Although The Church of BuVu does not have a precise epistemology (“Epistemology is the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion.”), my own personal epistemology was just given a boost by learning that there will be a production of “B Is for Beer: The Musical”, in LA, in November of this year.
If this show also plays in Seattle, I am prepared to take a stand: There is a God, and He/She heard my prayers.
Hallelujah,
BuFoon Steve Gillard
… is really funny. Niels would have loved his Facebook posts. (Except Niels didn’t spend much time on screens. Maybe we could have talked him into a Facebook account. Ahhh, no. Probably not. But I would have shown him these hilarious takes on The Tao, non-duality, and related things, and he would have loved them.)
Thanks for the Facebook fun, Cliff Pollard. (Click on the link to find Cliff’s exceptionally funny Facebook page.)
Thanks again, Cliff.
BuFoon Steve Gillard
I just realized it’s been 10 years, as of a few days ago (September 27), that Niels moved on to whatever comes after this earth go-round. I hope there’s an afterlife, because Niels was definitely larger-than-life.
Here’s a link to some wonderful memoria created by his writer friend, David Chadwick: Crooked Cucumber
And, here’s the Interview about BuVu: Niels Holm Interview II
We miss you, Niels. Man, do we miss you.
BuFoon Steve Gillard
The Church of BuVu is an ecumenical church. We respect the First Amendment and freedom of religion. We like to emphasize those things we have in common with other faiths, not our differences. In that spirit, we’d like to feature a Volkswagen commercial that does a nice job of showcasing a religion with which the Church of BuVu has much in common. (We will overlook the fact that Dudeism incorrectly bills itself as “the slowest growing religion in the world,” even though we know that BuVu is the rightful pretender to that title.)
Cheers,
BuFoon Steve Gillard
I’m looking at the tattoo I had my artist nephew inscribe on my right inner forearm: ERLEICHDA. Lighten Up! I need to see that constantly. Hence the tattoo. Hence recalling the creator of that word, Tom Robbins (in Jitterbug Perfume), and one of his wise cracks:
“A sense of humor, properly developed, is superior to any religion so far devised.” Amen, brother.
Here’s an expanded version of that sentiment:
“Men who wear bow ties to work every day (let’s make an exception for Pee-Wee Herman), men whose dreams have been usurped either by the shallow aspirations of the marketplace or by the drab cliches of Marxist realpolitik, such men are not adroit at distinguishing that which is lighthearted from that which is merely lightweight. God knows what confused thunders might rumble in their sinuses were they to encounter a concept such as “crazy wisdom.”
“Crazy wisdom is, of course, the opposite of conventional wisdom. It is wisdom that deliberately swims against the current in order to avoid being swept along in the numbing wake of bourgeois compromise; wisdom that flouts taboos in order to undermine their power; wisdom that evolves when one, while refusing to avert one’s gaze from the sorrows and injustices of the world, insists on joy in spite of everything; wisdom that embraces risk and eschews security; wisdom that turns the tables on neurosis by lampooning it; the wisdom of those who neither seek authority nor willingly submit to it.
. . . . .
“. . . (W)hen Oscar Wilde allegedly gestured at the garish wallpaper in his cheap Parisian hotel room and announced with his dying breath, “Either it goes or I go,” he was exhibiting something beyond an irrepressibly brilliant wit. Freud, you see, wasn’t whistling “Edelweiss” when he wrote that gallows humor is indicative of a greatness of soul.
“The quips of the condemned prisoner or dying patient tower dramatically above, say, sallies on TV sitcoms by reason of their gloriously inappropriate refusal, even at life’s most acute moment, to surrender to despair. The man who jokes in the executioner’s face can be destroyed but never defeated.
“When an eminent Zen master, upon hearing a sudden burst of squirrel chatter outside his window, sat up in his deathbed and proclaimed, “That’s what it was all about!” his last words surpassed Wilde’s in playful significance, constituting as they did a koan of sorts, an enigmatic invitation to rethink the meaning of existence. Anecdotes such as this one remind the nimble-minded that there’s often a thin line between the comic and the cosmic, and that on that frontier can be found the doorway to psychic rebirth.
“Ancient Egyptians believed that when a person died, the gods immediately placed his or her heart in one pan of a set of scales. In the other pan was a feather. If there was imbalance, if the heart of the deceased weighed more than the feather, he or she was denied admittance to the afterworld. Only the lighthearted were deemed advanced enough to merit immortality.”
In defiance of gravity: writing, wisdom, and the Fabulous Club Gemini
by Tom Robbins
Harper’s Magazine, Sept. 2004.
Happy Sunday,
BuFoon Steve Gillard