6 May 2012. The Game-Changer Icon Blows the Whistle at the Tipping Point

Mack Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

The Game-Changer Icon blows the Whistle at the Tipping Point

As tweeted in the national news by various reliable sources close to far-flung centrists, liberal media bias talking points reached the tipping point with pin-point accuracy by crossing a red line drawn in the sands of time by sustainable viral rebels.  Categorically denied by the FLOTUS, affordable prescription drugs impacted climate change as both sides of the aisle came together to grow the game-changing economy in order to take back our streets from right-wing team-building earmarks.

Further, green diversity admitted to a personal error in judgment whose smoking gun was revealed in a walk-back whose timing could only be politically motivated.  This unfortunate chapter in the party rank-and-file was a benchmark game-change for the leader of the free world to double down on gender-based innovations.

In Europe, the war on women sought out the game-change healing process through settled science along the fiscal cliff.  Green jobs coming out of the firewall were hailed by sources close to the Vatican as a time to move on up the slippery slope to wreak havoc on net chatter.  The mainstream was downstream because upstream porcelain shares were noticeably higher.

In other news, closure was sought by firewalls everywhere so that Israel’s Iron Dome would be a wakeup call too big to fail on climate change.  A key endorsement by real-time right-wing advocacy groups insisted that his resignation was based on his need to spend more time with his family’s fully-automatic assault rifle with high-capacity pressure-cookers.  Although sources close to Hamad Kharzi said this move was an over-the-top effort sounding a death-knell for the nanny state science-deniers, due diligence in the wake of hate crimes called for an end to outside-the-box mandates.

In business news, sources close to Wall Street suggest that the enhanced infrastructure game change showed real concerns in the optics of loose cannons on deck.  Empowering the enhanced status of free-market synergy led to pro-active core values reaching a jaw-dropping reality check on Asian memes.  The robust credibility of main street’s best practices suggests that the palpable excitement of transparency is cooling off to sustainable limits.

Finally, in sports news, sources close to the south end of a north-bound free agent exploring other game-changing options on Saturday reported that a great many people were stunned and shocked to the very core of their existential beings, bringing about a world that they no longer recognize, defining a generation and changing their lives forever, to discover that one horse can run faster than another.

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Sleepy LIttle Southern Rattlesnakes

Mack Hall

Alas that terrorists and foreign oil executives never seem to bother rattlesnakes, a professional courtesy which suggests that vipers of all species recognize each other and perhaps even share a secret handshake. Well, maybe not a handshake.

According to an Associated Press story, rattlesnake roundups are declining. Hmmm – rattlesnake roundups. As fond as I am of cowboy films, I don’t remember John, Roy, Hoppy, Gene, and the boys herding snakes along the Chisholm Trail to Texas. How would they do that? “Slither along, little herpetofauna, sing a-kiyi-fangy-ki-yay?” Think of the classic movies: Fang-fight at the O.K. Corral, Fang of the Barbary Coast, They Died With Their Snakeskin Boots On, Stagecoachwhip, and The Sons of Katie Adder.
Eastern diamondback rattlesnakes, like fire ants and some world leaders, live mostly underground. In rural communities catching these critters and killing them is jolly good sport, just like in Rio Bravo, and rattlesnake rounder-uppers have developed marvelous new ways of snatching serpents out of their dens. Instead of pouring gasoline down a hole and seeing what pops up, modern hunters, Beyond Petroleum, insert plastic tubes and listen for the rattle, and if such a sound is forthcoming then a smaller tube with a hook is inserted (somehow I feel the discomforting words “you may feel a little pressure” are spoken at this point), and the snake is dragged out.

The rattlesnake is then killed and eaten. The convention is that snake tastes like chicken. Since I’ve tried chicken, I’ve no need to sample snake. Perhaps snakes could be made part of the school lunch program: snake tenders, snake fingers, snake-fried snake, and snake ring things.

The skin is made into belts, purses, shoes, boots, wallets, and other fashion accessories for sale to tourists, though I suppose rattlesnake do-rags are not do-able.

The rattlesnake’s skull and bones and rattles are made into trinkets, and I certainly hope to find toys made of rattlesnake remnants for the next niece or nephew for Christmas: “Uncle Mack! Thank you so much for my Barbie Snake House! You’re the greatest!”

These hunts supplement rural economies through their curiosity value, and people really do pay money to stand around and eat snake sandwiches and buy stuffed snakes, and good for them.

Unfortunately, environmentalists are unhappy with rattlesnake hunts, maintaining that rattlesnakes are declining in population everywhere but in Congress. Alas that no one rounds up environmentalists and makes trinkets of them. Anyone who spends any time outdoors from Pennsylvania to California will observe that there is no shortage of rattlesnakes, and that rattlesnakes are not our anthropomorphic friends. Rattlesnakes can kill a healthy adult, and will kill a child.

But then, hey, it’s always open season on children in American now, and no doubt PETA will defend to the death – a baby’s death -- a snake’s right to choose.

If rattlesnakes were to disappear, who would care except the sort of unread sheeplings who wear Che Guevera tee-shirts? The biodiversity argument holds no venom; Ireland has no snakes at all, nor does Newfoundland, and the folks and animals there seem to rich and rewarding lives without the blessings of pit vipers.

The AP writer was doing pretty well until he employed the most over-used cliché’ in Christendom, referring to a small town in Alabama as “sleepy.” But perhaps this is not the scrivener’s fault; he may have been simply following orders and the AP style book. One never reads in the national press of a Southern town as anything but sleepy, so possibly use of the tired metaphor is an edict. Southern towns, according to the form book, are always sleepy, with the court house dozing in a hammock and the grocery store snoozing on the back porch and Main Street fitting itself into its CPAP mask for a good night’s slumber. Middlebury, Vermont, enjoying superior character, never sleeps, nor does Bangor, Maine.

Towns aren’t sleepy, but some unimaginative writers are.

I dare not suggest that anyone reading this excellent newspaper kill rattlesnakes since some sub-species are protected under penalty of law, and goodness knows I would never place the life of a child over that of a reptile; that would be wrong.

Writing: K.I.S.S.

One of my final-exam questions for my Lamar University, Angelina College, and Kirbyville High School students:

16. Rewrite the following CBS-ism as one complete sentence using five or fewer words:

In my own personal opinion, and in conclusion, at the end of the day, the bottom line is, when all is said and done, when the fat man sings, that Mother Nature, in the awesome form of mighty Hurricane Ike thundering and slamming ashore in a turbulent and fateful pre-dawn, wreaked havoc on our homeland, snapping trees like matchsticks and leaving a swath of destruction in her wake that looked like a war zone and changed our lives forever, requiring us to seek closure and healing from grief counselors.

Writing: K.I.S.S.

One of my final-exam questions for my Lamar University, Angelina College, and Kirbyville High School students:

16. Rewrite the following CBS-ism as one complete sentence using five or fewer words:

In my own personal opinion, and in conclusion, at the end of the day, the bottom line is, when all is said and done, when the fat man sings, that Mother Nature, in the awesome form of mighty Hurricane Ike thundering and slamming ashore in a turbulent and fateful pre-dawn, wreaked havoc on our homeland, snapping trees like matchsticks and leaving a swath of destruction in her wake that looked like a war zone and changed our lives forever, requiring us to seek closure and healing from grief counselors.