WHAT'S YOUR TIBETAN NAME?

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KEWL MONIKERS FROM THE ROOF OF THE WORLD

MUCH GROOVIER, FABBER AND GEARER THAN ELIZABETH OR GEORGE

Maybe We Should Try Calling Dubya "Hairless Weazle, " or "Scourge of Crawford."

Tibet is a country in the middle of Asia that was discovered by Richard Gere in 1983, in the time of the gravity boots. They do not have as much good hashish as Nepal, rendering a trip there by magic bus like, virtually useless, man.

They do however have some way kewl names for their lords and masters, unlike, um, us? Mes-ag-tshoms, or "Old Hairy" was their king in the 700's, when our kings had names like the Irish King Flaithbertach mac Loingsig ("Pay your fucking taxes"), Finland's King Snaer "Vanha" Jokulsson ("No parking 9am to 6pm"), Albanian King Gjin Progoni ("Employees Must Wash Hands") and the dreaded Eneko de Aritza ("I'll poke your fucking eyes out"), King of the Basques.

Dpal 'Khor Brtsan, "Old Smelly", was among the first Buddhist kings of Tibet, despite his aroma. Tsangpa Dunkhurwa, "Old Spice," King during the time of Genghis Khan, introduced curry from India, and 5-spice powder from China. Lobsang Gyatso, "Old Dirty Fingernails," was the first Dalai Lama to wield political power in Tibet. (Apparently, you had to be old to be king, and personal hygiene mattered but little.)

So, what's your Tibetan name? I considered "Old Crusty" for myself, but some clown beat me to it. "Old Hickory" has a nice ring to it, but too Southern for me. "Old Ironsides"? Too Raymond Burr. "Old Blood & Guts." Hm. Mark that one down. Nice medical ring. "Old Salty"? Too much like a snack food that's gone bad. Well, I'm open to suggestions.
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SPINNING THE PRAYER WHEELS OF HISTORY

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Tenzing Norgay.
Tenzing Norgay.
Tenzing Norgay.

Say it with me.
Tenzing Norgay.
It has a nice, mystical ring to it. It was the name of the other guy who conquered Mt. Everest in the year that I was born. The non-white guy. The schlepper. The one who knew the way.

Sir Edmund Hilary, the white guy, died recently. He seems to have been a good guy, unlike the battallions of megalomaniacal useless yuppies littering the slopes of Everest these days. Unlike most of them, Hilary dedicated his life to helping people like Tenzing Norgay.

Thanks to Rudyard Kipling and the English in general, we have certain images and attitudes in relation to the various "little" brown, yellow, black, red and tan people encountered, conquered and subjugated in the course of discovery, exploration, exploitation, colonization and empire over the last five hundred years. We're a decent sort of folk ourselves, so we heartily admit the good qualities of many of these wogs, though, of course, most of them are just bloody wogs to some of us: Worthy Oriental Gentlemen, niggers, spics, dagos, chinks, pineappleheads, etc. Though we've beat them and we've flayed them and we've cursed the god that made them maybe a few were better men than we were, eh, Tenzing Norgay?

In fact, these little wogs had a history and a culture of their own. Empires and conquests of their own. Those we subjugated have subjugated others. Even today, we read about horrific scenes right out of MacBeth or Hamlet in far-off Katmandu, on the fabled roof of the world: Almost five hundred years after Shakespeare, scenes of utter barbarism in what we had imagined were the halls of Shangrila.

What we need to remember is that Shakespeare himself represented the apex of our civilization, or the beginning of it. But he also represented the beginning of an age of cultural, military and economic domination of the world by an upstart nation no one had ever heard of before, in most of the world. A nation that was once dominated by empires, now come to dominate Imperial nations.

The Moghuls, the Ottoman Caliphate, Persia. The Mongols, Han China, Tibet. For thousands of years, these nations, these peoples rose and fell, struggled amongst themselves and against each other. And yet they were "discovered" by the Danes, the English, the French, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Dutch, the Italians, the Americans, suddenly, one day quite recently, as if they had never existed. Some had long since known the peaks of their civilizations, and fallen into decline. Some were a ways yet from reaching their peak. Others were at their own absolute apex.

This may have meant their arts and letters were flowering. But it also meant great bloody conquests and ruthless exploitations of their neighbors. Civilization may be a process of refinement and rationalization, acculturation and anti-barbarism. But it is built on a quicksand of blood, greed, hatred, fear, envy and lust for land, resources and power. Perhaps this is why every empire that rises must fall: Some might call it karma, others just payback: Balance. The swinging of the historical pendulum.

My point is that, even as mighty nations like Tibet become helpless victims, so we in America should expect our own fortunes to change, someday. And then we will be the funny little white people, kwai lo schlepping across the dry seas of Luna and Mars, behind some famous Chinaman.
Billy Bob Norgay,
Billy Bob Norgay,
Billy Bob Norgay.
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