Mack Hall
King Vidor’s Northwest Passage (1940) dramatizes an English guerilla campaign against Quebec during the Seven Years’ War. Although both sides claimed victory at Saint Francis / Sainte Francois in 1759, the long retreat of the Rangers under French pressure was a disaster.
At the end of the film the reconstituted Rangers are sent on another expedition, and as they march out of town the local taverner asks a stay-behind veteran of the Saint Francis raid, Hunk Marriner (Walter Brennan), "Ain’t you goin’?” Hunk replies laconically “I been,” and returns to his refreshing beverage.
For the past week the television viewers of the world have been watching two bits of drama: a great many of the citizens of Teheran protesting the outcome of an election they knew was rigged before going into it, and a great many citizens of other great cities of the world demanding that the U.N. (meaning 19-year-old Americans) be sent in to do something about it.
Nope. Not this time. Let the Chinese or the Swiss send their 19-year-olds to die in Iran if they wish.
Let us consider the losing side in the recent elections. No candidate stands for election in Iran without the approval of the mullets. Mir Hossein Mousavi ran for president as a tool of the mullets, and was bitterly disappointed when the votes – meaning the mullets – said that the current chief stooge, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, won by a Russian-style landslide. Mr. Mousavi then set off a week of rioting in Teheran, and although a number of young Iranians have been killed by the Revolutionary Guard, Mr. Mousavi is quite safe and will remain so. As with so many amateur dictators, he will demand that his followers fight to the last bullet and the last drop of blood, said demands probably to be made from a five-star hotel resort and golf course in France or the USA.
Iran doesn’t like us. Oh, boo-hoo. If not for British oil development in the 1940s Iran would be nothing more than a sort of Newark, New Jersey, only with more sand and less charm. Iranians under the Shah didn’t like us. Iranians under the Ayatollah Khomeini didn’t like us. Iranians under Ayatolla Khameni don’t like us. Whatever thug-ocracy in Teheran is to come won’t change anything much – and Iranians won’t like us. Iran will never be a democracy and will never be friendly.
In Paris, people demonstrating in the streets demand that the U.N. (meaning 19-year-old Americans) do something about Iran.
In New York, people demonstrating in the streets demand that the U.N. (meaning 19-year-old Americans) do something about Iran.
In Los Angeles, people demonstrating in the streets demand that the U.N. (meaning 19-year-old Americans) do something about Iran.
And a great many of those people demanding that the U.N. (meaning 19-year-old Americans) do something about Iran are Iranians.
Iranians in exile don’t appear to be asking for weapons or assistance so that they can go back to Iran and do something.
Iranians in exile don’t appear to be requiring themselves to give up their jobs, their businesses, their comfy lifestyles to do anything about the country they fled; they appear to want Americans to fight and die and suffer for Iran.
And without a doubt the moment a pair of American boots touch the sacred soil of Iran (where suddenly every city will be a holy city), the wearer of those American boots will be charged with war crimes by some European (meaning Belgium) court with no clear mission except to keep itself in existence.
Isolationism has not been fashionable since the 1930s, when non-intervention allowed Hitler, Mussolini, Hirohito, and Stalin to parcel the world among themselves (let us never forget that the Communists and the Nazis were great pals well into World War II). Resolving that this should never happen again, the post-war world saw the Western nations involved in a confused and often contradictory series of intrusions into the affairs of other nations. To what extent these were successful cannot be known; in retrospect we can be sure that if the French and British had in good time suppressed Hitler’s occupation of Alsace and the Sudetenland, the French and British would have been judged by the world to be oppressors.
Except when the North Koreans are doing weird things with missiles and nukes, the South Koreans hate us. Same for the Japanese. Indonesia. Afghanistan. Iraq (the Iraqis and the U.N. begged the U.S. to intervene, remember?). Taiwan. Cuba. Serbia. Bosnia. The hopeless city of New Orleans.
No, maybe it’s time for the United States to practice a little healthy isolationism and give up letting other nations, who despise us anyway, kill our nineteen-year-olds and our economy. The United States, in endeavoring to do good, has wrecked itself. Switzerland, one of the most evil nations in the world, one which never met a bloody tyrant with whom it could not cut a profitable deal, has never made a point of helping any nation in need, and yet prospers.
Maybe it’s time for the United States to skip a campaign, telling those who demand much too much of us, “No, thanks. I been.”
Monday, June 22, 2009
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Buying a Wash Stand
This morning I had occasion to buy a "vanity" (nee' wash stand) at Lowe's in Jasper, and enjoyed talking with Kenneth, a happy geezer my age who has no business climbing ladders.
Anyway, he and I both wondered whether the vanity (does it preen before itself?) contained a sink, and Kenneth asked if it was okay if he opened the box.
Well, sure.
He explained that several days ago he had sold a lady a nice lamp, and she had asked him to open the box to make sure the lamp was like the picture and that all the parts were there. Everything was fine, and Kenneth closed the box and began to place it in the lady's shopping cart.
"Oh, no," she protested, "not that one; it's been opened."
Anyway, he and I both wondered whether the vanity (does it preen before itself?) contained a sink, and Kenneth asked if it was okay if he opened the box.
Well, sure.
He explained that several days ago he had sold a lady a nice lamp, and she had asked him to open the box to make sure the lamp was like the picture and that all the parts were there. Everything was fine, and Kenneth closed the box and began to place it in the lady's shopping cart.
"Oh, no," she protested, "not that one; it's been opened."
Sunday, June 14, 2009
A Man Could Stand Up
Mack Hall
A Man Could Stand Up is the third novel in Ford Madox Ford’s World War I tetralogy, Parade’s End. The phrase “a man could stand up” is employed repeatedly as an allusion to life and death in the trenches, and with multiple meanings. In trench warfare to stand up is to die, and so the desire to stand up symbolizes a hope for an end to the war. At other times in the novel the phrase means doing that which is brave and right.
On Tuesday, 11 June 2009, a man named Stephen Johns stood up for civilization, for us. Opening the door as a kindness to an elderly man, the sorry ess of a bee responded to this courtesy by shooting Mr. Johns in the chest. He never had a chance.
Stephen Johns was a security guard for the Holocaust Museum in our nation’s capital. Contrary to the stereotype of the rent-a-cop, Mr. Johns was a trained professional and a certified peace officer. So were his two backups, who quickly and efficiently returned fire and saved the lives of uncounted innocents. The one life they could not save was that of their comrade.
Questions have been asked about the motives of the gutless murderer; more needful questions should be asked about the motives of Stephen Johns. Evil is as common as bitterweeds; a man who stands up for what is right rather less so.
So I would like to know more about Stephen Johns. At least two writers alluded to Mr. Johns as a “gentle giant,” an appellation which is as condescending as it is trite. They should not have written such drivel. Mr. Johns was a man, not a cliché.
We know that Mr. Johns was 39, had a wife and a son, loved the Washington Redskins (hey, no one’s perfect), and was liked and respected by his co-workers.
I don't know much else about Stephen Johns, and I would like to. I want to know who his pals were, what jokes he made about his boss, who he ate lunch with, what books influenced him, if he sneaked a cigarette during his break, if he flirted with the receptionist, what kind of coffee he preferred, what kind of music he liked, and what his dreams were.
I know little more than this: Stephen Johns died while protecting other people and the truth of history. His death means that others will continue to live, to meditate upon evil and upon the good men who stand up to evil, and may God give us the grace to understand that. Mr. Johns lived and died in order to save the truth of history for all of us, a truth malevolent people deny. I doubt if he woke up the other morning imagining that he would die as a hero of civilization, but that is what happened, and we should honor his memory as an American hero.
A man could stand up. Stephen Johns did.
A Man Could Stand Up is the third novel in Ford Madox Ford’s World War I tetralogy, Parade’s End. The phrase “a man could stand up” is employed repeatedly as an allusion to life and death in the trenches, and with multiple meanings. In trench warfare to stand up is to die, and so the desire to stand up symbolizes a hope for an end to the war. At other times in the novel the phrase means doing that which is brave and right.
On Tuesday, 11 June 2009, a man named Stephen Johns stood up for civilization, for us. Opening the door as a kindness to an elderly man, the sorry ess of a bee responded to this courtesy by shooting Mr. Johns in the chest. He never had a chance.
Stephen Johns was a security guard for the Holocaust Museum in our nation’s capital. Contrary to the stereotype of the rent-a-cop, Mr. Johns was a trained professional and a certified peace officer. So were his two backups, who quickly and efficiently returned fire and saved the lives of uncounted innocents. The one life they could not save was that of their comrade.
Questions have been asked about the motives of the gutless murderer; more needful questions should be asked about the motives of Stephen Johns. Evil is as common as bitterweeds; a man who stands up for what is right rather less so.
So I would like to know more about Stephen Johns. At least two writers alluded to Mr. Johns as a “gentle giant,” an appellation which is as condescending as it is trite. They should not have written such drivel. Mr. Johns was a man, not a cliché.
We know that Mr. Johns was 39, had a wife and a son, loved the Washington Redskins (hey, no one’s perfect), and was liked and respected by his co-workers.
I don't know much else about Stephen Johns, and I would like to. I want to know who his pals were, what jokes he made about his boss, who he ate lunch with, what books influenced him, if he sneaked a cigarette during his break, if he flirted with the receptionist, what kind of coffee he preferred, what kind of music he liked, and what his dreams were.
I know little more than this: Stephen Johns died while protecting other people and the truth of history. His death means that others will continue to live, to meditate upon evil and upon the good men who stand up to evil, and may God give us the grace to understand that. Mr. Johns lived and died in order to save the truth of history for all of us, a truth malevolent people deny. I doubt if he woke up the other morning imagining that he would die as a hero of civilization, but that is what happened, and we should honor his memory as an American hero.
A man could stand up. Stephen Johns did.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Dan Rather Wants Our Children
Mack Hall
Like Rasputin’s bloated corpse bobbing up among the ice floes of the Nevka River, Dan Rather has surfaced again.
On the occasion of his latest apparition he wants our children.
In an article syndicated by Hearst, Rather, the famous documents expert, coyly asks if it would not be in the best interests of unity that all young people be conscripted into the military or into some sort of vague “national service.”
Conscription. Press gangs. The draft. Forced labor. Hitler Youth. Young Pioneers. The concept that a human is completely at the disposal of the State is a European idea, not an American one. America has occasionally violated the spirit of its own Constitution and impressed people into the military: the Civil War, World War I, World War II, and, inexcusably, for some 28 years following 1945. Even so, during World War II the draft was more of a management tool than a bludgeon: “Wait your turn; we’ll tell you when we need you.”
But even in a national emergency, conscription is never a good idea.
Conscription is an unconstitutional wrong forced upon the young and the poor by the old and the rich. A child of Congress or of Wall Street is no more likely to be found in a recruit barracks than is a copy of The Federalist Papers.
But Dan Rather wants the government to herd our children and grandchildren into barracks and labor camps. For what reason? To sing Woody Guthrie songs or perhaps The Internationale before huge images of Ted Kennedy? To be required to chant Dear Leader’s recent assertion that America is now a Muslim nation? To dig canals by hand? To be posted to the streets of Chicago to hand out A.C.O.R.N. propaganda?
The toadious Dan Rather subscribes to a benign but incomplete concept of Old Army Buddies – that people of different backgrounds drafted into the Army got to know each other better, and so made a better America.
Well, maybe, but that’s a specious argument that could be made of concentration camps, too. If a stuffy Belgian banker and an ‘umble Dutch janitor share a good conversation together while breaking rocks for a road project, that conversation is not a good argument for the existence of concentration camps.
Am I comparing conscription to concentration camps? Yes, to a not-very-limited extent. When people are forcibly removed from their homes and occupations and put behind the wire into a situation of regimentation with a system of punishments for not adapting to the new order, they have been deprived of the whole basis of the Declaration of Independence, the God-given right of self-determination.
I know lots of fine young people who are off to the military this summer. We can be immensely proud of them because they choose to do so. Another young man of my acquaintance spent the first week after his high school graduation helping teach Vacation Bible School; after that he’s going to work until college in the autumn. Work is probably his choice, but then I know his mom and dad; they’re not into letting their kids loaf around as house guests. And yet another young man brought me my fast-cholesterol at the drive-in the other evening. Good for them. They don’t even know who Dan Rather is; I don’t expect that they would want him or any other old flatulent ideologue ordering them into the camps for the good of the State.
Our recent presidents have been doing a czar thing – energy czars, car czars, and now a salary czar. What next, a children’s-camp czar? We don’t want no stinking czars. We don’t want our children seized by the State, either.
If Dan Rather likes internment camps so much, let him build himself a barbed-wire fence, sentence himself behind it, stand himself to attention two or three times a day, and count himself.
-30-
Like Rasputin’s bloated corpse bobbing up among the ice floes of the Nevka River, Dan Rather has surfaced again.
On the occasion of his latest apparition he wants our children.
In an article syndicated by Hearst, Rather, the famous documents expert, coyly asks if it would not be in the best interests of unity that all young people be conscripted into the military or into some sort of vague “national service.”
Conscription. Press gangs. The draft. Forced labor. Hitler Youth. Young Pioneers. The concept that a human is completely at the disposal of the State is a European idea, not an American one. America has occasionally violated the spirit of its own Constitution and impressed people into the military: the Civil War, World War I, World War II, and, inexcusably, for some 28 years following 1945. Even so, during World War II the draft was more of a management tool than a bludgeon: “Wait your turn; we’ll tell you when we need you.”
But even in a national emergency, conscription is never a good idea.
Conscription is an unconstitutional wrong forced upon the young and the poor by the old and the rich. A child of Congress or of Wall Street is no more likely to be found in a recruit barracks than is a copy of The Federalist Papers.
But Dan Rather wants the government to herd our children and grandchildren into barracks and labor camps. For what reason? To sing Woody Guthrie songs or perhaps The Internationale before huge images of Ted Kennedy? To be required to chant Dear Leader’s recent assertion that America is now a Muslim nation? To dig canals by hand? To be posted to the streets of Chicago to hand out A.C.O.R.N. propaganda?
The toadious Dan Rather subscribes to a benign but incomplete concept of Old Army Buddies – that people of different backgrounds drafted into the Army got to know each other better, and so made a better America.
Well, maybe, but that’s a specious argument that could be made of concentration camps, too. If a stuffy Belgian banker and an ‘umble Dutch janitor share a good conversation together while breaking rocks for a road project, that conversation is not a good argument for the existence of concentration camps.
Am I comparing conscription to concentration camps? Yes, to a not-very-limited extent. When people are forcibly removed from their homes and occupations and put behind the wire into a situation of regimentation with a system of punishments for not adapting to the new order, they have been deprived of the whole basis of the Declaration of Independence, the God-given right of self-determination.
I know lots of fine young people who are off to the military this summer. We can be immensely proud of them because they choose to do so. Another young man of my acquaintance spent the first week after his high school graduation helping teach Vacation Bible School; after that he’s going to work until college in the autumn. Work is probably his choice, but then I know his mom and dad; they’re not into letting their kids loaf around as house guests. And yet another young man brought me my fast-cholesterol at the drive-in the other evening. Good for them. They don’t even know who Dan Rather is; I don’t expect that they would want him or any other old flatulent ideologue ordering them into the camps for the good of the State.
Our recent presidents have been doing a czar thing – energy czars, car czars, and now a salary czar. What next, a children’s-camp czar? We don’t want no stinking czars. We don’t want our children seized by the State, either.
If Dan Rather likes internment camps so much, let him build himself a barbed-wire fence, sentence himself behind it, stand himself to attention two or three times a day, and count himself.
-30-
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Kim Jong Il's Twitter
Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Kim Jong Il’s Twitter
My Twits: Bashar, Hu, Lula, Hugo, Umar, Vladimir, Triet, Robert, Saddamn (channeled via Jane), The Shadow, and Mickey.
12:10 A.M. OMG Obama is like so not my BFF!!!!!!!
12:14. OMG a note from the imperialist yankee state department. Obama is so like my BFF again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thanx for the Hillary poster dude!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! U rok!!!!
12:32. OMG like I got a new toy – nuclear missiles! Like, I’m so not going to have More-Than-Supreme General Park shot now cuz I fell better!!!! Oooooo this is so better than viagra!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1:11. OMG Saddamn that was so NOT funny about “power-lift shoes.” U no I got bad ankles!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My doctor said so the one I accidentally had shot not the one I got now!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1:15. OMG okay like the nxt time im having a bad day I’m like so going to nuke shanghai!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1:17. OMG Hu that was so like a joke u no & that thing about my hair being taller than the rest of me was so not kool!!!!!!!!!!!!
1:20. OMG Hu u no your my homeboy BFF 4-ever!!!!!!!!!!!!! That correspondence with Obama was just pity for him ok???????????????
1:22. OMG I just remembrd my nuke missiles bring on the jade girls!!!!
1:23. OMG that octomom is such a hottie!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1:24. OMG Hugo do you h8 Amerika as much as i do??????????
1:26. OMG me 2 hugo I line up my star wars dolls and label Darth Vadar “Amerika” and Luke Skywalker “me” xcept whn im feeling u no special and then I label Princess Leia “me.” But keep it a secret ok!!!!!!!!!!!!
1:30. OMG no Robert hugo SO lies!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1:31. OMG Hugo you crossed your heart & promised not to tell!!!!!!!!!!!!!! U are so NOT my BFF now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1:33. OMG u people stop making short jokes & princess leia jokes now I MEAN IT I got nuke missiles now IM DA MAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
2:00. OMG like u no I had a cabinet meeting & had some counterrevolutionaries shot it was so kool seeing them begging for their lives thatz why they call me Dear Leader. Ok like I got nukes now so Im wearing THE BIG-BOY PANTS just like Obama so he’s got to be my BFF for now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
2:05. OMG so lik im going to wear a seahawks cap back’ards I’ll look soooo coooool!!!!!!!!!!
2:06. OMG r maybe Ill wear my Special Forces Colonel uniform with the mossy oaf cammo pattern & my silver-plated ak-47 special Lenin model with the picture of princess Leia on the stock!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
2:10. OMG did I tell u guys about my nuke missiles!!!!!! I am like so SOMEBODY now and they got to RESPECT me!!!!!!
2:15. OMG its so 215 in the morning so I am so ready for bed now with my Mickey on my pillow and my Princess Leia on the other side of my pillow and my fairy princess nite lite and my guards all tall and handsome outside my door & a special fone by my bed that connects me directly to my big nuke missiles I feel so snug and special nitey-nites!!!!!!!!!!!!
Mhall46184@aol.com
Kim Jong Il’s Twitter
My Twits: Bashar, Hu, Lula, Hugo, Umar, Vladimir, Triet, Robert, Saddamn (channeled via Jane), The Shadow, and Mickey.
12:10 A.M. OMG Obama is like so not my BFF!!!!!!!
12:14. OMG a note from the imperialist yankee state department. Obama is so like my BFF again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thanx for the Hillary poster dude!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! U rok!!!!
12:32. OMG like I got a new toy – nuclear missiles! Like, I’m so not going to have More-Than-Supreme General Park shot now cuz I fell better!!!! Oooooo this is so better than viagra!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1:11. OMG Saddamn that was so NOT funny about “power-lift shoes.” U no I got bad ankles!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My doctor said so the one I accidentally had shot not the one I got now!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1:15. OMG okay like the nxt time im having a bad day I’m like so going to nuke shanghai!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1:17. OMG Hu that was so like a joke u no & that thing about my hair being taller than the rest of me was so not kool!!!!!!!!!!!!
1:20. OMG Hu u no your my homeboy BFF 4-ever!!!!!!!!!!!!! That correspondence with Obama was just pity for him ok???????????????
1:22. OMG I just remembrd my nuke missiles bring on the jade girls!!!!
1:23. OMG that octomom is such a hottie!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1:24. OMG Hugo do you h8 Amerika as much as i do??????????
1:26. OMG me 2 hugo I line up my star wars dolls and label Darth Vadar “Amerika” and Luke Skywalker “me” xcept whn im feeling u no special and then I label Princess Leia “me.” But keep it a secret ok!!!!!!!!!!!!
1:30. OMG no Robert hugo SO lies!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1:31. OMG Hugo you crossed your heart & promised not to tell!!!!!!!!!!!!!! U are so NOT my BFF now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1:33. OMG u people stop making short jokes & princess leia jokes now I MEAN IT I got nuke missiles now IM DA MAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
2:00. OMG like u no I had a cabinet meeting & had some counterrevolutionaries shot it was so kool seeing them begging for their lives thatz why they call me Dear Leader. Ok like I got nukes now so Im wearing THE BIG-BOY PANTS just like Obama so he’s got to be my BFF for now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
2:05. OMG so lik im going to wear a seahawks cap back’ards I’ll look soooo coooool!!!!!!!!!!
2:06. OMG r maybe Ill wear my Special Forces Colonel uniform with the mossy oaf cammo pattern & my silver-plated ak-47 special Lenin model with the picture of princess Leia on the stock!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
2:10. OMG did I tell u guys about my nuke missiles!!!!!! I am like so SOMEBODY now and they got to RESPECT me!!!!!!
2:15. OMG its so 215 in the morning so I am so ready for bed now with my Mickey on my pillow and my Princess Leia on the other side of my pillow and my fairy princess nite lite and my guards all tall and handsome outside my door & a special fone by my bed that connects me directly to my big nuke missiles I feel so snug and special nitey-nites!!!!!!!!!!!!
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
A LITURGY FOR THE EMPEROR -- now available on Amazon.com
I am pleased to announce that my appropriately slender, rather expensive, and quite excellent book of poetry, A Liturgy for the Emperor, is now available from Amazon.com. If you have read it, do post a review on Amazon. If you haven't read it, your purchase of it will indulge both my ego and my bank account! There are many small pieces, including sonnets, and the longish eponymous poem, "A Liturgy for the Emperor," is in honor of Byzantium.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Decoration Day
Did John Kerry place a wreath on himself today?
-- Mack Hall, Viet-Nam Class of 1969-1970
-- Mack Hall, Viet-Nam Class of 1969-1970
The Class of 2009
Mack Hall
(Yes, I'm plagiarizing from myself; I post this, modified, every year.)
THE CLASS OF 2009
Children insist on growing up and going away. Oh, sure, there are always one or two of whom one can sing “Thank God and Greyhound you’re gone,” but the loss of most of them is very painful, very real, very acute, and very forever.
Here, Class of 2009 are some disconnected factoids your old English teacher meant to tell you earlier in the year, before the month of May very cleverly sneaked up on all of us:
1. In October you will return for homecoming. You will find many of the same teachers, school, and friends you left behind. But you won’t be on the team or in the band; it isn’t about you anymore, and that will be oddly disturbing. The same school that once nagged you for tardiness and absenteeism will now require you to wear a visitor’s badge if you show up on a school day. By October of next year, most of the students in your old high school won’t know who you are -- or were. And they won't care. You'll just be old people.
2. Some day surprisingly soon you will hear shrieks of insolent laughter from your child’s room. You will find your child and her friends laughing at your yearbook pictures. You and your friends will be subject to scornful dismissal by a new, cooler-than-cool generation. You will feel very old.
3. Billy Graham attended a public school; Adolf Hitler attended a Christian school. Don’t obsess on labels.
4. You are not going to win the Texas lottery.
5. You're a little bit too old for a MySpace. Time to grow up.
6. Have you ever noticed that you never see “Matthew 6:5-6” on a sign or bumper sticker?
7. College is not high school. Work is not high school. There is no such thing as an excused absence in adult life. The boss will not care about your special needs, sensitivities, artistic gifts, or traumatic childhood.
8. Most people are good, and can be trusted. But the two-per-centers, like hemorrhoids, do tend to get your attention.
9. Listening to radio commentators with whom you already agree is not participating in our democracy. There was a school board election a few weeks ago – did you vote? Or did you just complain?
9. Tattoos do have one useful purpose – they will help your relatives identify your body after you die of some weird disease that was on the needle. Oh, yeah, sure, the process is sterile – a tattoo parlor looks like a hospital, right?
10. Your class ranking is little more than a seating chart for graduation, reflecting your performance in a sometimes artificial and often passive situation for the last four years. Your future is up to you.
11. Put the 'phone down. Grasp the steering wheel firmly with both hands. Stay alive.
12. Save the planet? Reform the establishment? Stop meanies from beating harp seals to death? Get a job first.
13. Time to wear the big-boy pants.
14. You are now the “they.” You are the adult. You are the government. You are the Church. You are the public school system. You decide what movies will be watched (if not made). You decide what will be on the television screen in your home. Your life is your own – don’t become one of the sheep.
15 . Giving back to the community begins now. Do something as an act of service to humanity -- join the volunteer fire department, teach Sunday school, clean up the city park one hour a week, or assist at the nursing home. However, if you find that more evenings and weekends are spent at these activities instead of raising your family, learn to say no to extra demands.
16. Don’t bore people with sad stories about your horrible childhood. No one ever lived a Leave It To Beaver or Cosby existence. And besides, you might have been the problem. Get over it.
17. The shouting, abusive, 1-900-Send-Money TV preacher with the bouffant hairdo strutting about on the low-prole stage set while beating on a Bible and yelling is not going to come to the house in the middle of the night when your child is dying, you don’t have a job, and you don’t know where to turn. Your pastor – Chaucer’s Parsoun -- may not be cool, may not be a clever speaker, may not sport a Rolex watch, and may not have a really bad wig, but he’s here for you. Support your local congregation. Oh, and never say to anyone “We missed you in church last Sunday,” because that’s really saying I was in church, and you weren’t, so nanny-nanny-boo-boo,” and where does that imperial “we” come from anyway? God has not appointed you to be His attendance officer.
18. Don’t wear a shirt that says “(bleep) Civilization” to a job interview.
19. When someone asks for a love offering, offer him your love and watch his reaction. He doesn’t want a love offering; he wants money. Sloppy language is used to manipulate people. Call things by their proper names, and hang on to your wallet.
20. Stop eating out of bags and boxes, and learn how to use a knife and fork. From now on the menus should be in words, not pictures.
21. When you find yourself facing a dinner setting with more than two forks, don’t panic; no one else knows quite what to do with three forks either. No one’s watching anyway, so just enjoy the meal.
22. A great secret to success in a job or in life is simply to show up.
23. There is no such thing as a non-denominational worship service.
24. You will always be your parents’ child. You may become a doctor, lawyer, banker, or, God help you, president, but your mother will still ask you if you’ve had enough to eat and remind you to take your jacket in case the night turns cold. And parents are a constant surprise -- they always have new knowledge you need to acquire.
25. According to some vaguely named family institute or some such, raising a child to the age of eighteen costs the family $153,000 and a few odd cents. The taxpayers of this state spend about $5,000 per year on each student. Thus, a great many people have pooled their resources and spent about $213,000 on you since you were born. They did not do this in order for you to sit around complaining about how unfair life is. Do something.
26. There was never a powerful secret society variously known as The Preps, The Rich Kids, or The Popular Kids, just as there are no unmarked U.N. helicopters.
27. Thank you notes: write ’em. It shows class. You don’t have to pay big money for pre-printed notes; buy notepaper with pictures (hunting scenes for the guys; flowers for the girls) on the outside and nothing on the inside. You can write; you’re a high school graduate, remember?
28. The school award you should have received: For Compassion. While I must confess that I was happy to see some of you on a daily basis because that way I was sure my tires would be safe, there was never one single instance of any of you taking any advantage or being unkind in any way to those who were emotionally or physically vulnerable. Indeed, most of you took the extra step in being very protective of the very special young people who are blended into the student population. There is no nicely-framed award for that compassion, not here, anyway, but even now there is one with your name on it on the walls of a mansion which, we are assured, awaits each of us, in a house with many mansions. God never asked you to be theologically correct; He asked you to be compassionate, and you were. Keep the kindness within you always.
29. Take a long, lingering look at your classmates during graduation. You’ll never see all of them ever again. In ten years many of you will be happy and honorable. Others will have failed life, and at only 28 will be sad, tired, bitter old men and women with no hope. Given that you all went to the same cinder-block school with the same blinky fluorescent lights, suffered the same old boring teachers, drove along the same dusty roads, and grew up in the same fading little town, what will have made the difference?
Well, Class of 2009, it’s time to let go. Thanks for everything: for the pictures and paper balls and pizza and pep rallies and recitals and concerts and games, for your thoughts and essays, for your laughter and jokes, for usually paying attention to roll call (“Focus, class... focus...focus...focus...”), for really thinking about Macbeth and Becket and Beowulf, and those wonderful pilgrims (us, of course) forever journeying to Canterbury, for doing those business letters and resumes’ over and over until YOU were proud of them, for wrestling with iambic pentameter, for all the love you gave everyone around you every day. Take all those good things with you in your adventures through life.
And whether we shall meet again I know not.
Therefore our everlasting farewell take:
For ever, and for ever, farewell...
--Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, IV.iii.115-117
(Yes, I'm plagiarizing from myself; I post this, modified, every year.)
THE CLASS OF 2009
Children insist on growing up and going away. Oh, sure, there are always one or two of whom one can sing “Thank God and Greyhound you’re gone,” but the loss of most of them is very painful, very real, very acute, and very forever.
Here, Class of 2009 are some disconnected factoids your old English teacher meant to tell you earlier in the year, before the month of May very cleverly sneaked up on all of us:
1. In October you will return for homecoming. You will find many of the same teachers, school, and friends you left behind. But you won’t be on the team or in the band; it isn’t about you anymore, and that will be oddly disturbing. The same school that once nagged you for tardiness and absenteeism will now require you to wear a visitor’s badge if you show up on a school day. By October of next year, most of the students in your old high school won’t know who you are -- or were. And they won't care. You'll just be old people.
2. Some day surprisingly soon you will hear shrieks of insolent laughter from your child’s room. You will find your child and her friends laughing at your yearbook pictures. You and your friends will be subject to scornful dismissal by a new, cooler-than-cool generation. You will feel very old.
3. Billy Graham attended a public school; Adolf Hitler attended a Christian school. Don’t obsess on labels.
4. You are not going to win the Texas lottery.
5. You're a little bit too old for a MySpace. Time to grow up.
6. Have you ever noticed that you never see “Matthew 6:5-6” on a sign or bumper sticker?
7. College is not high school. Work is not high school. There is no such thing as an excused absence in adult life. The boss will not care about your special needs, sensitivities, artistic gifts, or traumatic childhood.
8. Most people are good, and can be trusted. But the two-per-centers, like hemorrhoids, do tend to get your attention.
9. Listening to radio commentators with whom you already agree is not participating in our democracy. There was a school board election a few weeks ago – did you vote? Or did you just complain?
9. Tattoos do have one useful purpose – they will help your relatives identify your body after you die of some weird disease that was on the needle. Oh, yeah, sure, the process is sterile – a tattoo parlor looks like a hospital, right?
10. Your class ranking is little more than a seating chart for graduation, reflecting your performance in a sometimes artificial and often passive situation for the last four years. Your future is up to you.
11. Put the 'phone down. Grasp the steering wheel firmly with both hands. Stay alive.
12. Save the planet? Reform the establishment? Stop meanies from beating harp seals to death? Get a job first.
13. Time to wear the big-boy pants.
14. You are now the “they.” You are the adult. You are the government. You are the Church. You are the public school system. You decide what movies will be watched (if not made). You decide what will be on the television screen in your home. Your life is your own – don’t become one of the sheep.
15 . Giving back to the community begins now. Do something as an act of service to humanity -- join the volunteer fire department, teach Sunday school, clean up the city park one hour a week, or assist at the nursing home. However, if you find that more evenings and weekends are spent at these activities instead of raising your family, learn to say no to extra demands.
16. Don’t bore people with sad stories about your horrible childhood. No one ever lived a Leave It To Beaver or Cosby existence. And besides, you might have been the problem. Get over it.
17. The shouting, abusive, 1-900-Send-Money TV preacher with the bouffant hairdo strutting about on the low-prole stage set while beating on a Bible and yelling is not going to come to the house in the middle of the night when your child is dying, you don’t have a job, and you don’t know where to turn. Your pastor – Chaucer’s Parsoun -- may not be cool, may not be a clever speaker, may not sport a Rolex watch, and may not have a really bad wig, but he’s here for you. Support your local congregation. Oh, and never say to anyone “We missed you in church last Sunday,” because that’s really saying I was in church, and you weren’t, so nanny-nanny-boo-boo,” and where does that imperial “we” come from anyway? God has not appointed you to be His attendance officer.
18. Don’t wear a shirt that says “(bleep) Civilization” to a job interview.
19. When someone asks for a love offering, offer him your love and watch his reaction. He doesn’t want a love offering; he wants money. Sloppy language is used to manipulate people. Call things by their proper names, and hang on to your wallet.
20. Stop eating out of bags and boxes, and learn how to use a knife and fork. From now on the menus should be in words, not pictures.
21. When you find yourself facing a dinner setting with more than two forks, don’t panic; no one else knows quite what to do with three forks either. No one’s watching anyway, so just enjoy the meal.
22. A great secret to success in a job or in life is simply to show up.
23. There is no such thing as a non-denominational worship service.
24. You will always be your parents’ child. You may become a doctor, lawyer, banker, or, God help you, president, but your mother will still ask you if you’ve had enough to eat and remind you to take your jacket in case the night turns cold. And parents are a constant surprise -- they always have new knowledge you need to acquire.
25. According to some vaguely named family institute or some such, raising a child to the age of eighteen costs the family $153,000 and a few odd cents. The taxpayers of this state spend about $5,000 per year on each student. Thus, a great many people have pooled their resources and spent about $213,000 on you since you were born. They did not do this in order for you to sit around complaining about how unfair life is. Do something.
26. There was never a powerful secret society variously known as The Preps, The Rich Kids, or The Popular Kids, just as there are no unmarked U.N. helicopters.
27. Thank you notes: write ’em. It shows class. You don’t have to pay big money for pre-printed notes; buy notepaper with pictures (hunting scenes for the guys; flowers for the girls) on the outside and nothing on the inside. You can write; you’re a high school graduate, remember?
28. The school award you should have received: For Compassion. While I must confess that I was happy to see some of you on a daily basis because that way I was sure my tires would be safe, there was never one single instance of any of you taking any advantage or being unkind in any way to those who were emotionally or physically vulnerable. Indeed, most of you took the extra step in being very protective of the very special young people who are blended into the student population. There is no nicely-framed award for that compassion, not here, anyway, but even now there is one with your name on it on the walls of a mansion which, we are assured, awaits each of us, in a house with many mansions. God never asked you to be theologically correct; He asked you to be compassionate, and you were. Keep the kindness within you always.
29. Take a long, lingering look at your classmates during graduation. You’ll never see all of them ever again. In ten years many of you will be happy and honorable. Others will have failed life, and at only 28 will be sad, tired, bitter old men and women with no hope. Given that you all went to the same cinder-block school with the same blinky fluorescent lights, suffered the same old boring teachers, drove along the same dusty roads, and grew up in the same fading little town, what will have made the difference?
Well, Class of 2009, it’s time to let go. Thanks for everything: for the pictures and paper balls and pizza and pep rallies and recitals and concerts and games, for your thoughts and essays, for your laughter and jokes, for usually paying attention to roll call (“Focus, class... focus...focus...focus...”), for really thinking about Macbeth and Becket and Beowulf, and those wonderful pilgrims (us, of course) forever journeying to Canterbury, for doing those business letters and resumes’ over and over until YOU were proud of them, for wrestling with iambic pentameter, for all the love you gave everyone around you every day. Take all those good things with you in your adventures through life.
And whether we shall meet again I know not.
Therefore our everlasting farewell take:
For ever, and for ever, farewell...
--Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, IV.iii.115-117
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Notre Starbuck's
Mack Hall
A recent news photo features a Notre Dame senior wearing a wispy I-finally-got-some-testosterone beard and a slogan skivvy shirt, both now as obligatory in America as a keffiyah is in South London, the tee whining: “Please don’t ruin MY graduation.”
You just know that this will tug at the heartstrings (what are heartstrings, anyway?) of 22-year-old corporals and privates fighting it out in 120-degree heat in the deserts of Afghanistan and Iraq. “Please!” they will write in impassioned letters to Time magazine and Dan Brown, “Don’t let the meanies ruin that lad’s college graduation. After all, he has worked so hard in air-conditioned classrooms for the last four years.”
On Friday, an 80-year-old priest singing the hymn “Immaculate Mary” on the campus of Notre Dame was arrested for trespassing (the ironies stack higher than the ego of archbishop and archembezzler Rembert Weakland). The sensitive, bearded youth in the slogan undershirt will be safe. That old meanie who meant to ruin the sensitive youth’s graduation was hustled off by at least three kampus kops. Ya gotta watch out for 80-year-olds singing hymns; they’re dangerous to the tough, rational minds forged and sharpened in the fires of four hard years of intellectual give-and-take at Notre Decaf Latte’.
And it’s all about freedom of speech. But whose? Mine, of course, because I’m special; my mother says so.
If you’ve ever listened to a graduation speaker you are painfully aware that you have forever lost an hour of your life when you could have been doing something far more creative, such as trimming your nose-hairs or giving the pooch its heart-worm medicine.
Every commencement speaker assures his listeners that his speech will be different from any they have ever heard, and yet all graduation speeches manage to auto-negative pressure themselves into a grey hole of mixed metaphors and pure Woosterian blather:
“Young women and men: you are the long-awaited hope of the huddled masses, just like your MySpaces say. Your four hard years of intellectual endeavors and service here among the dreaming spires of Bob’s College are the key that will unlock the road to the bright, shining future mountaintop of this promising land of visions of ours. Go forth and make your realities the dreams of the marginalized and dispossessed whose hearts and minds await your deconstructed truths of the nature of personkind.
“Some might say that you are a lost generation of FaceBook surfers interested only in the glib and the shallow. But last night your class president, Heather “Mike” Scumwalligan-Snortle, the first-ever transgendered, undocumented, poly-racial graduate of Bob’s College (hold for wild applause), simultaneously a single mother and a single father, who had to make do with only five federal grants, shared with me some of her-his thoughts about making America great again: draft beer (hold for more wild applause).
“I can only concur with Ms. Scumwalligan-Snortle’s golden dream of a richer, better America that reaches out to the homely and the homeless and beerless with a fearless courage and bravery that speaks and thunders and whispers the wonderfulness of the Bob’s College Class of 2009 (hold for applause and air-horns). I see your selflessness and your generosity and your open-mindednesses and, like, stuff, misspelled in glued-down glitter on your mortarboards. Anyone who can spend long, selfless hours in brotherhood and sisterhood with his or her sisters and brothers gluing glitter on a mortarboard while singing the sound-track from Mamma Mia is a real intellectual with an iconic passion for the future of accessible health care for all, including dachshunds.
“I see among the graduates Poncy Thworbt, president of Gamma Alpha Sigma Fraternity. Some people say that fraternities are outworn institutions that have become nothing more than excuses for promoting alcoholism and homoeroticism. Some people see fraternity brothers stripping pledges naked and beating them up so they can call each other friends and brothers, and ask why. Well, my fellow Americans, I ask why not. My fellow inheritors of Turtle Island, when you’ve shoved the head of a freshman down a toilet bowl until he almost drowns, that’s brotherhood, that’s love, that’s compassion, that’s respect for the dignity of one’s brothers and sisters.
“And with us today is Heather-Mysteee-Shannon StarDawn who in solidarity with the starving children of the world composed a heartfelt song and accompanied herself on her guitar, spending weeks making a MyMyMySpaceToob of her heartfelt and passionate artistic performance in order to comfort the starving children of every race and creed and color on our planet. Now that’s what I call making a difference. You rock, Heather-Mysteee-Shannon-Dawn!
“Some cynics might suggest that you should now get off your baccalaureates and get what they claim is a real job. How little they know! You, the Bob’s College Class of 2009, know the agony and suffering and sacrifice of constructing a really good MyMyMyFaceBook entry (pause for air-horns)! You’ve all labored long into the night, sustained by nothing more than beer and pizza and pure thoughts, downloading shiny, glittery, public-domain unicorns onto your unique ‘blog to demonstrate to the world how special you are. You tell me that’s not real work!
And so let the word go forth that you are very, very special indeed. Go forth and heal and change the world and the harp seals and the polar bears with your passions as iconic filmmakers, artists, community activists, computer graphics designers, and writers of cutting-edge haiku, and give back by taking a gap year at someone else’s expense so that you can make a difference!
(Wild applause)
A recent news photo features a Notre Dame senior wearing a wispy I-finally-got-some-testosterone beard and a slogan skivvy shirt, both now as obligatory in America as a keffiyah is in South London, the tee whining: “Please don’t ruin MY graduation.”
You just know that this will tug at the heartstrings (what are heartstrings, anyway?) of 22-year-old corporals and privates fighting it out in 120-degree heat in the deserts of Afghanistan and Iraq. “Please!” they will write in impassioned letters to Time magazine and Dan Brown, “Don’t let the meanies ruin that lad’s college graduation. After all, he has worked so hard in air-conditioned classrooms for the last four years.”
On Friday, an 80-year-old priest singing the hymn “Immaculate Mary” on the campus of Notre Dame was arrested for trespassing (the ironies stack higher than the ego of archbishop and archembezzler Rembert Weakland). The sensitive, bearded youth in the slogan undershirt will be safe. That old meanie who meant to ruin the sensitive youth’s graduation was hustled off by at least three kampus kops. Ya gotta watch out for 80-year-olds singing hymns; they’re dangerous to the tough, rational minds forged and sharpened in the fires of four hard years of intellectual give-and-take at Notre Decaf Latte’.
And it’s all about freedom of speech. But whose? Mine, of course, because I’m special; my mother says so.
If you’ve ever listened to a graduation speaker you are painfully aware that you have forever lost an hour of your life when you could have been doing something far more creative, such as trimming your nose-hairs or giving the pooch its heart-worm medicine.
Every commencement speaker assures his listeners that his speech will be different from any they have ever heard, and yet all graduation speeches manage to auto-negative pressure themselves into a grey hole of mixed metaphors and pure Woosterian blather:
“Young women and men: you are the long-awaited hope of the huddled masses, just like your MySpaces say. Your four hard years of intellectual endeavors and service here among the dreaming spires of Bob’s College are the key that will unlock the road to the bright, shining future mountaintop of this promising land of visions of ours. Go forth and make your realities the dreams of the marginalized and dispossessed whose hearts and minds await your deconstructed truths of the nature of personkind.
“Some might say that you are a lost generation of FaceBook surfers interested only in the glib and the shallow. But last night your class president, Heather “Mike” Scumwalligan-Snortle, the first-ever transgendered, undocumented, poly-racial graduate of Bob’s College (hold for wild applause), simultaneously a single mother and a single father, who had to make do with only five federal grants, shared with me some of her-his thoughts about making America great again: draft beer (hold for more wild applause).
“I can only concur with Ms. Scumwalligan-Snortle’s golden dream of a richer, better America that reaches out to the homely and the homeless and beerless with a fearless courage and bravery that speaks and thunders and whispers the wonderfulness of the Bob’s College Class of 2009 (hold for applause and air-horns). I see your selflessness and your generosity and your open-mindednesses and, like, stuff, misspelled in glued-down glitter on your mortarboards. Anyone who can spend long, selfless hours in brotherhood and sisterhood with his or her sisters and brothers gluing glitter on a mortarboard while singing the sound-track from Mamma Mia is a real intellectual with an iconic passion for the future of accessible health care for all, including dachshunds.
“I see among the graduates Poncy Thworbt, president of Gamma Alpha Sigma Fraternity. Some people say that fraternities are outworn institutions that have become nothing more than excuses for promoting alcoholism and homoeroticism. Some people see fraternity brothers stripping pledges naked and beating them up so they can call each other friends and brothers, and ask why. Well, my fellow Americans, I ask why not. My fellow inheritors of Turtle Island, when you’ve shoved the head of a freshman down a toilet bowl until he almost drowns, that’s brotherhood, that’s love, that’s compassion, that’s respect for the dignity of one’s brothers and sisters.
“And with us today is Heather-Mysteee-Shannon StarDawn who in solidarity with the starving children of the world composed a heartfelt song and accompanied herself on her guitar, spending weeks making a MyMyMySpaceToob of her heartfelt and passionate artistic performance in order to comfort the starving children of every race and creed and color on our planet. Now that’s what I call making a difference. You rock, Heather-Mysteee-Shannon-Dawn!
“Some cynics might suggest that you should now get off your baccalaureates and get what they claim is a real job. How little they know! You, the Bob’s College Class of 2009, know the agony and suffering and sacrifice of constructing a really good MyMyMyFaceBook entry (pause for air-horns)! You’ve all labored long into the night, sustained by nothing more than beer and pizza and pure thoughts, downloading shiny, glittery, public-domain unicorns onto your unique ‘blog to demonstrate to the world how special you are. You tell me that’s not real work!
And so let the word go forth that you are very, very special indeed. Go forth and heal and change the world and the harp seals and the polar bears with your passions as iconic filmmakers, artists, community activists, computer graphics designers, and writers of cutting-edge haiku, and give back by taking a gap year at someone else’s expense so that you can make a difference!
(Wild applause)
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
The Spider, The Cockroach, The Man
English 430
Stephen F. Austin State University
Dr. Barbara Carr
27 June 2001
Upon reading Leigh Hunt's "To the Grasshopper and the Cricket" and John Keats' "On the Grasshopper and Cricket" in Dr. Carr's Class, 27 June 2001, on a theme suggested by a classmate. Note: No Shakespearean sonnets were harmed in the making of this poem.
The Spider and the Cockroach
The Spider speeds along her spin-spanned sphere;
She senses that her lunch has lurched into
Her airy, aeolian kitchen where
It will be rendered into housefly stew.
Nocturnally the Roach broods silently,
Meditating among the doggy bowls
Upon the kitchen floor, a poisoned sea
Where Raid! doth steal exoskeleton'd souls
And blundering through my own small world come I
Most hungrily, with cup and plate in hand;
Like the Spider and Roach, my lunch I spy
There -- where the refrigerator doth stand.
Thus Spider and Roach and an aging Dude
Share their universe while searching for food.
Stephen F. Austin State University
Dr. Barbara Carr
27 June 2001
Upon reading Leigh Hunt's "To the Grasshopper and the Cricket" and John Keats' "On the Grasshopper and Cricket" in Dr. Carr's Class, 27 June 2001, on a theme suggested by a classmate. Note: No Shakespearean sonnets were harmed in the making of this poem.
The Spider and the Cockroach
The Spider speeds along her spin-spanned sphere;
She senses that her lunch has lurched into
Her airy, aeolian kitchen where
It will be rendered into housefly stew.
Nocturnally the Roach broods silently,
Meditating among the doggy bowls
Upon the kitchen floor, a poisoned sea
Where Raid! doth steal exoskeleton'd souls
And blundering through my own small world come I
Most hungrily, with cup and plate in hand;
Like the Spider and Roach, my lunch I spy
There -- where the refrigerator doth stand.
Thus Spider and Roach and an aging Dude
Share their universe while searching for food.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
THE PRISONER Fact #11
#6 was hired to play a game of chess with Death in one of those grainy black-and-white Ingmar Bergman films. #6 kept checkmating Death in three or four moves, spoiling the film's narrative flow, and so was sacked.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
How Many Dead Aggies Does it Take...?
Mack Hall
College Station, where there is a college but no station, is segregating a section of its new city cemetery for Aggies only.
There is no word yet on whether the Aggies-only section will rest adjacent to the exclusive Elvis impersonator section. The answer might be indexed in the official guide to funerals in America, Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One.
Ross Albrecht (’84), marketing manager for the new cemetery, told the Associated Press that the use of Texas A & M symbols will be “correct and respectful.” The entrance to the Aggie section will be a “Spirit Gate” between two concrete columns faked up to look like limestone, and for the discerning Aggie there’s nothing that says correct and respectful like chunks of concrete painted to look like something else.
Correct and respectful pallbearers could be rounded up from The Dixie Chicken.
Maybe the maroon Aggie hearse will be drawn to the cemetery by twelve little Reveilles wearing maroon mourning plumes.
Although Texas A & M has no direct connection with the city cemetery, the school will license the use of trademarked A & M logos and other symbols. This means that if you – for reasons best known to yourself – wish to have your mortal remains decorated with an image of Ol’ Sarge, you will have to pay Texas A & M for permission.
Licensing agreements guarantee the quality of Texas A & M’s acounts receivable. The difference between a cheap, unlicensed, made-in-China tee-shirt proclaiming “Fightin’ Texas Aggies” and another cheap, licensed, made-in-China tee shirt proclaiming “Fightin’ Texas Aggies” is, well, nothing except a tag.
Will we ever see a tee proclaiming “Studyin’ Texas Aggies?”
Made-in-China Texas A & M coffee cups, made-in-China Texas A & M neckties, made-in-China Texas A & M lunch buckets, Made-in-China Texas A & M portable toilets, and now, dug-in-College Station Texas A & M holes in the ground, license fees payable to the university.
And some people say America isn’t a religious country.
A sales brochure preaches "The concept is that the Spirit of Aggieland travels in a ceremonial way from the campus to the Aggie Field of Honor through this final gateway." If that isn’t straight out of the Gospels I don’t what is.
At this writing no one is clear whether or not having posed nude or semi-nude will be a bar to resting in peace in The Aggie Field of Honor.
If the University of San Francisco were to feature a cemetery, would the trustees establish an Eternal Joint exuding faux marijuana smoke in The Mahareshi Yoga Guru Garden of Like, You Know, Where It Is Forever 1968?
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology would have to license Star Trek Action Figure grave markers from Paramount. Funeral services might be offered in Klingon.
A beauty school – the Dear Departed is buried with a 21-hair-dryer salute.
Good ol’ A & M, coming up with a brand-new century-old tradition every year or so.
But what if…just what if Aggies who Pass On To The Other Side make their last Whoop! at the pearly gates only to discover that Saint Peter wears burnt orange?
Hullabaloo, caneck, caneck!
College Station, where there is a college but no station, is segregating a section of its new city cemetery for Aggies only.
There is no word yet on whether the Aggies-only section will rest adjacent to the exclusive Elvis impersonator section. The answer might be indexed in the official guide to funerals in America, Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One.
Ross Albrecht (’84), marketing manager for the new cemetery, told the Associated Press that the use of Texas A & M symbols will be “correct and respectful.” The entrance to the Aggie section will be a “Spirit Gate” between two concrete columns faked up to look like limestone, and for the discerning Aggie there’s nothing that says correct and respectful like chunks of concrete painted to look like something else.
Correct and respectful pallbearers could be rounded up from The Dixie Chicken.
Maybe the maroon Aggie hearse will be drawn to the cemetery by twelve little Reveilles wearing maroon mourning plumes.
Although Texas A & M has no direct connection with the city cemetery, the school will license the use of trademarked A & M logos and other symbols. This means that if you – for reasons best known to yourself – wish to have your mortal remains decorated with an image of Ol’ Sarge, you will have to pay Texas A & M for permission.
Licensing agreements guarantee the quality of Texas A & M’s acounts receivable. The difference between a cheap, unlicensed, made-in-China tee-shirt proclaiming “Fightin’ Texas Aggies” and another cheap, licensed, made-in-China tee shirt proclaiming “Fightin’ Texas Aggies” is, well, nothing except a tag.
Will we ever see a tee proclaiming “Studyin’ Texas Aggies?”
Made-in-China Texas A & M coffee cups, made-in-China Texas A & M neckties, made-in-China Texas A & M lunch buckets, Made-in-China Texas A & M portable toilets, and now, dug-in-College Station Texas A & M holes in the ground, license fees payable to the university.
And some people say America isn’t a religious country.
A sales brochure preaches "The concept is that the Spirit of Aggieland travels in a ceremonial way from the campus to the Aggie Field of Honor through this final gateway." If that isn’t straight out of the Gospels I don’t what is.
At this writing no one is clear whether or not having posed nude or semi-nude will be a bar to resting in peace in The Aggie Field of Honor.
If the University of San Francisco were to feature a cemetery, would the trustees establish an Eternal Joint exuding faux marijuana smoke in The Mahareshi Yoga Guru Garden of Like, You Know, Where It Is Forever 1968?
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology would have to license Star Trek Action Figure grave markers from Paramount. Funeral services might be offered in Klingon.
A beauty school – the Dear Departed is buried with a 21-hair-dryer salute.
Good ol’ A & M, coming up with a brand-new century-old tradition every year or so.
But what if…just what if Aggies who Pass On To The Other Side make their last Whoop! at the pearly gates only to discover that Saint Peter wears burnt orange?
Hullabaloo, caneck, caneck!
Saturday, May 9, 2009
THE PRISONER Fact #10
#6 often regaled the other prisoners in THE VILLAGE with crude jokes about a quite impossible relationship between #2 and Rover.
Monday, May 4, 2009
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.
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.
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.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
THE PRISONER Fact #9
Yes, #6 catches the swine flu. He catches it, has a few quiet conversations with it, and persuades it to attack #2.
Freshly-Baked, Farm-Fresh, Home-Cooked Feed 'n' Seed
Mack Hall
Once upon a time Main Street in my little town featured The City Café’, but one never hears of that anymore. If the establishment still existed it would surely advertise itself as “Mama’s Country Café’” or “Country Cookery” or “The Country Home Cooking Lone Star Café.’”
Advertising in this part of the world is all about the country thing, even when the concept of country is irrelevant to the matter. When you sit down to the good ol’ bacon and eggs in the morning you know very well they were not cooked at home or in the country; they were cooked in the back of the café’ by Juan. If you want home-cooking, stay home and cook. If you want to start the day with the crossword and someone keeping the coffee flowing for you, you drive out of the country and into town. Town is where they keep the country cafes.’
And speaking of cafes’, a friend noted that one in Beaumont did not feature even a single rusty license plate on its walls. Is that legal? Doesn’t the health department cite restaurants for not having rusty license plates? I think I saw that on Channel 6.
And then there are the various car dealerships prefaced Cowboy. A cowboy is an agricultural worker who herds cows. There really aren’t any of those around here. Car dealerships based on real-world workers would be named Petrochemical Operator Fiat, or perhaps Receptionist Volkswagen, or maybe Pipefitter Opel.
Almost every bread product is billed as fresh-baked. Well, yeah, when a Kaiser roll (and does the Kaiser know about this?) is baked, it’s fresh. A more accurate labeling would be: “This Kaiser roll was baked, then packaged, then loaded on a truck, then driven around East Texas until it was finally off-loaded at this store, and now it’s resided on this shelf for an indeterminate time.”
This leads us to farm-fresh. Is a farm fresh? How fresh? A really honest ice-cream commercial would feature a cow with the scours.
One longs to see a church called Certified Public Accountants for Christ.
Maybe hospitals will follow the country theme: “Yes, ma’am, let us deliver your baby in the country fashion. And don’t mind the livestock grazing in the delivery room.”
Or lawyers: “You got a case against that company that employed you and put up with your absences and indolence and petty theft all those years before finally sacking you? Let our crack country team of country lawyers take th’ Burdizzos to ‘em! Yeeeeeeeee-hawwwwwwwwwwww!”
Chinese cars: “Howdy, pardner, this is Tex Chang of Shanghai Motors, and ah’m here to tell you about our proven line of Red Star hybrid pickups, now available in North America. Whether you’re haulin’ prisoners to execution or vegetables to th’ market, you’ll be country-proud you’re country-savin’ th’ country planet by country-drivin’ a country-hybrid Red Star pickup.”
And, hey, how about that country-swine flu, eh? Rumor has it that it’s going to be bought up by a foreign company and the virus out-sourced to Italy, with you and me paying for it all.
Once upon a time Main Street in my little town featured The City Café’, but one never hears of that anymore. If the establishment still existed it would surely advertise itself as “Mama’s Country Café’” or “Country Cookery” or “The Country Home Cooking Lone Star Café.’”
Advertising in this part of the world is all about the country thing, even when the concept of country is irrelevant to the matter. When you sit down to the good ol’ bacon and eggs in the morning you know very well they were not cooked at home or in the country; they were cooked in the back of the café’ by Juan. If you want home-cooking, stay home and cook. If you want to start the day with the crossword and someone keeping the coffee flowing for you, you drive out of the country and into town. Town is where they keep the country cafes.’
And speaking of cafes’, a friend noted that one in Beaumont did not feature even a single rusty license plate on its walls. Is that legal? Doesn’t the health department cite restaurants for not having rusty license plates? I think I saw that on Channel 6.
And then there are the various car dealerships prefaced Cowboy. A cowboy is an agricultural worker who herds cows. There really aren’t any of those around here. Car dealerships based on real-world workers would be named Petrochemical Operator Fiat, or perhaps Receptionist Volkswagen, or maybe Pipefitter Opel.
Almost every bread product is billed as fresh-baked. Well, yeah, when a Kaiser roll (and does the Kaiser know about this?) is baked, it’s fresh. A more accurate labeling would be: “This Kaiser roll was baked, then packaged, then loaded on a truck, then driven around East Texas until it was finally off-loaded at this store, and now it’s resided on this shelf for an indeterminate time.”
This leads us to farm-fresh. Is a farm fresh? How fresh? A really honest ice-cream commercial would feature a cow with the scours.
One longs to see a church called Certified Public Accountants for Christ.
Maybe hospitals will follow the country theme: “Yes, ma’am, let us deliver your baby in the country fashion. And don’t mind the livestock grazing in the delivery room.”
Or lawyers: “You got a case against that company that employed you and put up with your absences and indolence and petty theft all those years before finally sacking you? Let our crack country team of country lawyers take th’ Burdizzos to ‘em! Yeeeeeeeee-hawwwwwwwwwwww!”
Chinese cars: “Howdy, pardner, this is Tex Chang of Shanghai Motors, and ah’m here to tell you about our proven line of Red Star hybrid pickups, now available in North America. Whether you’re haulin’ prisoners to execution or vegetables to th’ market, you’ll be country-proud you’re country-savin’ th’ country planet by country-drivin’ a country-hybrid Red Star pickup.”
And, hey, how about that country-swine flu, eh? Rumor has it that it’s going to be bought up by a foreign company and the virus out-sourced to Italy, with you and me paying for it all.
The Sky to Moc Hoa
Mack Hall
The Sky to Moc Hoa
The sky to Moc Hoa is hazily blue,
Layered between heat and Heaven. The damp
Rots even the air with the menace of death.
The ground below, all green and holed, dies too;
It seems to gasp: You will not live, young lad,
You will not live to read your books or dream
About a little room, a fire, a pipe,
A chair, a pen, a dog, a truth-told poem
Flung courteously in manuscript pages
Upon a coffee-stained table, halo’d
In a 60-watt puddle of lamp-light.
You skinny, stupid kid. You will not live.
Then circling, and circling again, again,
Searching, perhaps, for festive rotting meals,
Down-spinning, fear-spinning onto Moc Hoa,
Palm trees, iron roofs, spinning in a dead sun,
Spinning up to a swing-ship spinning down.
A square of iron matting in a green marsh,
Hot, green, wet, fetid with old Samsara.
Gunboats diesel across the Van Co Tay,
Little green gunboats, red nylon mail sacks,
Engines, cheery yells, sloshing mud, heat, rot.
Mail sacks off, mail sacks on, men off, men on,
Dark blades beating against the heavy heat,
The door gunners, the pilot impatient.
All clear to lift, heads down, humans crouching
Ape-like against the grass, against the slime
In sweating, stinking, slinking, feral fear
As the dragon-blades roar and finally fly,
And the beaten grass and beaten men
Now stand again erect in gasping heat,
Some silent in a new and fearful world.
You will not live, young hero; you will die.
What then of Dostoyevsky and Chekhov?
What then of your Modern Library editions,
A dollar each at the Stars & Stripes store
Far away and long ago in DaNang,
All marked and underlined? What is the point?
What then of your notebook scribbled with words,
Your weak attempts at poetry? So sad,
So irrelevant in the nights of death.
The corpses on the gunboat decks won’t care,
Their flare-lit faces staring into smoke
At 0-Two-Damned Thirty in the morning –
Of what truth or beauty are your words to them?
You haven’t any words anyway;
They’re out of movies and books, all of them.
What truth can adventure-story words speak
To corpses with their eyes eaten away?
Write your used emotions onto a page;
You haven’t any emotions anyway;
They’re out of the past, all of them.
What truth can used emotions speak to death?
So sling your useless gear aboard the boat:
A seabag of utilities, clean socks,
Letters, a pocket knife, a Rosary,
Some underwear, some dreams, and lots of books.
And board yourself. Try not to fall, to drown,
To be a floating bloating, eyeless face.Not yet.
Think of your books, your words. Look up:
The sky to Moc Hoa is hazily blue.
Notes:
1. Moc Hoa, pronounced Mock Wah -- a town on the Vam Co Tay River near the border with Cambodia.
2. “Young lad” or “lad” – employed sarcastically of recruits by chief petty officers.
3. “Young hero” – employed sarcastically of recruits by chief petty officers and of Navy Corpsman in Field Medical Service School by Marine sergeant-instructors.
4. Utilities – heavy, olive-drab, 1950s style Marine Corps battle-dress issued to Navy personnel on their way to Viet-Nam. Too darned hot. I had to scrounge lighter clothing.
5. Samsara – in some Eastern religions the ocean of birth and death.
6. Gunboats – here, PBRs, or Patrol Boat, River. The history of this excellent craft and its use in river warfare is well documented.
7. Stars and Stripes store – more accurately, any one of the chain of Pacific Stars and Stripes book stores.
8. Swing ship – a helicopter, in my experience always the famous Huey, employed for carrying supplies and personnel on routine routes. The pilots sometimes spun them in very fast in order to try to avoid ground fire.
9. Seabag – duffel bag.
10. Skinny kid – most of us were.
The Sky to Moc Hoa
The sky to Moc Hoa is hazily blue,
Layered between heat and Heaven. The damp
Rots even the air with the menace of death.
The ground below, all green and holed, dies too;
It seems to gasp: You will not live, young lad,
You will not live to read your books or dream
About a little room, a fire, a pipe,
A chair, a pen, a dog, a truth-told poem
Flung courteously in manuscript pages
Upon a coffee-stained table, halo’d
In a 60-watt puddle of lamp-light.
You skinny, stupid kid. You will not live.
Then circling, and circling again, again,
Searching, perhaps, for festive rotting meals,
Down-spinning, fear-spinning onto Moc Hoa,
Palm trees, iron roofs, spinning in a dead sun,
Spinning up to a swing-ship spinning down.
A square of iron matting in a green marsh,
Hot, green, wet, fetid with old Samsara.
Gunboats diesel across the Van Co Tay,
Little green gunboats, red nylon mail sacks,
Engines, cheery yells, sloshing mud, heat, rot.
Mail sacks off, mail sacks on, men off, men on,
Dark blades beating against the heavy heat,
The door gunners, the pilot impatient.
All clear to lift, heads down, humans crouching
Ape-like against the grass, against the slime
In sweating, stinking, slinking, feral fear
As the dragon-blades roar and finally fly,
And the beaten grass and beaten men
Now stand again erect in gasping heat,
Some silent in a new and fearful world.
You will not live, young hero; you will die.
What then of Dostoyevsky and Chekhov?
What then of your Modern Library editions,
A dollar each at the Stars & Stripes store
Far away and long ago in DaNang,
All marked and underlined? What is the point?
What then of your notebook scribbled with words,
Your weak attempts at poetry? So sad,
So irrelevant in the nights of death.
The corpses on the gunboat decks won’t care,
Their flare-lit faces staring into smoke
At 0-Two-Damned Thirty in the morning –
Of what truth or beauty are your words to them?
You haven’t any words anyway;
They’re out of movies and books, all of them.
What truth can adventure-story words speak
To corpses with their eyes eaten away?
Write your used emotions onto a page;
You haven’t any emotions anyway;
They’re out of the past, all of them.
What truth can used emotions speak to death?
So sling your useless gear aboard the boat:
A seabag of utilities, clean socks,
Letters, a pocket knife, a Rosary,
Some underwear, some dreams, and lots of books.
And board yourself. Try not to fall, to drown,
To be a floating bloating, eyeless face.Not yet.
Think of your books, your words. Look up:
The sky to Moc Hoa is hazily blue.
Notes:
1. Moc Hoa, pronounced Mock Wah -- a town on the Vam Co Tay River near the border with Cambodia.
2. “Young lad” or “lad” – employed sarcastically of recruits by chief petty officers.
3. “Young hero” – employed sarcastically of recruits by chief petty officers and of Navy Corpsman in Field Medical Service School by Marine sergeant-instructors.
4. Utilities – heavy, olive-drab, 1950s style Marine Corps battle-dress issued to Navy personnel on their way to Viet-Nam. Too darned hot. I had to scrounge lighter clothing.
5. Samsara – in some Eastern religions the ocean of birth and death.
6. Gunboats – here, PBRs, or Patrol Boat, River. The history of this excellent craft and its use in river warfare is well documented.
7. Stars and Stripes store – more accurately, any one of the chain of Pacific Stars and Stripes book stores.
8. Swing ship – a helicopter, in my experience always the famous Huey, employed for carrying supplies and personnel on routine routes. The pilots sometimes spun them in very fast in order to try to avoid ground fire.
9. Seabag – duffel bag.
10. Skinny kid – most of us were.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
THE PRISONER Fact #8
#6 never dines in restaurants featuring old license plates hanging on the walls.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
THE PRISONER Fact #7
An unfortunate incident occurred on the outer perimeter when #34, a former Vatican superspy, tried to surrender to Rover in Latin.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Pilgrimage Along the A1
Mack Hall
From Peterborough drops a road
Across the Fens, into the past
(Where wary wraiths still wear the woad);
It comes to Chesterton at last.
And we will walk along that track,
Or hop a bus, perhaps; you know
How hard it is to sling a pack
When one is sixty-old, and slow.
That mapped blue line across our land
Follows along a Roman way
Where Hereward the Wake made stand
In mists where secret islands lay.
In Chesterton a Norman tower
Beside Saint Michael’s guards the fields;
Though clockless, still it counts slow hours
And centuries long hidden and sealed.
And there before a looted tomb,
Long bare of candles, flowers, and prayers,
We will in our poor Latin resume
Aves for old de Beauville’s cares.
From Peterborough drops a road
Across the Fens, into the past
(Where wary wraiths still wear the woad);
It comes to Chesterton at last.
And we will walk along that track,
Or hop a bus, perhaps; you know
How hard it is to sling a pack
When one is sixty-old, and slow.
That mapped blue line across our land
Follows along a Roman way
Where Hereward the Wake made stand
In mists where secret islands lay.
In Chesterton a Norman tower
Beside Saint Michael’s guards the fields;
Though clockless, still it counts slow hours
And centuries long hidden and sealed.
And there before a looted tomb,
Long bare of candles, flowers, and prayers,
We will in our poor Latin resume
Aves for old de Beauville’s cares.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Saint Joseph the Just
Mack Hall
For Joe Burns, Father and Teacher
Saint Joseph in a dreary winter night
Took to himself a newborn not his own,
Who yet is always his, the Child of Light
Whose crib Saint Joseph knew to be a throne.
Saint Joseph shows men truth: each child is ours,
Adopted by each good man upon birth;
True fatherhood ordained in starlit hours
And ratified in Heaven and on earth.
Saint Joseph is the man who looked into
The eyes of Mary in her happy youth;
This strong man looked into her eyes and knew
She bore within her all eternal Truth.
Our witness is Saint Joseph, ever just:
God calls each man to take each child in trust.
For Joe Burns, Father and Teacher
Saint Joseph in a dreary winter night
Took to himself a newborn not his own,
Who yet is always his, the Child of Light
Whose crib Saint Joseph knew to be a throne.
Saint Joseph shows men truth: each child is ours,
Adopted by each good man upon birth;
True fatherhood ordained in starlit hours
And ratified in Heaven and on earth.
Saint Joseph is the man who looked into
The eyes of Mary in her happy youth;
This strong man looked into her eyes and knew
She bore within her all eternal Truth.
Our witness is Saint Joseph, ever just:
God calls each man to take each child in trust.
THE PRISONER -- Fact #6 About #6
#6 is a STAR TREK man, and would not bother A, B, or C-ing to the galaxy next door to see a STAR WARS anything.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Weak Tea
Mack Hall
The Boston Tea Party of 1773 is said to have been a reasonable protest against taxation without representation. The English view is that after 150 years it was about time for the colonies to stop being a drag on the English economy and to start helping pay for their own maintenance and defense.
The tea parties of 2009 are less defensible, except for the environmental matter – the tea this year was drunk, not dumped into a harbor to pollute the little fishies. The reality is that our contemporary tea parties are not about lack of representation but rather about folks (wearing clothes made in slave-labor camps in the Far East) throwing polite hissy-fits for getting exactly the government for which they voted.
Or maybe the government for which they did not vote at all.
Indeed, if the one requirement for participation in a Taxed Enough Already Tea Party were the possession of an I-voted-last-November voter card, how many people could have shown up?
Under the kings the theory is that the hierarchy of power is from God to the Christian monarch to the people. Under a republic the usual hierarchy of power is from the people to their elected rulers, and there is no God. In our Republic the general idea has been that power is given by God to the people, who then prayerfully and thoughtfully elect their leaders, which explains the saintly Ted Kennedy, who once walked on water.
Unfortunately most Americans don’t vote. Some can’t, because of youth, mental incompetence, or felony conviction (which doesn’t apply to Rush Limbaugh with his illegal drug issues, because he’s special and you’re not). Of the rest, many don’t bother to register, and of those who register, only about half ever vote. One fears they are too busy obediently listening to Glenn Beck yell at them.
A protest against a federal government that was empowered by democratic vote only four months before seems to be pretty weak tea. Similarly, sitting around over coffee (or tea) and belly-aching about the state government, the county government, the city government, or the school board unless the belly-acher actually voted in those elections is an exercise of the absolute freedom to be a gaseous phony.
Historical minutiae of no particular importance:
1. George Washington was the 11th President, not the first. After independence from perfidious Albion, this country functioned (badly) under the Articles of Confederation. The argument that the first ten presidents were leaders of Congress, not of the Confederation, won’t brew.
2. The United States government has in the past sent the United States Army to shoot and hang tax protestors, beginning with Shay’s Rebellion and The Whiskey Rebellion. Being shot might have been a lesser punishment than having to endure that princess CNN reporter.
3. The first President (I capitalize the noun because of my deep respect for the office) born in the United States was Martin Van Buren. The ten Presidents under the Articles of Confederation were all born in English colonies, as were eight of the first nine Presidents under the Constitution. If the concept that an American President must be American born is valid, then the first President is Van Buren and the second is John Tyler, all those preceding being invalid.
4. The final irony about any American tea party is that very little tea is grown here; most tea consumed in America is grown in over forty countries in Asia and Africa, and imported mostly by English companies.
And, hey, how about that balance of trade with Communist China, eh?
The Boston Tea Party of 1773 is said to have been a reasonable protest against taxation without representation. The English view is that after 150 years it was about time for the colonies to stop being a drag on the English economy and to start helping pay for their own maintenance and defense.
The tea parties of 2009 are less defensible, except for the environmental matter – the tea this year was drunk, not dumped into a harbor to pollute the little fishies. The reality is that our contemporary tea parties are not about lack of representation but rather about folks (wearing clothes made in slave-labor camps in the Far East) throwing polite hissy-fits for getting exactly the government for which they voted.
Or maybe the government for which they did not vote at all.
Indeed, if the one requirement for participation in a Taxed Enough Already Tea Party were the possession of an I-voted-last-November voter card, how many people could have shown up?
Under the kings the theory is that the hierarchy of power is from God to the Christian monarch to the people. Under a republic the usual hierarchy of power is from the people to their elected rulers, and there is no God. In our Republic the general idea has been that power is given by God to the people, who then prayerfully and thoughtfully elect their leaders, which explains the saintly Ted Kennedy, who once walked on water.
Unfortunately most Americans don’t vote. Some can’t, because of youth, mental incompetence, or felony conviction (which doesn’t apply to Rush Limbaugh with his illegal drug issues, because he’s special and you’re not). Of the rest, many don’t bother to register, and of those who register, only about half ever vote. One fears they are too busy obediently listening to Glenn Beck yell at them.
A protest against a federal government that was empowered by democratic vote only four months before seems to be pretty weak tea. Similarly, sitting around over coffee (or tea) and belly-aching about the state government, the county government, the city government, or the school board unless the belly-acher actually voted in those elections is an exercise of the absolute freedom to be a gaseous phony.
Historical minutiae of no particular importance:
1. George Washington was the 11th President, not the first. After independence from perfidious Albion, this country functioned (badly) under the Articles of Confederation. The argument that the first ten presidents were leaders of Congress, not of the Confederation, won’t brew.
2. The United States government has in the past sent the United States Army to shoot and hang tax protestors, beginning with Shay’s Rebellion and The Whiskey Rebellion. Being shot might have been a lesser punishment than having to endure that princess CNN reporter.
3. The first President (I capitalize the noun because of my deep respect for the office) born in the United States was Martin Van Buren. The ten Presidents under the Articles of Confederation were all born in English colonies, as were eight of the first nine Presidents under the Constitution. If the concept that an American President must be American born is valid, then the first President is Van Buren and the second is John Tyler, all those preceding being invalid.
4. The final irony about any American tea party is that very little tea is grown here; most tea consumed in America is grown in over forty countries in Asia and Africa, and imported mostly by English companies.
And, hey, how about that balance of trade with Communist China, eh?
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Russians in Moc Hoa
I read lots of Russian lit (in translation, of course) while in Viet-Nam
Mack Hall
Russians in Moc Hoa
I understood poor, young Raskolnikov
And read all I found by Anton Chekhov
Remembered nothing about Bulgakhov
Heard naughty whispers about Nabokov
Thrilled to the Cossacks in old Sholokov
And then I learned about Kalashnikov –
This, I decided, is where I get off!
Mack Hall
Russians in Moc Hoa
I understood poor, young Raskolnikov
And read all I found by Anton Chekhov
Remembered nothing about Bulgakhov
Heard naughty whispers about Nabokov
Thrilled to the Cossacks in old Sholokov
And then I learned about Kalashnikov –
This, I decided, is where I get off!
Monday, April 13, 2009
Little Known Fact #4 About THE PRISONER
#6 hides his Winnie-the-Pooh books unders his pillow. If #2 ever finds out...
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Ubi Petrus
Mack Hall
For Inky and Jason
"Ubi Petrus, ibi Ecclesia."
- St. Ambrose of Milan
Where Peter was, there also was the Tomb --
Blood-sodden dreams cold-rotting in old sin,
The Chalice left unwashed, the Upper Room
A three-days’ grave for hope-forsaken men.
Where Peter is, there also should we be,
Poor pilgrims, his, a-kneel before the Throne
Of Eosian Christendom, and none but he
Is called to lead the Church to eternal Dawn.
Where Peter then will be, there is the Faith,
Transubstantiation, whipped blood, ripped flesh
A solid reality, not a wraith
Of shop-soiled heresies labeled as fresh.
Where Peter is, O Lord, there let us pray,
Poor battered wanderers along Your way.
For Inky and Jason
"Ubi Petrus, ibi Ecclesia."
- St. Ambrose of Milan
Where Peter was, there also was the Tomb --
Blood-sodden dreams cold-rotting in old sin,
The Chalice left unwashed, the Upper Room
A three-days’ grave for hope-forsaken men.
Where Peter is, there also should we be,
Poor pilgrims, his, a-kneel before the Throne
Of Eosian Christendom, and none but he
Is called to lead the Church to eternal Dawn.
Where Peter then will be, there is the Faith,
Transubstantiation, whipped blood, ripped flesh
A solid reality, not a wraith
Of shop-soiled heresies labeled as fresh.
Where Peter is, O Lord, there let us pray,
Poor battered wanderers along Your way.
Pontius Pilate's Pleynt
Mack Hall
My Caesar and my Empire have I served,
A diplomatic functionary, true
To distant duties, and never unnerved
By greedy Greek or perfidious Jew.
Outside the arca archa have I thought,
Festooned my desk and office with awards;
My Caesar’s honour only have I sought
While sparing for myself but few rewards.
I built with focused care my resume’
And filed each memorandum, note, and scrip;
I justly ruled (no matter what they say),
And seldom sent men to the cross or whip.
But, oh! That thing about an open vault –
I never got it. And why was that my fault?
My Caesar and my Empire have I served,
A diplomatic functionary, true
To distant duties, and never unnerved
By greedy Greek or perfidious Jew.
Outside the arca archa have I thought,
Festooned my desk and office with awards;
My Caesar’s honour only have I sought
While sparing for myself but few rewards.
I built with focused care my resume’
And filed each memorandum, note, and scrip;
I justly ruled (no matter what they say),
And seldom sent men to the cross or whip.
But, oh! That thing about an open vault –
I never got it. And why was that my fault?
Another Fact About THE PRISONER
#6 would have rescued the Maersk Alabama but #2 strapped #6 to that aluminum see-saw in the control room and made him too sea-sick to go.
The Maersk Alabama Incident: One Shot, One Kill, One Million Lawsuits
Mack Hall
The brilliant rescue of Captain Richard Phillips of the Maersk Alabama by the United States Navy leads one to wonder if the roaring we hear is caused by a tidal wave (“tsunami” is so last six months) of lawsuits being filed against America by Americans.
We are awaiting the usual pictures of the requisite peaceful anti-American rioting in London and Paris by peaceful peace activists peacefully chanting “Death to America” and “Peacefully behead those who disapprove of peaceful Islam.”
What has not yet been decided is when the Navy SEALS involved will be turned over to the Belgians for a show trial – uh – fair trial, or when The Leader of the Free World will next genuflect before another thug and apologize for evil, perfidious America’s brutality, colonialism, and carbon-footprintism.
Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, America’s leading druggie Republicans, will whoop and strut like the couch-carrot emperor in Gladiator.
Maersk will probably pay off somebody anyway: “Pretty-please don’t steal our ships.”
Mexico will claim that this is all the fault of the few remaining American gun manufacturers.
The American taxpayer will probably be made to give all the Somali relatives (“He was my third cousin twice removed…sob!”) far more money than is granted to American war widows and orphans.
Greenpeace will sue for the global warming caused by the discharge of weapons.
PETA will kill some more dogs while griping that the First Family did not rescue Bo from a shelter. The President’s Death Star limousine will sport a bumper sticker reading “I (heart) My Portuguese Water Dog.” This will replace the Maersk Alabama in the news.
Germany, Britain, and Norway will squabble about the Altmark incident in 1940, but will in the end agree that it was America’s fault. Descendants will sue America because Texaco sold the British government a can of oil that was later used (according to expert testimony) to lubricate a galley ventilation fan on HMS Cossack.
Hey, how about the Chinese navy stepping in and helping out off East Africa, eh?
U.S. Navy officers anywhere in the world who may have heard of the Maersk Alabama will receive medals; the enlisted men who risked their lives will be told to go clean something.
And in the meantime, between satellite-phone consultations with their American attorneys, Somali pirate-lords will be having the lads clean their AK-47s and brush up on their boarding-party skills.
The brilliant rescue of Captain Richard Phillips of the Maersk Alabama by the United States Navy leads one to wonder if the roaring we hear is caused by a tidal wave (“tsunami” is so last six months) of lawsuits being filed against America by Americans.
We are awaiting the usual pictures of the requisite peaceful anti-American rioting in London and Paris by peaceful peace activists peacefully chanting “Death to America” and “Peacefully behead those who disapprove of peaceful Islam.”
What has not yet been decided is when the Navy SEALS involved will be turned over to the Belgians for a show trial – uh – fair trial, or when The Leader of the Free World will next genuflect before another thug and apologize for evil, perfidious America’s brutality, colonialism, and carbon-footprintism.
Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, America’s leading druggie Republicans, will whoop and strut like the couch-carrot emperor in Gladiator.
Maersk will probably pay off somebody anyway: “Pretty-please don’t steal our ships.”
Mexico will claim that this is all the fault of the few remaining American gun manufacturers.
The American taxpayer will probably be made to give all the Somali relatives (“He was my third cousin twice removed…sob!”) far more money than is granted to American war widows and orphans.
Greenpeace will sue for the global warming caused by the discharge of weapons.
PETA will kill some more dogs while griping that the First Family did not rescue Bo from a shelter. The President’s Death Star limousine will sport a bumper sticker reading “I (heart) My Portuguese Water Dog.” This will replace the Maersk Alabama in the news.
Germany, Britain, and Norway will squabble about the Altmark incident in 1940, but will in the end agree that it was America’s fault. Descendants will sue America because Texaco sold the British government a can of oil that was later used (according to expert testimony) to lubricate a galley ventilation fan on HMS Cossack.
Hey, how about the Chinese navy stepping in and helping out off East Africa, eh?
U.S. Navy officers anywhere in the world who may have heard of the Maersk Alabama will receive medals; the enlisted men who risked their lives will be told to go clean something.
And in the meantime, between satellite-phone consultations with their American attorneys, Somali pirate-lords will be having the lads clean their AK-47s and brush up on their boarding-party skills.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Little Known Fact #1 About THE PRISONER
#6 finally realized he could intimidate Rover by glaring at him in that head down / eyes up way he uses in the opening.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
History's Lost E-Mails - a Rebuttal to an Anonymous Committee of Merovingians
Dear Anonymous Accuser:
Thank you for your note, the contents of
which sound much like the block warden’s caution (“Your attitude is noticed,
comrade.”) to Yuri in the film version of Doctor Zhivago.
I have re-read the column, which I wrote
nine years ago, and find nothing offensive in it (although it is rather
puerile), nor do you detail exactly what is offensive in it and why I should be
sanctioned. You are being Kafka-esque, and I say this as someone who has read
Kafka: you do not tell me what offense I have purportedly committed nor do you face
me with an accuser. You do not even face me with you, for you do not give your
name. You employ the passive voice in referring to an “Adult Content policy” and
to “Community Guidelines,” which sounds like something from an episode of
Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner: “The Committee won’t like this, Number
Six.”
Google (and one could find “google”
offensive, with its history mocking someone’s physical characteristics) is a
private company, and so is free to publish or not publish, as is only
right. And I am free to pity Google for
moral, ethical, and literary cowardice.
I was raised in situational poverty,
barely graduated from high school, and spent 18 months in Viet-Nam. Upon
returning to the USA (with life-long skin cancer which the DVA denies) I worked
straight nights (double shifts on weekends) as an ambulance driver and later an
LVN to put myself through university. I taught for almost forty years in public
school, community college, and university as an adjunct instructor of no status
whatsoever. In retirement I volunteered with our local school’s reading program
until the Covid ended that, and I still volunteer with the lads at the local prison.
I volunteer in community cleanup after our hurricanes (tho’ I’m getting a
little old for that). I’ve worked hard all my life, paid my taxes, paid off my
house at age 70, receive only half of my Social Security because of some vague
law, and never gamed the system. Indeed, I would say that the system has gamed
me.
And was all of this so that some frightened
committee of anonymous inquisitors staring at an Orwellian telescreen or a
Mordor-ish Palantir could find an innocuous scribble insensitive?
Pffffft.
Sincerely,
Lawrence Hall
Saturday, April 4, 2009
The Mirror of a Man
The Mirror of a Man
For Robin
As his adventures continue
A good knife is the mirror of a man,
Carefully crafted by the Master’s hands,
Forged in the fire, hammered, water-baptized,
And forged again, made strong and sharp and true.
A good knife is the mirror of a friend,
A fellow pilgrim on the sunlit road,
A needful companion, always at hand,
Welcome as sunrise and coffee at dawn.
A good knife is the mirror of a life
Lived humbly in this sometimes Lenten world,
But proven a sword when, at journey’s end,
A man at last enters Jerusalem.
-- Mack Hall, 4 April 2009
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Notre Dame and the Upside-Down Helmet
Mack Hall
You can talk of your Judge Judy and your high school principal and your mother-in-law, but you have never been truly judged and found wanting until you have had a dinner-jacketed maitre d’ at the Notre Dame faculty club evaluate – and find inadequate – your very soul with the subtle arching of an eyebrow above his unblinking reptilian eye.
I was honored to spend a happy summer at Notre Dame under the mentoring of the brilliant and wonderfully humorous Thomas Morris (whom you can find at http://www.morrisinstitute.com and whose books you can find at Amazon.com and other good bookstores). I and the other Fellows of that year’s National Endowment for the Humanities were nominally – remember that adverb – members of the Notre Dame faculty for the six weeks, and I still have my faculty I.D. card somewhere.
Toward the end of our summer we Fellows decided to put on shoes and clean shirts and take a celebratory dinner in the faculty club just to say we had done so, and after appalling Jeeves and some members of the real faculty we enjoyed ourselves immensely in the elegant dining room. It was a fitting end to a marvelous six weeks.
Notre Dame was founded in the middle of the 19th century by a French missionary order, but its football reputation rests on generations of Irish lads who were not welcome at Harvard or Yale. Thus, an accident of immigration resulted in the school mascot NOT being “The Fighting French.” This paragraph has nothing to do with the narrative, and as a teacher I’d take points off for it, but I like it so I’m leaving it in.
The Notre Dame adventure continued when Tom asked me and several others to read and comment on the draft of what would be one of his best books, Making Sense of It All. This was an enjoyable labor for which he gave me many thanks. In all humility I must confess that Tom did not ask me to read or comment on the draft of his next book.
Notre Dame remains dear to me all these years later. I remember with a “I Survived” mentality how our lot were billeted in Saint Edward’s Hall, Lentenly un-air-conditioned during a record-hot summer in which the temps reached 106 day after day. Thus we sloshed in the covered pool when possible, spent our off-class hours reading and writing in the mechanized air of the student commons, and walked in the cool of the evenings, sometimes participating in the Notre Dame tradition of praying the Rosary in the Grotto at dusk.
The Basilica of the Sacred Heart is only a few steps away from St. Edward’s Hall, and we usually entered by the east door beneath these words carved in the stone of the arch: “God, Country, and Notre Dame.” This is much better than “Me, Me, and AIG” or “Me, Me, and Enron” or perhaps “He Who Dies With the Most Toys Wins.” On either side are bronze plaques commemorating the sons – and now daughters, I fear – of Notre Dame who died in America’s wars.
Someone pointed out to me the light at the entrance – a bulb fitted into the upside-down World War I helmet of Fr. Charles O’Connell, who survived and became the 12th president of Notre Dame. I suppose Fr. O’Connell wanted to make sure he could find his helmet in the middle of the night the next time Germany started a war.
Notre Dame du Lac (“Our Lady of the Lake”) began as a grade school in a log cabin in a frozen wilderness in the 1840s, but the French missionary priests envisioned a great university topped by a golden dome and a statue of the Blessed Mother. Generations of sacrifice and service made it so.
The whole point of Notre Dame is that it is a Catholic university. The football team, the upside-down helmet with a light bulb in it, the lovely lakes, the reconstructed log cabin, the rather stupid-looking leprechaun, Knute Rockne and The Gipper – all these are fun, but they are not what Notre Dame is about, the transmission of Christian civilization, via such great teachers as Thomas Morris, from one generation to the next.
The current administration of Notre Dame has invited the President of the United States to speak at graduation in May. Normally this would be a “how nice” thing, because no one listens to graduation speakers, not even to presidents. One attends graduation to dress up like a monk or monkette, pose for pictures, and toss one’s hat and maybe one’s cookies later on, not to listen to someone expel the usual flatus about dreams being the key (there’s always a key) that unlocks the road to the future of the door or something. I dare to say that were Jesus Himself to speak at Notre Dame’s ceremonies in May the graduates would be too busy text-messaging each other to notice: “dud hu d dud in whit keg mi pl8s l8ter.”
Unfortunately, the current president’s fashionable enthusiasm (hey, all the cool kids are doing it, right?) for infanticide has gotten all tangled up in this Christianity thing. When Jesus said that children should be permitted to come to Him, He didn’t mean that the children should be shot, gassed, burnt, poisoned, or flushed first. Indeed, He was very clear that a failure to protect children would be severely punished.
Jesus appeared in a time when the dominant Greco-Roman culture highly approved of killing off any babies, especially girls, whom the sperm-donor or the state found lacking. The modern science of economics under Hitler would later label such children – and folks past retirement age -- as “useless feeders.”
Certainly one may speak freely in a public forum, and the president probably won’t even mention killing babies anyway.
But this forum is different. This forum is Notre Dame, named for Jesus’ Mother, who chooses life. Further, the speaker is going to be given an honorary doctorate in, oh, doctorness or something, which would imply a Christian school’s ratification of his contempt for the lives of the most vulnerable among us. This ratification is to be made during the graduation of hundreds of young men and women who are now forced into an unhappy alternative: to attend the graduation they have earned and thus possibly be construed as approving of the killing of babies, or staying away entirely and denying themselves their special day. That choice that was not part of the deal when they entered Notre Dame four years ago.
One wonders if the current maitre d’ at the Notre Dame faculty club -– or anyone else -- will lift an eyebrow at that.
You can talk of your Judge Judy and your high school principal and your mother-in-law, but you have never been truly judged and found wanting until you have had a dinner-jacketed maitre d’ at the Notre Dame faculty club evaluate – and find inadequate – your very soul with the subtle arching of an eyebrow above his unblinking reptilian eye.
I was honored to spend a happy summer at Notre Dame under the mentoring of the brilliant and wonderfully humorous Thomas Morris (whom you can find at http://www.morrisinstitute.com and whose books you can find at Amazon.com and other good bookstores). I and the other Fellows of that year’s National Endowment for the Humanities were nominally – remember that adverb – members of the Notre Dame faculty for the six weeks, and I still have my faculty I.D. card somewhere.
Toward the end of our summer we Fellows decided to put on shoes and clean shirts and take a celebratory dinner in the faculty club just to say we had done so, and after appalling Jeeves and some members of the real faculty we enjoyed ourselves immensely in the elegant dining room. It was a fitting end to a marvelous six weeks.
Notre Dame was founded in the middle of the 19th century by a French missionary order, but its football reputation rests on generations of Irish lads who were not welcome at Harvard or Yale. Thus, an accident of immigration resulted in the school mascot NOT being “The Fighting French.” This paragraph has nothing to do with the narrative, and as a teacher I’d take points off for it, but I like it so I’m leaving it in.
The Notre Dame adventure continued when Tom asked me and several others to read and comment on the draft of what would be one of his best books, Making Sense of It All. This was an enjoyable labor for which he gave me many thanks. In all humility I must confess that Tom did not ask me to read or comment on the draft of his next book.
Notre Dame remains dear to me all these years later. I remember with a “I Survived” mentality how our lot were billeted in Saint Edward’s Hall, Lentenly un-air-conditioned during a record-hot summer in which the temps reached 106 day after day. Thus we sloshed in the covered pool when possible, spent our off-class hours reading and writing in the mechanized air of the student commons, and walked in the cool of the evenings, sometimes participating in the Notre Dame tradition of praying the Rosary in the Grotto at dusk.
The Basilica of the Sacred Heart is only a few steps away from St. Edward’s Hall, and we usually entered by the east door beneath these words carved in the stone of the arch: “God, Country, and Notre Dame.” This is much better than “Me, Me, and AIG” or “Me, Me, and Enron” or perhaps “He Who Dies With the Most Toys Wins.” On either side are bronze plaques commemorating the sons – and now daughters, I fear – of Notre Dame who died in America’s wars.
Someone pointed out to me the light at the entrance – a bulb fitted into the upside-down World War I helmet of Fr. Charles O’Connell, who survived and became the 12th president of Notre Dame. I suppose Fr. O’Connell wanted to make sure he could find his helmet in the middle of the night the next time Germany started a war.
Notre Dame du Lac (“Our Lady of the Lake”) began as a grade school in a log cabin in a frozen wilderness in the 1840s, but the French missionary priests envisioned a great university topped by a golden dome and a statue of the Blessed Mother. Generations of sacrifice and service made it so.
The whole point of Notre Dame is that it is a Catholic university. The football team, the upside-down helmet with a light bulb in it, the lovely lakes, the reconstructed log cabin, the rather stupid-looking leprechaun, Knute Rockne and The Gipper – all these are fun, but they are not what Notre Dame is about, the transmission of Christian civilization, via such great teachers as Thomas Morris, from one generation to the next.
The current administration of Notre Dame has invited the President of the United States to speak at graduation in May. Normally this would be a “how nice” thing, because no one listens to graduation speakers, not even to presidents. One attends graduation to dress up like a monk or monkette, pose for pictures, and toss one’s hat and maybe one’s cookies later on, not to listen to someone expel the usual flatus about dreams being the key (there’s always a key) that unlocks the road to the future of the door or something. I dare to say that were Jesus Himself to speak at Notre Dame’s ceremonies in May the graduates would be too busy text-messaging each other to notice: “dud hu d dud in whit keg mi pl8s l8ter.”
Unfortunately, the current president’s fashionable enthusiasm (hey, all the cool kids are doing it, right?) for infanticide has gotten all tangled up in this Christianity thing. When Jesus said that children should be permitted to come to Him, He didn’t mean that the children should be shot, gassed, burnt, poisoned, or flushed first. Indeed, He was very clear that a failure to protect children would be severely punished.
Jesus appeared in a time when the dominant Greco-Roman culture highly approved of killing off any babies, especially girls, whom the sperm-donor or the state found lacking. The modern science of economics under Hitler would later label such children – and folks past retirement age -- as “useless feeders.”
Certainly one may speak freely in a public forum, and the president probably won’t even mention killing babies anyway.
But this forum is different. This forum is Notre Dame, named for Jesus’ Mother, who chooses life. Further, the speaker is going to be given an honorary doctorate in, oh, doctorness or something, which would imply a Christian school’s ratification of his contempt for the lives of the most vulnerable among us. This ratification is to be made during the graduation of hundreds of young men and women who are now forced into an unhappy alternative: to attend the graduation they have earned and thus possibly be construed as approving of the killing of babies, or staying away entirely and denying themselves their special day. That choice that was not part of the deal when they entered Notre Dame four years ago.
One wonders if the current maitre d’ at the Notre Dame faculty club -– or anyone else -- will lift an eyebrow at that.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
The Grouchy Man's MeMeMeSpaceBookThingie
Mack Hall
About ME, ME, ME: Why do you care? Why would I care if you care? Get lost.
MY, MY, MY Ten Favorite Movies: Read a book, dummy. But I, I, I confess to enjoying Braveheart and Titanic for their happy endings. Any movie featuring Mel Gibson being ripped apart by cackling torturers is okay by ME, ME, ME.
MY, MY, MY Ten Favorite Television Shows: At the moment I, I, I’m watching The Tudors, but only for the beheading scenes.
MY, MY, MY Turn-Ons: Scotch, cigars, and imagining the inventor of this self-indulgent site falling to his death through a faulty airplane toilet.
MY, MY, MY Turn-Offs: Kittens, puppies, long walks on the beach, sincere people, flowers, candle-light dinners.
MY, MY, MY Music: Wagner. All that 19th-century pseudo-paganism with lots of violence and shrieking makes ME, ME, ME want to go out and conquer France. The repeated “Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho!” bits are confusing, though. Was Wagner trying to make the iambics work, or was he yelling for a cracker?
MY, MY, MY Most Specialist Favoritist Memory: When I, I, I ran over a bunny rabbit with MY, MY, MY lawnmower.
In MY, MY, MY Room I, I, I Have Posters of: Vlad the Impaler, Saddamn Hussein, Henry VIII, Mussolini, and Hannah Montana.
MY, MY, MY Bestest Wish For the Mother Earth: Al Gore being eaten by polar bears. Or maybe Heather McCartney’s wooden leg being gnawed by a harp seal.
MY, MY, MY Greatest Fear: Happy children singing and dancing in a sunlit meadow. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!
MY, MY, MY Favoritest Food: Critter. Killed. Cooked.
MY, MY, MY Favorite Television Shows: Anything with people being humiliated for laughs. And snakes.
MY, MY, MY Motto: Take time to stomp the flowers.
MY, MY, MY Favorite Car: Anything with treads and a cannon.
MY, MY, MY Favorite Clothes: Coats made from the skins of cute little hamsters sacrificed to weird gods under a full moon.
MY, MY, MY Favorite Song: “Lenin Lived Here,” by the Red Army Chorus.
MY, MY, MY Wish For You: Go Away. A MyMyMySpaceBookThingie site is all about ME, ME, ME.
About ME, ME, ME: Why do you care? Why would I care if you care? Get lost.
MY, MY, MY Ten Favorite Movies: Read a book, dummy. But I, I, I confess to enjoying Braveheart and Titanic for their happy endings. Any movie featuring Mel Gibson being ripped apart by cackling torturers is okay by ME, ME, ME.
MY, MY, MY Ten Favorite Television Shows: At the moment I, I, I’m watching The Tudors, but only for the beheading scenes.
MY, MY, MY Turn-Ons: Scotch, cigars, and imagining the inventor of this self-indulgent site falling to his death through a faulty airplane toilet.
MY, MY, MY Turn-Offs: Kittens, puppies, long walks on the beach, sincere people, flowers, candle-light dinners.
MY, MY, MY Music: Wagner. All that 19th-century pseudo-paganism with lots of violence and shrieking makes ME, ME, ME want to go out and conquer France. The repeated “Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho!” bits are confusing, though. Was Wagner trying to make the iambics work, or was he yelling for a cracker?
MY, MY, MY Most Specialist Favoritist Memory: When I, I, I ran over a bunny rabbit with MY, MY, MY lawnmower.
In MY, MY, MY Room I, I, I Have Posters of: Vlad the Impaler, Saddamn Hussein, Henry VIII, Mussolini, and Hannah Montana.
MY, MY, MY Bestest Wish For the Mother Earth: Al Gore being eaten by polar bears. Or maybe Heather McCartney’s wooden leg being gnawed by a harp seal.
MY, MY, MY Greatest Fear: Happy children singing and dancing in a sunlit meadow. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!
MY, MY, MY Favoritest Food: Critter. Killed. Cooked.
MY, MY, MY Favorite Television Shows: Anything with people being humiliated for laughs. And snakes.
MY, MY, MY Motto: Take time to stomp the flowers.
MY, MY, MY Favorite Car: Anything with treads and a cannon.
MY, MY, MY Favorite Clothes: Coats made from the skins of cute little hamsters sacrificed to weird gods under a full moon.
MY, MY, MY Favorite Song: “Lenin Lived Here,” by the Red Army Chorus.
MY, MY, MY Wish For You: Go Away. A MyMyMySpaceBookThingie site is all about ME, ME, ME.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Books as Kindling
Mack Hall
Amazon.com is selling its Kindle II, and most of us have never even seen its predecessor, the Kindle I.
The Kindle is a small, light, flat electronic gadget that displays a book one page at a time on its 6" diagonal screen. The real utility of this device is that, according to Amazon, it can store approximately 1,500 books. The number would vary because Peter Rabbit and The City of God, each a book of wisdom in its own way, differ in size.
The Kindle II as advertised by Amazon.com costs $359.00, which includes a one-year warranty with a one-time I-dropped-it protection. A leather Kindle cover – in case you fear you might drop the thing a second time – is $29.99. A two-year extended warranty, which really means only one year following the first year, is $65. Guts, feathers, and all, then, a fully kitted-out and protected Kindle II is $453.99.
Now you’re ready and rarin’ to read, right?
Whoa, pardner; don’t polish those bi-focals just yet.
You’ve bought only the book-holder-thingie. Now you have to buy a book for it. That’s right – this pricey revolution in reading books doesn’t include a book.
Amazon.com offers some 245,000 titles for over-the-air download, most – not all – for $9.99.
Buying a Kindle, then, is rather like paying forty or fifty dollars for a coffee cup at BigBuck’s and then having to pay another couple of dollars for some coffee to put into it.
And while you are buying your cup of coffee and your back is turned someone else will help himself to your Kindle while ignoring the unguarded paperback at the next table.
There are a few people who will pay a great deal of money for the Kindle simply because it is a fashion and they want to be seen to be sporting the latest. For most of us, $350 for a shiny book-holder-thingie that will surely suffer the fragility and mortality of all electronics seems a poor investment. Besides, in a year or two such devices will probably be on sale in a bubble-package at the supermarket checkout, and the downloads will be a few dollars each.
Oppressors won’t like electronic reading devices such as the Kindle because they will make burning books more less theatrical. Instead of tossing each book into a jolly bookfire while chanting "Saint Augustine, we burn you! We burn you!" and "Beatrix Potter, we burn you! We burn you!" the GooberTroopers will be burning only one plastic gadget:
"Comrade Brother UberPhartenFuhrer Smith, why isn’t there a bigger fire?"
"I’m sorry, Comrade Brother UberDooberFuhrer Jones; we found only one Kindle. We had to beat up a reactionary fourth-grader to get it away from her."
"Well, just rake it out of the fire and throw it in again."
"The fourth-grader, mein Comrade Brother UberdooberFuhrer?"
"No, no, no, we burn books only; destroying children is the prerogative of the new Director of Health and Human Services."
-30-
Amazon.com is selling its Kindle II, and most of us have never even seen its predecessor, the Kindle I.
The Kindle is a small, light, flat electronic gadget that displays a book one page at a time on its 6" diagonal screen. The real utility of this device is that, according to Amazon, it can store approximately 1,500 books. The number would vary because Peter Rabbit and The City of God, each a book of wisdom in its own way, differ in size.
The Kindle II as advertised by Amazon.com costs $359.00, which includes a one-year warranty with a one-time I-dropped-it protection. A leather Kindle cover – in case you fear you might drop the thing a second time – is $29.99. A two-year extended warranty, which really means only one year following the first year, is $65. Guts, feathers, and all, then, a fully kitted-out and protected Kindle II is $453.99.
Now you’re ready and rarin’ to read, right?
Whoa, pardner; don’t polish those bi-focals just yet.
You’ve bought only the book-holder-thingie. Now you have to buy a book for it. That’s right – this pricey revolution in reading books doesn’t include a book.
Amazon.com offers some 245,000 titles for over-the-air download, most – not all – for $9.99.
Buying a Kindle, then, is rather like paying forty or fifty dollars for a coffee cup at BigBuck’s and then having to pay another couple of dollars for some coffee to put into it.
And while you are buying your cup of coffee and your back is turned someone else will help himself to your Kindle while ignoring the unguarded paperback at the next table.
There are a few people who will pay a great deal of money for the Kindle simply because it is a fashion and they want to be seen to be sporting the latest. For most of us, $350 for a shiny book-holder-thingie that will surely suffer the fragility and mortality of all electronics seems a poor investment. Besides, in a year or two such devices will probably be on sale in a bubble-package at the supermarket checkout, and the downloads will be a few dollars each.
Oppressors won’t like electronic reading devices such as the Kindle because they will make burning books more less theatrical. Instead of tossing each book into a jolly bookfire while chanting "Saint Augustine, we burn you! We burn you!" and "Beatrix Potter, we burn you! We burn you!" the GooberTroopers will be burning only one plastic gadget:
"Comrade Brother UberPhartenFuhrer Smith, why isn’t there a bigger fire?"
"I’m sorry, Comrade Brother UberDooberFuhrer Jones; we found only one Kindle. We had to beat up a reactionary fourth-grader to get it away from her."
"Well, just rake it out of the fire and throw it in again."
"The fourth-grader, mein Comrade Brother UberdooberFuhrer?"
"No, no, no, we burn books only; destroying children is the prerogative of the new Director of Health and Human Services."
-30-
Books as Kindling
Mack Hall
Amazon.com is selling its Kindle II, and most of us have never even seen its predecessor, the Kindle I.
Amazon.com is selling its Kindle II, and most of us have never even seen its predecessor, the Kindle I.
The Kindle is a small, light, flat electronic gadget that displays a book one page at a time on its 6" diagonal screen. The real utility of this device is that, according to Amazon, it can store approximately 1,500 books. The number would vary because Peter Rabbit and The City of God, each a book of wisdom in its own way, differ in size.
The Kindle II as advertised by Amazon.com costs $359.00, which includes a one-year warranty with a one-time I-dropped-it protection. A leather Kindle cover – in case you fear you might drop the thing a second time – is $29.99. A two-year extended warranty, which really means only one year following the first year, is $65. Guts, feathers, and all, then, a fully kitted-out and protected Kindle II is $453.99.
Now you’re ready and rarin’ to read, right?
Whoa, pardner; don’t polish those bi-focals just yet.
You’ve bought only the book-holder-thingie. Now you have to buy a book for it. That’s right – this pricey revolution in reading books doesn’t include a book.
Amazon.com offers some 245,000 titles for over-the-air download, most – not all – for $9.99.
Buying a Kindle, then, is rather like paying forty or fifty dollars for a coffee cup at BigBuck’s and then having to pay another couple of dollars for some coffee to put into it.
And while you are buying your cup of coffee and your back is turned someone else will help himself to your Kindle while ignoring the unguarded paperback at the next table.
There are a few people who will pay a great deal of money for the Kindle simply because it is a fashion and they want to be seen to be sporting the latest. For most of us, $350 for a shiny book-holder-thingie that will surely suffer the fragility and mortality of all electronics seems a poor investment. Besides, in a year or two such devices will probably be on sale in a bubble-package at the supermarket checkout, and the downloads will be a few dollars each.
Oppressors won’t like electronic reading devices such as the Kindle because they will make burning books more less theatrical. Instead of tossing each book into a jolly bookfire while chanting "Saint Augustine, we burn you! We burn you!" and "Beatrix Potter, we burn you! We burn you!" the GooberTroopers will be burning only one plastic gadget:
"Comrade Brother UberPhartenFuhrer Smith, why isn’t there a bigger fire?"
"I’m sorry, Comrade Brother UberDooberFuhrer Jones; we found only one Kindle. We had to beat up a reactionary fourth-grader to get it away from her."
"Well, just rake it out of the fire and throw it in again."
"The fourth-grader, mein Comrade Brother UberdooberFuhrer?"
"No, no, no, we burn books only; destroying children is the prerogative of the new Director of Health and Human Services."
-30-
Luminous Mysteries, a Poem
Mack Hall
Luminous Mysteries
For Brandon-in-the-Hallway, Leah-Talky-Smurf, Chase-in-the-Back-of-the-Room, Alyssa-the-Troublemaker, Kyle-the-Baby-Bell, Marci-Marci, Erica Diane, Kandace, Christy & Misty (one of 'em is bad, bad, bad -- but which one!?), Kylie Brooke, Drew-the Pretty, Traci Natalia, Queen Amanda, Princess Jerrica, Kayla Drew, Lindsey-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, and Merry Barbie!
You fluttered through the fluorescented halls
Like butterflies upon their springtime wings,
And softly touched each flowering soul with love,
Gentling Lent into merry Eastertide
With joy, with happiness, with coffee cups.
Coffee and happiness are but two parts
Of holiness, the Rosary of youth:
Old cars, after-school jobs, crawling the mall,
Your untied shoelaces, your awful jokes
Giving comfort to a suffering, sin-stained world.
And though you yawned at Sunday morning Mass,
Our Lady's Church was ever a kid-safe place
To be, to think, to pray, to love, and you
Are forever a Luminous Mystery
Prayed in the happy morning of your lives.
Luminous Mysteries
For Brandon-in-the-Hallway, Leah-Talky-Smurf, Chase-in-the-Back-of-the-Room, Alyssa-the-Troublemaker, Kyle-the-Baby-Bell, Marci-Marci, Erica Diane, Kandace, Christy & Misty (one of 'em is bad, bad, bad -- but which one!?), Kylie Brooke, Drew-the Pretty, Traci Natalia, Queen Amanda, Princess Jerrica, Kayla Drew, Lindsey-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, and Merry Barbie!
You fluttered through the fluorescented halls
Like butterflies upon their springtime wings,
And softly touched each flowering soul with love,
Gentling Lent into merry Eastertide
With joy, with happiness, with coffee cups.
Coffee and happiness are but two parts
Of holiness, the Rosary of youth:
Old cars, after-school jobs, crawling the mall,
Your untied shoelaces, your awful jokes
Giving comfort to a suffering, sin-stained world.
And though you yawned at Sunday morning Mass,
Our Lady's Church was ever a kid-safe place
To be, to think, to pray, to love, and you
Are forever a Luminous Mystery
Prayed in the happy morning of your lives.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
We're All Bankers Now
Mack Hall
Our government has, for reasons of its own, decided that failing banks – meaning their owners in Belgium or Spain, not the employees here in the USA -- should be rescued by the rest of us. Since our taxes will be employed for these endeavors, we, The People (bless us) are now owners of The People’s Banks.
Now that you and I are Owner-Comrade Bankers, shouldn’t we enjoy some of the old-fashioned perqs that go with swelling about as merchant bankers?
I wouldn’t bet on it, not that I could afford to bet. I think our lives as bankers will be the new style:
A banker’s life, old style: The occasional, um, conference in Las Vegas
A banker’s life, new style: Christmas party at Katfish Kloset
A banker’s life, old style: Cash bonuses
A banker’s life, new style: Coupons for two cups of drive-through coffee
A banker’s life, old style: Being greeted at the door by deferential employees
A banker’s life, new style: Being greeted at the door by a sullen security guard wielding an electronic wand that’s been places you really don’t want to know about
A banker’s life, old style: carpeted office with large windows
A banker’s life, new style: wherever you are now, probably with dim, energy-saving, mercury-poisoning, squiggly light bulbs
A banker’s life, old style: showing up for work at eight or nine
A banker’s life, new style: Dragging out of bed at four or five for the long drive to the plant which is due to close before autumn but you’ll have to find money to support the bank anyway
A banker’s life, old style: president of the Rotary Club
A banker’s life, new style: waiter at Rotary Club suppers
A banker’s life, old style: tailored suits
A banker’s life, new style: Nomex
A banker’s life, old style: leisurely luncheons at the club
A banker’s life, new style: a bag of cholesterol from GlopBurger
A banker’s life, old style: walnut-paneled boardrooms
A banker’s life, new style: a quick smoke out back by the dumpster
A banker’s life, old style: Rolex
A banker’s life, new style: Timex
A banker’s life, old style: Mont Blanc
A banker’s life, new style: Mont Bic
A banker’s life, old style: Cole-Haan
A banker’s life, new style: Goodwill
A banker’s life, old style: Private school for your kid in Switzerland
A banker’s life, new style: Hoping your kid can keep his job bagging groceries
A banker’s life, old style: Exchanging bon mots about the old days in the Skull and Bones
A banker’s life, new style: Swapping yarns about the old days in Iraq and Afghanistan
A banker’s life, old style: Skiing in Switzerland every winter
A banker’s life, new style: Disney World. Once. Maybe.
Work hard, my fellow Banker-Comrades; thousands of European and Chinese millionaires are depending on you.
-30-
Our government has, for reasons of its own, decided that failing banks – meaning their owners in Belgium or Spain, not the employees here in the USA -- should be rescued by the rest of us. Since our taxes will be employed for these endeavors, we, The People (bless us) are now owners of The People’s Banks.
Now that you and I are Owner-Comrade Bankers, shouldn’t we enjoy some of the old-fashioned perqs that go with swelling about as merchant bankers?
I wouldn’t bet on it, not that I could afford to bet. I think our lives as bankers will be the new style:
A banker’s life, old style: The occasional, um, conference in Las Vegas
A banker’s life, new style: Christmas party at Katfish Kloset
A banker’s life, old style: Cash bonuses
A banker’s life, new style: Coupons for two cups of drive-through coffee
A banker’s life, old style: Being greeted at the door by deferential employees
A banker’s life, new style: Being greeted at the door by a sullen security guard wielding an electronic wand that’s been places you really don’t want to know about
A banker’s life, old style: carpeted office with large windows
A banker’s life, new style: wherever you are now, probably with dim, energy-saving, mercury-poisoning, squiggly light bulbs
A banker’s life, old style: showing up for work at eight or nine
A banker’s life, new style: Dragging out of bed at four or five for the long drive to the plant which is due to close before autumn but you’ll have to find money to support the bank anyway
A banker’s life, old style: president of the Rotary Club
A banker’s life, new style: waiter at Rotary Club suppers
A banker’s life, old style: tailored suits
A banker’s life, new style: Nomex
A banker’s life, old style: leisurely luncheons at the club
A banker’s life, new style: a bag of cholesterol from GlopBurger
A banker’s life, old style: walnut-paneled boardrooms
A banker’s life, new style: a quick smoke out back by the dumpster
A banker’s life, old style: Rolex
A banker’s life, new style: Timex
A banker’s life, old style: Mont Blanc
A banker’s life, new style: Mont Bic
A banker’s life, old style: Cole-Haan
A banker’s life, new style: Goodwill
A banker’s life, old style: Private school for your kid in Switzerland
A banker’s life, new style: Hoping your kid can keep his job bagging groceries
A banker’s life, old style: Exchanging bon mots about the old days in the Skull and Bones
A banker’s life, new style: Swapping yarns about the old days in Iraq and Afghanistan
A banker’s life, old style: Skiing in Switzerland every winter
A banker’s life, new style: Disney World. Once. Maybe.
Work hard, my fellow Banker-Comrades; thousands of European and Chinese millionaires are depending on you.
-30-
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Dirty Books
Mack Hall
I am a product of…endless books…books in the study, books in the drawing room, books in the cloakroom, books…in the great bookcase on the landing, books in a bedroom, books piled as high as my shoulder…books of all kinds…
-- C. S. Lewis in Surprised by Joy
The Congress of the United States, having passed laws to protect us from psychotic nail clippers and large, menacing bottles of shampoo is now banning children’s books for our own good. The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA), passed last August as a response to lead-based paints on Chinese toys (the North Pole has been outsourced to Shanghai), embraces in a B-movie death-hug all children’s books printed before 1985.
Inks produced before that magical year are said to contain lead, and thus are said to endanger children. Said. But said by whom?
Just how many hundreds of copies of Little House on the Prairie a child would have to eat in order to ingest a measurable amount of lead has not been determined, nor is that Congress’ problem. The burden is ours. Anyone – meaning you or me – who gives a child a book printed before 1985 is obligated by law to spend hundreds of dollars having that book tested for lead.
Mom or Grandma, under that law you can be prosecuted for passing on to your favorite rug-rat that untested, unregistered copy of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm you so enjoyed as a girl.
After all, every parent’s worst nightmare is of his child being pursued down a dark street by lead-intoxicated Scuffy the Tugboat.
Pops, giving the lads in your life your boyhood copies of Old Yeller and Rifles for Watie is verboten unless you pay a great deal of money to have them tested and approved by a benevolent government.
One wonders if this book-banning is an expression of backdoor censorship of old and now incorrect books. A solid American kid who reads Johnny Tremain might be a little more uppity about oppressive governments than some glassy-eyed serf malnourished on the weirdness of Captain Underpants.
So many books have never been reprinted, and exist only because old copies reside in home libraries, public libraries, and used bookstores. The destruction of these books by government edict would be as great a crime against civilization as the Taliban blowing up ancient cultural artifacts in Afghanistan. 2,000-year-old works of art aren’t in harmony with Islam, and 100-year-old children’s books might not be in harmony with powerful and relatively anonymous functionaries within our federal government.
Government controls the means of distribution of intellectual property through the licensing, regulation, and monitoring of radio, television, telephones, and the ‘net. A printed book, though, is a silent expression of freedom. Reading a printed book is an activity that cannot easily be monitored. A book on one’s own shelves cannot be rewritten by a government agency’s computer technicians overnight.
But a book is not completely safe – it can be lost, burned, stolen, or seized. Nor are you safe. Someone in our government has found a way to threaten your freedom to read not by crudely banning books outright but by promoting a bogus health issue: who but a cad could possibly be against safeguarding the safety of children? Thus the book is not demonized, but rather the possibility of content of lead in the type, and by extension he who owns the book. To expose a child to a book thus becomes a crime.
To tyrants, buying your child an old book full of stories of heroes is a criminal act. In truth, giving your child that book makes you a real hero yourself.
Just be careful to look over your shoulder.
“I mean they’ve erased our history and are rewriting what remains…whole zones of literature are now forbidden and are disappearing from libraries.”
-- Antun to Josip re Tito’s Yugoslavia in Michael O’Brien’s The Island of the World
-30-
I am a product of…endless books…books in the study, books in the drawing room, books in the cloakroom, books…in the great bookcase on the landing, books in a bedroom, books piled as high as my shoulder…books of all kinds…
-- C. S. Lewis in Surprised by Joy
The Congress of the United States, having passed laws to protect us from psychotic nail clippers and large, menacing bottles of shampoo is now banning children’s books for our own good. The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA), passed last August as a response to lead-based paints on Chinese toys (the North Pole has been outsourced to Shanghai), embraces in a B-movie death-hug all children’s books printed before 1985.
Inks produced before that magical year are said to contain lead, and thus are said to endanger children. Said. But said by whom?
Just how many hundreds of copies of Little House on the Prairie a child would have to eat in order to ingest a measurable amount of lead has not been determined, nor is that Congress’ problem. The burden is ours. Anyone – meaning you or me – who gives a child a book printed before 1985 is obligated by law to spend hundreds of dollars having that book tested for lead.
Mom or Grandma, under that law you can be prosecuted for passing on to your favorite rug-rat that untested, unregistered copy of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm you so enjoyed as a girl.
After all, every parent’s worst nightmare is of his child being pursued down a dark street by lead-intoxicated Scuffy the Tugboat.
Pops, giving the lads in your life your boyhood copies of Old Yeller and Rifles for Watie is verboten unless you pay a great deal of money to have them tested and approved by a benevolent government.
One wonders if this book-banning is an expression of backdoor censorship of old and now incorrect books. A solid American kid who reads Johnny Tremain might be a little more uppity about oppressive governments than some glassy-eyed serf malnourished on the weirdness of Captain Underpants.
So many books have never been reprinted, and exist only because old copies reside in home libraries, public libraries, and used bookstores. The destruction of these books by government edict would be as great a crime against civilization as the Taliban blowing up ancient cultural artifacts in Afghanistan. 2,000-year-old works of art aren’t in harmony with Islam, and 100-year-old children’s books might not be in harmony with powerful and relatively anonymous functionaries within our federal government.
Government controls the means of distribution of intellectual property through the licensing, regulation, and monitoring of radio, television, telephones, and the ‘net. A printed book, though, is a silent expression of freedom. Reading a printed book is an activity that cannot easily be monitored. A book on one’s own shelves cannot be rewritten by a government agency’s computer technicians overnight.
But a book is not completely safe – it can be lost, burned, stolen, or seized. Nor are you safe. Someone in our government has found a way to threaten your freedom to read not by crudely banning books outright but by promoting a bogus health issue: who but a cad could possibly be against safeguarding the safety of children? Thus the book is not demonized, but rather the possibility of content of lead in the type, and by extension he who owns the book. To expose a child to a book thus becomes a crime.
To tyrants, buying your child an old book full of stories of heroes is a criminal act. In truth, giving your child that book makes you a real hero yourself.
Just be careful to look over your shoulder.
“I mean they’ve erased our history and are rewriting what remains…whole zones of literature are now forbidden and are disappearing from libraries.”
-- Antun to Josip re Tito’s Yugoslavia in Michael O’Brien’s The Island of the World
-30-
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Cargo Cult
Mack Hall
A wise man of my acquaintance speaks the truest words I have ever heard about materialism: “It’s only stuff.”
My usual rejoinder is “I like my stuff!”
But he is right. As the anonymous author of “The Seafarer” said some 1500 years ago, the wealth of the world neither goes with us when we die nor does it remain. One’s car, pocketknife, fountain pen, watch, boat, tractor, Brickberry – all will eventually be sold, stolen, rusted, rotted, recycled, or simply lost in the passage of the centuries.
Even so, while one is here on earth a reasonable amount of stuff is good: a nice coat, a radio, plumbing, sensible shoes, a glass of iced tea, a bed, a roof, a good book.
Modern economies are based on the exchange of work, goods, and services, but right now all that seems to have slowed mightily. We are not selling enough hamburgers, insurance, and lawsuits these days.
Japan is in bad shape too, and Panasonic Corporation is demanding that all its employees help Panasonic by buying lots of Panasonic stuff with their paychecks. You make it, you buy it.
If all organizations followed Panasonic’s closed-loop scheme, here are the possibilities:
“Cowboys, ya done a good job in herdin’ these longhorns from Texas to Abilene, fightin’ drought, wolves, Apaches, rustlers, and that satanic bread truck near Waco. 3,000 head o’ cows, and ya got 2,500 through. Now buy them.”
“Hey, Fred, great work in rebuilding those three carburetors today. Now the company executives expect you to do your duty and buy these three carbs plus the one that Bob didn’t finish. At wholesale, natch.”
“Nurse Aide Smith, you are one good caregiver, a true Flo Nightingale. We appreciate you, and the patients appreciate you. In exchange for your paycheck we demand that you take two hundred used bedpans home to your family.”
“Spuds, you are a great short-order cook, and you’ve worked here at Awful House for years. Tell ya what – instead of paying you this week we’re gonna let you eat all you want of the customer leftovers, okay? Do it for the company that loves you so much.”
"Wanda Fay, you have been a great asset here at the newspaper for over twenty years, but we’re having some rough times and are going to have to let you go. We can't give you severance pay, so we’re going to let you have today’s entire press run of 150,000 copies of the newspaper you helped make great. Good bye, and good luck.”
“Corporal Steele, you saved Fort Spitcup from being overrun by wave after wave of screaming terrorists armed with AK47s, AK48s, and suicide underpants through your expert command of your platoon after Sergeant Ironguts was killed in action. In recognition of your bravery and professionalism, and in lieu of treatment or VA benefits for the arm you lost in combat, we’re going to give you all the dead bodies. A grateful nation thanks you.”
“Employees of the sewage plant: as you know, the city is having a cash-flow problem…”
A wise man of my acquaintance speaks the truest words I have ever heard about materialism: “It’s only stuff.”
My usual rejoinder is “I like my stuff!”
But he is right. As the anonymous author of “The Seafarer” said some 1500 years ago, the wealth of the world neither goes with us when we die nor does it remain. One’s car, pocketknife, fountain pen, watch, boat, tractor, Brickberry – all will eventually be sold, stolen, rusted, rotted, recycled, or simply lost in the passage of the centuries.
Even so, while one is here on earth a reasonable amount of stuff is good: a nice coat, a radio, plumbing, sensible shoes, a glass of iced tea, a bed, a roof, a good book.
Modern economies are based on the exchange of work, goods, and services, but right now all that seems to have slowed mightily. We are not selling enough hamburgers, insurance, and lawsuits these days.
Japan is in bad shape too, and Panasonic Corporation is demanding that all its employees help Panasonic by buying lots of Panasonic stuff with their paychecks. You make it, you buy it.
If all organizations followed Panasonic’s closed-loop scheme, here are the possibilities:
“Cowboys, ya done a good job in herdin’ these longhorns from Texas to Abilene, fightin’ drought, wolves, Apaches, rustlers, and that satanic bread truck near Waco. 3,000 head o’ cows, and ya got 2,500 through. Now buy them.”
“Hey, Fred, great work in rebuilding those three carburetors today. Now the company executives expect you to do your duty and buy these three carbs plus the one that Bob didn’t finish. At wholesale, natch.”
“Nurse Aide Smith, you are one good caregiver, a true Flo Nightingale. We appreciate you, and the patients appreciate you. In exchange for your paycheck we demand that you take two hundred used bedpans home to your family.”
“Spuds, you are a great short-order cook, and you’ve worked here at Awful House for years. Tell ya what – instead of paying you this week we’re gonna let you eat all you want of the customer leftovers, okay? Do it for the company that loves you so much.”
"Wanda Fay, you have been a great asset here at the newspaper for over twenty years, but we’re having some rough times and are going to have to let you go. We can't give you severance pay, so we’re going to let you have today’s entire press run of 150,000 copies of the newspaper you helped make great. Good bye, and good luck.”
“Corporal Steele, you saved Fort Spitcup from being overrun by wave after wave of screaming terrorists armed with AK47s, AK48s, and suicide underpants through your expert command of your platoon after Sergeant Ironguts was killed in action. In recognition of your bravery and professionalism, and in lieu of treatment or VA benefits for the arm you lost in combat, we’re going to give you all the dead bodies. A grateful nation thanks you.”
“Employees of the sewage plant: as you know, the city is having a cash-flow problem…”
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Stimulus Package
Mack Hall
The financial depression is getting so bad that day and night I see poor people on three-wheelers fleeing poverty in terror along my road. Yep, rattle-trap old three-wheelers all day long, with mattresses and chickens and Grandma piled on, headed to California.
But I’m okay; I got my stimulus packages, two of ‘em, the other day: DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico, Hecho en China. Someday I will thrill my grandchildren with yarns about the Not-So-Great Depression: “Boy, we was so pore we had only two television sets, and they was analog at that! Thank God for the federal government who came to our rescue with two Convertido Analogicos! I just don’t think we would have made it through the terrible winter of ‘08-’09 without ‘em.”
Rosie the Riveter will be updated to Rosie the DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en China Installer. The iconic poster will show Rosie flexing her cell ‘phone and crying “My boss is a sexist meanie!”
Installing a DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en China will soon be a WPA job, with four supervisors watching one installer do the work.
Standing along the streets the newly unemployed will hold up signs that read “Will Install Your DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en China For Food.”
As hospitals wrecked by Hurricane Ike finally have to close forever, patients dying in the weedy parking lots will each be comforted by a brand-new DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en China.
As the economy collapses, once-respectable women will stand on street corners smoking cigarettes and whispering, “Hey, mister, want a good DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en China tonight?”
An Olympic gold medallist will be photographed smoking something grassy through a DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en China.
Women with serious pyschosexual issues will take off their clothes to protest global warming caused by the use of DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en Chinas.
The Pentagon will pay $4,000 for each DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en China.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will demand a DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en China for each of her offices and houses, and a gold-plated one for her government jet.
Members of The Bright Light Free Will Foursquare Three-and-a-Half Gospels Missionary Temple Fellowship of The Something-or-Other under the The Reverend Doctor Brother Bishop Billy will gather on rooftops at midnight on Ground Squirrel Day trying to receive messages from the Mother Ship on their DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en Chinas.
Congress will subpoena tobacco executives to grill them about why teenagers are smoking DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en Chinas.
Old people will yarn that “In my day we didn’t need a DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en China; we sat around watching rocks, and by golly we were glad to have an extra rock for Christmas. We didn’t have DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en Chinas, but we had love, and if we didn’t have love my ol’ daddy’d take a razor strap to my heinie and I grew up just fine, so you know what you kids can do with your fancy DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en Chinas that you think you got to have.”
In the Khyber Pass an outnumbered, outgunned American patrol, surrounded by extremist Methodists, will radio its last, defiant message: “Send us more DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en Chinas!”
War? Depression? Hurricanes? Homelessness? Foreclosures? Unemployment? Republicans lurking under the bed? Stand tall, America; with our DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en Chinas we can tackle anything!
The financial depression is getting so bad that day and night I see poor people on three-wheelers fleeing poverty in terror along my road. Yep, rattle-trap old three-wheelers all day long, with mattresses and chickens and Grandma piled on, headed to California.
But I’m okay; I got my stimulus packages, two of ‘em, the other day: DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico, Hecho en China. Someday I will thrill my grandchildren with yarns about the Not-So-Great Depression: “Boy, we was so pore we had only two television sets, and they was analog at that! Thank God for the federal government who came to our rescue with two Convertido Analogicos! I just don’t think we would have made it through the terrible winter of ‘08-’09 without ‘em.”
Rosie the Riveter will be updated to Rosie the DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en China Installer. The iconic poster will show Rosie flexing her cell ‘phone and crying “My boss is a sexist meanie!”
Installing a DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en China will soon be a WPA job, with four supervisors watching one installer do the work.
Standing along the streets the newly unemployed will hold up signs that read “Will Install Your DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en China For Food.”
As hospitals wrecked by Hurricane Ike finally have to close forever, patients dying in the weedy parking lots will each be comforted by a brand-new DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en China.
As the economy collapses, once-respectable women will stand on street corners smoking cigarettes and whispering, “Hey, mister, want a good DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en China tonight?”
An Olympic gold medallist will be photographed smoking something grassy through a DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en China.
Women with serious pyschosexual issues will take off their clothes to protest global warming caused by the use of DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en Chinas.
The Pentagon will pay $4,000 for each DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en China.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will demand a DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en China for each of her offices and houses, and a gold-plated one for her government jet.
Members of The Bright Light Free Will Foursquare Three-and-a-Half Gospels Missionary Temple Fellowship of The Something-or-Other under the The Reverend Doctor Brother Bishop Billy will gather on rooftops at midnight on Ground Squirrel Day trying to receive messages from the Mother Ship on their DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en Chinas.
Congress will subpoena tobacco executives to grill them about why teenagers are smoking DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en Chinas.
Old people will yarn that “In my day we didn’t need a DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en China; we sat around watching rocks, and by golly we were glad to have an extra rock for Christmas. We didn’t have DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en Chinas, but we had love, and if we didn’t have love my ol’ daddy’d take a razor strap to my heinie and I grew up just fine, so you know what you kids can do with your fancy DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en Chinas that you think you got to have.”
In the Khyber Pass an outnumbered, outgunned American patrol, surrounded by extremist Methodists, will radio its last, defiant message: “Send us more DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en Chinas!”
War? Depression? Hurricanes? Homelessness? Foreclosures? Unemployment? Republicans lurking under the bed? Stand tall, America; with our DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en Chinas we can tackle anything!
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Irrelevant -- a Poem
Mack Hall
Irrelevant
For Tod
How wonderful to be irrelevant:
An old car rusting in sere autumn weeds,
An unheard voice no longer pertinent,
A silent solitary bidding his beads.
In youth one roams the glades with Robin Hood,
Sails dream-ships far beyond the classroom wall,
Dances with fairies in a moonlit wood,
Gives homage to our King in Arthur’s hall.
A man, alas, drags Dante’s darksome dreams
Through corridors haunted with smoke and mist,
Where truth is bought and sold by mad regimes,
And lies are given a sly, sensitive twist.
But, oh! Peace! To be nothing at the end,
Nunc dimittis, thou happiest of men!
Irrelevant
For Tod
How wonderful to be irrelevant:
An old car rusting in sere autumn weeds,
An unheard voice no longer pertinent,
A silent solitary bidding his beads.
In youth one roams the glades with Robin Hood,
Sails dream-ships far beyond the classroom wall,
Dances with fairies in a moonlit wood,
Gives homage to our King in Arthur’s hall.
A man, alas, drags Dante’s darksome dreams
Through corridors haunted with smoke and mist,
Where truth is bought and sold by mad regimes,
And lies are given a sly, sensitive twist.
But, oh! Peace! To be nothing at the end,
Nunc dimittis, thou happiest of men!
100 Things to Ignore Before You Die
Mack Hall
A recent visit to the book store reveals that there are only about two kinds of books for sale just now: those with pictures of the President on the cover and those telling you of 100 movies, songs, places, meals, adventures you must see, hear, visit, eat, or experience before you die.
Just what death has to do with any given 100 experience eludes the thoughtful person. You see Plan Nine From Outer Space because you want to laugh at a cheesy film with pie plates doubling as flying saucers, not because your physician has given you a thumbs-down. You listen to Wagner because of some atavistic impulse to listen to people yelling at each other in German with Nibelungsomethings beating on kettledrums in the background. You eat a taco because you’re hungry. You jump out of an airplane because against all logic you really, really feel that some cloth and a few lengths of string will keep you from terminal planet-hugging.
Life should be lived on one’s own terms, as far as is possible (God seems to have His own plans in the matter), not on some other human’s schedule. Perhaps part of the scheme is not doing all that other people tell you. Following are some things that can well be ignored in living a meaningful life:
1. Numerology, horoscopes, and global warming
2. Art that must be explained
3. Poetry that doesn’t scan
4. Bottled water
5. Batman movies
6. Coffee with adjectives
7. National Public Radio on Saturday morning
8. That quiet young man who collects Nazi memorabilia
9. Activists
10. 1968
11. Fat-free potato chips
12. Newark, New Jersey
13. Wedding receptions
14. Golf-as-life metaphors
15. Meeting
16. Movie remakes
17. Afghanistan
18. Margarine
19. Eateries that serve margarine
20. Holding hands with total strangers in church
21. Cell ‘phones
22. Sea salt
23. Air Canada
24. Belgium
25. Lists!
A recent visit to the book store reveals that there are only about two kinds of books for sale just now: those with pictures of the President on the cover and those telling you of 100 movies, songs, places, meals, adventures you must see, hear, visit, eat, or experience before you die.
Just what death has to do with any given 100 experience eludes the thoughtful person. You see Plan Nine From Outer Space because you want to laugh at a cheesy film with pie plates doubling as flying saucers, not because your physician has given you a thumbs-down. You listen to Wagner because of some atavistic impulse to listen to people yelling at each other in German with Nibelungsomethings beating on kettledrums in the background. You eat a taco because you’re hungry. You jump out of an airplane because against all logic you really, really feel that some cloth and a few lengths of string will keep you from terminal planet-hugging.
Life should be lived on one’s own terms, as far as is possible (God seems to have His own plans in the matter), not on some other human’s schedule. Perhaps part of the scheme is not doing all that other people tell you. Following are some things that can well be ignored in living a meaningful life:
1. Numerology, horoscopes, and global warming
2. Art that must be explained
3. Poetry that doesn’t scan
4. Bottled water
5. Batman movies
6. Coffee with adjectives
7. National Public Radio on Saturday morning
8. That quiet young man who collects Nazi memorabilia
9. Activists
10. 1968
11. Fat-free potato chips
12. Newark, New Jersey
13. Wedding receptions
14. Golf-as-life metaphors
15. Meeting
16. Movie remakes
17. Afghanistan
18. Margarine
19. Eateries that serve margarine
20. Holding hands with total strangers in church
21. Cell ‘phones
22. Sea salt
23. Air Canada
24. Belgium
25. Lists!
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Thoughts of Chairman Mack
Mack Hall
In the 1960s the obedient paraded up and down the streets of China waving Mao’s Little Red Book and killing people. Among Chairman Mao’s sayings was “Political power comes from the barrel of a gun.” If so, then muggers are not muggers; they’re Jeffersonian democrats re-interpreting the Constitution as a living document to be redefined every generation mwamwamwa…mwa…mwamwamwawawa.
And speaking of the Constitution, one reads of lawyers who carry pocket copies of that venerable document as a reminder of the secondary source of law in this nation.
Christians have been known to carry copies of the Bible (known as “MY Bible”) around, though these are more often left on car dashboards or camouflaged in embroidered covers along with arsenals of multi-colored hi-lighters.
Whether or not girls will be making pillows of the Thoughts of Chairman Obama has yet to be determined, but the book is now for sale to all the faithful. You can now replace pocket editions of Mao, the Constitution, and the Bible with the wisdom of the President who has been President for a week or so.
Yes, The History Company (www.historycompany.com) offers a little blue booklet called Pocket Obama at $49.50 for ten copies (Thanks to newsbusters.org for the heads up). The fulsome advertisement compares President Obama favorably to President Kennedy and Martin Luther King, but does not offer a Pocket Kennedy or a Pocket King. I suppose this is because after a while one runs out of pockets. The cell ‘phone, the water bottle, the MePod, the BrickBerry, and Pocket Obama must take precedence.
And Pocket Obama will definitely take precedence, because www.historycompany.com commands very precisely that “It is an unofficial requirement for every citizen to own, to read, and to carry this book at all times.” Hey, I am not making this up. What is not clear is the distinction between an official requirement and an unofficial requirement, what the sanctions are for not meeting the requirement, and just who is making the requirement. As Number 2 says in The Prisoner, “That would be telling.”
Maybe the guards / counselors / therapists at Guantanamo will start giving free copies to prisoners.
You might want to hurry and buy your copy of Pocket Obama; it will go well with your Chuck and Di mugs, your Pat Paulsen for President button, your Circuit City and Linens ‘N’ Things discount cards, your love beads, your mood ring, and your lava lamp.
But I must leave off now and go weep copious tears before my Ronald Reagan poster.
In the 1960s the obedient paraded up and down the streets of China waving Mao’s Little Red Book and killing people. Among Chairman Mao’s sayings was “Political power comes from the barrel of a gun.” If so, then muggers are not muggers; they’re Jeffersonian democrats re-interpreting the Constitution as a living document to be redefined every generation mwamwamwa…mwa…mwamwamwawawa.
And speaking of the Constitution, one reads of lawyers who carry pocket copies of that venerable document as a reminder of the secondary source of law in this nation.
Christians have been known to carry copies of the Bible (known as “MY Bible”) around, though these are more often left on car dashboards or camouflaged in embroidered covers along with arsenals of multi-colored hi-lighters.
Whether or not girls will be making pillows of the Thoughts of Chairman Obama has yet to be determined, but the book is now for sale to all the faithful. You can now replace pocket editions of Mao, the Constitution, and the Bible with the wisdom of the President who has been President for a week or so.
Yes, The History Company (www.historycompany.com) offers a little blue booklet called Pocket Obama at $49.50 for ten copies (Thanks to newsbusters.org for the heads up). The fulsome advertisement compares President Obama favorably to President Kennedy and Martin Luther King, but does not offer a Pocket Kennedy or a Pocket King. I suppose this is because after a while one runs out of pockets. The cell ‘phone, the water bottle, the MePod, the BrickBerry, and Pocket Obama must take precedence.
And Pocket Obama will definitely take precedence, because www.historycompany.com commands very precisely that “It is an unofficial requirement for every citizen to own, to read, and to carry this book at all times.” Hey, I am not making this up. What is not clear is the distinction between an official requirement and an unofficial requirement, what the sanctions are for not meeting the requirement, and just who is making the requirement. As Number 2 says in The Prisoner, “That would be telling.”
Maybe the guards / counselors / therapists at Guantanamo will start giving free copies to prisoners.
You might want to hurry and buy your copy of Pocket Obama; it will go well with your Chuck and Di mugs, your Pat Paulsen for President button, your Circuit City and Linens ‘N’ Things discount cards, your love beads, your mood ring, and your lava lamp.
But I must leave off now and go weep copious tears before my Ronald Reagan poster.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Kirbyville Elementary 2nd Grade, 1955-1956
Kirbyville Elementary School
2nd Grade, 1955-1956
Photo by D. T. Kent Jr. of happy memory
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