Mack Hall
Bashing our practically perfect postal people is a recent innovation; until the United States Postal Service, nee’ Post Office, was dragged down by politics in the 1960s it was the world’s best, and on a local level it still is. The leader class in D.C. and the connected masters of the monster regional centers are not interested in your mail or the postal employees who actually work, but the nice man or woman who sells you stamps or delivers the bills to your door still follows the finest tradition of neither rain nor snow nor water moccasins.
For mail delivery from the United States Postal Service you do not have to telephone 1-800-BOMBAY and find yourself referred from operator to operative to obfuscation and back again. There’s a post office in the nearest town. You can within minutes rent an inside box for a small annual fee or arrange for rural delivery. You do not have to stay home and wait for someone to come out and bolt chunks of metal to your roof. The United States Postal Service has no interest in your roof.
The United States Postal Service does not lie to you. Can you say the same thing of your internet or television service provider?
When you walk to your official United States mail box you are not blocked by pop-up-in-your-face attack ads for fungicides for delicate parts of your anatomy. You might be blocked by the wide-load lady who bends over and spreads out over a block of twenty or so mail boxes while she slowly examines, one at a time, each item from her own box, but that’s not the postal service’s fault.
If you receive lots of letters occasionally, say at Christmas, the United States Postal Service does not charge you extra for them because you’ve exceeded some sort of dot.com.org.punk quota.
When you buy a stamp, that stamp will send your letter anywhere in the USA or to an APO. The postal service will not suddenly tell you that you have sent too many letters this month and charge you extra for the next stamp.
Unlike your ISP or satellite, the postal service does not shut down whenever there’s a little wind or a few drops of rain.
Opening your mail box does not require some twenty mechanical steps, the entry of two different codes, and waiting and waiting and waiting while a connection is sloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooowly accomplished.
Your mail box does not disappear just as you reach for the letters inside, with a disembodied message floating in the air telling you that you must restart your mail box.
Postal service billing makes sense. First of all, there is actually no billing – you give the nice person at the counter a package or a letter and some money, and off goes the letter or cookies or First Communion card. The postage costs an agreed amount, and there is no vague, coded list of inexplicable fees added.
Anything you have entered into any keyboard anywhere exists now and will exist long after that really bad day is centuries past; any myopic busybody in the world can recover it and use it against you when you run for mayor or are vetted for a better job. The postal service, a good American institution, doesn’t care about some dumb thing you wrote in a letter during a hissy-fit long ago.
Your local postmaster does not spy on you while you’re on the keyboard. Do you think that someone else isn’t looking at you through the little camera on your ‘puter? Really? Don’t you read the news?
And the stamps are pretty!
Going postal – that’s really a good thing.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Sunday, April 4, 2010
A Sort-of Disneyland, only with Firing Squads
Mack Hall
Dubai is a no-kissing zone.
The United Arab Emirates is just another middle-eastern thugocracy of sand, rocks, oil, and semi-retired pirates. The capital, Dubai, features the world’s tallest skyscraper, but with the downturn in the local economy there doesn’t seem to be anyone in it. Dubai is quite the party town, according to the Dubai website, featuring “bars, pubs, discos and nightclubs.”
Nightclubs and such have been known to lead to, well, kissing, but in Dubai, a sort of Disneyland, only with slavery and firing squads, you’d better sip your well-regulated liquor and forego osculation.
A British man and woman, Ayman Najafi and Charlotte Adams, have been sentenced to a fine and a month, but not a fine month, in jail for kissing in a restaurant. They were fingered by an outraged citizen who didn’t actually see the kiss but was told about it by her two-year-old daughter.
Rules of evidence in the U.A.E. apparently bridge the cultural gap between P. G. Wodehouse and Lavrentia Beria.
Last year the Dubai justice (cough) system sentenced a British couple to jail for sex-on-the-beach (not the drink), but on appeal commuted the sentences. Last month the Dubai courts less mercifully incarcerated an Indian couple in jail for three months for sending spicy text-messages to each other, and last week sentenced some 17 or so Indians to the firing squad for beating a Pakistani gentleman to death over a wholesale liquor deal in which the party of the first part and the parties of the 1st-17th parts could not come to an amicable agreement.
Okay, that last crime was a little over the top, but in the USA a murderous mob would probably be given community service and then jobs with A.C.O.R.N.
Of course in the U.A.E. one never knows whether or not a crime really happened. Given that third-hand testimony attributed to a two-year-old can lead to a conviction, the Indians may have been guilty of nothing but playing a sitar.
Come to think of it, playing a sitar should result in the death penalty anyway.
I suggest that Dubai could use some help from American law enforcement. Perhaps the Los Angeles Police Department could send Officers Pete Malloy and Jim Reed to help the United Arab Emirates update and inculturate:
“Say, Jim, we’ve been on duty for four hours. Let’s stop for a sandwich. SANDwich, get it? We’re in the U.A.E. Ha, ha. SANDwich.”
“That’s not funny, Pete.”
Radio, with appropriate static and crackling: “One-Adam-Twelve, One-Adam-Twelve, see the woman, 2332 Glorious and Enlightened Sheik Alli-Bubba Drive. Assault in progress.”
Pete and Jim speed past casinos and bars, and quickly arrive.
“Yes, ma’am, what seems to be the problem?”
“Oh, officers, praise the religion of peace and mercy; some young punks pushed me down and stole my purse! They ran thataway!”
“Ma’am, you’re under arrest. Cuff her, Reed.”
“But officer, why? I’m the victim!”
“Yes, ma’am, but you’re a woman, so you tempted those poor, impressionable lads. Sorry, but you’ll go to prison for this, if not the peace-loving firing squad. Read this lady her rights, Reed…oh, well, never mind.”
Later, over Turkish coffee and pita bread, Reed asks “I don’t get it, Pete. That woman’s purse was stolen. Why should she go to jail?”
“We don’t make the laws, Jim, we just enforce them. Our country has sent us to the U.A.E. for sensitivity training. We’re here to learn new ways of doing things, and we must respect the local culture.”
“Pete, the local culture seems to be about tourism, slavery, money-laundering, and funding terrorists, all under a government that makes the Chicago mob look classy.”
“Jim, if I’ve told you once I’ve told you a million times, it’s not slavery, it’s a guest-worker program. Didn’t they teach you anything at the academy?”
“They didn’t have to teach me the difference between employment and slavery.”
“Cool it, partner. We’re guest workers too.”
“One-Adam-Twelve, One-Adam-Twelve, reports of unauthorized kissing at a Denny’s. Repeat, unauthorized kissing at a Denny’s.”
“Let’s roll, partner.”
“Um, Pete…”
“Yeah?”
“The United Arab Emirates…they’re our friends, right?”
-30-
Dubai is a no-kissing zone.
The United Arab Emirates is just another middle-eastern thugocracy of sand, rocks, oil, and semi-retired pirates. The capital, Dubai, features the world’s tallest skyscraper, but with the downturn in the local economy there doesn’t seem to be anyone in it. Dubai is quite the party town, according to the Dubai website, featuring “bars, pubs, discos and nightclubs.”
Nightclubs and such have been known to lead to, well, kissing, but in Dubai, a sort of Disneyland, only with slavery and firing squads, you’d better sip your well-regulated liquor and forego osculation.
A British man and woman, Ayman Najafi and Charlotte Adams, have been sentenced to a fine and a month, but not a fine month, in jail for kissing in a restaurant. They were fingered by an outraged citizen who didn’t actually see the kiss but was told about it by her two-year-old daughter.
Rules of evidence in the U.A.E. apparently bridge the cultural gap between P. G. Wodehouse and Lavrentia Beria.
Last year the Dubai justice (cough) system sentenced a British couple to jail for sex-on-the-beach (not the drink), but on appeal commuted the sentences. Last month the Dubai courts less mercifully incarcerated an Indian couple in jail for three months for sending spicy text-messages to each other, and last week sentenced some 17 or so Indians to the firing squad for beating a Pakistani gentleman to death over a wholesale liquor deal in which the party of the first part and the parties of the 1st-17th parts could not come to an amicable agreement.
Okay, that last crime was a little over the top, but in the USA a murderous mob would probably be given community service and then jobs with A.C.O.R.N.
Of course in the U.A.E. one never knows whether or not a crime really happened. Given that third-hand testimony attributed to a two-year-old can lead to a conviction, the Indians may have been guilty of nothing but playing a sitar.
Come to think of it, playing a sitar should result in the death penalty anyway.
I suggest that Dubai could use some help from American law enforcement. Perhaps the Los Angeles Police Department could send Officers Pete Malloy and Jim Reed to help the United Arab Emirates update and inculturate:
“Say, Jim, we’ve been on duty for four hours. Let’s stop for a sandwich. SANDwich, get it? We’re in the U.A.E. Ha, ha. SANDwich.”
“That’s not funny, Pete.”
Radio, with appropriate static and crackling: “One-Adam-Twelve, One-Adam-Twelve, see the woman, 2332 Glorious and Enlightened Sheik Alli-Bubba Drive. Assault in progress.”
Pete and Jim speed past casinos and bars, and quickly arrive.
“Yes, ma’am, what seems to be the problem?”
“Oh, officers, praise the religion of peace and mercy; some young punks pushed me down and stole my purse! They ran thataway!”
“Ma’am, you’re under arrest. Cuff her, Reed.”
“But officer, why? I’m the victim!”
“Yes, ma’am, but you’re a woman, so you tempted those poor, impressionable lads. Sorry, but you’ll go to prison for this, if not the peace-loving firing squad. Read this lady her rights, Reed…oh, well, never mind.”
Later, over Turkish coffee and pita bread, Reed asks “I don’t get it, Pete. That woman’s purse was stolen. Why should she go to jail?”
“We don’t make the laws, Jim, we just enforce them. Our country has sent us to the U.A.E. for sensitivity training. We’re here to learn new ways of doing things, and we must respect the local culture.”
“Pete, the local culture seems to be about tourism, slavery, money-laundering, and funding terrorists, all under a government that makes the Chicago mob look classy.”
“Jim, if I’ve told you once I’ve told you a million times, it’s not slavery, it’s a guest-worker program. Didn’t they teach you anything at the academy?”
“They didn’t have to teach me the difference between employment and slavery.”
“Cool it, partner. We’re guest workers too.”
“One-Adam-Twelve, One-Adam-Twelve, reports of unauthorized kissing at a Denny’s. Repeat, unauthorized kissing at a Denny’s.”
“Let’s roll, partner.”
“Um, Pete…”
“Yeah?”
“The United Arab Emirates…they’re our friends, right?”
-30-
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Cultural Colonialism and a Fish
Mack Hall
Hayden Panettiere, who is famous for playing an “indestructible cheerleader” (I’m only repeated what the AP says) on television, has directed the fisherpersons of Taiji, Japan to stop their annual dolphin fishing.
Posturing – I mean, protesting – the annual seal hunt in Newfoundland is like, so back in th’ day, like, y’know? The happening place now for posing prettily for the cameras and patronizing the benighted natives is darkest Japan. Lapsing into the imperial first-person plural, Great White Non-Huntress Hayden sayeth, “We’ve been to Taiji…it’s a beautiful place with beautiful wildlife.”
Yeah, and the local folks are so cute and quaint and folksy, too, and love to sit on the doorsteps of their ‘umble cottages in the evenings, playing the banjo and singing their ethnic songs. Of course there is the matter of their killing our animal-friends thing.
Any centuries-old culture which has found its balance with nature certainly needs to be corrected and its future planned by a 20-year-old American whose moral, cultural, and intellectual authority comes from appearing on the tellyvision.
Hayden-Sahib promises the fisherfolk of Taiji that if only they’d stop being meanies and killing Flipper she’d love to be their spokesprincess and help them promote tourism and maybe basketweaving. No doubt they’ll build a statue of her and form a cargo-cult.
Newfoundland was promised the same deal – stop beating the widdy-biddy-big-eyed baby seals to death and we’ll send you some tourists. Yes, if we all stop farming and fishing we can feed the world based on visiting each other.
Perhaps my neighbor, who raises horses and cows, could be persuaded to give all his livestock to a nature preserve – where’d they naturally be naturally eaten by the natural and organic wolves – and charge tourists five dollars each to walk across his fields and admire the clover or something. No hayrides in a wagon, though, because a tractor burns that wicked old polluting gasoline and using a mule would be animal cruelty. Let the mule, too, be recycled by cuddly carnivores.
In the summers we could all stop fishing the lakes and streams, beat our fishing poles into plowshares, and learn how to wear funny clothes and pose for pictures with tourists. With the proceeds we could put fish-flavored tofu on the table beneath an ikon of the divine Hayden.
Hey, we could sell our woods rattlesnakes to tourists as pets. The city folk could take the critters back to their high-rise apartments and snuggle up to them on cold winter nights, or maybe turn the rattlers loose in the city parks where children play. Hey, if rattlesnakes are good for country children just think how much better they’ll be for city kids.
And Newfoundland could send Hayden some harp seals for her swimming pool for her pet dolphin to eat. Hayden does know that none of these critters is a vegetarian, doesn’t she?
Japan, like Iceland and England, is a small island nation, and because of this much of her economy is based on the sea. Seafaring nations squabble with each other over limits and about who should fish where, but none of them proposes mass starvation by not fishing at all. A 20-year-old whose wholly artificial living is not based on the soil or the sea is not only presumptuous but dangerous in telling people who actually work how to live. A Japanese fisherman living a marginal life has no following of thousands of cell-‘phone twitterers whose idea of a rough day is being asked to turn in a global-warming essay on time. He is pretty much alone. The fisherman makes his peace with the sea because his living is the sea, and if he does not fish his children do not eat. To require this man to surrender his dignity and his heritage and take up selling made-in-China souvenirs to mocking visitors is unconscionable.
Eat the fish. Save the humans.
-30-
Hayden Panettiere, who is famous for playing an “indestructible cheerleader” (I’m only repeated what the AP says) on television, has directed the fisherpersons of Taiji, Japan to stop their annual dolphin fishing.
Posturing – I mean, protesting – the annual seal hunt in Newfoundland is like, so back in th’ day, like, y’know? The happening place now for posing prettily for the cameras and patronizing the benighted natives is darkest Japan. Lapsing into the imperial first-person plural, Great White Non-Huntress Hayden sayeth, “We’ve been to Taiji…it’s a beautiful place with beautiful wildlife.”
Yeah, and the local folks are so cute and quaint and folksy, too, and love to sit on the doorsteps of their ‘umble cottages in the evenings, playing the banjo and singing their ethnic songs. Of course there is the matter of their killing our animal-friends thing.
Any centuries-old culture which has found its balance with nature certainly needs to be corrected and its future planned by a 20-year-old American whose moral, cultural, and intellectual authority comes from appearing on the tellyvision.
Hayden-Sahib promises the fisherfolk of Taiji that if only they’d stop being meanies and killing Flipper she’d love to be their spokesprincess and help them promote tourism and maybe basketweaving. No doubt they’ll build a statue of her and form a cargo-cult.
Newfoundland was promised the same deal – stop beating the widdy-biddy-big-eyed baby seals to death and we’ll send you some tourists. Yes, if we all stop farming and fishing we can feed the world based on visiting each other.
Perhaps my neighbor, who raises horses and cows, could be persuaded to give all his livestock to a nature preserve – where’d they naturally be naturally eaten by the natural and organic wolves – and charge tourists five dollars each to walk across his fields and admire the clover or something. No hayrides in a wagon, though, because a tractor burns that wicked old polluting gasoline and using a mule would be animal cruelty. Let the mule, too, be recycled by cuddly carnivores.
In the summers we could all stop fishing the lakes and streams, beat our fishing poles into plowshares, and learn how to wear funny clothes and pose for pictures with tourists. With the proceeds we could put fish-flavored tofu on the table beneath an ikon of the divine Hayden.
Hey, we could sell our woods rattlesnakes to tourists as pets. The city folk could take the critters back to their high-rise apartments and snuggle up to them on cold winter nights, or maybe turn the rattlers loose in the city parks where children play. Hey, if rattlesnakes are good for country children just think how much better they’ll be for city kids.
And Newfoundland could send Hayden some harp seals for her swimming pool for her pet dolphin to eat. Hayden does know that none of these critters is a vegetarian, doesn’t she?
Japan, like Iceland and England, is a small island nation, and because of this much of her economy is based on the sea. Seafaring nations squabble with each other over limits and about who should fish where, but none of them proposes mass starvation by not fishing at all. A 20-year-old whose wholly artificial living is not based on the soil or the sea is not only presumptuous but dangerous in telling people who actually work how to live. A Japanese fisherman living a marginal life has no following of thousands of cell-‘phone twitterers whose idea of a rough day is being asked to turn in a global-warming essay on time. He is pretty much alone. The fisherman makes his peace with the sea because his living is the sea, and if he does not fish his children do not eat. To require this man to surrender his dignity and his heritage and take up selling made-in-China souvenirs to mocking visitors is unconscionable.
Eat the fish. Save the humans.
-30-
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Mack's Health Care Proposals
Mack Hall
Before you vote you must first (1) register to vote, (2) vote, and (3) understand that listening to the screaming fat boys on the radio does not constitute participatory democracy.
Now take your special Sergeant Preston of the Yukon secret decoder pen and mark your ballot:
Proposition 1. I am in favor of health care, formerly known as folks going to see the doctor when they need to.
A. Yes
B. No, I stand in front of emergency room doorways and strongly urge folks to go home and die quietly, leaving all their worldly goods to me
Proposition 2. The proper spelling is:
A. Health care
B. Healthcare
Proposition 3: All births will be reported:
A. In the Honolulu newspapers only
B. On cheap photocopier paper in disappearing ink
Proposition 4. All Americans will receive the same health care as Congress and the Premiere of Newfoundland.
A. When Buna, Texas freezes over
B. See ‘A’ above
C. Your attitude’s been noticed, comrade
Proposition 5. All physicians, nurses, aides, technicians, and other health care providers will be required to spend more time on paperwork and sensitivity training than in providing services to the sick. They will be supervised by trustees who have no medical experience, will have their incomes fixed by a czar, and will constantly be faulted by keyboard commandos on the ‘net. They will be sued until they are more efficient according to norms fixed by government functionaries who have no idea of what healing the sick involves.
A. Yes
B. Where’d they go?
Proposition 6: Except for Congress, all Americans will be subject to death…um, quality of life panels made up of A.C.O.R.N. and S.E.I.U thug…um, therapists to determine if they are worthy.
A. Yes
B. Comrades, take this citizen into the street and help him understand why he needs to vote ‘yes’
Proposition 7: Hospital closures…um…consolidation will continue until there is one giant government hospital in the USA, located in Area 51. Congress will have its own provisions, and that’s none of your business, okay?
A. Yes, master
B. What happened to all the good little private, religious, and local-government hospitals that used to serve America?
C. “Questions are a burden to others.” -- The Prisoner
Proposition 8: Anyone who wants to know what’s in the several thousand pages of what is said to be health care reform is a racist, a homophobe, and a homonym.
A. Yes
B. We have sensitivity training for people like you
Proposition 9: Except for Congress and the Premiere of Newfoundland, any wait lasting less than twelve hours in the nation’s one remaining emergency room shall not be considered a long wait.
A. Yes
B. Aren’t you dead yet?
Proposition 10: Anyone who actually works for a living will pay for universal health care but will not receive it; anyone who has never worked and never intends to work will receive universal health care and a flat screen teevee. The Premiere of Newfoundland, however, will not receive a flat screen teevee.
A. Yes
B. I’ve been watching reality shows; what are you talking about?
-30-
Before you vote you must first (1) register to vote, (2) vote, and (3) understand that listening to the screaming fat boys on the radio does not constitute participatory democracy.
Now take your special Sergeant Preston of the Yukon secret decoder pen and mark your ballot:
Proposition 1. I am in favor of health care, formerly known as folks going to see the doctor when they need to.
A. Yes
B. No, I stand in front of emergency room doorways and strongly urge folks to go home and die quietly, leaving all their worldly goods to me
Proposition 2. The proper spelling is:
A. Health care
B. Healthcare
Proposition 3: All births will be reported:
A. In the Honolulu newspapers only
B. On cheap photocopier paper in disappearing ink
Proposition 4. All Americans will receive the same health care as Congress and the Premiere of Newfoundland.
A. When Buna, Texas freezes over
B. See ‘A’ above
C. Your attitude’s been noticed, comrade
Proposition 5. All physicians, nurses, aides, technicians, and other health care providers will be required to spend more time on paperwork and sensitivity training than in providing services to the sick. They will be supervised by trustees who have no medical experience, will have their incomes fixed by a czar, and will constantly be faulted by keyboard commandos on the ‘net. They will be sued until they are more efficient according to norms fixed by government functionaries who have no idea of what healing the sick involves.
A. Yes
B. Where’d they go?
Proposition 6: Except for Congress, all Americans will be subject to death…um, quality of life panels made up of A.C.O.R.N. and S.E.I.U thug…um, therapists to determine if they are worthy.
A. Yes
B. Comrades, take this citizen into the street and help him understand why he needs to vote ‘yes’
Proposition 7: Hospital closures…um…consolidation will continue until there is one giant government hospital in the USA, located in Area 51. Congress will have its own provisions, and that’s none of your business, okay?
A. Yes, master
B. What happened to all the good little private, religious, and local-government hospitals that used to serve America?
C. “Questions are a burden to others.” -- The Prisoner
Proposition 8: Anyone who wants to know what’s in the several thousand pages of what is said to be health care reform is a racist, a homophobe, and a homonym.
A. Yes
B. We have sensitivity training for people like you
Proposition 9: Except for Congress and the Premiere of Newfoundland, any wait lasting less than twelve hours in the nation’s one remaining emergency room shall not be considered a long wait.
A. Yes
B. Aren’t you dead yet?
Proposition 10: Anyone who actually works for a living will pay for universal health care but will not receive it; anyone who has never worked and never intends to work will receive universal health care and a flat screen teevee. The Premiere of Newfoundland, however, will not receive a flat screen teevee.
A. Yes
B. I’ve been watching reality shows; what are you talking about?
-30-
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Saint Swithin's Day
Mack Hall
There are no parades for Saint Augustine of North Africa on the 28th of August. No one wears a tee-shirt with the invitational “Kiss Me, I’m African-Carthaginian-Roman,” and one looks in vain for a beer stein bearing an image of the saint on one side and “Beat the Snot Out of a Manichaean” on the other.
Saint Augustine of Canterbury is passed by, too, with no bumper stickers reading “Our Augustine Can Whip Your Odin with One Baptism Tied Behind his Back.”
November 3rd is the feast day of Saint Martin de Porres (which is much easier than saying “Saint Martin de Porres’ Day” because then one would have to calculate how many s’s to put in and just where the apostrophe ought to go), the patron saint of hairdressers and barbers. In a merrier world all barbers and hairdressers would yearly on The Glorious Third parade in the uniforms of their guilds, scissors raised aloft by an honor guard, and singing hymns to God, hymns that also mention hair.
The protomartyr, Saint Stephen, is the patron saint of Hungary, and yet no television specials feature Magyar dancers clogging (or whatever it is that Magyar dancers do) to that jolly old Budapestian song, “Attila the Hun / He Was Really Lots of Fun.” No Magyar-American senators rise unsteadily to a point of order in Congress to declare “Everyone’s Magyar on Saint Stephen’s Day!”
Saint Swithin’s Day (July 15) was a biggie before the Normans came. Robin Hood and his Merry Men often validated a statement with “by Saint Swithin,” as in “Let’s pop over to the Blue Boar Inn for a cold brew, by Saint Swithin.” And yet do pubs feature happy hour on St. Swithin’s Day? Alas, no.
Anyone seeing a flag with the Cross of Saint George almost surely thinks of soccer hooligans and British National Party thugs, not of the patron saint of England, Portugal, and Greece. There are no ditties about “Th’ Wearin’ o’ th’ Red” on April 23rd.
On the first of April most folks will play practical jokes and never spare a thought for Saint Charles I, the last Austrian emperor and one of the noblest men of the 20th century.
In the hospital named for Saint Elizabeth of Thuringen, hundreds of folks pass by a beautiful if fanciful image of her and the Wartburg every day. The ill rightly ask their friends to pray for them, but do they ask Saint Elizabeth to pray for them too? Her day is November 17th. It passes unremarked.
And perhaps that blithe indifference to most saints is better than the shabby treatment given Saint Patrick of Ireland (tho’ he was born in Britain and then enslaved by the Irish). Guided by an angel, Patrick fled his captors after many years in bondage and escaped to Gaul (France) where he went to school and was ordained a priest. Patrick then returned to Ireland to serve as a missionary among the people who had worked him in captivity. That Patrick actually forgave them and then did something for others instead of hanging out for the rest of his life in Britain or Gaul and crying into his beer about his ill-treatment is the surest proof that he was not Irish.
Saint Patrick did not serve humanity so that they might pour green dye into their beverages, wear made-in-China leprechaun badges, and get all teary-eyed about how Celtic they are. The local telly news will feature unsteady folks in the traditional Ye Old Green Tees lifting their glasses and yelling “Whoo! Whoo!” or something equally Ye Olde Celtic at the local Ye Old Irish Blarney Pub and Grille or something, but will have nothing to say of “Saint Patrick’s Breastplate” (that’s a traditional prayer), or of Saint Palladius, Saint Brendan, or Saint Brigid.
Perhaps on Saint Patrick’s Day the other saints at the foot of the Throne gather around him and pat him on the shoulder and comfort him with “We know you tried your best, Paddy,” or perhaps “Maybe next year they’ll get it, eh?”
-30-
Mack Hall’s A Liturgy for the Emperor is available in hardback for $22.99 from Lulu.com and Amazon com. Searching for the Summer Country is available in paperback for $11.88 from Lulu.com. Both are collections of poetry in what is known as neo-formalism, that is, they scan and / or rhyme. No vague, fuzzy, 1968-ish, stream-of-consciousness stuff from Mack!
There are no parades for Saint Augustine of North Africa on the 28th of August. No one wears a tee-shirt with the invitational “Kiss Me, I’m African-Carthaginian-Roman,” and one looks in vain for a beer stein bearing an image of the saint on one side and “Beat the Snot Out of a Manichaean” on the other.
Saint Augustine of Canterbury is passed by, too, with no bumper stickers reading “Our Augustine Can Whip Your Odin with One Baptism Tied Behind his Back.”
November 3rd is the feast day of Saint Martin de Porres (which is much easier than saying “Saint Martin de Porres’ Day” because then one would have to calculate how many s’s to put in and just where the apostrophe ought to go), the patron saint of hairdressers and barbers. In a merrier world all barbers and hairdressers would yearly on The Glorious Third parade in the uniforms of their guilds, scissors raised aloft by an honor guard, and singing hymns to God, hymns that also mention hair.
The protomartyr, Saint Stephen, is the patron saint of Hungary, and yet no television specials feature Magyar dancers clogging (or whatever it is that Magyar dancers do) to that jolly old Budapestian song, “Attila the Hun / He Was Really Lots of Fun.” No Magyar-American senators rise unsteadily to a point of order in Congress to declare “Everyone’s Magyar on Saint Stephen’s Day!”
Saint Swithin’s Day (July 15) was a biggie before the Normans came. Robin Hood and his Merry Men often validated a statement with “by Saint Swithin,” as in “Let’s pop over to the Blue Boar Inn for a cold brew, by Saint Swithin.” And yet do pubs feature happy hour on St. Swithin’s Day? Alas, no.
Anyone seeing a flag with the Cross of Saint George almost surely thinks of soccer hooligans and British National Party thugs, not of the patron saint of England, Portugal, and Greece. There are no ditties about “Th’ Wearin’ o’ th’ Red” on April 23rd.
On the first of April most folks will play practical jokes and never spare a thought for Saint Charles I, the last Austrian emperor and one of the noblest men of the 20th century.
In the hospital named for Saint Elizabeth of Thuringen, hundreds of folks pass by a beautiful if fanciful image of her and the Wartburg every day. The ill rightly ask their friends to pray for them, but do they ask Saint Elizabeth to pray for them too? Her day is November 17th. It passes unremarked.
And perhaps that blithe indifference to most saints is better than the shabby treatment given Saint Patrick of Ireland (tho’ he was born in Britain and then enslaved by the Irish). Guided by an angel, Patrick fled his captors after many years in bondage and escaped to Gaul (France) where he went to school and was ordained a priest. Patrick then returned to Ireland to serve as a missionary among the people who had worked him in captivity. That Patrick actually forgave them and then did something for others instead of hanging out for the rest of his life in Britain or Gaul and crying into his beer about his ill-treatment is the surest proof that he was not Irish.
Saint Patrick did not serve humanity so that they might pour green dye into their beverages, wear made-in-China leprechaun badges, and get all teary-eyed about how Celtic they are. The local telly news will feature unsteady folks in the traditional Ye Old Green Tees lifting their glasses and yelling “Whoo! Whoo!” or something equally Ye Olde Celtic at the local Ye Old Irish Blarney Pub and Grille or something, but will have nothing to say of “Saint Patrick’s Breastplate” (that’s a traditional prayer), or of Saint Palladius, Saint Brendan, or Saint Brigid.
Perhaps on Saint Patrick’s Day the other saints at the foot of the Throne gather around him and pat him on the shoulder and comfort him with “We know you tried your best, Paddy,” or perhaps “Maybe next year they’ll get it, eh?”
-30-
Mack Hall’s A Liturgy for the Emperor is available in hardback for $22.99 from Lulu.com and Amazon com. Searching for the Summer Country is available in paperback for $11.88 from Lulu.com. Both are collections of poetry in what is known as neo-formalism, that is, they scan and / or rhyme. No vague, fuzzy, 1968-ish, stream-of-consciousness stuff from Mack!
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Rush Limbaugh's Bedroom and Other Meditations
Mack Hall
With the arrival of spring, or as springy as this part of the world ever uncoils, folks go outside and do outside stuff – fertilize the lawn with that bag of crumbly stuff leftover from an autumn sale, talk to the apple blossoms, comment on the bits of green poking up tentatively through November’s sere leaves, and sometimes simply sit on the steps and marvel at another new year. At such times one’s mind, unleashed from the ‘net and the radio and the telly, begins to, well, think:
Evolution is Really Real in Canada
Canada’s current national anthem, which Americans got to hear over and over during the Olympics, may soon suffer another change. Once upon a time it was “God Save the Queen / King / Labour Electorate Along the London-Birmingham Axis,” and then multiple versions of “O Canada.” The original was written by a woman and afterwards modified several times by men. Just now there is a line about Thy Sons or something, which someone says should be Thy Persons or something, and folks in Canada are arguing about it. Perhaps Canadians won’t mind a Yank weighing on some word changes:
“O Canada, What Are the Words to Our National Anthem This year? Eh.”
“O Canada, We’re Not the USA. Eh.”
“O Canada, Built on Hockey and Tim Horton’s. Eh.”
“O Canada, We’ve Got More Olympic Gold Medals Than the USA and Russia Put Together So There. Eh.”
Ooooh – I hope I’m not beaten to death with made-in-China Anne of Green Gables dolls the next time I visit Prince Edward Island.
The Death Penalty
These two headlines were one above the other in a recent web news site: “Mother Dumped Newborn in Trash, Went to Party” and “Judge Declares Death Penalty Unconstitutional.”
Swinging Singapore
Tom Taschinger of the Beaumont Enterprise, upon which The Times of London models itself, reports that Singapore still bans chewing gum. Tom finds this harsh, but, hey, it’s not as bad as some geriatric hippie in a hula shirt playing a guitar in church because, like, 1968 was so, like, y’know, happenin’.”
Spring Break – Saints Gone Wild
An Irish tourist board recently promoted ten ways to celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day without going to a pub. Not one of the ten suggestions included attending Mass that day. The English tried for hundreds of years to suppress Ireland’s ancient faith; left alone the Irish destroyed it themselves.
Kiss me – I’m not Irish.
Spring Break – Body Scanners Gone Wild
Jeremy Clarkson of The Times of London writes: “We now think it’s normal to take off our clothes at an airport.”
Spring Break – Amish Girls Gone Mild
How did Amish caps become an almost requisite accessory on the covers of romance novels? Lucinda no longer swoons passionately in the arms of the Byronic pirate / Indian / outlaw; she sits demurely on a wagon seat next to some fellow named Aminadab while sporting a white beanie with strings hanging down.
One can anticipate a Hallmark movie: Amish Spring Break – Girls Scrub Floors While Fully Dressed.
Lock-and-Load Voting
Iraq voted for parliamentary seats last week, and the Religion of Peace wasn’t having it. Through bombings and shootings they murdered more people than show up to vote in some county elections in the USA. Alas that more Americans complain about the governance of the country than actually do something about it.
Where’s a Sky Marshal When You Need One?
Last week an air-traffic controller at JFK, nee’ Idyllwild, allowed his young son to radio instructions to pilots.
This is probably not permitted in advanced nations.
Rush Limbaugh’s Bedroom
Rush Limbaugh is apparently selling his New York penthouse. A purported photograph of his bedroom shows a foo-foo space possibly modeled on Cleopatra’s boudoir in the Elizabeth Taylor film, but subtly influenced by Elvis Presley’s jungle room and the poetry section of the Austin Barnes and Nobles. And the low-prole ceiling paintings and Florida beach motel murals are to die. Not to die for. To die.
It just doesn’t look very, um, Republican.
-30-
With the arrival of spring, or as springy as this part of the world ever uncoils, folks go outside and do outside stuff – fertilize the lawn with that bag of crumbly stuff leftover from an autumn sale, talk to the apple blossoms, comment on the bits of green poking up tentatively through November’s sere leaves, and sometimes simply sit on the steps and marvel at another new year. At such times one’s mind, unleashed from the ‘net and the radio and the telly, begins to, well, think:
Evolution is Really Real in Canada
Canada’s current national anthem, which Americans got to hear over and over during the Olympics, may soon suffer another change. Once upon a time it was “God Save the Queen / King / Labour Electorate Along the London-Birmingham Axis,” and then multiple versions of “O Canada.” The original was written by a woman and afterwards modified several times by men. Just now there is a line about Thy Sons or something, which someone says should be Thy Persons or something, and folks in Canada are arguing about it. Perhaps Canadians won’t mind a Yank weighing on some word changes:
“O Canada, What Are the Words to Our National Anthem This year? Eh.”
“O Canada, We’re Not the USA. Eh.”
“O Canada, Built on Hockey and Tim Horton’s. Eh.”
“O Canada, We’ve Got More Olympic Gold Medals Than the USA and Russia Put Together So There. Eh.”
Ooooh – I hope I’m not beaten to death with made-in-China Anne of Green Gables dolls the next time I visit Prince Edward Island.
The Death Penalty
These two headlines were one above the other in a recent web news site: “Mother Dumped Newborn in Trash, Went to Party” and “Judge Declares Death Penalty Unconstitutional.”
Swinging Singapore
Tom Taschinger of the Beaumont Enterprise, upon which The Times of London models itself, reports that Singapore still bans chewing gum. Tom finds this harsh, but, hey, it’s not as bad as some geriatric hippie in a hula shirt playing a guitar in church because, like, 1968 was so, like, y’know, happenin’.”
Spring Break – Saints Gone Wild
An Irish tourist board recently promoted ten ways to celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day without going to a pub. Not one of the ten suggestions included attending Mass that day. The English tried for hundreds of years to suppress Ireland’s ancient faith; left alone the Irish destroyed it themselves.
Kiss me – I’m not Irish.
Spring Break – Body Scanners Gone Wild
Jeremy Clarkson of The Times of London writes: “We now think it’s normal to take off our clothes at an airport.”
Spring Break – Amish Girls Gone Mild
How did Amish caps become an almost requisite accessory on the covers of romance novels? Lucinda no longer swoons passionately in the arms of the Byronic pirate / Indian / outlaw; she sits demurely on a wagon seat next to some fellow named Aminadab while sporting a white beanie with strings hanging down.
One can anticipate a Hallmark movie: Amish Spring Break – Girls Scrub Floors While Fully Dressed.
Lock-and-Load Voting
Iraq voted for parliamentary seats last week, and the Religion of Peace wasn’t having it. Through bombings and shootings they murdered more people than show up to vote in some county elections in the USA. Alas that more Americans complain about the governance of the country than actually do something about it.
Where’s a Sky Marshal When You Need One?
Last week an air-traffic controller at JFK, nee’ Idyllwild, allowed his young son to radio instructions to pilots.
This is probably not permitted in advanced nations.
Rush Limbaugh’s Bedroom
Rush Limbaugh is apparently selling his New York penthouse. A purported photograph of his bedroom shows a foo-foo space possibly modeled on Cleopatra’s boudoir in the Elizabeth Taylor film, but subtly influenced by Elvis Presley’s jungle room and the poetry section of the Austin Barnes and Nobles. And the low-prole ceiling paintings and Florida beach motel murals are to die. Not to die for. To die.
It just doesn’t look very, um, Republican.
-30-
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Fish Sticks, Hockey Sticks, Canadian Chicks
Mack Hall
Last week a pet whale killed its third human at about the same time the Canadian women’s hockey team won a hockey match, which hockey teams have been known to do. This hockey match, though, was for the Olympic championship.
Curiously, the girl-eating whale enjoys a better chance at praise, honor, and a picture on a cereal box. The Canadian girls (I can call them girls; I’m old) are in BIG trouble for excessive merriment, which must not be tolerated.
No, not everyone was happy to see those young Canadian women sing their national anthem with joyful tears in their eyes. American hockey fans, for instance. And a number of Canadians in the audience didn’t even bother to take off their obligatory baseball caps during “O Canada,” while Prime Minister Harper looked as if he had lost a particularly beloved looney in a wager with his driver.
Things got worse for the plucky pucksters when, later in the evening, after the fans and almost everyone else had gone home, they returned to the ice to celebrate with champagne and cigars. The photographs of this innocent jollification outraged the oh-so-easily outraged. The public relations would have been worse only if Canada’s gold medalists had killed and eaten a baby harp seal in front of a kindergarten class.
According to the BBC, the International Olympic Committee, that unimpeachable role model to the world in matters of probity, is “looking into the incident.”
Incident? The Canadian equivalent of an end-zone dance is an “incident?” Horrors.
An organization styling itself Hockey Canada apologized for the offense given by Team Canada to a frail and delicate world heretofore innocent of the lurid knowledge of champagne and cigars. Perhaps Team Canada will be required to dress in white pinafores and stand meekly before some rubbishy EuroCourt and sing “I Am Sixteen, Going on Seventeen” as penance.
In contrast to the shabby treatment given Canada’s merry hockey players, the orca (“orca” sounds so much more, like, y’know, environmental and, like, stuff than “large stupid fish”) who kills folks will enjoy a continued career in show business with Sea World, whose corporate heart is colder than Viking DNA mouldering beneath the frost at L’Anse au Meadows. Hey, so what if a loyal employee is drowned and partially eaten by a cetaceous carnivore? Such must not interfere with profits, though the Dinner with Shamu concept may need a little re-working.
Some have asked what made the critter snap? Snap? What are they going to do, give the varmint therapy? A gold medal for killing the most humans?
Others blame the victim, suggesting that her ponytail provoked the animal. Ah, yes, the ponytail defense. And will they say that the victim’s clothes were too tight?
Perhaps even now Sea World lawyers are investigating the victim’s past to determine if she once smoked a cigar or drank a glass of champagne, or was taking secret orders from Ottawa.
How curious it is that women’s honor and even their lives are less important than profits from a freaky fish show for tourists in knee-pants and Avatar tee-shirts.
God bless Canada’s women’s hockey team. They know who they are and how good they are, and so do we, and so do their truest fans: this week in Windsor, Nova Scotia, and all over Canada little girls are slipping Bambi-like on the ice with their half-litre-size hockey sticks, dreaming of Olympic gold, not of being eaten for profit and amusement. To paraphrase Mr. T, I pity the poor fish that gets in their way.
As for the stupid whale, let it be rendered into fish sticks, and soon.
-30-
Last week a pet whale killed its third human at about the same time the Canadian women’s hockey team won a hockey match, which hockey teams have been known to do. This hockey match, though, was for the Olympic championship.
Curiously, the girl-eating whale enjoys a better chance at praise, honor, and a picture on a cereal box. The Canadian girls (I can call them girls; I’m old) are in BIG trouble for excessive merriment, which must not be tolerated.
No, not everyone was happy to see those young Canadian women sing their national anthem with joyful tears in their eyes. American hockey fans, for instance. And a number of Canadians in the audience didn’t even bother to take off their obligatory baseball caps during “O Canada,” while Prime Minister Harper looked as if he had lost a particularly beloved looney in a wager with his driver.
Things got worse for the plucky pucksters when, later in the evening, after the fans and almost everyone else had gone home, they returned to the ice to celebrate with champagne and cigars. The photographs of this innocent jollification outraged the oh-so-easily outraged. The public relations would have been worse only if Canada’s gold medalists had killed and eaten a baby harp seal in front of a kindergarten class.
According to the BBC, the International Olympic Committee, that unimpeachable role model to the world in matters of probity, is “looking into the incident.”
Incident? The Canadian equivalent of an end-zone dance is an “incident?” Horrors.
An organization styling itself Hockey Canada apologized for the offense given by Team Canada to a frail and delicate world heretofore innocent of the lurid knowledge of champagne and cigars. Perhaps Team Canada will be required to dress in white pinafores and stand meekly before some rubbishy EuroCourt and sing “I Am Sixteen, Going on Seventeen” as penance.
In contrast to the shabby treatment given Canada’s merry hockey players, the orca (“orca” sounds so much more, like, y’know, environmental and, like, stuff than “large stupid fish”) who kills folks will enjoy a continued career in show business with Sea World, whose corporate heart is colder than Viking DNA mouldering beneath the frost at L’Anse au Meadows. Hey, so what if a loyal employee is drowned and partially eaten by a cetaceous carnivore? Such must not interfere with profits, though the Dinner with Shamu concept may need a little re-working.
Some have asked what made the critter snap? Snap? What are they going to do, give the varmint therapy? A gold medal for killing the most humans?
Others blame the victim, suggesting that her ponytail provoked the animal. Ah, yes, the ponytail defense. And will they say that the victim’s clothes were too tight?
Perhaps even now Sea World lawyers are investigating the victim’s past to determine if she once smoked a cigar or drank a glass of champagne, or was taking secret orders from Ottawa.
How curious it is that women’s honor and even their lives are less important than profits from a freaky fish show for tourists in knee-pants and Avatar tee-shirts.
God bless Canada’s women’s hockey team. They know who they are and how good they are, and so do we, and so do their truest fans: this week in Windsor, Nova Scotia, and all over Canada little girls are slipping Bambi-like on the ice with their half-litre-size hockey sticks, dreaming of Olympic gold, not of being eaten for profit and amusement. To paraphrase Mr. T, I pity the poor fish that gets in their way.
As for the stupid whale, let it be rendered into fish sticks, and soon.
-30-
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Buddhists and Tradesmen Kindly Use Side Entrance
Mack Hall
Last week the King of Sweden wore a baseball cap and Tiger Woods didn’t, pretty much altering everyone’s perception of reality to the point that some geologists fear a shift in the planetary poles.
Baseball caps are the sort of thing Europeans sneer at for being, well, American, but there His Majesty was, in all his plebeian non-glory. One wonders what “Made in China” is in Swedish. One imagines a King of Sweden on holiday wearing not a ball cap but rather some sort of alpine hat with a feather, or maybe a herring, sticking out of it.
The look-at-this photograph of the week, though, was of the Dalai Lama being escorted out a side door and through a 21-garbage-sack salute of the weekly White House garbage. A sort of Via Garbagossa. Would the D.L.’s fellow Buddhist Tiger Woods be dismissed from The Presence in the same way?
One cannot be sure, but the Dalai Lama looked to be carrying a Wal-Mart dvd collection.
The Dalai Lama’s host and hostess were once promoted as an echo of the elegance of the Kennedy administration, but said echo is more like a bounce off a single-wide belonging to one of Bill Clinton’s Arkansas relatives.
The world’s fascination with the Dalai Lama is curious. He is more famous than Princess Di and featured on lots more tee-shirts, though Princess Di never owned slaves and the Dalai Lama did, up until he fled the Chinese. Whatever ill we may speak of the Chinese, they did end slavery in Tibet.
And now to speak ill of the Chinese: they keep trying to vet every other nation’s guest list. Anyone hosting the Dalai Lama is sternly disapproved of by the iron-jawed men (look in vain for a woman with power) in Peiping / Pekin / Peking / Beijing, and yet he is welcome in every sophisticated salon from Paris to Call Junction. Some of his hosts discreetly see him out by the side door, though, perhaps hoping the Chinese, who sometimes act like censorious old church ladies, won’t notice.
The fashion seems to be “Hey, look, we’re so cool we’ve got the Dalai Lama in our house. Hey, we’re not sure who he is are what he does, but, hey, like The Motorcycle Diaries and global warming, he’s like, y’know, all cool and stuff. And, like, hey, he’s cool with being sneaked out the side door and through the garbage, okay? It’s like, y’know, mantra and samsara and cool oriental stuff, dig? He’s like that.”
The Chinese response is a sinister glower which, translated from Mandarin to English, says, “Hey, just remember that we own you.”
The Dalai Lama does not wear baseball caps, though if he did the cap’s logo might read “Funded by the C.I.A.” No, no, your humble scrivener would never suggest anything so distressing, never, never, never; he’s just repeating mindless but amusing gossip.
Last week the King of Sweden wore a baseball cap and Tiger Woods didn’t, pretty much altering everyone’s perception of reality to the point that some geologists fear a shift in the planetary poles.
Baseball caps are the sort of thing Europeans sneer at for being, well, American, but there His Majesty was, in all his plebeian non-glory. One wonders what “Made in China” is in Swedish. One imagines a King of Sweden on holiday wearing not a ball cap but rather some sort of alpine hat with a feather, or maybe a herring, sticking out of it.
The look-at-this photograph of the week, though, was of the Dalai Lama being escorted out a side door and through a 21-garbage-sack salute of the weekly White House garbage. A sort of Via Garbagossa. Would the D.L.’s fellow Buddhist Tiger Woods be dismissed from The Presence in the same way?
One cannot be sure, but the Dalai Lama looked to be carrying a Wal-Mart dvd collection.
The Dalai Lama’s host and hostess were once promoted as an echo of the elegance of the Kennedy administration, but said echo is more like a bounce off a single-wide belonging to one of Bill Clinton’s Arkansas relatives.
The world’s fascination with the Dalai Lama is curious. He is more famous than Princess Di and featured on lots more tee-shirts, though Princess Di never owned slaves and the Dalai Lama did, up until he fled the Chinese. Whatever ill we may speak of the Chinese, they did end slavery in Tibet.
And now to speak ill of the Chinese: they keep trying to vet every other nation’s guest list. Anyone hosting the Dalai Lama is sternly disapproved of by the iron-jawed men (look in vain for a woman with power) in Peiping / Pekin / Peking / Beijing, and yet he is welcome in every sophisticated salon from Paris to Call Junction. Some of his hosts discreetly see him out by the side door, though, perhaps hoping the Chinese, who sometimes act like censorious old church ladies, won’t notice.
The fashion seems to be “Hey, look, we’re so cool we’ve got the Dalai Lama in our house. Hey, we’re not sure who he is are what he does, but, hey, like The Motorcycle Diaries and global warming, he’s like, y’know, all cool and stuff. And, like, hey, he’s cool with being sneaked out the side door and through the garbage, okay? It’s like, y’know, mantra and samsara and cool oriental stuff, dig? He’s like that.”
The Chinese response is a sinister glower which, translated from Mandarin to English, says, “Hey, just remember that we own you.”
The Dalai Lama does not wear baseball caps, though if he did the cap’s logo might read “Funded by the C.I.A.” No, no, your humble scrivener would never suggest anything so distressing, never, never, never; he’s just repeating mindless but amusing gossip.
Buddhists and Tradesmen Kindly Use Side Entrance
Mack Hall
Last week the King of Sweden wore a baseball cap and Tiger Woods didn’t, pretty much altering everyone’s perception of reality to the point that some geologists fear a shift in the planetary poles.
Baseball caps are the sort of thing Europeans sneer at for being, well, American, but there His Majesty was, in all his plebeian non-glory. One wonders what “Made in China” is in Swedish. One imagines a King of Sweden on holiday wearing not a ball cap but rather some sort of alpine hat with a feather, or maybe a herring, sticking out of it.
The look-at-this photograph of the week, though, was of the Dalai Lama being escorted out a side door and through a 21-garbage-sack salute of the weekly White House garbage. A sort of Via Garbagossa. Would the D.L.’s fellow Buddhist Tiger Woods be dismissed from The Presence in the same way?
One cannot be sure, but the Dalai Lama looked to be carrying a Wal-Mart dvd collection.
The Dalai Lama’s host and hostess were once promoted as an echo of the elegance of the Kennedy administration, but said echo is more like a bounce off a single-wide belonging to one of Bill Clinton’s Arkansas relatives.
The world’s fascination with the Dalai Lama is curious. He is more famous than Princess Di and featured on lots more tee-shirts, though Princess Di never owned slaves and the Dalai Lama did, up until he fled the Chinese. Whatever ill we may speak of the Chinese, they did end slavery in Tibet.
And now to speak ill of the Chinese: they keep trying to vet every other nation’s guest list. Anyone hosting the Dalai Lama is sternly disapproved of by the iron-jawed men (look in vain for a woman with power) in Peiping / Pekin / Peking / Beijing, and yet he is welcome in every sophisticated salon from Paris to Call Junction. Some of his hosts discreetly see him out by the side door, though, perhaps hoping the Chinese, who sometimes act like censorious old church ladies, won’t notice.
The fashion seems to be “Hey, look, we’re so cool we’ve got the Dalai Lama in our house. Hey, we’re not sure who he is are what he does, but, hey, like The Motorcycle Diaries and global warming, he’s like, y’know, all cool and stuff. And, like, hey, he’s cool with being sneaked out the side door and through the garbage, okay? It’s like, y’know, mantra and samsara and cool oriental stuff, dig? He’s like that.”
The Chinese response is a sinister glower which, translated from Mandarin to English, says, “Hey, just remember that we own you.”
The Dalai Lama does not wear baseball caps, though if he did the cap’s logo might read “Funded by the C.I.A.” No, no, your humble scrivener would never suggest anything so distressing, never, never, never; he’s just repeating mindless but amusing gossip.
Last week the King of Sweden wore a baseball cap and Tiger Woods didn’t, pretty much altering everyone’s perception of reality to the point that some geologists fear a shift in the planetary poles.
Baseball caps are the sort of thing Europeans sneer at for being, well, American, but there His Majesty was, in all his plebeian non-glory. One wonders what “Made in China” is in Swedish. One imagines a King of Sweden on holiday wearing not a ball cap but rather some sort of alpine hat with a feather, or maybe a herring, sticking out of it.
The look-at-this photograph of the week, though, was of the Dalai Lama being escorted out a side door and through a 21-garbage-sack salute of the weekly White House garbage. A sort of Via Garbagossa. Would the D.L.’s fellow Buddhist Tiger Woods be dismissed from The Presence in the same way?
One cannot be sure, but the Dalai Lama looked to be carrying a Wal-Mart dvd collection.
The Dalai Lama’s host and hostess were once promoted as an echo of the elegance of the Kennedy administration, but said echo is more like a bounce off a single-wide belonging to one of Bill Clinton’s Arkansas relatives.
The world’s fascination with the Dalai Lama is curious. He is more famous than Princess Di and featured on lots more tee-shirts, though Princess Di never owned slaves and the Dalai Lama did, up until he fled the Chinese. Whatever ill we may speak of the Chinese, they did end slavery in Tibet.
And now to speak ill of the Chinese: they keep trying to vet every other nation’s guest list. Anyone hosting the Dalai Lama is sternly disapproved of by the iron-jawed men (look in vain for a woman with power) in Peiping / Pekin / Peking / Beijing, and yet he is welcome in every sophisticated salon from Paris to Call Junction. Some of his hosts discreetly see him out by the side door, though, perhaps hoping the Chinese, who sometimes act like censorious old church ladies, won’t notice.
The fashion seems to be “Hey, look, we’re so cool we’ve got the Dalai Lama in our house. Hey, we’re not sure who he is are what he does, but, hey, like The Motorcycle Diaries and global warming, he’s like, y’know, all cool and stuff. And, like, hey, he’s cool with being sneaked out the side door and through the garbage, okay? It’s like, y’know, mantra and samsara and cool oriental stuff, dig? He’s like that.”
The Chinese response is a sinister glower which, translated from Mandarin to English, says, “Hey, just remember that we own you.”
The Dalai Lama does not wear baseball caps, though if he did the cap’s logo might read “Funded by the C.I.A.” No, no, your humble scrivener would never suggest anything so distressing, never, never, never; he’s just repeating mindless but amusing gossip.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Spawn of Satan Wireless
Mack Hall
Once upon a time there was no 911 service, but you could use the handset of a Western Electric telephone as a club for beating burglars about the head and shoulders. Now an entire telephone is little more than a choking hazard for infants and puppies.
Cell ‘phones, like toilet paper, are useful, but they have acquired such a cultic status that there may soon be an official government holiday dedicated to them. People actually have conversations about their ‘phones, which did not happen in 1960: “I’ve got a ‘phone. Western Electric. Black. It sends and receives calls.” “Me, too. Western Electric. Black. It sends and receives calls.”
I credit the invention of the Princess Phone as the beginning of the end of Western Civilization.
My lights-up-in-the-dark cell ‘phone winked out last week, and I approached, yea, verily, the Temple of Telephones in Beaumont to have the matter remedied. I was in the temple at 0905, and at 0935 I was still waiting to be blessed by the priestesses and my name hadn’t moved from the #4 spot, where it started, on the electric signboard. The Temple of Telephones features seven altars, but the hierarchy hadn’t seen fit to assign more than two priestesses. Two of the faithful were at the two open altars when I entered and were still there when I left, muttering heresy under my breath. As I have often said before, the concept of customer service in many stores in Beaumont is pretty much Ignore-Them-And-Maybe-They’ll-Go-Away. This also applies to nation-wide religions like my cell ‘phone service provider, Spawn of Satan Wireless.
I was not optimistic about the 1-800-What-Do-You-Want, Peasant? number, but I suffered only five minutes or so of advertisements for newer-than-new Spawn-of-Satan Wireless telephones and services when a miracle occurred – a real human spoke unto me. She told me the obvious, that my ‘phone service had been cancelled. I agreed with her diagnosis, and asked her whodunnit. She was amazed that apparently no one had dunnit, it was just dunnit, but that she would reconnect my ‘phone and not charge me a $15 reconnect fee. She said this last bit as if she expected me to thank her and Spawn of Satan Wireless for not charging me to reconnect a telephone that they, not I, had disconnected. She mentioned this generosity twice. I didn’t thank her twice.
And then I got a bill charging me $150 for early termination. Grrrrrrr.
Once again I am wirelessly harnessed to the world on the electronic choke-chain, and can re-join the faithful in chanting “Can you hear me now?” Before Vatican II that was “Audit me nunc?” Old people still maintain that telephone service was so much better when it was in Latin.
I miss Western Electric telephones, those great big chunks of manly, heavy, made-in-America plastic that you could have used as door stops or boat anchors were you so inclined.
I miss staplers, too. When Marco Polo and I were in school together there were two brands of staplers, Bostich and Swingline, made entirely of steel in American industrial cities by World War II veterans named Spike and Rocky who smoked cigarettes and drank cups of Joe in chrome diners. If Bostich or Swingline staplers jammed you simply opened them up and beat on them like the S.E.I.U. beat up Republicans until their attitude changed.
Alas that you couldn’t take a photograph with a steel stapler. In order to take a photograph you had to have a camera. How did we ever live?
Now staplers are made in China of thin, brittle plastic. My previous one lasted less than a year, and I pleaded with the SupplyMeister for a new stapler, which was called (not kidding) EcoStapler. It lasted through exactly twenty staplings and then split down the middle like the temple veil on Good Friday. The toughest part of the EcoStapler was its hardshell plastic bubble, which took the edge off my Gerber pocketknife in a session of cutting, cursing, and bloodletting.
Tape dispensers, too, were once made of steel, with good steel teeth for sundering the tape apart in a most satisfactory way. Now tape dispensers are plastic, which wouldn’t be a bad idea except that they are filled with Chinese sand and soon begin spilling sand all over one’s endeavors. My tape dispenser is mended with its own tape so no more sand will leak out, but the cuts are a little ragged since the Chinese teeth are little inclined to honest work.
Someone said the new staplers and tape dispensers coming out of India will also take pictures and paint your toenails.
Once upon a time there was no 911 service, but you could use the handset of a Western Electric telephone as a club for beating burglars about the head and shoulders. Now an entire telephone is little more than a choking hazard for infants and puppies.
Cell ‘phones, like toilet paper, are useful, but they have acquired such a cultic status that there may soon be an official government holiday dedicated to them. People actually have conversations about their ‘phones, which did not happen in 1960: “I’ve got a ‘phone. Western Electric. Black. It sends and receives calls.” “Me, too. Western Electric. Black. It sends and receives calls.”
I credit the invention of the Princess Phone as the beginning of the end of Western Civilization.
My lights-up-in-the-dark cell ‘phone winked out last week, and I approached, yea, verily, the Temple of Telephones in Beaumont to have the matter remedied. I was in the temple at 0905, and at 0935 I was still waiting to be blessed by the priestesses and my name hadn’t moved from the #4 spot, where it started, on the electric signboard. The Temple of Telephones features seven altars, but the hierarchy hadn’t seen fit to assign more than two priestesses. Two of the faithful were at the two open altars when I entered and were still there when I left, muttering heresy under my breath. As I have often said before, the concept of customer service in many stores in Beaumont is pretty much Ignore-Them-And-Maybe-They’ll-Go-Away. This also applies to nation-wide religions like my cell ‘phone service provider, Spawn of Satan Wireless.
I was not optimistic about the 1-800-What-Do-You-Want, Peasant? number, but I suffered only five minutes or so of advertisements for newer-than-new Spawn-of-Satan Wireless telephones and services when a miracle occurred – a real human spoke unto me. She told me the obvious, that my ‘phone service had been cancelled. I agreed with her diagnosis, and asked her whodunnit. She was amazed that apparently no one had dunnit, it was just dunnit, but that she would reconnect my ‘phone and not charge me a $15 reconnect fee. She said this last bit as if she expected me to thank her and Spawn of Satan Wireless for not charging me to reconnect a telephone that they, not I, had disconnected. She mentioned this generosity twice. I didn’t thank her twice.
And then I got a bill charging me $150 for early termination. Grrrrrrr.
Once again I am wirelessly harnessed to the world on the electronic choke-chain, and can re-join the faithful in chanting “Can you hear me now?” Before Vatican II that was “Audit me nunc?” Old people still maintain that telephone service was so much better when it was in Latin.
I miss Western Electric telephones, those great big chunks of manly, heavy, made-in-America plastic that you could have used as door stops or boat anchors were you so inclined.
I miss staplers, too. When Marco Polo and I were in school together there were two brands of staplers, Bostich and Swingline, made entirely of steel in American industrial cities by World War II veterans named Spike and Rocky who smoked cigarettes and drank cups of Joe in chrome diners. If Bostich or Swingline staplers jammed you simply opened them up and beat on them like the S.E.I.U. beat up Republicans until their attitude changed.
Alas that you couldn’t take a photograph with a steel stapler. In order to take a photograph you had to have a camera. How did we ever live?
Now staplers are made in China of thin, brittle plastic. My previous one lasted less than a year, and I pleaded with the SupplyMeister for a new stapler, which was called (not kidding) EcoStapler. It lasted through exactly twenty staplings and then split down the middle like the temple veil on Good Friday. The toughest part of the EcoStapler was its hardshell plastic bubble, which took the edge off my Gerber pocketknife in a session of cutting, cursing, and bloodletting.
Tape dispensers, too, were once made of steel, with good steel teeth for sundering the tape apart in a most satisfactory way. Now tape dispensers are plastic, which wouldn’t be a bad idea except that they are filled with Chinese sand and soon begin spilling sand all over one’s endeavors. My tape dispenser is mended with its own tape so no more sand will leak out, but the cuts are a little ragged since the Chinese teeth are little inclined to honest work.
Someone said the new staplers and tape dispensers coming out of India will also take pictures and paint your toenails.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
The United States Witch Force
Mack Hall
The United States Air Force has officially welcomed witchcraft through granting a worship space (apparently a ring of rocks on a hilltop) to Wiccans (which sounds ever so much nicer than saying witches) at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.
The cynical among us might ask (and we do) why witches would want to fly airplanes when they possess perfectly serviceable brooms.
The more reflective among us might ask if this nation has at last lost its collective mind.
And the even more reflective might consider how this process of degradation of religion (which is a perfectly good word) has been going on for a while.
The historical religious tensions in this country are very real, but so are frequent and noble examples of mutual respect: General Washington writing a letter to a Jewish congregation to thank them for their loyalty to the new nation, General Lee integrating his parish, the four chaplains on the sinking USAT Dorchester in World War II sacrificing their lives by giving their lifejackets to other men. These actions were not predicated on some vague moral relativism but on the core beliefs of each faith. The Jewish chaplain who gave his lifejacket to the first soldier he saw without one did so because he knew that was exactly the most Jewish thing he could do.
Mutual respect cannot deteriorate into relativism, however, for then respect must cease to exist. One can no more refer to truth being subjective than one can refer to the sunrise being subjective. Tomorrow the sun will rise, even if a majority of Americans vote that it should not. One can honestly hold that the Real Presence in Holy Communion is not true even as another honestly maintains that it is true. What cannot be honestly held is the feely-goody concept that the Real Presence can be true for Mr. Smith because he wants it to be true, and not true for Mr. Jones because he does not want it to be true. Even more dishonest would be Mr. Smith, Mr. Jones, and Mr. Hoogerwerf agreeing to vote democratically on whether or not the Real Presence is true, and further agreeing to be bound by the results.
Mutual respect among people does not logically extend itself into indulging the fantasies of the childish or deluded among us. Witchcraft is a make-believe neo-paganism of a very silly and made-up sort that real pagans – Aristotle, Plato, and Virgil come to mind – would have laughed out of any ancient temple, grove, or spring. The paganism of our ancestors was an honest and intelligent attempt at understanding reality, not the feverish imaginings of the ill-educated whose religious instruction in youth was no more substantial than a Fisher-Price Play Church.
A cadet at the United States Air Force Academy pursues truth. A petulant will demanding that 2 + 2 should equal 5 because the bearer of the will wants it to be so cannot change the reality that 2 + 2 must always equal 4 and can be no other. Such an individual cannot be trusted with any position of leadership and responsibility. A cadet who insists that physics and trigonometry are subjective “truths” depending on the individual’s feelings should not be trusted with a bicycle and certainly not with an aircraft. If this individual thinks himself The Blue Flower Fairy and wishes to worship toadstools or oak trees, and maybe even learn conversational Klingon, he is free to do so, and Godspeed (so to speak) him. The rest of us are equally free not to be required to fund him in a military academy or obey him as a superior officer in the defense of this nation.
If a candidate for a military academy represents himself as a witch, Harry Potter, an elf, or a light bulb the response should be a hearty, insensitive belly-laugh as the poor sap is led gently away.
-30-
The United States Air Force has officially welcomed witchcraft through granting a worship space (apparently a ring of rocks on a hilltop) to Wiccans (which sounds ever so much nicer than saying witches) at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.
The cynical among us might ask (and we do) why witches would want to fly airplanes when they possess perfectly serviceable brooms.
The more reflective among us might ask if this nation has at last lost its collective mind.
And the even more reflective might consider how this process of degradation of religion (which is a perfectly good word) has been going on for a while.
The historical religious tensions in this country are very real, but so are frequent and noble examples of mutual respect: General Washington writing a letter to a Jewish congregation to thank them for their loyalty to the new nation, General Lee integrating his parish, the four chaplains on the sinking USAT Dorchester in World War II sacrificing their lives by giving their lifejackets to other men. These actions were not predicated on some vague moral relativism but on the core beliefs of each faith. The Jewish chaplain who gave his lifejacket to the first soldier he saw without one did so because he knew that was exactly the most Jewish thing he could do.
Mutual respect cannot deteriorate into relativism, however, for then respect must cease to exist. One can no more refer to truth being subjective than one can refer to the sunrise being subjective. Tomorrow the sun will rise, even if a majority of Americans vote that it should not. One can honestly hold that the Real Presence in Holy Communion is not true even as another honestly maintains that it is true. What cannot be honestly held is the feely-goody concept that the Real Presence can be true for Mr. Smith because he wants it to be true, and not true for Mr. Jones because he does not want it to be true. Even more dishonest would be Mr. Smith, Mr. Jones, and Mr. Hoogerwerf agreeing to vote democratically on whether or not the Real Presence is true, and further agreeing to be bound by the results.
Mutual respect among people does not logically extend itself into indulging the fantasies of the childish or deluded among us. Witchcraft is a make-believe neo-paganism of a very silly and made-up sort that real pagans – Aristotle, Plato, and Virgil come to mind – would have laughed out of any ancient temple, grove, or spring. The paganism of our ancestors was an honest and intelligent attempt at understanding reality, not the feverish imaginings of the ill-educated whose religious instruction in youth was no more substantial than a Fisher-Price Play Church.
A cadet at the United States Air Force Academy pursues truth. A petulant will demanding that 2 + 2 should equal 5 because the bearer of the will wants it to be so cannot change the reality that 2 + 2 must always equal 4 and can be no other. Such an individual cannot be trusted with any position of leadership and responsibility. A cadet who insists that physics and trigonometry are subjective “truths” depending on the individual’s feelings should not be trusted with a bicycle and certainly not with an aircraft. If this individual thinks himself The Blue Flower Fairy and wishes to worship toadstools or oak trees, and maybe even learn conversational Klingon, he is free to do so, and Godspeed (so to speak) him. The rest of us are equally free not to be required to fund him in a military academy or obey him as a superior officer in the defense of this nation.
If a candidate for a military academy represents himself as a witch, Harry Potter, an elf, or a light bulb the response should be a hearty, insensitive belly-laugh as the poor sap is led gently away.
-30-
Saturday, January 30, 2010
A Cookie and a Hug for the Nazis?
Mack Hall
That Long and Nazi Road
The Nazi Party of Colorado has adopted a mile of US Highway 85 to keep tidy.
Yes, when you think of community service and good citizenship you naturally think of National Socialists.
The State of Colorado is, for some reason, unhappy with this sorry little herd of sh…um, civic-minded citizens, but the nation that the Nazis would destroy protects even Nazis, and so the Colorado Department of Transportation was required to license the leather-boys to care for a mile of American right-of-way.
Perhaps the Nazis are situated between the NAMBLA and ACORN sections, giving the American people three miles of litter-free but still malodorous highway.
One hopes the Nazis won’t be afraid to pick up food wrappers with Kosher symbols on them. And Wotan alone knows how they would react to a discarded Manischewitz bottle.
The Nazis could mark their section of highway by erecting little “Arbeit Macht Frei” signs at each end, and when they are actually out doing something other than beating up people could post another sign reading “Ubermenschen Working.”
How do Nazis pick up litter? After all, their record is of making messes, not cleaning them up, and the concept of tidiness may be unfamiliar to them. Can a comrade simultaneously goose-step and poke a soda-can with one of those little sticks with a nail in it? Does the stick have one of those swishtika flags attached? Do the neat Nazis sing The Discarded Vessel Song while marching along with their garbage bags? Other jolly marching songs could include “Nazi Road, Take Me Home,” “That Long and Nazi Road,” “Long, Long Nazi Road,” “Rocky Mountain Heil,” and “Heil the Hitler and Pass the Trash.”
At last report, however, the local Nazis hadn’t actually picked up anything. Possibly they were delayed by beating up some small, inoffensive person. Or perhaps they were waiting for a congratulatory message and an “Im Rollen Vor in Colorado” signal from Mel Gibson. They couldn’t access it, of course, because no Nazi would own a Blackberry.
Nazis cleaning up the roads will doubtless cause folks driving by to think better of them.
“Gosh, Martha, just look at all those Nazi lads picking up litter. Kinda makes ya rethink that invasion of Norway thing, eh?”
“You’re so right, George. I always said that Vidkun Quisling got a raw deal. He had a rough childhood, you know. Such a sensitive boy.”
“You know, Martha, just seeing the local Ubergollyshakennotstirredwhatsisfuhrer supervising trash suggests to me that Auschwitz was taken out of context.”
“Yes, dear, this matter of the local Nazis cleaning up the highways and byways of our great land has changed my thinking completely. There’s nothing like a thirty-second show of public service in front of the cameras to change completely seventy years of well-documented history. Stop the car, George; I’m going to give those boys a cookie and a hug.”
That Long and Nazi Road
The Nazi Party of Colorado has adopted a mile of US Highway 85 to keep tidy.
Yes, when you think of community service and good citizenship you naturally think of National Socialists.
The State of Colorado is, for some reason, unhappy with this sorry little herd of sh…um, civic-minded citizens, but the nation that the Nazis would destroy protects even Nazis, and so the Colorado Department of Transportation was required to license the leather-boys to care for a mile of American right-of-way.
Perhaps the Nazis are situated between the NAMBLA and ACORN sections, giving the American people three miles of litter-free but still malodorous highway.
One hopes the Nazis won’t be afraid to pick up food wrappers with Kosher symbols on them. And Wotan alone knows how they would react to a discarded Manischewitz bottle.
The Nazis could mark their section of highway by erecting little “Arbeit Macht Frei” signs at each end, and when they are actually out doing something other than beating up people could post another sign reading “Ubermenschen Working.”
How do Nazis pick up litter? After all, their record is of making messes, not cleaning them up, and the concept of tidiness may be unfamiliar to them. Can a comrade simultaneously goose-step and poke a soda-can with one of those little sticks with a nail in it? Does the stick have one of those swishtika flags attached? Do the neat Nazis sing The Discarded Vessel Song while marching along with their garbage bags? Other jolly marching songs could include “Nazi Road, Take Me Home,” “That Long and Nazi Road,” “Long, Long Nazi Road,” “Rocky Mountain Heil,” and “Heil the Hitler and Pass the Trash.”
At last report, however, the local Nazis hadn’t actually picked up anything. Possibly they were delayed by beating up some small, inoffensive person. Or perhaps they were waiting for a congratulatory message and an “Im Rollen Vor in Colorado” signal from Mel Gibson. They couldn’t access it, of course, because no Nazi would own a Blackberry.
Nazis cleaning up the roads will doubtless cause folks driving by to think better of them.
“Gosh, Martha, just look at all those Nazi lads picking up litter. Kinda makes ya rethink that invasion of Norway thing, eh?”
“You’re so right, George. I always said that Vidkun Quisling got a raw deal. He had a rough childhood, you know. Such a sensitive boy.”
“You know, Martha, just seeing the local Ubergollyshakennotstirredwhatsisfuhrer supervising trash suggests to me that Auschwitz was taken out of context.”
“Yes, dear, this matter of the local Nazis cleaning up the highways and byways of our great land has changed my thinking completely. There’s nothing like a thirty-second show of public service in front of the cameras to change completely seventy years of well-documented history. Stop the car, George; I’m going to give those boys a cookie and a hug.”
A Cookie and a Hug for the Nazis?
Mack Hall
That Long and Nazi Road
The Nazi Party of Colorado has adopted a mile of US Highway 85 to keep tidy.
Yes, when you think of community service and good citizenship you naturally think of National Socialists.
The State of Colorado is, for some reason, unhappy with this sorry little herd of sh…um, civic-minded citizens, but the nation that the Nazis would destroy protects even Nazis, and so the Colorado Department of Transportation was required to license the leather-boys to care for a mile of American right-of-way.
Perhaps the Nazis are situated between the NAMBLA and ACORN sections, giving the American people three miles of litter-free but still malodorous highway.
One hopes the Nazis won’t be afraid to pick up food wrappers with Kosher symbols on them. And Wotan alone knows how they would react to a discarded Manischewitz bottle.
The Nazis could mark their section of highway by erecting little “Arbeit Macht Frei” signs at each end, and when they are actually out doing something other than beating up people could post another sign reading “Ubermenschen Working.”
How do Nazis pick up litter? After all, their record is of making messes, not cleaning them up, and the concept of tidiness may be unfamiliar to them. Can a comrade simultaneously goose-step and poke a soda-can with one of those little sticks with a nail in it? Does the stick have one of those swishtika flags attached? Do the neat Nazis sing The Discarded Vessel Song while marching along with their garbage bags? Other jolly marching songs could include “Nazi Road, Take Me Home,” “That Long and Nazi Road,” “Long, Long Nazi Road,” “Rocky Mountain Heil,” and “Heil the Hitler and Pass the Trash.”
At last report, however, the local Nazis hadn’t actually picked up anything. Possibly they were delayed by beating up some small, inoffensive person. Or perhaps they were waiting for a congratulatory message and an “Im Rollen Vor in Colorado” signal from Mel Gibson. They couldn’t access it, of course, because no Nazi would own a Blackberry.
Nazis cleaning up the roads will doubtless cause folks driving by to think better of them.
“Gosh, Martha, just look at all those Nazi lads picking up litter. Kinda makes ya rethink that invasion of Norway thing, eh?”
“You’re so right, George. I always said that Vidkun Quisling got a raw deal. He had a rough childhood, you know. Such a sensitive boy.”
“You know, Martha, just seeing the local Ubergollyshakennotstirredwhatsisfuhrer supervising trash suggests to me that Auschwitz was taken out of context.”
“Yes, dear, this matter of the local Nazis cleaning up the highways and byways of our great land has changed my thinking completely. There’s nothing like a thirty-second show of public service in front of the cameras to change completely seventy years of well-documented history. Stop the car, George; I’m going to give those boys a cookie and a hug.”
That Long and Nazi Road
The Nazi Party of Colorado has adopted a mile of US Highway 85 to keep tidy.
Yes, when you think of community service and good citizenship you naturally think of National Socialists.
The State of Colorado is, for some reason, unhappy with this sorry little herd of sh…um, civic-minded citizens, but the nation that the Nazis would destroy protects even Nazis, and so the Colorado Department of Transportation was required to license the leather-boys to care for a mile of American right-of-way.
Perhaps the Nazis are situated between the NAMBLA and ACORN sections, giving the American people three miles of litter-free but still malodorous highway.
One hopes the Nazis won’t be afraid to pick up food wrappers with Kosher symbols on them. And Wotan alone knows how they would react to a discarded Manischewitz bottle.
The Nazis could mark their section of highway by erecting little “Arbeit Macht Frei” signs at each end, and when they are actually out doing something other than beating up people could post another sign reading “Ubermenschen Working.”
How do Nazis pick up litter? After all, their record is of making messes, not cleaning them up, and the concept of tidiness may be unfamiliar to them. Can a comrade simultaneously goose-step and poke a soda-can with one of those little sticks with a nail in it? Does the stick have one of those swishtika flags attached? Do the neat Nazis sing The Discarded Vessel Song while marching along with their garbage bags? Other jolly marching songs could include “Nazi Road, Take Me Home,” “That Long and Nazi Road,” “Long, Long Nazi Road,” “Rocky Mountain Heil,” and “Heil the Hitler and Pass the Trash.”
At last report, however, the local Nazis hadn’t actually picked up anything. Possibly they were delayed by beating up some small, inoffensive person. Or perhaps they were waiting for a congratulatory message and an “Im Rollen Vor in Colorado” signal from Mel Gibson. They couldn’t access it, of course, because no Nazi would own a Blackberry.
Nazis cleaning up the roads will doubtless cause folks driving by to think better of them.
“Gosh, Martha, just look at all those Nazi lads picking up litter. Kinda makes ya rethink that invasion of Norway thing, eh?”
“You’re so right, George. I always said that Vidkun Quisling got a raw deal. He had a rough childhood, you know. Such a sensitive boy.”
“You know, Martha, just seeing the local Ubergollyshakennotstirredwhatsisfuhrer supervising trash suggests to me that Auschwitz was taken out of context.”
“Yes, dear, this matter of the local Nazis cleaning up the highways and byways of our great land has changed my thinking completely. There’s nothing like a thirty-second show of public service in front of the cameras to change completely seventy years of well-documented history. Stop the car, George; I’m going to give those boys a cookie and a hug.”
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Hapsburgs in Space
Mack Hall
For Blessed Karl I
Time is a trap for those who will not hear
The silver hymns soft-sighed among the stars,
Or invisible winds whispering truth
Among the conspiratorial pines.1
The moon prays perfectly her ancient dance
Between our planet’s orbit and the sun’s,
Stern2 orbit over orbit, neatly planned,
Layered within each other flawlessly.
And all of these speak of eternity,
And freedom in humility, the truth;
To violate this Order of the Star Is to enslave the selfish self in chains.
Because
The universe is not an accident,
Or fantasy of fact-filled-fevered brains;
It flows beyond all sunsets and all dawns,
Beyond the constructs of constructedness.
To grasp the Golden Chain3 is then to lose
One’s chains, to sail beyond pale time and find,
Transcending all dimensionality,
The Crown4, the Cup5, the Altar6, and the Star7.
1 Pine trees always seem to be up to something
2 In the sense of precise
3 An allusion to Aquinas’ Catena Aurea
4 The Hapsburg crown, symbolizing earthly hierarchy, and God, symbolizing eternal hierarchy
5. Holy Communion
6. Where time and eternity meet in the actions of the priest
7 The Star of Bethlehem, and beyond
For Blessed Karl I
Time is a trap for those who will not hear
The silver hymns soft-sighed among the stars,
Or invisible winds whispering truth
Among the conspiratorial pines.1
The moon prays perfectly her ancient dance
Between our planet’s orbit and the sun’s,
Stern2 orbit over orbit, neatly planned,
Layered within each other flawlessly.
And all of these speak of eternity,
And freedom in humility, the truth;
To violate this Order of the Star Is to enslave the selfish self in chains.
Because
The universe is not an accident,
Or fantasy of fact-filled-fevered brains;
It flows beyond all sunsets and all dawns,
Beyond the constructs of constructedness.
To grasp the Golden Chain3 is then to lose
One’s chains, to sail beyond pale time and find,
Transcending all dimensionality,
The Crown4, the Cup5, the Altar6, and the Star7.
1 Pine trees always seem to be up to something
2 In the sense of precise
3 An allusion to Aquinas’ Catena Aurea
4 The Hapsburg crown, symbolizing earthly hierarchy, and God, symbolizing eternal hierarchy
5. Holy Communion
6. Where time and eternity meet in the actions of the priest
7 The Star of Bethlehem, and beyond
New Sayings from the Old West
Mack Hall
Cinema, like jazz, is an art form that originates in America, and America’s optimistic view of herself is best shown in western films. Actors as different in their political views as John Wayne and Gregory Peck found common ground in their depictions of western heroes to demonstrate their love of country.
The shabby revisionist westerns of the 1960s are rightly ignored now, and new generations celebrate America and the themes of love, loyalty, and community with the great films of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. A few lonely producers still make good western films (Broken Trail comes to mind) about imperfect men and women finding the best in themselves in hard times, and this gives us hope for the future of the art of film.
But imagine the dialogue in films had the good old movies been made as 1960’s cynicism and anti-heroism:
“He’ll do to ride the river with.” / “He’ll do to work out at the health and wellness center with.”
“We all fought in the war, Colonel.” / “We all protested America’s evil, fascistic, imperial wars, you militaristic oppressor!”
“Gimme a beer, barkeep.” / “Construct me a double-decaf-latte-cinnamon-swish, barista.”
“Whatever else the young man is, he’s a fine judge of horseflesh.” / “Whatever else the young person is, they’re a fine judge of postwar Bulgarian existentialist cinema.”
“Outlaws!” / “Marginalized and dispossessed agricultural workers with revisionist attitudes towards property rights!”
“Injuns!” / “Native Americans with anger-management issues!”
“Cantankerous old mule!” / “Quasi-domesticated quadrupedal service animal!”
“Senor, we have the finest baths between Mexico City and New Orleans.” / “Senor, we feature an exclusive half-day spa experience with all-natural scented candles, a licensed masseur, and a complimentary selection of herbal teas.”
“Circle the wagons!” / “Valet parking!”
“Boots and saddles!” / “Designer flip-flops and Corinthian leather seats!”
“She’s a purty little filly.” / “She just filed sexism charges on me.”
“Fill your hand, you (ess of a bee)!” / “I’m referring this confrontation to the arbitrator for resolution.”
“They’ve holed up in that old church at the end of the street.” / “They’ve sought refuge in Swami Abbub’s ashram on HeatherWood Lane.”
“I’m ridin’ shotgun.” / “I’m ridin’ pepper spray.”
“Your fault. My fault. Nobody’s fault. If that boy gets hurt I’m gonna kill you.” / “Free to be you and me.”
“Check your guns at the edge of town.” / “Kindly switch off all cell ‘phones and other electronic devices.”
“I need a grubstake.” / “I’m giving you this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to invest in gold.”
“Sorry, son, that leg’s got to come off.” / “But because of the medical lawsuits I have to leave you alone and let you die.”
“Ol’ Doc Boone’s a drunk.” / “Senor citizen Doctor Boone suffers chemical-dependence issues.”
“Ain’t nothin’ prettier than the desert cactus in bloom in early spring.” / “Did you remember my allergy medications?”
“Hank, where are your spurs?” / “Hank, where are the keys to your Toyota?”
“Hand over that strongbox or we’ll shoot.” / “Hand over those pretty shoes with the checkmark on ‘em or we’ll shoot.”
“All aboard for Lordsburg!” / “But first we have to wand all of you and strip-search Grandma.”
“Bugler, sound the charge.” / “Bugler, twitter Washington for permission for us to defend ourselves.”
“Chester, I’m going over to the Longbranch Saloon.” / “Chester, I’m off for my two o’clock encounter group.”
And finally, an old cowboy, a figure perhaps of John Wayne, rides with his son to a ridge overlooking a valley:
“Son, see that old Spanish church? Someday, someone will bulldoze it flat and replace it with a mosque. And over there where those deer are grazing will be a mucho grande gas station selling made-in-China western souvenirs. The trailer park will be over there where those 100-year-old cacti are now, and a motel will cover the Indian burial grounds. The Old West is passing.”
“Dad, where will they put the shopping mall? I need a new pair of knee-pants, and a tee-shirt with somebody else’s name on it, and the new Monster-Kill-Kill game.”
-30-
Cinema, like jazz, is an art form that originates in America, and America’s optimistic view of herself is best shown in western films. Actors as different in their political views as John Wayne and Gregory Peck found common ground in their depictions of western heroes to demonstrate their love of country.
The shabby revisionist westerns of the 1960s are rightly ignored now, and new generations celebrate America and the themes of love, loyalty, and community with the great films of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. A few lonely producers still make good western films (Broken Trail comes to mind) about imperfect men and women finding the best in themselves in hard times, and this gives us hope for the future of the art of film.
But imagine the dialogue in films had the good old movies been made as 1960’s cynicism and anti-heroism:
“He’ll do to ride the river with.” / “He’ll do to work out at the health and wellness center with.”
“We all fought in the war, Colonel.” / “We all protested America’s evil, fascistic, imperial wars, you militaristic oppressor!”
“Gimme a beer, barkeep.” / “Construct me a double-decaf-latte-cinnamon-swish, barista.”
“Whatever else the young man is, he’s a fine judge of horseflesh.” / “Whatever else the young person is, they’re a fine judge of postwar Bulgarian existentialist cinema.”
“Outlaws!” / “Marginalized and dispossessed agricultural workers with revisionist attitudes towards property rights!”
“Injuns!” / “Native Americans with anger-management issues!”
“Cantankerous old mule!” / “Quasi-domesticated quadrupedal service animal!”
“Senor, we have the finest baths between Mexico City and New Orleans.” / “Senor, we feature an exclusive half-day spa experience with all-natural scented candles, a licensed masseur, and a complimentary selection of herbal teas.”
“Circle the wagons!” / “Valet parking!”
“Boots and saddles!” / “Designer flip-flops and Corinthian leather seats!”
“She’s a purty little filly.” / “She just filed sexism charges on me.”
“Fill your hand, you (ess of a bee)!” / “I’m referring this confrontation to the arbitrator for resolution.”
“They’ve holed up in that old church at the end of the street.” / “They’ve sought refuge in Swami Abbub’s ashram on HeatherWood Lane.”
“I’m ridin’ shotgun.” / “I’m ridin’ pepper spray.”
“Your fault. My fault. Nobody’s fault. If that boy gets hurt I’m gonna kill you.” / “Free to be you and me.”
“Check your guns at the edge of town.” / “Kindly switch off all cell ‘phones and other electronic devices.”
“I need a grubstake.” / “I’m giving you this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to invest in gold.”
“Sorry, son, that leg’s got to come off.” / “But because of the medical lawsuits I have to leave you alone and let you die.”
“Ol’ Doc Boone’s a drunk.” / “Senor citizen Doctor Boone suffers chemical-dependence issues.”
“Ain’t nothin’ prettier than the desert cactus in bloom in early spring.” / “Did you remember my allergy medications?”
“Hank, where are your spurs?” / “Hank, where are the keys to your Toyota?”
“Hand over that strongbox or we’ll shoot.” / “Hand over those pretty shoes with the checkmark on ‘em or we’ll shoot.”
“All aboard for Lordsburg!” / “But first we have to wand all of you and strip-search Grandma.”
“Bugler, sound the charge.” / “Bugler, twitter Washington for permission for us to defend ourselves.”
“Chester, I’m going over to the Longbranch Saloon.” / “Chester, I’m off for my two o’clock encounter group.”
And finally, an old cowboy, a figure perhaps of John Wayne, rides with his son to a ridge overlooking a valley:
“Son, see that old Spanish church? Someday, someone will bulldoze it flat and replace it with a mosque. And over there where those deer are grazing will be a mucho grande gas station selling made-in-China western souvenirs. The trailer park will be over there where those 100-year-old cacti are now, and a motel will cover the Indian burial grounds. The Old West is passing.”
“Dad, where will they put the shopping mall? I need a new pair of knee-pants, and a tee-shirt with somebody else’s name on it, and the new Monster-Kill-Kill game.”
-30-
Sunday, January 17, 2010
If They Told us the Truth
Mack Hall
You are not a valued customer.
Your telephone call is not important to us; if it were, a human would be talking to you.
This is just a few ounces of coffee pretending to be a pound. We don’t give a hamster’s heinie about the poor farmers who grow it; we just stick on labels about “green” and “fair trade” and charge you more so you can feel good about being sensitive and ecological and, like, y’know, stuff.
We at (name of tractor company goes here) don’t make the name-brand tee-shirts and plastic cups and all that other junk you buy; we make tractors. Chinese companies, all ultimately controlled by the Red Chinese Army, pay us to use our name on their shoddy wares so you can wear a funny-looking hat and identify with a corporation that wouldn’t care squash about you if it even knew you existed.
Well, yeah, we can paint one of our cars green for you. Otherwise, there ain’t no green cars. Cars are four-wheeled machines that run on gasoline or electricity. Some are more efficient that others.
I’m not really the doctor of democracy; I dropped out of college, avoided military service, didn’t vote until I was in my thirties, and got away with doctor-shopping prescription drugs because I’m rich. And I got rich telling you how to live. You know, if you think about it, and you won’t, the only difference between me and the coffee shop windbag know-it-all is that I pass gas on the radio instead of at the front table.
This organic material is not farm fresh. You bought it out of a store. It was brought to the store in a truck. It was stored somewhere before that. It was shipped to that somewhere from a processing plant. It spent some time in a processing plant. It was shipped to the processing plant from where it was harvested or slaughtered. We print this lie all the time, you know it’s a lie, and you aren’t offended by the lie. Curious.
Nothing in this café or store was homemade. A café or store is not a home. If you want something homemade, go home and make it.
Made in China by underpaid workers who have no rights, no safety protection, no health insurance, no nothin’. Hey, we’re the folks who poison your pets and your children, and you keep buying from us.
We guarantee (that there is a three-dimensional object in this box you’re buying from us. Whether or not it is useful, aesthetically pleasing, or well-made has nothing to do with us.).
Unlimited usage (until you reach the limit).
Faster than dial-up (except when it isn’t).
You pay us to wear our advertising, demonstrating that you have no sense of self. We love it. In a sane world we would pay you to wear our advertising, and your friends would pity you for doing so.
Our product has a low carbon footprint. Come to think of it, nothing on this planet actually has a carbon footprint at all. How dumb are you to believe our advertising about low carbon footprints, huh?
News alert – which is only the same stuff we’ve been telling you all week.
I have no intention of changing the culture in Washington. If you elect me, I will become inside-the-beltway just like everyone else who goes there. Now buy my book, don’t do any critical thinking, be true believers, assemble in large groups to chant and wave, and feed my ego with your adoration.
It’s the must-see movie of the year – and if we tell you that you must see it, you must obey.
User-friendly – hahahahahahahahhahahahahaaaaaaaa!
You are not a valued customer.
Your telephone call is not important to us; if it were, a human would be talking to you.
This is just a few ounces of coffee pretending to be a pound. We don’t give a hamster’s heinie about the poor farmers who grow it; we just stick on labels about “green” and “fair trade” and charge you more so you can feel good about being sensitive and ecological and, like, y’know, stuff.
We at (name of tractor company goes here) don’t make the name-brand tee-shirts and plastic cups and all that other junk you buy; we make tractors. Chinese companies, all ultimately controlled by the Red Chinese Army, pay us to use our name on their shoddy wares so you can wear a funny-looking hat and identify with a corporation that wouldn’t care squash about you if it even knew you existed.
Well, yeah, we can paint one of our cars green for you. Otherwise, there ain’t no green cars. Cars are four-wheeled machines that run on gasoline or electricity. Some are more efficient that others.
I’m not really the doctor of democracy; I dropped out of college, avoided military service, didn’t vote until I was in my thirties, and got away with doctor-shopping prescription drugs because I’m rich. And I got rich telling you how to live. You know, if you think about it, and you won’t, the only difference between me and the coffee shop windbag know-it-all is that I pass gas on the radio instead of at the front table.
This organic material is not farm fresh. You bought it out of a store. It was brought to the store in a truck. It was stored somewhere before that. It was shipped to that somewhere from a processing plant. It spent some time in a processing plant. It was shipped to the processing plant from where it was harvested or slaughtered. We print this lie all the time, you know it’s a lie, and you aren’t offended by the lie. Curious.
Nothing in this café or store was homemade. A café or store is not a home. If you want something homemade, go home and make it.
Made in China by underpaid workers who have no rights, no safety protection, no health insurance, no nothin’. Hey, we’re the folks who poison your pets and your children, and you keep buying from us.
We guarantee (that there is a three-dimensional object in this box you’re buying from us. Whether or not it is useful, aesthetically pleasing, or well-made has nothing to do with us.).
Unlimited usage (until you reach the limit).
Faster than dial-up (except when it isn’t).
You pay us to wear our advertising, demonstrating that you have no sense of self. We love it. In a sane world we would pay you to wear our advertising, and your friends would pity you for doing so.
Our product has a low carbon footprint. Come to think of it, nothing on this planet actually has a carbon footprint at all. How dumb are you to believe our advertising about low carbon footprints, huh?
News alert – which is only the same stuff we’ve been telling you all week.
I have no intention of changing the culture in Washington. If you elect me, I will become inside-the-beltway just like everyone else who goes there. Now buy my book, don’t do any critical thinking, be true believers, assemble in large groups to chant and wave, and feed my ego with your adoration.
It’s the must-see movie of the year – and if we tell you that you must see it, you must obey.
User-friendly – hahahahahahahahhahahahahaaaaaaaa!
Sunday, January 10, 2010
What to Name Your Pet or Human
Mack Hall
Ashley Sanders, one of the many fine writers at The Beaumont Enterprise, posted in her Sunday column a list of the top ten pet names according to an organization called Veterinary Pet Insurance. For dogs, those are:
1. Bella
2. Max
3. Bailey
4. Lucy
5. Molly
6. Buddy
7. Maggie
8. Daisy
9. Chloe
10. Sophie
What strikes the perceptive reader is that the top ten dog names are almost as Christian as the top ten human names.
Bella, meaning beautiful, appears as the prefix Bel in many saints’ names. Max, for Maximus, Maximian, and Maximilian, is popular in both Roman and Greek hagiography, and Bailey, Old English for bailiff, appears in several English and Bretagne saints’ names and as the middle name of St. Elizabeth Seton. Lucy (Bringer of Light) is the happy name of many saints all over Europe and the Mediterranean, Molly is a diminutive of Mary just as Maggie is of Margaret, and Daisy, the day’s eye flower in Old English, is also another name for Margaret since in France the daisy is called the marguerite. Even Buddy enjoys a Christian connection; in Old English it means messenger / friend / brother, and is associated with the Twelve Brothers of Carthage, Africans who were martyred for their Christian faith. Chloe is Greek for young growth and is not in itself a saint’s name but the root Chlo / Clo appears often. There are many saints named Sophie / Sophia, Greek for wisdom, and the mother church of Orthodoxy, profaned by the Turks from 1453 until the present day, is named Hagia Sophia, meaning Holy Wisdom. (Sheehan, Dictionary of Patron Saints’ Names)
Now that we have dismissed the doggies, let us consider the top ten baby names of 2009 according to Babyfirstyear.org:
Girls:
Ella
Grace
Emma
Elizabeth
Lorelei
Riley
Rory
Isabella
Chloe
Anna
Boys:
Aiden
Jayden
Dylan
James
Gavin
Benjamin
Caleb
Nathan
Jack
Andrew
All these names except one enjoy a Christian or Jewish origin, reversing a generation-old trend of labeling children after soap opera characters, geographical features, or simply noises that sounded good to the young parents. God help the child whose parents thought “Urk” made a nice sound. Well, when he comes of age he can change Urk for a real name.
One kinda worries about Lorelei, though.
-30-
Ashley Sanders, one of the many fine writers at The Beaumont Enterprise, posted in her Sunday column a list of the top ten pet names according to an organization called Veterinary Pet Insurance. For dogs, those are:
1. Bella
2. Max
3. Bailey
4. Lucy
5. Molly
6. Buddy
7. Maggie
8. Daisy
9. Chloe
10. Sophie
What strikes the perceptive reader is that the top ten dog names are almost as Christian as the top ten human names.
Bella, meaning beautiful, appears as the prefix Bel in many saints’ names. Max, for Maximus, Maximian, and Maximilian, is popular in both Roman and Greek hagiography, and Bailey, Old English for bailiff, appears in several English and Bretagne saints’ names and as the middle name of St. Elizabeth Seton. Lucy (Bringer of Light) is the happy name of many saints all over Europe and the Mediterranean, Molly is a diminutive of Mary just as Maggie is of Margaret, and Daisy, the day’s eye flower in Old English, is also another name for Margaret since in France the daisy is called the marguerite. Even Buddy enjoys a Christian connection; in Old English it means messenger / friend / brother, and is associated with the Twelve Brothers of Carthage, Africans who were martyred for their Christian faith. Chloe is Greek for young growth and is not in itself a saint’s name but the root Chlo / Clo appears often. There are many saints named Sophie / Sophia, Greek for wisdom, and the mother church of Orthodoxy, profaned by the Turks from 1453 until the present day, is named Hagia Sophia, meaning Holy Wisdom. (Sheehan, Dictionary of Patron Saints’ Names)
Now that we have dismissed the doggies, let us consider the top ten baby names of 2009 according to Babyfirstyear.org:
Girls:
Ella
Grace
Emma
Elizabeth
Lorelei
Riley
Rory
Isabella
Chloe
Anna
Boys:
Aiden
Jayden
Dylan
James
Gavin
Benjamin
Caleb
Nathan
Jack
Andrew
All these names except one enjoy a Christian or Jewish origin, reversing a generation-old trend of labeling children after soap opera characters, geographical features, or simply noises that sounded good to the young parents. God help the child whose parents thought “Urk” made a nice sound. Well, when he comes of age he can change Urk for a real name.
One kinda worries about Lorelei, though.
-30-
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Great Work -- Now Go Away
Mack Hall
Last fall a Navy commando unit in a brilliant operation captured a notorious terrorist alive. Alive. But the terrorist later said that the sailors socked him during the confrontation and gave him a fat lip, and now the sailors are being court-martialed. So will the Japanese government now sue World War II veterans for hurting Generalissimo Tojo’s feelings? Will Grandpa be yanked off his rocking chair and sent to jail because he once said something rude about Adolf Hitler during the Battle of the Bulge?
More recently a police officer in a city far, far away was suspended with pay after he fired his pistol at a man who was threatening people, including the officer, with a knife. In such matters one would think that the suspension would be for the sake of the officer, for a good man does come away from such a matter the same man who went into it. But the matter always seems to project as a suspicion of the officer, and the dreary electronic comments from the sort of people who take their ideology from street corners and their grammar from twitting support this grim conclusion. Folks want to be protected but then they sideline-quarterback the protectors. As someone (the sources conflict) said, (Newark) hath no fury like a non-combatant.
The concept of suspending someone for doing his job does not obtain in most vocations. One does not imagine the head of surgery saying “Doctor Snorthbargle, you were simply brilliant today in saving the life of that emergency patient. You’re suspended until the medical board investigates you. Now go away.”
The supermarket manager does not call for an inquiry on little Siegfried the sack boy because the customers compliment him for his good work.
When a team wins a football game they are not sent home while a court determines whether or not they acted wisely in doing so.
Consider the possibility of a police officer observing a citizen driving carefully, following all state and local laws while operating a safe and well-maintained motor vehicle. The officer arrests the citizen and brings him before a justice of the peace who rules: “Citizen Jones, you were seen driving in a prudent fashion. Your license is suspended while I refer your case to the grand jury. I am impounding your car. You may have one telephone call to send for someone to come and get you. You might want to tell that friend or relative to drive irresponsibly unless he too wants the full majesty of the law to come down on him like a ton of cliches’.”
What if Captain Smith had parked the Titanic for the night long, long ago? “Captain Smith, you brought the company’s newest ship and all her passengers and crew safely to New York. Until the Board of Trade considers this matter carefully, your master’s license is suspended.”
The judge summons Perry Mason to the bench. “Mr. Mason, you were wonderful today. You saved an innocent woman from the death penalty and you helped the police find the real murderer. You represent everything that is true and noble in the legal profession. Your license to practice law is suspended until further notice, and the bailiff will now escort you to your cell.”
On a fine autumn day several liberal arts graduates from the United States Department of Agriculture descend upon Farmer Brown with briefcases full of legal documents. “Farmer Brown, you raised fine crops of wheat and soy this year. You provided part-time employment for three transient laborers and for five high school kids during the haying season. You filled out all your government forms accurately, paid your taxes, demonstrated wise agricultural practices, and in all ways are an excellent man. Your livestock are well cared for and you are unfailingly considerate of your neighbors and the environment. Therefore, we must investigate you. During this investigation, which may take a year or two, you are forbidden to farm. This means you will lose the land that’s been in your family for generations, but don’t worry; it will make a nice parking lot for Giganto-Mart. Further, your federal government, for whom you voted, is in its infinite generosity giving you a discount on your monthly rental of a public-housing unit.”
These are humorous imaginings, but there are very real exceptions to the idea that the laborer is worth of his hire: the illogical ways the American people sometimes mishandle their own police and their own young men and women in the services.
-30-
Last fall a Navy commando unit in a brilliant operation captured a notorious terrorist alive. Alive. But the terrorist later said that the sailors socked him during the confrontation and gave him a fat lip, and now the sailors are being court-martialed. So will the Japanese government now sue World War II veterans for hurting Generalissimo Tojo’s feelings? Will Grandpa be yanked off his rocking chair and sent to jail because he once said something rude about Adolf Hitler during the Battle of the Bulge?
More recently a police officer in a city far, far away was suspended with pay after he fired his pistol at a man who was threatening people, including the officer, with a knife. In such matters one would think that the suspension would be for the sake of the officer, for a good man does come away from such a matter the same man who went into it. But the matter always seems to project as a suspicion of the officer, and the dreary electronic comments from the sort of people who take their ideology from street corners and their grammar from twitting support this grim conclusion. Folks want to be protected but then they sideline-quarterback the protectors. As someone (the sources conflict) said, (Newark) hath no fury like a non-combatant.
The concept of suspending someone for doing his job does not obtain in most vocations. One does not imagine the head of surgery saying “Doctor Snorthbargle, you were simply brilliant today in saving the life of that emergency patient. You’re suspended until the medical board investigates you. Now go away.”
The supermarket manager does not call for an inquiry on little Siegfried the sack boy because the customers compliment him for his good work.
When a team wins a football game they are not sent home while a court determines whether or not they acted wisely in doing so.
Consider the possibility of a police officer observing a citizen driving carefully, following all state and local laws while operating a safe and well-maintained motor vehicle. The officer arrests the citizen and brings him before a justice of the peace who rules: “Citizen Jones, you were seen driving in a prudent fashion. Your license is suspended while I refer your case to the grand jury. I am impounding your car. You may have one telephone call to send for someone to come and get you. You might want to tell that friend or relative to drive irresponsibly unless he too wants the full majesty of the law to come down on him like a ton of cliches’.”
What if Captain Smith had parked the Titanic for the night long, long ago? “Captain Smith, you brought the company’s newest ship and all her passengers and crew safely to New York. Until the Board of Trade considers this matter carefully, your master’s license is suspended.”
The judge summons Perry Mason to the bench. “Mr. Mason, you were wonderful today. You saved an innocent woman from the death penalty and you helped the police find the real murderer. You represent everything that is true and noble in the legal profession. Your license to practice law is suspended until further notice, and the bailiff will now escort you to your cell.”
On a fine autumn day several liberal arts graduates from the United States Department of Agriculture descend upon Farmer Brown with briefcases full of legal documents. “Farmer Brown, you raised fine crops of wheat and soy this year. You provided part-time employment for three transient laborers and for five high school kids during the haying season. You filled out all your government forms accurately, paid your taxes, demonstrated wise agricultural practices, and in all ways are an excellent man. Your livestock are well cared for and you are unfailingly considerate of your neighbors and the environment. Therefore, we must investigate you. During this investigation, which may take a year or two, you are forbidden to farm. This means you will lose the land that’s been in your family for generations, but don’t worry; it will make a nice parking lot for Giganto-Mart. Further, your federal government, for whom you voted, is in its infinite generosity giving you a discount on your monthly rental of a public-housing unit.”
These are humorous imaginings, but there are very real exceptions to the idea that the laborer is worth of his hire: the illogical ways the American people sometimes mishandle their own police and their own young men and women in the services.
-30-
Thursday, December 31, 2009
The Catholic Keyboard Commando -- a Little Doglessmatic Doggerel
Mack Hall
The Catholic Keyboard Commando -- A Little Doglessmatic Doggerel
Dedicated to Certain More-Catholic-Than-You Bloggers
A species of Catholic, brave and true,
Humble, spiritual, intellectual too,
Corrects us heretics – give him a hand-o:
The carping Catholic keyboard commando!
His keyboard’s inspired by the Holy Ghost;
Just ask him; he’ll make you no idle boast.
Together they make a righteous band-o:
The carping Catholic keyboard commando!
“Sede vacante” is sometimes his style;
With these two words he makes a barnyard pile.
He’s holier than the Pope, and oh, so grand-o:
The carping Catholic keyboard commando!
He hates anyone who is not like him –
“You liberal!” is how he dismisses them,
Because opposition he cannot stand-o:
The carping Catholic keyboard commando!
He is so perfect in his thoughts and prayers,
Burdened with all of Holy Church’s cares,
So God should listen to this holy man-doh:
Petty Pelagian keyboard commando!
This includes a blogging priest (or two):
He drools vile thoughts, attributes them to you.
Caritas, no, he’s busy with his glands-o:
Lecherous Catholic keyboard commando!
But now it’s time for this dog’rel to close
While God’s chosen ‘blogger looks down his nose
In judgment smug from his fairyland-o:
The carping Catholic keyboard commando!
The Catholic Keyboard Commando -- A Little Doglessmatic Doggerel
Dedicated to Certain More-Catholic-Than-You Bloggers
A species of Catholic, brave and true,
Humble, spiritual, intellectual too,
Corrects us heretics – give him a hand-o:
The carping Catholic keyboard commando!
His keyboard’s inspired by the Holy Ghost;
Just ask him; he’ll make you no idle boast.
Together they make a righteous band-o:
The carping Catholic keyboard commando!
“Sede vacante” is sometimes his style;
With these two words he makes a barnyard pile.
He’s holier than the Pope, and oh, so grand-o:
The carping Catholic keyboard commando!
He hates anyone who is not like him –
“You liberal!” is how he dismisses them,
Because opposition he cannot stand-o:
The carping Catholic keyboard commando!
He is so perfect in his thoughts and prayers,
Burdened with all of Holy Church’s cares,
So God should listen to this holy man-doh:
Petty Pelagian keyboard commando!
This includes a blogging priest (or two):
He drools vile thoughts, attributes them to you.
Caritas, no, he’s busy with his glands-o:
Lecherous Catholic keyboard commando!
But now it’s time for this dog’rel to close
While God’s chosen ‘blogger looks down his nose
In judgment smug from his fairyland-o:
The carping Catholic keyboard commando!
Monday, December 28, 2009
Explosive Ivanas
Mack Hall
Ivana Trump, who is famous for her marriages or something, was required to leave a commercial aircraft at Palm Beach for misbehavior after she waxed wroth at some children who were running and screaming in the aisles. There is no word as to whether the running and screaming children were de-off-un-boarded too.
Anyone who has flown with children will surely sympathize with Ms. Trump; most rug-rats should be stowed below with the other live animals.
Perhaps Ivana and the children should all have been punished by being made to sit together and share a Happy Meal.
If vulgar old women can be shown the way to the bus station, why can’t the terrorists?
Just last week a wealthy Nigerian studying engineering in London tried to explode himself on a flight into Detroit. People who have been to Detroit report that such a desire is common. The terrorist – um, misunderstood youth – boarded at Amsterdam, where airport security is reputedly, like, whoa, dude, this is some good stuff we’re smokin’, huh? He carried on his person explosives which he assembled in the potty and then attempted to touch off on the approach. Some of the other passengers, insensitive brutes who probably watch FOX and have read Sarah Palin’s book, jumped on the unfortunate son-of-a-(rich man) who was but crying out for understanding.
As usual, the perp’s acquaintances report that he was a good fellow, a fine student, and a great basketball player. Well, hey, we all know that terrorists are old grouches who have trouble spelling and don’t like sports.
The poor fellow’s lawsuits against the airline and the other passengers and the makers of his flaming underwear are soon to be announced. The meanies who saved the airliner and over two hundred lives must be punished.
The next day another Nigerian on another flight from Amsterdam to Detroit also locked himself in the potty (which most of us do) and refused to come out during the approach, pleading illness. This time the situation appears to have been one of funny-tummy. Perhaps the man had to sit next to some rotten children. Or maybe he was coming to America for the Obamacare.
Security Czar Janet, one of our republic’s many czars (ironic, eh?), hastens to assure us that air travel is safe, which is why airport security are hassling twice the usual number of little old ladies.
Safe airline travel, eh, your Czar-ness? With screaming children, cursing Ivanas, scheming terrorists, and Nigerian businessmen with explosive diarrhea if not explosives, maybe booking space on the Titanic should be an option again.
Ivana Trump, who is famous for her marriages or something, was required to leave a commercial aircraft at Palm Beach for misbehavior after she waxed wroth at some children who were running and screaming in the aisles. There is no word as to whether the running and screaming children were de-off-un-boarded too.
Anyone who has flown with children will surely sympathize with Ms. Trump; most rug-rats should be stowed below with the other live animals.
Perhaps Ivana and the children should all have been punished by being made to sit together and share a Happy Meal.
If vulgar old women can be shown the way to the bus station, why can’t the terrorists?
Just last week a wealthy Nigerian studying engineering in London tried to explode himself on a flight into Detroit. People who have been to Detroit report that such a desire is common. The terrorist – um, misunderstood youth – boarded at Amsterdam, where airport security is reputedly, like, whoa, dude, this is some good stuff we’re smokin’, huh? He carried on his person explosives which he assembled in the potty and then attempted to touch off on the approach. Some of the other passengers, insensitive brutes who probably watch FOX and have read Sarah Palin’s book, jumped on the unfortunate son-of-a-(rich man) who was but crying out for understanding.
As usual, the perp’s acquaintances report that he was a good fellow, a fine student, and a great basketball player. Well, hey, we all know that terrorists are old grouches who have trouble spelling and don’t like sports.
The poor fellow’s lawsuits against the airline and the other passengers and the makers of his flaming underwear are soon to be announced. The meanies who saved the airliner and over two hundred lives must be punished.
The next day another Nigerian on another flight from Amsterdam to Detroit also locked himself in the potty (which most of us do) and refused to come out during the approach, pleading illness. This time the situation appears to have been one of funny-tummy. Perhaps the man had to sit next to some rotten children. Or maybe he was coming to America for the Obamacare.
Security Czar Janet, one of our republic’s many czars (ironic, eh?), hastens to assure us that air travel is safe, which is why airport security are hassling twice the usual number of little old ladies.
Safe airline travel, eh, your Czar-ness? With screaming children, cursing Ivanas, scheming terrorists, and Nigerian businessmen with explosive diarrhea if not explosives, maybe booking space on the Titanic should be an option again.
Explosive Ivanas
Mack Hall
Ivana Trump, who is famous for her marriages or something, was required to leave a commercial aircraft at Palm Beach for misbehavior after she waxed wroth at some children who were running and screaming in the aisles. There is no word as to whether the running and screaming children were de-off-un-boarded too.
Anyone who has flown with children will surely sympathize with Ms. Trump; most rug-rats should be stowed below with the other live animals.
Perhaps Ivana and the children should all have been punished by being made to sit together and share a Happy Meal.
If vulgar old women can be shown the way to the bus station, why can’t the terrorists?
Just last week a wealthy Nigerian studying engineering in London tried to explode himself on a flight into Detroit. People who have been to Detroit report that such a desire is common. The terrorist – um, misunderstood youth – boarded at Amsterdam, where airport security is reputedly, like, whoa, dude, this is some good stuff we’re smokin’, huh? He carried on his person explosives which he assembled in the potty and then attempted to touch off on the approach. Some of the other passengers, insensitive brutes who probably watch FOX and have read Sarah Palin’s book, jumped on the unfortunate son-of-a-(rich man) who was but crying out for understanding.
As usual, the perp’s acquaintances report that he was a good fellow, a fine student, and a great basketball player. Well, hey, we all know that terrorists are old grouches who have trouble spelling and don’t like sports.
The poor fellow’s lawsuits against the airline and the other passengers and the makers of his flaming underwear are soon to be announced. The meanies who saved the airliner and over two hundred lives must be punished.
The next day another Nigerian on another flight from Amsterdam to Detroit also locked himself in the potty (which most of us do) and refused to come out during the approach, pleading illness. This time the situation appears to have been one of funny-tummy. Perhaps the man had to sit next to some rotten children. Or maybe he was coming to America for the Obamacare.
Security Czar Janet, one of our republic’s many czars (ironic, eh?), hastens to assure us that air travel is safe, which is why airport security are hassling twice the usual number of little old ladies.
Safe airline travel, eh, your Czar-ness? With screaming children, cursing Ivanas, scheming terrorists, and Nigerian businessmen with explosive diarrhea if not explosives, maybe booking space on the Titanic should be an option again.
Ivana Trump, who is famous for her marriages or something, was required to leave a commercial aircraft at Palm Beach for misbehavior after she waxed wroth at some children who were running and screaming in the aisles. There is no word as to whether the running and screaming children were de-off-un-boarded too.
Anyone who has flown with children will surely sympathize with Ms. Trump; most rug-rats should be stowed below with the other live animals.
Perhaps Ivana and the children should all have been punished by being made to sit together and share a Happy Meal.
If vulgar old women can be shown the way to the bus station, why can’t the terrorists?
Just last week a wealthy Nigerian studying engineering in London tried to explode himself on a flight into Detroit. People who have been to Detroit report that such a desire is common. The terrorist – um, misunderstood youth – boarded at Amsterdam, where airport security is reputedly, like, whoa, dude, this is some good stuff we’re smokin’, huh? He carried on his person explosives which he assembled in the potty and then attempted to touch off on the approach. Some of the other passengers, insensitive brutes who probably watch FOX and have read Sarah Palin’s book, jumped on the unfortunate son-of-a-(rich man) who was but crying out for understanding.
As usual, the perp’s acquaintances report that he was a good fellow, a fine student, and a great basketball player. Well, hey, we all know that terrorists are old grouches who have trouble spelling and don’t like sports.
The poor fellow’s lawsuits against the airline and the other passengers and the makers of his flaming underwear are soon to be announced. The meanies who saved the airliner and over two hundred lives must be punished.
The next day another Nigerian on another flight from Amsterdam to Detroit also locked himself in the potty (which most of us do) and refused to come out during the approach, pleading illness. This time the situation appears to have been one of funny-tummy. Perhaps the man had to sit next to some rotten children. Or maybe he was coming to America for the Obamacare.
Security Czar Janet, one of our republic’s many czars (ironic, eh?), hastens to assure us that air travel is safe, which is why airport security are hassling twice the usual number of little old ladies.
Safe airline travel, eh, your Czar-ness? With screaming children, cursing Ivanas, scheming terrorists, and Nigerian businessmen with explosive diarrhea if not explosives, maybe booking space on the Titanic should be an option again.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
An Advent Valentine
Mack Hall
An Advent Valentine
For, of course, happy Valentine Marie Petty
And now comes Valentine, an autumn gift;
Vertumnus and Pomona thus withdraw
In recognition of the seasonal shift,
Saluting, they, this Advent child in awe.
The pagan year recesses to its close;
The Christian year commences with a child
Born as the second candle softly glows
(Saint Nicholas is happily beguiled).
Her family journeys to Bethlehem,
A little family in a Star-lit night,
And Simeon, perhaps, joins in their hymn,
As they present their love to living Light:
Rare gifts for the Christ Child ‘midst sheep and kine,
And not among the least, His Valentine
An Advent Valentine
For, of course, happy Valentine Marie Petty
And now comes Valentine, an autumn gift;
Vertumnus and Pomona thus withdraw
In recognition of the seasonal shift,
Saluting, they, this Advent child in awe.
The pagan year recesses to its close;
The Christian year commences with a child
Born as the second candle softly glows
(Saint Nicholas is happily beguiled).
Her family journeys to Bethlehem,
A little family in a Star-lit night,
And Simeon, perhaps, joins in their hymn,
As they present their love to living Light:
Rare gifts for the Christ Child ‘midst sheep and kine,
And not among the least, His Valentine
The Arts of Christmas
Mack Hall
Christmas is pretty. Of all the holidays, both religious and secular, Christmas inspires more and better attempts at literary, visual, and musical art than all the others. Easter, the premiere Christian holy day, ends its somber Lenten anticipation with beautiful music celebrating the Resurrection, but in popular culture is almost ignored. Independence Day is red, white, blue, explosions, and John Philip Sousa, which are okay, but no one spends four weeks in preparation for the Fourth. The religious holidays of All Souls and All Saints have been perverted into the ghastly Halloween, and Thanksgiving barely makes a nod at the Pilgrim fathers before dismembering a turkey and then yelling at a footer match on television.
But with Christmas comes art.
Arnold Friberg, who painted one of the most famous versions of Washington at prayer, wisely said that art which has to be explained is not art at all.
And so it is with Christmas. A Christmas tree needs no explanation, not even to an infant – it simply is, with its colored lights and angels and glass globes and “Baby’s First Christmas” ornament. Adults argue whether Christmas trees are pagan in origin (they probably are), and certainly the aforementioned Pilgrim fathers banned Christmas trees (and Christmas itself) as Romish corruptions, but a child in his wisdom delights in trees.
Christmas music, too, never requires National Public Radio gaseous exhalations invoking such Charlie Brown teacher-isms as “fusion,” “inculturation,” and “textual analysis.” Handel’s glorious music is as clear to an atonal simpleton like me as it is to James Levine of the New York Phil. Fr. Franz Gruber’s simple and sublime “Stille Nacht” and Gene Autry’s jolly “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” as a contract piece for Montgomery Ward both have their places in the canon, one to honor the birth of the Savior and the other to honor the cash-register.
Any time a Hallmark Christmas movie is broadcast an angel rips its wings off, but there is a lengthy catalogue of great Christmas films, including Holiday Inn, The Bishop’s Wife, The Shop Around the Corner, Miracle on 34th Street, and Christmas in Connecticut. John Wayne’s Three Godfathers, with its themes of sacrifice and redemption, is laden with Christmas allusions. Every year Linus Van Pelt in A Charlie Brown Christmas reads to us the infancy narrative from St. Luke, and he doesn’t need a voice-over narrator to explain it all to us.
And, hey, don’t shoot your eye out.
In the 13th century St. Francis of Assisi set up the first Nativity scene, forever giving serious sculptors and even more serious manufacturers a subject for artistic endeavors of varying quality. Perhaps the best Nativity scenes are the cheap ones the children can play with. Since World War II this Catholic tradition has become popular with other Christian faithful, just in time for public displays to be shut down by some local courts, who understand it very well.
Happily there was no Martha Stewart at Bethlehem to instruct Mary on decorating the Stable just so. If Christmas begins with a stable, as St. Luke and Linus remind us, need it continue in a museum-display living room on the cover of Southern Living? One does not imagine the Blessed Mother apologizing to the shepherds because “the stable is a mess.”
Nativity scenes remain simple, which is a small miracle. In churches one sees other Christian symbols, including statues and crucifixes, which appear to have been beaten out of scrap metal by a disturbed chimpanzee with a sledge hammer. Church committees are often deceived into paying good money for debris when a disciple of Billy Mays saliva-sprays them with polysyllabic adjectives explaining what his purported art means. As with the emperor’s new clothes, few people have the courage to say “I DO know something about art, and this ain’t it, pal.”
But art has left the humble Stable alone, not fitting it out with rocket pods or even running water, and a little child can place the Infant Jesus in His manger between Mary and Joseph, set the camels here – or maybe there? – and the ox and the shepherds where she feels they need to be, not where a decorator with a color chart and the rule of three says they must be. Little children pretty much know how Christmas should be, and their play is the best art of all.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
Christmas is pretty. Of all the holidays, both religious and secular, Christmas inspires more and better attempts at literary, visual, and musical art than all the others. Easter, the premiere Christian holy day, ends its somber Lenten anticipation with beautiful music celebrating the Resurrection, but in popular culture is almost ignored. Independence Day is red, white, blue, explosions, and John Philip Sousa, which are okay, but no one spends four weeks in preparation for the Fourth. The religious holidays of All Souls and All Saints have been perverted into the ghastly Halloween, and Thanksgiving barely makes a nod at the Pilgrim fathers before dismembering a turkey and then yelling at a footer match on television.
But with Christmas comes art.
Arnold Friberg, who painted one of the most famous versions of Washington at prayer, wisely said that art which has to be explained is not art at all.
And so it is with Christmas. A Christmas tree needs no explanation, not even to an infant – it simply is, with its colored lights and angels and glass globes and “Baby’s First Christmas” ornament. Adults argue whether Christmas trees are pagan in origin (they probably are), and certainly the aforementioned Pilgrim fathers banned Christmas trees (and Christmas itself) as Romish corruptions, but a child in his wisdom delights in trees.
Christmas music, too, never requires National Public Radio gaseous exhalations invoking such Charlie Brown teacher-isms as “fusion,” “inculturation,” and “textual analysis.” Handel’s glorious music is as clear to an atonal simpleton like me as it is to James Levine of the New York Phil. Fr. Franz Gruber’s simple and sublime “Stille Nacht” and Gene Autry’s jolly “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” as a contract piece for Montgomery Ward both have their places in the canon, one to honor the birth of the Savior and the other to honor the cash-register.
Any time a Hallmark Christmas movie is broadcast an angel rips its wings off, but there is a lengthy catalogue of great Christmas films, including Holiday Inn, The Bishop’s Wife, The Shop Around the Corner, Miracle on 34th Street, and Christmas in Connecticut. John Wayne’s Three Godfathers, with its themes of sacrifice and redemption, is laden with Christmas allusions. Every year Linus Van Pelt in A Charlie Brown Christmas reads to us the infancy narrative from St. Luke, and he doesn’t need a voice-over narrator to explain it all to us.
And, hey, don’t shoot your eye out.
In the 13th century St. Francis of Assisi set up the first Nativity scene, forever giving serious sculptors and even more serious manufacturers a subject for artistic endeavors of varying quality. Perhaps the best Nativity scenes are the cheap ones the children can play with. Since World War II this Catholic tradition has become popular with other Christian faithful, just in time for public displays to be shut down by some local courts, who understand it very well.
Happily there was no Martha Stewart at Bethlehem to instruct Mary on decorating the Stable just so. If Christmas begins with a stable, as St. Luke and Linus remind us, need it continue in a museum-display living room on the cover of Southern Living? One does not imagine the Blessed Mother apologizing to the shepherds because “the stable is a mess.”
Nativity scenes remain simple, which is a small miracle. In churches one sees other Christian symbols, including statues and crucifixes, which appear to have been beaten out of scrap metal by a disturbed chimpanzee with a sledge hammer. Church committees are often deceived into paying good money for debris when a disciple of Billy Mays saliva-sprays them with polysyllabic adjectives explaining what his purported art means. As with the emperor’s new clothes, few people have the courage to say “I DO know something about art, and this ain’t it, pal.”
But art has left the humble Stable alone, not fitting it out with rocket pods or even running water, and a little child can place the Infant Jesus in His manger between Mary and Joseph, set the camels here – or maybe there? – and the ox and the shepherds where she feels they need to be, not where a decorator with a color chart and the rule of three says they must be. Little children pretty much know how Christmas should be, and their play is the best art of all.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
The National Christmas Wish List
Mack Hall
Tiger Woods – a new set of golf clubs. Or at least a new driver.
American soldiers – the same medical care and legal protection granted to this nation’s enemies.
President and Mrs. Obama – a few extra place settings for those drop-in dinner guests.
A.C.O.R.N. – industrial-strength, high-speed paper shredders.
For all children – no more dinner-table shootings. Holidays aren’t supposed to include casualty lists.
Rhode Island Representative Patrick Kennedy – a King Henry II action figure with a voice chip that says “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?”
Global Warming true believers – a stocking full of carbon credits. And maybe a brain.
Windows Vista users – an Apple computer.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi – Obedience. So let it be written. So let it be done.
Sarah Palin – Levi’s for Levi. Put on your clothes and go home, lad; your fifteen minutes are up.
Some of the prissier Christian bloggers – books on Donatism and Pelagianism.
That special woman in your life – more shirtless vampire dudes.
United States Army Major Nidal Hassan – the customary book and movie deal.
Former President Jimmy Carter – please notice him. Then maybe he’ll go away.
Finally, for the little children: may they find under the Christmas tree roller skates, dolls, toy trucks and cars made of metal, cap pistols (gasp!), toy trains, chessmen, books about Robin Hood and King Arthur and The Bobbsey Twins, marbles, Lincoln Logs, little toy soldiers, Old Maid cards, and coloring books, none of it with electronic chips. And may the children, just for an hour or two, be permitted to play without the weird adult world of who’s mad at whom this year intruding. And even breakfast can wait a while, okay?
Tiger Woods – a new set of golf clubs. Or at least a new driver.
American soldiers – the same medical care and legal protection granted to this nation’s enemies.
President and Mrs. Obama – a few extra place settings for those drop-in dinner guests.
A.C.O.R.N. – industrial-strength, high-speed paper shredders.
For all children – no more dinner-table shootings. Holidays aren’t supposed to include casualty lists.
Rhode Island Representative Patrick Kennedy – a King Henry II action figure with a voice chip that says “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?”
Global Warming true believers – a stocking full of carbon credits. And maybe a brain.
Windows Vista users – an Apple computer.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi – Obedience. So let it be written. So let it be done.
Sarah Palin – Levi’s for Levi. Put on your clothes and go home, lad; your fifteen minutes are up.
Some of the prissier Christian bloggers – books on Donatism and Pelagianism.
That special woman in your life – more shirtless vampire dudes.
United States Army Major Nidal Hassan – the customary book and movie deal.
Former President Jimmy Carter – please notice him. Then maybe he’ll go away.
Finally, for the little children: may they find under the Christmas tree roller skates, dolls, toy trucks and cars made of metal, cap pistols (gasp!), toy trains, chessmen, books about Robin Hood and King Arthur and The Bobbsey Twins, marbles, Lincoln Logs, little toy soldiers, Old Maid cards, and coloring books, none of it with electronic chips. And may the children, just for an hour or two, be permitted to play without the weird adult world of who’s mad at whom this year intruding. And even breakfast can wait a while, okay?
Having the Neighbors for Supper
Mack Hall
Near Herxheim, a small town in the Rhineland-Palatinate, archaeologists have found the fragmented remains of some 500 folks who were apparently eaten by their friends and neighbors 7,000 years ago.
The BBC was too, too pleased to locate Herxheim in southwestern Germany, but a mediaeval border incident involving a kilometer or two could just as easily have placed the little town in eastern France. And you know what they say about French cooking.
Hey, what a name for the local football team, eh? The Herxheim Omnivores. Herxheim Herbivores would be more alliterative but, alas, inaccurate.
One indication of anthropophagia was the preserved remnants of fast-food bags labeled Johann-in-der-Box and containing bits of Johann.
Noshing on one’s fellows is rare in Europe, except for that quiet little man next door who was such a good neighbor and kept his lawn tidy, so scientists from the University of Bordeaux (and a glass of Bordeaux always goes well with a meat dish) speculate that this was a rare event caused by a famine.
The Copenhagen crowd hasn’t opined on the matter of 7,000–year-old carbon footprints near Herxheim but there were certainly carbonized ladyfingers.
In those days a lunch invitation would sure make one nervous.
Hey, about hobo stew?
And dining out could cost an arm and a leg.
A restaurant advertising German cooking would mean it.
A kid playing with a friend might begin to worry if the friend’s mother appeared at the door with a carving knife and called out “Heinrich, stop playing with your food!”
“Clean your plate, son; there are kids starving in China who would love to have your cousin Dieter.”
Fast food would mean a track star from the snack bar.
Cap’n Crunch was seafood to the neoliths.
And kids speak disapprovingly of the school lunch these days.
Country cooking would be Hank Williams en brochette.
Diners might complain to the chef about the guitarist who was too stringy.
Oh, well, that’s enough anthropophagic humor in your morning newspaper. Now go ahead and eat your breakfast – whoever it was.
Near Herxheim, a small town in the Rhineland-Palatinate, archaeologists have found the fragmented remains of some 500 folks who were apparently eaten by their friends and neighbors 7,000 years ago.
The BBC was too, too pleased to locate Herxheim in southwestern Germany, but a mediaeval border incident involving a kilometer or two could just as easily have placed the little town in eastern France. And you know what they say about French cooking.
Hey, what a name for the local football team, eh? The Herxheim Omnivores. Herxheim Herbivores would be more alliterative but, alas, inaccurate.
One indication of anthropophagia was the preserved remnants of fast-food bags labeled Johann-in-der-Box and containing bits of Johann.
Noshing on one’s fellows is rare in Europe, except for that quiet little man next door who was such a good neighbor and kept his lawn tidy, so scientists from the University of Bordeaux (and a glass of Bordeaux always goes well with a meat dish) speculate that this was a rare event caused by a famine.
The Copenhagen crowd hasn’t opined on the matter of 7,000–year-old carbon footprints near Herxheim but there were certainly carbonized ladyfingers.
In those days a lunch invitation would sure make one nervous.
Hey, about hobo stew?
And dining out could cost an arm and a leg.
A restaurant advertising German cooking would mean it.
A kid playing with a friend might begin to worry if the friend’s mother appeared at the door with a carving knife and called out “Heinrich, stop playing with your food!”
“Clean your plate, son; there are kids starving in China who would love to have your cousin Dieter.”
Fast food would mean a track star from the snack bar.
Cap’n Crunch was seafood to the neoliths.
And kids speak disapprovingly of the school lunch these days.
Country cooking would be Hank Williams en brochette.
Diners might complain to the chef about the guitarist who was too stringy.
Oh, well, that’s enough anthropophagic humor in your morning newspaper. Now go ahead and eat your breakfast – whoever it was.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
An Adjective Christmas
Mack Hall
So thoroughly did our Puritan ancestors purge Christmas from the culture that in the New England colonies the observance of Advent or Christmas was a crime. Save for Anglicans and Catholics, Christmas was not much a part of the American tradition until the middle of the 19th century when Charles Dickens’ stories and Prince Albert’s Christmas tree generated the holiday as a secular fashion.
Advent isn’t much observed at all, not even as a generic late-autumn holiday. Instead, America is for its sins burdened with a wholly artificial construct called The Christmas Season.
That Season is upon us, That Season when folks talk about putting Christ back into Christmas and then skip divine services on Christmas day itself. And can a mere human actually put Christ anywhere anyway?
There are elements of The Christmas Season that make one despair of salvation: A Christmas Carol comes to mind, and Hallmark movies. Surely every time It’s a Wonderful Life is broadcast an angel rips its wings off. Maybe the Puritans foresaw all that, and that was why they banned Christmas.
Christmas is seldom without an adjective anymore. Even Dickens had the decency to leave the name of the holiday alone, but now the marketers of music and movies pile on the descriptors in order to peddle to niche audiences: White Christmas, A Muppet Christmas, Rocky Mountain Christmas, and, I suppose, The Ground Squirrels’ Christmas, An Ozark Christmas, An Irish Christmas, A Three (or is it four?) Tenors Christmas, A Country Christmas, Somebody’s Country Christmas, Somebody Else’s Country Ozark Christmas, Somebody Else’s Tennessee Country Ozark Farm Christmas, A Cowboy Christmas, A Cajun Christmas, An Ol’ Fashioned Christmas, A Victorian Christmas, Some Girl in an Amish Bonnet Christmas, A Down-Home Christmas, A Down East Christmas, and maybe even The Blair Witch Christmas Reunion Special.
I suppose three (or four) tenors for Christmas is nice, but why not The Three Electricians for Christmas? When the power fails, sturdy fellows in Nomex suits are indeed The Three Wise Electricians, bearing gifts of light and heat and running water.
Hospital workers, too, deserve their own Christmas movie, as do cops and firemen and plumbers and ambulance crews and soldiers and all the other folks who on Christmas do not get to snuggle in warm beds with visions of anything because they’re on duty. Wassail? Eggnog? No, gimme another go-cup of that hairy-legged two-in-the-morning coffee.
Waiters and retail clerks deserve combat pay, not just their own movie or song, for enduring the ungodly Christmas poutiness of all the unhappy Christmas shoppers in Christendom during The Christmas Season. And while I’m pretty much opposed to the death penalty, I’d make an exception for supervisors who require employees to wear Santa hats or elf costumes.
One wonders if that long-ago innkeeper wore plastic antlers and greeted the tired travelers Mary and Joseph with a forced “Happy holidays! Do you have a reservation? Visa? Or Mastercard? And what discount card will you be using? And how many days will you be staying with us? Hey, ya like animals?”
St. Luke, tell me the Story again.
So thoroughly did our Puritan ancestors purge Christmas from the culture that in the New England colonies the observance of Advent or Christmas was a crime. Save for Anglicans and Catholics, Christmas was not much a part of the American tradition until the middle of the 19th century when Charles Dickens’ stories and Prince Albert’s Christmas tree generated the holiday as a secular fashion.
Advent isn’t much observed at all, not even as a generic late-autumn holiday. Instead, America is for its sins burdened with a wholly artificial construct called The Christmas Season.
That Season is upon us, That Season when folks talk about putting Christ back into Christmas and then skip divine services on Christmas day itself. And can a mere human actually put Christ anywhere anyway?
There are elements of The Christmas Season that make one despair of salvation: A Christmas Carol comes to mind, and Hallmark movies. Surely every time It’s a Wonderful Life is broadcast an angel rips its wings off. Maybe the Puritans foresaw all that, and that was why they banned Christmas.
Christmas is seldom without an adjective anymore. Even Dickens had the decency to leave the name of the holiday alone, but now the marketers of music and movies pile on the descriptors in order to peddle to niche audiences: White Christmas, A Muppet Christmas, Rocky Mountain Christmas, and, I suppose, The Ground Squirrels’ Christmas, An Ozark Christmas, An Irish Christmas, A Three (or is it four?) Tenors Christmas, A Country Christmas, Somebody’s Country Christmas, Somebody Else’s Country Ozark Christmas, Somebody Else’s Tennessee Country Ozark Farm Christmas, A Cowboy Christmas, A Cajun Christmas, An Ol’ Fashioned Christmas, A Victorian Christmas, Some Girl in an Amish Bonnet Christmas, A Down-Home Christmas, A Down East Christmas, and maybe even The Blair Witch Christmas Reunion Special.
I suppose three (or four) tenors for Christmas is nice, but why not The Three Electricians for Christmas? When the power fails, sturdy fellows in Nomex suits are indeed The Three Wise Electricians, bearing gifts of light and heat and running water.
Hospital workers, too, deserve their own Christmas movie, as do cops and firemen and plumbers and ambulance crews and soldiers and all the other folks who on Christmas do not get to snuggle in warm beds with visions of anything because they’re on duty. Wassail? Eggnog? No, gimme another go-cup of that hairy-legged two-in-the-morning coffee.
Waiters and retail clerks deserve combat pay, not just their own movie or song, for enduring the ungodly Christmas poutiness of all the unhappy Christmas shoppers in Christendom during The Christmas Season. And while I’m pretty much opposed to the death penalty, I’d make an exception for supervisors who require employees to wear Santa hats or elf costumes.
One wonders if that long-ago innkeeper wore plastic antlers and greeted the tired travelers Mary and Joseph with a forced “Happy holidays! Do you have a reservation? Visa? Or Mastercard? And what discount card will you be using? And how many days will you be staying with us? Hey, ya like animals?”
St. Luke, tell me the Story again.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Who Cleaned up the Park?
Mack Hall
Someone said that someone said that someone else said that the ‘net said that someone said that the sexiest accent in the world is Irish. Well, who could argue with that sourcing, eh?
Our own rural accents are admittedly pretty cool some of the time. A certain silver-haired cooking-show gal, for instance, has a lovely voice, but there’s just something de Medici about her intonation that makes one suspect that she knows where several shallow graves are located. But our East Texas accent, the sound of one long eyebrow whining, cannot be not recommended for public consumption or wide distribution.
Business people from East Texas should never do their own radio commercials. In the days of that “Iz iyit trewwwwwww? Iz iyit trewwwwwwwww? Iz iyit reelly trewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww?” thing my reflexes developed so efficiently that I could hit the OFF button long before the last syllable of the first “iz iyit trewwwwwwwwwwwww” faded away to die an agonized and prolonged Wagnerian death in some other sufferer’s ears.
One wonders how many professionally-made commercials with trained voices are missed because the radio listener kills the sound of an amateur’s unfortunate baying and doesn’t get back to the station until after he’s had therapy. If I were buying a commercial I would specify to the radio sales folks that my expensive and attractive commercial should never be positioned behind Nasal Bubba or Adenoidal Cletus lest the good commercial go unheard due to dead-air time.
Equally annoying is the endless repetition of a commercial. The public-service spot about two teen lads leaving a party when the drinking started was pretty cute the first two or three hundred times I heard it, but repetition, vain repetition, now sends my lightning fingers of radio death flying to the dial.
If you never listen to the radio, let me give you the exposition: two teens come home late at night, and are ambushed by Dad, who wonders why his sons are late and why they are wearing food (fathers are like that). They explain that they and some others wisely left an unchaperoned party when drinking began, and drove to a fast-food joint for, well, some fast-food. But they did not eat the food; they then motored to the park and, for reasons best known to teens, threw the food at each other. The wise father is amused at the narrative, proud of his sons for their mature judgment, and sends them upstairs for baths and bed.
Okay, fine, good message, cute presentation.
But upon hearing this fictional narrative several dozen times, one begins to wonder: who cleaned up the park?
Take-out food comes with layers of wrappings, a paper bag, tiny envelopes of salt and pepper, little plastic thingies with sauces, drinks in cups, straws for the drinks, a receipt, and so on. And then there’s the food itself, tacos and hamburgers in this story. All over the park, rotting and fly-blown and malodorous by the time the sun rises.
Littering is hardly to be compared to underaged drinking, but it’s still illegal in its own modest way, it’s not considerate, and someone has to clean up the mess.
I imagine anyone who grew up in the hungry 1930s latched on to the food wastage thing immediately. In a world in which there really are hungry children (I’m not talking about the fat boy waddling down the street with a bag of ‘tater chips in one hand and his cell ‘phone in the other), is this scenario a good idea? Will the lads keep a straight face as they help collect canned food for the genuinely poor at Thanksgiving and Christmas?
Well, we’ll leave the park cleanup crew to their work. Maybe they will enjoy listening to the radio while cleaning up the litter.
Someone said that someone said that someone else said that the ‘net said that someone said that the sexiest accent in the world is Irish. Well, who could argue with that sourcing, eh?
Our own rural accents are admittedly pretty cool some of the time. A certain silver-haired cooking-show gal, for instance, has a lovely voice, but there’s just something de Medici about her intonation that makes one suspect that she knows where several shallow graves are located. But our East Texas accent, the sound of one long eyebrow whining, cannot be not recommended for public consumption or wide distribution.
Business people from East Texas should never do their own radio commercials. In the days of that “Iz iyit trewwwwwww? Iz iyit trewwwwwwwww? Iz iyit reelly trewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww?” thing my reflexes developed so efficiently that I could hit the OFF button long before the last syllable of the first “iz iyit trewwwwwwwwwwwww” faded away to die an agonized and prolonged Wagnerian death in some other sufferer’s ears.
One wonders how many professionally-made commercials with trained voices are missed because the radio listener kills the sound of an amateur’s unfortunate baying and doesn’t get back to the station until after he’s had therapy. If I were buying a commercial I would specify to the radio sales folks that my expensive and attractive commercial should never be positioned behind Nasal Bubba or Adenoidal Cletus lest the good commercial go unheard due to dead-air time.
Equally annoying is the endless repetition of a commercial. The public-service spot about two teen lads leaving a party when the drinking started was pretty cute the first two or three hundred times I heard it, but repetition, vain repetition, now sends my lightning fingers of radio death flying to the dial.
If you never listen to the radio, let me give you the exposition: two teens come home late at night, and are ambushed by Dad, who wonders why his sons are late and why they are wearing food (fathers are like that). They explain that they and some others wisely left an unchaperoned party when drinking began, and drove to a fast-food joint for, well, some fast-food. But they did not eat the food; they then motored to the park and, for reasons best known to teens, threw the food at each other. The wise father is amused at the narrative, proud of his sons for their mature judgment, and sends them upstairs for baths and bed.
Okay, fine, good message, cute presentation.
But upon hearing this fictional narrative several dozen times, one begins to wonder: who cleaned up the park?
Take-out food comes with layers of wrappings, a paper bag, tiny envelopes of salt and pepper, little plastic thingies with sauces, drinks in cups, straws for the drinks, a receipt, and so on. And then there’s the food itself, tacos and hamburgers in this story. All over the park, rotting and fly-blown and malodorous by the time the sun rises.
Littering is hardly to be compared to underaged drinking, but it’s still illegal in its own modest way, it’s not considerate, and someone has to clean up the mess.
I imagine anyone who grew up in the hungry 1930s latched on to the food wastage thing immediately. In a world in which there really are hungry children (I’m not talking about the fat boy waddling down the street with a bag of ‘tater chips in one hand and his cell ‘phone in the other), is this scenario a good idea? Will the lads keep a straight face as they help collect canned food for the genuinely poor at Thanksgiving and Christmas?
Well, we’ll leave the park cleanup crew to their work. Maybe they will enjoy listening to the radio while cleaning up the litter.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Remembrance Day: "Let Perpetual Light Shine Upon Them"
Mack Hall
In a happier the world the remembrances of Armistice Day / Veterans’ Day would all be old ones told in peacetime, jolly boot-camp stories for the kiddies and the civilians, mostly. A veteran eventually learns to keep other matters in his heart, and to change the subject or simply walk away discreetly when someone who got no closer to war than his dime-store camouflage and collection of John Wayne films begins some hand-me-down, second-hand, thousand-yard-stare yarn. He heard it from his buddy, you see, and his buddy was a Green Beret / Army Ranger / CIA commando / Marine / Navy SEAL / special operative in an organization so secret that blah-blah-blah, so he ought to know, eh.
But in the middle of a long, long war the stories of the long-ago, even the funny ones about some barracks buffoonery, somehow seem inappropriate. Soldiers are dying now, some shot in the back by a self-indulgent, emo ess of a bee whose duty was to watch their backs.
The Wall Street Journal, Fox, and other sources have told us something of the thirteen unarmed Americans murdered last week:
Lt. Col Juanita Warman, 55, of Maryland was a physician’s assistant with two daughters and six grandchildren. She worked her way through the University of Pittsburgh.
Major Libardo Caraveo, 52, of Virginia came to America from Mexico in his teens. He earned his doctorate in psychology at the University of Arizona and worked with special-needs children in Tucson schools before beginning private practice. He was preparing to deploy to Afghanistan.
Capt. John Gaffaney, 52, of California was a psychiatric nurse who also was on base clearing for Afghanistan. He served in the Navy and then in the California National Guard as a young man, and two years ago managed to get back into the service to help the soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan deal with the trauma. He is survived by a wife and a son.
Captain Russell Seager, 41, of Wisconsin joined the Army a few years ago, and was a psychiatrist who wanted to help soldiers returning from war adapt to civilian life.
Staff Sgt. Justin Decrow, 32, of Indiana was helping train soldiers on how to help veterans home from the wars with the paperwork. He and his wife have a 13-year-old daughter.
Sgt. Amy Krueger, 29, of Wisconsin told her mother she was going to get Osama Bin Ladin. Sergeant Kreuger’s mother told her she couldn’t take on Osama by herself.
“Watch me,” she replied.
And maybe she would have, if she hadn’t been murdered by an American Army officer before she got the chance.
Sergeant Amy was to have been posted to Afghanistan in December.
Spc. Jason Dean Hunt, 22, of Oklahoma had been in the Army for almost four years, including a tour in Iraq. He had been married only two months.
Spc. Frederick Greene, 29, of Tennessee was assigned to the 16th Signal Company at Fort Hood.
PFC Aaron Nemelka,19, of Utah joined the Utah National Guard as his form of service instead of going on mission for his church. He was to be sent to Afghanistan in January.
PFC Michael Pearson, 22, of Illinois had telephoned his parents only two days before his death to tell them he would be home for Christmas.
PFC Kham Xiong, 23, of Minnesota was a father of three whose family has a tradition of military service. Both his grandfather and his father fought against the Pathet Lao and the Viet-Cong, and his brother, Nelson is a Marine in Afghanistan.
Pvt. Francheska Velez, 21, of Illinois loved poetry and dancing. She had just returned home from Iraq, and was a career soldier.
Michael G. Cahill, 62, of Texas was a civilian employee, a physician’s assistant back at work after a heart attack two weeks before. He and his wife, Joleen, were married for 37 years. He was much loved for his many beyond-the-call-of-duty kindnesses to young soldiers returning from the war or on their way overseas.
Thirteen good Americans.
“Eternal rest give unto them, O Lord,
and let perpetual light shine upon them.”
- Roman Missal
In a happier the world the remembrances of Armistice Day / Veterans’ Day would all be old ones told in peacetime, jolly boot-camp stories for the kiddies and the civilians, mostly. A veteran eventually learns to keep other matters in his heart, and to change the subject or simply walk away discreetly when someone who got no closer to war than his dime-store camouflage and collection of John Wayne films begins some hand-me-down, second-hand, thousand-yard-stare yarn. He heard it from his buddy, you see, and his buddy was a Green Beret / Army Ranger / CIA commando / Marine / Navy SEAL / special operative in an organization so secret that blah-blah-blah, so he ought to know, eh.
But in the middle of a long, long war the stories of the long-ago, even the funny ones about some barracks buffoonery, somehow seem inappropriate. Soldiers are dying now, some shot in the back by a self-indulgent, emo ess of a bee whose duty was to watch their backs.
The Wall Street Journal, Fox, and other sources have told us something of the thirteen unarmed Americans murdered last week:
Lt. Col Juanita Warman, 55, of Maryland was a physician’s assistant with two daughters and six grandchildren. She worked her way through the University of Pittsburgh.
Major Libardo Caraveo, 52, of Virginia came to America from Mexico in his teens. He earned his doctorate in psychology at the University of Arizona and worked with special-needs children in Tucson schools before beginning private practice. He was preparing to deploy to Afghanistan.
Capt. John Gaffaney, 52, of California was a psychiatric nurse who also was on base clearing for Afghanistan. He served in the Navy and then in the California National Guard as a young man, and two years ago managed to get back into the service to help the soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan deal with the trauma. He is survived by a wife and a son.
Captain Russell Seager, 41, of Wisconsin joined the Army a few years ago, and was a psychiatrist who wanted to help soldiers returning from war adapt to civilian life.
Staff Sgt. Justin Decrow, 32, of Indiana was helping train soldiers on how to help veterans home from the wars with the paperwork. He and his wife have a 13-year-old daughter.
Sgt. Amy Krueger, 29, of Wisconsin told her mother she was going to get Osama Bin Ladin. Sergeant Kreuger’s mother told her she couldn’t take on Osama by herself.
“Watch me,” she replied.
And maybe she would have, if she hadn’t been murdered by an American Army officer before she got the chance.
Sergeant Amy was to have been posted to Afghanistan in December.
Spc. Jason Dean Hunt, 22, of Oklahoma had been in the Army for almost four years, including a tour in Iraq. He had been married only two months.
Spc. Frederick Greene, 29, of Tennessee was assigned to the 16th Signal Company at Fort Hood.
PFC Aaron Nemelka,19, of Utah joined the Utah National Guard as his form of service instead of going on mission for his church. He was to be sent to Afghanistan in January.
PFC Michael Pearson, 22, of Illinois had telephoned his parents only two days before his death to tell them he would be home for Christmas.
PFC Kham Xiong, 23, of Minnesota was a father of three whose family has a tradition of military service. Both his grandfather and his father fought against the Pathet Lao and the Viet-Cong, and his brother, Nelson is a Marine in Afghanistan.
Pvt. Francheska Velez, 21, of Illinois loved poetry and dancing. She had just returned home from Iraq, and was a career soldier.
Michael G. Cahill, 62, of Texas was a civilian employee, a physician’s assistant back at work after a heart attack two weeks before. He and his wife, Joleen, were married for 37 years. He was much loved for his many beyond-the-call-of-duty kindnesses to young soldiers returning from the war or on their way overseas.
Thirteen good Americans.
“Eternal rest give unto them, O Lord,
and let perpetual light shine upon them.”
- Roman Missal
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Death Lodge
Mack Hall
In an episode of the minimalist police drama Adam 12, two of The People burglarize a house while it is under a fumigation tent. Dragged out by officers in hazmat suits, one of the idiots…um…citizens dies from the fumigants. While being questioned the surviving dumb…er…victim of an oppressive society brags about being a draft dodger because he and his friend did not want to die for an evil capitalist system. A police officer, indicating the corpse, asks the salient question: “So what did your buddy die for?”
Several weeks ago in Arizona three people died from a spiritual (cough) retreat involving starvation, dehydration, humiliation, and, finally, several hours in what has been called a sweat lodge (it isn’t) suffering oxygen deprivation or toxic fumes or both.
Perhaps the death lodgers got to beat on some drums and chant gen-you-wine old-timey songs to the Earth-Mother-Goddess-Nature-Green-Spirit-Principle-of-Me, Me, Me before they departed this vale of bottled water, clutching icons of Al Gore to their hearts.
One thing we do know is that their checks cleared before they died; one-with-nature spiritual guides want their money up front.
Religious frauds are as old as Delphi, and Chaucer makes fun of them in The Canterbury Tales: Get’cher red-hot relics right ‘chere! I got’cha a piece of the sail of St. Peter’s boat! Who wants to bid on Veronica’s veil, eh? Modern Oracles and Pardoners are given blessings by talk-show hosts and even by presidents, and make their little pile selling books and cds and dvds and magic amulets and handkerchiefs soaked with holy essences, and the world wags on. Occasionally, though, some, like Jim Jones, who posed with President Jimmy Carter, begin believing in their own detritus and then the dead bodies pile up.
This last lot of corpses in Arizona were apparently quite wealthy; according to the news they and some 57 other seekers after truth each paid $9,000 in order to be spiritually enlightened.
$9,000. If you had that much loose holiness jingling in your pockets what would you do with it? You could buy the really high-dollar lawn mower and have money left over for gasoline for the thing. You could take a really good vacation. You could pay off the car. You could stash it away in the kid’s college fund. You could find some genuinely poor people – not fatties with cell ‘phones – and help fund their job searches. You could help a museum with its bills. You could do lots of good things. Hey, you could give it me.
But would you ever pay some bogus holy dude $9,000 to starve you, deprive you of sleep, and humiliate you?
Sixty of your well-to-do fellow citizens did. $9,000 x 60 = $540,000 for a long weekend of one-ness with the Sky-God Vi-Sa’Card and the Earth-Mother Pi’n’Number.
You and I are in the wrong business.
Man, give me $9,000 and I’ll tell you whatever makes you feel all holy and stuff. I’ll even throw in a few fair-trade bagels and a sleeping bag made from recycled goat hair or something. For a sweat lodge I’ll stake out that blue FEMA tarp left over from Rita, and you can sit crossed-legged in there and chant mantra-rays or mantas or mantels to the Moon Goddess Tiffany. I’ll leave the sides open so you can breathe. In the meantime, I’ll be inside in the air-conditioning checking my account on the ‘puter to make sure your check cleared.
A human’s quest is not for some sort of vague, fluffy self-fulfillment, whatever self-fulfillment means. One’s quest is for the truth. Not my truth, or your truth, or some voted-upon truth, because there are no such things. There is only the truth. And you start from there. And there is no charge.
The police officer in the story asks a man what his friend died for. C. S. Lewis in one of his essays reminds us to ask ourselves what we live for.
In an episode of the minimalist police drama Adam 12, two of The People burglarize a house while it is under a fumigation tent. Dragged out by officers in hazmat suits, one of the idiots…um…citizens dies from the fumigants. While being questioned the surviving dumb…er…victim of an oppressive society brags about being a draft dodger because he and his friend did not want to die for an evil capitalist system. A police officer, indicating the corpse, asks the salient question: “So what did your buddy die for?”
Several weeks ago in Arizona three people died from a spiritual (cough) retreat involving starvation, dehydration, humiliation, and, finally, several hours in what has been called a sweat lodge (it isn’t) suffering oxygen deprivation or toxic fumes or both.
Perhaps the death lodgers got to beat on some drums and chant gen-you-wine old-timey songs to the Earth-Mother-Goddess-Nature-Green-Spirit-Principle-of-Me, Me, Me before they departed this vale of bottled water, clutching icons of Al Gore to their hearts.
One thing we do know is that their checks cleared before they died; one-with-nature spiritual guides want their money up front.
Religious frauds are as old as Delphi, and Chaucer makes fun of them in The Canterbury Tales: Get’cher red-hot relics right ‘chere! I got’cha a piece of the sail of St. Peter’s boat! Who wants to bid on Veronica’s veil, eh? Modern Oracles and Pardoners are given blessings by talk-show hosts and even by presidents, and make their little pile selling books and cds and dvds and magic amulets and handkerchiefs soaked with holy essences, and the world wags on. Occasionally, though, some, like Jim Jones, who posed with President Jimmy Carter, begin believing in their own detritus and then the dead bodies pile up.
This last lot of corpses in Arizona were apparently quite wealthy; according to the news they and some 57 other seekers after truth each paid $9,000 in order to be spiritually enlightened.
$9,000. If you had that much loose holiness jingling in your pockets what would you do with it? You could buy the really high-dollar lawn mower and have money left over for gasoline for the thing. You could take a really good vacation. You could pay off the car. You could stash it away in the kid’s college fund. You could find some genuinely poor people – not fatties with cell ‘phones – and help fund their job searches. You could help a museum with its bills. You could do lots of good things. Hey, you could give it me.
But would you ever pay some bogus holy dude $9,000 to starve you, deprive you of sleep, and humiliate you?
Sixty of your well-to-do fellow citizens did. $9,000 x 60 = $540,000 for a long weekend of one-ness with the Sky-God Vi-Sa’Card and the Earth-Mother Pi’n’Number.
You and I are in the wrong business.
Man, give me $9,000 and I’ll tell you whatever makes you feel all holy and stuff. I’ll even throw in a few fair-trade bagels and a sleeping bag made from recycled goat hair or something. For a sweat lodge I’ll stake out that blue FEMA tarp left over from Rita, and you can sit crossed-legged in there and chant mantra-rays or mantas or mantels to the Moon Goddess Tiffany. I’ll leave the sides open so you can breathe. In the meantime, I’ll be inside in the air-conditioning checking my account on the ‘puter to make sure your check cleared.
A human’s quest is not for some sort of vague, fluffy self-fulfillment, whatever self-fulfillment means. One’s quest is for the truth. Not my truth, or your truth, or some voted-upon truth, because there are no such things. There is only the truth. And you start from there. And there is no charge.
The police officer in the story asks a man what his friend died for. C. S. Lewis in one of his essays reminds us to ask ourselves what we live for.
Death Lodge
Mack Hall
In an episode of the minimalist police drama Adam 12, two of The People burglarize a house while it is under a fumigation tent. Dragged out by officers in hazmat suits, one of the idiots…um…citizens dies from the fumigants. While being questioned the surviving dumb…er…victim of an oppressive society brags about being a draft dodger because he and his friend did not want to die for an evil capitalist system. A police officer, indicating the corpse, asks the salient question: “So what did your buddy die for?”
Several weeks ago in Arizona three people died from a spiritual (cough) retreat involving starvation, dehydration, humiliation, and, finally, several hours in what has been called a sweat lodge (it isn’t) suffering oxygen deprivation or toxic fumes or both.
Perhaps the death lodgers got to beat on some drums and chant gen-you-wine old-timey songs to the Earth-Mother-Goddess-Nature-Green-Spirit-Principle-of-Me, Me, Me before they departed this vale of bottled water, clutching icons of Al Gore to their hearts.
One thing we do know is that their checks cleared before they died; one-with-nature spiritual guides want their money up front.
Religious frauds are as old as Delphi, and Chaucer makes fun of them in The Canterbury Tales: Get’cher red-hot relics right ‘chere! I got’cha a piece of the sail of St. Peter’s boat! Who wants to bid on Veronica’s veil, eh? Modern Oracles and Pardoners are given blessings by talk-show hosts and even by presidents, and make their little pile selling books and cds and dvds and magic amulets and handkerchiefs soaked with holy essences, and the world wags on. Occasionally, though, some, like Jim Jones, who posed with President Jimmy Carter, begin believing in their own detritus and then the dead bodies pile up.
This last lot of corpses in Arizona were apparently quite wealthy; according to the news they and some 57 other seekers after truth each paid $9,000 in order to be spiritually enlightened.
$9,000. If you had that much loose holiness jingling in your pockets what would you do with it? You could buy the really high-dollar lawn mower and have money left over for gasoline for the thing. You could take a really good vacation. You could pay off the car. You could stash it away in the kid’s college fund. You could find some genuinely poor people – not fatties with cell ‘phones – and help fund their job searches. You could help a museum with its bills. You could do lots of good things. Hey, you could give it me.
But would you ever pay some bogus holy dude $9,000 to starve you, deprive you of sleep, and humiliate you?
Sixty of your well-to-do fellow citizens did. $9,000 x 60 = $540,000 for a long weekend of one-ness with the Sky-God Vi-Sa’Card and the Earth-Mother Pi’n’Number.
You and I are in the wrong business.
Man, give me $9,000 and I’ll tell you whatever makes you feel all holy and stuff. I’ll even throw in a few fair-trade bagels and a sleeping bag made from recycled goat hair or something. For a sweat lodge I’ll stake out that blue FEMA tarp left over from Rita, and you can sit crossed-legged in there and chant mantra-rays or mantas or mantels to the Moon Goddess Tiffany. I’ll leave the sides open so you can breathe. In the meantime, I’ll be inside in the air-conditioning checking my account on the ‘puter to make sure your check cleared.
A human’s quest is not for some sort of vague, fluffy self-fulfillment, whatever self-fulfillment means. One’s quest is for the truth. Not my truth, or your truth, or some voted-upon truth, because there are no such things. There is only the truth. And you start from there. And there is no charge.
The police officer in the story asks a man what his friend died for. C. S. Lewis in one of his essays reminds us to ask ourselves what we live for.
In an episode of the minimalist police drama Adam 12, two of The People burglarize a house while it is under a fumigation tent. Dragged out by officers in hazmat suits, one of the idiots…um…citizens dies from the fumigants. While being questioned the surviving dumb…er…victim of an oppressive society brags about being a draft dodger because he and his friend did not want to die for an evil capitalist system. A police officer, indicating the corpse, asks the salient question: “So what did your buddy die for?”
Several weeks ago in Arizona three people died from a spiritual (cough) retreat involving starvation, dehydration, humiliation, and, finally, several hours in what has been called a sweat lodge (it isn’t) suffering oxygen deprivation or toxic fumes or both.
Perhaps the death lodgers got to beat on some drums and chant gen-you-wine old-timey songs to the Earth-Mother-Goddess-Nature-Green-Spirit-Principle-of-Me, Me, Me before they departed this vale of bottled water, clutching icons of Al Gore to their hearts.
One thing we do know is that their checks cleared before they died; one-with-nature spiritual guides want their money up front.
Religious frauds are as old as Delphi, and Chaucer makes fun of them in The Canterbury Tales: Get’cher red-hot relics right ‘chere! I got’cha a piece of the sail of St. Peter’s boat! Who wants to bid on Veronica’s veil, eh? Modern Oracles and Pardoners are given blessings by talk-show hosts and even by presidents, and make their little pile selling books and cds and dvds and magic amulets and handkerchiefs soaked with holy essences, and the world wags on. Occasionally, though, some, like Jim Jones, who posed with President Jimmy Carter, begin believing in their own detritus and then the dead bodies pile up.
This last lot of corpses in Arizona were apparently quite wealthy; according to the news they and some 57 other seekers after truth each paid $9,000 in order to be spiritually enlightened.
$9,000. If you had that much loose holiness jingling in your pockets what would you do with it? You could buy the really high-dollar lawn mower and have money left over for gasoline for the thing. You could take a really good vacation. You could pay off the car. You could stash it away in the kid’s college fund. You could find some genuinely poor people – not fatties with cell ‘phones – and help fund their job searches. You could help a museum with its bills. You could do lots of good things. Hey, you could give it me.
But would you ever pay some bogus holy dude $9,000 to starve you, deprive you of sleep, and humiliate you?
Sixty of your well-to-do fellow citizens did. $9,000 x 60 = $540,000 for a long weekend of one-ness with the Sky-God Vi-Sa’Card and the Earth-Mother Pi’n’Number.
You and I are in the wrong business.
Man, give me $9,000 and I’ll tell you whatever makes you feel all holy and stuff. I’ll even throw in a few fair-trade bagels and a sleeping bag made from recycled goat hair or something. For a sweat lodge I’ll stake out that blue FEMA tarp left over from Rita, and you can sit crossed-legged in there and chant mantra-rays or mantas or mantels to the Moon Goddess Tiffany. I’ll leave the sides open so you can breathe. In the meantime, I’ll be inside in the air-conditioning checking my account on the ‘puter to make sure your check cleared.
A human’s quest is not for some sort of vague, fluffy self-fulfillment, whatever self-fulfillment means. One’s quest is for the truth. Not my truth, or your truth, or some voted-upon truth, because there are no such things. There is only the truth. And you start from there. And there is no charge.
The police officer in the story asks a man what his friend died for. C. S. Lewis in one of his essays reminds us to ask ourselves what we live for.
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