Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Flying Topless
Are you thinking of leaving your body to science? Well, use your head before making that decision.
As of last week, some “40 to 60 whole and partial heads” (Associated Press) were being held by the Pulaski County coroner after they were denied boarding at Little Rock by Southwest Airlines. Man, don’t you just wonder what conversation was like at the gate!
Maybe there was a problem with the head count. And with 40-60 of them, there was certainly no chance of an employee dead-heading home on that flight.
The heads were not packaged or labeled properly, and a lot of loose and unidentified human heads on an airplane is a situation with which few travelers would be comfortable. It just sort of breaks up the holiday mood.
Let this be a lesson to all of us: when shipping body parts, give the airline a heads-up.
The heads were being shipped by an organization styling itself JLS Consulting LLC of Conway, Arkansas. And one can understand the name. If a fellow is trying to pick up a cute girl – maybe a Southwest Airlines employee – at a bar, “I’m a consultant” is so much more alpha-male than “I’m a guy who cuts heads off corpses with a hacksaw.”
The police became nosy in this matter of boxes of human heads (police are like that), and asked a few questions. JLS Consulting said that the heads were headed to Fort Worth for physicians to use in continuing education. Education. And you had trouble getting your head into algebra. Talk about a skull session!
And as St. Thomas More might have said, “Why, Richard, what does it profit a man to give his soul for the whole world. But for Fort Worth!”
Still, the authorities remain unclear on several issues, such as where the heads came from. Lots of folks happily donate blood; donating one’s head is somewhat more of a commitment and usually not voluntary. And so the heads wait, chillin’ in the Pulaski County morgue, hoping for the message to “Head ‘em up! Move ‘em out!”
All fooling aside, leaving one’s body to science or donating organs for one’s fellow humans is a wonderful gift of life. How good it would be, upon passing, to know that someone still alive would benefit from one’s eyes or heart, or that physicians would learn something new for the betterment of mankind.
But one’s head rattling around in a box in the belly of an airplane – would that help anyone?
Old Bill was clear about our human need to respect the departed, which means a Christian funeral, not a cardboard box and a shipping error:
Do we all holy rites.
Let there be sung “Non nobis” and “Te Deum,”
The dead with charity enclosed in clay…
- Henry V, IV.viii.117-119
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Don't Cry for Me, Vuvuzela
Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Don’t Cry for Me, Vuvuzela
Vuvuzela is not a South American country, nor is it an obscure anatomical term; it is a long plastic horn first associated with South African football (we unsophisticated Americans call the game soccer).
Footballers don’t play the vuvuzela in a match because it’s not actually part of the game, and, indeed, in a crush a player could risk getting one shoved up his vuvuzela. The noisemaker, a meter long (we God-fearing folks would say that it’s somewhat over a yard; real Christians don’t do metric), is employed by the fans in order to make, well, noise. Purists say that this could ruin the traditional restrained, gentlemanly demeanor that has always obtained in the stands during soccer matches.
The vuvuzela is said to make a monotone racket, a sort of buzzing sound, and so when thousands of these are blown at the same time the effect is like a stadium assaulted by an apocalyptic horde of lust-crazed uberwasps from outer space, and if that’s not a reason for going to a footie match then what is? The vuvuzela is also said to ruin hearing, so perhaps it is a C.I.A. plot to sell millions of those $14.95 bionic hearing aids as advertised by the Six Million Geritol Man.
The classic South African vuvuzela strategy is to maintain a reasonable lung effort throughout the match but to save some energy for the last part of the game and then make a sustained and concerted racket to kill the spirits of the opposition. If both teams blow vuvuzelas, a match could end up like the finale of Hamlet with all those dead bodies littering the stage.
The vuvuzela must be really cool, because it’s used in soccer matches, and nothing says cool like a few thousand drunk Englishmen throwing up in the bleachers.
Some South African patriots claim that the vuvzela is an ancient African tradition. No doubt these made-in-China plastic horns were buried as priceless grave goods in the tombs of long-ago kings, or were traded north so that Moses and Pharaoh could marvel at the Chinese craftsmanship available from merchants beyond the Nile.
The two or three Americans actually interested in soccer / footer will no doubt transplant the idea here, and this fall we can expect Ye Olde American Cowbell and the traditional Tres Elegante’ Airhorn to be augmented at our real football games by the ancient Chinese-made African Vuvuzela, which can be ordered online.
Before ordering, one might want to consider that the thrifty Chinese make their novelty products, including the vuvuzela, from all sorts of recycled plastic and latex goods, including pre-owned condom(inium)s. As your mother always told you, don’t put some things in your mouth; you don’t know where they’ve been.
The vuvuzela gives fatuous failing footers fresh facesavings for fiascos. When France tied Uruguay last week, the French captain blamed the poor performance of his team on the racket of the vuvuzelas. Yeah, that’s what happened at Buena Vista and Camerone; the Mexicans charged across the blasted landscape with massed vuvuzelas, chasing the French away.
One hopes the vuvuzela doesn’t catch on here. Called me an old-fashioned flag-waver, but there’s nothing that captures the healthy, competitive spirit of American athletics like cheeseheads, Viking helmets, cowbells, platters of toxic nachos, giant foam fingers, air horns, and giant illuminated signs that suck up more electricity than the Taco Bell in Branson, Missouri on a Saturday night.
The United States Border Patrol must be put on alert for gangs trying to smuggle undocumented vuvuzelas across the border, and British Petroleum needs to clean up all those vuvuzelas polluting the Gulf of Mexico.
Let us true Americans always keep this in our hearts: there were no vuvuzelas at Plymouth Rock.
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
Don’t Cry for Me, Vuvuzela
Vuvuzela is not a South American country, nor is it an obscure anatomical term; it is a long plastic horn first associated with South African football (we unsophisticated Americans call the game soccer).
Footballers don’t play the vuvuzela in a match because it’s not actually part of the game, and, indeed, in a crush a player could risk getting one shoved up his vuvuzela. The noisemaker, a meter long (we God-fearing folks would say that it’s somewhat over a yard; real Christians don’t do metric), is employed by the fans in order to make, well, noise. Purists say that this could ruin the traditional restrained, gentlemanly demeanor that has always obtained in the stands during soccer matches.
The vuvuzela is said to make a monotone racket, a sort of buzzing sound, and so when thousands of these are blown at the same time the effect is like a stadium assaulted by an apocalyptic horde of lust-crazed uberwasps from outer space, and if that’s not a reason for going to a footie match then what is? The vuvuzela is also said to ruin hearing, so perhaps it is a C.I.A. plot to sell millions of those $14.95 bionic hearing aids as advertised by the Six Million Geritol Man.
The classic South African vuvuzela strategy is to maintain a reasonable lung effort throughout the match but to save some energy for the last part of the game and then make a sustained and concerted racket to kill the spirits of the opposition. If both teams blow vuvuzelas, a match could end up like the finale of Hamlet with all those dead bodies littering the stage.
The vuvuzela must be really cool, because it’s used in soccer matches, and nothing says cool like a few thousand drunk Englishmen throwing up in the bleachers.
Some South African patriots claim that the vuvzela is an ancient African tradition. No doubt these made-in-China plastic horns were buried as priceless grave goods in the tombs of long-ago kings, or were traded north so that Moses and Pharaoh could marvel at the Chinese craftsmanship available from merchants beyond the Nile.
The two or three Americans actually interested in soccer / footer will no doubt transplant the idea here, and this fall we can expect Ye Olde American Cowbell and the traditional Tres Elegante’ Airhorn to be augmented at our real football games by the ancient Chinese-made African Vuvuzela, which can be ordered online.
Before ordering, one might want to consider that the thrifty Chinese make their novelty products, including the vuvuzela, from all sorts of recycled plastic and latex goods, including pre-owned condom(inium)s. As your mother always told you, don’t put some things in your mouth; you don’t know where they’ve been.
The vuvuzela gives fatuous failing footers fresh facesavings for fiascos. When France tied Uruguay last week, the French captain blamed the poor performance of his team on the racket of the vuvuzelas. Yeah, that’s what happened at Buena Vista and Camerone; the Mexicans charged across the blasted landscape with massed vuvuzelas, chasing the French away.
One hopes the vuvuzela doesn’t catch on here. Called me an old-fashioned flag-waver, but there’s nothing that captures the healthy, competitive spirit of American athletics like cheeseheads, Viking helmets, cowbells, platters of toxic nachos, giant foam fingers, air horns, and giant illuminated signs that suck up more electricity than the Taco Bell in Branson, Missouri on a Saturday night.
The United States Border Patrol must be put on alert for gangs trying to smuggle undocumented vuvuzelas across the border, and British Petroleum needs to clean up all those vuvuzelas polluting the Gulf of Mexico.
Let us true Americans always keep this in our hearts: there were no vuvuzelas at Plymouth Rock.
-30-
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Rush Limbaugh and Helen Thomas Got Married?
Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Paintballs and the White House Press Corps
Because Israel is a tiny country that can be overflown by hostile aircraft in seconds, it has in its short history developed a citizen-soldier army that, despite its small size and its heavy dependence on reservists, is one of the most flexible, effective, and professional militaries in history.
The ever-changing basement governments in what some are pleased to call Palestine (a Roman designation) are careless with their own citizens’ lives but have lots of money to spend in firing thousands of rockets onto Israel.
Just as President Lincoln did to the Confederacy, President Roosevelt to the Axis, and President Kennedy to Cuba, the Israelis have set an ongoing blockade of hostile areas. Their reasoning is that if the neighbors are shooting at you all the time, you do the best you can to see that they can’t easily get more bullets.
So when some peace (cough) activists, no doubt wearing Che Guevera tees, sent several ships to break the blockade, Israel announced that the ships would be boarded and searched, and that non-military goods would be sent on to Gaza.
Alas, some genius decided that, in order to avoid offending anyone, the Israeli commandos would go into action with paintball guns. Oh, some wore pistols, but were all but forbidden to use them. In the event, the peace-loving peace activists, when they stopped laughing, peacefully beat the snot out of the Israeli paintball commandos with peaceful iron bars, even seizing some of the pistols. Finally, someone on the Israeli side made a decision that the lads could fight back, and nine deaths resulted. These deaths could possibly have been avoided if the commandos had been permitted to board fully armed and in a Gunny Ermey mode.
As Czech, Polish, French, Belgian, Dutch, English, and Norwegian diplomats of the last century could attest, trying to make peace with evil gets your country peacefully destroyed and your citizens peacefully killed or peacefully enslaved.
Paintball guns don’t say Churchill; they say Chamberlain.
Imagine how the world might be now if during World War II the allies had employed paintball guns against the Axis powers.
Whatever some Israeli desk-commander was thinking, he wasn’t thinking of his young soldiers. He may have been thinking of trying to save the lives of Israel’s enemies by a show of weakness, but that didn’t work either.
Looking past the paintballs, our own nation has for the past few years been drifting into European-style anti-Semitism unworthy of any civilized man or woman. The dean of the White House press corps, for decades petted and indulged despite her coarseness and vulgarity, this week spat out her wishes that all Israelis would return “home” to Germany and Poland. This journalist’s historical ignorance is commensurate with her malevolence.
You’d think that the White House press corps’ lead reporter’s near-death experience from a house falling on her back in 1939 would have helped her focus on the basic concepts of right and wrong.
We haven’t heard from Helen Thomas or Rush Limbaugh this weekend, and Mr. Limbaugh is rumored to have gotten married. Do you think…? Imagine them exiting the office of a justice of the peace under the arched paintball guns of an honor guard of the Fox Network faithful.
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
Paintballs and the White House Press Corps
Because Israel is a tiny country that can be overflown by hostile aircraft in seconds, it has in its short history developed a citizen-soldier army that, despite its small size and its heavy dependence on reservists, is one of the most flexible, effective, and professional militaries in history.
The ever-changing basement governments in what some are pleased to call Palestine (a Roman designation) are careless with their own citizens’ lives but have lots of money to spend in firing thousands of rockets onto Israel.
Just as President Lincoln did to the Confederacy, President Roosevelt to the Axis, and President Kennedy to Cuba, the Israelis have set an ongoing blockade of hostile areas. Their reasoning is that if the neighbors are shooting at you all the time, you do the best you can to see that they can’t easily get more bullets.
So when some peace (cough) activists, no doubt wearing Che Guevera tees, sent several ships to break the blockade, Israel announced that the ships would be boarded and searched, and that non-military goods would be sent on to Gaza.
Alas, some genius decided that, in order to avoid offending anyone, the Israeli commandos would go into action with paintball guns. Oh, some wore pistols, but were all but forbidden to use them. In the event, the peace-loving peace activists, when they stopped laughing, peacefully beat the snot out of the Israeli paintball commandos with peaceful iron bars, even seizing some of the pistols. Finally, someone on the Israeli side made a decision that the lads could fight back, and nine deaths resulted. These deaths could possibly have been avoided if the commandos had been permitted to board fully armed and in a Gunny Ermey mode.
As Czech, Polish, French, Belgian, Dutch, English, and Norwegian diplomats of the last century could attest, trying to make peace with evil gets your country peacefully destroyed and your citizens peacefully killed or peacefully enslaved.
Paintball guns don’t say Churchill; they say Chamberlain.
Imagine how the world might be now if during World War II the allies had employed paintball guns against the Axis powers.
Whatever some Israeli desk-commander was thinking, he wasn’t thinking of his young soldiers. He may have been thinking of trying to save the lives of Israel’s enemies by a show of weakness, but that didn’t work either.
Looking past the paintballs, our own nation has for the past few years been drifting into European-style anti-Semitism unworthy of any civilized man or woman. The dean of the White House press corps, for decades petted and indulged despite her coarseness and vulgarity, this week spat out her wishes that all Israelis would return “home” to Germany and Poland. This journalist’s historical ignorance is commensurate with her malevolence.
You’d think that the White House press corps’ lead reporter’s near-death experience from a house falling on her back in 1939 would have helped her focus on the basic concepts of right and wrong.
We haven’t heard from Helen Thomas or Rush Limbaugh this weekend, and Mr. Limbaugh is rumored to have gotten married. Do you think…? Imagine them exiting the office of a justice of the peace under the arched paintball guns of an honor guard of the Fox Network faithful.
-30-
Saturday, May 29, 2010
The 1914 Model is Outdated
Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
The 1914 Model is Outdated
Some weeks ago a South Korean warship blew up and now the North Koreans and the South Koreans are calling each other rude names. South Korea and Secretary of State Clinton have done the CSI thing on scraps of metal and claim that a North Korean submarine sank the South Korean warship with a torpedo.
What does this have to do with us? Plenty.
Because of 1914-model interlocking treaties, this country backs South Korea, who despises us, and China, who also despises us, backs North Korea, who loathes and fears us.
North Korea is run by an anonymous klaven of frozen-faced men headed by a demonic dwarf in elevator shoes. These characters should be laughable as the villains in an episode of The Avengers or The Man from U.N.C.L.E.; alas for civilization that they are very real and command a huge army, air force, and navy, all equipped with nuclear weapons. As with any Communist nation, North Korea has made its military power and its workers’ paradise by shooting and starving millions of workers. They have nothing to lose.
Standing between these crazies, who, remember, loathe us, and the South Koreans, who, remember, despise us, are a few thousand American soldiers. Don’t expect Belgium or Switzerland to lend a hand with this one, and, really, why should they? And why should we?
Switzerland, as always, will profit from this war, and the Chinese will do their best to stay out of it too, except to sell the North Koreans more weapons to use again others.
South Korea is now one of the world’s most economically developed nations, and maybe it’s time they guarded their own eggs-and-ham border.
Indeed, maybe it’s time we started guarding our borders too. The American military is fighting all over the world, and the people our solders are fighting are genuinely evil. Some of them mean to conquer the world, which is clear in their own book if anyone here would bother to read it.
But the question must be asked: why is it always Americans who must go and try to make chicken soup out of chicken armpit? Other nations help, especially Canada and England, but given that our current regime does not like Canada and has certainly stiffed England with unforgivable ill manners, they may not feel like allying themselves with us in the future.
In the meantime, a sturdy but far too small American army may find itself stranded and annihilated defending a country that doesn’t like us. Remember that the North Koreans possess, thanks to China and Russia, nuclear weapons, and the flight time from North Korean launch sites to our lads on the ground is but mere seconds. Seconds.
This ain’t pretty.
Must more thousands of American young die for South Korea?
Perhaps the next time two nations who hate us go to war with each other, we could stay out of it.
But, hey, how about American Idol and next year’s football season, eh?
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
The 1914 Model is Outdated
Some weeks ago a South Korean warship blew up and now the North Koreans and the South Koreans are calling each other rude names. South Korea and Secretary of State Clinton have done the CSI thing on scraps of metal and claim that a North Korean submarine sank the South Korean warship with a torpedo.
What does this have to do with us? Plenty.
Because of 1914-model interlocking treaties, this country backs South Korea, who despises us, and China, who also despises us, backs North Korea, who loathes and fears us.
North Korea is run by an anonymous klaven of frozen-faced men headed by a demonic dwarf in elevator shoes. These characters should be laughable as the villains in an episode of The Avengers or The Man from U.N.C.L.E.; alas for civilization that they are very real and command a huge army, air force, and navy, all equipped with nuclear weapons. As with any Communist nation, North Korea has made its military power and its workers’ paradise by shooting and starving millions of workers. They have nothing to lose.
Standing between these crazies, who, remember, loathe us, and the South Koreans, who, remember, despise us, are a few thousand American soldiers. Don’t expect Belgium or Switzerland to lend a hand with this one, and, really, why should they? And why should we?
Switzerland, as always, will profit from this war, and the Chinese will do their best to stay out of it too, except to sell the North Koreans more weapons to use again others.
South Korea is now one of the world’s most economically developed nations, and maybe it’s time they guarded their own eggs-and-ham border.
Indeed, maybe it’s time we started guarding our borders too. The American military is fighting all over the world, and the people our solders are fighting are genuinely evil. Some of them mean to conquer the world, which is clear in their own book if anyone here would bother to read it.
But the question must be asked: why is it always Americans who must go and try to make chicken soup out of chicken armpit? Other nations help, especially Canada and England, but given that our current regime does not like Canada and has certainly stiffed England with unforgivable ill manners, they may not feel like allying themselves with us in the future.
In the meantime, a sturdy but far too small American army may find itself stranded and annihilated defending a country that doesn’t like us. Remember that the North Koreans possess, thanks to China and Russia, nuclear weapons, and the flight time from North Korean launch sites to our lads on the ground is but mere seconds. Seconds.
This ain’t pretty.
Must more thousands of American young die for South Korea?
Perhaps the next time two nations who hate us go to war with each other, we could stay out of it.
But, hey, how about American Idol and next year’s football season, eh?
-30-
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Press One for Rational Thought Concerning Arizona
Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Press One for Rational Thought
Arizona, a most unfashionable state after firing on Fort Sumter earlier this spring, is now a pariah (or is that a piranha?) for wanting the English teachers in its public schools to speak, well, English.
There is no word on whether Spanish teachers in Arizona schools must know Spanish.
Employing standard English is clearly not a requirement for holding a sinecure as a super special golly administrative assistant czarina in some school districts, but, generally speaking (speaking in English), English teachers really should have pretty good control of the language of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Belloc, Churchill, Tolkien, and Thomas the Tank Engine.
If a strong accent is a bar to employment as an English teacher, any native Texan currently employed as such ain’t a-gonna be much longer; he’s gonna have t’ drag up pronto an’ mosey into th’ sunset, y’all.
English teachers must know English, just as a nurse ought to know patient care and a welder should use more than Elmer’s Glue for bonding.
Imagine taking your wheezing pickup truck to your mechanic: “Hey, Cletus, Ol’ Blue’s stalling on acceleration again…hey, where are you going?”
“Sorry, old friend, I’ve been reassigned by the government as a dental assistant. Diversity and multiculturalism, they say.”
“Dental assistant? Cletus, you don’t know anything about teeth; you only got two of ‘em anyway! And who’s gonna take care of Ol’ Blue, my 1956 pickup?”
“Here’s Sven, your new mechanic. He’s an expert in Swedish massage.”
“Massage!? Ol’ Blue don’t need a massage! It’s the carburetor!”
“Ja, me fix carburetor good with warm towels, ja. Ze government say so, ja. Ich bin ein multicultural sensitive mechanic now, is good, ja?”
Arizona is catching a lot of flak (which is a German import) for trying to control the international border and protect American citizens in the absence of enforcement of federal laws by the federal government. The reaction in some in the salons of D.C. has been to sneer and to wear the now-obligatory cause-of-the-month rubber wrist bands pooh-poohing a state that was home to sophisticated cultures hundreds of years before Washington was inhabited by anything more than mud turtles and malaria mosquitoes.
Some states are proposing an economic boycott of Arizona. Two problems obtain – Arizona is an exporter of electrical power and water to other states in a nation that, due to governmental short-sightedness, is lacking in both. California, for instance, is no more in a position to dictate terms to Arizona than Washington is to our Chinese masters.
The second issue is this – whom (“whom,” he said, for he had been to school) do the critics think live in Arizona? Vikings? Arizona has enjoyed a Spanish culture for some 500 years, and numerous First Nations cultures for millennia longer than that.
In Arizona you eat breakfast at Juanita’s café’, not at Janice’s, and if you speed you don’t get a ticket from Al Caldwell’s friend Officer Fatback but from Officer Rodriguez. You might buy your gasoline from a station owned by an Apache whose folks have lived on the same bit of land for a thousand years. All these American citizens want to live under the same Constitutional protections as the rest of us.
Boycott them? Why?
For the record, I, unlike the Attorney General of the United States, have read Arizona’s new bill regarding folks who cross the international border without a passport, a driver’s license, or at least a Sam’s Club card. The law is positively Merovingian in its harmlessness and inadequacy. Crossing into the USA for work or study (or, sadly, crime) remains a great deal easier than trying – trying, because you might not be permitted – to pop across the Canadian border to visit Niagara Falls for an hour.
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
Press One for Rational Thought
Arizona, a most unfashionable state after firing on Fort Sumter earlier this spring, is now a pariah (or is that a piranha?) for wanting the English teachers in its public schools to speak, well, English.
There is no word on whether Spanish teachers in Arizona schools must know Spanish.
Employing standard English is clearly not a requirement for holding a sinecure as a super special golly administrative assistant czarina in some school districts, but, generally speaking (speaking in English), English teachers really should have pretty good control of the language of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Belloc, Churchill, Tolkien, and Thomas the Tank Engine.
If a strong accent is a bar to employment as an English teacher, any native Texan currently employed as such ain’t a-gonna be much longer; he’s gonna have t’ drag up pronto an’ mosey into th’ sunset, y’all.
English teachers must know English, just as a nurse ought to know patient care and a welder should use more than Elmer’s Glue for bonding.
Imagine taking your wheezing pickup truck to your mechanic: “Hey, Cletus, Ol’ Blue’s stalling on acceleration again…hey, where are you going?”
“Sorry, old friend, I’ve been reassigned by the government as a dental assistant. Diversity and multiculturalism, they say.”
“Dental assistant? Cletus, you don’t know anything about teeth; you only got two of ‘em anyway! And who’s gonna take care of Ol’ Blue, my 1956 pickup?”
“Here’s Sven, your new mechanic. He’s an expert in Swedish massage.”
“Massage!? Ol’ Blue don’t need a massage! It’s the carburetor!”
“Ja, me fix carburetor good with warm towels, ja. Ze government say so, ja. Ich bin ein multicultural sensitive mechanic now, is good, ja?”
Arizona is catching a lot of flak (which is a German import) for trying to control the international border and protect American citizens in the absence of enforcement of federal laws by the federal government. The reaction in some in the salons of D.C. has been to sneer and to wear the now-obligatory cause-of-the-month rubber wrist bands pooh-poohing a state that was home to sophisticated cultures hundreds of years before Washington was inhabited by anything more than mud turtles and malaria mosquitoes.
Some states are proposing an economic boycott of Arizona. Two problems obtain – Arizona is an exporter of electrical power and water to other states in a nation that, due to governmental short-sightedness, is lacking in both. California, for instance, is no more in a position to dictate terms to Arizona than Washington is to our Chinese masters.
The second issue is this – whom (“whom,” he said, for he had been to school) do the critics think live in Arizona? Vikings? Arizona has enjoyed a Spanish culture for some 500 years, and numerous First Nations cultures for millennia longer than that.
In Arizona you eat breakfast at Juanita’s café’, not at Janice’s, and if you speed you don’t get a ticket from Al Caldwell’s friend Officer Fatback but from Officer Rodriguez. You might buy your gasoline from a station owned by an Apache whose folks have lived on the same bit of land for a thousand years. All these American citizens want to live under the same Constitutional protections as the rest of us.
Boycott them? Why?
For the record, I, unlike the Attorney General of the United States, have read Arizona’s new bill regarding folks who cross the international border without a passport, a driver’s license, or at least a Sam’s Club card. The law is positively Merovingian in its harmlessness and inadequacy. Crossing into the USA for work or study (or, sadly, crime) remains a great deal easier than trying – trying, because you might not be permitted – to pop across the Canadian border to visit Niagara Falls for an hour.
-30-
Sunday, May 16, 2010
The Class of 2010
Mack Hall
Children insist on growing up and going away. Every year the old…um, venerable parents and faculty see their high school seniors off to the new world they must make for themselves. Oh, sure, there are always one or two graduates of whom one can sing “Thank God and Greyhound you’re gone,” but the loss of most of the young’uns is very painful, very real, very acute, and very forever. And while some old guy taught them not to ever split (cough) infinitives, which they immediately forgot, the block form for business letters, which they usually remember, and the possible symbolism of Grendel in Beowulf, there are always lots of other little things parents and teachers hope they have learned along the way.
Here then, Class of 2010 are some disconnected factoids your old English teacher meant to share with you earlier in the year, before the month of May very cleverly sneaked up on all of us:
1. In October you will return for homecoming. You will find pretty much the same teachers, school, and friends you left behind. It will all seem very familiar at first. But you won’t be on the team or in the band; it isn’t about you anymore, and that will be oddly disturbing. The same school that once nagged you for tardiness and absenteeism will now require you to wear a visitor’s badge. By October of next year most of the students in your old high school won’t know who you are -- or were. And they won't care. You'll just be old people.
2. Some day surprisingly soon you will hear shrieks of insolent laughter from your child’s room. You will find your child and her friends laughing at your yearbook pictures. You and your friends will be subject to scornful dismissal by a new, cooler-than-cool generation. You will feel very old.
3. Change the oil in your car more often than the manufacturer recommends.
4. Billy Graham attended a public school; Adolf Hitler attended a Christian school. Don’t obsess on labels.
5. You are not going to win the Texas lottery.
6. T-shirts are underwear.
7. For a whole year folks have been telling you how special you are; on the morning after graduation you’ll be just another unemployed American.
8. Don’t whine that you’re old enough to fight in Afghanistan but “they” won’t let you buy a beer. You’re not in Afghanistan.
9. Have you ever noticed that you never see “Matthew 6:5-6” on a sign or bumper sticker?
10. College is not high school.
11. Work is not high school. There is no such thing as an excused absence in adult life. The boss will not care about your special needs, sensitivities, artistic gifts, or traumatic childhood.
12. God made the world. We have the testimony of Genesis and of the Incarnation that all Creation is good. Never let anyone try to tell you that the world is evil.
13. Listening to radio commentators with whom you already agree is not participating in our democracy. Until he was in his thirties, Rush Limbaugh never even registered to vote in any place he ever lived. You can do better than that.
14. Why should someone else have to raise your child?
15. Tattoos do serve one useful purpose – they will help your relatives identify your body after you die of some weird disease that was on the needle. Yeah, sure, the process is sterile – a tattoo parlor looks like a hospital, right?
16. Your class ranking is little more than a seating chart for graduation, reflecting your performance in a sometimes artificial and often passive situation for the last four years. Your future is up to you.
17. Knowing how to repair things gives you power and autonomy. You will amaze yourself with what you can do with duct-tape, a set of screwdrivers, a set of wrenches, a hammer, and a pair of Vise-grip pliers.
18. Movies are made by committees of thousands of people. Sometimes they get it right. Books are usually written by one person. Sometimes he or she gets it wrong. But there are lots more good books than there are good movies.
19. Put the 'phone down. Grasp the steering wheel firmly with both hands. Stay alive.
20. Save the planet? Reform the establishment? Stop meanies from beating harp seals to death? Hey, get a job first.
21. Time to wear the big-boy pants.
22. Some people are Democrats because they believe the Democratic Party is best at protecting the rights of the individual. Other people are Democrats because they are part of the Socialist / Communist continuum and believe that government is a weapon to bludgeon people into obedience. Some people are Republicans because they believe the Republican Party is best at protecting the rights of the individual. Other people are Republicans because they have Fascist tendencies and believe that government is a weapon to bludgeon people into obedience. Hiding out in the woods and refusing to participate is not a logical option.
23. You are the “they.” You are the adult. You are the government. You are the Church. You are the public school system. You decide what movies will be watched (if not made). You decide what will be on the television screen in your home. Your life is your own – don’t become one of the sheep.
24. Giving back to your community begins now. Serve humanity -- join the volunteer fire department, teach Sunday school, clean up the city park one hour a week, or assist at the nursing home.
25. Don’t bore people with sad stories about your horrible childhood. No one ever lived a Leave It To Beaver or Cosby existence. And besides, you might have been the problem. Get over it.
26. The shouting, abusive, 1-900-Send-Money TV preacher with the bouffant hairdo strutting about on the low-prole stage set while beating on a Bible and yelling is not going to come to your house in the middle of the night when your child is sick, you don’t have a job, and you don’t know where to turn. Your pastor – Chaucer’s Parsoun -- may not be cool and may not sport a Rolex watch, but he’s here for you. Support your local congregation.
27. If you insist on taking your shirt off in public, shave your armpit hair. Or braid it. Or something.
28. Don’t wear a shirt that says “(bleep) Civilization” to a job interview.
29. When someone asks for a love offering, offer him your love and watch his reaction. He doesn’t want a love offering; he wants money. Sloppy language is used to manipulate people. Call things by their proper names, and hang on to your wallet.
30. Stop eating out of bags and boxes, and learn how to use a knife and fork. From now on the menu should be in words, not in pictures.
31. What is the truth? Is it something you want to believe? Something repeated over and over until you come to believe it in spite of your own experience?
32. A great secret to success in a job or in life is simply to show up.
33. Most people do not look good in baseball caps.
34. You will always be your parents’ child. You may become a doctor, lawyer, banker, or, God help you, president, but your mother will still ask you if you’ve had enough to eat and remind you to take your jacket in case the night turns cold. And parents are a constant surprise -- they always have new knowledge you need to acquire.
35. Strunk & White’s Elements of Style is all the English grammar and usage book you’ll ever need. If more people understood that and had a library card, every English teacher in America would be an ex-English teacher standing in line at the Wal-Mart employment office. Keep it a secret, okay?
36. According to some vaguely named family institute or some such, raising a child to the age of eighteen costs the family $153,000 and a few odd cents. The taxpayers of this state spend about $5,000 per year on each student. Thus, a great many people have pooled their resources and spent about $213,000 on you since you were born. They did not do this in order for you to sit around complaining about how unfair life is. Do something.
37. There was never a powerful secret society variously known as The Preps, The Rich Kids, or The Popular Kids, just as there are no unmarked U.N. helicopters. But if you ask me, those guys who play chess need watching; I hear that the pawns are reporting all your movements to The 666 Beast computer in Belgium via computer chips in your school i.d. card.
38. Thank you notes: write ’em. It shows class. You don’t have to pay big money for pre-printed notes; buy notepaper with pictures (hunting scenes for the guys; flowers for the girls) on the outside and nothing on the inside. You can write; you’re a high school graduate, remember?
39. Babies cry. That’s not a crime. However, in public places, other people do have a right to hear a sermon or attend a movie without prolonged yowling. You may feel awkward about getting up and quietly taking the infant outside; you shouldn’t. When you discreetly carry your crying baby away for a few minutes to attend to its needs, other people are grateful to you for respecting both them and your child, and are pleased that the child has such great parents.
40. Take a long, lingering look at your classmates during graduation. You’ll never see all of them ever again. In ten years many of you will be happy and honorable. Others at only 28 will be sad, tired, bitter old men and women with no hope. Given that you all went to the same cinder-block school with the same blinky fluorescent lights, suffered the same old boring teachers, drove along the same dusty roads, and grew up in the same fading little town, what will have made the difference?
Well, Class of 2010, it’s time to let go. Thanks for everything: for the pictures and paper balls and pizza and pep rallies and recitals and concerts and games, for your thoughts and essays, for your laughter and jokes, for usually paying attention (“Focus, class... focus...focus...focus...class…class…class…class…”), for really thinking about Macbeth and Becket and Beowulf, and those wonderful pilgrims (who, of course, are us) forever journeying to Canterbury, for doing those business letters and resumes’ over and over until YOU were proud of them, for wrestling with iambic pentameter, for all the love you gave everyone around you every day. Take all those good things with you in your adventures through life.
And whether we shall meet again I know not.
Therefore our everlasting farewell take:
For ever, and for ever, farewell...
--Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, IV.iii.115-117
-30-
Children insist on growing up and going away. Every year the old…um, venerable parents and faculty see their high school seniors off to the new world they must make for themselves. Oh, sure, there are always one or two graduates of whom one can sing “Thank God and Greyhound you’re gone,” but the loss of most of the young’uns is very painful, very real, very acute, and very forever. And while some old guy taught them not to ever split (cough) infinitives, which they immediately forgot, the block form for business letters, which they usually remember, and the possible symbolism of Grendel in Beowulf, there are always lots of other little things parents and teachers hope they have learned along the way.
Here then, Class of 2010 are some disconnected factoids your old English teacher meant to share with you earlier in the year, before the month of May very cleverly sneaked up on all of us:
1. In October you will return for homecoming. You will find pretty much the same teachers, school, and friends you left behind. It will all seem very familiar at first. But you won’t be on the team or in the band; it isn’t about you anymore, and that will be oddly disturbing. The same school that once nagged you for tardiness and absenteeism will now require you to wear a visitor’s badge. By October of next year most of the students in your old high school won’t know who you are -- or were. And they won't care. You'll just be old people.
2. Some day surprisingly soon you will hear shrieks of insolent laughter from your child’s room. You will find your child and her friends laughing at your yearbook pictures. You and your friends will be subject to scornful dismissal by a new, cooler-than-cool generation. You will feel very old.
3. Change the oil in your car more often than the manufacturer recommends.
4. Billy Graham attended a public school; Adolf Hitler attended a Christian school. Don’t obsess on labels.
5. You are not going to win the Texas lottery.
6. T-shirts are underwear.
7. For a whole year folks have been telling you how special you are; on the morning after graduation you’ll be just another unemployed American.
8. Don’t whine that you’re old enough to fight in Afghanistan but “they” won’t let you buy a beer. You’re not in Afghanistan.
9. Have you ever noticed that you never see “Matthew 6:5-6” on a sign or bumper sticker?
10. College is not high school.
11. Work is not high school. There is no such thing as an excused absence in adult life. The boss will not care about your special needs, sensitivities, artistic gifts, or traumatic childhood.
12. God made the world. We have the testimony of Genesis and of the Incarnation that all Creation is good. Never let anyone try to tell you that the world is evil.
13. Listening to radio commentators with whom you already agree is not participating in our democracy. Until he was in his thirties, Rush Limbaugh never even registered to vote in any place he ever lived. You can do better than that.
14. Why should someone else have to raise your child?
15. Tattoos do serve one useful purpose – they will help your relatives identify your body after you die of some weird disease that was on the needle. Yeah, sure, the process is sterile – a tattoo parlor looks like a hospital, right?
16. Your class ranking is little more than a seating chart for graduation, reflecting your performance in a sometimes artificial and often passive situation for the last four years. Your future is up to you.
17. Knowing how to repair things gives you power and autonomy. You will amaze yourself with what you can do with duct-tape, a set of screwdrivers, a set of wrenches, a hammer, and a pair of Vise-grip pliers.
18. Movies are made by committees of thousands of people. Sometimes they get it right. Books are usually written by one person. Sometimes he or she gets it wrong. But there are lots more good books than there are good movies.
19. Put the 'phone down. Grasp the steering wheel firmly with both hands. Stay alive.
20. Save the planet? Reform the establishment? Stop meanies from beating harp seals to death? Hey, get a job first.
21. Time to wear the big-boy pants.
22. Some people are Democrats because they believe the Democratic Party is best at protecting the rights of the individual. Other people are Democrats because they are part of the Socialist / Communist continuum and believe that government is a weapon to bludgeon people into obedience. Some people are Republicans because they believe the Republican Party is best at protecting the rights of the individual. Other people are Republicans because they have Fascist tendencies and believe that government is a weapon to bludgeon people into obedience. Hiding out in the woods and refusing to participate is not a logical option.
23. You are the “they.” You are the adult. You are the government. You are the Church. You are the public school system. You decide what movies will be watched (if not made). You decide what will be on the television screen in your home. Your life is your own – don’t become one of the sheep.
24. Giving back to your community begins now. Serve humanity -- join the volunteer fire department, teach Sunday school, clean up the city park one hour a week, or assist at the nursing home.
25. Don’t bore people with sad stories about your horrible childhood. No one ever lived a Leave It To Beaver or Cosby existence. And besides, you might have been the problem. Get over it.
26. The shouting, abusive, 1-900-Send-Money TV preacher with the bouffant hairdo strutting about on the low-prole stage set while beating on a Bible and yelling is not going to come to your house in the middle of the night when your child is sick, you don’t have a job, and you don’t know where to turn. Your pastor – Chaucer’s Parsoun -- may not be cool and may not sport a Rolex watch, but he’s here for you. Support your local congregation.
27. If you insist on taking your shirt off in public, shave your armpit hair. Or braid it. Or something.
28. Don’t wear a shirt that says “(bleep) Civilization” to a job interview.
29. When someone asks for a love offering, offer him your love and watch his reaction. He doesn’t want a love offering; he wants money. Sloppy language is used to manipulate people. Call things by their proper names, and hang on to your wallet.
30. Stop eating out of bags and boxes, and learn how to use a knife and fork. From now on the menu should be in words, not in pictures.
31. What is the truth? Is it something you want to believe? Something repeated over and over until you come to believe it in spite of your own experience?
32. A great secret to success in a job or in life is simply to show up.
33. Most people do not look good in baseball caps.
34. You will always be your parents’ child. You may become a doctor, lawyer, banker, or, God help you, president, but your mother will still ask you if you’ve had enough to eat and remind you to take your jacket in case the night turns cold. And parents are a constant surprise -- they always have new knowledge you need to acquire.
35. Strunk & White’s Elements of Style is all the English grammar and usage book you’ll ever need. If more people understood that and had a library card, every English teacher in America would be an ex-English teacher standing in line at the Wal-Mart employment office. Keep it a secret, okay?
36. According to some vaguely named family institute or some such, raising a child to the age of eighteen costs the family $153,000 and a few odd cents. The taxpayers of this state spend about $5,000 per year on each student. Thus, a great many people have pooled their resources and spent about $213,000 on you since you were born. They did not do this in order for you to sit around complaining about how unfair life is. Do something.
37. There was never a powerful secret society variously known as The Preps, The Rich Kids, or The Popular Kids, just as there are no unmarked U.N. helicopters. But if you ask me, those guys who play chess need watching; I hear that the pawns are reporting all your movements to The 666 Beast computer in Belgium via computer chips in your school i.d. card.
38. Thank you notes: write ’em. It shows class. You don’t have to pay big money for pre-printed notes; buy notepaper with pictures (hunting scenes for the guys; flowers for the girls) on the outside and nothing on the inside. You can write; you’re a high school graduate, remember?
39. Babies cry. That’s not a crime. However, in public places, other people do have a right to hear a sermon or attend a movie without prolonged yowling. You may feel awkward about getting up and quietly taking the infant outside; you shouldn’t. When you discreetly carry your crying baby away for a few minutes to attend to its needs, other people are grateful to you for respecting both them and your child, and are pleased that the child has such great parents.
40. Take a long, lingering look at your classmates during graduation. You’ll never see all of them ever again. In ten years many of you will be happy and honorable. Others at only 28 will be sad, tired, bitter old men and women with no hope. Given that you all went to the same cinder-block school with the same blinky fluorescent lights, suffered the same old boring teachers, drove along the same dusty roads, and grew up in the same fading little town, what will have made the difference?
Well, Class of 2010, it’s time to let go. Thanks for everything: for the pictures and paper balls and pizza and pep rallies and recitals and concerts and games, for your thoughts and essays, for your laughter and jokes, for usually paying attention (“Focus, class... focus...focus...focus...class…class…class…class…”), for really thinking about Macbeth and Becket and Beowulf, and those wonderful pilgrims (who, of course, are us) forever journeying to Canterbury, for doing those business letters and resumes’ over and over until YOU were proud of them, for wrestling with iambic pentameter, for all the love you gave everyone around you every day. Take all those good things with you in your adventures through life.
And whether we shall meet again I know not.
Therefore our everlasting farewell take:
For ever, and for ever, farewell...
--Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, IV.iii.115-117
-30-
Friday, May 7, 2010
Sidonian Dido
Mack Hall
(Rough draft scribbled in class long ago)
Sidonian Dido
Sidonian Dido, Africa’s Queen –
Dreamer on the Mediterranean shore,
Why is it that your truth has not been seen?
In singing ancient songs there is far more
Than tall tales treacherous Trojans tend to tell,
Crude calumnies by Teucerian bores
Your faithful friends followed when your star fell
In your Phoenician homeland far away;
In Africa you built anew, built well
Your city between the desert and bay,
Carthage, homeland of courtesy and grace,
Where even Juno deigned to dwell, some say
Sidonian Dido, your ancient race
Brought to the desert the lute and the lyre,
Made moonlit music in that dream-scaped place
Sidonian Dido, Africa’s Queen!
The bitter black smoke of your funeral pyre
Cannot obscure the brilliance of your fire,
Cannot win honor for Dardanian liars
Sidonian Dido, a dreamer’s queen –
Sing to us who love you on African nights
When the deep desert dreams in limpid light,
When eyes and hearts and moon are full and bright
(Rough draft scribbled in class long ago)
Sidonian Dido
Sidonian Dido, Africa’s Queen –
Dreamer on the Mediterranean shore,
Why is it that your truth has not been seen?
In singing ancient songs there is far more
Than tall tales treacherous Trojans tend to tell,
Crude calumnies by Teucerian bores
Your faithful friends followed when your star fell
In your Phoenician homeland far away;
In Africa you built anew, built well
Your city between the desert and bay,
Carthage, homeland of courtesy and grace,
Where even Juno deigned to dwell, some say
Sidonian Dido, your ancient race
Brought to the desert the lute and the lyre,
Made moonlit music in that dream-scaped place
Sidonian Dido, Africa’s Queen!
The bitter black smoke of your funeral pyre
Cannot obscure the brilliance of your fire,
Cannot win honor for Dardanian liars
Sidonian Dido, a dreamer’s queen –
Sing to us who love you on African nights
When the deep desert dreams in limpid light,
When eyes and hearts and moon are full and bright
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Sleepy LIttle Southern Rattlesnakes
Mack Hall
Alas that terrorists and foreign oil executives never seem to bother rattlesnakes, a professional courtesy which suggests that vipers of all species recognize each other and perhaps even share a secret handshake. Well, maybe not a handshake.
According to an Associated Press story, rattlesnake roundups are declining. Hmmm – rattlesnake roundups. As fond as I am of cowboy films, I don’t remember John, Roy, Hoppy, Gene, and the boys herding snakes along the Chisholm Trail to Texas. How would they do that? “Slither along, little herpetofauna, sing a-kiyi-fangy-ki-yay?” Think of the classic movies: Fang-fight at the O.K. Corral, Fang of the Barbary Coast, They Died With Their Snakeskin Boots On, Stagecoachwhip, and The Sons of Katie Adder.
Eastern diamondback rattlesnakes, like fire ants and some world leaders, live mostly underground. In rural communities catching these critters and killing them is jolly good sport, just like in Rio Bravo, and rattlesnake rounder-uppers have developed marvelous new ways of snatching serpents out of their dens. Instead of pouring gasoline down a hole and seeing what pops up, modern hunters, Beyond Petroleum, insert plastic tubes and listen for the rattle, and if such a sound is forthcoming then a smaller tube with a hook is inserted (somehow I feel the discomforting words “you may feel a little pressure” are spoken at this point), and the snake is dragged out.
The rattlesnake is then killed and eaten. The convention is that snake tastes like chicken. Since I’ve tried chicken, I’ve no need to sample snake. Perhaps snakes could be made part of the school lunch program: snake tenders, snake fingers, snake-fried snake, and snake ring things.
The skin is made into belts, purses, shoes, boots, wallets, and other fashion accessories for sale to tourists, though I suppose rattlesnake do-rags are not do-able.
The rattlesnake’s skull and bones and rattles are made into trinkets, and I certainly hope to find toys made of rattlesnake remnants for the next niece or nephew for Christmas: “Uncle Mack! Thank you so much for my Barbie Snake House! You’re the greatest!”
These hunts supplement rural economies through their curiosity value, and people really do pay money to stand around and eat snake sandwiches and buy stuffed snakes, and good for them.
Unfortunately, environmentalists are unhappy with rattlesnake hunts, maintaining that rattlesnakes are declining in population everywhere but in Congress. Alas that no one rounds up environmentalists and makes trinkets of them. Anyone who spends any time outdoors from Pennsylvania to California will observe that there is no shortage of rattlesnakes, and that rattlesnakes are not our anthropomorphic friends. Rattlesnakes can kill a healthy adult, and will kill a child.
But then, hey, it’s always open season on children in American now, and no doubt PETA will defend to the death – a baby’s death -- a snake’s right to choose.
If rattlesnakes were to disappear, who would care except the sort of unread sheeplings who wear Che Guevera tee-shirts? The biodiversity argument holds no venom; Ireland has no snakes at all, nor does Newfoundland, and the folks and animals there seem to rich and rewarding lives without the blessings of pit vipers.
The AP writer was doing pretty well until he employed the most over-used cliché’ in Christendom, referring to a small town in Alabama as “sleepy.” But perhaps this is not the scrivener’s fault; he may have been simply following orders and the AP style book. One never reads in the national press of a Southern town as anything but sleepy, so possibly use of the tired metaphor is an edict. Southern towns, according to the form book, are always sleepy, with the court house dozing in a hammock and the grocery store snoozing on the back porch and Main Street fitting itself into its CPAP mask for a good night’s slumber. Middlebury, Vermont, enjoying superior character, never sleeps, nor does Bangor, Maine.
Towns aren’t sleepy, but some unimaginative writers are.
I dare not suggest that anyone reading this excellent newspaper kill rattlesnakes since some sub-species are protected under penalty of law, and goodness knows I would never place the life of a child over that of a reptile; that would be wrong.
Alas that terrorists and foreign oil executives never seem to bother rattlesnakes, a professional courtesy which suggests that vipers of all species recognize each other and perhaps even share a secret handshake. Well, maybe not a handshake.
According to an Associated Press story, rattlesnake roundups are declining. Hmmm – rattlesnake roundups. As fond as I am of cowboy films, I don’t remember John, Roy, Hoppy, Gene, and the boys herding snakes along the Chisholm Trail to Texas. How would they do that? “Slither along, little herpetofauna, sing a-kiyi-fangy-ki-yay?” Think of the classic movies: Fang-fight at the O.K. Corral, Fang of the Barbary Coast, They Died With Their Snakeskin Boots On, Stagecoachwhip, and The Sons of Katie Adder.
Eastern diamondback rattlesnakes, like fire ants and some world leaders, live mostly underground. In rural communities catching these critters and killing them is jolly good sport, just like in Rio Bravo, and rattlesnake rounder-uppers have developed marvelous new ways of snatching serpents out of their dens. Instead of pouring gasoline down a hole and seeing what pops up, modern hunters, Beyond Petroleum, insert plastic tubes and listen for the rattle, and if such a sound is forthcoming then a smaller tube with a hook is inserted (somehow I feel the discomforting words “you may feel a little pressure” are spoken at this point), and the snake is dragged out.
The rattlesnake is then killed and eaten. The convention is that snake tastes like chicken. Since I’ve tried chicken, I’ve no need to sample snake. Perhaps snakes could be made part of the school lunch program: snake tenders, snake fingers, snake-fried snake, and snake ring things.
The skin is made into belts, purses, shoes, boots, wallets, and other fashion accessories for sale to tourists, though I suppose rattlesnake do-rags are not do-able.
The rattlesnake’s skull and bones and rattles are made into trinkets, and I certainly hope to find toys made of rattlesnake remnants for the next niece or nephew for Christmas: “Uncle Mack! Thank you so much for my Barbie Snake House! You’re the greatest!”
These hunts supplement rural economies through their curiosity value, and people really do pay money to stand around and eat snake sandwiches and buy stuffed snakes, and good for them.
Unfortunately, environmentalists are unhappy with rattlesnake hunts, maintaining that rattlesnakes are declining in population everywhere but in Congress. Alas that no one rounds up environmentalists and makes trinkets of them. Anyone who spends any time outdoors from Pennsylvania to California will observe that there is no shortage of rattlesnakes, and that rattlesnakes are not our anthropomorphic friends. Rattlesnakes can kill a healthy adult, and will kill a child.
But then, hey, it’s always open season on children in American now, and no doubt PETA will defend to the death – a baby’s death -- a snake’s right to choose.
If rattlesnakes were to disappear, who would care except the sort of unread sheeplings who wear Che Guevera tee-shirts? The biodiversity argument holds no venom; Ireland has no snakes at all, nor does Newfoundland, and the folks and animals there seem to rich and rewarding lives without the blessings of pit vipers.
The AP writer was doing pretty well until he employed the most over-used cliché’ in Christendom, referring to a small town in Alabama as “sleepy.” But perhaps this is not the scrivener’s fault; he may have been simply following orders and the AP style book. One never reads in the national press of a Southern town as anything but sleepy, so possibly use of the tired metaphor is an edict. Southern towns, according to the form book, are always sleepy, with the court house dozing in a hammock and the grocery store snoozing on the back porch and Main Street fitting itself into its CPAP mask for a good night’s slumber. Middlebury, Vermont, enjoying superior character, never sleeps, nor does Bangor, Maine.
Towns aren’t sleepy, but some unimaginative writers are.
I dare not suggest that anyone reading this excellent newspaper kill rattlesnakes since some sub-species are protected under penalty of law, and goodness knows I would never place the life of a child over that of a reptile; that would be wrong.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Rush Limbaugh is a Democrat
Mack Hall
Last week Jack Lawrence of the American Civil Liberties Union invited y’r ‘umble scrivener to participate in a debate on, well, civil liberties at Lamar’s fine new John Gray Auditorium across the street from Vincent Beck Stadium in Beaumont.
I was deputed to help represent the Republican point-of-view, which might not sit well with real Republicans, along with a sharp young Lamar undergraduate and real Republican, Andrew Greenberg.
The Democrat panelists were Dr. Bruce Drury and Stuart Wright, and the ACLU panelists (Democrats and ACLU – aren’t those pretty much synonymous?) were Jack Lawrence and Judy Whose-Last-Name-I-Didn’t-Get.
The topics were terrorism, torture, and privacy, and we debated before a packed house, said packing consisting mostly of air space since the American people stayed away by the thousands.
The evening was quite a merry one, with no screaming, yelling, or ear-biting, but perhaps that’s because no one among us was in favor of terrorism, torture, or violations of privacy. My proposal that our general disapproval of the death penalty might be modified with regard to internet service providers was met with approval by the assembly.
After the meeting broke up with handshakes all ‘round, a few of us stayed to continue talking late into the night. This was the sort of informal occasion when the ACLU, and, indeed, most people are at their best, since no one is trying to score points off anyone else.
During this time I was at last able to present my thesis – there was no logical opening for it earlier – that Rush Limbaugh is in fact a Democrat, based on his threat to move to a foreign country, Costa Rica, if Congress didn’t do things his way (http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlepolitics/archives/197198.asp).
Another argument that Rush Limbaugh is a Democrat is that he is an education expert who in many states cannot legally visit a grade-school campus because of his drug issues with illegally doctor-shopping for OxyContin and for his possession of Viagra without a prescription.
Rush Limbaugh is a college dropout who bills himself as the Doctor of Democracy. There’s nothing shameful about busting out of college; some of us have accomplished this academic indistinction many times (ahem!), but you just don’t call yourself a doctor unless you’ve earned it.
Rush Limbaugh is a union-basher who, by his own admission on the radio, belongs to a union. His union is good; all others are bad.
Rush Limbaugh is an all-too-common American because he is a political junky who never even registered to vote until he was 35 (http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/politics/2009/03/06/10-things-you-didnt-know-about-rush-limbaugh.html).
A counter-argument can be made that Rush Limbaugh is a true inner-circle Republican because he is a military hawk and drawing-room generalissimo who responded to his draft notice with a note from his own doctor stating that he suffered the agonies of a pilonidal cyst (translation: butt-pimple), which the U.S. Army took at face (so to speak) value, and so bothered his leisure no further.
But let’s be fair: Rush Limbaugh is not Nancy Pelosi or John Edwards, he hasn’t been married as many times as Larry King, he is generous in numerous charities, and he does have a birth certificate.
Editor’s note: Next week Mack will be writing from an undisclosed location.
-30-
Last week Jack Lawrence of the American Civil Liberties Union invited y’r ‘umble scrivener to participate in a debate on, well, civil liberties at Lamar’s fine new John Gray Auditorium across the street from Vincent Beck Stadium in Beaumont.
I was deputed to help represent the Republican point-of-view, which might not sit well with real Republicans, along with a sharp young Lamar undergraduate and real Republican, Andrew Greenberg.
The Democrat panelists were Dr. Bruce Drury and Stuart Wright, and the ACLU panelists (Democrats and ACLU – aren’t those pretty much synonymous?) were Jack Lawrence and Judy Whose-Last-Name-I-Didn’t-Get.
The topics were terrorism, torture, and privacy, and we debated before a packed house, said packing consisting mostly of air space since the American people stayed away by the thousands.
The evening was quite a merry one, with no screaming, yelling, or ear-biting, but perhaps that’s because no one among us was in favor of terrorism, torture, or violations of privacy. My proposal that our general disapproval of the death penalty might be modified with regard to internet service providers was met with approval by the assembly.
After the meeting broke up with handshakes all ‘round, a few of us stayed to continue talking late into the night. This was the sort of informal occasion when the ACLU, and, indeed, most people are at their best, since no one is trying to score points off anyone else.
During this time I was at last able to present my thesis – there was no logical opening for it earlier – that Rush Limbaugh is in fact a Democrat, based on his threat to move to a foreign country, Costa Rica, if Congress didn’t do things his way (http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlepolitics/archives/197198.asp).
Another argument that Rush Limbaugh is a Democrat is that he is an education expert who in many states cannot legally visit a grade-school campus because of his drug issues with illegally doctor-shopping for OxyContin and for his possession of Viagra without a prescription.
Rush Limbaugh is a college dropout who bills himself as the Doctor of Democracy. There’s nothing shameful about busting out of college; some of us have accomplished this academic indistinction many times (ahem!), but you just don’t call yourself a doctor unless you’ve earned it.
Rush Limbaugh is a union-basher who, by his own admission on the radio, belongs to a union. His union is good; all others are bad.
Rush Limbaugh is an all-too-common American because he is a political junky who never even registered to vote until he was 35 (http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/politics/2009/03/06/10-things-you-didnt-know-about-rush-limbaugh.html).
A counter-argument can be made that Rush Limbaugh is a true inner-circle Republican because he is a military hawk and drawing-room generalissimo who responded to his draft notice with a note from his own doctor stating that he suffered the agonies of a pilonidal cyst (translation: butt-pimple), which the U.S. Army took at face (so to speak) value, and so bothered his leisure no further.
But let’s be fair: Rush Limbaugh is not Nancy Pelosi or John Edwards, he hasn’t been married as many times as Larry King, he is generous in numerous charities, and he does have a birth certificate.
Editor’s note: Next week Mack will be writing from an undisclosed location.
-30-
Sunday, April 18, 2010
A Nation of Beggars
Mack Hall
Once I built a railroad, I made it run, made it race against time.
Once I built a railroad; now it's done. Brother, can you spare a dime?
Once I built a tower, up to the sun, brick, and rivet, and lime;
Once I built a tower, now it's done. Brother, can you spare a dime?
- E. Y. Harburg, 1931
One pities the dozens of beggars in decaying third-world countries who line the roads with their cans out and who importune the traveler in parking lots. I’m speaking of the USA, of course.
Last Saturday in Beaumont a large pickup truck pulled up next to me and the driver grinned at me with her remaining teeth and assured me she wasn’t going to hurt me. When the first words from a stranger are that she’s not going to hurt you, you know you’ve made a friend.
My new friend said her husband had abused her, and showed me a band-aid on her arm to prove it. He was now in jail, she said, and assured me that she was a country girl, and I said no and rolled up my window; she still had some teeth, and they looked dangerous when bared. I didn’t catch the rest of her monologue, but I don’t think it was a blessing. She then drove around the parking lot trying to make new friends, but with little success.
In most countries the beggars don’t drive newer and bigger cars than the beggees, but, hey, we’re a shining parking lot on a hill.
More beggars lined the road at many intersections on the way home, asking for money for a catalogue of good causes. In one small town a number of young people begged for money so that they might enjoy a safe graduation night. I, for one, am unclear on the concept of teens standing in the middle of a four-lane highway in traffic so that they might be safe on some other occasion.
“Hey, kid, here’s…oops! Watch out for that 18-wheeler! Here’s a dollar. Be safe.”
Instead of money perhaps we could give them advice: “Hey, kid, don’t get drunk and drive after you graduate, okay? There might be some other kid standing in the road begging for money.”
Recently I looked up on www.charitynavigator.org a charity that had suddenly become fashionable, and, hey, who wouldn’t want to help a harp seal / abandoned piranha / little human? I made no friends when I pointed out that the president and CEO of the charity takes an annual rake-off of over $300,000 and that another fellow, listed as the former president and CEO, helps himself to another $300,000 every year.
The line between generosity and cynicism is a thick one. If a child is hungry, feed the child. If a man asks you for money for a hungry child and the man’s keeping $300,000 for himself, don’t give it to him.
Give it to me.
Once I built a railroad, I made it run, made it race against time.
Once I built a railroad; now it's done. Brother, can you spare a dime?
Once I built a tower, up to the sun, brick, and rivet, and lime;
Once I built a tower, now it's done. Brother, can you spare a dime?
- E. Y. Harburg, 1931
One pities the dozens of beggars in decaying third-world countries who line the roads with their cans out and who importune the traveler in parking lots. I’m speaking of the USA, of course.
Last Saturday in Beaumont a large pickup truck pulled up next to me and the driver grinned at me with her remaining teeth and assured me she wasn’t going to hurt me. When the first words from a stranger are that she’s not going to hurt you, you know you’ve made a friend.
My new friend said her husband had abused her, and showed me a band-aid on her arm to prove it. He was now in jail, she said, and assured me that she was a country girl, and I said no and rolled up my window; she still had some teeth, and they looked dangerous when bared. I didn’t catch the rest of her monologue, but I don’t think it was a blessing. She then drove around the parking lot trying to make new friends, but with little success.
In most countries the beggars don’t drive newer and bigger cars than the beggees, but, hey, we’re a shining parking lot on a hill.
More beggars lined the road at many intersections on the way home, asking for money for a catalogue of good causes. In one small town a number of young people begged for money so that they might enjoy a safe graduation night. I, for one, am unclear on the concept of teens standing in the middle of a four-lane highway in traffic so that they might be safe on some other occasion.
“Hey, kid, here’s…oops! Watch out for that 18-wheeler! Here’s a dollar. Be safe.”
Instead of money perhaps we could give them advice: “Hey, kid, don’t get drunk and drive after you graduate, okay? There might be some other kid standing in the road begging for money.”
Recently I looked up on www.charitynavigator.org a charity that had suddenly become fashionable, and, hey, who wouldn’t want to help a harp seal / abandoned piranha / little human? I made no friends when I pointed out that the president and CEO of the charity takes an annual rake-off of over $300,000 and that another fellow, listed as the former president and CEO, helps himself to another $300,000 every year.
The line between generosity and cynicism is a thick one. If a child is hungry, feed the child. If a man asks you for money for a hungry child and the man’s keeping $300,000 for himself, don’t give it to him.
Give it to me.
A Few Kind Words about the United States Postal Service
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.
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 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-
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