it is tempting for a rational person to immediately disregard these people as frauds or mental cases. But upon second thought, one can easily make a logical case that it could be true and there would literally be NO way you could know that from this planet with your mammal brain. Currently, we cannot know if there is intelligent life beyond Earth unless they prove themselves to us, so, if there was intelligent life beyond Earth and it had the ability to communicate telepathically with humans and speak through them, we would not be able to prove or disprove that unless they allowed it. Are some of the people who are doing this frauds? Of course. Any knowledge of the human species will tell you that some most definitely are. But some might be authentic. If they were, you’d have no way of knowing or proving it unless they let you. Think about that.
Back to my ear-splitting Sunday morning. I am posting this on Monday morning but I was typing it yesterday morning under duress.
Like seemingly most days throughout the year, today is a religious holiday of some kind in the small town in Central Mexico where we live. I don’t know which holiday they are celebrating today since it’s not Christmas or Easter and those are the only holidays I can recognize with any certainty. To be frank, there are so many holidays here that unless you’re a native, it can be pretty challenging to keep track. Today’s is the biggest and loudest one of the year, though, so I think it is the celebration of what they call the Virgin of Guadalupe. She is without doubt the biggest celebrity in Mexico and comes from a story very early in the Spanish conquest of what is now called the Aztec Empire, one of the most advanced cultures in the world at the time.
The story is that Jesus’s mother appeared to an indigenous man a few times over a period of a few days and performed a few miracles; a deathbed reprieve of the man’s uncle, the sudden appearance of some artwork on a cloak, and some roses normally only found in Spain. In fact, the name “Guadalupe,” which the vision reportedly asked to be called, is from Spain as well. Some say this event was fabricated in an attempt to get the local indigenous people to believe in the new religion that was being forced down their throats by their conquerors (Catholicism), some say it was an authentic encounter with a being from another dimension. Again, the rational mind rebels (especially with the historical context) but if it was an authentic visitor from another dimension, we’d have no way of knowing that unless it let us in on the secret. Just saying.
Our town is San Miguel de Allende, which means “St. Michael of/from Allende.” St. Michael is the biblical archangel, one of God’s favorite enforcers, so there is a St. Michael’s Day, of course. You see images of him around town quite often and he is mostly pictured with wings and medieval battle gear, waving a sword and standing on the neck of the Devil. Of course he is. Where else would he stand?
“Allende” is the last name of a hero of the Mexican War of Independence from Spain, so there’s an Allende Day of some kind here as well. He is usually shown as a guy wearing a military officer’s uniform, waving a sword, not standing on the Devil’s neck but you get the feeling he would if the opportunity presented itself. And, since Mexico is a culture that is loath to miss an opportunity to throw a fiesta and light fuses, there’s probably a “De Day” celebrating prepositions related to religious or patriotic themes. This would not surprise me in the least.
But it doesn’t matter what the holiday is called, tradition requires that the people of our town begin shooting explosives into the sky well before the sun is up. Around 5 A.M., our otherwise peaceful village sounds as though it is under siege. A person with battle-induced PTSD would likely be digging a bomb shelter in the floor of their living room by sunrise before being reminded that this is simply the way some Mexicans get close to God.
These explosives are not pretty rockets with sparkles and glittering flower and star shapes in the sky, no. Those come in the evening after dark. The ones that start pre-dawn and last all day long are crude things that make a hiss-s-s-s-s- sound, then explode a hundred feet off the ground with the force of heavy artillery, enough to shake the glass in your windows and the fillings in your teeth. The visual display is nothing more than a puff of smoke in the sky, most don’t even leave a trail of sparks as they go up. How making your neighborhood sound like the deck of a battleship during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor fits into Catholic theology is anyone’s guess, but from what I’ve read about Mexican history, this custom comes from the Aztecs, not the Pope. The official term for this kind of combo is “syncretism”.
The Aztec gods were evidently quite hard of hearing because part of the point of building the stone pyramids and the elaborate complexes of buildings, walls, and courtyards that surrounded them that the Aztecs are so famous for was to magnify the sound of enormous drums that they would beat by the dozens or hundreds. The sound must have been deafening. In fact, if the Aztec gods were not naturally hard of hearing, they certainly were by the time the Aztecs were finished worshipping them. It is my theory that after so many generations of this kind of behavior, natural selection favored people who could not hear loud noises or at least were not affected by them, and Mexico seems to be brimming with such people today. I get the feeling the average Mexican in my town wouldn’t flinch if a bomb went off in their purse.
And this brings to mind an interesting cultural contradiction: though Mexicans tend to favor loud explosions and very loud music at their parties, they are personally a very quiet people. It is not considered polite to raise your voice in Mexico or to draw attention to yourself, so you almost never hear anyone yelling, either on the street or in their homes. Expressing anger in public is not tolerated. Loud fireworks, music, and mufflers, yes, but not loud people. The loudest thing you’ll ever hear a Mexican say in my town is, “Stand back, I’m going to light this explosive device now.” (Of course, they say that in Spanish, which I could attempt to approximate here without the help of a translation app but with my current linguistic skills it would likely sound to a native speaker like a drunk toddler with a weird accent and a tenuous grasp of the rules of grammar. After five years of attempting to learn Spanish, that’s as far as I’ve gotten, I’m sorry to say.)
And this brings me full circle because as I write this, I’m realizing that it could be this cultural oppression about personal noise that gives them a thirst for public noise. If I can’t yell at my lazy spouse and annoying kids, at least I can blow off some steam by lighting homemade rocket bombs and waking everyone up at five in the morning.
My dog is a nervous wreck this morning but the gods are pleased so that’s probably a good thing.
Let’s all now please ourselves by diving into Wayno’s Bizarro cartoons from the week!…
Maybe he’s only leaving a sample.
(If you have trouble understanding this cartoon, combine the type of bird he is with the name of the object he’s standing on.)
Both Wayno and I like the Sluggo/Secret Symbol combo tattoo. I have tattoos, but not that one. Wayno has none but includes in his blog post this week a couple that he might consider should he ever decide to take the leap. Also in this week’s post, he tells an interesting story about Dizzy Gillespie and Louis Armstrong and also includes a link to an awesome duet that had me swinging!
That eyeball hood ornament won’t last long in Hoboken. Better not leave it unattended.
If he loses, he’ll probably have to sell his chain of gyms.
All he really wants is the approval of strangers. And some crackers.
All he needs is an antenna dangling some mistletoe.
And that concludes the week’s cartoon holiday party, Jazz Pickles. Thanks for sticking around until we decorated the general. If you enjoy our weekly missives and appreciate the lack of a paywall or annoying ads and clickbait, perhaps send some holiday cheer our way via the links below. We’ll keep you in mind next time we stand beneath the general’s antenna.
Until next week, keep your head down and your earplugs firmly inserted in your hear holes.
BIZARRO SHOP Fun and cheap!
… Bizarro TIP JAR One-time or repeating. Your choice!
…Signed, numbered, limited edition prints and original Bizarro panels