Luck of the Devil - BC Pires

[Duane 3NE 2NR]

Luck of the Devil
Written by BC Pires
Published: 10 Dec 2010

The worst forest fire in Israel’s history occurred last week; and, all over the world, people were saying, “What? They had a forest in Israel to catch fire? The whole Middle East isn’t just sand, camels, one-two oases and three-four hundred thousand oil wells?” But, yes, there was a forest in Israel; until last week; when, by what you might call the luck of the devil, 5,000 hectares containing more than five million trees, may-be ten per cent of Israel’s greenery (my guesstimate) burned flat. Destroying the Carmel forest was the equivalent of paving the whole east bank of the Amazon all the way to the Atlantic.

The sheer freakishness of it reminds me of the old joke about the new father at the maternity hospital who is told that his child was born deformed and is then led through a series of wards housing progressively worse cases—babies with no ears, then babies with no arms, then babies with no arms or legs, then babies who are just heads on necks and so on—until the very last ward, where his child lies in a clear basket, a child so severely malformed as to amount to no more than a single eyeball lying on a blanket. “Unfortunately,” says the doctor, “he’s blind in one eye.”

When you consider Israel is God’s own country and the Jews His chosen people, it doesn’t seem fair that one of its precious few wooded areas should burn. On a physical geography map of Israel, the arid areas are shown as brown and the forests as green; and the brown areas could be an orthodox Hassidic Jew’s face, with the green areas being his forelock and peyos (those long, curly sideburns). There’s that much brown; and that little green. And you begin to feel sorry for the Israelis.  You mean they have to put up with deserts and forest fires at the same firetrucking time? Why, that’s like having the Promised Land and suicide bombers. What’s a tried and true Hebrew to do? Convert to Islam?

Well, the luck of the Muslim god doesn’t seem much better. Pakistan—a state created in good faith entirely in the name of Allah the Merciful—was this year afflicted with floods that would have made Noah’s look like a walk in the ark. In Nigeria, the Christian god’s numbers might improve a bit, at least as compared with witches; last year, hundreds of children aged between five and 11 were murdered by their friends, family and neighbours, because they were revealed (by God, via the local village preacher) to be witches; one “bishop” proudly claimed to have personally killed 110 himself.
Nor do God’s fortunes improve in our own backyard, which we like to think of as his front garden. Consider our Caribbean sister, the devoutly Catholic/voodoo Haiti, probably the most religious country in the New World. Haiti has this year been levelled by an earthquake, lashed by a hurricane and is being decimated by a cholera epidemic as we speak.

When things like Israel’s forest fire, Pakistan’s floods or Haiti’s earthquake happen, I marvel at the continuing faith of the intelligent people I know who are also firm believers. How much has to happen before they reluctantly conclude that God, if he, she or it exists at all, either has no power to intervene (proving he is not omnipotent) or chooses not to (rendering him uncaring). It’s not rocket science. It’s as plain as the nose on your face or the cancer in your newborn baby’s throat. Believers tirelessly summon up as much faith as is necessary to override the incontrovertible evidence before their eyes; and tell you that faith comes from God. Instead of stepping forward and stating the bleeding obvious—that no caring, powerful being could allow such suffering—they bend over backwards to explain away God’s failings.

The ultimate excuse—really the ultimate negation of personal responsibility—is the bald statement that we cannot understand God and must trust He knows what He’s doing, even when, say, He causes or allows churches, temples and mosques to collapse. (As He did in Sao Paulo, killing seven. He got another 27 believers in one Ugandan church, 35 in a Morocco mosque, nine in a Varanasi temple, many, many more in New York, Nepal, Canada, all over; it’s almost cute how many of his adoring creatures God has killed in the act of worshipping Him; and the religious will promptly tell you He took them at the best time they could go, while praising Him, and because He loved them so much.)The only entity with worst luck than God last week was England, who, as we all know, put in a technically perfect bid to host the World Cup. God Himself must have cracked up laughing, watching those proceedings.

The cream of British pomp and circumstance, ranging from the Crown itself through Her Majesty’s Prime Minister to Sir David Beckham, courted our own Jack of all tirades —and Jack string them up like a form one goalie in the FA Cup final. England was hooted out of the running with two votes from 22.
On Tuesday, Jack revealed why: its media had insulted the honourable gentlemen of Fifa. Is there no one who will rid Fifa of that pesky press?
Perhaps not at the end of the day but, at the end of a bad week for the Almighty, if given the choice of believing in God and believing in Jack Warner, I’ll put my faith in Jack. He, clearly, can intervene to change reality. He obviously works in the here and now; and he could give vengeance lessons to Yahweh. If God had Fifa or Jack’s power, Noah would have had his ark rejected and the contract given to the Muslims.

At the end of the day and this column, though, God must have a sense of humour. I may not live to see it but I’m sure my religious friends are convinced I will die to find out that God always has the last laugh; and the joke’s on me.

BC Pires believes he will have another drink. Read more of his
writing at www.BCraw.com

http://guardian.co.tt/commentary/columnist/2010/12/10/luck-devil

[sMASH]

another take

[Monk BANzai]

interesting at best...

[M_2NR]

LOL gotta loves these "God rants"

[janfar]

" If God had Fifa or Jack’s power, Noah would have had his ark rejected and the contract given to the Muslims."

I lol'd...

Post this in that thread about all the godly stuffs and stuff...

[rollingstock]

Yuh want megadoc get a heart attack

[dogg]

B.C. Pires is unwell. He may not survive the year.
He was one of the columnists I looked fwd to reading back in the days when I had time to read an entire newspaper.

I wish him well and hope he recovers from his medical issues.

ON SEPTEMBER 1, I weighed 125 lbs, 50 lbs less than I did on December 10 last, the day of the surgery to remove the tumour from my oesophagus, but only 25 lbs away from my target regained weight of 150 lbs.

On Sunday last, I weighed 105 lbs.

Folks, you never know when it will be your time. Have your house in order.
Chances are thin.

[zoom rader]

B.C. Pires is unwell. He may not survive the year.
He was one of the columnists I looked fwd to reading back in the days when I had time to read an entire newspaper.

I wish him well and hope he recovers from his medical issues.

ON SEPTEMBER 1, I weighed 125 lbs, 50 lbs less than I did on December 10 last, the day of the surgery to remove the tumour from my oesophagus, but only 25 lbs away from my target regained weight of 150 lbs.

On Sunday last, I weighed 105 lbs.

Folks, you never know when it will be your time. Have your house in order.
Chances are thin.

Sad.

He's also a blogger for the red mis government to appeal to those that understand a different language in politics from Hood folk

[bluefete]

I have been closely following his writings since his cancer diagnosis.

It is incredibly difficult to read some parts and I feel it for his wife and children.

The irony is that the same God he used to deny all these years has given him time to put his affairs in order. Many people do not get that opportunity.

I pray he will get better but the battle is real and brutal especially when he writes about the constant coughing from the hole in his fistula.

Powerful words in his column on Friday:

"When you’re down to the frame of yourself – your actual literal skeleton, if you get down far enough – your resources shrink to nothingness."

[dogg]

Did he really turn to god? I haven't read all of the recent articles.

That would be surprising, as he was a staunch atheist/ agonstic.

I have been closely following his writings since his cancer diagnosis.

It is incredibly difficult to read some parts and I feel it for his wife and children.

The irony is that the same God he used to deny all these years has given him time to put his affairs in order. Many people do not get that opportunity.

I pray he will get better but the battle is real and brutal especially when he writes about the constant coughing from the hole in his fistula.

Powerful words in his column on Friday:

"When you’re down to the frame of yourself – your actual literal skeleton, if you get down far enough – your resources shrink to nothingness."

[pugboy]

i read a lot of his stuff and appreciate his wit
sad to be going down so

a hole between gullet and lung chamber is pressure
he is lucky they didn’t put in a chest tube

[redmanjp]

Did he really turn to god? I haven't read all of the recent articles.

That would be surprising, as he was a staunch atheist/ agonstic.

I have been closely following his writings since his cancer diagnosis.

It is incredibly difficult to read some parts and I feel it for his wife and children.

The irony is that the same God he used to deny all these years has given him time to put his affairs in order. Many people do not get that opportunity.

I pray he will get better but the battle is real and brutal especially when he writes about the constant coughing from the hole in his fistula.

Powerful words in his column on Friday:

"When you’re down to the frame of yourself – your actual literal skeleton, if you get down far enough – your resources shrink to nothingness."

No where says he did, though it would be pretty ironic.

[zoom rader]

I use to read his articles alot but then stopped when he was being paid by the red mis government as a blogger for the upper minds

[Rovin]

d man out out here for decades & i sure some of us must have read some of his articles

no kind of sickness is nice but his sounds extra terrible ... hope he recovers

[bluefete]

No he seemingly has not.

Did he really turn to god? I haven't read all of the recent articles.

That would be surprising, as he was a staunch atheist/ agonstic.

I have been closely following his writings since his cancer diagnosis.

It is incredibly difficult to read some parts and I feel it for his wife and children.

The irony is that the same God he used to deny all these years has given him time to put his affairs in order. Many people do not get that opportunity.

I pray he will get better but the battle is real and brutal especially when he writes about the constant coughing from the hole in his fistula.

Powerful words in his column on Friday:

"When you’re down to the frame of yourself – your actual literal skeleton, if you get down far enough – your resources shrink to nothingness."

[bluefete]

No where says he did, though it would be pretty ironic.

You are right. He has not, at least publicly.

[bluefete]

d man out out here for decades & i sure some of us must have read some of his articles

no kind of sickness is nice but his sounds extra terrible ... hope he recovers

Rovin: No kind of cancer is nice to get. He has been chronicling his battle and it makes for absorbing and at times, very uncomfortable reading.

Many people will learn from his experiences.

[K74T]

RIP BC Pires.

Lost the battle last night.

[antlind]

RIP BC Pires.

Lost the battle last night.

RIP. He fought the good fight against that cancer to the end.

[bluefete]

Now coming to post. RIP

https://newsday.co.tt/2023/10/22/long-t ... er-battle/

[eitech]

Death is never nice.
He now knows the truth.

[VexXx Dogg]

RIP to a legend.

[zoom rader]

Jah bless him

[death365]

As soon. As trinituner statt taking bout the man ... he ups an dead yes !!!

[Dizzy28]

Didn't really agree with him in his last few years of writings but his was one of my most looked forward to features particularly when he was at Express

RIP!!

[pugboy]

lots of recognition for him
he obviously had appeal to a wide section of society

[Chimera]

yuh know i never read the first post or any of his articles

never took him on really

now read the first post here and is real kix

[dogg]

lots of recognition for him
he obviously had appeal to a wide section of society

Journalists' deaths often seem more important than they should because other journalists can use their public media platforms to express tributes.

But BC was an entertaining writer and even though I haven't read some of his later works, he will be missed.

[paid_influencer]

from KIRK

spoiler tage because it long

Kirk Meighoo is with Janak Meighoo and
25 others
.
·
BC PIRES, SUBVERSIVE

BC Pires was a friend and an inspiration. He approached his death exactly the way he approached his life, with great humour, ironic observation and detachment, a genuine appreciation for absurdity, and always that subtle hint of subversion. For BC was a subversive. A very curious one, but a subversive.

I mean that in the most complimentary way, in the sense that all the people whom I admire most were and are subversive. My own worldview has been profoundly shaped by those who have made me see how ridiculous our world and our assumptions so often are, or who simply had the courage to ask uncomfortable questions. The best comedians are subversive. BC was a subversive in such a profound, genuine and subtle way, that people often did not notice how deep he went.

I think I first read BC Pires in Lloyd Best’s legendary Trinidad and Tobago Review in the 1990s. I was not yet a published writer and I was finding my own voice at the time. Trinidad and Tobago was truly blessed during that period to have incredibly distinctive and articulate voices writing in our newspapers, with often fiercely contesting and opposed ideas and interpretations of our country. Lloyd Best, Denis Solomon, Morgan Job, Selwyn Ryan, Anil Mahabir, Kamal Persad, Sat Maharaj, to name a few – it was a very lively space.

BC was a young writer who was able to quite definitely carve out his own place among those Titans. He was bold and unafraid and hilarious and insightful. He was unapologetically BC.

He caused trouble – but never just for causing trouble’s sake. For underneath all that humour, irreverence, and his resolve not to take anything too seriously, BC had definite and firm principles which grounded and guided him. You could say he was an old-fashioned liberal, like Bill Maher, Christopher Hitchens, or Voltaire, never letting you forget the dangerous and subversive side of old-fashioned liberalism, particularly in a society with so many taboos.

BC believed in freedom of thought, freedom of expression, freedom of conscience, and freedom to piss off anybody that he felt firetrucking deserved it, the more pompous and self-important the better. I liked that very much, but that's not what impressed me the most.

What I found to be particularly brave was how BC Pires casually but profoundly rejected the dominant mainstream definition of what it meant to be Trinidadian. This prevailing definition was profoundly political and exclusionary, tied into a particular vision of Creole nationalism ushered in by the PNM in 1956, suppressing other ways of being authentically Trinidadian. In the 1990s, when I first discovered BC Pires, that dominant definition of what it meant to be Trinidadian – and what it meant to be “not Trinidadian” or “not patriotic” – was being questioned at the highest levels of society.

In this context, I remember reading an article that BC wrote in the Trinidad and Tobago Review in which his love for the British rock band, the Rolling Stones, and their impact on him was central. I was particularly shocked by that. What I found particularly refreshing, and remarkable, was how he referred to this love for the Rolling Stones so casually, so unapologetically, and so matter-of-factly. He didn't apologise for liking rock music, and he didn't think it made him any less Trinidadian for doing so. He was showing that the politically correct definition of what it meant to be a “true Trini” was not valid – because BC was undeniably a true Trini.

His attitude was eye-opening, provocative, inspiring, consciousness-raising, exciting and even a bit dangerous. Furthermore, BC was challenging this notion of Trinidadianness in the Trinidad and Tobago Review, as well, the country’s intellectual newspaper, published by the country's leading nationalist/indigenous intellectual, Lloyd Best. There was an intriguing irony and defiance there. It said a lot about Lloyd that he encouraged all these dissident voices to be heard.

There was more to BC, of course. I remember very distinctly his observation in the early 1990s that we knew Port of Spain bounced back from the ruin and disaster of the coup and looting – not particularly because of the very important Brian Lara Promenade and establishment of City Gate – but because McDonald's had opened up on Independence Square. It was a typically funny, ironic and insightful BC observation, showing us how we still needed the validation of foreigners, to tell us of our own achievements.

BC, of course, was also a Caribbean man and a global man. He had Guyanese roots, and London was like a second home to him. In the final years of his life, he moved to Barbados. He was published in the UK Guardian several times over some years, a fact which I greatly admired and was impressed with.

BC did not treat us like children and did not avoid topics and taboos that adults might talk about in our former mother country and elsewhere. This got him into trouble several times. But, BC did not only apply this attitude to sensitive topics. BC had equal audacity at smaller levels, such as writing his own reviews of television shows and movies, instead of having our national papers simply cut and paste reviews from national news agencies like Reuters. BC pushed back against the idea that we should just take other people's opinions and accept them, without articulating our own opinions, even in the realm of what might be considered trivial.

After myself being published in the Trinidad and Tobago Review, eventually becoming contributing editor alongside Lloyd Best, and then having my columns in the Express and Guardian, I developed a personal friendship with BC. I fondly keep the 2 CD ROMs of his favourite Rolling Stones tracks that he made for me, turning the song titles into one big Faulkner-esque run-on sentence written on the CD itself. When I entered political life, it was a singular honour for me to have BC inscribe the copy of his Thank God It’s Friday book that he gave me, “Kirk, who might just make it possible for one to be affectionate to a politician. Best firetrucking wishes.”

I had lost touch with BC over his last years, and significant differences emerged between us politically, philosophically, and ideologically. I still had great affection for him, though, even if from a distance. However, when I heard he had cancer, I reached out to him again, and we started talking, thankfully. We avoided dwelling on the contentious topics, and just teased each other about them instead.

I admired the way he was coping with his illness and mortality. It was humbling to witness in real time, as he shared his experiences with his distinctive good humour, wit and irony. Indeed, I thought he was on the road to recovery. Sadly, he was not. The news of his passing came as a shock.

BC was a true original, confident in his own voice, while trying to make others confident of theirs too, including me. He influenced many, and stimulated and entertained many more. In a couple of cases, BC may have produced one or two writers that tried to be versions of him. They say Imitation is the greatest form of flattery, but no one could imitate BC. He was unique and one-of-a-kind.

Many of us were fortunate to have known and read him in his troublemaking, subversive prime. I’m not sure we’ll get a privilege like that again soon. Thank God BC preserved some of his columns in book form, so that they could be more widely and permanently available. May BC continue to inspire and enrich us all.

1,272 words
Dr. Kirk Meighoo
Cunupia
24 October 2023

[bluefete]

BC Pires will be cremated, in Barbados, on Saturday 11th November 2023 at 8:00 a.m.