#FluffyFriday: A Special Card

#ThrowbackThursday: The Picture That Reilly Let "Momma" Take Last Night To Celebrate A Special Anniversary Today

Reilly also let "Momma" put the following caption for it when she sent it to Joyce, from whom she got Reillyⁱ—and she understood what she saying, like most puppies can understand what their human parents are saying:

"Hi, Joyce! Thank you for letting me meet Momma four years ago!"

Happy Acquaintance Day, Reilly! 

ⁱ By the way, "Momma" recommends Ole Field Farm and made this recommendation on her own. 

#WoofWednesday: Three Years Ago Today...

By the way, "Auntie Nicole" has yet to see even a picture of Tootsie, although she sees her in both Camille and Camille's maternal sister Shelby (and she's seen Poppie)! "Momma", though, has seen Apple and Oobie-Won (and it's still great that Apple is, like Reilly's "great-great-great-grandmother" Allen was, about two years older than her partner—since Apple was six and Oobie-Won four in 2015, and Reilly's Allen "great-great-grandparents" were born in June 1880 and September 1881, respectively—and that Apple even looks as a canine like Nana Allen did as a human!)




















Bonus: Various pictures of Camille and of Camille and her twice-removed cousin Reilly ("Tootsie's grandmother is Apple's sister," Joyce explained.). The pictures were taken before or on July 30, 2015.

Commentary: Karl Marx's Fifth Daughter & Her Various Lovers And Descendants—And What Havoc She Has Wreaked

Since necessity is the mother of invention and Karl Marx was the father of Communism, one could say that Communism was Karl Marx's fifth daughter. While Communism was at best a misguided and thus ill-conceived attempt at correcting abuses that occurred during the Era of the Industrial Revolution and Neoimperialism/Neocolonialism, abuses that occurred during that Era still needed correction. Thus, Karl Marx perhaps conceived his brainchild in an attempt to affect a correction of those abuses—and at worst, he conceived his brainchild just to create different kinds of abuses and heap abuse upon abuse.

Karl Marx himself¹ was a Levite and a child of Herschel Mordechai HaLevi and Henrietta Pressburg² Mordechai, and Herschel Mordechai culturally Prussianized himself by converting to Lutheranism and renaming himself "Heinrich Marx". As for Karl, he in many respects took the opposite path of his father—a Levitic rabbi's son turned fully-assimilated and patriotic Preußener. For example, he married the gentile Jenny Westphal and became an Atheist—whereas his monotheistic father had never intermarried or given up on God in any way. He also believed in centralization of governance and of governments in a far different way that his Prussian monarchist father did—in fact, he founded an entire family to reflect that he did.

That family is the family of Communism and the family of Communism-descended ideologies. Paradoxically enough, the writer of "Daas Manifesto" and "On the Jewish Question" raised up his ideological daughter in his Jewish roots to some extent—whether or not he meant to do so. For instance, he—whether intentionally or unintentionally—based "Each according to what he needs and what he has" on the pursuit of justice and on the mitzvah that the rich give no more than the poor and the poor no less than the rich³. At the same time, he explicitly bucked against his roots by raising up Communism in ways that were contrary to them such as the shunning of the mitzvot to believe in and worship Yehovah⁴ and to not engage in Revolutions⁵.

Once Communism fully grew up, she found her footing in finding various lovers and having her own children—and to this day, she is as polyamorous and prolific as ever. She has had gentile lovers and Jewish children like her father had, and she has also had Jewish lovers and gentile children. Of course, some had and have loved her by loving her descendants such as Socialism instead of loving her—although some have flirted with her as well as with her descendant ideologies.

Among the lovers of Communism were Lenin and Stalin, both of whom were in Imperial Russia—where her father actually thought she could never have a footholdⁱ¹⁰—and among her descendants were Leninism and Stalinism. Once Lenin died and against what Lenin wished, polyamorous Communism simply took on another husband—Stalin. Thus, misguided and bad-enough Leninism was overtaken by his worse stepfather and by his brother Stalinism—and obviously, bad went to worse.

The Communistic Soviet Empire ("Union Of...Republics"⁶) eventually collapsed, and Communism's familial rule in Russia seemed done until her child Kremlinism conceived another descendant of hers—Putinism. Meanwhile, other descendants of Communism and other lovers of hers have continuing footholds in other places. For instance, Maoism still is the ideology of China's governance and government, and its own Politburo head declared himself "emperor for life" as China looks to have a modern-day equivalent of the Soviet Empire. At the same time, Kimism is the Ribbentrop to whom South Korea is sickeningly playing Molotov⁷.

Thus, then, the kind of Solomonic wisdom that Karl Marx flouted for whatever reason⁸ could apply here. In this case, Communism is the seductress that one wants to avoid:

"Say unto wisdom: 'Thou art my sister', and call understanding thy kinswoman; [t]hat they may keep thee from the strange woman, from the alien woman that maketh smooth her words.For at the window of my house I looked forth through my lattice; [a]nd I beheld among the thoughtless ones, I discerned among the youths, a young man void of understanding, [p]assing through the street near her corner, and he went the way to her house; [i]n the twilight, in the evening of the day, in the blackness of night and the darkness. [a]nd, behold, there met him a woman with the attire of a harlot, and wily of heart. She is riotous and rebellious, her feet abide not in her house; [n]ow she is in the streets, now in the broad places, and lieth in wait at every corner....

"Now therefore, O ye children, hearken unto me, and attend to the words of my mouth. Let not thy heart decline to her ways, go not astray in her paths. For she hath cast down many wounded; yea, a mighty host are all her slain. Her house is the way to the nether-world, going down to the chambers of death."⁹

Fair Use. Obtained via Biblioklept.org.

¹ As one can find out even if he or she just browses around on good-for-the-basic-facts Wikipedia, though he or she will want to do more research than that

² Or, were it UnGermanized, something like Bratislavsky—or in her case, Bratislavskyová. Again, research. I've researched. By the way, I'm using simply prior knowledge as I write this—e.g., I remember reading that "Pressburg" is German for "Bratislava", and I have Slovakish Yidish roots. 

³ Exodus 30:15. I do double check my work when I'm not sure about something—a particular reference. By the way, the "pursuit of justice" refers to Deuteronomy 16:20.

⁴ Psalm 14:1 sufficiently covers that.

⁵ Proverbs 24:21-22. Incidentally, I think that the American obsession with British royals may involve latent Post-Revolutionary regrets.
ⁱ Once again, Western Ashkenazim look down on Eastern Ashkenazim, despite that Karl Marx may've had Eastern Ashkenazi roots😉. 

⁶ "Socialist" and "Republic" denote inherently-contradictory concepts, especially with regards to direct republics like the United States (as opposed to traditional republics. Also, a republic with elements of what's been called "direct democracy" could really be called a "direct republic", especially since democracy could actually be called an ideological ancestor of at least Soviet Communism—just as only freeborn Athenian Greek men could be citizens and vote in democracy's birthplace, so only Soviet Russian men whom were part of the Politburo and Soviet Non-Russian men whom had the favor of the Politburo had any real say).

⁷ By the way and on that note, Ribbentrop actually represented what are two Communism-related ideologies, which are Fascism and National Socialism—the latter of which is known as part of the Alt Right for a reason, as the Alt Right ("Old Right", 19^th-Century Right) is the Modern Far Left. In contrast to Communism (unless Communism was maliciously conceived as opposed to misguidedly conceived), however, Fascism and National Socialism were maliciously-conceived ideologies from the beginning. 
⁸Since the exhortation against revolutions comes from the Book of Proverbs
⁹ From Proverbs 7, JPS 1917
¹⁰ Update as of May 2, 2018 at 10:15 PM EST: I came to realize that since I had written Footnote Two to insert the joke that is now is in Footnote "i"—and that Footnote Two would've thus made no sense without Footnote "i"—I decided to insert the joke despite whatever backlash I may get for it. Besides, Western Ashkenazim apparently at least did at one time look down on Eastern Ashkenazim—in fact, I once read that Western Ashkenazim came up with (forgive my language) "sheeny" to make fun of Eastern Ashkenazim for using Yiddish, which explains why a character's use of it in Eugene O'Neill's play didn't make sense to me when I read it without knowing that (Why would a slur that sounds like it came from "Sheen" be Anti Semitic and not Anti Irish?, I thought?).

A Modified Copied-and-Pasted Facebook Post On Aging

(And no, you don't have to copy and paste. I'm just modifying this a little as I copy and paste it because it's an albe-painful reminder that those of us under 35 are getting older, too).

To everyone whom has come of age and is only aging more and more every day:

We are going through the next stage of our lives. We are at ages at which we see more and more wrinkles, gray hair, and extra pounds. We think about the fact that quite a few of us were just even 25 seemingly yesterday, and just slightly younger than that just as if it were only a few days before that. Now we're either closer to 35 or further away from 35 on the older side of it than we ever thought that we could be in just a short amount of time, and the 25-and-younger crowd will be just like us one day (😢. You do get that old before you know it, and the worst part is getting old as you get older.).

What we once brought to the table with whatever youth and zest for life we had will become either wisdom, experience, and good hearts that older people are expected to have or the haughtiness, stubbornness, and miserliness of the proverbial old fool—"Better is a poor, wise youth than a foolish old king." We've earned each of our gray hairs for either what we've endured or made others endure, too.

Don't think that aging necessarily means being like a classic or like a fine wine, either. Our exteriors may not be what they once were, and any looks that we do retain will either mean nothing or be like the proverbial "gold ring in a pig's snout" if we deliberately forego having (let alone increasing) spirit, courage and strength in entering and exiting the coming chapters of our lives with grace and dignity; and may we never pride ourselves in what we've endured and accomplished—may we be humbled by and learn from it.

May God "[t]each us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom"—especially since we don't know if we have the rest of today, let alone tomorrow and any days thereafter.

Even if you decide to not copy, paste, and modify this with your age and a picture of you, look at the recent-enough picture that I have posted of my currently-28-years-old self and apply Marley's words to Scrooge to how you yourself are aging:

"Look to me no more. Look, that you may remember what has passed."