Chamblee54

This is a repost from 2019, before the world went into a spiral. … Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas finished it’s performance in front of my glasses. Like most Tom Robbins books, HASP does not have a satisfying ending. The author/auteur creates characters, throws them into troubling situations, and makes word jokes about their plight. Unfortunately, books come to an end, and what serves as a plot should have a termination. For this wordsmith, the journey is so much fun that the destination is reduced to an ad in the travel guide. (Author and auteur both come to us through “Middle English auctour, from Anglo-French auctor, autor, from Latin auctor promoter, originator, author, from augēre to increase.”) Neither noun is as important as it used to be.
The best way to approach HAFP is to forget the plot God, and go directly to the details, where she can be found. Like page 333, which is half of 666, but with a fraction of the opprobrium. There is this exchange, between Gwen Mati and Larry Diamond. They are the *star crossed lovers* in HAFP. “Wait a minute. You have to get the government’s permission to get an enema?” “This may be the land of the free, sweetheart, but you’re deluding yourself if you think your ass is your own.”
Larry Diamond is probably the stand in for Tom Robbins. He is full of conspiracies, hypotheses, feces, and other aromatic arcana. Considering that HAFP was published in 1994, and presumably written before then, the reader wonders what was in his crystal ball. Consider this item on page 315: “If global warming melts the polar ice caps, as some predict, we will have little choice in our resumption of an aquatic life style.” LD talks about frogs a lot in HASP, but very has little to say about pajamas. Do you say pa JAH muz, or pa JAM muz?
HAFP is full of semi-plausible conjecture projection. Consider the part on page 318, about magic mushroom spores coming to earth, from the star Sirius. Fair enough, but how did the extraterrestrial spores find their way to cowpies? The star Sirius is a key player in the morpho-mythology of HASP. How much is true, and how much was created in the mental compost of the Robbins mind? When I read HAFP in 1996, I could only wonder. On the 2019 reading, Google is ready when you are.
The tale LD weaves involves the Dogon people of ancient Timbuktu. Here is what one source says: “The Dogon stories explain that also. According to their oral traditions, a race people from the Sirius system called the Nommos visited Earth thousands of years ago. The Nommos were ugly, amphibious beings that resembled mermen and mermaids. … The Egyptian G-ddess Isis, who is sometimes depicted as a mermaid, is linked with the star Sirius.”
Isis has a PR problem these days. For some reason, an armed terrorist/freedom fighter group is killing people in the middle east. Depending on the day, and campaign contributions, ISIS is seen as an enemy of the American people. What does this have to do with a Goddess? Will a rebel army be named for Astarte, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Kali, or Inanna?
“The Nommos, according to the Dogon legend, lived on a planet that orbits another star in the Sirius system. They landed on Earth in an “ark” that made a spinning decent to the ground with great noise and wind. It was the Nommos that gave the Dogon the knowledge about Sirius B. The legend goes on to say the Nommos also furnished the Dogon’s with some interesting information about our own solar system: That the planet Jupiter has four major moons, that Saturn has rings and that the planets orbit the sun. These were all facts discovered by Westerners only after Galileo invented the telescope.”
“The system is also known to the Bozo, who call Sirius sima kayne (literally: sitting trouser) and its satellite tono nalema (literally: eye star).” Lately another Kayne has become popular. He is hardly a sitting trouser. Has the Kardashian husband been gifted to us from a distant solar system?
At some point in HAFP, Larry Diamond makes plans to go to Timbuktu. He will lick the belly of the toad, and take a magic carpet ride. Gwen Mati was grossed out. “It sounds like a drug.” “Its a hallucinogenic bufotoxin. Aspirin is a drug.”
“Bufotoxin, a moderately potent poison secreted in the skin of many anuran amphibians, especially the typical toads (genus Bufo.) The milky fluid contains several identifiable components: bufagin, with effects on the heart similar to those of digitalis; bufotenine, a hallucinogen; and serotonin, a vasoconstrictor. The composition of the poison varies with the species of toad. Taken internally, the poison causes severe, even fatal reaction in many predators, but some animals (e.g., hognosed snakes) are not affected. The poison does not normally affect human skin, but it does irritate the eyes and mucous membranes.” There was no word on spores from outer space.
This is enough fun for one day. Part one of this series is available at an internet near you. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.

This is a repost from 2015. Tom Robbins is still alive after 92 years on the planet. … There is a quote on page sixty nine of Tibetan Peach Pie: A True Account of an Imaginative Life, by Tom Robbins. Yes, that magic number, representing mutual oral gratification when it is not the product of twenty three skiddoo times three. The line is from a poem, “Fruits and Vegetables,” by Erica Jong. Before we get much further, maybe we should hear the line. If a woman wants to be a poet, she must dwell in the house of the tomato.
This is synchronicity in living color. Tom Robbins and Erica Jong have been two of my favorite authors for thirty seven plus years. They both gave readings in a converted auto dealership on Pharr Road in the early nineties. I was at both, even if all I saw of Mr. Robbins was the author sitting down autographing books. The thought that these two confirmed heterosexuals might have performed reproductive acts sends literary gossipmongers into zipless fits. And to have this quote dropping on page 69, about a red juicy fruit/vegetable/berry… it just takes the pizza pie prize.
The humble tomato is a much written about food product . A disagreement over pronunciation provides lyrics for a hit song. It is dandy for throwing. Some say it is easy to grow. (I have tall trees surrounding my backyard, and no luck at all with ‘maters.)
The structure of the word… to, as in direction, ma, as in mother, another two letter to… tomato has a symmetry unknown to chocolate or pineapple. The oh sound at the end makes tomato easy to rhyme. Tomato spelled backwards is otamot, which is total nonsense. Whatever it’s other virtues, tomato is neither a palindrome nor a weapon of mass destruction.
When I saw the tomato quote, he asked Mr. Google for more information. One of the results was a page by Jason Webley. This is a musician, who used to write about oddities on his web page. Mr. Webley is currently on tour in Europe, which might not be the comfortable thing to do at this very moment. His commentary was instructional.
“The tomato does have a funny history. It, like many of the vegetables we eat is a New World plant. Somehow the Itallians made do without tomato paste until realtively recently (likewise with the Irish and their potatos.) When the plant was first discovered by Europeans in South America is was believed to be deadly (a member of the Nightshade family) but pretty. Rumor has it, the tomato was believed to be the apple of forbidden knowledge from the Garden of Eden. It was brought back to Europe purely as a decorative plant and actually made it all the way around the Mediteranean and back across the Atlantic to North America before people got up the courage to eat the thing.”
Mr. Webley is full of arcane knowledge, From him we learn: Lahnaphobia: Fear of vegetables. (spell check suggestion:Islamophobia) ~ The difference between a fruit and a vegetable: In accordance with a US Supreme Court ruling in 1893, the difference between a fruit and a vegetable is as follows: ‘Any plant or part thereof eaten during the main dish is a vegetable. If it is eaten at any other part of the meal, it is a fruit.’ ~ Have you ever noticed that the Bible is full of references to corn? Doesn’t this seem a bit unusual, considering that corn is a new world grain developed in the region now known as Guatemala and was completely unknown to Europe and the Middle East until at least 500 years ago? Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.