Mack Hall
All the world turns its attention to the upper midwest this week, because when you’re talking about Republicans in Minnesota, you’re talking about some serious excitement, boy! When Uncle Edgar and Aunt Mabel wear their funny made-in-China Uncle Sam hats and start chugging some discount-store champagne on the convention floor, sooooeeeee, look out!
I just want all of You People out there beneath the embracing wings of my private jet to know that I am waiting for The Call to serve you, my little People, you ‘umble little working men and women who keep the wheels of American industry turning, as your next President and Saviour. Indeed, I pre-pre-release my pre-prepared pre-acceptance speech, for which in return my underground banks of secret computers manned…um…personned by my operatives are even now mining your personal computers for information:
My fellow Americans,
As I stand here tonight, bathed in the glorious reflected light of myself, the guy for whom I have been waiting, pushing the envelope and thinking outside the box, I just want you to know that the future lies ahead. The past is behind us. Tomorrow is another day. We have nothing to love but love itself. Nothing stands between us and the spirit of victory except the spirit of defeat.
Yes, we can – we can use commas to set single nouns of affirmation apart from independent clauses.
My running mate is a Washington outsider who brings years of Washington experience to the ticket in order to call upon veteran lawmakers to revolutionize business as usual in order to bring America to a brave new dawn of hope, because, after all, yesterday is gone, and tomorrow is a new day, and the sun shines on all persons regardless of creed, color, or walk of life.
As we open a new chapter of life on the long and weary road to a brave new world, the key to the future will unlock the envelope of opportunity for all, equality especially for the marginalized who build this great country daily with the sweat of their tears and the muscles of our toils.
Let us ensure that never again will Joe Six-Pack and John and Mary Catholic be burdened with having to think too much about errant hyperbole or have to deconstruct shades of meanings, or meanings of shades, because the blue-collar little people need to sit around their kitchen tables as they plan in hope the riding of their bicycles to their humble little jobs as they save the planet from global warming caused by a failure to think outside the pre-paid mailer and the inefficient recycling of fueled fossils and solar wind power for all the people of the world in peace, love, and harmonic convergence because life is like a delicate flower that must be gently nourished so that it will grow to be like a mighty oak sheltering the world from America’s occupation of Tibet.
My fellow Americans, let the nuance go forth from this second and minute and hour and decade from this night which defines a new generation of nurturing and loving souls who are passionate in their dedication for an America which looks more like the world, and a world which embraces each other in her loving arms because at the end of the day the bottom line is that we are all children of Mother Earth who is crying for her children through tears stained by pollution and a failure to love as the green torch of hope is passed from loving hand to loving hand and from loving windmill to loving windmill in the ever-expanding passionate quest from renewable energy sources under the selfless guardianship of my old pal T-Bone, who also just happens to own most of the ground under which those windmills sit.
I also want to thank my spiritual leader, The Reverend Doctor Bishop Brother Billy-Bob Hairdo of the Bright Light Free Will Four Square Full Gospel Holiness Sanctified Temple Fellowship Outreach of the Lord Jesus Christ of the Lamb and Taco Stand, your Visa Card welcome. I know he would love to be here with you tonight, but he got crossways of the district attorney and is even now being brutally tortured in a FEMA trailer.
With an unfailing confidence in the future that the sun will shine bright on a new America cleansed of last week’s news because it is all so last year, I pledge to you, my fellow Americans, my pledgeness that I will pledge to serve you in my beingness of soul and extend my blue-collar backgroundness through my simple Spode china dinner settings at a table open through all the highways and byways of this great land to all God’s / Buddha’s / Allah’s / Gaia’s children. With all my layered humility I pledge to thank you with all my heart and soul and prayers and thoughts.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Down From the Door Where it Began
First printed in 2001
Mack Hall
The road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began
Now far ahead the road has gone
And I must follow, if I can
Pursuing it with eager feet
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet –
And whither then? I cannot say.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien
Our former random collection of stem cells left for university on Sunday, alternating between giggles and tears as she loaded her little Volkswagen with flutes, clothes, books, tennis racket, computer, makeup, pillows, blankies, and all the other impedimenta of the late-adolescent female beginning her journey on her chosen road. This has been a week of departures, the annual late-August migration of high school graduates out of America’s fast-disappearing little towns and into the groaning centers of population for college or careers. In ones and twos they have flown away like hummingbirds in November, all the little rug-rats who squealed at birthday parties and sleepovers, and scampered through the house with the merry dachshunds. They long ago packed away the Barbies and took up books, musical instruments, microscopes, and computers instead. Some are off to great universities, some to the Marines, and some to the wonderful world of entry-level jobs: “Ya want fries with that?’
I woke up early on Sunday morning, and did what all fathers do for their college-bound kids: I washed Sarah’s car. It didn’t really need it, but I didn’t know what else to do. We had all gone to Mass the night before, because all journeys properly begin and end at the Altar. However, this left us with maybe too much time before Sarah joined The Other Sarah for their two-car departure. So I mowed the lawn. It didn’t really need it, but I didn’t know what else to do.
Eldon came over in the early afternoon; both his girls have left for A & M, so in our great sorrow we broke out a couple of cigars, sat under the fan on the back porch (now more commonly known as a patio), and felt old. Finally, around two, I violated my own no-cars-on-the-lawn rule and backed Sarah’s little Bug to the front door, where I followed orders and helped Sarah load her gear to her specifications while the usually merry dachshunds watched sadly. They didn’t know what was going on, but they somehow knew that their little world was about to change. And then there was nothing left to do. Sunlight fell on the green grass and the blue Volkswagen while the sky to the north darkened with an approaching thunderstorm. Hugs all around, and then Sarah drove away down the lane and the dusty East Texas road -- not to a movie or pizza with her buds, and not for an afternoon or an evening, but far away and forever.
Now the house is very quiet, and the babble of the television and the rattle of the washer can’t disguise the emptiness of a house where a child used to live. Sarah’s awards-heavy letter jacket hangs in her closet in its plastic bag from the cleaners. Last week it was her resume’; now it’s just an artifact of the past, stored away with plastic boxes of toys and games. On her bed reside the stuffed animals she cuddled at night and when she was sick. Her books are stacked on their accustomed shelves: the worn Little House books she read over and over, Diary of a Young Girl, My Cat Spit Magee, 501 Spanish Verbs, Agatha Christie mysteries, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, every Sweet Valley High book ever churned out on spec, Finland, Jane Austen.
One of the best things I ever did for Sarah was to ban daytime television during her childhood summers. Thus, she climbed her favorite tree with books, cats, and her cap pistol, and spent many warm afternoon hours in her green-lit, bee-humming world, hidden away from adults, reading. This was sometimes alarming, but she got through it without any broken bones.
They will wait patiently for Sarah: cats and dachshunds and stuffed toys and books and her climbing tree. I’ve even saved her cap pistol in case she should someday feel the need to be Queen of the West again. No kids run in and out of the house, and the ‘phone doesn’t ring a dozen times or so nightly -- The Divine Sarah’s Answering Service is definitely out of business. The stereo doesn’t shake the walls. I can watch The History Channel all I want. Heck, maybe I am The History Channel.
Fare thee well, Sarah Elizabeth Maria Goretti Hall, daughter of Cromwellian Roundheads and French refugees, of American Indians and Yankees and good Confederates, of soldiers and sailors and farmers and railroad men and laborers, of women who crossed oceans in wooden ships and gave birth in wagons along forest trails. Thank you for the magical gift of your childhood. I hope you get to see the sunset at midnight in Finland again, and climb on a bronze lion in Trafalgar Square. I hope you play your flute in Italy, visit castles in Germany, ski in Austria, and do whatever it is they do in Australia. I hope your friends are always like those great kids you grew up with. May your little Blue Bug carry you to great adventures, and may it follow its nose home when you are ready to come back to the door where a couple of little dachshunds and an old dad sit waiting for you.
Mack Hall
The road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began
Now far ahead the road has gone
And I must follow, if I can
Pursuing it with eager feet
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet –
And whither then? I cannot say.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien
Our former random collection of stem cells left for university on Sunday, alternating between giggles and tears as she loaded her little Volkswagen with flutes, clothes, books, tennis racket, computer, makeup, pillows, blankies, and all the other impedimenta of the late-adolescent female beginning her journey on her chosen road. This has been a week of departures, the annual late-August migration of high school graduates out of America’s fast-disappearing little towns and into the groaning centers of population for college or careers. In ones and twos they have flown away like hummingbirds in November, all the little rug-rats who squealed at birthday parties and sleepovers, and scampered through the house with the merry dachshunds. They long ago packed away the Barbies and took up books, musical instruments, microscopes, and computers instead. Some are off to great universities, some to the Marines, and some to the wonderful world of entry-level jobs: “Ya want fries with that?’
I woke up early on Sunday morning, and did what all fathers do for their college-bound kids: I washed Sarah’s car. It didn’t really need it, but I didn’t know what else to do. We had all gone to Mass the night before, because all journeys properly begin and end at the Altar. However, this left us with maybe too much time before Sarah joined The Other Sarah for their two-car departure. So I mowed the lawn. It didn’t really need it, but I didn’t know what else to do.
Eldon came over in the early afternoon; both his girls have left for A & M, so in our great sorrow we broke out a couple of cigars, sat under the fan on the back porch (now more commonly known as a patio), and felt old. Finally, around two, I violated my own no-cars-on-the-lawn rule and backed Sarah’s little Bug to the front door, where I followed orders and helped Sarah load her gear to her specifications while the usually merry dachshunds watched sadly. They didn’t know what was going on, but they somehow knew that their little world was about to change. And then there was nothing left to do. Sunlight fell on the green grass and the blue Volkswagen while the sky to the north darkened with an approaching thunderstorm. Hugs all around, and then Sarah drove away down the lane and the dusty East Texas road -- not to a movie or pizza with her buds, and not for an afternoon or an evening, but far away and forever.
Now the house is very quiet, and the babble of the television and the rattle of the washer can’t disguise the emptiness of a house where a child used to live. Sarah’s awards-heavy letter jacket hangs in her closet in its plastic bag from the cleaners. Last week it was her resume’; now it’s just an artifact of the past, stored away with plastic boxes of toys and games. On her bed reside the stuffed animals she cuddled at night and when she was sick. Her books are stacked on their accustomed shelves: the worn Little House books she read over and over, Diary of a Young Girl, My Cat Spit Magee, 501 Spanish Verbs, Agatha Christie mysteries, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, every Sweet Valley High book ever churned out on spec, Finland, Jane Austen.
One of the best things I ever did for Sarah was to ban daytime television during her childhood summers. Thus, she climbed her favorite tree with books, cats, and her cap pistol, and spent many warm afternoon hours in her green-lit, bee-humming world, hidden away from adults, reading. This was sometimes alarming, but she got through it without any broken bones.
They will wait patiently for Sarah: cats and dachshunds and stuffed toys and books and her climbing tree. I’ve even saved her cap pistol in case she should someday feel the need to be Queen of the West again. No kids run in and out of the house, and the ‘phone doesn’t ring a dozen times or so nightly -- The Divine Sarah’s Answering Service is definitely out of business. The stereo doesn’t shake the walls. I can watch The History Channel all I want. Heck, maybe I am The History Channel.
Fare thee well, Sarah Elizabeth Maria Goretti Hall, daughter of Cromwellian Roundheads and French refugees, of American Indians and Yankees and good Confederates, of soldiers and sailors and farmers and railroad men and laborers, of women who crossed oceans in wooden ships and gave birth in wagons along forest trails. Thank you for the magical gift of your childhood. I hope you get to see the sunset at midnight in Finland again, and climb on a bronze lion in Trafalgar Square. I hope you play your flute in Italy, visit castles in Germany, ski in Austria, and do whatever it is they do in Australia. I hope your friends are always like those great kids you grew up with. May your little Blue Bug carry you to great adventures, and may it follow its nose home when you are ready to come back to the door where a couple of little dachshunds and an old dad sit waiting for you.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Roderick Spode Goes to the Olympics
Mack Hall
Dictators are not as sartorially formal as they used to be. Wodehouse’s fictional Roderick Spode practiced dictator-poses before a framed photograph of Benito Mussolini (as, apparently, did Bill Clinton; notice the pouty lower lip thing). China’s Hu, though, overlord of a larger slave empire than that of the slacker Hitler, forswears uniforms and moustaches and stern looks in favor of nicely-tailored sports coats, benign smiles, and Rotarian back-slaps.
Well, if a man’s going to speed your demise (Hey, Hu, what really happened to the Panchen Lama in 1989 while you were the gauleiter of Tibet, hmmmm? Heart attack, you say?), he might as well wear casual clothes and eye your corpse through designer glasses.
Someday the participation of the democracies in the Peiping / Peking / Beijing games will be viewed with as much embarrassment as showing up at the 1936 Olympics and posing prettily for snapshots beneath all those swastikas. Now, as then, the attitude by visitors and locals alike is very Feldwebel Schultzian: "I know NOTHING!"
Olympic games under tyrannies will never be open about their true athletic endeavors. Behind the gymnastics and basketball and footraces are the eternal competitions of dictators. This year’s winners and losers are:
Conquering Small Nations: Russia over Georgia takes the gold; China over Tibet takes the silver.
Executing Prisoners for the Harvest of Their Organs for Rich People: China by a hair-trigger.
State Religions: The Chinese Patriotic Church Not Associated With That Jew-Plutocrat Outfit in Rome falls to Hugo Chavez’s New and Improved Venezuelan Catholic Church Not Associated With That Jew-Plutocrat Outfit in Rome. The medals are presented by an Anglican priestess doing liturgical dance to the musical stylings of Dan Shutte.
Murdering Women: Gold: The Taliban, Silver: Al Quaeda, Bronze: Hamas.
Poisoned Foodstuffs Production: Gold: China, Silver: China, Bronze: China.
Blaming America for Everything That’s Wrong in the World: Gold: Russia; Silver, Iran; Bronze: China.
Geekiest Dictator: Gold: North Korea’s Kim Jong-Ill; Silver: Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe; Bronze: Russia’s Vladimir Pewwwtin. Dishonorable Mention: Nancy Pelosi (The people can’t afford gas? Let them walk. Congress is dismissed.).
Most Oppressive Regime: Gold: North Korea, Silver: Zimbabwe; Bronze: Canada’s Human Rights Commission (Freedom of speech? Canadians don’t need no stinkin’ freedom of speech!).
The closing ceremonies of the Dictator Olympics will include a musical tribute to Saddamn Hussein along with a slide show of his death camps and his former friends being thrown to their deaths from bridges and buildings.
And now, while much of the world suffers, we return to our feature presentation of Hannah Montana’s latest stupid cell-phone-camera stunt.
Dictators are not as sartorially formal as they used to be. Wodehouse’s fictional Roderick Spode practiced dictator-poses before a framed photograph of Benito Mussolini (as, apparently, did Bill Clinton; notice the pouty lower lip thing). China’s Hu, though, overlord of a larger slave empire than that of the slacker Hitler, forswears uniforms and moustaches and stern looks in favor of nicely-tailored sports coats, benign smiles, and Rotarian back-slaps.
Well, if a man’s going to speed your demise (Hey, Hu, what really happened to the Panchen Lama in 1989 while you were the gauleiter of Tibet, hmmmm? Heart attack, you say?), he might as well wear casual clothes and eye your corpse through designer glasses.
Someday the participation of the democracies in the Peiping / Peking / Beijing games will be viewed with as much embarrassment as showing up at the 1936 Olympics and posing prettily for snapshots beneath all those swastikas. Now, as then, the attitude by visitors and locals alike is very Feldwebel Schultzian: "I know NOTHING!"
Olympic games under tyrannies will never be open about their true athletic endeavors. Behind the gymnastics and basketball and footraces are the eternal competitions of dictators. This year’s winners and losers are:
Conquering Small Nations: Russia over Georgia takes the gold; China over Tibet takes the silver.
Executing Prisoners for the Harvest of Their Organs for Rich People: China by a hair-trigger.
State Religions: The Chinese Patriotic Church Not Associated With That Jew-Plutocrat Outfit in Rome falls to Hugo Chavez’s New and Improved Venezuelan Catholic Church Not Associated With That Jew-Plutocrat Outfit in Rome. The medals are presented by an Anglican priestess doing liturgical dance to the musical stylings of Dan Shutte.
Murdering Women: Gold: The Taliban, Silver: Al Quaeda, Bronze: Hamas.
Poisoned Foodstuffs Production: Gold: China, Silver: China, Bronze: China.
Blaming America for Everything That’s Wrong in the World: Gold: Russia; Silver, Iran; Bronze: China.
Geekiest Dictator: Gold: North Korea’s Kim Jong-Ill; Silver: Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe; Bronze: Russia’s Vladimir Pewwwtin. Dishonorable Mention: Nancy Pelosi (The people can’t afford gas? Let them walk. Congress is dismissed.).
Most Oppressive Regime: Gold: North Korea, Silver: Zimbabwe; Bronze: Canada’s Human Rights Commission (Freedom of speech? Canadians don’t need no stinkin’ freedom of speech!).
The closing ceremonies of the Dictator Olympics will include a musical tribute to Saddamn Hussein along with a slide show of his death camps and his former friends being thrown to their deaths from bridges and buildings.
And now, while much of the world suffers, we return to our feature presentation of Hannah Montana’s latest stupid cell-phone-camera stunt.
Roderick Spode Goes to the Olympics
Mack Hall
Dictators are not as sartorially formal as they used to be. Wodehouse’s fictional Roderick Spode practiced dictator-poses before a framed photograph of Benito Mussolini (as, apparently, did Bill Clinton; notice the pouty lower lip thing). China’s Hu, though, overlord of a larger slave empire than that of the slacker Hitler, forswears uniforms and moustaches and stern looks in favor of nicely-tailored sports coats, benign smiles, and Rotarian back-slaps.
Well, if a man’s going to speed your demise (Hey, Hu, what really happened to the Panchen Lama in 1989 while you were the gauleiter of Tibet, hmmmm? Heart attack, you say?), he might as well wear casual clothes and eye your corpse through designer glasses.
Someday the participation of the democracies in the Peiping / Peking / Beijing games will be viewed with as much embarrassment as showing up at the 1936 Olympics and posing prettily for snapshots beneath all those swastikas. Now, as then, the attitude by visitors and locals alike is very Feldwebel Schultzian: "I know NOTHING!"
Olympic games under tyrannies will never be open about their true athletic endeavors. Behind the gymnastics and basketball and footraces are the eternal competitions of dictators. This year’s winners and losers are:
Conquering Small Nations: Russia over Georgia takes the gold; China over Tibet takes the silver.
Executing Prisoners for the Harvest of Their Organs for Rich People: China by a hair-trigger.
State Religions: The Chinese Patriotic Church Not Associated With That Jew-Plutocrat Outfit in Rome falls to Hugo Chavez’s New and Improved Venezuelan Catholic Church Not Associated With That Jew-Plutocrat Outfit in Rome. The medals are presented by an Anglican priestess doing liturgical dance to the musical stylings of Dan Shutte.
Murdering Women: Gold: The Taliban, Silver: Al Quaeda, Bronze: Hamas.
Poisoned Foodstuffs Production: Gold: China, Silver: China, Bronze: China.
Blaming America for Everything That’s Wrong in the World: Gold: Russia; Silver, Iran; Bronze: China.
Geekiest Dictator: Gold: North Korea’s Kim Jong-Ill; Silver: Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe; Bronze: Russia’s Vladimir Pewwwtin. Dishonorable Mention: Nancy Pelosi (The people can’t afford gas? Let them walk. Congress is dismissed.).
Most Oppressive Regime: Gold: North Korea, Silver: Zimbabwe; Bronze: Canada’s Human Rights Commission (Freedom of speech? Canadians don’t need no stinkin’ freedom of speech!).
The closing ceremonies of the Dictator Olympics will include a musical tribute to Saddamn Hussein along with a slide show of his death camps and his former friends being thrown to their deaths from bridges and buildings.
And now, while much of the world suffers, we return to our feature presentation of Hannah Montana’s latest stupid cell-phone-camera stunt.
Dictators are not as sartorially formal as they used to be. Wodehouse’s fictional Roderick Spode practiced dictator-poses before a framed photograph of Benito Mussolini (as, apparently, did Bill Clinton; notice the pouty lower lip thing). China’s Hu, though, overlord of a larger slave empire than that of the slacker Hitler, forswears uniforms and moustaches and stern looks in favor of nicely-tailored sports coats, benign smiles, and Rotarian back-slaps.
Well, if a man’s going to speed your demise (Hey, Hu, what really happened to the Panchen Lama in 1989 while you were the gauleiter of Tibet, hmmmm? Heart attack, you say?), he might as well wear casual clothes and eye your corpse through designer glasses.
Someday the participation of the democracies in the Peiping / Peking / Beijing games will be viewed with as much embarrassment as showing up at the 1936 Olympics and posing prettily for snapshots beneath all those swastikas. Now, as then, the attitude by visitors and locals alike is very Feldwebel Schultzian: "I know NOTHING!"
Olympic games under tyrannies will never be open about their true athletic endeavors. Behind the gymnastics and basketball and footraces are the eternal competitions of dictators. This year’s winners and losers are:
Conquering Small Nations: Russia over Georgia takes the gold; China over Tibet takes the silver.
Executing Prisoners for the Harvest of Their Organs for Rich People: China by a hair-trigger.
State Religions: The Chinese Patriotic Church Not Associated With That Jew-Plutocrat Outfit in Rome falls to Hugo Chavez’s New and Improved Venezuelan Catholic Church Not Associated With That Jew-Plutocrat Outfit in Rome. The medals are presented by an Anglican priestess doing liturgical dance to the musical stylings of Dan Shutte.
Murdering Women: Gold: The Taliban, Silver: Al Quaeda, Bronze: Hamas.
Poisoned Foodstuffs Production: Gold: China, Silver: China, Bronze: China.
Blaming America for Everything That’s Wrong in the World: Gold: Russia; Silver, Iran; Bronze: China.
Geekiest Dictator: Gold: North Korea’s Kim Jong-Ill; Silver: Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe; Bronze: Russia’s Vladimir Pewwwtin. Dishonorable Mention: Nancy Pelosi (The people can’t afford gas? Let them walk. Congress is dismissed.).
Most Oppressive Regime: Gold: North Korea, Silver: Zimbabwe; Bronze: Canada’s Human Rights Commission (Freedom of speech? Canadians don’t need no stinkin’ freedom of speech!).
The closing ceremonies of the Dictator Olympics will include a musical tribute to Saddamn Hussein along with a slide show of his death camps and his former friends being thrown to their deaths from bridges and buildings.
And now, while much of the world suffers, we return to our feature presentation of Hannah Montana’s latest stupid cell-phone-camera stunt.
The Secret Jail for Democrats
Mack Hall
To read that Denver has built a secret jail for the detention of Democrats (activists say so; it must be true) is a thought so heart-warming, so touching that it would bring a tear to Colonel Klink’s monocled eye. One imagines jack-booted goon-squads of blonde Russian supermen employing electric cattle prods – or at least Super-Soakers filled with tap water – to herd masses of bleating liberals, liberals shuffling along on their all-natural hemp sandals and clutching their meagre possessions in tattered Starbuck’s gift bags, into cold, dripping dungeons secured by clanging iron doors. O, be still, my heart.
Alas, it is not so.
The city of Denver, under siege by foreigners with bags of deadly poisons and by domestic crazies with bags of feces to fling at the Party worthies, has converted a warehouse into a processing area for citizens alleged by police officers to have committed criminal acts. Flinging poison or feces, for instance.
The center is on Steele Street, and Steele is homonymic with steel, and the Russian for steel is Stalin, if you get my meaning. Lift high the barbed wire, comrades!
Just why there should be protestors in a society with an almost universal franchise (Do you have a pulse? Hey, you can vote!) that can change its government every two years eludes the thinking person. What are the protestors protesting? The vote? Freedom? Democracy?
According to the city, the center is simply for the post-arrest processing of peace-lovers who fling poison and doo-doo, not for long-term detention.
But according to the protestors, the center is a Putinesque Gulag with whips and chains and waterboarding and posters of Ronald Reagan in every cell.
Sigh. If only.
The city says the facility has been expensively remodeled, certified by the fire marshal, and air-conditioned, and offers water, restrooms, and medical care, which is a much better deal than Denver’s homeless ever get.
What? No coffee shop? No Evian water? No religious services? No widescreen telly? No quiche for breakfast? No direct line to Rick Warren or the Dalai Lama? The horror! The horror!
Rumor has it that the speaker system will play the theme from The Great Escape as the prisoners are fingerprinted, photographed, and interviewed by Rolling Stone.
One anticipates that being arrested at the Democratic Party Convention will be a badge of honor among the bags of feces…I mean the carriers of bags of feces. Years from now aging leftists will brag at Old Comrades’ meetings about the brutality they suffered at the blood-stained hands of Officer Jennifer of the Denver Police: “She offered me a cup of house coffee – in a global-warming plastic cup!”
“I know where you’re coming from, comrade. When I asked for something to eat after ten long minutes of incarceration and starvation, Officer Stan gave me a sandwich on…sniff…white bread! Clearly that was racist code! Sob! And the sandwich contained meat from one of our animal comrades! Did they think I was a cannibal!?”
“You comrades are weak! You should have acted! I, in the name of the Revolution and of The Red Dawn of Aromatherapy, torched the twenty-year old car of a single-mother housekeeper at the Hilton! That taught her what it meant to cooperate with the oppressors!”
The Denver facility is supposed to be able to process sixty vegetarians an hour, but of course delays can happen, and Comrade Feces and Comrade Rycin may have to wait in holding areas. How will this be handled? Will roving, tattooed gangs of Hillaryites fight with roving, tattooed gangs of Obamistas in this Andersonville-in-the-Rockies?
Will sullen prisoners stare bleakly through the barbed wire at passing convoys of limousines carrying in degenerate capitalist luxury the more-comrade-than-thou Party functionaries?
Will prisoners raising clenched fists – fists clenching their PDAs -- generate manifestos demonstrating solidarity with the Russian workers’ and peasants’ liberation of fascist, war-mongering Georgia under the benevolent, all-seeing, all-knowing eyes of Comrade Putin?
Sergeant Schultz says “I know nothing! NOTHING!”
Ready the lawyers and grief counselors, Denver; it’s going to be a bumpy week.
Don’t laugh, you rascally Republicans; you’re next. Bwahahahahahaha!
To read that Denver has built a secret jail for the detention of Democrats (activists say so; it must be true) is a thought so heart-warming, so touching that it would bring a tear to Colonel Klink’s monocled eye. One imagines jack-booted goon-squads of blonde Russian supermen employing electric cattle prods – or at least Super-Soakers filled with tap water – to herd masses of bleating liberals, liberals shuffling along on their all-natural hemp sandals and clutching their meagre possessions in tattered Starbuck’s gift bags, into cold, dripping dungeons secured by clanging iron doors. O, be still, my heart.
Alas, it is not so.
The city of Denver, under siege by foreigners with bags of deadly poisons and by domestic crazies with bags of feces to fling at the Party worthies, has converted a warehouse into a processing area for citizens alleged by police officers to have committed criminal acts. Flinging poison or feces, for instance.
The center is on Steele Street, and Steele is homonymic with steel, and the Russian for steel is Stalin, if you get my meaning. Lift high the barbed wire, comrades!
Just why there should be protestors in a society with an almost universal franchise (Do you have a pulse? Hey, you can vote!) that can change its government every two years eludes the thinking person. What are the protestors protesting? The vote? Freedom? Democracy?
According to the city, the center is simply for the post-arrest processing of peace-lovers who fling poison and doo-doo, not for long-term detention.
But according to the protestors, the center is a Putinesque Gulag with whips and chains and waterboarding and posters of Ronald Reagan in every cell.
Sigh. If only.
The city says the facility has been expensively remodeled, certified by the fire marshal, and air-conditioned, and offers water, restrooms, and medical care, which is a much better deal than Denver’s homeless ever get.
What? No coffee shop? No Evian water? No religious services? No widescreen telly? No quiche for breakfast? No direct line to Rick Warren or the Dalai Lama? The horror! The horror!
Rumor has it that the speaker system will play the theme from The Great Escape as the prisoners are fingerprinted, photographed, and interviewed by Rolling Stone.
One anticipates that being arrested at the Democratic Party Convention will be a badge of honor among the bags of feces…I mean the carriers of bags of feces. Years from now aging leftists will brag at Old Comrades’ meetings about the brutality they suffered at the blood-stained hands of Officer Jennifer of the Denver Police: “She offered me a cup of house coffee – in a global-warming plastic cup!”
“I know where you’re coming from, comrade. When I asked for something to eat after ten long minutes of incarceration and starvation, Officer Stan gave me a sandwich on…sniff…white bread! Clearly that was racist code! Sob! And the sandwich contained meat from one of our animal comrades! Did they think I was a cannibal!?”
“You comrades are weak! You should have acted! I, in the name of the Revolution and of The Red Dawn of Aromatherapy, torched the twenty-year old car of a single-mother housekeeper at the Hilton! That taught her what it meant to cooperate with the oppressors!”
The Denver facility is supposed to be able to process sixty vegetarians an hour, but of course delays can happen, and Comrade Feces and Comrade Rycin may have to wait in holding areas. How will this be handled? Will roving, tattooed gangs of Hillaryites fight with roving, tattooed gangs of Obamistas in this Andersonville-in-the-Rockies?
Will sullen prisoners stare bleakly through the barbed wire at passing convoys of limousines carrying in degenerate capitalist luxury the more-comrade-than-thou Party functionaries?
Will prisoners raising clenched fists – fists clenching their PDAs -- generate manifestos demonstrating solidarity with the Russian workers’ and peasants’ liberation of fascist, war-mongering Georgia under the benevolent, all-seeing, all-knowing eyes of Comrade Putin?
Sergeant Schultz says “I know nothing! NOTHING!”
Ready the lawyers and grief counselors, Denver; it’s going to be a bumpy week.
Don’t laugh, you rascally Republicans; you’re next. Bwahahahahahaha!
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Preabsolutely
Mack Hall
Perhaps the excessive use of the prefix “pre” began with advertisements by funeral homes: we were urged to preplan preneed for our predemise. But of course a plan by definition is a pre thing, and if you are planning your funeral that too is pre since you are not yet posed (or preposed) in the coffin under the scientifically-arranged (or prearranged) lights to make you look pretty. To say “pre-plan” is like saying “plan-plan.” With the complementary use of “absolutely” as a universal four-syllable substitute for the perfectly utilitarian one-syllable “yes,” the language took a divergent road in the yellow wood, and the way back is blocked by an avalanche of obscurantism.
To help make the works of our culture more accessible to moderns lost in that wood, I propose (or prepropose) the following re-makes (pre-makes?) of certain literary and cinematic icons of our time:
Casablanca:
Rick: “Last night we presaid a great many prethings. Absolutely. You presaid I was to predo the prethinking for both of us. Well, I've predone a lot of it since then, and it all preadds up to one prething: you're pregetting on that preplane with Victor where you prebelong. Absolutely.”
Ilsa: “But, Richard, preno, I... I...”
Rick: “Now, you've got to prelisten to me! You have any preidea what you'd prehave to prelook preforward to if you prestayed here? Nine prechances out of ten, we'd both prewind up in a preconcentration camp. Isn't that pretrue, Louie?”
Captain Renault: “Absolutely.”
Ilsa: “You're presaying this only to premake me prego.“
Rick: “I'm presaying it because it's pretrue. Inside of us, we both preknow you prebelong with Victor. You're prepart of his prework, the thing that prekeeps him pregoing. If that plane preleaves the ground and you're not prewith him, you'll preregret it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but presoon and for the prerest of your prelife. Absolutely."
Ilsa: “But prewhat about us?”
Rick: “We'll always prehave Paris. We didn't have, we, we prelost it until you precame to Casablanca. We pregot it back last night. Absolutely.”
Ilsa: “And I presaid I would never preleave you. Absolutely.”
Rick: “And you never prewill. But I've got a prejob to do, too. Where I'm pregoing, you can't prefollow. What I've got to predo, you can't be any prepart of. Ilsa, I'm no pregood at prebeing prenoble, but it doesn't pretake much to presee that the problems of three little people don't preamount to a hill of beans in this precrazy world. Someday you'll preunderstand that. Now, now... Here's prelooking at you kid. Absolutely.”
Gone With the Wind:
Scarlett: “Oh, Rhett, prewhere shall I prego? What shall I predo?”Rhett: “Absolutely.”
President Kennedy: “Ich prebin ein preBerliner. Absolutely.”
John Wayne in True Grit: “Prefill your hand, you son-of-an-absolute!”
Ernest Hemingway: “There is prenothing to prewriting. All you do is presit down at a typewriter and prebleed. Absolutely.”
Thomas More: “I predie the King’s pregood servant, but God’s prefirst. Absolutely.”
Martin Luther King: “I prehave a predream. Absolutely.”
President Roosevelt: “Yesterday, a date which will prelive in preinfamy, the United States of America was predeliberately and preabsolutely preattacked by naval and forces of the Empire of Japan…”
And now, let us close with a prayer:
“Our Father, who preart in Heaven, prehallowed be Thy Name. Absolutely. Thy prekingdom come, Thy will be predone, on Earth as it is in Heaven. Absolutely. Pregiveus this day our predaily prebread, and preforgive us our pretresspasses as we preforgive those who pretresspass against us. Absolutely. And prelead us not into temptation, but predeliver us from preevil. Absolutely.”
Perhaps the excessive use of the prefix “pre” began with advertisements by funeral homes: we were urged to preplan preneed for our predemise. But of course a plan by definition is a pre thing, and if you are planning your funeral that too is pre since you are not yet posed (or preposed) in the coffin under the scientifically-arranged (or prearranged) lights to make you look pretty. To say “pre-plan” is like saying “plan-plan.” With the complementary use of “absolutely” as a universal four-syllable substitute for the perfectly utilitarian one-syllable “yes,” the language took a divergent road in the yellow wood, and the way back is blocked by an avalanche of obscurantism.
To help make the works of our culture more accessible to moderns lost in that wood, I propose (or prepropose) the following re-makes (pre-makes?) of certain literary and cinematic icons of our time:
Casablanca:
Rick: “Last night we presaid a great many prethings. Absolutely. You presaid I was to predo the prethinking for both of us. Well, I've predone a lot of it since then, and it all preadds up to one prething: you're pregetting on that preplane with Victor where you prebelong. Absolutely.”
Ilsa: “But, Richard, preno, I... I...”
Rick: “Now, you've got to prelisten to me! You have any preidea what you'd prehave to prelook preforward to if you prestayed here? Nine prechances out of ten, we'd both prewind up in a preconcentration camp. Isn't that pretrue, Louie?”
Captain Renault: “Absolutely.”
Ilsa: “You're presaying this only to premake me prego.“
Rick: “I'm presaying it because it's pretrue. Inside of us, we both preknow you prebelong with Victor. You're prepart of his prework, the thing that prekeeps him pregoing. If that plane preleaves the ground and you're not prewith him, you'll preregret it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but presoon and for the prerest of your prelife. Absolutely."
Ilsa: “But prewhat about us?”
Rick: “We'll always prehave Paris. We didn't have, we, we prelost it until you precame to Casablanca. We pregot it back last night. Absolutely.”
Ilsa: “And I presaid I would never preleave you. Absolutely.”
Rick: “And you never prewill. But I've got a prejob to do, too. Where I'm pregoing, you can't prefollow. What I've got to predo, you can't be any prepart of. Ilsa, I'm no pregood at prebeing prenoble, but it doesn't pretake much to presee that the problems of three little people don't preamount to a hill of beans in this precrazy world. Someday you'll preunderstand that. Now, now... Here's prelooking at you kid. Absolutely.”
Gone With the Wind:
Scarlett: “Oh, Rhett, prewhere shall I prego? What shall I predo?”Rhett: “Absolutely.”
President Kennedy: “Ich prebin ein preBerliner. Absolutely.”
John Wayne in True Grit: “Prefill your hand, you son-of-an-absolute!”
Ernest Hemingway: “There is prenothing to prewriting. All you do is presit down at a typewriter and prebleed. Absolutely.”
Thomas More: “I predie the King’s pregood servant, but God’s prefirst. Absolutely.”
Martin Luther King: “I prehave a predream. Absolutely.”
President Roosevelt: “Yesterday, a date which will prelive in preinfamy, the United States of America was predeliberately and preabsolutely preattacked by naval and forces of the Empire of Japan…”
And now, let us close with a prayer:
“Our Father, who preart in Heaven, prehallowed be Thy Name. Absolutely. Thy prekingdom come, Thy will be predone, on Earth as it is in Heaven. Absolutely. Pregiveus this day our predaily prebread, and preforgive us our pretresspasses as we preforgive those who pretresspass against us. Absolutely. And prelead us not into temptation, but predeliver us from preevil. Absolutely.”
-30-
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