Mack Hall
Until a recent rainy evening I was the last guy in the USA using a dial-up modem for connecting to the ‘net. As the sky darkened and the wind blew and the rain began to fall I thought that I should probably go and disconnect the… (FLASH! POW!) …modem.
Cue the fading and erratic static.
The next day I went in search of another modem, and considered that the all modems I had lost to lightning would put a hurt on even the manliest of landfills. Indeed, whenever I have bought a computer in the past I also bought an external modem, knowing that a ‘puter’s built-in modem always goes poof within a week, dying perhaps of shame.
A visit to Giganto-Mart was without success; the misnamed help weren’t much interested and appeared not to know what a modem was anyway. Lots of routers, but I’m not sure I need anything routed just now; if I do, I’ve got a Garmin.
MegaXtreemOffice in Beaumont had no modems; as the young man explained, dial-up modems (or is that modi?) are now as antique as 33 1/3 records and the Edsel, and referred me to my very own cellular service at a kiosk in Happy Meadows Mall.
And there, after lengthy negotiations with a nice fellow named Basil or Sidney or something like that, though the touch of Hindi in his accent suggests that’s not what’s on his birth certificate, I am now wirelessly wired to the outside world.
Okay, my daughter had to help. She didn’t make too much fun of me.
Spending a disconnected evening with a book, the newspaper crossword (Children, your grandparents will explain to you what a newspaper is…), and (gasp) television was okay, but I am happy to resume my usual geek/nerd/anti-social/loser habits. Hey, want to know the temperature in Bombay / Mumbai today?
Neville said that wireless would load really, really, really fast up here in the woods. He was wrong. Only kinda fast. But much better than dial-up.
The best thing of all is that now I can compute anywhere in the house, and will say ‘bye-‘bye to that rather expensive telephone land-line and to the AOL account.
And now I can download videos of Fox News’ Glenn Beck screaming at people who don’t line up in straight rows. Do you get the idea that Glenn Beck was nicer when he was drinking? Glenn Beck – a French expression meaning "change the station."
My fear is that now I will become one of those tiresome people who travels with a computer. I’ll bet Glenn Beck travels with a computer.
The Last Modem standing is now a base for my beautiful old Argus C3 (the famous "Brick") 35mm film camera on display on a bookshelf, still usable some forty years after it was built, a work of art in metal and glass. Don’t you wish computers and their accessories would last that long!
Sunday, July 26, 2009
What Did You Do in the War, Mummy?
Mack Hall
Last week Harry Patch, the last British veteran of the Western Front, died at 111. Even at his age he was lucky not to have been conscripted for the current Afghan campaign.
In 2006 a 75-year-old retired American Army surgeon, Colonel William Bernhard, was reactivated – drafted – and sent to Afghanistan. Once upon a time it was the elderly who sent the young to die in far-away wars; now the young are sending the elderly instead. For the elderly, of course, this means they get to go to two or three wars in their lifetimes while the youthful presidents and prime ministers who send them avoid unpleasantness altogether.
Of all the world’s leaders, possibly two have served in uniform. The Pope was drafted into the Wehrmacht when he was sixteen, and the Queen volunteered as an ATS driver when she was the same age. She got her hands dirty and had to take cover in air raids, joining, as Bill Mauldin said, the club of them what has been shot at.
Some delicate souls in our time claim PTSD from having a bad day at the office.
Unfortunately, politicians with clean hands (if not hearts) still want to send other folks and other folks’ children to the wars. Well, I’ve got a solution for that: the next time anyone wants to have a war, the politicians and their kids, young and old, go first. Using Dr. Bernhard, the Pope, and Queen Elizabeth as precedents, the top age will be 75 and the bottom age will be 16.
"But…but…I’m in a wheelchair!" protests white-haired Senator Gloriosous.
"Not a problem, Private Gloriosous," replies Sergeant Rock, "We built ya a ramp to the turret of this here armored car. Yer a machine-gunner now. The war -- sorry, I meant nation-building -- you voted for is right down the street. Get with it."
"Oooooooooooooh! I want to be an officer in a pretty uniform and go to officers’ clubs and dances," coos Congressman Warprofit’s daughter Heather-Misty-Shannon-La’Shan’qua-Dawn.
"Wrong, Private Warprofit," replies Corporal Hardbutt. "You’ve got street patrol in two hours. Right now you’ve got KP. Your pa can help you. Wash all these mess trays."
"But…but…I’m a college graduate! I have an Honors BA in Community Activism with a minor in Serbo-Hungarian Literature!"
"Oh, sorry, Private Warprofit. I didn’t know. Here, I’ll show you and your pa how to wash dishes…"
"I don’t want to go to a beastly war!" pleads Poncy Tworbt, president of the Sidwell Friends School Chess Club. "I don’t wanna! I’m, like, y’know, an intellectual, and, like, stuff! I’m an artist! And a guitarist! I’m forming a band! I’m sensitive. I’m only 16! I just got my first Mercedes-Benz for my birthday! I’m special! Mummy tells me I’m special!"
"Yeah, Seaman Tworbt?" replies CPO Brasso, a career Navy man with his right forefinger locked in a perpetual curve from carrying a coffee cup for 30 years. "Well, yer mummy’s a Congressman, so yer goin’. Ya play chess, ya say? Great, here’s your swab and bucket. Get this boat deck squared away; we got night patrol up a little river they say used to flow from Eden. Sure hot now, in lots of ways. You might live through it. Now get busy."
The President goes too; the commander-in-chief can command from behind some sandbags in 115-degree heat. You think it’s a good war, boss? How good?
In the meantime, each investor in companies with military contracts will receive a private’s pay for the duration of the war.
But what about the ordinary citizens, the folks who have no power to declare a war? Oh, they can go to the wars if they want to: the kid at the feed store, the guy climbing the cracking unit, the lineman, the nurse, the storekeeper, the doctor. Sure, if they want to go. But they don’t have to.
Next time we have a war, the uberklasse can lead us from the front.
Last week Harry Patch, the last British veteran of the Western Front, died at 111. Even at his age he was lucky not to have been conscripted for the current Afghan campaign.
In 2006 a 75-year-old retired American Army surgeon, Colonel William Bernhard, was reactivated – drafted – and sent to Afghanistan. Once upon a time it was the elderly who sent the young to die in far-away wars; now the young are sending the elderly instead. For the elderly, of course, this means they get to go to two or three wars in their lifetimes while the youthful presidents and prime ministers who send them avoid unpleasantness altogether.
Of all the world’s leaders, possibly two have served in uniform. The Pope was drafted into the Wehrmacht when he was sixteen, and the Queen volunteered as an ATS driver when she was the same age. She got her hands dirty and had to take cover in air raids, joining, as Bill Mauldin said, the club of them what has been shot at.
Some delicate souls in our time claim PTSD from having a bad day at the office.
Unfortunately, politicians with clean hands (if not hearts) still want to send other folks and other folks’ children to the wars. Well, I’ve got a solution for that: the next time anyone wants to have a war, the politicians and their kids, young and old, go first. Using Dr. Bernhard, the Pope, and Queen Elizabeth as precedents, the top age will be 75 and the bottom age will be 16.
"But…but…I’m in a wheelchair!" protests white-haired Senator Gloriosous.
"Not a problem, Private Gloriosous," replies Sergeant Rock, "We built ya a ramp to the turret of this here armored car. Yer a machine-gunner now. The war -- sorry, I meant nation-building -- you voted for is right down the street. Get with it."
"Oooooooooooooh! I want to be an officer in a pretty uniform and go to officers’ clubs and dances," coos Congressman Warprofit’s daughter Heather-Misty-Shannon-La’Shan’qua-Dawn.
"Wrong, Private Warprofit," replies Corporal Hardbutt. "You’ve got street patrol in two hours. Right now you’ve got KP. Your pa can help you. Wash all these mess trays."
"But…but…I’m a college graduate! I have an Honors BA in Community Activism with a minor in Serbo-Hungarian Literature!"
"Oh, sorry, Private Warprofit. I didn’t know. Here, I’ll show you and your pa how to wash dishes…"
"I don’t want to go to a beastly war!" pleads Poncy Tworbt, president of the Sidwell Friends School Chess Club. "I don’t wanna! I’m, like, y’know, an intellectual, and, like, stuff! I’m an artist! And a guitarist! I’m forming a band! I’m sensitive. I’m only 16! I just got my first Mercedes-Benz for my birthday! I’m special! Mummy tells me I’m special!"
"Yeah, Seaman Tworbt?" replies CPO Brasso, a career Navy man with his right forefinger locked in a perpetual curve from carrying a coffee cup for 30 years. "Well, yer mummy’s a Congressman, so yer goin’. Ya play chess, ya say? Great, here’s your swab and bucket. Get this boat deck squared away; we got night patrol up a little river they say used to flow from Eden. Sure hot now, in lots of ways. You might live through it. Now get busy."
The President goes too; the commander-in-chief can command from behind some sandbags in 115-degree heat. You think it’s a good war, boss? How good?
In the meantime, each investor in companies with military contracts will receive a private’s pay for the duration of the war.
But what about the ordinary citizens, the folks who have no power to declare a war? Oh, they can go to the wars if they want to: the kid at the feed store, the guy climbing the cracking unit, the lineman, the nurse, the storekeeper, the doctor. Sure, if they want to go. But they don’t have to.
Next time we have a war, the uberklasse can lead us from the front.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Lobsters on a Plane
Mack Hall
So why do the lobsters get to ride for free?
You find your seat with your small carry-on, sit as assigned as part of the herd, and then observe that while United Air Lines has required you to pay $20 to check your suitcase, other passengers are entering the cabin with bags larger than the one you checked, multiple bags, and even large cardboard boxes containing lobsters. Live lobsters. Critters. All for free.
In Halifax, Nova Scotia a shop in the airport sells live lobsters to the sort of people who wear God Bless the USA baseball caps made in China: “Look what I brought ya from Canada, honey – a live lobster!”
Oh, yeah, a clicking, clacking crustacean. Just what everyone wants as a souvenir.
Not only does United Air Lines interpret their own baggage rules loosely, so does the United States government. Everyone entering the country must complete and sign a form stating that he is not bringing in any agricultural products or varmints. So what’s with ignoring the lobsters?
Did the lobsters have to sign a document stating that they were not bringing any parts of humans into the USA?
Is there a possibility of Mad Lobster Disease?
Are the lobsters patted and wanded? Do they have to take off their little claws while scuttling through the metal detector?
And speaking of claws, if I can’t bring my little Swiss Army knife on board, why aren’t the lobsters disarmed too? Could this be part of a plot? Is Dr. Doom lulling us to sleep with real lobsters and waiting to take over a United States aircraft with evil robot lobsters sold through a secret agent pretending to be an ‘umble dealer in live food at the Halifax airport?
The poor cabin attendants on airplanes have to deal with all the humans, excess luggage, and lobsters, trying to close the cheap plastic hatches on too many bulging bags and boxes. During the flight folks get up and open the hatches to let their excess junk drop on other folks below them.
AT DFW the lobsters got off all right, but United Air Lines whimsically offloaded the checked luggage at diverse places. When I and my party finally found ours, no one was watching it and no one asked for our claim checks. Anyone could have walked out of the airport with my dirty shirts and my loose loonies and toonies.
Shame on you, American Air Lines. Your baggage-handling practices stink as badly as those lobsters. I want my money back.
What really happens to the lobsters who were carried out past the baggage carousels with no delay? Do happy spouses or significant others clap their hands in glee and exclaim “Oh, wait until I show this exoskeletonal varmint to the neighbors!”?
Are the children sent to take their new little friend Sparky to the back yard to play?
“But Daddy, I wanted a Sergeant Preston of the Yukon action figure with a machine gun and a rocket launcher!”
“Sorry, son; Canada ran out of Mounties, but I brought you this swell lobster!”
Does the United States Department of Agriculture send a S.W.A.T. team based on a neighbor’s anonymous ‘phone call about unregistered foreign livestock?
I heard a rumor that next year halifax is going to upstage Pamplona with an annual running of the lobsters down Water Street, past Tim Horton’s, and down to Murphy’s Wharf, eh. Any fatalities will be carried out to sea on Theodore Tugboat and dumped into the water at George Lighthouse with full military honors.
Either that or stuffed into the overhead bins on United Air Lines
So why do the lobsters get to ride for free?
You find your seat with your small carry-on, sit as assigned as part of the herd, and then observe that while United Air Lines has required you to pay $20 to check your suitcase, other passengers are entering the cabin with bags larger than the one you checked, multiple bags, and even large cardboard boxes containing lobsters. Live lobsters. Critters. All for free.
In Halifax, Nova Scotia a shop in the airport sells live lobsters to the sort of people who wear God Bless the USA baseball caps made in China: “Look what I brought ya from Canada, honey – a live lobster!”
Oh, yeah, a clicking, clacking crustacean. Just what everyone wants as a souvenir.
Not only does United Air Lines interpret their own baggage rules loosely, so does the United States government. Everyone entering the country must complete and sign a form stating that he is not bringing in any agricultural products or varmints. So what’s with ignoring the lobsters?
Did the lobsters have to sign a document stating that they were not bringing any parts of humans into the USA?
Is there a possibility of Mad Lobster Disease?
Are the lobsters patted and wanded? Do they have to take off their little claws while scuttling through the metal detector?
And speaking of claws, if I can’t bring my little Swiss Army knife on board, why aren’t the lobsters disarmed too? Could this be part of a plot? Is Dr. Doom lulling us to sleep with real lobsters and waiting to take over a United States aircraft with evil robot lobsters sold through a secret agent pretending to be an ‘umble dealer in live food at the Halifax airport?
The poor cabin attendants on airplanes have to deal with all the humans, excess luggage, and lobsters, trying to close the cheap plastic hatches on too many bulging bags and boxes. During the flight folks get up and open the hatches to let their excess junk drop on other folks below them.
AT DFW the lobsters got off all right, but United Air Lines whimsically offloaded the checked luggage at diverse places. When I and my party finally found ours, no one was watching it and no one asked for our claim checks. Anyone could have walked out of the airport with my dirty shirts and my loose loonies and toonies.
Shame on you, American Air Lines. Your baggage-handling practices stink as badly as those lobsters. I want my money back.
What really happens to the lobsters who were carried out past the baggage carousels with no delay? Do happy spouses or significant others clap their hands in glee and exclaim “Oh, wait until I show this exoskeletonal varmint to the neighbors!”?
Are the children sent to take their new little friend Sparky to the back yard to play?
“But Daddy, I wanted a Sergeant Preston of the Yukon action figure with a machine gun and a rocket launcher!”
“Sorry, son; Canada ran out of Mounties, but I brought you this swell lobster!”
Does the United States Department of Agriculture send a S.W.A.T. team based on a neighbor’s anonymous ‘phone call about unregistered foreign livestock?
I heard a rumor that next year halifax is going to upstage Pamplona with an annual running of the lobsters down Water Street, past Tim Horton’s, and down to Murphy’s Wharf, eh. Any fatalities will be carried out to sea on Theodore Tugboat and dumped into the water at George Lighthouse with full military honors.
Either that or stuffed into the overhead bins on United Air Lines
Sunday, June 28, 2009
"Scope for Imagination" -- Anne of Green Gables
Mack Hall
In anticipation of a brief visit to Prince Edward Island, Canada’s smallest province, I was advised by several people to read L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables.
Oh, sure, and maybe I should also play with Barbie and Ken dolls dressed as Tim Horton’s servers in order to acculturate.
In the event, I read Anne of Green Gables, and liked it. Sure, it’s a girlie book in much the same way that Tom Sawyer is a boyie book, but with far fewer real adventures and better character development.
Set in Prince Edward Island around 1900, Anne is the fictional story of a very talkative and imaginative eleven-year-old orphan girl accidentally adopted (they wanted a boy to help with the farm) by a stern old maid and her bachelor brother. The narrative shows Anne growing up from eleven to sixteen – in 1900 an eleven-year-old was a child; a sixteen-year-old was an adult. Adolescence, we often forget, is a recent sociological construct. As an eleven-year-old Anne is a dreamer, a maker of mistakes, and a true drama princess. As a sixteen-year-old Anne is a graduate of a one-year preparation program and a teacher. Montgomery’s characterization of Anne is brilliant; the child’s unbroken, page-long babblings mature seamlessly over the years into an eloquence seldom to be found in today’s world of thirty-somethings jibbering in neo-valley-speak.
The stern Presbyterian couple, Marilla and Matthew, quite set in their ways, find their lives much changed by the rambunctious, dreamy Anne. If a mistake can be made, Anne is sure to make it, despite her best intentions in all things, and home, school, church, and the little town of Avonlea are all given “scope for imagination” (Anne’s trademark phrase) repeatedly.
Since Marilla and Matthew are Presbyterians, Christmas is not observed. They give Anne a new dress before breakfast, uncomfortable even with this slight concession to the day, and then Anne goes off to school as usual.
The Acadians are barely mentioned at all; a neighboring family has a slow, stupid French housemaid, and one summer Matthew hires a slow, stupid French boy for help with the farm work. These caricatures are briefly noted and then disappear from the narrative. Montgomery barely mentions the French subculture because it was barely a part of her segregated world, or Anne’s. Even now a perusal of place names in the Maritimes in a general encyclopedia will often state, with no irony, that a given settlement began when the Acadians were expelled.
In the end, as Anne leaves at fifteen to be trained as a teacher, Marilla says “I just couldn’t help thinking of the little girl you used to be, Anne. I was wishing you could have stayed a little girl, even with all your queer ways…and I just got lonesome thinking it all over.”
Shy Matthew simply says to the stars on a summer night “She’s smart and pretty, and loving, too which is better than all the rest. She’s been a blessing to us…It was Providence, because the Almighty saw we needed her, I reckon.”
C. S. Lewis said that a children’s book that could not be enjoyed by an adult wasn’t worth anything as a children’s book. So it is with Anne of Green Gables. Women who read it as girls grow almost misty-eyed in their happy memories when Anne is mentioned. A surprising number of men have read it too. In Japan the Anne books are studied as literature; in Canada they are simply enjoyed. And enjoyment is the best use of literature, a good book read by a child under the trees of summer with no tiresome adult about to critique the book or the child.
In anticipation of a brief visit to Prince Edward Island, Canada’s smallest province, I was advised by several people to read L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables.
Oh, sure, and maybe I should also play with Barbie and Ken dolls dressed as Tim Horton’s servers in order to acculturate.
In the event, I read Anne of Green Gables, and liked it. Sure, it’s a girlie book in much the same way that Tom Sawyer is a boyie book, but with far fewer real adventures and better character development.
Set in Prince Edward Island around 1900, Anne is the fictional story of a very talkative and imaginative eleven-year-old orphan girl accidentally adopted (they wanted a boy to help with the farm) by a stern old maid and her bachelor brother. The narrative shows Anne growing up from eleven to sixteen – in 1900 an eleven-year-old was a child; a sixteen-year-old was an adult. Adolescence, we often forget, is a recent sociological construct. As an eleven-year-old Anne is a dreamer, a maker of mistakes, and a true drama princess. As a sixteen-year-old Anne is a graduate of a one-year preparation program and a teacher. Montgomery’s characterization of Anne is brilliant; the child’s unbroken, page-long babblings mature seamlessly over the years into an eloquence seldom to be found in today’s world of thirty-somethings jibbering in neo-valley-speak.
The stern Presbyterian couple, Marilla and Matthew, quite set in their ways, find their lives much changed by the rambunctious, dreamy Anne. If a mistake can be made, Anne is sure to make it, despite her best intentions in all things, and home, school, church, and the little town of Avonlea are all given “scope for imagination” (Anne’s trademark phrase) repeatedly.
Since Marilla and Matthew are Presbyterians, Christmas is not observed. They give Anne a new dress before breakfast, uncomfortable even with this slight concession to the day, and then Anne goes off to school as usual.
The Acadians are barely mentioned at all; a neighboring family has a slow, stupid French housemaid, and one summer Matthew hires a slow, stupid French boy for help with the farm work. These caricatures are briefly noted and then disappear from the narrative. Montgomery barely mentions the French subculture because it was barely a part of her segregated world, or Anne’s. Even now a perusal of place names in the Maritimes in a general encyclopedia will often state, with no irony, that a given settlement began when the Acadians were expelled.
In the end, as Anne leaves at fifteen to be trained as a teacher, Marilla says “I just couldn’t help thinking of the little girl you used to be, Anne. I was wishing you could have stayed a little girl, even with all your queer ways…and I just got lonesome thinking it all over.”
Shy Matthew simply says to the stars on a summer night “She’s smart and pretty, and loving, too which is better than all the rest. She’s been a blessing to us…It was Providence, because the Almighty saw we needed her, I reckon.”
C. S. Lewis said that a children’s book that could not be enjoyed by an adult wasn’t worth anything as a children’s book. So it is with Anne of Green Gables. Women who read it as girls grow almost misty-eyed in their happy memories when Anne is mentioned. A surprising number of men have read it too. In Japan the Anne books are studied as literature; in Canada they are simply enjoyed. And enjoyment is the best use of literature, a good book read by a child under the trees of summer with no tiresome adult about to critique the book or the child.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Taxpayer! There's a Fly in my Soup!
Mack Hall
I was raised on a farm, a real farm, not a weekend play-farm, and fresh food around the seasons was always a part of my childhood. I didn’t appreciate it. Once upon a time I rejected something that was placed before me at the kitchen table: blackeyed peas, perhaps, or collard greens.
“Each your supper,” my father said, “there are children starving in China who would love to have those peas.”
I replied in the insolence of youth with “Well, they can have mine.”
I still feel the pain. There are just some things you don’t say about food to folks raised in the Depression.
Terry Nichols, one of Timothy McVeigh’s conspirators in the murder of 168 people, including children, is suing you and me because he doesn’t like the food placed before him in prison.
And since Mr. Nichols is a federal prisoner (folks still tend to disapprove of murder), the working American must pay for the lawyers Mr. Nichols will use to sue the working American.
Mr. Nichols, who suffers a delicate digestive system and an acute sensitivity in regard to theological issues, maintains that the lack of whole grains and fresh food is causing him to sin against God.
Maybe Mr. Nichols finds sin in food grown with ammonium nitrate and delivered to the prison in a rented truck.
Perhaps the prison television has been showing the Food Network. God know what might happen if they start broadcasting Bridezillas.
If Mr. Nichols wants to be treated as if he were in daycare, he shouldn’t have blown up a daycare. After all, only licensed physicians are permitted to kill children, at some $10,000 a head.
Perhaps the lawsuit will be adjudicated at the federal courthouse in Oklahoma City.
There is no way of knowing how many American children starved to death in the Great Depression. Such really happened, and the survivors are reluctant to talk about it. Any American child in those terrible years would have been very happy to have Terry Nichols’ supper then; children in the Sudan would be very happy to have it today.
Because of Terry Nichols and Timothy McVeigh, some thirty or forty children in Oklahoma City did not live to make whiny faces at the supper table at the risk of a good spanking.
If this matter comes to adjudication, the thoughtful, reflective, working American must hope that the thoughtful, reflective, working judge will listen carefully to sensitive Mr. Nichols’ petition, consider it carefully, look at Mr. Nichols, and say “No. Next case.”
I was raised on a farm, a real farm, not a weekend play-farm, and fresh food around the seasons was always a part of my childhood. I didn’t appreciate it. Once upon a time I rejected something that was placed before me at the kitchen table: blackeyed peas, perhaps, or collard greens.
“Each your supper,” my father said, “there are children starving in China who would love to have those peas.”
I replied in the insolence of youth with “Well, they can have mine.”
I still feel the pain. There are just some things you don’t say about food to folks raised in the Depression.
Terry Nichols, one of Timothy McVeigh’s conspirators in the murder of 168 people, including children, is suing you and me because he doesn’t like the food placed before him in prison.
And since Mr. Nichols is a federal prisoner (folks still tend to disapprove of murder), the working American must pay for the lawyers Mr. Nichols will use to sue the working American.
Mr. Nichols, who suffers a delicate digestive system and an acute sensitivity in regard to theological issues, maintains that the lack of whole grains and fresh food is causing him to sin against God.
Maybe Mr. Nichols finds sin in food grown with ammonium nitrate and delivered to the prison in a rented truck.
Perhaps the prison television has been showing the Food Network. God know what might happen if they start broadcasting Bridezillas.
If Mr. Nichols wants to be treated as if he were in daycare, he shouldn’t have blown up a daycare. After all, only licensed physicians are permitted to kill children, at some $10,000 a head.
Perhaps the lawsuit will be adjudicated at the federal courthouse in Oklahoma City.
There is no way of knowing how many American children starved to death in the Great Depression. Such really happened, and the survivors are reluctant to talk about it. Any American child in those terrible years would have been very happy to have Terry Nichols’ supper then; children in the Sudan would be very happy to have it today.
Because of Terry Nichols and Timothy McVeigh, some thirty or forty children in Oklahoma City did not live to make whiny faces at the supper table at the risk of a good spanking.
If this matter comes to adjudication, the thoughtful, reflective, working American must hope that the thoughtful, reflective, working judge will listen carefully to sensitive Mr. Nichols’ petition, consider it carefully, look at Mr. Nichols, and say “No. Next case.”
Monday, June 22, 2009
"I Been"
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.”
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.”
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-
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