Mack Hall
The Catholic Keyboard Commando -- A Little Doglessmatic Doggerel
Dedicated to Certain More-Catholic-Than-You Bloggers
A species of Catholic, brave and true,
Humble, spiritual, intellectual too,
Corrects us heretics – give him a hand-o:
The carping Catholic keyboard commando!
His keyboard’s inspired by the Holy Ghost;
Just ask him; he’ll make you no idle boast.
Together they make a righteous band-o:
The carping Catholic keyboard commando!
“Sede vacante” is sometimes his style;
With these two words he makes a barnyard pile.
He’s holier than the Pope, and oh, so grand-o:
The carping Catholic keyboard commando!
He hates anyone who is not like him –
“You liberal!” is how he dismisses them,
Because opposition he cannot stand-o:
The carping Catholic keyboard commando!
He is so perfect in his thoughts and prayers,
Burdened with all of Holy Church’s cares,
So God should listen to this holy man-doh:
Petty Pelagian keyboard commando!
This includes a blogging priest (or two):
He drools vile thoughts, attributes them to you.
Caritas, no, he’s busy with his glands-o:
Lecherous Catholic keyboard commando!
But now it’s time for this dog’rel to close
While God’s chosen ‘blogger looks down his nose
In judgment smug from his fairyland-o:
The carping Catholic keyboard commando!
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Monday, December 28, 2009
Explosive Ivanas
Mack Hall
Ivana Trump, who is famous for her marriages or something, was required to leave a commercial aircraft at Palm Beach for misbehavior after she waxed wroth at some children who were running and screaming in the aisles. There is no word as to whether the running and screaming children were de-off-un-boarded too.
Anyone who has flown with children will surely sympathize with Ms. Trump; most rug-rats should be stowed below with the other live animals.
Perhaps Ivana and the children should all have been punished by being made to sit together and share a Happy Meal.
If vulgar old women can be shown the way to the bus station, why can’t the terrorists?
Just last week a wealthy Nigerian studying engineering in London tried to explode himself on a flight into Detroit. People who have been to Detroit report that such a desire is common. The terrorist – um, misunderstood youth – boarded at Amsterdam, where airport security is reputedly, like, whoa, dude, this is some good stuff we’re smokin’, huh? He carried on his person explosives which he assembled in the potty and then attempted to touch off on the approach. Some of the other passengers, insensitive brutes who probably watch FOX and have read Sarah Palin’s book, jumped on the unfortunate son-of-a-(rich man) who was but crying out for understanding.
As usual, the perp’s acquaintances report that he was a good fellow, a fine student, and a great basketball player. Well, hey, we all know that terrorists are old grouches who have trouble spelling and don’t like sports.
The poor fellow’s lawsuits against the airline and the other passengers and the makers of his flaming underwear are soon to be announced. The meanies who saved the airliner and over two hundred lives must be punished.
The next day another Nigerian on another flight from Amsterdam to Detroit also locked himself in the potty (which most of us do) and refused to come out during the approach, pleading illness. This time the situation appears to have been one of funny-tummy. Perhaps the man had to sit next to some rotten children. Or maybe he was coming to America for the Obamacare.
Security Czar Janet, one of our republic’s many czars (ironic, eh?), hastens to assure us that air travel is safe, which is why airport security are hassling twice the usual number of little old ladies.
Safe airline travel, eh, your Czar-ness? With screaming children, cursing Ivanas, scheming terrorists, and Nigerian businessmen with explosive diarrhea if not explosives, maybe booking space on the Titanic should be an option again.
Ivana Trump, who is famous for her marriages or something, was required to leave a commercial aircraft at Palm Beach for misbehavior after she waxed wroth at some children who were running and screaming in the aisles. There is no word as to whether the running and screaming children were de-off-un-boarded too.
Anyone who has flown with children will surely sympathize with Ms. Trump; most rug-rats should be stowed below with the other live animals.
Perhaps Ivana and the children should all have been punished by being made to sit together and share a Happy Meal.
If vulgar old women can be shown the way to the bus station, why can’t the terrorists?
Just last week a wealthy Nigerian studying engineering in London tried to explode himself on a flight into Detroit. People who have been to Detroit report that such a desire is common. The terrorist – um, misunderstood youth – boarded at Amsterdam, where airport security is reputedly, like, whoa, dude, this is some good stuff we’re smokin’, huh? He carried on his person explosives which he assembled in the potty and then attempted to touch off on the approach. Some of the other passengers, insensitive brutes who probably watch FOX and have read Sarah Palin’s book, jumped on the unfortunate son-of-a-(rich man) who was but crying out for understanding.
As usual, the perp’s acquaintances report that he was a good fellow, a fine student, and a great basketball player. Well, hey, we all know that terrorists are old grouches who have trouble spelling and don’t like sports.
The poor fellow’s lawsuits against the airline and the other passengers and the makers of his flaming underwear are soon to be announced. The meanies who saved the airliner and over two hundred lives must be punished.
The next day another Nigerian on another flight from Amsterdam to Detroit also locked himself in the potty (which most of us do) and refused to come out during the approach, pleading illness. This time the situation appears to have been one of funny-tummy. Perhaps the man had to sit next to some rotten children. Or maybe he was coming to America for the Obamacare.
Security Czar Janet, one of our republic’s many czars (ironic, eh?), hastens to assure us that air travel is safe, which is why airport security are hassling twice the usual number of little old ladies.
Safe airline travel, eh, your Czar-ness? With screaming children, cursing Ivanas, scheming terrorists, and Nigerian businessmen with explosive diarrhea if not explosives, maybe booking space on the Titanic should be an option again.
Explosive Ivanas
Mack Hall
Ivana Trump, who is famous for her marriages or something, was required to leave a commercial aircraft at Palm Beach for misbehavior after she waxed wroth at some children who were running and screaming in the aisles. There is no word as to whether the running and screaming children were de-off-un-boarded too.
Anyone who has flown with children will surely sympathize with Ms. Trump; most rug-rats should be stowed below with the other live animals.
Perhaps Ivana and the children should all have been punished by being made to sit together and share a Happy Meal.
If vulgar old women can be shown the way to the bus station, why can’t the terrorists?
Just last week a wealthy Nigerian studying engineering in London tried to explode himself on a flight into Detroit. People who have been to Detroit report that such a desire is common. The terrorist – um, misunderstood youth – boarded at Amsterdam, where airport security is reputedly, like, whoa, dude, this is some good stuff we’re smokin’, huh? He carried on his person explosives which he assembled in the potty and then attempted to touch off on the approach. Some of the other passengers, insensitive brutes who probably watch FOX and have read Sarah Palin’s book, jumped on the unfortunate son-of-a-(rich man) who was but crying out for understanding.
As usual, the perp’s acquaintances report that he was a good fellow, a fine student, and a great basketball player. Well, hey, we all know that terrorists are old grouches who have trouble spelling and don’t like sports.
The poor fellow’s lawsuits against the airline and the other passengers and the makers of his flaming underwear are soon to be announced. The meanies who saved the airliner and over two hundred lives must be punished.
The next day another Nigerian on another flight from Amsterdam to Detroit also locked himself in the potty (which most of us do) and refused to come out during the approach, pleading illness. This time the situation appears to have been one of funny-tummy. Perhaps the man had to sit next to some rotten children. Or maybe he was coming to America for the Obamacare.
Security Czar Janet, one of our republic’s many czars (ironic, eh?), hastens to assure us that air travel is safe, which is why airport security are hassling twice the usual number of little old ladies.
Safe airline travel, eh, your Czar-ness? With screaming children, cursing Ivanas, scheming terrorists, and Nigerian businessmen with explosive diarrhea if not explosives, maybe booking space on the Titanic should be an option again.
Ivana Trump, who is famous for her marriages or something, was required to leave a commercial aircraft at Palm Beach for misbehavior after she waxed wroth at some children who were running and screaming in the aisles. There is no word as to whether the running and screaming children were de-off-un-boarded too.
Anyone who has flown with children will surely sympathize with Ms. Trump; most rug-rats should be stowed below with the other live animals.
Perhaps Ivana and the children should all have been punished by being made to sit together and share a Happy Meal.
If vulgar old women can be shown the way to the bus station, why can’t the terrorists?
Just last week a wealthy Nigerian studying engineering in London tried to explode himself on a flight into Detroit. People who have been to Detroit report that such a desire is common. The terrorist – um, misunderstood youth – boarded at Amsterdam, where airport security is reputedly, like, whoa, dude, this is some good stuff we’re smokin’, huh? He carried on his person explosives which he assembled in the potty and then attempted to touch off on the approach. Some of the other passengers, insensitive brutes who probably watch FOX and have read Sarah Palin’s book, jumped on the unfortunate son-of-a-(rich man) who was but crying out for understanding.
As usual, the perp’s acquaintances report that he was a good fellow, a fine student, and a great basketball player. Well, hey, we all know that terrorists are old grouches who have trouble spelling and don’t like sports.
The poor fellow’s lawsuits against the airline and the other passengers and the makers of his flaming underwear are soon to be announced. The meanies who saved the airliner and over two hundred lives must be punished.
The next day another Nigerian on another flight from Amsterdam to Detroit also locked himself in the potty (which most of us do) and refused to come out during the approach, pleading illness. This time the situation appears to have been one of funny-tummy. Perhaps the man had to sit next to some rotten children. Or maybe he was coming to America for the Obamacare.
Security Czar Janet, one of our republic’s many czars (ironic, eh?), hastens to assure us that air travel is safe, which is why airport security are hassling twice the usual number of little old ladies.
Safe airline travel, eh, your Czar-ness? With screaming children, cursing Ivanas, scheming terrorists, and Nigerian businessmen with explosive diarrhea if not explosives, maybe booking space on the Titanic should be an option again.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
An Advent Valentine
Mack Hall
An Advent Valentine
For, of course, happy Valentine Marie Petty
And now comes Valentine, an autumn gift;
Vertumnus and Pomona thus withdraw
In recognition of the seasonal shift,
Saluting, they, this Advent child in awe.
The pagan year recesses to its close;
The Christian year commences with a child
Born as the second candle softly glows
(Saint Nicholas is happily beguiled).
Her family journeys to Bethlehem,
A little family in a Star-lit night,
And Simeon, perhaps, joins in their hymn,
As they present their love to living Light:
Rare gifts for the Christ Child ‘midst sheep and kine,
And not among the least, His Valentine
An Advent Valentine
For, of course, happy Valentine Marie Petty
And now comes Valentine, an autumn gift;
Vertumnus and Pomona thus withdraw
In recognition of the seasonal shift,
Saluting, they, this Advent child in awe.
The pagan year recesses to its close;
The Christian year commences with a child
Born as the second candle softly glows
(Saint Nicholas is happily beguiled).
Her family journeys to Bethlehem,
A little family in a Star-lit night,
And Simeon, perhaps, joins in their hymn,
As they present their love to living Light:
Rare gifts for the Christ Child ‘midst sheep and kine,
And not among the least, His Valentine
The Arts of Christmas
Mack Hall
Christmas is pretty. Of all the holidays, both religious and secular, Christmas inspires more and better attempts at literary, visual, and musical art than all the others. Easter, the premiere Christian holy day, ends its somber Lenten anticipation with beautiful music celebrating the Resurrection, but in popular culture is almost ignored. Independence Day is red, white, blue, explosions, and John Philip Sousa, which are okay, but no one spends four weeks in preparation for the Fourth. The religious holidays of All Souls and All Saints have been perverted into the ghastly Halloween, and Thanksgiving barely makes a nod at the Pilgrim fathers before dismembering a turkey and then yelling at a footer match on television.
But with Christmas comes art.
Arnold Friberg, who painted one of the most famous versions of Washington at prayer, wisely said that art which has to be explained is not art at all.
And so it is with Christmas. A Christmas tree needs no explanation, not even to an infant – it simply is, with its colored lights and angels and glass globes and “Baby’s First Christmas” ornament. Adults argue whether Christmas trees are pagan in origin (they probably are), and certainly the aforementioned Pilgrim fathers banned Christmas trees (and Christmas itself) as Romish corruptions, but a child in his wisdom delights in trees.
Christmas music, too, never requires National Public Radio gaseous exhalations invoking such Charlie Brown teacher-isms as “fusion,” “inculturation,” and “textual analysis.” Handel’s glorious music is as clear to an atonal simpleton like me as it is to James Levine of the New York Phil. Fr. Franz Gruber’s simple and sublime “Stille Nacht” and Gene Autry’s jolly “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” as a contract piece for Montgomery Ward both have their places in the canon, one to honor the birth of the Savior and the other to honor the cash-register.
Any time a Hallmark Christmas movie is broadcast an angel rips its wings off, but there is a lengthy catalogue of great Christmas films, including Holiday Inn, The Bishop’s Wife, The Shop Around the Corner, Miracle on 34th Street, and Christmas in Connecticut. John Wayne’s Three Godfathers, with its themes of sacrifice and redemption, is laden with Christmas allusions. Every year Linus Van Pelt in A Charlie Brown Christmas reads to us the infancy narrative from St. Luke, and he doesn’t need a voice-over narrator to explain it all to us.
And, hey, don’t shoot your eye out.
In the 13th century St. Francis of Assisi set up the first Nativity scene, forever giving serious sculptors and even more serious manufacturers a subject for artistic endeavors of varying quality. Perhaps the best Nativity scenes are the cheap ones the children can play with. Since World War II this Catholic tradition has become popular with other Christian faithful, just in time for public displays to be shut down by some local courts, who understand it very well.
Happily there was no Martha Stewart at Bethlehem to instruct Mary on decorating the Stable just so. If Christmas begins with a stable, as St. Luke and Linus remind us, need it continue in a museum-display living room on the cover of Southern Living? One does not imagine the Blessed Mother apologizing to the shepherds because “the stable is a mess.”
Nativity scenes remain simple, which is a small miracle. In churches one sees other Christian symbols, including statues and crucifixes, which appear to have been beaten out of scrap metal by a disturbed chimpanzee with a sledge hammer. Church committees are often deceived into paying good money for debris when a disciple of Billy Mays saliva-sprays them with polysyllabic adjectives explaining what his purported art means. As with the emperor’s new clothes, few people have the courage to say “I DO know something about art, and this ain’t it, pal.”
But art has left the humble Stable alone, not fitting it out with rocket pods or even running water, and a little child can place the Infant Jesus in His manger between Mary and Joseph, set the camels here – or maybe there? – and the ox and the shepherds where she feels they need to be, not where a decorator with a color chart and the rule of three says they must be. Little children pretty much know how Christmas should be, and their play is the best art of all.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
Christmas is pretty. Of all the holidays, both religious and secular, Christmas inspires more and better attempts at literary, visual, and musical art than all the others. Easter, the premiere Christian holy day, ends its somber Lenten anticipation with beautiful music celebrating the Resurrection, but in popular culture is almost ignored. Independence Day is red, white, blue, explosions, and John Philip Sousa, which are okay, but no one spends four weeks in preparation for the Fourth. The religious holidays of All Souls and All Saints have been perverted into the ghastly Halloween, and Thanksgiving barely makes a nod at the Pilgrim fathers before dismembering a turkey and then yelling at a footer match on television.
But with Christmas comes art.
Arnold Friberg, who painted one of the most famous versions of Washington at prayer, wisely said that art which has to be explained is not art at all.
And so it is with Christmas. A Christmas tree needs no explanation, not even to an infant – it simply is, with its colored lights and angels and glass globes and “Baby’s First Christmas” ornament. Adults argue whether Christmas trees are pagan in origin (they probably are), and certainly the aforementioned Pilgrim fathers banned Christmas trees (and Christmas itself) as Romish corruptions, but a child in his wisdom delights in trees.
Christmas music, too, never requires National Public Radio gaseous exhalations invoking such Charlie Brown teacher-isms as “fusion,” “inculturation,” and “textual analysis.” Handel’s glorious music is as clear to an atonal simpleton like me as it is to James Levine of the New York Phil. Fr. Franz Gruber’s simple and sublime “Stille Nacht” and Gene Autry’s jolly “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” as a contract piece for Montgomery Ward both have their places in the canon, one to honor the birth of the Savior and the other to honor the cash-register.
Any time a Hallmark Christmas movie is broadcast an angel rips its wings off, but there is a lengthy catalogue of great Christmas films, including Holiday Inn, The Bishop’s Wife, The Shop Around the Corner, Miracle on 34th Street, and Christmas in Connecticut. John Wayne’s Three Godfathers, with its themes of sacrifice and redemption, is laden with Christmas allusions. Every year Linus Van Pelt in A Charlie Brown Christmas reads to us the infancy narrative from St. Luke, and he doesn’t need a voice-over narrator to explain it all to us.
And, hey, don’t shoot your eye out.
In the 13th century St. Francis of Assisi set up the first Nativity scene, forever giving serious sculptors and even more serious manufacturers a subject for artistic endeavors of varying quality. Perhaps the best Nativity scenes are the cheap ones the children can play with. Since World War II this Catholic tradition has become popular with other Christian faithful, just in time for public displays to be shut down by some local courts, who understand it very well.
Happily there was no Martha Stewart at Bethlehem to instruct Mary on decorating the Stable just so. If Christmas begins with a stable, as St. Luke and Linus remind us, need it continue in a museum-display living room on the cover of Southern Living? One does not imagine the Blessed Mother apologizing to the shepherds because “the stable is a mess.”
Nativity scenes remain simple, which is a small miracle. In churches one sees other Christian symbols, including statues and crucifixes, which appear to have been beaten out of scrap metal by a disturbed chimpanzee with a sledge hammer. Church committees are often deceived into paying good money for debris when a disciple of Billy Mays saliva-sprays them with polysyllabic adjectives explaining what his purported art means. As with the emperor’s new clothes, few people have the courage to say “I DO know something about art, and this ain’t it, pal.”
But art has left the humble Stable alone, not fitting it out with rocket pods or even running water, and a little child can place the Infant Jesus in His manger between Mary and Joseph, set the camels here – or maybe there? – and the ox and the shepherds where she feels they need to be, not where a decorator with a color chart and the rule of three says they must be. Little children pretty much know how Christmas should be, and their play is the best art of all.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
The National Christmas Wish List
Mack Hall
Tiger Woods – a new set of golf clubs. Or at least a new driver.
American soldiers – the same medical care and legal protection granted to this nation’s enemies.
President and Mrs. Obama – a few extra place settings for those drop-in dinner guests.
A.C.O.R.N. – industrial-strength, high-speed paper shredders.
For all children – no more dinner-table shootings. Holidays aren’t supposed to include casualty lists.
Rhode Island Representative Patrick Kennedy – a King Henry II action figure with a voice chip that says “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?”
Global Warming true believers – a stocking full of carbon credits. And maybe a brain.
Windows Vista users – an Apple computer.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi – Obedience. So let it be written. So let it be done.
Sarah Palin – Levi’s for Levi. Put on your clothes and go home, lad; your fifteen minutes are up.
Some of the prissier Christian bloggers – books on Donatism and Pelagianism.
That special woman in your life – more shirtless vampire dudes.
United States Army Major Nidal Hassan – the customary book and movie deal.
Former President Jimmy Carter – please notice him. Then maybe he’ll go away.
Finally, for the little children: may they find under the Christmas tree roller skates, dolls, toy trucks and cars made of metal, cap pistols (gasp!), toy trains, chessmen, books about Robin Hood and King Arthur and The Bobbsey Twins, marbles, Lincoln Logs, little toy soldiers, Old Maid cards, and coloring books, none of it with electronic chips. And may the children, just for an hour or two, be permitted to play without the weird adult world of who’s mad at whom this year intruding. And even breakfast can wait a while, okay?
Tiger Woods – a new set of golf clubs. Or at least a new driver.
American soldiers – the same medical care and legal protection granted to this nation’s enemies.
President and Mrs. Obama – a few extra place settings for those drop-in dinner guests.
A.C.O.R.N. – industrial-strength, high-speed paper shredders.
For all children – no more dinner-table shootings. Holidays aren’t supposed to include casualty lists.
Rhode Island Representative Patrick Kennedy – a King Henry II action figure with a voice chip that says “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?”
Global Warming true believers – a stocking full of carbon credits. And maybe a brain.
Windows Vista users – an Apple computer.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi – Obedience. So let it be written. So let it be done.
Sarah Palin – Levi’s for Levi. Put on your clothes and go home, lad; your fifteen minutes are up.
Some of the prissier Christian bloggers – books on Donatism and Pelagianism.
That special woman in your life – more shirtless vampire dudes.
United States Army Major Nidal Hassan – the customary book and movie deal.
Former President Jimmy Carter – please notice him. Then maybe he’ll go away.
Finally, for the little children: may they find under the Christmas tree roller skates, dolls, toy trucks and cars made of metal, cap pistols (gasp!), toy trains, chessmen, books about Robin Hood and King Arthur and The Bobbsey Twins, marbles, Lincoln Logs, little toy soldiers, Old Maid cards, and coloring books, none of it with electronic chips. And may the children, just for an hour or two, be permitted to play without the weird adult world of who’s mad at whom this year intruding. And even breakfast can wait a while, okay?
Having the Neighbors for Supper
Mack Hall
Near Herxheim, a small town in the Rhineland-Palatinate, archaeologists have found the fragmented remains of some 500 folks who were apparently eaten by their friends and neighbors 7,000 years ago.
The BBC was too, too pleased to locate Herxheim in southwestern Germany, but a mediaeval border incident involving a kilometer or two could just as easily have placed the little town in eastern France. And you know what they say about French cooking.
Hey, what a name for the local football team, eh? The Herxheim Omnivores. Herxheim Herbivores would be more alliterative but, alas, inaccurate.
One indication of anthropophagia was the preserved remnants of fast-food bags labeled Johann-in-der-Box and containing bits of Johann.
Noshing on one’s fellows is rare in Europe, except for that quiet little man next door who was such a good neighbor and kept his lawn tidy, so scientists from the University of Bordeaux (and a glass of Bordeaux always goes well with a meat dish) speculate that this was a rare event caused by a famine.
The Copenhagen crowd hasn’t opined on the matter of 7,000–year-old carbon footprints near Herxheim but there were certainly carbonized ladyfingers.
In those days a lunch invitation would sure make one nervous.
Hey, about hobo stew?
And dining out could cost an arm and a leg.
A restaurant advertising German cooking would mean it.
A kid playing with a friend might begin to worry if the friend’s mother appeared at the door with a carving knife and called out “Heinrich, stop playing with your food!”
“Clean your plate, son; there are kids starving in China who would love to have your cousin Dieter.”
Fast food would mean a track star from the snack bar.
Cap’n Crunch was seafood to the neoliths.
And kids speak disapprovingly of the school lunch these days.
Country cooking would be Hank Williams en brochette.
Diners might complain to the chef about the guitarist who was too stringy.
Oh, well, that’s enough anthropophagic humor in your morning newspaper. Now go ahead and eat your breakfast – whoever it was.
Near Herxheim, a small town in the Rhineland-Palatinate, archaeologists have found the fragmented remains of some 500 folks who were apparently eaten by their friends and neighbors 7,000 years ago.
The BBC was too, too pleased to locate Herxheim in southwestern Germany, but a mediaeval border incident involving a kilometer or two could just as easily have placed the little town in eastern France. And you know what they say about French cooking.
Hey, what a name for the local football team, eh? The Herxheim Omnivores. Herxheim Herbivores would be more alliterative but, alas, inaccurate.
One indication of anthropophagia was the preserved remnants of fast-food bags labeled Johann-in-der-Box and containing bits of Johann.
Noshing on one’s fellows is rare in Europe, except for that quiet little man next door who was such a good neighbor and kept his lawn tidy, so scientists from the University of Bordeaux (and a glass of Bordeaux always goes well with a meat dish) speculate that this was a rare event caused by a famine.
The Copenhagen crowd hasn’t opined on the matter of 7,000–year-old carbon footprints near Herxheim but there were certainly carbonized ladyfingers.
In those days a lunch invitation would sure make one nervous.
Hey, about hobo stew?
And dining out could cost an arm and a leg.
A restaurant advertising German cooking would mean it.
A kid playing with a friend might begin to worry if the friend’s mother appeared at the door with a carving knife and called out “Heinrich, stop playing with your food!”
“Clean your plate, son; there are kids starving in China who would love to have your cousin Dieter.”
Fast food would mean a track star from the snack bar.
Cap’n Crunch was seafood to the neoliths.
And kids speak disapprovingly of the school lunch these days.
Country cooking would be Hank Williams en brochette.
Diners might complain to the chef about the guitarist who was too stringy.
Oh, well, that’s enough anthropophagic humor in your morning newspaper. Now go ahead and eat your breakfast – whoever it was.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
An Adjective Christmas
Mack Hall
So thoroughly did our Puritan ancestors purge Christmas from the culture that in the New England colonies the observance of Advent or Christmas was a crime. Save for Anglicans and Catholics, Christmas was not much a part of the American tradition until the middle of the 19th century when Charles Dickens’ stories and Prince Albert’s Christmas tree generated the holiday as a secular fashion.
Advent isn’t much observed at all, not even as a generic late-autumn holiday. Instead, America is for its sins burdened with a wholly artificial construct called The Christmas Season.
That Season is upon us, That Season when folks talk about putting Christ back into Christmas and then skip divine services on Christmas day itself. And can a mere human actually put Christ anywhere anyway?
There are elements of The Christmas Season that make one despair of salvation: A Christmas Carol comes to mind, and Hallmark movies. Surely every time It’s a Wonderful Life is broadcast an angel rips its wings off. Maybe the Puritans foresaw all that, and that was why they banned Christmas.
Christmas is seldom without an adjective anymore. Even Dickens had the decency to leave the name of the holiday alone, but now the marketers of music and movies pile on the descriptors in order to peddle to niche audiences: White Christmas, A Muppet Christmas, Rocky Mountain Christmas, and, I suppose, The Ground Squirrels’ Christmas, An Ozark Christmas, An Irish Christmas, A Three (or is it four?) Tenors Christmas, A Country Christmas, Somebody’s Country Christmas, Somebody Else’s Country Ozark Christmas, Somebody Else’s Tennessee Country Ozark Farm Christmas, A Cowboy Christmas, A Cajun Christmas, An Ol’ Fashioned Christmas, A Victorian Christmas, Some Girl in an Amish Bonnet Christmas, A Down-Home Christmas, A Down East Christmas, and maybe even The Blair Witch Christmas Reunion Special.
I suppose three (or four) tenors for Christmas is nice, but why not The Three Electricians for Christmas? When the power fails, sturdy fellows in Nomex suits are indeed The Three Wise Electricians, bearing gifts of light and heat and running water.
Hospital workers, too, deserve their own Christmas movie, as do cops and firemen and plumbers and ambulance crews and soldiers and all the other folks who on Christmas do not get to snuggle in warm beds with visions of anything because they’re on duty. Wassail? Eggnog? No, gimme another go-cup of that hairy-legged two-in-the-morning coffee.
Waiters and retail clerks deserve combat pay, not just their own movie or song, for enduring the ungodly Christmas poutiness of all the unhappy Christmas shoppers in Christendom during The Christmas Season. And while I’m pretty much opposed to the death penalty, I’d make an exception for supervisors who require employees to wear Santa hats or elf costumes.
One wonders if that long-ago innkeeper wore plastic antlers and greeted the tired travelers Mary and Joseph with a forced “Happy holidays! Do you have a reservation? Visa? Or Mastercard? And what discount card will you be using? And how many days will you be staying with us? Hey, ya like animals?”
St. Luke, tell me the Story again.
So thoroughly did our Puritan ancestors purge Christmas from the culture that in the New England colonies the observance of Advent or Christmas was a crime. Save for Anglicans and Catholics, Christmas was not much a part of the American tradition until the middle of the 19th century when Charles Dickens’ stories and Prince Albert’s Christmas tree generated the holiday as a secular fashion.
Advent isn’t much observed at all, not even as a generic late-autumn holiday. Instead, America is for its sins burdened with a wholly artificial construct called The Christmas Season.
That Season is upon us, That Season when folks talk about putting Christ back into Christmas and then skip divine services on Christmas day itself. And can a mere human actually put Christ anywhere anyway?
There are elements of The Christmas Season that make one despair of salvation: A Christmas Carol comes to mind, and Hallmark movies. Surely every time It’s a Wonderful Life is broadcast an angel rips its wings off. Maybe the Puritans foresaw all that, and that was why they banned Christmas.
Christmas is seldom without an adjective anymore. Even Dickens had the decency to leave the name of the holiday alone, but now the marketers of music and movies pile on the descriptors in order to peddle to niche audiences: White Christmas, A Muppet Christmas, Rocky Mountain Christmas, and, I suppose, The Ground Squirrels’ Christmas, An Ozark Christmas, An Irish Christmas, A Three (or is it four?) Tenors Christmas, A Country Christmas, Somebody’s Country Christmas, Somebody Else’s Country Ozark Christmas, Somebody Else’s Tennessee Country Ozark Farm Christmas, A Cowboy Christmas, A Cajun Christmas, An Ol’ Fashioned Christmas, A Victorian Christmas, Some Girl in an Amish Bonnet Christmas, A Down-Home Christmas, A Down East Christmas, and maybe even The Blair Witch Christmas Reunion Special.
I suppose three (or four) tenors for Christmas is nice, but why not The Three Electricians for Christmas? When the power fails, sturdy fellows in Nomex suits are indeed The Three Wise Electricians, bearing gifts of light and heat and running water.
Hospital workers, too, deserve their own Christmas movie, as do cops and firemen and plumbers and ambulance crews and soldiers and all the other folks who on Christmas do not get to snuggle in warm beds with visions of anything because they’re on duty. Wassail? Eggnog? No, gimme another go-cup of that hairy-legged two-in-the-morning coffee.
Waiters and retail clerks deserve combat pay, not just their own movie or song, for enduring the ungodly Christmas poutiness of all the unhappy Christmas shoppers in Christendom during The Christmas Season. And while I’m pretty much opposed to the death penalty, I’d make an exception for supervisors who require employees to wear Santa hats or elf costumes.
One wonders if that long-ago innkeeper wore plastic antlers and greeted the tired travelers Mary and Joseph with a forced “Happy holidays! Do you have a reservation? Visa? Or Mastercard? And what discount card will you be using? And how many days will you be staying with us? Hey, ya like animals?”
St. Luke, tell me the Story again.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Who Cleaned up the Park?
Mack Hall
Someone said that someone said that someone else said that the ‘net said that someone said that the sexiest accent in the world is Irish. Well, who could argue with that sourcing, eh?
Our own rural accents are admittedly pretty cool some of the time. A certain silver-haired cooking-show gal, for instance, has a lovely voice, but there’s just something de Medici about her intonation that makes one suspect that she knows where several shallow graves are located. But our East Texas accent, the sound of one long eyebrow whining, cannot be not recommended for public consumption or wide distribution.
Business people from East Texas should never do their own radio commercials. In the days of that “Iz iyit trewwwwwww? Iz iyit trewwwwwwwww? Iz iyit reelly trewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww?” thing my reflexes developed so efficiently that I could hit the OFF button long before the last syllable of the first “iz iyit trewwwwwwwwwwwww” faded away to die an agonized and prolonged Wagnerian death in some other sufferer’s ears.
One wonders how many professionally-made commercials with trained voices are missed because the radio listener kills the sound of an amateur’s unfortunate baying and doesn’t get back to the station until after he’s had therapy. If I were buying a commercial I would specify to the radio sales folks that my expensive and attractive commercial should never be positioned behind Nasal Bubba or Adenoidal Cletus lest the good commercial go unheard due to dead-air time.
Equally annoying is the endless repetition of a commercial. The public-service spot about two teen lads leaving a party when the drinking started was pretty cute the first two or three hundred times I heard it, but repetition, vain repetition, now sends my lightning fingers of radio death flying to the dial.
If you never listen to the radio, let me give you the exposition: two teens come home late at night, and are ambushed by Dad, who wonders why his sons are late and why they are wearing food (fathers are like that). They explain that they and some others wisely left an unchaperoned party when drinking began, and drove to a fast-food joint for, well, some fast-food. But they did not eat the food; they then motored to the park and, for reasons best known to teens, threw the food at each other. The wise father is amused at the narrative, proud of his sons for their mature judgment, and sends them upstairs for baths and bed.
Okay, fine, good message, cute presentation.
But upon hearing this fictional narrative several dozen times, one begins to wonder: who cleaned up the park?
Take-out food comes with layers of wrappings, a paper bag, tiny envelopes of salt and pepper, little plastic thingies with sauces, drinks in cups, straws for the drinks, a receipt, and so on. And then there’s the food itself, tacos and hamburgers in this story. All over the park, rotting and fly-blown and malodorous by the time the sun rises.
Littering is hardly to be compared to underaged drinking, but it’s still illegal in its own modest way, it’s not considerate, and someone has to clean up the mess.
I imagine anyone who grew up in the hungry 1930s latched on to the food wastage thing immediately. In a world in which there really are hungry children (I’m not talking about the fat boy waddling down the street with a bag of ‘tater chips in one hand and his cell ‘phone in the other), is this scenario a good idea? Will the lads keep a straight face as they help collect canned food for the genuinely poor at Thanksgiving and Christmas?
Well, we’ll leave the park cleanup crew to their work. Maybe they will enjoy listening to the radio while cleaning up the litter.
Someone said that someone said that someone else said that the ‘net said that someone said that the sexiest accent in the world is Irish. Well, who could argue with that sourcing, eh?
Our own rural accents are admittedly pretty cool some of the time. A certain silver-haired cooking-show gal, for instance, has a lovely voice, but there’s just something de Medici about her intonation that makes one suspect that she knows where several shallow graves are located. But our East Texas accent, the sound of one long eyebrow whining, cannot be not recommended for public consumption or wide distribution.
Business people from East Texas should never do their own radio commercials. In the days of that “Iz iyit trewwwwwww? Iz iyit trewwwwwwwww? Iz iyit reelly trewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww?” thing my reflexes developed so efficiently that I could hit the OFF button long before the last syllable of the first “iz iyit trewwwwwwwwwwwww” faded away to die an agonized and prolonged Wagnerian death in some other sufferer’s ears.
One wonders how many professionally-made commercials with trained voices are missed because the radio listener kills the sound of an amateur’s unfortunate baying and doesn’t get back to the station until after he’s had therapy. If I were buying a commercial I would specify to the radio sales folks that my expensive and attractive commercial should never be positioned behind Nasal Bubba or Adenoidal Cletus lest the good commercial go unheard due to dead-air time.
Equally annoying is the endless repetition of a commercial. The public-service spot about two teen lads leaving a party when the drinking started was pretty cute the first two or three hundred times I heard it, but repetition, vain repetition, now sends my lightning fingers of radio death flying to the dial.
If you never listen to the radio, let me give you the exposition: two teens come home late at night, and are ambushed by Dad, who wonders why his sons are late and why they are wearing food (fathers are like that). They explain that they and some others wisely left an unchaperoned party when drinking began, and drove to a fast-food joint for, well, some fast-food. But they did not eat the food; they then motored to the park and, for reasons best known to teens, threw the food at each other. The wise father is amused at the narrative, proud of his sons for their mature judgment, and sends them upstairs for baths and bed.
Okay, fine, good message, cute presentation.
But upon hearing this fictional narrative several dozen times, one begins to wonder: who cleaned up the park?
Take-out food comes with layers of wrappings, a paper bag, tiny envelopes of salt and pepper, little plastic thingies with sauces, drinks in cups, straws for the drinks, a receipt, and so on. And then there’s the food itself, tacos and hamburgers in this story. All over the park, rotting and fly-blown and malodorous by the time the sun rises.
Littering is hardly to be compared to underaged drinking, but it’s still illegal in its own modest way, it’s not considerate, and someone has to clean up the mess.
I imagine anyone who grew up in the hungry 1930s latched on to the food wastage thing immediately. In a world in which there really are hungry children (I’m not talking about the fat boy waddling down the street with a bag of ‘tater chips in one hand and his cell ‘phone in the other), is this scenario a good idea? Will the lads keep a straight face as they help collect canned food for the genuinely poor at Thanksgiving and Christmas?
Well, we’ll leave the park cleanup crew to their work. Maybe they will enjoy listening to the radio while cleaning up the litter.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Remembrance Day: "Let Perpetual Light Shine Upon Them"
Mack Hall
In a happier the world the remembrances of Armistice Day / Veterans’ Day would all be old ones told in peacetime, jolly boot-camp stories for the kiddies and the civilians, mostly. A veteran eventually learns to keep other matters in his heart, and to change the subject or simply walk away discreetly when someone who got no closer to war than his dime-store camouflage and collection of John Wayne films begins some hand-me-down, second-hand, thousand-yard-stare yarn. He heard it from his buddy, you see, and his buddy was a Green Beret / Army Ranger / CIA commando / Marine / Navy SEAL / special operative in an organization so secret that blah-blah-blah, so he ought to know, eh.
But in the middle of a long, long war the stories of the long-ago, even the funny ones about some barracks buffoonery, somehow seem inappropriate. Soldiers are dying now, some shot in the back by a self-indulgent, emo ess of a bee whose duty was to watch their backs.
The Wall Street Journal, Fox, and other sources have told us something of the thirteen unarmed Americans murdered last week:
Lt. Col Juanita Warman, 55, of Maryland was a physician’s assistant with two daughters and six grandchildren. She worked her way through the University of Pittsburgh.
Major Libardo Caraveo, 52, of Virginia came to America from Mexico in his teens. He earned his doctorate in psychology at the University of Arizona and worked with special-needs children in Tucson schools before beginning private practice. He was preparing to deploy to Afghanistan.
Capt. John Gaffaney, 52, of California was a psychiatric nurse who also was on base clearing for Afghanistan. He served in the Navy and then in the California National Guard as a young man, and two years ago managed to get back into the service to help the soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan deal with the trauma. He is survived by a wife and a son.
Captain Russell Seager, 41, of Wisconsin joined the Army a few years ago, and was a psychiatrist who wanted to help soldiers returning from war adapt to civilian life.
Staff Sgt. Justin Decrow, 32, of Indiana was helping train soldiers on how to help veterans home from the wars with the paperwork. He and his wife have a 13-year-old daughter.
Sgt. Amy Krueger, 29, of Wisconsin told her mother she was going to get Osama Bin Ladin. Sergeant Kreuger’s mother told her she couldn’t take on Osama by herself.
“Watch me,” she replied.
And maybe she would have, if she hadn’t been murdered by an American Army officer before she got the chance.
Sergeant Amy was to have been posted to Afghanistan in December.
Spc. Jason Dean Hunt, 22, of Oklahoma had been in the Army for almost four years, including a tour in Iraq. He had been married only two months.
Spc. Frederick Greene, 29, of Tennessee was assigned to the 16th Signal Company at Fort Hood.
PFC Aaron Nemelka,19, of Utah joined the Utah National Guard as his form of service instead of going on mission for his church. He was to be sent to Afghanistan in January.
PFC Michael Pearson, 22, of Illinois had telephoned his parents only two days before his death to tell them he would be home for Christmas.
PFC Kham Xiong, 23, of Minnesota was a father of three whose family has a tradition of military service. Both his grandfather and his father fought against the Pathet Lao and the Viet-Cong, and his brother, Nelson is a Marine in Afghanistan.
Pvt. Francheska Velez, 21, of Illinois loved poetry and dancing. She had just returned home from Iraq, and was a career soldier.
Michael G. Cahill, 62, of Texas was a civilian employee, a physician’s assistant back at work after a heart attack two weeks before. He and his wife, Joleen, were married for 37 years. He was much loved for his many beyond-the-call-of-duty kindnesses to young soldiers returning from the war or on their way overseas.
Thirteen good Americans.
“Eternal rest give unto them, O Lord,
and let perpetual light shine upon them.”
- Roman Missal
In a happier the world the remembrances of Armistice Day / Veterans’ Day would all be old ones told in peacetime, jolly boot-camp stories for the kiddies and the civilians, mostly. A veteran eventually learns to keep other matters in his heart, and to change the subject or simply walk away discreetly when someone who got no closer to war than his dime-store camouflage and collection of John Wayne films begins some hand-me-down, second-hand, thousand-yard-stare yarn. He heard it from his buddy, you see, and his buddy was a Green Beret / Army Ranger / CIA commando / Marine / Navy SEAL / special operative in an organization so secret that blah-blah-blah, so he ought to know, eh.
But in the middle of a long, long war the stories of the long-ago, even the funny ones about some barracks buffoonery, somehow seem inappropriate. Soldiers are dying now, some shot in the back by a self-indulgent, emo ess of a bee whose duty was to watch their backs.
The Wall Street Journal, Fox, and other sources have told us something of the thirteen unarmed Americans murdered last week:
Lt. Col Juanita Warman, 55, of Maryland was a physician’s assistant with two daughters and six grandchildren. She worked her way through the University of Pittsburgh.
Major Libardo Caraveo, 52, of Virginia came to America from Mexico in his teens. He earned his doctorate in psychology at the University of Arizona and worked with special-needs children in Tucson schools before beginning private practice. He was preparing to deploy to Afghanistan.
Capt. John Gaffaney, 52, of California was a psychiatric nurse who also was on base clearing for Afghanistan. He served in the Navy and then in the California National Guard as a young man, and two years ago managed to get back into the service to help the soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan deal with the trauma. He is survived by a wife and a son.
Captain Russell Seager, 41, of Wisconsin joined the Army a few years ago, and was a psychiatrist who wanted to help soldiers returning from war adapt to civilian life.
Staff Sgt. Justin Decrow, 32, of Indiana was helping train soldiers on how to help veterans home from the wars with the paperwork. He and his wife have a 13-year-old daughter.
Sgt. Amy Krueger, 29, of Wisconsin told her mother she was going to get Osama Bin Ladin. Sergeant Kreuger’s mother told her she couldn’t take on Osama by herself.
“Watch me,” she replied.
And maybe she would have, if she hadn’t been murdered by an American Army officer before she got the chance.
Sergeant Amy was to have been posted to Afghanistan in December.
Spc. Jason Dean Hunt, 22, of Oklahoma had been in the Army for almost four years, including a tour in Iraq. He had been married only two months.
Spc. Frederick Greene, 29, of Tennessee was assigned to the 16th Signal Company at Fort Hood.
PFC Aaron Nemelka,19, of Utah joined the Utah National Guard as his form of service instead of going on mission for his church. He was to be sent to Afghanistan in January.
PFC Michael Pearson, 22, of Illinois had telephoned his parents only two days before his death to tell them he would be home for Christmas.
PFC Kham Xiong, 23, of Minnesota was a father of three whose family has a tradition of military service. Both his grandfather and his father fought against the Pathet Lao and the Viet-Cong, and his brother, Nelson is a Marine in Afghanistan.
Pvt. Francheska Velez, 21, of Illinois loved poetry and dancing. She had just returned home from Iraq, and was a career soldier.
Michael G. Cahill, 62, of Texas was a civilian employee, a physician’s assistant back at work after a heart attack two weeks before. He and his wife, Joleen, were married for 37 years. He was much loved for his many beyond-the-call-of-duty kindnesses to young soldiers returning from the war or on their way overseas.
Thirteen good Americans.
“Eternal rest give unto them, O Lord,
and let perpetual light shine upon them.”
- Roman Missal
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Death Lodge
Mack Hall
In an episode of the minimalist police drama Adam 12, two of The People burglarize a house while it is under a fumigation tent. Dragged out by officers in hazmat suits, one of the idiots…um…citizens dies from the fumigants. While being questioned the surviving dumb…er…victim of an oppressive society brags about being a draft dodger because he and his friend did not want to die for an evil capitalist system. A police officer, indicating the corpse, asks the salient question: “So what did your buddy die for?”
Several weeks ago in Arizona three people died from a spiritual (cough) retreat involving starvation, dehydration, humiliation, and, finally, several hours in what has been called a sweat lodge (it isn’t) suffering oxygen deprivation or toxic fumes or both.
Perhaps the death lodgers got to beat on some drums and chant gen-you-wine old-timey songs to the Earth-Mother-Goddess-Nature-Green-Spirit-Principle-of-Me, Me, Me before they departed this vale of bottled water, clutching icons of Al Gore to their hearts.
One thing we do know is that their checks cleared before they died; one-with-nature spiritual guides want their money up front.
Religious frauds are as old as Delphi, and Chaucer makes fun of them in The Canterbury Tales: Get’cher red-hot relics right ‘chere! I got’cha a piece of the sail of St. Peter’s boat! Who wants to bid on Veronica’s veil, eh? Modern Oracles and Pardoners are given blessings by talk-show hosts and even by presidents, and make their little pile selling books and cds and dvds and magic amulets and handkerchiefs soaked with holy essences, and the world wags on. Occasionally, though, some, like Jim Jones, who posed with President Jimmy Carter, begin believing in their own detritus and then the dead bodies pile up.
This last lot of corpses in Arizona were apparently quite wealthy; according to the news they and some 57 other seekers after truth each paid $9,000 in order to be spiritually enlightened.
$9,000. If you had that much loose holiness jingling in your pockets what would you do with it? You could buy the really high-dollar lawn mower and have money left over for gasoline for the thing. You could take a really good vacation. You could pay off the car. You could stash it away in the kid’s college fund. You could find some genuinely poor people – not fatties with cell ‘phones – and help fund their job searches. You could help a museum with its bills. You could do lots of good things. Hey, you could give it me.
But would you ever pay some bogus holy dude $9,000 to starve you, deprive you of sleep, and humiliate you?
Sixty of your well-to-do fellow citizens did. $9,000 x 60 = $540,000 for a long weekend of one-ness with the Sky-God Vi-Sa’Card and the Earth-Mother Pi’n’Number.
You and I are in the wrong business.
Man, give me $9,000 and I’ll tell you whatever makes you feel all holy and stuff. I’ll even throw in a few fair-trade bagels and a sleeping bag made from recycled goat hair or something. For a sweat lodge I’ll stake out that blue FEMA tarp left over from Rita, and you can sit crossed-legged in there and chant mantra-rays or mantas or mantels to the Moon Goddess Tiffany. I’ll leave the sides open so you can breathe. In the meantime, I’ll be inside in the air-conditioning checking my account on the ‘puter to make sure your check cleared.
A human’s quest is not for some sort of vague, fluffy self-fulfillment, whatever self-fulfillment means. One’s quest is for the truth. Not my truth, or your truth, or some voted-upon truth, because there are no such things. There is only the truth. And you start from there. And there is no charge.
The police officer in the story asks a man what his friend died for. C. S. Lewis in one of his essays reminds us to ask ourselves what we live for.
In an episode of the minimalist police drama Adam 12, two of The People burglarize a house while it is under a fumigation tent. Dragged out by officers in hazmat suits, one of the idiots…um…citizens dies from the fumigants. While being questioned the surviving dumb…er…victim of an oppressive society brags about being a draft dodger because he and his friend did not want to die for an evil capitalist system. A police officer, indicating the corpse, asks the salient question: “So what did your buddy die for?”
Several weeks ago in Arizona three people died from a spiritual (cough) retreat involving starvation, dehydration, humiliation, and, finally, several hours in what has been called a sweat lodge (it isn’t) suffering oxygen deprivation or toxic fumes or both.
Perhaps the death lodgers got to beat on some drums and chant gen-you-wine old-timey songs to the Earth-Mother-Goddess-Nature-Green-Spirit-Principle-of-Me, Me, Me before they departed this vale of bottled water, clutching icons of Al Gore to their hearts.
One thing we do know is that their checks cleared before they died; one-with-nature spiritual guides want their money up front.
Religious frauds are as old as Delphi, and Chaucer makes fun of them in The Canterbury Tales: Get’cher red-hot relics right ‘chere! I got’cha a piece of the sail of St. Peter’s boat! Who wants to bid on Veronica’s veil, eh? Modern Oracles and Pardoners are given blessings by talk-show hosts and even by presidents, and make their little pile selling books and cds and dvds and magic amulets and handkerchiefs soaked with holy essences, and the world wags on. Occasionally, though, some, like Jim Jones, who posed with President Jimmy Carter, begin believing in their own detritus and then the dead bodies pile up.
This last lot of corpses in Arizona were apparently quite wealthy; according to the news they and some 57 other seekers after truth each paid $9,000 in order to be spiritually enlightened.
$9,000. If you had that much loose holiness jingling in your pockets what would you do with it? You could buy the really high-dollar lawn mower and have money left over for gasoline for the thing. You could take a really good vacation. You could pay off the car. You could stash it away in the kid’s college fund. You could find some genuinely poor people – not fatties with cell ‘phones – and help fund their job searches. You could help a museum with its bills. You could do lots of good things. Hey, you could give it me.
But would you ever pay some bogus holy dude $9,000 to starve you, deprive you of sleep, and humiliate you?
Sixty of your well-to-do fellow citizens did. $9,000 x 60 = $540,000 for a long weekend of one-ness with the Sky-God Vi-Sa’Card and the Earth-Mother Pi’n’Number.
You and I are in the wrong business.
Man, give me $9,000 and I’ll tell you whatever makes you feel all holy and stuff. I’ll even throw in a few fair-trade bagels and a sleeping bag made from recycled goat hair or something. For a sweat lodge I’ll stake out that blue FEMA tarp left over from Rita, and you can sit crossed-legged in there and chant mantra-rays or mantas or mantels to the Moon Goddess Tiffany. I’ll leave the sides open so you can breathe. In the meantime, I’ll be inside in the air-conditioning checking my account on the ‘puter to make sure your check cleared.
A human’s quest is not for some sort of vague, fluffy self-fulfillment, whatever self-fulfillment means. One’s quest is for the truth. Not my truth, or your truth, or some voted-upon truth, because there are no such things. There is only the truth. And you start from there. And there is no charge.
The police officer in the story asks a man what his friend died for. C. S. Lewis in one of his essays reminds us to ask ourselves what we live for.
Death Lodge
Mack Hall
In an episode of the minimalist police drama Adam 12, two of The People burglarize a house while it is under a fumigation tent. Dragged out by officers in hazmat suits, one of the idiots…um…citizens dies from the fumigants. While being questioned the surviving dumb…er…victim of an oppressive society brags about being a draft dodger because he and his friend did not want to die for an evil capitalist system. A police officer, indicating the corpse, asks the salient question: “So what did your buddy die for?”
Several weeks ago in Arizona three people died from a spiritual (cough) retreat involving starvation, dehydration, humiliation, and, finally, several hours in what has been called a sweat lodge (it isn’t) suffering oxygen deprivation or toxic fumes or both.
Perhaps the death lodgers got to beat on some drums and chant gen-you-wine old-timey songs to the Earth-Mother-Goddess-Nature-Green-Spirit-Principle-of-Me, Me, Me before they departed this vale of bottled water, clutching icons of Al Gore to their hearts.
One thing we do know is that their checks cleared before they died; one-with-nature spiritual guides want their money up front.
Religious frauds are as old as Delphi, and Chaucer makes fun of them in The Canterbury Tales: Get’cher red-hot relics right ‘chere! I got’cha a piece of the sail of St. Peter’s boat! Who wants to bid on Veronica’s veil, eh? Modern Oracles and Pardoners are given blessings by talk-show hosts and even by presidents, and make their little pile selling books and cds and dvds and magic amulets and handkerchiefs soaked with holy essences, and the world wags on. Occasionally, though, some, like Jim Jones, who posed with President Jimmy Carter, begin believing in their own detritus and then the dead bodies pile up.
This last lot of corpses in Arizona were apparently quite wealthy; according to the news they and some 57 other seekers after truth each paid $9,000 in order to be spiritually enlightened.
$9,000. If you had that much loose holiness jingling in your pockets what would you do with it? You could buy the really high-dollar lawn mower and have money left over for gasoline for the thing. You could take a really good vacation. You could pay off the car. You could stash it away in the kid’s college fund. You could find some genuinely poor people – not fatties with cell ‘phones – and help fund their job searches. You could help a museum with its bills. You could do lots of good things. Hey, you could give it me.
But would you ever pay some bogus holy dude $9,000 to starve you, deprive you of sleep, and humiliate you?
Sixty of your well-to-do fellow citizens did. $9,000 x 60 = $540,000 for a long weekend of one-ness with the Sky-God Vi-Sa’Card and the Earth-Mother Pi’n’Number.
You and I are in the wrong business.
Man, give me $9,000 and I’ll tell you whatever makes you feel all holy and stuff. I’ll even throw in a few fair-trade bagels and a sleeping bag made from recycled goat hair or something. For a sweat lodge I’ll stake out that blue FEMA tarp left over from Rita, and you can sit crossed-legged in there and chant mantra-rays or mantas or mantels to the Moon Goddess Tiffany. I’ll leave the sides open so you can breathe. In the meantime, I’ll be inside in the air-conditioning checking my account on the ‘puter to make sure your check cleared.
A human’s quest is not for some sort of vague, fluffy self-fulfillment, whatever self-fulfillment means. One’s quest is for the truth. Not my truth, or your truth, or some voted-upon truth, because there are no such things. There is only the truth. And you start from there. And there is no charge.
The police officer in the story asks a man what his friend died for. C. S. Lewis in one of his essays reminds us to ask ourselves what we live for.
In an episode of the minimalist police drama Adam 12, two of The People burglarize a house while it is under a fumigation tent. Dragged out by officers in hazmat suits, one of the idiots…um…citizens dies from the fumigants. While being questioned the surviving dumb…er…victim of an oppressive society brags about being a draft dodger because he and his friend did not want to die for an evil capitalist system. A police officer, indicating the corpse, asks the salient question: “So what did your buddy die for?”
Several weeks ago in Arizona three people died from a spiritual (cough) retreat involving starvation, dehydration, humiliation, and, finally, several hours in what has been called a sweat lodge (it isn’t) suffering oxygen deprivation or toxic fumes or both.
Perhaps the death lodgers got to beat on some drums and chant gen-you-wine old-timey songs to the Earth-Mother-Goddess-Nature-Green-Spirit-Principle-of-Me, Me, Me before they departed this vale of bottled water, clutching icons of Al Gore to their hearts.
One thing we do know is that their checks cleared before they died; one-with-nature spiritual guides want their money up front.
Religious frauds are as old as Delphi, and Chaucer makes fun of them in The Canterbury Tales: Get’cher red-hot relics right ‘chere! I got’cha a piece of the sail of St. Peter’s boat! Who wants to bid on Veronica’s veil, eh? Modern Oracles and Pardoners are given blessings by talk-show hosts and even by presidents, and make their little pile selling books and cds and dvds and magic amulets and handkerchiefs soaked with holy essences, and the world wags on. Occasionally, though, some, like Jim Jones, who posed with President Jimmy Carter, begin believing in their own detritus and then the dead bodies pile up.
This last lot of corpses in Arizona were apparently quite wealthy; according to the news they and some 57 other seekers after truth each paid $9,000 in order to be spiritually enlightened.
$9,000. If you had that much loose holiness jingling in your pockets what would you do with it? You could buy the really high-dollar lawn mower and have money left over for gasoline for the thing. You could take a really good vacation. You could pay off the car. You could stash it away in the kid’s college fund. You could find some genuinely poor people – not fatties with cell ‘phones – and help fund their job searches. You could help a museum with its bills. You could do lots of good things. Hey, you could give it me.
But would you ever pay some bogus holy dude $9,000 to starve you, deprive you of sleep, and humiliate you?
Sixty of your well-to-do fellow citizens did. $9,000 x 60 = $540,000 for a long weekend of one-ness with the Sky-God Vi-Sa’Card and the Earth-Mother Pi’n’Number.
You and I are in the wrong business.
Man, give me $9,000 and I’ll tell you whatever makes you feel all holy and stuff. I’ll even throw in a few fair-trade bagels and a sleeping bag made from recycled goat hair or something. For a sweat lodge I’ll stake out that blue FEMA tarp left over from Rita, and you can sit crossed-legged in there and chant mantra-rays or mantas or mantels to the Moon Goddess Tiffany. I’ll leave the sides open so you can breathe. In the meantime, I’ll be inside in the air-conditioning checking my account on the ‘puter to make sure your check cleared.
A human’s quest is not for some sort of vague, fluffy self-fulfillment, whatever self-fulfillment means. One’s quest is for the truth. Not my truth, or your truth, or some voted-upon truth, because there are no such things. There is only the truth. And you start from there. And there is no charge.
The police officer in the story asks a man what his friend died for. C. S. Lewis in one of his essays reminds us to ask ourselves what we live for.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Moehammed O'Chang, Uiger-Irish-Han Detective
Mack Hall
I blame it all on Agatha Christie. In the 1920s she created the fictional detective Hercule Poirot based on the characteristics of real Belgian refugees she met in England during World War I. The gag worked so well that Poirot and his rather dim friend Captain Hastings have been the subjects of dozens of novels, short stories, and films for some eighty years.
In the past decade or so, multi-ethnic detectives appear to be a requirement for any new detective stories: Indian (as in sub-continent), Indian (as in Native American), African (as in Kenya), and combinations thereof indicate that nowadays ya can’t be a detective without a hyphen.
Sherlock Holmes had his pipe and Doctor Watson, Inspector Morse his cigarettes and Sergeant Lewis, and Chief Superintendent Foyle his Scotch and his driver Samantha, but in this chemical-free, pal-free era the new detectives are pretty much restricted to a dog or cat to help them along.
I propose to publishing companies these following chemically-correct, pet-friendly detectives:
Johann Smythe-Bulkovsky, Norwegian-English-Russian police detective and his herring, Bob.
Sammi Robichaux-Gianelli, transgendered Finnish-French-Italian spy and his/her reindeer, Bubba.
Paddy O’Hara-Moriarty, Newfoundland-Newfoundland-Newfoundland police inspector with three eyes, an Irish ancestry that needs a little more genetic diversity, and a talking codfish named Seamus that nobody else can see or hear.
Lupe McKenzie-Nguyen, Mexican-Canadian-Vietnamese private detective and her pal Sparky, a crime-solving electric eel.
Angus Hussein-Llewellyn, Scotch-Iraqi-Welsh police constable and his suicide-bomber hamster, Darryl.
Bubba Boudreau-Zulu, Texan-Cajun-Kenyan CSI geek and his springbok, Hoppy.
Rush Beck-Hannity, ‘merican sit-behind-a-desk-and-think-stuff crime non-fighter, you bet’cha, and his drooling pet fox, Sean. He doesn’t actually do anything; all he does is criticize working police officers and detectives.
X X-X, F.I.L.B.E.R.T. enforcer. If he wanted you to know any more he’d beat it into you.
Dr. Misloz Hans-Hans, Czech-Swiss-Dutch police consulting physician and his petri dish of intuitive bacteria.
Chef Cletus Rabinowitz-Park, the Tennessean-Israeli-Korean cooking-show host who dishes up omelettes and solves crimes using sign language, and his pal Handy the Signing Squirrel, who keeps being accused of making obscene gestures because squirrels haven’t as many fingers as humans.
So whatever happened to Hercule Poirot? He was busted for income-tax fraud and incarcerated in the little grey cells.
Ouch.
I blame it all on Agatha Christie. In the 1920s she created the fictional detective Hercule Poirot based on the characteristics of real Belgian refugees she met in England during World War I. The gag worked so well that Poirot and his rather dim friend Captain Hastings have been the subjects of dozens of novels, short stories, and films for some eighty years.
In the past decade or so, multi-ethnic detectives appear to be a requirement for any new detective stories: Indian (as in sub-continent), Indian (as in Native American), African (as in Kenya), and combinations thereof indicate that nowadays ya can’t be a detective without a hyphen.
Sherlock Holmes had his pipe and Doctor Watson, Inspector Morse his cigarettes and Sergeant Lewis, and Chief Superintendent Foyle his Scotch and his driver Samantha, but in this chemical-free, pal-free era the new detectives are pretty much restricted to a dog or cat to help them along.
I propose to publishing companies these following chemically-correct, pet-friendly detectives:
Johann Smythe-Bulkovsky, Norwegian-English-Russian police detective and his herring, Bob.
Sammi Robichaux-Gianelli, transgendered Finnish-French-Italian spy and his/her reindeer, Bubba.
Paddy O’Hara-Moriarty, Newfoundland-Newfoundland-Newfoundland police inspector with three eyes, an Irish ancestry that needs a little more genetic diversity, and a talking codfish named Seamus that nobody else can see or hear.
Lupe McKenzie-Nguyen, Mexican-Canadian-Vietnamese private detective and her pal Sparky, a crime-solving electric eel.
Angus Hussein-Llewellyn, Scotch-Iraqi-Welsh police constable and his suicide-bomber hamster, Darryl.
Bubba Boudreau-Zulu, Texan-Cajun-Kenyan CSI geek and his springbok, Hoppy.
Rush Beck-Hannity, ‘merican sit-behind-a-desk-and-think-stuff crime non-fighter, you bet’cha, and his drooling pet fox, Sean. He doesn’t actually do anything; all he does is criticize working police officers and detectives.
X X-X, F.I.L.B.E.R.T. enforcer. If he wanted you to know any more he’d beat it into you.
Dr. Misloz Hans-Hans, Czech-Swiss-Dutch police consulting physician and his petri dish of intuitive bacteria.
Chef Cletus Rabinowitz-Park, the Tennessean-Israeli-Korean cooking-show host who dishes up omelettes and solves crimes using sign language, and his pal Handy the Signing Squirrel, who keeps being accused of making obscene gestures because squirrels haven’t as many fingers as humans.
So whatever happened to Hercule Poirot? He was busted for income-tax fraud and incarcerated in the little grey cells.
Ouch.
Moehammed O'Chang, Uiger-Irish-Han Detective
Mack Hall
I blame it all on Agatha Christie. In the 1920s she created the fictional detective Hercule Poirot based on the characteristics of real Belgian refugees she met in England during World War I. The gag worked so well that Poirot and his rather dim friend Captain Hastings have been the subjects of dozens of novels, short stories, and films for some eighty years.
In the past decade or so, multi-ethnic detectives appear to be a requirement for any new detective stories: Indian (as in sub-continent), Indian (as in Native American), African (as in Kenya), and combinations thereof indicate that nowadays ya can’t be a detective without a hyphen.
Sherlock Holmes had his pipe and Doctor Watson, Inspector Morse his cigarettes and Sergeant Lewis, and Chief Superintendent Foyle his Scotch and his driver Samantha, but in this chemical-free, pal-free era the new detectives are pretty much restricted to a dog or cat to help them along.
I propose to publishing companies these following chemically-correct, pet-friendly detectives:
Johann Smythe-Bulkovsky, Norwegian-English-Russian police detective and his herring, Bob.
Sammi Robichaux-Gianelli, transgendered Finnish-French-Italian spy and his/her reindeer, Bubba.
Paddy O’Hara-Moriarty, Newfoundland-Newfoundland-Newfoundland police inspector with three eyes, an Irish ancestry that needs a little more genetic diversity, and a talking codfish named Seamus that nobody else can see or hear.
Lupe McKenzie-Nguyen, Mexican-Canadian-Vietnamese private detective and her pal Sparky, a crime-solving electric eel.
Angus Hussein-Llewellyn, Scotch-Iraqi-Welsh police constable and his suicide-bomber hamster, Darryl.
Bubba Boudreau-Zulu, Texan-Cajun-Kenyan CSI geek and his springbok, Hoppy.
Rush Beck-Hannity, ‘merican sit-behind-a-desk-and-think-stuff crime non-fighter, you bet’cha, and his drooling pet fox, Sean. He doesn’t actually do anything; all he does is criticize working police officers and detectives.
X X-X, F.I.L.B.E.R.T. enforcer. If he wanted you to know any more he’d beat it into you.
Dr. Misloz Hans-Hans, Czech-Swiss-Dutch police consulting physician and his petri dish of intuitive bacteria.
Chef Cletus Rabinowitz-Park, the Tennessean-Israeli-Korean cooking-show host who dishes up omelettes and solves crimes using sign language, and his pal Handy the Signing Squirrel, who keeps being accused of making obscene gestures because squirrels haven’t as many fingers as humans.
So whatever happened to Hercule Poirot? He was busted for income-tax fraud and incarcerated in the little grey cells.
Ouch.
I blame it all on Agatha Christie. In the 1920s she created the fictional detective Hercule Poirot based on the characteristics of real Belgian refugees she met in England during World War I. The gag worked so well that Poirot and his rather dim friend Captain Hastings have been the subjects of dozens of novels, short stories, and films for some eighty years.
In the past decade or so, multi-ethnic detectives appear to be a requirement for any new detective stories: Indian (as in sub-continent), Indian (as in Native American), African (as in Kenya), and combinations thereof indicate that nowadays ya can’t be a detective without a hyphen.
Sherlock Holmes had his pipe and Doctor Watson, Inspector Morse his cigarettes and Sergeant Lewis, and Chief Superintendent Foyle his Scotch and his driver Samantha, but in this chemical-free, pal-free era the new detectives are pretty much restricted to a dog or cat to help them along.
I propose to publishing companies these following chemically-correct, pet-friendly detectives:
Johann Smythe-Bulkovsky, Norwegian-English-Russian police detective and his herring, Bob.
Sammi Robichaux-Gianelli, transgendered Finnish-French-Italian spy and his/her reindeer, Bubba.
Paddy O’Hara-Moriarty, Newfoundland-Newfoundland-Newfoundland police inspector with three eyes, an Irish ancestry that needs a little more genetic diversity, and a talking codfish named Seamus that nobody else can see or hear.
Lupe McKenzie-Nguyen, Mexican-Canadian-Vietnamese private detective and her pal Sparky, a crime-solving electric eel.
Angus Hussein-Llewellyn, Scotch-Iraqi-Welsh police constable and his suicide-bomber hamster, Darryl.
Bubba Boudreau-Zulu, Texan-Cajun-Kenyan CSI geek and his springbok, Hoppy.
Rush Beck-Hannity, ‘merican sit-behind-a-desk-and-think-stuff crime non-fighter, you bet’cha, and his drooling pet fox, Sean. He doesn’t actually do anything; all he does is criticize working police officers and detectives.
X X-X, F.I.L.B.E.R.T. enforcer. If he wanted you to know any more he’d beat it into you.
Dr. Misloz Hans-Hans, Czech-Swiss-Dutch police consulting physician and his petri dish of intuitive bacteria.
Chef Cletus Rabinowitz-Park, the Tennessean-Israeli-Korean cooking-show host who dishes up omelettes and solves crimes using sign language, and his pal Handy the Signing Squirrel, who keeps being accused of making obscene gestures because squirrels haven’t as many fingers as humans.
So whatever happened to Hercule Poirot? He was busted for income-tax fraud and incarcerated in the little grey cells.
Ouch.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
The Second-Hand Thousand-Yard Stare
Mack Hall
The Second-Hand Thousand-Yard Stare
or
The Doggerels of War
The Second-Hand Thousand-Yard Stare
or
The Doggerels of War
Dedicated to the Liars and The Saps Who Believe Them
Tell me ‘bout the action I never saw;
You heard it all from your brother-in-law,
Knowing from his tales that I wasn’t there:
The same old, second-hand, thousand-yard stare
Tell me ‘bout the river, the Vam Co Tay,
Your uncle or cousin, the Green Beret,
The man who’s seen it all, bullets through the air:
The same old, second-hand, thousand-yard stare
Tell me ‘bout the guys living ‘neath a bridge
Who lost their souls – they say – on some grim ridge,
And you believe their yarns bizarre and rare:
The same old, second-hand, thousand-yard stare
Tell me ‘bout your buddy, the Navy Seal
Who tells you all for a beer and a meal
Killed a thousand Cong with his steely glare:
The same old, second-hand, thousand-yard stare
Tell me ‘bout the heroes silent and strong;
They seem to talk to you, though, all night long,
By gosh, you’re special, and you want to share
The same old, second-hand, thousand-yard stare
You got no closer than a movie show
To Viet-Nam, but gosh you sure do know
All about war, and tell it with such flair:
The same old, second-hand, thousand-yard stare
The poor truth is -- real vets are such a bore,
A barber, plumber, or clerk in a store
But you believe the studs who preen and swear:
‘Nother damn, hand-me-down, thousand-yard stare
Well --
I ain’t no special nothin’; I’m just a man
Who knows a little bit of the lay of the land
Along the Cambodian border where
I never heard of a thousand-yard stare.
Tell me ‘bout the action I never saw;
You heard it all from your brother-in-law,
Knowing from his tales that I wasn’t there:
The same old, second-hand, thousand-yard stare
Tell me ‘bout the river, the Vam Co Tay,
Your uncle or cousin, the Green Beret,
The man who’s seen it all, bullets through the air:
The same old, second-hand, thousand-yard stare
Tell me ‘bout the guys living ‘neath a bridge
Who lost their souls – they say – on some grim ridge,
And you believe their yarns bizarre and rare:
The same old, second-hand, thousand-yard stare
Tell me ‘bout your buddy, the Navy Seal
Who tells you all for a beer and a meal
Killed a thousand Cong with his steely glare:
The same old, second-hand, thousand-yard stare
Tell me ‘bout the heroes silent and strong;
They seem to talk to you, though, all night long,
By gosh, you’re special, and you want to share
The same old, second-hand, thousand-yard stare
You got no closer than a movie show
To Viet-Nam, but gosh you sure do know
All about war, and tell it with such flair:
The same old, second-hand, thousand-yard stare
The poor truth is -- real vets are such a bore,
A barber, plumber, or clerk in a store
But you believe the studs who preen and swear:
‘Nother damn, hand-me-down, thousand-yard stare
Well --
I ain’t no special nothin’; I’m just a man
Who knows a little bit of the lay of the land
Along the Cambodian border where
I never heard of a thousand-yard stare.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Honk if You Cheered for the Iceberg
Mack Hall
Bumper stickers are not nearly as popular as they once were, but they’re still rather good fun. A young friend gave me one that reads EARTH FIRST – WE’LL LOG THE OTHER PLANETS LATER. In that same jolly spirit, here are some other bumper stickers we might enjoy seeing on someone else’s car:
So Your Kid Plays Soccer. Big Whoop.
My Other Car is Worse Than This Heap.
Follow Me to The Bright Light Free Will Four Square Full Gospel Missionary Temple of the Lord Jesus Christ of the Lamb and Auto Detailing, the Reverend Doctor Brother Master Bishop Oafus Smith Bringing Massages Even Though This is a Weekday and Why Would You Follow a Complete Stranger to Some Church You Never Heard of Anyway?
Renew Your Medications if You (heart) Glenn Beck.
I’d Rather Not be Farming.
Rush Limbaugh’s Family Values: More Ex-Wives Than You Have Children.
Honk if You Miss the Habsburgs.
Fellowship of Pagan Athletes.
I’m Not Irish, Thank God.
I Wasn’t Born in Texas; My Company Made Me Move Here.
My Child is an Accelerated Reader – What Does That Mean?
End the Death Penalty – Except for Whoever Invented Reality Shows.
This Smith & Wesson is Protected by a Car.
Harp Seals – They Taste a Little Like Chicken.
I Miss The Inquisition. Really.
Give Thermonuclear War a Chance.
Cats – The Other White Meat.
My Parents Went To Germany And All They Bought Me Was This Stupid Mercedes-Benz.
Certified Public Accountants for Christ.
Please Come Back, George III; All is Forgiven.
The Next Time Germany Invades France, Let’s Stay Home.
It’s Not a Rain Forest, It’s a Jungle.
Let the Polar Bears Drown.
I’m Angry About the Results of the Elections in Which I was Too Lazy to Vote.
When the Last Farmer is EPA’d Out of Business, What Will You Eat?
Have You Read the Label on Your “I Love America” Tee Shirt?
Sophomores – A Renewable Food Source.
Honk if You Cheered for the English soldiers in Braveheart.
Honk if You Cheered for the English soldiers in Gandhi.
Honk if You Cheered for the Iceberg.
Bumper stickers are not nearly as popular as they once were, but they’re still rather good fun. A young friend gave me one that reads EARTH FIRST – WE’LL LOG THE OTHER PLANETS LATER. In that same jolly spirit, here are some other bumper stickers we might enjoy seeing on someone else’s car:
So Your Kid Plays Soccer. Big Whoop.
My Other Car is Worse Than This Heap.
Follow Me to The Bright Light Free Will Four Square Full Gospel Missionary Temple of the Lord Jesus Christ of the Lamb and Auto Detailing, the Reverend Doctor Brother Master Bishop Oafus Smith Bringing Massages Even Though This is a Weekday and Why Would You Follow a Complete Stranger to Some Church You Never Heard of Anyway?
Renew Your Medications if You (heart) Glenn Beck.
I’d Rather Not be Farming.
Rush Limbaugh’s Family Values: More Ex-Wives Than You Have Children.
Honk if You Miss the Habsburgs.
Fellowship of Pagan Athletes.
I’m Not Irish, Thank God.
I Wasn’t Born in Texas; My Company Made Me Move Here.
My Child is an Accelerated Reader – What Does That Mean?
End the Death Penalty – Except for Whoever Invented Reality Shows.
This Smith & Wesson is Protected by a Car.
Harp Seals – They Taste a Little Like Chicken.
I Miss The Inquisition. Really.
Give Thermonuclear War a Chance.
Cats – The Other White Meat.
My Parents Went To Germany And All They Bought Me Was This Stupid Mercedes-Benz.
Certified Public Accountants for Christ.
Please Come Back, George III; All is Forgiven.
The Next Time Germany Invades France, Let’s Stay Home.
It’s Not a Rain Forest, It’s a Jungle.
Let the Polar Bears Drown.
I’m Angry About the Results of the Elections in Which I was Too Lazy to Vote.
When the Last Farmer is EPA’d Out of Business, What Will You Eat?
Have You Read the Label on Your “I Love America” Tee Shirt?
Sophomores – A Renewable Food Source.
Honk if You Cheered for the English soldiers in Braveheart.
Honk if You Cheered for the English soldiers in Gandhi.
Honk if You Cheered for the Iceberg.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
A Shot in the Light
Mack Hall
In the next few weeks Americans must make a life-or-death decision for themselves and for their children – ‘flu shots or ‘flu shots-not.
For perhaps two generations we Americans have come to take as a given that we and our children should live healthy lives and die of old age. We have so sheltered ourselves in this matter that we have tossed the reality down the Orwellian Memory Hole – humans haven’t often lived much past thirty. A visit to any rural cemetery lying silently under the sighing pines reminds us of that hard truth, because next to any adult grave one often finds four or five tiny little graves which, if marked at all, will read simply “Baby,” over and over. In the terrible old days young parents did not choose a name until they knew the child would live, and they weren’t terribly optimistic about that.
A diagnosis of pneumonia, once a pronouncement of death, is seldom exciting now, and polio is thought by some to be found only on The History Channel. Vaccines and antibiotics, those wonderful gifts to civilization, are now sometimes questioned as unnatural and unnecessary by generations with no memory of iron lungs and pale hopes that at least some of the children might survive. Some young parents have come to fear the vaccines and medicines that have permitted millions of children to grow up instead of disappearing into forest cemeteries.
Well, here’s some bad news – an injection might indeed kill you or your child. So might a bee sting or a handful of peanuts or a whiff of weed allergens with the next northwest wind. A young acquaintance of mine, now a doctoral candidate, must carry an emergency allergen injector-thingie with her for the rest of her life. It’s a bother, but, hey, it beats being dead.
With immunizations as in most other matters, a parent is morally obligated to make decisions based on knowledge, not on hallway rumors and ‘net chatter. Freedom of information is so essential to a democracy that any restriction on the exchange of ideas is abominable, but the other half of that freedom is the burden of responsibility to seek out the truth.
A genuinely grieving father may be very sincere in his adamant belief that daily bathing caused his son to die of a bone infection, and he may freely post his belief on the ‘net and form clubs and causes. But what are the facts in the matter? Elementary hygiene makes it clear that daily bathing is part of the package of good practices that keep people alive. Should one anecdote, a study of somewhat less than a hundred, as Doctor Bailey of happy memory once said sardonically, then cause a generation of children to remain unwashed?
If a child suffers diarrhea from contamination on improperly cleaned lettuce do we then ban all fresh vegetables from her diet?
If a child eats a grilled-cheese sandwich one day and then falls off his bicycle the next, is there a connection that leads one to forbid grilled-cheese sandwiches?
Rumors, gossips, anecdotes, and conspiracy theories must not inform a mother or father’s decision on the child’s health care.
Take the child to the physician or nurse-practitioner, speak of your concerns, and then LISTEN. Physicians and NPs are, like, you know, smart and stuff. They did not spend their university years reading Jean-Paul Sartre and Bella Abzug, writing revolutionary manifestoes for the university newspaper, and protesting EvilHitlerBush; they employed their time in the texts and laboratories and hospitals under the guidance of physicians who knew how to save lives.
Listen. Think. And then make an informed decision.
There are no guarantees, as your health-care provider will tell you, and the choice must be yours. Pretty heavy burden, eh?
In the next few weeks Americans must make a life-or-death decision for themselves and for their children – ‘flu shots or ‘flu shots-not.
For perhaps two generations we Americans have come to take as a given that we and our children should live healthy lives and die of old age. We have so sheltered ourselves in this matter that we have tossed the reality down the Orwellian Memory Hole – humans haven’t often lived much past thirty. A visit to any rural cemetery lying silently under the sighing pines reminds us of that hard truth, because next to any adult grave one often finds four or five tiny little graves which, if marked at all, will read simply “Baby,” over and over. In the terrible old days young parents did not choose a name until they knew the child would live, and they weren’t terribly optimistic about that.
A diagnosis of pneumonia, once a pronouncement of death, is seldom exciting now, and polio is thought by some to be found only on The History Channel. Vaccines and antibiotics, those wonderful gifts to civilization, are now sometimes questioned as unnatural and unnecessary by generations with no memory of iron lungs and pale hopes that at least some of the children might survive. Some young parents have come to fear the vaccines and medicines that have permitted millions of children to grow up instead of disappearing into forest cemeteries.
Well, here’s some bad news – an injection might indeed kill you or your child. So might a bee sting or a handful of peanuts or a whiff of weed allergens with the next northwest wind. A young acquaintance of mine, now a doctoral candidate, must carry an emergency allergen injector-thingie with her for the rest of her life. It’s a bother, but, hey, it beats being dead.
With immunizations as in most other matters, a parent is morally obligated to make decisions based on knowledge, not on hallway rumors and ‘net chatter. Freedom of information is so essential to a democracy that any restriction on the exchange of ideas is abominable, but the other half of that freedom is the burden of responsibility to seek out the truth.
A genuinely grieving father may be very sincere in his adamant belief that daily bathing caused his son to die of a bone infection, and he may freely post his belief on the ‘net and form clubs and causes. But what are the facts in the matter? Elementary hygiene makes it clear that daily bathing is part of the package of good practices that keep people alive. Should one anecdote, a study of somewhat less than a hundred, as Doctor Bailey of happy memory once said sardonically, then cause a generation of children to remain unwashed?
If a child suffers diarrhea from contamination on improperly cleaned lettuce do we then ban all fresh vegetables from her diet?
If a child eats a grilled-cheese sandwich one day and then falls off his bicycle the next, is there a connection that leads one to forbid grilled-cheese sandwiches?
Rumors, gossips, anecdotes, and conspiracy theories must not inform a mother or father’s decision on the child’s health care.
Take the child to the physician or nurse-practitioner, speak of your concerns, and then LISTEN. Physicians and NPs are, like, you know, smart and stuff. They did not spend their university years reading Jean-Paul Sartre and Bella Abzug, writing revolutionary manifestoes for the university newspaper, and protesting EvilHitlerBush; they employed their time in the texts and laboratories and hospitals under the guidance of physicians who knew how to save lives.
Listen. Think. And then make an informed decision.
There are no guarantees, as your health-care provider will tell you, and the choice must be yours. Pretty heavy burden, eh?
A Shot in the Light
Mack Hall
In the next few weeks Americans must make a life-or-death decision for themselves and for their children – ‘flu shots or ‘flu shots-not.
For perhaps two generations we Americans have come to take as a given that we and our children should live healthy lives and die of old age. We have so sheltered ourselves in this matter that we have tossed the reality down the Orwellian Memory Hole – humans haven’t often lived much past thirty. A visit to any rural cemetery lying silently under the sighing pines reminds us of that hard truth, because next to any adult grave one often finds four or five tiny little graves which, if marked at all, will read simply “Baby,” over and over. In the terrible old days young parents did not choose a name until they knew the child would live, and they weren’t terribly optimistic about that.
A diagnosis of pneumonia, once a pronouncement of death, is seldom exciting now, and polio is thought by some to be found only on The History Channel. Vaccines and antibiotics, those wonderful gifts to civilization, are now sometimes questioned as unnatural and unnecessary by generations with no memory of iron lungs and pale hopes that at least some of the children might survive. Some young parents have come to fear the vaccines and medicines that have permitted millions of children to grow up instead of disappearing into forest cemeteries.
Well, here’s some bad news – an injection might indeed kill you or your child. So might a bee sting or a handful of peanuts or a whiff of weed allergens with the next northwest wind. A young acquaintance of mine, now a doctoral candidate, must carry an emergency allergen injector-thingie with her for the rest of her life. It’s a bother, but, hey, it beats being dead.
With immunizations as in most other matters, a parent is morally obligated to make decisions based on knowledge, not on hallway rumors and ‘net chatter. Freedom of information is so essential to a democracy that any restriction on the exchange of ideas is abominable, but the other half of that freedom is the burden of responsibility to seek out the truth.
A genuinely grieving father may be very sincere in his adamant belief that daily bathing caused his son to die of a bone infection, and he may freely post his belief on the ‘net and form clubs and causes. But what are the facts in the matter? Elementary hygiene makes it clear that daily bathing is part of the package of good practices that keep people alive. Should one anecdote, a study of somewhat less than a hundred, as Doctor Bailey of happy memory once said sardonically, then cause a generation of children to remain unwashed?
If a child suffers diarrhea from contamination on improperly cleaned lettuce do we then ban all fresh vegetables from her diet?
If a child eats a grilled-cheese sandwich one day and then falls off his bicycle the next, is there a connection that leads one to forbid grilled-cheese sandwiches?
Rumors, gossips, anecdotes, and conspiracy theories must not inform a mother or father’s decision on the child’s health care.
Take the child to the physician or nurse-practitioner, speak of your concerns, and then LISTEN. Physicians and NPs are, like, you know, smart and stuff. They did not spend their university years reading Jean-Paul Sartre and Bella Abzug, writing revolutionary manifestoes for the university newspaper, and protesting EvilHitlerBush; they employed their time in the texts and laboratories and hospitals under the guidance of physicians who knew how to save lives.
Listen. Think. And then make an informed decision.
There are no guarantees, as your health-care provider will tell you, and the choice must be yours. Pretty heavy burden, eh?
In the next few weeks Americans must make a life-or-death decision for themselves and for their children – ‘flu shots or ‘flu shots-not.
For perhaps two generations we Americans have come to take as a given that we and our children should live healthy lives and die of old age. We have so sheltered ourselves in this matter that we have tossed the reality down the Orwellian Memory Hole – humans haven’t often lived much past thirty. A visit to any rural cemetery lying silently under the sighing pines reminds us of that hard truth, because next to any adult grave one often finds four or five tiny little graves which, if marked at all, will read simply “Baby,” over and over. In the terrible old days young parents did not choose a name until they knew the child would live, and they weren’t terribly optimistic about that.
A diagnosis of pneumonia, once a pronouncement of death, is seldom exciting now, and polio is thought by some to be found only on The History Channel. Vaccines and antibiotics, those wonderful gifts to civilization, are now sometimes questioned as unnatural and unnecessary by generations with no memory of iron lungs and pale hopes that at least some of the children might survive. Some young parents have come to fear the vaccines and medicines that have permitted millions of children to grow up instead of disappearing into forest cemeteries.
Well, here’s some bad news – an injection might indeed kill you or your child. So might a bee sting or a handful of peanuts or a whiff of weed allergens with the next northwest wind. A young acquaintance of mine, now a doctoral candidate, must carry an emergency allergen injector-thingie with her for the rest of her life. It’s a bother, but, hey, it beats being dead.
With immunizations as in most other matters, a parent is morally obligated to make decisions based on knowledge, not on hallway rumors and ‘net chatter. Freedom of information is so essential to a democracy that any restriction on the exchange of ideas is abominable, but the other half of that freedom is the burden of responsibility to seek out the truth.
A genuinely grieving father may be very sincere in his adamant belief that daily bathing caused his son to die of a bone infection, and he may freely post his belief on the ‘net and form clubs and causes. But what are the facts in the matter? Elementary hygiene makes it clear that daily bathing is part of the package of good practices that keep people alive. Should one anecdote, a study of somewhat less than a hundred, as Doctor Bailey of happy memory once said sardonically, then cause a generation of children to remain unwashed?
If a child suffers diarrhea from contamination on improperly cleaned lettuce do we then ban all fresh vegetables from her diet?
If a child eats a grilled-cheese sandwich one day and then falls off his bicycle the next, is there a connection that leads one to forbid grilled-cheese sandwiches?
Rumors, gossips, anecdotes, and conspiracy theories must not inform a mother or father’s decision on the child’s health care.
Take the child to the physician or nurse-practitioner, speak of your concerns, and then LISTEN. Physicians and NPs are, like, you know, smart and stuff. They did not spend their university years reading Jean-Paul Sartre and Bella Abzug, writing revolutionary manifestoes for the university newspaper, and protesting EvilHitlerBush; they employed their time in the texts and laboratories and hospitals under the guidance of physicians who knew how to save lives.
Listen. Think. And then make an informed decision.
There are no guarantees, as your health-care provider will tell you, and the choice must be yours. Pretty heavy burden, eh?
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Who's Sari Now?
Mack Hall
The fists and the curry were flying aboard an Air India flight last week as two pilots (male), an air hostess (female), and at least one other air host or hostess duked out their differences thousands of feet over Pakistan.
The fight began in the cockpit and continued in the galley. Given the public’s Roman fascination for viewing televised humiliation the passengers might have enjoyed the scene of violence if not for the alarming fact that the pilots were involved.
If one is aboard an Air India flight reading The Times of India, enjoying a nice cup of tea, and pondering a business deal involving Mahindra, the serenity of the journey is somewhat compromised by a fist-fight among the crew. And then the really existential question obtains at some point: who is flying the airplane? Does one want to entrust his life to any of these Gladiators of the Air?
The combatants, once they called a truce and landed the plane, gave conflicting statements. The air hostess said the pilots were making some aerial maneuvers on her, while one pilot says the air hostess began hitting him because an air host was offering her more than coffee or tea and she wanted to distract from the real problem, and, yeah, it doesn’t make any sense.
Thank goodness no one whupped out one of those soft plastic spoons that come with the meals, or perhaps a fingernail-clipper or even 1.1 ounce of baby formula. Whew!
If the fight had happened on a United Airlines plane, United would have charged the passengers extra for the entertainment.
Air crews used to give small children little plastic pilots’ wings; I suppose Air India would more appropriately hand out little pilots’ boxing gloves.
And where was the obligatory cute nun with her guitar to sing of peace and love, eh?
Maybe the crew were offended by the inflight movie choices: Gunga Din and Northwest Frontier.
Did the two Air India pilots hit the nearest airport bar and brag to other pilots about beating up a girl?
Captain Sculley and his crew they ain’t.
Accusations of sexual impropriety followed by some bee-slapping: one imagines the television movie, starring David Letterman, RuPaul, Glenn Beck, and one or two bishops, and directed by Roman Polanski, with the fight scenes choreographed by Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd.
Remember those airplane disaster movies of the 1970s? One has problems considering remakes with steel-jawed Charlton Heston punching out Karen Black and then tearfully apologizing by Twitter: “i R so bad 4 hit ing u 4-giv me? xxx ooo.”
The plane safely landed, the two pilots lost their licenses, and life goes on. One wonders if the pilots are as ready to fight Pakistan as they were to fight girls; Pakistan’s nuclear program is said to be developing nicely. When the nuclear missiles begin falling on the ancient cities of the subcontinent, folks in the target area might have a millisecond to long for the days of the Raj.
-30-
The fists and the curry were flying aboard an Air India flight last week as two pilots (male), an air hostess (female), and at least one other air host or hostess duked out their differences thousands of feet over Pakistan.
The fight began in the cockpit and continued in the galley. Given the public’s Roman fascination for viewing televised humiliation the passengers might have enjoyed the scene of violence if not for the alarming fact that the pilots were involved.
If one is aboard an Air India flight reading The Times of India, enjoying a nice cup of tea, and pondering a business deal involving Mahindra, the serenity of the journey is somewhat compromised by a fist-fight among the crew. And then the really existential question obtains at some point: who is flying the airplane? Does one want to entrust his life to any of these Gladiators of the Air?
The combatants, once they called a truce and landed the plane, gave conflicting statements. The air hostess said the pilots were making some aerial maneuvers on her, while one pilot says the air hostess began hitting him because an air host was offering her more than coffee or tea and she wanted to distract from the real problem, and, yeah, it doesn’t make any sense.
Thank goodness no one whupped out one of those soft plastic spoons that come with the meals, or perhaps a fingernail-clipper or even 1.1 ounce of baby formula. Whew!
If the fight had happened on a United Airlines plane, United would have charged the passengers extra for the entertainment.
Air crews used to give small children little plastic pilots’ wings; I suppose Air India would more appropriately hand out little pilots’ boxing gloves.
And where was the obligatory cute nun with her guitar to sing of peace and love, eh?
Maybe the crew were offended by the inflight movie choices: Gunga Din and Northwest Frontier.
Did the two Air India pilots hit the nearest airport bar and brag to other pilots about beating up a girl?
Captain Sculley and his crew they ain’t.
Accusations of sexual impropriety followed by some bee-slapping: one imagines the television movie, starring David Letterman, RuPaul, Glenn Beck, and one or two bishops, and directed by Roman Polanski, with the fight scenes choreographed by Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd.
Remember those airplane disaster movies of the 1970s? One has problems considering remakes with steel-jawed Charlton Heston punching out Karen Black and then tearfully apologizing by Twitter: “i R so bad 4 hit ing u 4-giv me? xxx ooo.”
The plane safely landed, the two pilots lost their licenses, and life goes on. One wonders if the pilots are as ready to fight Pakistan as they were to fight girls; Pakistan’s nuclear program is said to be developing nicely. When the nuclear missiles begin falling on the ancient cities of the subcontinent, folks in the target area might have a millisecond to long for the days of the Raj.
-30-
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Freedom from Religion -- Thank God
Mack Hall
Americans generally sneer at the religions of others. I think this is a fine tradition that we should maintain, for in some other nations folks cut off each other’s heads for not agreeing on professions of faith.
But maybe religious persecution by our own government is now upon us, as it is in little kingdoms ruled by little men with badly-dyed beards.
In Oklahoma the local Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, also known as Unemployable Liberal Arts Graduates Living on Your Tax Dollars and Bothering You, is suing Abercrombie and Fitch for religious discrimination against a teenybopper. The allegation is that said child was denied a job at A & F because her Muslim head scarf would be a violation of A & F’s dress code.
The horror!
And you thought William Tyndale had it rough.
The lawsuit contends that A & F discriminated against Samantha (yes, that’s her name) on the basis of her religion.
The problem is, they didn’t.
Anyone who has seen an Abercrombie & Fitch ad – resulting in awkward explanations to one’s children as to what those teenagers in the pictures are doing with and to each other – will understand that A & F is not about religion. A & F wants to sell clothing – tho’ their models aren’t wearing any -- and cruises on the south side of pornography in doing so.
Apparently A & F are wholly uninterested in Samantha’s profession of faith in anything; they simply expect her, if hired, to follow their dress code just like all other employees. That is so totally equal. And anyway this dress code is clearly far more modest for A & F’s store employees than it is for their models.
Samantha, naturally, is humiliated and distressed and suffering grievously. Yes, I can imagine that’s pretty much how Thomas More felt as he heard the executioner touching up the old axe with a file and whistling a happy worker’s tune.
I think Abercrombie and Fitch should neither defend themselves nor apologize; they should sue Samantha and all the little prissycrats at the EEOC, for it is they who are persecuting on the basis of religion.
Imagine a Christian teenager working at Abercrombie and Fitch and saying to a customer "Sure, I’ll be happy to sell you this hootchie-mama outfit, but first I’d like to share with you some words from St. Paul regarding modesty…"
The subsequent interview with the supervisor would end with the words "…and we’ll mail your final paycheck to you."
And so it should. No one applies for a job with A & F unaware of how they do business.
Or consider another girl applying for a job as a dancer at Rocky’s Elegante’ Gentleman’s Club, and then demanding, on religious grounds, to remain stationary and fully clothed while on stage.
Ain’t happenin’.
What Samantha, her religion, and the Equal Opportunity Blah-blah seem not to understand is the concept of freedom.
No one has a right to a job at Abercrombie and Fitch or anywhere else. If the applicant and the company agree on terms, then they contract with each other as free Americans. If they do not agree, then they are both equally free to ignore each other.
This applies to all of us. If a business can be prosecuted by the United States government simply for being itself, and required to spend immense amounts of money defending itself against religious hatred, so can you. If you were to say (and I’m sure you wouldn’t) "I disapprove of Islam" – or maybe "I sneer at Catholics" or "I think Methodists are goofy" or "Baptists are rotten singers" – would you be hounded into poverty for it by your government?
The United States Equal Opporploppery-Something says yes.
Freedom of religion must of necessity include freedom from religion. If I am vouchsafed a vision of The Cosmic Bubba out by the dairy barn, then I am free to walk about the public streets and maintain that the one true religion is the Church of The Cosmic Bubba, and that I am Cosmic Bubba’s holy prophet. My fellow citizenry are equally free to dismiss me for being almost as off-the-planet as Glenn Beck, and my boss is free to require me not to wear my one-foot-high pectoral image of The Cosmic Bubba on a day-glo chain while on the job. Under the Constitution I have no legal claim against others for not believing in The Cosmic Bubba and accepting me as The Cosmic Bubba’s prophet, curses be upon their pancreases.
Hey, folks, we gotta vote. Voting makes freedom work. We may have to walk around the armed thugs in berets to get to the ballot box, but as Jerry Clower said in another context, "They can kill us but they sure can’t eat us."
Americans generally sneer at the religions of others. I think this is a fine tradition that we should maintain, for in some other nations folks cut off each other’s heads for not agreeing on professions of faith.
But maybe religious persecution by our own government is now upon us, as it is in little kingdoms ruled by little men with badly-dyed beards.
In Oklahoma the local Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, also known as Unemployable Liberal Arts Graduates Living on Your Tax Dollars and Bothering You, is suing Abercrombie and Fitch for religious discrimination against a teenybopper. The allegation is that said child was denied a job at A & F because her Muslim head scarf would be a violation of A & F’s dress code.
The horror!
And you thought William Tyndale had it rough.
The lawsuit contends that A & F discriminated against Samantha (yes, that’s her name) on the basis of her religion.
The problem is, they didn’t.
Anyone who has seen an Abercrombie & Fitch ad – resulting in awkward explanations to one’s children as to what those teenagers in the pictures are doing with and to each other – will understand that A & F is not about religion. A & F wants to sell clothing – tho’ their models aren’t wearing any -- and cruises on the south side of pornography in doing so.
Apparently A & F are wholly uninterested in Samantha’s profession of faith in anything; they simply expect her, if hired, to follow their dress code just like all other employees. That is so totally equal. And anyway this dress code is clearly far more modest for A & F’s store employees than it is for their models.
Samantha, naturally, is humiliated and distressed and suffering grievously. Yes, I can imagine that’s pretty much how Thomas More felt as he heard the executioner touching up the old axe with a file and whistling a happy worker’s tune.
I think Abercrombie and Fitch should neither defend themselves nor apologize; they should sue Samantha and all the little prissycrats at the EEOC, for it is they who are persecuting on the basis of religion.
Imagine a Christian teenager working at Abercrombie and Fitch and saying to a customer "Sure, I’ll be happy to sell you this hootchie-mama outfit, but first I’d like to share with you some words from St. Paul regarding modesty…"
The subsequent interview with the supervisor would end with the words "…and we’ll mail your final paycheck to you."
And so it should. No one applies for a job with A & F unaware of how they do business.
Or consider another girl applying for a job as a dancer at Rocky’s Elegante’ Gentleman’s Club, and then demanding, on religious grounds, to remain stationary and fully clothed while on stage.
Ain’t happenin’.
What Samantha, her religion, and the Equal Opportunity Blah-blah seem not to understand is the concept of freedom.
No one has a right to a job at Abercrombie and Fitch or anywhere else. If the applicant and the company agree on terms, then they contract with each other as free Americans. If they do not agree, then they are both equally free to ignore each other.
This applies to all of us. If a business can be prosecuted by the United States government simply for being itself, and required to spend immense amounts of money defending itself against religious hatred, so can you. If you were to say (and I’m sure you wouldn’t) "I disapprove of Islam" – or maybe "I sneer at Catholics" or "I think Methodists are goofy" or "Baptists are rotten singers" – would you be hounded into poverty for it by your government?
The United States Equal Opporploppery-Something says yes.
Freedom of religion must of necessity include freedom from religion. If I am vouchsafed a vision of The Cosmic Bubba out by the dairy barn, then I am free to walk about the public streets and maintain that the one true religion is the Church of The Cosmic Bubba, and that I am Cosmic Bubba’s holy prophet. My fellow citizenry are equally free to dismiss me for being almost as off-the-planet as Glenn Beck, and my boss is free to require me not to wear my one-foot-high pectoral image of The Cosmic Bubba on a day-glo chain while on the job. Under the Constitution I have no legal claim against others for not believing in The Cosmic Bubba and accepting me as The Cosmic Bubba’s prophet, curses be upon their pancreases.
Hey, folks, we gotta vote. Voting makes freedom work. We may have to walk around the armed thugs in berets to get to the ballot box, but as Jerry Clower said in another context, "They can kill us but they sure can’t eat us."
Freedom from Religion -- Thank God
Mack Hall
Americans generally sneer at the religions of others. I think this is a fine tradition that we should maintain, for in some other nations folks cut off each other’s heads for not agreeing on professions of faith.
But maybe religious persecution by our own government is now upon us, as it is in little kingdoms ruled by little men with badly-dyed beards.
In Oklahoma the local Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, also known as Unemployable Liberal Arts Graduates Living on Your Tax Dollars and Bothering You, is suing Abercrombie and Fitch for religious discrimination against a teenybopper. The allegation is that said child was denied a job at A & F because her Muslim head scarf would be a violation of A & F’s dress code.
The horror!
And you thought William Tyndale had it rough.
The lawsuit contends that A & F discriminated against Samantha (yes, that’s her name) on the basis of her religion.
The problem is, they didn’t.
Anyone who has seen an Abercrombie & Fitch ad – resulting in awkward explanations to one’s children as to what those teenagers in the pictures are doing with and to each other – will understand that A & F is not about religion. A & F wants to sell clothing – tho’ their models aren’t wearing any -- and cruises on the south side of pornography in doing so.
Apparently A & F are wholly uninterested in Samantha’s profession of faith in anything; they simply expect her, if hired, to follow their dress code just like all other employees. That is so totally equal. And anyway this dress code is clearly far more modest for A & F’s store employees than it is for their models.
Samantha, naturally, is humiliated and distressed and suffering grievously. Yes, I can imagine that’s pretty much how Thomas More felt as he heard the executioner touching up the old axe with a file and whistling a happy worker’s tune.
I think Abercrombie and Fitch should neither defend themselves nor apologize; they should sue Samantha and all the little prissycrats at the EEOC, for it is they who are persecuting on the basis of religion.
Imagine a Christian teenager working at Abercrombie and Fitch and saying to a customer "Sure, I’ll be happy to sell you this hootchie-mama outfit, but first I’d like to share with you some words from St. Paul regarding modesty…"
The subsequent interview with the supervisor would end with the words "…and we’ll mail your final paycheck to you."
And so it should. No one applies for a job with A & F unaware of how they do business.
Or consider another girl applying for a job as a dancer at Rocky’s Elegante’ Gentleman’s Club, and then demanding, on religious grounds, to remain stationary and fully clothed while on stage.
Ain’t happenin’.
What Samantha, her religion, and the Equal Opportunity Blah-blah seem not to understand is the concept of freedom.
No one has a right to a job at Abercrombie and Fitch or anywhere else. If the applicant and the company agree on terms, then they contract with each other as free Americans. If they do not agree, then they are both equally free to ignore each other.
This applies to all of us. If a business can be prosecuted by the United States government simply for being itself, and required to spend immense amounts of money defending itself against religious hatred, so can you. If you were to say (and I’m sure you wouldn’t) "I disapprove of Islam" – or maybe "I sneer at Catholics" or "I think Methodists are goofy" or "Baptists are rotten singers" – would you be hounded into poverty for it by your government?
The United States Equal Opporploppery-Something says yes.
Freedom of religion must of necessity include freedom from religion. If I am vouchsafed a vision of The Cosmic Bubba out by the dairy barn, then I am free to walk about the public streets and maintain that the one true religion is the Church of The Cosmic Bubba, and that I am Cosmic Bubba’s holy prophet. My fellow citizenry are equally free to dismiss me for being almost as off-the-planet as Glenn Beck, and my boss is free to require me not to wear my one-foot-high pectoral image of The Cosmic Bubba on a day-glo chain while on the job. Under the Constitution I have no legal claim against others for not believing in The Cosmic Bubba and accepting me as The Cosmic Bubba’s prophet, curses be upon their pancreases.
Hey, folks, we gotta vote. Voting makes freedom work. We may have to walk around the armed thugs in berets to get to the ballot box, but as Jerry Clower said in another context, "They can kill us but they sure can’t eat us."
Americans generally sneer at the religions of others. I think this is a fine tradition that we should maintain, for in some other nations folks cut off each other’s heads for not agreeing on professions of faith.
But maybe religious persecution by our own government is now upon us, as it is in little kingdoms ruled by little men with badly-dyed beards.
In Oklahoma the local Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, also known as Unemployable Liberal Arts Graduates Living on Your Tax Dollars and Bothering You, is suing Abercrombie and Fitch for religious discrimination against a teenybopper. The allegation is that said child was denied a job at A & F because her Muslim head scarf would be a violation of A & F’s dress code.
The horror!
And you thought William Tyndale had it rough.
The lawsuit contends that A & F discriminated against Samantha (yes, that’s her name) on the basis of her religion.
The problem is, they didn’t.
Anyone who has seen an Abercrombie & Fitch ad – resulting in awkward explanations to one’s children as to what those teenagers in the pictures are doing with and to each other – will understand that A & F is not about religion. A & F wants to sell clothing – tho’ their models aren’t wearing any -- and cruises on the south side of pornography in doing so.
Apparently A & F are wholly uninterested in Samantha’s profession of faith in anything; they simply expect her, if hired, to follow their dress code just like all other employees. That is so totally equal. And anyway this dress code is clearly far more modest for A & F’s store employees than it is for their models.
Samantha, naturally, is humiliated and distressed and suffering grievously. Yes, I can imagine that’s pretty much how Thomas More felt as he heard the executioner touching up the old axe with a file and whistling a happy worker’s tune.
I think Abercrombie and Fitch should neither defend themselves nor apologize; they should sue Samantha and all the little prissycrats at the EEOC, for it is they who are persecuting on the basis of religion.
Imagine a Christian teenager working at Abercrombie and Fitch and saying to a customer "Sure, I’ll be happy to sell you this hootchie-mama outfit, but first I’d like to share with you some words from St. Paul regarding modesty…"
The subsequent interview with the supervisor would end with the words "…and we’ll mail your final paycheck to you."
And so it should. No one applies for a job with A & F unaware of how they do business.
Or consider another girl applying for a job as a dancer at Rocky’s Elegante’ Gentleman’s Club, and then demanding, on religious grounds, to remain stationary and fully clothed while on stage.
Ain’t happenin’.
What Samantha, her religion, and the Equal Opportunity Blah-blah seem not to understand is the concept of freedom.
No one has a right to a job at Abercrombie and Fitch or anywhere else. If the applicant and the company agree on terms, then they contract with each other as free Americans. If they do not agree, then they are both equally free to ignore each other.
This applies to all of us. If a business can be prosecuted by the United States government simply for being itself, and required to spend immense amounts of money defending itself against religious hatred, so can you. If you were to say (and I’m sure you wouldn’t) "I disapprove of Islam" – or maybe "I sneer at Catholics" or "I think Methodists are goofy" or "Baptists are rotten singers" – would you be hounded into poverty for it by your government?
The United States Equal Opporploppery-Something says yes.
Freedom of religion must of necessity include freedom from religion. If I am vouchsafed a vision of The Cosmic Bubba out by the dairy barn, then I am free to walk about the public streets and maintain that the one true religion is the Church of The Cosmic Bubba, and that I am Cosmic Bubba’s holy prophet. My fellow citizenry are equally free to dismiss me for being almost as off-the-planet as Glenn Beck, and my boss is free to require me not to wear my one-foot-high pectoral image of The Cosmic Bubba on a day-glo chain while on the job. Under the Constitution I have no legal claim against others for not believing in The Cosmic Bubba and accepting me as The Cosmic Bubba’s prophet, curses be upon their pancreases.
Hey, folks, we gotta vote. Voting makes freedom work. We may have to walk around the armed thugs in berets to get to the ballot box, but as Jerry Clower said in another context, "They can kill us but they sure can’t eat us."
Sunday, September 13, 2009
I Pledge to...
Mack Hall
Sycophants in an Echo Chamber
A flock of the fashionable, like guinea-hens yakking in middle of the road, recently made public pledges to be the President’s servants in all things dim and dutiful. Naturally they made a MeMeMeTubeMyFace video, and appear to have employed an echo chamber ("I pledge…I pledge…I pledge…"), though perhaps that is merely an effect of vain repetition.
As a response to those craven obedientiaries I propose somewhat more meaningful pledges:
I pledge…pledge…pledge (ya like that echo effect?) to be no man’s servant and no man’s master.
I pledge…pledge…pledge to use real bulbs until Dear Leader’s Light Bulb Czar’s Special Incandescent Action Unit catches me and prosecutes me into oblivion.
I pledge…pledge…pledge to buy the biggest car I can afford and to make frequent and unnecessary trips.
I pledge…pledge…pledge to buy coffee without a Fair Trade label.
I pledge…pledge…pledge always to love America and to remain unsophisticated and non-Euro.
I pledge…pledge…pledge not to pay much attention to Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck. The best of folks suffer flaws, but I see no reason why any responsible, self-disciplined American should sacrifice a minute of God’s precious gift of life to a couple of impenitent, dysfunctional, draft-dodging, chemically-dependent, wholly self-centered, shrieking nutters. They seem so European.
I pledge…pledge…pledge to turn the thermostat in my house to where I want it, not to where The Thermostat Czar wants it.
I pledge…pledge…pledge to eat chunks of dead animals more often. Vegetarianism is for Manichaeans.
I pledge…pledge…pledge to employ chemical pesticides and fertilizers on my yard and garden.
I pledge…pledge…pledge never to drink coffee brewed from the excreta of cats. I love ya, Al, but not that much.
I pledge…pledge…pledge to repudiate and resist the edicts of any of Dear Leader’s thirty-three or so extra-Constitutional czars. We don’t need no stinking czars.
I pledge…pledge…pledge that when the grocery store asks me "Paper? Or plastic?" I will ask for both so that I won’t miss a chance to overheat the planet and stress the whales and polar bears.
I pledge…pledge…pledge to do my best to avoid companies who advertise that they are environmentally friendly. If they want me to pay them money for a product or service they’d darned well better be Mackly friendly.
Unlike the rich and slovenly, I pledge…pledge…pledge to dress in clothes that don’t look as if they have been stolen from a Salvation Army donation bin.
I pledge…pledge…pledge to vote, vote, vote. Always.
Sycophants in an Echo Chamber
A flock of the fashionable, like guinea-hens yakking in middle of the road, recently made public pledges to be the President’s servants in all things dim and dutiful. Naturally they made a MeMeMeTubeMyFace video, and appear to have employed an echo chamber ("I pledge…I pledge…I pledge…"), though perhaps that is merely an effect of vain repetition.
As a response to those craven obedientiaries I propose somewhat more meaningful pledges:
I pledge…pledge…pledge (ya like that echo effect?) to be no man’s servant and no man’s master.
I pledge…pledge…pledge to use real bulbs until Dear Leader’s Light Bulb Czar’s Special Incandescent Action Unit catches me and prosecutes me into oblivion.
I pledge…pledge…pledge to buy the biggest car I can afford and to make frequent and unnecessary trips.
I pledge…pledge…pledge to buy coffee without a Fair Trade label.
I pledge…pledge…pledge always to love America and to remain unsophisticated and non-Euro.
I pledge…pledge…pledge not to pay much attention to Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck. The best of folks suffer flaws, but I see no reason why any responsible, self-disciplined American should sacrifice a minute of God’s precious gift of life to a couple of impenitent, dysfunctional, draft-dodging, chemically-dependent, wholly self-centered, shrieking nutters. They seem so European.
I pledge…pledge…pledge to turn the thermostat in my house to where I want it, not to where The Thermostat Czar wants it.
I pledge…pledge…pledge to eat chunks of dead animals more often. Vegetarianism is for Manichaeans.
I pledge…pledge…pledge to employ chemical pesticides and fertilizers on my yard and garden.
I pledge…pledge…pledge never to drink coffee brewed from the excreta of cats. I love ya, Al, but not that much.
I pledge…pledge…pledge to repudiate and resist the edicts of any of Dear Leader’s thirty-three or so extra-Constitutional czars. We don’t need no stinking czars.
I pledge…pledge…pledge that when the grocery store asks me "Paper? Or plastic?" I will ask for both so that I won’t miss a chance to overheat the planet and stress the whales and polar bears.
I pledge…pledge…pledge to do my best to avoid companies who advertise that they are environmentally friendly. If they want me to pay them money for a product or service they’d darned well better be Mackly friendly.
Unlike the rich and slovenly, I pledge…pledge…pledge to dress in clothes that don’t look as if they have been stolen from a Salvation Army donation bin.
I pledge…pledge…pledge to vote, vote, vote. Always.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
The Japan-Venus Axis of Miyuki
Mack Hall
Japan’s new first lady, Miyuki Hatoyama, claims to have travelled to Venus on a space ship and to have known Tom Cruise in a past life when he was Japanese.
Oh, yeah. And maybe she took her kids shopping in Paris aboard a Japanese government matter-displacement-machine-thingie.
I think we can agree that the batteries in this woman’s E-meter need replacing.
Mrs. Hatoyama has enjoyed a number of careers, including writing cookbooks. Hey, lady, ya gotta watch those mushrooms in the next edition, okay?
One imagines what the wives’ part of a state visit to the USA might involve, with Mrs. Obama opening the conversation by asking "Hey, would you like to visit the kids’ vegetable garden?"
Mrs. Hatoyama might reply with "Oh, yes! My 2,452 transmigrated oversouls and I had such a lovely garden on the planet Venus several million years ago. That’s Venusian years, of course, not Earth years."
"Er…okay. And perhaps we can have a nice cup of tea outside on this lovely Washington day."
"I’d like that, Mrs. Obama. Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the starship Enterprise used to serve me tea in a galaxy far, far away. A 1960 Ford Galaxy, I think. He always said I would have been his first choice for ship’s counselor, you know."
"Umm…"
"And where are your lovely children, Mrs. Obama? I always say that children make the nicest window ornaments. I just love children; they go so well when stir-fried over charcoal and served with a nice red wine."
"Oh, well, gosh, they had lessons late at school today. I’m so sorry you’re going to miss them."
"Oh, too bad. I was looking forward to telling them about being a Cosmic Geisha at the Space Academy when Tom Cruise was a mediaeval emperor of Japan and well on his way to becoming The Lord High Master of the Universe until he was magicked into a lime-green toadstool by the jealous perfidious chamberlain Snargborth employing the spell-casting Klingon wand he stole from the tormented Keepers of the Blue Cave on the Planet Forsooth in the Fourth Dimension of the Gatekeepers of Doom. He addressed the children on the first day of school, you know. Before he was a toadstool, I mean."
"Oh, yes, my husband did that this year. Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck turned red and purple, and almost died of strokes. Not that you could tell any difference with Glenn Beck."
"I so wanted to address all the children of Japan on the first day of school this year, but when my husband the prime minister read my speech about the importance of daily nuclear colon cleansing he suggested that I needed a nice vacation at this darling resort in Switzerland. They had the nicest injections there, and I got to meet Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson. They have such intriguing oversouls, and naturally have visited all the poshest planets. I gave them autographed copies of my children’s cookbook. Hmmm…I wonder who did address the children."
"I’m sure it worked out for the best, my dear. I wonder where our husbands are?…pssst…Secret Service…my location, now…set phasers on stun…"
Japan’s new first lady, Miyuki Hatoyama, claims to have travelled to Venus on a space ship and to have known Tom Cruise in a past life when he was Japanese.
Oh, yeah. And maybe she took her kids shopping in Paris aboard a Japanese government matter-displacement-machine-thingie.
I think we can agree that the batteries in this woman’s E-meter need replacing.
Mrs. Hatoyama has enjoyed a number of careers, including writing cookbooks. Hey, lady, ya gotta watch those mushrooms in the next edition, okay?
One imagines what the wives’ part of a state visit to the USA might involve, with Mrs. Obama opening the conversation by asking "Hey, would you like to visit the kids’ vegetable garden?"
Mrs. Hatoyama might reply with "Oh, yes! My 2,452 transmigrated oversouls and I had such a lovely garden on the planet Venus several million years ago. That’s Venusian years, of course, not Earth years."
"Er…okay. And perhaps we can have a nice cup of tea outside on this lovely Washington day."
"I’d like that, Mrs. Obama. Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the starship Enterprise used to serve me tea in a galaxy far, far away. A 1960 Ford Galaxy, I think. He always said I would have been his first choice for ship’s counselor, you know."
"Umm…"
"And where are your lovely children, Mrs. Obama? I always say that children make the nicest window ornaments. I just love children; they go so well when stir-fried over charcoal and served with a nice red wine."
"Oh, well, gosh, they had lessons late at school today. I’m so sorry you’re going to miss them."
"Oh, too bad. I was looking forward to telling them about being a Cosmic Geisha at the Space Academy when Tom Cruise was a mediaeval emperor of Japan and well on his way to becoming The Lord High Master of the Universe until he was magicked into a lime-green toadstool by the jealous perfidious chamberlain Snargborth employing the spell-casting Klingon wand he stole from the tormented Keepers of the Blue Cave on the Planet Forsooth in the Fourth Dimension of the Gatekeepers of Doom. He addressed the children on the first day of school, you know. Before he was a toadstool, I mean."
"Oh, yes, my husband did that this year. Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck turned red and purple, and almost died of strokes. Not that you could tell any difference with Glenn Beck."
"I so wanted to address all the children of Japan on the first day of school this year, but when my husband the prime minister read my speech about the importance of daily nuclear colon cleansing he suggested that I needed a nice vacation at this darling resort in Switzerland. They had the nicest injections there, and I got to meet Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson. They have such intriguing oversouls, and naturally have visited all the poshest planets. I gave them autographed copies of my children’s cookbook. Hmmm…I wonder who did address the children."
"I’m sure it worked out for the best, my dear. I wonder where our husbands are?…pssst…Secret Service…my location, now…set phasers on stun…"
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Jeeves and Hitler
Mack Hall
P. G. Wodehouse wrote ten or so novels and perhaps fifty short stories about his two most famous fictional creations, Jeeves and Wooster. As Jeeves would say, "they make light, attractive reading" about the wealthy and rather dim Bertie Wooster and his brilliant valet, Jeeves. Although the stories were written over six decades, Bertie and Jeeves are forever young, living in an innocent England that never was. Like the white-telephone movies of the 1930s, the Jeeves and Wooster yarns are comic treats with no message, no edge, and no heavy breathing, and with only the most harmless of Roadrunner car crashes and explosions.
That exposition established, I relate to you, gentle reader, the recent communication I had from a bookseller:
Dear Amazon.com Customer,
As someone who has purchased or rated Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit by P. G. Wodehouse, you might like to know that With Hitler to the End: The Memoir of Hitler’s Valet will be released on September 1, 2009. You can pre-order yours…
The educated reader will agree that one cannot pre-order anything, just as one cannot pre-plan, pre-pay, or pre-position; one can only order, plan, pay, or position. My, my, my, what do they teach them in the schools these days?
But to the point: one can only marvel at Amazon.com’s intellectual and ideological contortions in connecting mild fictional amusement with very real genocide.
Heinz Linge was Hitler’s valet, and after his release from ten years of Soviet imprisonment wrote his memoirs, to be published this fall. Linge-Jeeves won’t receive any royalties, though, since he died in 1980.
Do you suppose that when Linge was born his parents said "Oh, what a fine-looking baby! I hope he grows up to be a servant to a mass-murderer!"
One wonders what a typical day in Linge’s life was like, imagining him quietly taking in the morning cup of tea to The One’s bedroom and parting the curtains:
"’Morning, Linge," yawns Dear Leader. "What sort of day is it?"
"Good morning, Dear Leader. Extremely clement, sir," says Linge. "Shall I lay out our hound’s-tooth check? We have an informal execution in the garden at two."
"Linge, one doesn’t like to complain, but you’ve served me the lapsang instead of the Irish breakfast tea!"
"I am terribly sorry, sir. I’ll have the kitchen maid who fills the tea canisters shot at once."
"Oh, that won’t be necessary; just send her to Dachau for end-of-life counseling. Never let it be said that the Fuhrer hasn’t a heart of gold as well as a will of iron, eh, what?"
"That is very kind of you, sir. I’ll draw your bath now, sir, if that is satisfactory."
Jeeves is always rescuing Bertie Wooster from jams into which the young master has gotten himself, often accidental engagements. Linge could have tried harder with his own master:
"So, Linge, you think I shouldn’t have gotten involved with Russia, eh? Pray tell why."
"Well, sir, Russia is an amusing and, shall we say, vivacious country, but for a man of your, er, quiet, retiring habits of drugs, the occult, and the occasional betrayal of old comrades…"
"Explain yourself, Linge."
"Ahem. While Russia is well-noted for Tchaikovsky, Chekhov, vodka, beefy farm girls with large forearms, and mass executions…"
"Aha! You see, Linge – mass executions. I like mass executions. The Soviets like mass executions. This is a marriage made in He…well, you know."
"Indeed, sir."
"So let’s have no more blithering rot about my incursion into the Soviet Union."
"Just as you say, sir."
What did Heinz Linge do for a living later in life? Was there much of a market for gentlemen’s gentlemen in Berlin in 1955?
"Well, Mr. Linge," says the employment counselor, "we seem to have a problem with your references. You say they all died in 1945? Ummm...you understand that there's not much call for valets for genocidal maniacs just now. Perhaps as a greeter at a big-box store...how are you at working with the public? Maybe a position as a market analyst for a bookstore chain?"
P. G. Wodehouse wrote ten or so novels and perhaps fifty short stories about his two most famous fictional creations, Jeeves and Wooster. As Jeeves would say, "they make light, attractive reading" about the wealthy and rather dim Bertie Wooster and his brilliant valet, Jeeves. Although the stories were written over six decades, Bertie and Jeeves are forever young, living in an innocent England that never was. Like the white-telephone movies of the 1930s, the Jeeves and Wooster yarns are comic treats with no message, no edge, and no heavy breathing, and with only the most harmless of Roadrunner car crashes and explosions.
That exposition established, I relate to you, gentle reader, the recent communication I had from a bookseller:
Dear Amazon.com Customer,
As someone who has purchased or rated Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit by P. G. Wodehouse, you might like to know that With Hitler to the End: The Memoir of Hitler’s Valet will be released on September 1, 2009. You can pre-order yours…
The educated reader will agree that one cannot pre-order anything, just as one cannot pre-plan, pre-pay, or pre-position; one can only order, plan, pay, or position. My, my, my, what do they teach them in the schools these days?
But to the point: one can only marvel at Amazon.com’s intellectual and ideological contortions in connecting mild fictional amusement with very real genocide.
Heinz Linge was Hitler’s valet, and after his release from ten years of Soviet imprisonment wrote his memoirs, to be published this fall. Linge-Jeeves won’t receive any royalties, though, since he died in 1980.
Do you suppose that when Linge was born his parents said "Oh, what a fine-looking baby! I hope he grows up to be a servant to a mass-murderer!"
One wonders what a typical day in Linge’s life was like, imagining him quietly taking in the morning cup of tea to The One’s bedroom and parting the curtains:
"’Morning, Linge," yawns Dear Leader. "What sort of day is it?"
"Good morning, Dear Leader. Extremely clement, sir," says Linge. "Shall I lay out our hound’s-tooth check? We have an informal execution in the garden at two."
"Linge, one doesn’t like to complain, but you’ve served me the lapsang instead of the Irish breakfast tea!"
"I am terribly sorry, sir. I’ll have the kitchen maid who fills the tea canisters shot at once."
"Oh, that won’t be necessary; just send her to Dachau for end-of-life counseling. Never let it be said that the Fuhrer hasn’t a heart of gold as well as a will of iron, eh, what?"
"That is very kind of you, sir. I’ll draw your bath now, sir, if that is satisfactory."
Jeeves is always rescuing Bertie Wooster from jams into which the young master has gotten himself, often accidental engagements. Linge could have tried harder with his own master:
"So, Linge, you think I shouldn’t have gotten involved with Russia, eh? Pray tell why."
"Well, sir, Russia is an amusing and, shall we say, vivacious country, but for a man of your, er, quiet, retiring habits of drugs, the occult, and the occasional betrayal of old comrades…"
"Explain yourself, Linge."
"Ahem. While Russia is well-noted for Tchaikovsky, Chekhov, vodka, beefy farm girls with large forearms, and mass executions…"
"Aha! You see, Linge – mass executions. I like mass executions. The Soviets like mass executions. This is a marriage made in He…well, you know."
"Indeed, sir."
"So let’s have no more blithering rot about my incursion into the Soviet Union."
"Just as you say, sir."
What did Heinz Linge do for a living later in life? Was there much of a market for gentlemen’s gentlemen in Berlin in 1955?
"Well, Mr. Linge," says the employment counselor, "we seem to have a problem with your references. You say they all died in 1945? Ummm...you understand that there's not much call for valets for genocidal maniacs just now. Perhaps as a greeter at a big-box store...how are you at working with the public? Maybe a position as a market analyst for a bookstore chain?"
Sunday, August 16, 2009
"Waiter! This Coffee Does NOT Taste Like (poop)!"
Mack Hall
Each generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.
-- Henry David Thoreau
If you take a cow-floppy and roast it in the oven, what you pull out of the oven is a very hot cow-floppy.
Re-naming a cow-floppy something vaguely exotic sounding, such as Impedimenta-Et-Malbowel-Fleur-de-Loo, won’t change the reality of what a cow-floppy is.
If you do the same things with cat-(poop), it’s still cat-(poop). And you don’t put (poop) in your mouth.
Well, maybe you do.
A recent fashion among imbibers of exotic coffees is something called Kopi Luwak, which is a Sumatran phrase meaning "Those stupid Americans will pay ten dollars a cup for brewed cat-(poop)."
In Sumatra lives a cat called a luwaks…but let me tell you a story about a couple of hunters lost in the woods. Hey, it worked as an opening for Brigadoon, eh?
I imagine a couple of fellows hunting those weird cats in the forests of Sumatra a few years ago, observing the cat-(poop) on the ground much as we note the rabbit-(poop) as we walk our woods.
"Wayne," said Arthur (Wayne and Arthur being traditional Sumatran names), "I’ll bet ya lunch we can persuade those stupid Americans to consume this cat-(poop) and pay for it, too."
"No way," said Wayne. "Americans aren’t that dumb. The Irish, maybe, but not the Americans."
"Yes, they are," replied Arthur. "We merchants persuaded them to wear knee-pants, didn’t we? And backwards baseball caps. And leather holsters for cell ‘phones. All at wildly inflated prices. I tell ya, Americans have no critical thinking skills whatsoever. Tell ‘em over and over that something really dumb is now cool, and they’ll line up obediently to buy it. They’ll buy cat-(poop), all right, if we can only figure out an angle to make it cool."
"You’ve got a point. Hey, we could make this cat-(poop) into coffee, advertise it with a lot of high-falutin’ adjectives, and charge big bucks for it!"
And so it came to pass that cat-(poop) was harvested from the jungle floors of the Far East by barefoot women singing their quaint native songs, such as "Catanooga Chew-Chew," "The Camptown Outhouse," "Splish-Splash, I Was Takin’ a Dump," and "One Ton o’ Guano." It was then carried to well-lit and well-ventilated (no doubt) factories to be ground and packaged. The cat-(poop) coffee was then exported to the USA, where a cuppa cost more than the workers made in a day.
Cat-(poop) coffee was given the Imprimutter and Nihil Thermostat by the talk shows, and the American people obeyed and bought, leading to new forms of discourse in the coffee shops of this great land:
"Is this cat-(poop) fair-trade?"
"Waiter, my coffee doesn’t taste like (poop)."
"Today’s Senior Special is one egg, one sausage, toast, and coffee with cat-(poop)."
The chalk-boards in coffee kiosks in all the college towns will soon feature expensive (poop)y coffees from all over the globe:
Jamaican Blue Mountain Cat Diarrhea
Australian Dingo Dooky
Tim Horton’s Canadian Loon Plop
French Roast DeCaf DeCatte La Belle Stool Specimen
All-American Cuppa Yankee Doo-Doo
Brazilian Number Two
Danish Defacatte
Portuguese Potty
English Royal Flush
X-treem Norwegian Fecal Impaction Action
Colombian Colo-rectal Mocha
I sure hope FEMA lays in a supply before the next hurricane.
Each generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.
-- Henry David Thoreau
If you take a cow-floppy and roast it in the oven, what you pull out of the oven is a very hot cow-floppy.
Re-naming a cow-floppy something vaguely exotic sounding, such as Impedimenta-Et-Malbowel-Fleur-de-Loo, won’t change the reality of what a cow-floppy is.
If you do the same things with cat-(poop), it’s still cat-(poop). And you don’t put (poop) in your mouth.
Well, maybe you do.
A recent fashion among imbibers of exotic coffees is something called Kopi Luwak, which is a Sumatran phrase meaning "Those stupid Americans will pay ten dollars a cup for brewed cat-(poop)."
In Sumatra lives a cat called a luwaks…but let me tell you a story about a couple of hunters lost in the woods. Hey, it worked as an opening for Brigadoon, eh?
I imagine a couple of fellows hunting those weird cats in the forests of Sumatra a few years ago, observing the cat-(poop) on the ground much as we note the rabbit-(poop) as we walk our woods.
"Wayne," said Arthur (Wayne and Arthur being traditional Sumatran names), "I’ll bet ya lunch we can persuade those stupid Americans to consume this cat-(poop) and pay for it, too."
"No way," said Wayne. "Americans aren’t that dumb. The Irish, maybe, but not the Americans."
"Yes, they are," replied Arthur. "We merchants persuaded them to wear knee-pants, didn’t we? And backwards baseball caps. And leather holsters for cell ‘phones. All at wildly inflated prices. I tell ya, Americans have no critical thinking skills whatsoever. Tell ‘em over and over that something really dumb is now cool, and they’ll line up obediently to buy it. They’ll buy cat-(poop), all right, if we can only figure out an angle to make it cool."
"You’ve got a point. Hey, we could make this cat-(poop) into coffee, advertise it with a lot of high-falutin’ adjectives, and charge big bucks for it!"
And so it came to pass that cat-(poop) was harvested from the jungle floors of the Far East by barefoot women singing their quaint native songs, such as "Catanooga Chew-Chew," "The Camptown Outhouse," "Splish-Splash, I Was Takin’ a Dump," and "One Ton o’ Guano." It was then carried to well-lit and well-ventilated (no doubt) factories to be ground and packaged. The cat-(poop) coffee was then exported to the USA, where a cuppa cost more than the workers made in a day.
Cat-(poop) coffee was given the Imprimutter and Nihil Thermostat by the talk shows, and the American people obeyed and bought, leading to new forms of discourse in the coffee shops of this great land:
"Is this cat-(poop) fair-trade?"
"Waiter, my coffee doesn’t taste like (poop)."
"Today’s Senior Special is one egg, one sausage, toast, and coffee with cat-(poop)."
The chalk-boards in coffee kiosks in all the college towns will soon feature expensive (poop)y coffees from all over the globe:
Jamaican Blue Mountain Cat Diarrhea
Australian Dingo Dooky
Tim Horton’s Canadian Loon Plop
French Roast DeCaf DeCatte La Belle Stool Specimen
All-American Cuppa Yankee Doo-Doo
Brazilian Number Two
Danish Defacatte
Portuguese Potty
English Royal Flush
X-treem Norwegian Fecal Impaction Action
Colombian Colo-rectal Mocha
I sure hope FEMA lays in a supply before the next hurricane.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Fidel Castro and The People's Toilet Paper
Mack Hall
Cuba, which in 1959 was violently changed from an oppressive thug-ocracy into, well, another oppressive thug-ocracy, only with longer speeches and more efficient firing-squads, is currently suffering from a shortage of toilet paper.
The shortage of premium wipe might be explained by the publication of Fidel Castro’s latest book, a 339-page Fidel Castro dictionary from which scholars may choose Fidel Castro’s favorite words and Fidel Castro’s favorite phrases in order to think and write the way Fidel Castro and the Fidel Castro government want them to.
No word yet on whether the phrase "died of a heart attack while trying to escape an end-of-life counseling center" is in Fidel Castro’s latest gift to civilization and scholarship.
Considering that no one has actually seen El Comandante in some three years, "ghost-written" might be an entry.
When Samuel Johnson wrote and published his dictionary in the 18th century he had to find and court subscribers to fund it. Dictators suffer no such problems; they simply wave a clean, work-free, manicured finger and say something like "So let it be written. So let it be done."
While there is enough paper to print El Comandante’s All-About-Me dictionary (it’s going to be a best seller – or else), there isn’t enough paper for certain delicate biological purposes.
According to the Communist government, Cuba’s economic problems are not due to central planning but because of three hurricanes. And, as we know, that evil, evil fiend President Bush and his minion Dick Cheney, who rips the wings off garden fairies, generated hurricanes that wiped out (so to speak) Cuba’s supplies of toilet paper. Bwahahahahaha!
According to a Fidel Castro official on Fidel Castro radio, "…at the end of the year there will be an important importation of toilet paper."
And your grandparents were excited about finding oranges and bananas in their Christmas stockings during the Great Depression. Imagine little Carmen or little Juan on (The Working People’s Inclusive and Sensitive Winter Festival) morning this year: "Mama! Papa! Look! Santa Claus left me a roll of toilet paper! I am so happy!"
"Yes, little Juan," papa will say, "Give thanks for the brilliant economic leadership of our beloved El Comandante Fidel Castro that our poor but proud toiling Socialist workers’ and peasants’ family has a roll of toilet paper for (The Working People’s Inclusive and Sensitive Winter Festival)."
Cuba, rich in arable land, imports 60% of its food thanks to the agricultural expertise of El Comandante and his mini-me, Raul. However, mayonnaise, barbecue sauce and canned squid have been reduced in price. Hmmmm, boy, there’s nothing that says Christmas dinner like canned squid. Stock up, everyone!
As for that toilet paper shortage, I have a suggestion: the thoughts of Marx, Mao, Lenin, and Engels. All over Fidel Castro’s Cuba there are Fidel Castro schools and Fidel Castro libraries containing the collected works of the propagators of one of the 19th century’s more cockroachy ideas, Communism. Millions and millions of people have died because of the evils dreamed up and then published by Marx, Mao, Lenin, Engels, and other scribbling vermin. A fitting conclusion to this macabre experiment in human extermination would be to let the survivors wipe away (ahem) the horrors with the mad ravings of the mass murderers. One of Fidel’s printed speeches alone ought to last through a bad run of diarrhea. Gotta watch that canned squid, eh?
Aren’t you glad that you live in a free country flag@whitehouse.gov where there is plenty of good food and toilet paper, and where informants and block wardens flag@whitehouse.gov don’t report you to Dear Leader flag@whitehouse.gov for thoughts and speech flag@whitehouse.gov not approved of flag@whitehouse.gov?
"Your attitude’s been noticed, comrade, oh, yes, it has!
Your attitude’s been noticed, you know!"
Your attitude’s been noticed, you know!"
-- Block warden to Yuri in Doctor Zhivago
Cuba, which in 1959 was violently changed from an oppressive thug-ocracy into, well, another oppressive thug-ocracy, only with longer speeches and more efficient firing-squads, is currently suffering from a shortage of toilet paper.
The shortage of premium wipe might be explained by the publication of Fidel Castro’s latest book, a 339-page Fidel Castro dictionary from which scholars may choose Fidel Castro’s favorite words and Fidel Castro’s favorite phrases in order to think and write the way Fidel Castro and the Fidel Castro government want them to.
No word yet on whether the phrase "died of a heart attack while trying to escape an end-of-life counseling center" is in Fidel Castro’s latest gift to civilization and scholarship.
Considering that no one has actually seen El Comandante in some three years, "ghost-written" might be an entry.
When Samuel Johnson wrote and published his dictionary in the 18th century he had to find and court subscribers to fund it. Dictators suffer no such problems; they simply wave a clean, work-free, manicured finger and say something like "So let it be written. So let it be done."
While there is enough paper to print El Comandante’s All-About-Me dictionary (it’s going to be a best seller – or else), there isn’t enough paper for certain delicate biological purposes.
According to the Communist government, Cuba’s economic problems are not due to central planning but because of three hurricanes. And, as we know, that evil, evil fiend President Bush and his minion Dick Cheney, who rips the wings off garden fairies, generated hurricanes that wiped out (so to speak) Cuba’s supplies of toilet paper. Bwahahahahaha!
According to a Fidel Castro official on Fidel Castro radio, "…at the end of the year there will be an important importation of toilet paper."
And your grandparents were excited about finding oranges and bananas in their Christmas stockings during the Great Depression. Imagine little Carmen or little Juan on (The Working People’s Inclusive and Sensitive Winter Festival) morning this year: "Mama! Papa! Look! Santa Claus left me a roll of toilet paper! I am so happy!"
"Yes, little Juan," papa will say, "Give thanks for the brilliant economic leadership of our beloved El Comandante Fidel Castro that our poor but proud toiling Socialist workers’ and peasants’ family has a roll of toilet paper for (The Working People’s Inclusive and Sensitive Winter Festival)."
Cuba, rich in arable land, imports 60% of its food thanks to the agricultural expertise of El Comandante and his mini-me, Raul. However, mayonnaise, barbecue sauce and canned squid have been reduced in price. Hmmmm, boy, there’s nothing that says Christmas dinner like canned squid. Stock up, everyone!
As for that toilet paper shortage, I have a suggestion: the thoughts of Marx, Mao, Lenin, and Engels. All over Fidel Castro’s Cuba there are Fidel Castro schools and Fidel Castro libraries containing the collected works of the propagators of one of the 19th century’s more cockroachy ideas, Communism. Millions and millions of people have died because of the evils dreamed up and then published by Marx, Mao, Lenin, Engels, and other scribbling vermin. A fitting conclusion to this macabre experiment in human extermination would be to let the survivors wipe away (ahem) the horrors with the mad ravings of the mass murderers. One of Fidel’s printed speeches alone ought to last through a bad run of diarrhea. Gotta watch that canned squid, eh?
Aren’t you glad that you live in a free country flag@whitehouse.gov where there is plenty of good food and toilet paper, and where informants and block wardens flag@whitehouse.gov don’t report you to Dear Leader flag@whitehouse.gov for thoughts and speech flag@whitehouse.gov not approved of flag@whitehouse.gov?
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Cash for Concrete Slabs
Mack Hall
The president takes a lot of metaphorical flak (and should) for his successful seizure of two large automobile manufacturers and hundreds of banks, but we can’t blame Amtrak on him. Amtrak has been the government rail passenger non-system for over a generation.
And you know how successful the government takeover of passenger trains has been. Whenever anyone plans a business trip or a vacation, Amtrak is the first mode of transportation that comes to mind. Why be enviro-insensitive and drive your own gas-guzzling car to drive to the beach or the Alamo on your own selfish schedule when diesel-guzzling Amtrak can dump you among the wreckage of decaying cities in the middle of the night? Do it for the whales. And the dolphins. And global warming. And, like, y’know, stuff.
The administration has budgeted some stimulus money (get excited; it used to be your money) to help build an Amtrak railway station in Beaumont.
Once upon a time Beaumont featured stations built and run by the Santa Fe, the Southern Pacific, and the Missouri Pacific and Kansas City Southern (shared). With the seizure…um…federalization…of railway service in the 1970s all passenger service was transferred to a single Amtrak shack out in some Bermuda Triangle at the end of a shell road. Then the station was abandoned and destroyed, and ticket service was transferred to a 1-800-like-we’ll-answer-the-‘phone number. All that is left is a concrete slab in a Night of the Living Dead darkness.
The city of Beaumont and Amtrak want to build a new Amtrak station more convenient to humans than to ghosts, snakes, and mosquitoes. That better site, though, is owned by a private railway company which would prefer that passenger trains not block their trackage, even if those stops are only about six times a week.
And fair enough. If you run a business you don’t want the government mandating that a government-subsidized business completely take over your store and parking lot even for fifteen minutes every other day.
I say this calls for another beer summit. This time, though, we call in the cameras and jazz it up a bit with geezer wrestling to determine the outcome. While the president and his Chicago pals pose with stage-prop beers they won’t drink, T. Boone Pickens, Al Franken, and Ted Kennedy will wrestle in their underwear to determine the outcome. Pickens will represent the private railway company, Franken will give his muscle and sinew for Amtrak, and Kennedy will show a little skin (okay, a lot of skin) for Beaumont.
The public and ESPN will pay to watch and broadcast these three aspects (aspects with one ‘s’, if you please) of the American character rasselin’ for rails – let us call the event Cash for Clunkers, or perhaps A Teachable Moment.
Given his rotundity, Senator Kennedy might have to pay a carbon footprint penalty to donate to the Mary Jo Kopechne Memorial Swimming Scholarship.
T. Boone Pickens (what were his parents thinking?), given his wind-power scheme for which he wanted, yes, your money, could blow away the competition.
Al Franken hasn’t got a chance, for no one wants to touch a fellow who looks like the strange little man who hangs around a mall parking lot in an out-of-season raincoat.
The winner decides where the new Amtrak station is to be built. PETA and the EPA must give clearance, and the proposals must all be certified organic. The contractors, sub-contractors, and construction workers must be certified as multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-sex (with transgender issues addressed in a sensitive manner), and vegan. Any passenger trains that stop in Beaumont must be green hybrids and the engineers must be able to provide original birth certificates.
Given the history of Amtrak and other conflicting government entities, we can expect to book a ticket through Beaumont’s new Amtrak station in, oh, twenty years or so.
The president takes a lot of metaphorical flak (and should) for his successful seizure of two large automobile manufacturers and hundreds of banks, but we can’t blame Amtrak on him. Amtrak has been the government rail passenger non-system for over a generation.
And you know how successful the government takeover of passenger trains has been. Whenever anyone plans a business trip or a vacation, Amtrak is the first mode of transportation that comes to mind. Why be enviro-insensitive and drive your own gas-guzzling car to drive to the beach or the Alamo on your own selfish schedule when diesel-guzzling Amtrak can dump you among the wreckage of decaying cities in the middle of the night? Do it for the whales. And the dolphins. And global warming. And, like, y’know, stuff.
The administration has budgeted some stimulus money (get excited; it used to be your money) to help build an Amtrak railway station in Beaumont.
Once upon a time Beaumont featured stations built and run by the Santa Fe, the Southern Pacific, and the Missouri Pacific and Kansas City Southern (shared). With the seizure…um…federalization…of railway service in the 1970s all passenger service was transferred to a single Amtrak shack out in some Bermuda Triangle at the end of a shell road. Then the station was abandoned and destroyed, and ticket service was transferred to a 1-800-like-we’ll-answer-the-‘phone number. All that is left is a concrete slab in a Night of the Living Dead darkness.
The city of Beaumont and Amtrak want to build a new Amtrak station more convenient to humans than to ghosts, snakes, and mosquitoes. That better site, though, is owned by a private railway company which would prefer that passenger trains not block their trackage, even if those stops are only about six times a week.
And fair enough. If you run a business you don’t want the government mandating that a government-subsidized business completely take over your store and parking lot even for fifteen minutes every other day.
I say this calls for another beer summit. This time, though, we call in the cameras and jazz it up a bit with geezer wrestling to determine the outcome. While the president and his Chicago pals pose with stage-prop beers they won’t drink, T. Boone Pickens, Al Franken, and Ted Kennedy will wrestle in their underwear to determine the outcome. Pickens will represent the private railway company, Franken will give his muscle and sinew for Amtrak, and Kennedy will show a little skin (okay, a lot of skin) for Beaumont.
The public and ESPN will pay to watch and broadcast these three aspects (aspects with one ‘s’, if you please) of the American character rasselin’ for rails – let us call the event Cash for Clunkers, or perhaps A Teachable Moment.
Given his rotundity, Senator Kennedy might have to pay a carbon footprint penalty to donate to the Mary Jo Kopechne Memorial Swimming Scholarship.
T. Boone Pickens (what were his parents thinking?), given his wind-power scheme for which he wanted, yes, your money, could blow away the competition.
Al Franken hasn’t got a chance, for no one wants to touch a fellow who looks like the strange little man who hangs around a mall parking lot in an out-of-season raincoat.
The winner decides where the new Amtrak station is to be built. PETA and the EPA must give clearance, and the proposals must all be certified organic. The contractors, sub-contractors, and construction workers must be certified as multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-sex (with transgender issues addressed in a sensitive manner), and vegan. Any passenger trains that stop in Beaumont must be green hybrids and the engineers must be able to provide original birth certificates.
Given the history of Amtrak and other conflicting government entities, we can expect to book a ticket through Beaumont’s new Amtrak station in, oh, twenty years or so.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
The Last Modem Standing
Mack Hall
Until a recent rainy evening I was the last guy in the USA using a dial-up modem for connecting to the ‘net. As the sky darkened and the wind blew and the rain began to fall I thought that I should probably go and disconnect the… (FLASH! POW!) …modem.
Cue the fading and erratic static.
The next day I went in search of another modem, and considered that the all modems I had lost to lightning would put a hurt on even the manliest of landfills. Indeed, whenever I have bought a computer in the past I also bought an external modem, knowing that a ‘puter’s built-in modem always goes poof within a week, dying perhaps of shame.
A visit to Giganto-Mart was without success; the misnamed help weren’t much interested and appeared not to know what a modem was anyway. Lots of routers, but I’m not sure I need anything routed just now; if I do, I’ve got a Garmin.
MegaXtreemOffice in Beaumont had no modems; as the young man explained, dial-up modems (or is that modi?) are now as antique as 33 1/3 records and the Edsel, and referred me to my very own cellular service at a kiosk in Happy Meadows Mall.
And there, after lengthy negotiations with a nice fellow named Basil or Sidney or something like that, though the touch of Hindi in his accent suggests that’s not what’s on his birth certificate, I am now wirelessly wired to the outside world.
Okay, my daughter had to help. She didn’t make too much fun of me.
Spending a disconnected evening with a book, the newspaper crossword (Children, your grandparents will explain to you what a newspaper is…), and (gasp) television was okay, but I am happy to resume my usual geek/nerd/anti-social/loser habits. Hey, want to know the temperature in Bombay / Mumbai today?
Neville said that wireless would load really, really, really fast up here in the woods. He was wrong. Only kinda fast. But much better than dial-up.
The best thing of all is that now I can compute anywhere in the house, and will say ‘bye-‘bye to that rather expensive telephone land-line and to the AOL account.
And now I can download videos of Fox News’ Glenn Beck screaming at people who don’t line up in straight rows. Do you get the idea that Glenn Beck was nicer when he was drinking? Glenn Beck – a French expression meaning "change the station."
My fear is that now I will become one of those tiresome people who travels with a computer. I’ll bet Glenn Beck travels with a computer.
The Last Modem standing is now a base for my beautiful old Argus C3 (the famous "Brick") 35mm film camera on display on a bookshelf, still usable some forty years after it was built, a work of art in metal and glass. Don’t you wish computers and their accessories would last that long!
Until a recent rainy evening I was the last guy in the USA using a dial-up modem for connecting to the ‘net. As the sky darkened and the wind blew and the rain began to fall I thought that I should probably go and disconnect the… (FLASH! POW!) …modem.
Cue the fading and erratic static.
The next day I went in search of another modem, and considered that the all modems I had lost to lightning would put a hurt on even the manliest of landfills. Indeed, whenever I have bought a computer in the past I also bought an external modem, knowing that a ‘puter’s built-in modem always goes poof within a week, dying perhaps of shame.
A visit to Giganto-Mart was without success; the misnamed help weren’t much interested and appeared not to know what a modem was anyway. Lots of routers, but I’m not sure I need anything routed just now; if I do, I’ve got a Garmin.
MegaXtreemOffice in Beaumont had no modems; as the young man explained, dial-up modems (or is that modi?) are now as antique as 33 1/3 records and the Edsel, and referred me to my very own cellular service at a kiosk in Happy Meadows Mall.
And there, after lengthy negotiations with a nice fellow named Basil or Sidney or something like that, though the touch of Hindi in his accent suggests that’s not what’s on his birth certificate, I am now wirelessly wired to the outside world.
Okay, my daughter had to help. She didn’t make too much fun of me.
Spending a disconnected evening with a book, the newspaper crossword (Children, your grandparents will explain to you what a newspaper is…), and (gasp) television was okay, but I am happy to resume my usual geek/nerd/anti-social/loser habits. Hey, want to know the temperature in Bombay / Mumbai today?
Neville said that wireless would load really, really, really fast up here in the woods. He was wrong. Only kinda fast. But much better than dial-up.
The best thing of all is that now I can compute anywhere in the house, and will say ‘bye-‘bye to that rather expensive telephone land-line and to the AOL account.
And now I can download videos of Fox News’ Glenn Beck screaming at people who don’t line up in straight rows. Do you get the idea that Glenn Beck was nicer when he was drinking? Glenn Beck – a French expression meaning "change the station."
My fear is that now I will become one of those tiresome people who travels with a computer. I’ll bet Glenn Beck travels with a computer.
The Last Modem standing is now a base for my beautiful old Argus C3 (the famous "Brick") 35mm film camera on display on a bookshelf, still usable some forty years after it was built, a work of art in metal and glass. Don’t you wish computers and their accessories would last that long!
What Did You Do in the War, Mummy?
Mack Hall
Last week Harry Patch, the last British veteran of the Western Front, died at 111. Even at his age he was lucky not to have been conscripted for the current Afghan campaign.
In 2006 a 75-year-old retired American Army surgeon, Colonel William Bernhard, was reactivated – drafted – and sent to Afghanistan. Once upon a time it was the elderly who sent the young to die in far-away wars; now the young are sending the elderly instead. For the elderly, of course, this means they get to go to two or three wars in their lifetimes while the youthful presidents and prime ministers who send them avoid unpleasantness altogether.
Of all the world’s leaders, possibly two have served in uniform. The Pope was drafted into the Wehrmacht when he was sixteen, and the Queen volunteered as an ATS driver when she was the same age. She got her hands dirty and had to take cover in air raids, joining, as Bill Mauldin said, the club of them what has been shot at.
Some delicate souls in our time claim PTSD from having a bad day at the office.
Unfortunately, politicians with clean hands (if not hearts) still want to send other folks and other folks’ children to the wars. Well, I’ve got a solution for that: the next time anyone wants to have a war, the politicians and their kids, young and old, go first. Using Dr. Bernhard, the Pope, and Queen Elizabeth as precedents, the top age will be 75 and the bottom age will be 16.
"But…but…I’m in a wheelchair!" protests white-haired Senator Gloriosous.
"Not a problem, Private Gloriosous," replies Sergeant Rock, "We built ya a ramp to the turret of this here armored car. Yer a machine-gunner now. The war -- sorry, I meant nation-building -- you voted for is right down the street. Get with it."
"Oooooooooooooh! I want to be an officer in a pretty uniform and go to officers’ clubs and dances," coos Congressman Warprofit’s daughter Heather-Misty-Shannon-La’Shan’qua-Dawn.
"Wrong, Private Warprofit," replies Corporal Hardbutt. "You’ve got street patrol in two hours. Right now you’ve got KP. Your pa can help you. Wash all these mess trays."
"But…but…I’m a college graduate! I have an Honors BA in Community Activism with a minor in Serbo-Hungarian Literature!"
"Oh, sorry, Private Warprofit. I didn’t know. Here, I’ll show you and your pa how to wash dishes…"
"I don’t want to go to a beastly war!" pleads Poncy Tworbt, president of the Sidwell Friends School Chess Club. "I don’t wanna! I’m, like, y’know, an intellectual, and, like, stuff! I’m an artist! And a guitarist! I’m forming a band! I’m sensitive. I’m only 16! I just got my first Mercedes-Benz for my birthday! I’m special! Mummy tells me I’m special!"
"Yeah, Seaman Tworbt?" replies CPO Brasso, a career Navy man with his right forefinger locked in a perpetual curve from carrying a coffee cup for 30 years. "Well, yer mummy’s a Congressman, so yer goin’. Ya play chess, ya say? Great, here’s your swab and bucket. Get this boat deck squared away; we got night patrol up a little river they say used to flow from Eden. Sure hot now, in lots of ways. You might live through it. Now get busy."
The President goes too; the commander-in-chief can command from behind some sandbags in 115-degree heat. You think it’s a good war, boss? How good?
In the meantime, each investor in companies with military contracts will receive a private’s pay for the duration of the war.
But what about the ordinary citizens, the folks who have no power to declare a war? Oh, they can go to the wars if they want to: the kid at the feed store, the guy climbing the cracking unit, the lineman, the nurse, the storekeeper, the doctor. Sure, if they want to go. But they don’t have to.
Next time we have a war, the uberklasse can lead us from the front.
Last week Harry Patch, the last British veteran of the Western Front, died at 111. Even at his age he was lucky not to have been conscripted for the current Afghan campaign.
In 2006 a 75-year-old retired American Army surgeon, Colonel William Bernhard, was reactivated – drafted – and sent to Afghanistan. Once upon a time it was the elderly who sent the young to die in far-away wars; now the young are sending the elderly instead. For the elderly, of course, this means they get to go to two or three wars in their lifetimes while the youthful presidents and prime ministers who send them avoid unpleasantness altogether.
Of all the world’s leaders, possibly two have served in uniform. The Pope was drafted into the Wehrmacht when he was sixteen, and the Queen volunteered as an ATS driver when she was the same age. She got her hands dirty and had to take cover in air raids, joining, as Bill Mauldin said, the club of them what has been shot at.
Some delicate souls in our time claim PTSD from having a bad day at the office.
Unfortunately, politicians with clean hands (if not hearts) still want to send other folks and other folks’ children to the wars. Well, I’ve got a solution for that: the next time anyone wants to have a war, the politicians and their kids, young and old, go first. Using Dr. Bernhard, the Pope, and Queen Elizabeth as precedents, the top age will be 75 and the bottom age will be 16.
"But…but…I’m in a wheelchair!" protests white-haired Senator Gloriosous.
"Not a problem, Private Gloriosous," replies Sergeant Rock, "We built ya a ramp to the turret of this here armored car. Yer a machine-gunner now. The war -- sorry, I meant nation-building -- you voted for is right down the street. Get with it."
"Oooooooooooooh! I want to be an officer in a pretty uniform and go to officers’ clubs and dances," coos Congressman Warprofit’s daughter Heather-Misty-Shannon-La’Shan’qua-Dawn.
"Wrong, Private Warprofit," replies Corporal Hardbutt. "You’ve got street patrol in two hours. Right now you’ve got KP. Your pa can help you. Wash all these mess trays."
"But…but…I’m a college graduate! I have an Honors BA in Community Activism with a minor in Serbo-Hungarian Literature!"
"Oh, sorry, Private Warprofit. I didn’t know. Here, I’ll show you and your pa how to wash dishes…"
"I don’t want to go to a beastly war!" pleads Poncy Tworbt, president of the Sidwell Friends School Chess Club. "I don’t wanna! I’m, like, y’know, an intellectual, and, like, stuff! I’m an artist! And a guitarist! I’m forming a band! I’m sensitive. I’m only 16! I just got my first Mercedes-Benz for my birthday! I’m special! Mummy tells me I’m special!"
"Yeah, Seaman Tworbt?" replies CPO Brasso, a career Navy man with his right forefinger locked in a perpetual curve from carrying a coffee cup for 30 years. "Well, yer mummy’s a Congressman, so yer goin’. Ya play chess, ya say? Great, here’s your swab and bucket. Get this boat deck squared away; we got night patrol up a little river they say used to flow from Eden. Sure hot now, in lots of ways. You might live through it. Now get busy."
The President goes too; the commander-in-chief can command from behind some sandbags in 115-degree heat. You think it’s a good war, boss? How good?
In the meantime, each investor in companies with military contracts will receive a private’s pay for the duration of the war.
But what about the ordinary citizens, the folks who have no power to declare a war? Oh, they can go to the wars if they want to: the kid at the feed store, the guy climbing the cracking unit, the lineman, the nurse, the storekeeper, the doctor. Sure, if they want to go. But they don’t have to.
Next time we have a war, the uberklasse can lead us from the front.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Lobsters on a Plane
Mack Hall
So why do the lobsters get to ride for free?
You find your seat with your small carry-on, sit as assigned as part of the herd, and then observe that while United Air Lines has required you to pay $20 to check your suitcase, other passengers are entering the cabin with bags larger than the one you checked, multiple bags, and even large cardboard boxes containing lobsters. Live lobsters. Critters. All for free.
In Halifax, Nova Scotia a shop in the airport sells live lobsters to the sort of people who wear God Bless the USA baseball caps made in China: “Look what I brought ya from Canada, honey – a live lobster!”
Oh, yeah, a clicking, clacking crustacean. Just what everyone wants as a souvenir.
Not only does United Air Lines interpret their own baggage rules loosely, so does the United States government. Everyone entering the country must complete and sign a form stating that he is not bringing in any agricultural products or varmints. So what’s with ignoring the lobsters?
Did the lobsters have to sign a document stating that they were not bringing any parts of humans into the USA?
Is there a possibility of Mad Lobster Disease?
Are the lobsters patted and wanded? Do they have to take off their little claws while scuttling through the metal detector?
And speaking of claws, if I can’t bring my little Swiss Army knife on board, why aren’t the lobsters disarmed too? Could this be part of a plot? Is Dr. Doom lulling us to sleep with real lobsters and waiting to take over a United States aircraft with evil robot lobsters sold through a secret agent pretending to be an ‘umble dealer in live food at the Halifax airport?
The poor cabin attendants on airplanes have to deal with all the humans, excess luggage, and lobsters, trying to close the cheap plastic hatches on too many bulging bags and boxes. During the flight folks get up and open the hatches to let their excess junk drop on other folks below them.
AT DFW the lobsters got off all right, but United Air Lines whimsically offloaded the checked luggage at diverse places. When I and my party finally found ours, no one was watching it and no one asked for our claim checks. Anyone could have walked out of the airport with my dirty shirts and my loose loonies and toonies.
Shame on you, American Air Lines. Your baggage-handling practices stink as badly as those lobsters. I want my money back.
What really happens to the lobsters who were carried out past the baggage carousels with no delay? Do happy spouses or significant others clap their hands in glee and exclaim “Oh, wait until I show this exoskeletonal varmint to the neighbors!”?
Are the children sent to take their new little friend Sparky to the back yard to play?
“But Daddy, I wanted a Sergeant Preston of the Yukon action figure with a machine gun and a rocket launcher!”
“Sorry, son; Canada ran out of Mounties, but I brought you this swell lobster!”
Does the United States Department of Agriculture send a S.W.A.T. team based on a neighbor’s anonymous ‘phone call about unregistered foreign livestock?
I heard a rumor that next year halifax is going to upstage Pamplona with an annual running of the lobsters down Water Street, past Tim Horton’s, and down to Murphy’s Wharf, eh. Any fatalities will be carried out to sea on Theodore Tugboat and dumped into the water at George Lighthouse with full military honors.
Either that or stuffed into the overhead bins on United Air Lines
So why do the lobsters get to ride for free?
You find your seat with your small carry-on, sit as assigned as part of the herd, and then observe that while United Air Lines has required you to pay $20 to check your suitcase, other passengers are entering the cabin with bags larger than the one you checked, multiple bags, and even large cardboard boxes containing lobsters. Live lobsters. Critters. All for free.
In Halifax, Nova Scotia a shop in the airport sells live lobsters to the sort of people who wear God Bless the USA baseball caps made in China: “Look what I brought ya from Canada, honey – a live lobster!”
Oh, yeah, a clicking, clacking crustacean. Just what everyone wants as a souvenir.
Not only does United Air Lines interpret their own baggage rules loosely, so does the United States government. Everyone entering the country must complete and sign a form stating that he is not bringing in any agricultural products or varmints. So what’s with ignoring the lobsters?
Did the lobsters have to sign a document stating that they were not bringing any parts of humans into the USA?
Is there a possibility of Mad Lobster Disease?
Are the lobsters patted and wanded? Do they have to take off their little claws while scuttling through the metal detector?
And speaking of claws, if I can’t bring my little Swiss Army knife on board, why aren’t the lobsters disarmed too? Could this be part of a plot? Is Dr. Doom lulling us to sleep with real lobsters and waiting to take over a United States aircraft with evil robot lobsters sold through a secret agent pretending to be an ‘umble dealer in live food at the Halifax airport?
The poor cabin attendants on airplanes have to deal with all the humans, excess luggage, and lobsters, trying to close the cheap plastic hatches on too many bulging bags and boxes. During the flight folks get up and open the hatches to let their excess junk drop on other folks below them.
AT DFW the lobsters got off all right, but United Air Lines whimsically offloaded the checked luggage at diverse places. When I and my party finally found ours, no one was watching it and no one asked for our claim checks. Anyone could have walked out of the airport with my dirty shirts and my loose loonies and toonies.
Shame on you, American Air Lines. Your baggage-handling practices stink as badly as those lobsters. I want my money back.
What really happens to the lobsters who were carried out past the baggage carousels with no delay? Do happy spouses or significant others clap their hands in glee and exclaim “Oh, wait until I show this exoskeletonal varmint to the neighbors!”?
Are the children sent to take their new little friend Sparky to the back yard to play?
“But Daddy, I wanted a Sergeant Preston of the Yukon action figure with a machine gun and a rocket launcher!”
“Sorry, son; Canada ran out of Mounties, but I brought you this swell lobster!”
Does the United States Department of Agriculture send a S.W.A.T. team based on a neighbor’s anonymous ‘phone call about unregistered foreign livestock?
I heard a rumor that next year halifax is going to upstage Pamplona with an annual running of the lobsters down Water Street, past Tim Horton’s, and down to Murphy’s Wharf, eh. Any fatalities will be carried out to sea on Theodore Tugboat and dumped into the water at George Lighthouse with full military honors.
Either that or stuffed into the overhead bins on United Air Lines
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