WEB GRAFFITI ZINE
Zine 16
Collated by William Hillman

Here's the final word on Nutrition and Health. It's a relief to know  the truth after all those conflicting medical studies.

• The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.
• The French eat a lot of fat and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.
• The Japanese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.
• The Italians drink excessive amounts of red wine and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the  British or Americans.

THE FOLLOWING IS A CHINESE GOOD LUCK TANTRA TOTEM. 
You may not believe in this but the advice is great! 
Read all the way down, you might learn something!!!

ONE.  Give people more than they expect and do it cheerfully.  TWO.  Marry a man/woman you love to talk to. As you get older, their conversational skills will be as important as any other.  THREE.  Don't believe all you hear, spend all you have or sleep all you want.  FOUR.  When you say, "I love you", mean it.  FIVE.  When you say, "I'm sorry", look the person in the eye.  SIX.  Be engaged at least six months before you get married.  SEVEN.  Believe in love at first sight.  EIGHT.  Never laugh at anyone's dreams. People who don't have dreams don't have much.  NINE.  Love deeply and passionately. You might get hurt but it's the only way to live life completely.  TEN.  In disagreements, fight fairly. Please No name calling.  ELEVEN.  Don't judge people by their relatives.  TWELVE.  Talk slowly but think quickly.  THIRTEEN.  When someone asks you a question you don't want to answer, smile and ask, "Why do you want to know?"  FOURTEEN.  Remember that great love and great achievements involve great risk.  FIFTEEN.  Say "bless you" when you hear someone sneeze.  SIXTEEN.  When you lose, don't lose the lesson.  SEVENTEEN.  Remember the three R's:  Respect for self;  Respect for others;  Responsibility for all your actions.  EIGHTEEN.  Don't let a little dispute injure a great friendship.  NINETEEN.  When you realize you've made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.  TWENTY.  Smile when picking up the phone. The caller will hear it in your voice.  TWENTY ONE.  Spend some time alone.

• I’d really like for you to know about hand me down clothes and homemade ice cream and leftover meat loaf sandwiches.
• I hope you learn humility by being humiliated, and that you learn honesty by being cheated.
• I hope you learn to make your own bed and mow the lawn and wash the car.
• And I really hope nobody gives you a brand new car when you are sixteen.
• It will be good if at least one time you can see puppies born and your old dog put to sleep.
• I hope you get a black eye fighting for something you believe in.
• I hope you have to share a bedroom with your younger brother/sister. And it’s all right if you have to draw a line down the middle of the room, but when he wants to crawl under the covers with you because he’s scared, I hope you let him.
• When you want to see a movie and your little brother/sister want to tag along, I hope you’ll let him/her.
• I hope you have to walk uphill to school with your friends and that you live in a town where you can do it safely.
• On rainy days when you have to catch a ride, I hope you don’t ask your driver to drop you two blocks away so you won’t be seen riding with someone as un-cool as your Mom.
• If you want a slingshot, I hope your Dad teaches you how to make one instead of buying one.
• I hope you learn to dig in the dirt and read books.
• When you learn to use computers, I hope you learn to add and subtract in your head.
• I hope you get teased by your friends when you have your first crush on a boy/girl, and when you talk back to your mother that you learn what Ivory soap tastes like.
• May you skin your knee climbing a mountain, burn your hand on a stove and stick your tongue on a frozen flagpole.
• I don’t care if you try a beer once, but I hope you don’t like it.  And if a friend offers you dope or a joint, I hope you realize he is not your friend.
• I sure hope you make time to sit on a porch with your Grandma/Grandpa and go fishing with your Uncle.  May you feel sorrow at a funeral and joy during the holidays.
• I hope your mother punishes you when you throw a baseball through your neighbor’s window and that she hugs you and kisses you at Christmas time when you give her a plaster mold of your hand.

These things I wish for you – tough times and disappointment, hard work and happiness.  To me, it’s the only way to appreciate life.  Written with a pen. Sealed with a kiss. I’m here for you. And if I die before you do, I’ll go to heaven and wait for you.

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Why Women are Cranky...

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WE start to "bud" in our blouses at 9 or 10 years old only to find anything that comes in contact with those tender, blooming buds, hurts so bad it brings us to tears.

ENTER the almighty, uncomfortable training bra contraption the boys in school will snap until we have calluses on our backs.

NEXT, we get our periods in our early to teens (or sooner). Along with those budding boobs, we now bloat, we cramp, we get the hormone crankies, and have to wear little mattresses between our legs or insert tubular, packed cotton rods in places we didn't even know we had.

OUR next little rite of passage (premarital or not) is having SEX for the first time which is about as much fun as having a ramrod push your insides up through your nostrils (and that's IF he did it right and didn't end up with his little cart before his horse), and Always leaving us to wonder just what all the fuss was about.

THEN it's off to Motherhood where we learn to live on dry crackers and water for a few months so we don't spend the entire day leaning over the John.

Of course, Amazing Creatures that we are (and we are), we learn to live with the growing little angels inside us steadily kicking our innards night and day making us wonder if we're having Rosemary's Baby. Our once flat bellies now look like we swallowed a watermelon whole and we pee our pants every time we sneeze.

WHEN the big moment arrives, the dam in our blessed Nether Regions will invariably burst right in the middle of the mall and we'll waddle with our big cartoon feet moaning in pain all the way to the ER.

THEN it's huff and puff and beg to die while the OB or his nurse says, "Please stop screaming, Mrs. In-Labor. Calm down and push. Just one more (10 more) good push," This warrants a strong, well-deserved impulse to punch the bitch AND the bastard who did this, square in the nose for making us cram a wiggling, mushroom-headed 10lb. bowling ball through a keyhole.

AFTER THAT, it's time to raise those angels only to find that when all that "cute" wears off, the beautiful little darlings morph into walking, jabbering, wet, gooey, snot-blowing, life-sucking little poop machines. Then the teen years. Need I say more?

FINALLY, the kids are almost grown now and we women hit our voracious sexual prime in our mid-30's to early 40's while hubby had his somewhere around his 18th birthday (which just happens to coincide with the reason all that "early" hot man sex got you pregnant in the first place).

NOW we hit the Grand Finale: "The Menopause," The Grand- mother of all womanhood. It's either take the HRT and chance cancer in those now seasoned "buds" or the aforementioned Nether Regions, or, Sweat Like a Hog in July, wash your sheets and pillowcases daily and bite the head off anything that moves.

SO, you ask WHY women seem to be more spiteful than men,-- when men get off so easy INCLUDING the icing on life's cake: (Being able to pee in the woods without soaking their socks?)

I LOVE being a woman (call me crazy) but "Womanhood" would make the Great Gandhi more spiteful!!!
 

And they say women are the "weaker sex." HA!

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THE MEANING OF BEING POOR

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One day a father of a very wealthy family took his son on a trip to the country with the firm purpose of showing his son how poor people can be. They spent a couple of days and nights on the farm of what would be considered a very poor family.

On their return from their trip, the father asked his son, "How was the trip?"

"It was great, Dad."

"Did you see how poor people can be?" the father asked.

"Oh Yeah" said the son.

"So what did you learn from the trip?" asked the father.

The son answered,
"I saw that we have one dog and they had four.
We have a pool that reaches to the middle of our garden and they have a creek that has no end.
We have imported lanterns in our garden and they have the stars at night.
Our patio reaches to the front yard and they have the whole horizon.
We have a small piece of land to live on and they have fields that go beyond our sight.
We have servants who serve us, but they serve others.
We buy our food, but they grow theirs.
We have walls around our property to protect us, they have friends to protect them."

With this the boy's father was speechless.

Then his son added, "Thanks dad for showing me how poor we are."

Too many times we forget what we have and concentrate on what we don't have. What is one person's worthless object is another's prize possession. It is all based on one's perspective. Makes you wonder what would happen if we all gave thanks for all the bounty we have, instead of worrying about wanting more. Take joy in all you have, especially your friends.

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IF I KNEW

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Introduction
To each person, God gives some talent such as comedy, just to name one, or the ability to suffer, and to some persons God has given musical talent, though not to as many as think so. So for a young Lutheran considering an orchestral career, the first question to ask yourself is, “Do I have a genuine God-given talent, or do I only seem talented compared to other young Lutherans?” Because most Lutherans aren’t musicians, they’re choir members. Mostly altos and basses. And they can be sure that their gift is God-given, because who else but God would be interested? Nobody goes into choir music for the wrong reasons. But orchestra... do you know what you’re getting into? You’re getting into opera for one thing. Don Juan and Mephistopheles, pagan goddesses screeching and being strangled and thrown off balconies. And even if you stick to concert music, where are the Christian composers? Modern ones are existentialists, the romantics were secular humanists, the 18th century was all rationalists, and the 17th were Italian except for Bach. And you can’t make a living playing Bach. In the Bible, we read about people singing and playing musical instruments, including the harp, the last trump, the cymbal, the psaltery. But in the Bible, music was in praise of the Lord, not for amusement. We don’t read that our Lord Himself ever played an instrument or enjoyed hearing other people play theirs. The apostles did not attend concerts. They weren’t in the arts—maybe there’s a reason for that. You play in an orchestra, you’re going to be devoting your life to music that sort of swirls around in spiritual mystery. Searching for answers that people could find in the Epistle to the Romans if somebody just showed them where it is.
What Type of Instrument?
But if you’re determined to play in an orchestra, then you ought to ask yourself, “Which instrument is the best one for a Lutheran to play?” Which instrument would our Lord have chosen, assuming He played an instrument?  And assuming He was Lutheran.

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The Wind Section

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French Horn
  Probably not a French horn: the French horn takes too much of a person’s life. French horn players hardly have time to marry and have children. The French horn is practically a religious belief all by itself. In some orchestras, the horn players are required to be celibate—sometimes by their wives. Because they think about the horn all the time anyway.

Bassoon
Should a Lutheran play the bassoon? Not if you want to be taken seriously, I don’t think so. The name kind of says it all: bassoon. It’s an instrument that isn’t playing with a full deck of marbles. Maybe it’s something you’d do for a hobby (“Hey honey, let’s go bassooning this weekend!”), but not as your life’s work. Some bassoonists filling out applications for home loans just say “orthodontist.”

Clarinet
Many Lutherans start out playing clarinets in marching band and think of it as a pretty good instrument and kind of sociable. You pick up a clarinet, and you feel like getting together with other people and forming an “M.” But the symphonic clarinet is different: clever, sarcastic, kind of snooty.  It’s a nice small town instrument that went to college and after that you can’t get a simple answer out of them. It is a French instrument, you know.  Ever wonder why there are no French Lutherans? Probably the wine wasn’t good enough for them. The oboe is the sensualist of the woodwind section, and if there is one wind Lutherans should avoid, it’s probably this one. In movie soundtracks, you tend to hear the oboe when the woman is taking her clothes off. Also a little later when she asks the man for a cigarette. You start playing the oboe, you’re going to have babies, take my word for it.

English Horn
The English horn sounds Christian, maybe because we think of it as the Anglican horn, but it’s so mournful, so plaintive. And so are English horn players. They all have deep complicated problems. They’re all down in the dumps, especially at night, which is when most concerts are. Maybe because they want what oboists have, I don’t know.

Flute
The flute is the show-off of the wind section, the big shot: Jean-Pierre Rampal, James Galway—both millionaires. (How many millionaire bassoonists can you name real fast?) Well, that’s fine. Everybody knows it’s the hardest, blowing across a tiny hole with your head tilted all your life: it’s like soloing on a pop bottle. The problem with the flute is that it vibrates your brain, and you start wearing big white caftans and smocks and eat roots and berries. You become a pantheist and sit in meadows, and you believe that all is one and God is everything—God is a column of air vibrating—and you know that’s not right.

Piccolo
The last member of the woodwind family is the flakiest and that’s the piccolo. It’s never in tune. Never has been, never will be. All you can play with it is the blues. Which, being a Lutheran, we don’t have anyway.

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The String Section

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Bass
We come now to the string section. Strings are mentioned in scripture and some young Christians are tempted to become string players. But you want to be careful. Bass, for example. A very deliberate instrument, the plow horse of the orchestra: and bass players do tend to be more methodical, not so spontaneous or witty or brilliant necessarily, but reliable. Which makes the instrument appealing to German Lutherans. And yet bass notes do have a certain texture and a tone, a darkness, a depth that—my gosh, when you see those guys pick up their bows back there, doesn’t it make you think the same thing that I do? And if we do, just think what they’re thinking about....

Cello
The cello section seems pleasant, and cellists seem like such nice people.  The way they put their arms around their instruments, they look like parents at a day care center zipping up snowsuits. They seem like us: comfortable, mid-range, able to see both sides of things. And yet, there’s something about the cello that’s hard to put your fingers on. It just doesn’t seem right. Maybe, it’s the way they hold the instrument the way they do. Why can’t they hold it across their laps? Or beside themselves?  I’m only asking.

Viola
The viola section is no place for a Lutheran and here you have to take my word for it, because I know violists and they’re okay until late at night, they like to build a fire in a vacant lot and drink red wine and roast a chicken on a clothes hanger and talk about going to Mexico with somebody named Rita. Violists have this dark, moody, gypsy streak, especially when they get older, and they realize that their instrument for some reason cannot be heard beyond the stage. You think you hear the violas, but it’s really the second violins.

First Violin
The first violin is a problem for a Christian because it’s a solo virtuoso instrument and we Christians are humble and decent people. The first violins see the maestro look to them first, and most of them believe that he secretly takes his cue from watching their bows go up and down. The maestro, who has a great nimbus of hair and is here on a temporary work permit, is hypnotized by listening to the violins and forgets which page he’s on and looks to the violins to find out what’s going on—this is what most violinists believe in their hearts. That if the maestro dropped dead, the orchestra would just follow the violins while his little body was carried off into the wings, and nobody in the audience would notice any difference except that now they would have an unobstructed view of the violin section. Is this a place for a Lutheran to be? Did our Lord say “Blessed are they who stand up in front and take deep bows for they shall receive bigger fees?” No, He did not.

Second Violin
The second violin section is attractive to Lutherans because these people are steady, supportive and helpful, but look who it is they help—they help out the first violins. You want to play second fiddle to that crowd? (No, I hope not.) One thing you may not know about second violins is that the parts are so easy they never practice and they wind up staying out late in singles bars on the freeway near the airport and dancing with software salesmen. But I guess that’s their way.

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The Brass Section

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Tuba
Let’s be clear about one thing about the brass section. The rest of the orchestra wishes the brass were playing in another room. So does the conductor. His back is toward you so that you can’t see what he’s saying to them but what he’s saying is, “Would you mind taking that thing outside?” The brass section is made up of men who were at one time in the construction trades. They went into music because the hours are better and there’s less dust. They’re heavy dudes and that’s why composers wrote so few notes for them. Because after they play, you can’t hear for a while.  The tuba player is normally a stocky, bearded guy whose hobby is plumbing.  The only member of the orchestra who bowls over 250 and gets his deer every year and changes his own oil. In his locker downstairs, he keeps a pair of lederhosen for free-lance jobs. Anyway, there’s only one tuba in the bunch and he’s it.

Trombone
The trombonist is a humorist, sort of the brother-in-law of the orchestra.  He carries a water spray gun to keep his slide moist and often uses it against his neighbors. That’s why they duck down back there. He’s nobody you’d ever want to see become artistic director; you just hope he doesn’t sit right behind you.

Trumpet
The trumpet is the brass instrument you imagine as Christian, thinking of Gideon and Gabriel, and then you meet one in real life, and you realize how driven these people are. They don’t want to wear black tie; they want to wear capes and swords and tassels; they want to play as loud as they can and see mallards drop from the ceiling. Of the people who’ve keeled over dead at orchestra concerts, most of them were killed by a long trumpet passage. And most of them were glad to go.

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Percussion Section

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There are two places in the orchestra for a Lutheran and one is the percussion section. It’s the most Christian instrument there is.  Percussionists are endlessly patient because they hardly ever get to play.  Pages and pages of music go by when the violins are sawing away and the winds are tooting and the brass are blasting, and the percussionist sits there and counts the bars like a hunter in the blind waiting for a grouse to appear. A percussionist may have to wait for twenty minutes just to play a few beats, but those beats have to be exact, and they have to be passionate, climactic. All that the Epistles of Paul say a Christian should be—faithful, waiting, trusting, filled with fervor—are the qualities of the good percussionist.

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The Harp

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The other Lutheran instrument, of course, is the harp. It’s a good instrument for any Christian because it keeps you humble and keeps you at home. You can’t run around with a harp. Having one is like living with an elderly parent in very poor health: it’s hard to get them in and out of cars, and it’s hard to keep them happy. It takes fourteen hours to tune a harp, which remains in tune for about twenty minutes, or until somebody opens the door. It’s an instrument for a saint. If a harpist could find a good percussionist, they wouldn’t need anybody else. They could settle down and make perfectly good music, just the two of them.

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