Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
The height – or depth – of hurricane season is here, which means it’s time for us to review all the Weather Channel cliches’ so we can try to sort out the reality:
1. Weather Channelistas always employ allusions to Hurricane Katrina, which, as we all know, was the only hurricane to strike these shores within living memory.
2. “We’re not out of the woods” – curious metaphor for a hurricane.
3. “Rain event” – why don’t they just say rain?
4. “Dodged the bullet” – hurricanes don’t shoot
5. “Stormed ashore” – well, yes, storms do indeed storm.
6. “Wreak havoc” – what, really, is havoc, and why and how is it wreaked? What is wreaking, anyway?
7. “Swath of destruction” – okay, Mr. Weather Channel Dude, quick, without consulting a dictionary, what is a swath?
8. “Mother Nature’s wrath” and “Mother Nature’s fury” – to which Greek or Roman nature goddess would the concept of Mother Nature apply?
9. “Decimated” – not unless the death rate is 10%
10. “Trees snapped like matchsticks” – do matchsticks ever snap like trees?
11. “Looks like a war zone.” No, it doesn’t. No one involved in the horror of combat looks upon the scene afterward and says “It looks like a hurricane zone.”
12. Storms that brew – what do they brew? Tea? Coffee? White lightnin’?
13. Storms that gain or lose steam, as if they were teakettles or steam locomotives
14. Hurricanes that make landfall – well, what else would they make? A gun rack in shop class?
15. Batten down the hatches (Darn, I forgot to buy a hatch; I wonder if the stores are still open)
16. Hunker down
17. Calm before the storm, always “eerie”
18. Calm in the eye of the storm, always “eerie”
19. Calm after the storm, always “eerie”
20. Visually, the stock shot of some doofus in a slicker, standing on the beach, and yelling into a microphone to tell us to stay off the beach.
Finally, always remember that, first and last, hurricane reporting is about Katrina; everything is about Katrina. Katrina, Katrina, Katrina. Audrey? Carla? Rita? Ike? Never heard of ‘em, pal.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Migratory Waterfowl
Mack Hall
Migratory Waterfowl
Loud-quacking, honking, singing, winging, they,
Beneath their wild-wind-beating wings rise up
From the waters of life, towards the sun,
Refreshed in holy pilgrimage along
Cold sky-trails from a long-ago warm nest,
Across the tattered scapes of history,
To a perfect visual landing at dawn
In the golden trees of Jerusalem
Migratory Waterfowl
Loud-quacking, honking, singing, winging, they,
Beneath their wild-wind-beating wings rise up
From the waters of life, towards the sun,
Refreshed in holy pilgrimage along
Cold sky-trails from a long-ago warm nest,
Across the tattered scapes of history,
To a perfect visual landing at dawn
In the golden trees of Jerusalem
Fuhrerbunker
Mack Hall, HSG
Fuhrerbunker
Do not descend into that withering world
Of pale self-pity dying in the depths,
A ghost hugging resentments to itself
And long-decayed hatreds treasured and fed
Upon the corpse of your frail, failing flesh
Hopelessly trapped in souring concrete cells
The empire you carefully constructed
Constricts, constrains, contracts, conforms, condemns
You cry to yourself that you cannot win
And that is true. You are without hope, doomed,
Waiting, lurking in a hugging wallow of
Stagnating fulfillment of the god-Self
Sitting on a floor fetid with refuse
Foul failures feeding on your inwardness
The feeble fluorescent lamps flickering
Shed shadows, never light, and never Light.
You cry to yourself that you cannot win
And that is true. You cannot win. Not you.
Not with the fantasy maps you drew, or
Upon the dead telephones whereon you
Communicated your nothingness to…
Nothing.
Open your hands. Open your eyes.
Don’t go down there. It’s dark down there. Don’t go.
Fuhrerbunker
Do not descend into that withering world
Of pale self-pity dying in the depths,
A ghost hugging resentments to itself
And long-decayed hatreds treasured and fed
Upon the corpse of your frail, failing flesh
Hopelessly trapped in souring concrete cells
The empire you carefully constructed
Constricts, constrains, contracts, conforms, condemns
You cry to yourself that you cannot win
And that is true. You are without hope, doomed,
Waiting, lurking in a hugging wallow of
Stagnating fulfillment of the god-Self
Sitting on a floor fetid with refuse
Foul failures feeding on your inwardness
The feeble fluorescent lamps flickering
Shed shadows, never light, and never Light.
You cry to yourself that you cannot win
And that is true. You cannot win. Not you.
Not with the fantasy maps you drew, or
Upon the dead telephones whereon you
Communicated your nothingness to…
Nothing.
Open your hands. Open your eyes.
Don’t go down there. It’s dark down there. Don’t go.
A Dairy Queen Waitress in Tuscany
Mack Hall, HSG
A Dairy Queen Waitress in Tuscany
Eat, drink, pray, love, hamburger, shake, and fries
Boyfriend, baby, trailer park, sad tired eyes
Creepy men, cranky boss, and ice-cream floats
A wheezing Honda with overdue notes
Cinder-blocks, fluorescents, grilled cheese to go
No child-support this month, ‘nother cup of Joe
Ten-year-reunion, can’t go, how time flew
Two shifts that day, the trailer rent is due
Baby at Mama’s, boyfriend still in bed
He’ll look for work tomorrow, that’s what he said
“Order up!” the fry cook hollers, and she
Dreams of a someday-summer in Italy
A Dairy Queen Waitress in Tuscany
Eat, drink, pray, love, hamburger, shake, and fries
Boyfriend, baby, trailer park, sad tired eyes
Creepy men, cranky boss, and ice-cream floats
A wheezing Honda with overdue notes
Cinder-blocks, fluorescents, grilled cheese to go
No child-support this month, ‘nother cup of Joe
Ten-year-reunion, can’t go, how time flew
Two shifts that day, the trailer rent is due
Baby at Mama’s, boyfriend still in bed
He’ll look for work tomorrow, that’s what he said
“Order up!” the fry cook hollers, and she
Dreams of a someday-summer in Italy
Friday, August 19, 2011
In Malignant Repose
Mack Hall, HSG
In Malignant Repose
A plastic sphinx in malignant repose
Perpetually admires its sered-soul self
Echoing self-seeking irrelevance
Head bowed in wanton worship of pale lights
Passionately drooling on soft tessarae
Drowning in a stoup of metaphor soup
Night-glowing community loneliness
The glowing box and the box-glowing self
Whose Rods and cones fix back upon themselves
Self-adoration in a far-closed loop
And die unknowing on a long-dead moon.
In Malignant Repose
A plastic sphinx in malignant repose
Perpetually admires its sered-soul self
Echoing self-seeking irrelevance
Head bowed in wanton worship of pale lights
Passionately drooling on soft tessarae
Drowning in a stoup of metaphor soup
Night-glowing community loneliness
The glowing box and the box-glowing self
Whose Rods and cones fix back upon themselves
Self-adoration in a far-closed loop
And die unknowing on a long-dead moon.
At the Sign of the Blue Boar
Mack Hall, HSG
At the Sign of the Blue Boar
Under the oak tree, long ago,
We lived with merry Robin Hood,
Who taught us how to bend the bow
And live aright in green Sherwood
Now let us now part the leaves again,
And find that merry life, and bold.
We’ll roam again as we did then --
How came it that we all grew old?
Let us stroll to the Blue Boar Inn,
Quaff a mug of October ale
Nigh unto Sherwood and the fen,
And, laughing, tell a jolly tale
Old Gaffer Swanthold might rest there
Easing his bones in the summer sun
Chatting sweet Joan whose auburn hair
Reminds him of his youthful fun.
Stout of sinew and bold of heart,
Home from the wars i’the Holy Land,
A gallant knight now takes his part,
A hero and a brave, strong man:
Sir Richard o’ the Lea, a knight
A warrior’s heart, but mortgaged land,
Always first in a desperate fight
Poor, but we know no better man
O Alan-a-Dale, tune your lute
And sing how Midge the Miller’s son
Bullied by men (of ill repute),
With Robin’s aid fought them, and won.
O sing of good Saint Swithin whose
Feast day predicts the summer’s moods,
Forty days as the Saint doth choose,
Smiling on England’s grain-fat roods
Maid Marian, she’s just a girl
So lightly dancing through the wood
But she can outshoot any churl
And she is sweet on Robin Hood
Will Scarlet, too, and Little John
Scathelock and Stutely, still
Ambushing fat bishops anon,
Not far from old Hanacker Mill
And we were with them there along
The London Road from Nottingham
Whistling a happy, wordless song,
For nothing rhymes with “Nottingham.”
Sing of Sherwood’s high-leaping deer
Falling to arrows swift and sure
Around the campfire, such good cheer
Venison and ale – the poor man’s cure
Far off in London, Henry, King,
And his Eleanor of Aquitaine
Too oft ignore their far-off shires
And their people’s sheriff-ridden pain
But with us always, happy Tuck
Ever hungry but never mean,
A Friar of faith, of joy, of pluck,
A child of blessed Mary, Queen
Telling his beads, sharpening his sword
Saying Masses for Robin’s band
Seated first at the groaning board
Oft poaching on the bishop’s land
O, merry robbers once we were
In green and sunny barefoot youth
“Stand and deliver, noble sir!
Your purse is too heavy, in God’s truth.”
Under the oak tree, long ago,
We lived with merry Robin Hood,
Who taught us how to bend the bow
And live aright in green Sherwood
At the Sign of the Blue Boar
Under the oak tree, long ago,
We lived with merry Robin Hood,
Who taught us how to bend the bow
And live aright in green Sherwood
Now let us now part the leaves again,
And find that merry life, and bold.
We’ll roam again as we did then --
How came it that we all grew old?
Let us stroll to the Blue Boar Inn,
Quaff a mug of October ale
Nigh unto Sherwood and the fen,
And, laughing, tell a jolly tale
Old Gaffer Swanthold might rest there
Easing his bones in the summer sun
Chatting sweet Joan whose auburn hair
Reminds him of his youthful fun.
Stout of sinew and bold of heart,
Home from the wars i’the Holy Land,
A gallant knight now takes his part,
A hero and a brave, strong man:
Sir Richard o’ the Lea, a knight
A warrior’s heart, but mortgaged land,
Always first in a desperate fight
Poor, but we know no better man
O Alan-a-Dale, tune your lute
And sing how Midge the Miller’s son
Bullied by men (of ill repute),
With Robin’s aid fought them, and won.
O sing of good Saint Swithin whose
Feast day predicts the summer’s moods,
Forty days as the Saint doth choose,
Smiling on England’s grain-fat roods
Maid Marian, she’s just a girl
So lightly dancing through the wood
But she can outshoot any churl
And she is sweet on Robin Hood
Will Scarlet, too, and Little John
Scathelock and Stutely, still
Ambushing fat bishops anon,
Not far from old Hanacker Mill
And we were with them there along
The London Road from Nottingham
Whistling a happy, wordless song,
For nothing rhymes with “Nottingham.”
Sing of Sherwood’s high-leaping deer
Falling to arrows swift and sure
Around the campfire, such good cheer
Venison and ale – the poor man’s cure
Far off in London, Henry, King,
And his Eleanor of Aquitaine
Too oft ignore their far-off shires
And their people’s sheriff-ridden pain
But with us always, happy Tuck
Ever hungry but never mean,
A Friar of faith, of joy, of pluck,
A child of blessed Mary, Queen
Telling his beads, sharpening his sword
Saying Masses for Robin’s band
Seated first at the groaning board
Oft poaching on the bishop’s land
O, merry robbers once we were
In green and sunny barefoot youth
“Stand and deliver, noble sir!
Your purse is too heavy, in God’s truth.”
Under the oak tree, long ago,
We lived with merry Robin Hood,
Who taught us how to bend the bow
And live aright in green Sherwood
The President, the Governor, and a Parrot Walk into a Bus...
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
The President, the Governor, and a Parrot Walk into a Bus…
Last week we saw the televised images of poor people in Martha’s Vineyard collapsing from the summer heat at a job fair. Leaping gracefully to action like a gazelle on a mission, the President immediately boarded his armored bus (and surely it is a hybrid), Merovingian 1, and betook himself to the relief of His people.
As the armored bus blew by displaced folks forced to wait by the side of the road, many raised their clenched fists in salute and cried “Strelnikov!”
Or possibly not.
Some scriveners have compared the grim, light-absorbing, windowless Presidential wheels to a police mortuary van or perhaps Darth Vadar’s Death Star, but the careful observer will note that it is actually one of the dark obsidian slabs that keep popping up in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
On its journey to the east the Presidential ‘bus shared road-space with Texas Governor Rick Perry’s bus. Although superficially similar – the wheels on all buses go ‘round and ‘round -- confusing the two vehicles would be quite impossible. The Presidential barge features a bar stocked with French wines and all the makins’ for martinis. The Governor’s rented wagon boasts a foam cooler full of ice and Shiner.
The horn of the President’s look-at-me goes “Toot-toot.” The horn of Governor’s rented vote-for-me plays “The Aggie War Hymn.”
The President’s rolling hideout is surrounded by armed Secret Service dudes in dark glasses. The Governor’s mobile deer stand has a gun rack with an old .30-.30 and a J. C. Higgins shotgun. When Rick Perry is President he will protect the Secret Service.
On the back of the President’s bus a Raleigh 10-speed is mounted; on the front of the Governor’s bus are some steer horns from an I10 truck stop near Marfa.
The President’s bus was armored in Canada. Maybe there was no mechanic or armorer still employed in the USA. But the Governor’s bus is not armored; if Carlos the Hamster or some other unwashed liberator were to attack it, Rick Perry’s glare would cause the Russian-made 40-mike-mikes to fall to the ground in a palsy, modify their lifestyle, and take up gardening and antique collecting.
But Governor Perry did not make the pilgrimage to the Holy Island of Martha’s Vineyard, for that was pacified long ago, and the sons and daughters of farmers and fishermen were set to cleaning the houses of their mainland betters. Governor Perry knew that somewhere, along the Brazos de Dios or on some dusty jogging trail, there were coyotes that needed taming and infinitives that needed splitting, and so he turned his trusty steed west.
Martha’s Vineyard is a small island off the coast of Massachusetts. The principle towns on MV, as the in-the-know call it, are: Tsarkoye Seloe, Potemkin Village, Brigadoon, Hanging gardens of Babylon, and Versailles, although the upstart resort of Xanadu is said to be the coming scene. To this Bower of Bliss, grounded as it is in the reality of the shared sacrifices of all Americans, the leaders of government, finance, art, cinema, theatre, publishing, broadcasting, and law withdraw every summer to do penance in sackcloth and ashes from Abercrombie & Fitch.
Some old Tag Heuer watchfaces will be missing from Martha’s Vineyard this year; those number-spinners who work at Standard and Poors will soon probably summer (and winter, and summer, and winter…) on another island, Devil’s Island, but that’s another matter.
And it is a curious triangle trade: people from middle America visit Washington and New York, people from Washington and New York visit Martha’s Vineyard, and the original inhabitants of Martha’s Vineyard, who can no longer afford to live there, well, who knows where they end up?
On a bus to nowhere?
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
The President, the Governor, and a Parrot Walk into a Bus…
Last week we saw the televised images of poor people in Martha’s Vineyard collapsing from the summer heat at a job fair. Leaping gracefully to action like a gazelle on a mission, the President immediately boarded his armored bus (and surely it is a hybrid), Merovingian 1, and betook himself to the relief of His people.
As the armored bus blew by displaced folks forced to wait by the side of the road, many raised their clenched fists in salute and cried “Strelnikov!”
Or possibly not.
Some scriveners have compared the grim, light-absorbing, windowless Presidential wheels to a police mortuary van or perhaps Darth Vadar’s Death Star, but the careful observer will note that it is actually one of the dark obsidian slabs that keep popping up in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
On its journey to the east the Presidential ‘bus shared road-space with Texas Governor Rick Perry’s bus. Although superficially similar – the wheels on all buses go ‘round and ‘round -- confusing the two vehicles would be quite impossible. The Presidential barge features a bar stocked with French wines and all the makins’ for martinis. The Governor’s rented wagon boasts a foam cooler full of ice and Shiner.
The horn of the President’s look-at-me goes “Toot-toot.” The horn of Governor’s rented vote-for-me plays “The Aggie War Hymn.”
The President’s rolling hideout is surrounded by armed Secret Service dudes in dark glasses. The Governor’s mobile deer stand has a gun rack with an old .30-.30 and a J. C. Higgins shotgun. When Rick Perry is President he will protect the Secret Service.
On the back of the President’s bus a Raleigh 10-speed is mounted; on the front of the Governor’s bus are some steer horns from an I10 truck stop near Marfa.
The President’s bus was armored in Canada. Maybe there was no mechanic or armorer still employed in the USA. But the Governor’s bus is not armored; if Carlos the Hamster or some other unwashed liberator were to attack it, Rick Perry’s glare would cause the Russian-made 40-mike-mikes to fall to the ground in a palsy, modify their lifestyle, and take up gardening and antique collecting.
But Governor Perry did not make the pilgrimage to the Holy Island of Martha’s Vineyard, for that was pacified long ago, and the sons and daughters of farmers and fishermen were set to cleaning the houses of their mainland betters. Governor Perry knew that somewhere, along the Brazos de Dios or on some dusty jogging trail, there were coyotes that needed taming and infinitives that needed splitting, and so he turned his trusty steed west.
Martha’s Vineyard is a small island off the coast of Massachusetts. The principle towns on MV, as the in-the-know call it, are: Tsarkoye Seloe, Potemkin Village, Brigadoon, Hanging gardens of Babylon, and Versailles, although the upstart resort of Xanadu is said to be the coming scene. To this Bower of Bliss, grounded as it is in the reality of the shared sacrifices of all Americans, the leaders of government, finance, art, cinema, theatre, publishing, broadcasting, and law withdraw every summer to do penance in sackcloth and ashes from Abercrombie & Fitch.
Some old Tag Heuer watchfaces will be missing from Martha’s Vineyard this year; those number-spinners who work at Standard and Poors will soon probably summer (and winter, and summer, and winter…) on another island, Devil’s Island, but that’s another matter.
And it is a curious triangle trade: people from middle America visit Washington and New York, people from Washington and New York visit Martha’s Vineyard, and the original inhabitants of Martha’s Vineyard, who can no longer afford to live there, well, who knows where they end up?
On a bus to nowhere?
-30-
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Down From the Door Where it Began
(With a new and even happier ending)
First printed in 2001
Down From the Door Where it Began
The road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began
Now far ahead the road has gone
And I must follow, if I can
Pursuing it with eager feet
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet –
And whither then? I cannot say.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien
Our former random collection of stem cells left for university on Sunday, alternating between giggles and tears as she loaded her little Volkswagen with flutes, clothes, books, tennis racket, computer, makeup, pillows, blankies, and all the other impedimenta of the late-adolescent female beginning her journey on her chosen road. This has been a week of departures, the annual late-August migration of high school graduates out of America’s fast-disappearing little towns and into the groaning centers of population for college or careers. In ones and twos they have flown away like hummingbirds in November, all the little rug-rats who squealed at birthday parties and sleepovers, and scampered through the house with the merry dachshunds. They long ago packed away the Barbies and took up books, musical instruments, microscopes, and computers instead. Some are off to great universities, some to the Marines, and some to the wonderful world of entry-level jobs: “Ya want fries with that?’
I woke up early on Sunday morning, and did what all fathers do for their college-bound kids: I washed Sarah’s car. It didn’t really need it, but I didn’t know what else to do. We had all gone to Mass the night before, because all journeys properly begin and end at the Altar. However, this left us with maybe too much time before Sarah joined The Other Sarah for their two-car departure. So I mowed the lawn. It didn’t really need it, but I didn’t know what else to do.
Eldon came over in the early afternoon; both his girls have left for A & M, so in our great sorrow we broke out a couple of cigars, sat under the fan on the back porch (now more commonly known as a patio), and felt old. Finally, around two, I violated my own no-cars-on-the-lawn rule and backed Sarah’s little Bug to the front door, where I followed orders and helped Sarah load her gear to her specifications while the usually merry dachshunds watched sadly. They didn’t know what was going on, but they somehow knew that their little world was about to change. And then there was nothing left to do. Sunlight fell on the green grass and the blue Volkswagen while the sky to the north darkened with an approaching thunderstorm. Hugs all around, and then Sarah drove away down the lane and the dusty East Texas road -- not to a movie or pizza with her buds, and not for an afternoon or an evening, but far away and forever.
Now the house is very quiet, and the babble of the television and the rattle of the washer can’t disguise the emptiness of a house where a child used to live. Sarah’s awards-heavy letter jacket hangs in her closet in its plastic bag from the cleaners. Last week it was her resume’; now it’s just an artifact of the past, stored away with plastic boxes of toys and games. On her bed reside the stuffed animals she cuddled at night and when she was sick. Her books are stacked on their accustomed shelves: the worn Little House books she read over and over, Diary of a Young Girl, My Cat Spit Magee, 501 Spanish Verbs, Agatha Christie mysteries, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, every Sweet Valley High book ever churned out on spec, Finland, Jane Austen.
One of the best things I ever did for Sarah was to ban daytime television during her childhood summers. Thus, she climbed her favorite tree with books, cats, and her cap pistol, and spent many warm afternoon hours in her green-lit, bee-humming world, hidden away from adults, reading. This was sometimes alarming, but she got through it without any broken bones.
They will wait patiently for Sarah: cats and dachshunds and stuffed toys and books and her climbing tree. I’ve even saved her cap pistol in case she should someday feel the need to be Queen of the West again. No kids run in and out of the house, and the ‘phone doesn’t ring a dozen times or so nightly -- The Divine Sarah’s Answering Service is definitely out of business. The stereo doesn’t shake the walls. I can watch The History Channel all I want. Heck, maybe I am The History Channel.
Fare thee well, Sarah Elizabeth Maria Goretti Hall, daughter of Cromwellian Roundheads and French refugees, of American Indians and Yankees and good Confederates, of soldiers and sailors and farmers and railroad men and laborers, of women who crossed oceans in wooden ships and gave birth in wagons along forest trails. Thank you for the magical gift of your childhood. I hope you get to see the sunset at midnight in Finland again, and climb on a bronze lion in Trafalgar Square. I hope you play your flute in Italy, visit castles in Germany, ski in Austria, and do whatever it is they do in Australia. I hope your friends are always like those great kids you grew up with. May your little Blue Bug carry you to great adventures, and may it follow its nose home when you are ready to come back to the door where a couple of little dachshunds and an old dad sit waiting for you.
A codicil:
Ten years later Sarah came back to the door where she began, bringing with her a PhD from Texas A & M. An old dad was indeed waiting for her, and a young dachshund, and a litter of kittens. Doctor Hall immediately sought out the new babies and was once again childhood Sarah, playing on the floor and baby-talking to puppies and kittens.
The road goes ever on and on, but sometimes it comes back, for just a little while, to the door where it began.
-30-
First printed in 2001
Down From the Door Where it Began
The road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began
Now far ahead the road has gone
And I must follow, if I can
Pursuing it with eager feet
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet –
And whither then? I cannot say.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien
Our former random collection of stem cells left for university on Sunday, alternating between giggles and tears as she loaded her little Volkswagen with flutes, clothes, books, tennis racket, computer, makeup, pillows, blankies, and all the other impedimenta of the late-adolescent female beginning her journey on her chosen road. This has been a week of departures, the annual late-August migration of high school graduates out of America’s fast-disappearing little towns and into the groaning centers of population for college or careers. In ones and twos they have flown away like hummingbirds in November, all the little rug-rats who squealed at birthday parties and sleepovers, and scampered through the house with the merry dachshunds. They long ago packed away the Barbies and took up books, musical instruments, microscopes, and computers instead. Some are off to great universities, some to the Marines, and some to the wonderful world of entry-level jobs: “Ya want fries with that?’
I woke up early on Sunday morning, and did what all fathers do for their college-bound kids: I washed Sarah’s car. It didn’t really need it, but I didn’t know what else to do. We had all gone to Mass the night before, because all journeys properly begin and end at the Altar. However, this left us with maybe too much time before Sarah joined The Other Sarah for their two-car departure. So I mowed the lawn. It didn’t really need it, but I didn’t know what else to do.
Eldon came over in the early afternoon; both his girls have left for A & M, so in our great sorrow we broke out a couple of cigars, sat under the fan on the back porch (now more commonly known as a patio), and felt old. Finally, around two, I violated my own no-cars-on-the-lawn rule and backed Sarah’s little Bug to the front door, where I followed orders and helped Sarah load her gear to her specifications while the usually merry dachshunds watched sadly. They didn’t know what was going on, but they somehow knew that their little world was about to change. And then there was nothing left to do. Sunlight fell on the green grass and the blue Volkswagen while the sky to the north darkened with an approaching thunderstorm. Hugs all around, and then Sarah drove away down the lane and the dusty East Texas road -- not to a movie or pizza with her buds, and not for an afternoon or an evening, but far away and forever.
Now the house is very quiet, and the babble of the television and the rattle of the washer can’t disguise the emptiness of a house where a child used to live. Sarah’s awards-heavy letter jacket hangs in her closet in its plastic bag from the cleaners. Last week it was her resume’; now it’s just an artifact of the past, stored away with plastic boxes of toys and games. On her bed reside the stuffed animals she cuddled at night and when she was sick. Her books are stacked on their accustomed shelves: the worn Little House books she read over and over, Diary of a Young Girl, My Cat Spit Magee, 501 Spanish Verbs, Agatha Christie mysteries, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, every Sweet Valley High book ever churned out on spec, Finland, Jane Austen.
One of the best things I ever did for Sarah was to ban daytime television during her childhood summers. Thus, she climbed her favorite tree with books, cats, and her cap pistol, and spent many warm afternoon hours in her green-lit, bee-humming world, hidden away from adults, reading. This was sometimes alarming, but she got through it without any broken bones.
They will wait patiently for Sarah: cats and dachshunds and stuffed toys and books and her climbing tree. I’ve even saved her cap pistol in case she should someday feel the need to be Queen of the West again. No kids run in and out of the house, and the ‘phone doesn’t ring a dozen times or so nightly -- The Divine Sarah’s Answering Service is definitely out of business. The stereo doesn’t shake the walls. I can watch The History Channel all I want. Heck, maybe I am The History Channel.
Fare thee well, Sarah Elizabeth Maria Goretti Hall, daughter of Cromwellian Roundheads and French refugees, of American Indians and Yankees and good Confederates, of soldiers and sailors and farmers and railroad men and laborers, of women who crossed oceans in wooden ships and gave birth in wagons along forest trails. Thank you for the magical gift of your childhood. I hope you get to see the sunset at midnight in Finland again, and climb on a bronze lion in Trafalgar Square. I hope you play your flute in Italy, visit castles in Germany, ski in Austria, and do whatever it is they do in Australia. I hope your friends are always like those great kids you grew up with. May your little Blue Bug carry you to great adventures, and may it follow its nose home when you are ready to come back to the door where a couple of little dachshunds and an old dad sit waiting for you.
A codicil:
Ten years later Sarah came back to the door where she began, bringing with her a PhD from Texas A & M. An old dad was indeed waiting for her, and a young dachshund, and a litter of kittens. Doctor Hall immediately sought out the new babies and was once again childhood Sarah, playing on the floor and baby-talking to puppies and kittens.
The road goes ever on and on, but sometimes it comes back, for just a little while, to the door where it began.
-30-
Sunday, August 7, 2011
"No Problem, Guys; Have a Blessed Day"
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
No Problem, Guys; Have a Blessed Day
When did “Have a blessed day” replace the equally irrelevant noise “Have a nice day?”
Several weeks ago I was in New Orleans, gasping in the heat, when a couple of fellows asked for my camera. I said no. Then they asked for money. Again I said no. Then one of them growled “Have a blessed day,” and the two stumbled away.
The “have a blessed day” really meant “go to (somewhere far, far under even the possibility of a rainbow).”
More recently a singer / songwriter (no doubt) presented himself uninvited at my door to try to sell me what he alleged (and who am I to judge? The Bible says you shouldn’t judge.) was fresh meat. Since I seldom purchase proffered and possibly putrefying perishables from the backs of pickup trucks in high summer, I declined the offer to inspect and buy whatever the peddler had decaying in the heat in my driveway by employing my New Orleans “no.”
He was persistent in urging conversation, asking about the neighbors and so on, and my repeated use of my now well-exercised New Orleans “no” exasperated him. Finally he told me to “have a blessed day” in a somewhat hostile manner, rather like my acquaintances in New Orleans, which suggested to me that, whatever he intended for the day, there was no blessing for me in it.
What does “have a blessed day” mean? It typically means nothing. As used by the shop assistant or the waiter, “have a blessed day” is but conventional sales exchange noise replacing the venerable “have a nice day,” said day maybe being a nice day or perhaps it could be a bad day but either way a day so decidedly yesterday, unlike “have a blessed day,” which is so today.
As used by someone whose expectations you have not met, “have a blessed day” appears to be a curse, just like the “I’ll pray for you!” screamed at you by someone who has deemed you unworthy of salvation.
Even with the perhaps Pollyanna-ish presumption of a positive purpose, “have a blessed day” still says nothing. What, after all, is a “blessed day” as opposed to, say, an unblessed day? All days are created by God, and so all are in that sense blessed. What, then, are the speaker’s intentions for you? If he wished to bless you, he could say so: “God bless you.” That’s clear enough, and your day, as well as your porch and your dog and your washing machine, would all come under the protection of that blessing. Or does he wish the day, not you, to be blessed?
“Have a blessed day” has infected, like a pus-oozing tattoo, the speech of young waiters, the gum-chewing sort who would address even an assemblage of supreme court justices and elderly nuns (for the purpose of this illustration you must now imagine supreme court judges and elderly nuns out on the town together) as “you guys,” sometimes “y’all guys.”
And then, when you thank the waiter (as you do, because your momma raised you right) for a coffee refill, more often than not he now nasals the cliché “no problem” instead of speaking manfully the elegant and correct response, “you’re welcome.” You would like to think that his momma raised him right too, but that in his youth he has fallen under the wicked influence of bad companions who chant “no problem” over and over in the scullery because they have seen too many Harry Potter movies, and that he will grow out of it.
I haven’t actually heard a waiter say “No problem, guys; have a blessed day” all together, but I know it’s happened. That’s why the economy collapsed; Chinese waiters never say “No problem, guys.”
If you are blessed (forgive me) with a waiter or waitress who refers to you as a lady or a gentleman, says “sir” or “ma’am,” “please,” “thank you,” and “you’re welcome,” and avoids the guy thing, that fine young person deserves a little extra on the tip.
Have a blessed day, y’all guys. No problem.
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
No Problem, Guys; Have a Blessed Day
When did “Have a blessed day” replace the equally irrelevant noise “Have a nice day?”
Several weeks ago I was in New Orleans, gasping in the heat, when a couple of fellows asked for my camera. I said no. Then they asked for money. Again I said no. Then one of them growled “Have a blessed day,” and the two stumbled away.
The “have a blessed day” really meant “go to (somewhere far, far under even the possibility of a rainbow).”
More recently a singer / songwriter (no doubt) presented himself uninvited at my door to try to sell me what he alleged (and who am I to judge? The Bible says you shouldn’t judge.) was fresh meat. Since I seldom purchase proffered and possibly putrefying perishables from the backs of pickup trucks in high summer, I declined the offer to inspect and buy whatever the peddler had decaying in the heat in my driveway by employing my New Orleans “no.”
He was persistent in urging conversation, asking about the neighbors and so on, and my repeated use of my now well-exercised New Orleans “no” exasperated him. Finally he told me to “have a blessed day” in a somewhat hostile manner, rather like my acquaintances in New Orleans, which suggested to me that, whatever he intended for the day, there was no blessing for me in it.
What does “have a blessed day” mean? It typically means nothing. As used by the shop assistant or the waiter, “have a blessed day” is but conventional sales exchange noise replacing the venerable “have a nice day,” said day maybe being a nice day or perhaps it could be a bad day but either way a day so decidedly yesterday, unlike “have a blessed day,” which is so today.
As used by someone whose expectations you have not met, “have a blessed day” appears to be a curse, just like the “I’ll pray for you!” screamed at you by someone who has deemed you unworthy of salvation.
Even with the perhaps Pollyanna-ish presumption of a positive purpose, “have a blessed day” still says nothing. What, after all, is a “blessed day” as opposed to, say, an unblessed day? All days are created by God, and so all are in that sense blessed. What, then, are the speaker’s intentions for you? If he wished to bless you, he could say so: “God bless you.” That’s clear enough, and your day, as well as your porch and your dog and your washing machine, would all come under the protection of that blessing. Or does he wish the day, not you, to be blessed?
“Have a blessed day” has infected, like a pus-oozing tattoo, the speech of young waiters, the gum-chewing sort who would address even an assemblage of supreme court justices and elderly nuns (for the purpose of this illustration you must now imagine supreme court judges and elderly nuns out on the town together) as “you guys,” sometimes “y’all guys.”
And then, when you thank the waiter (as you do, because your momma raised you right) for a coffee refill, more often than not he now nasals the cliché “no problem” instead of speaking manfully the elegant and correct response, “you’re welcome.” You would like to think that his momma raised him right too, but that in his youth he has fallen under the wicked influence of bad companions who chant “no problem” over and over in the scullery because they have seen too many Harry Potter movies, and that he will grow out of it.
I haven’t actually heard a waiter say “No problem, guys; have a blessed day” all together, but I know it’s happened. That’s why the economy collapsed; Chinese waiters never say “No problem, guys.”
If you are blessed (forgive me) with a waiter or waitress who refers to you as a lady or a gentleman, says “sir” or “ma’am,” “please,” “thank you,” and “you’re welcome,” and avoids the guy thing, that fine young person deserves a little extra on the tip.
Have a blessed day, y’all guys. No problem.
-30-
"No Problem, Guys; Have a Blessed Day"
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
No Problem, Guys; Have a Blessed Day
When did “Have a blessed day” replace the equally irrelevant noise “Have a nice day?”
Several weeks ago I was in New Orleans, gasping in the heat, when a couple of fellows asked for my camera. I said no. Then they asked for money. Again I said no. Then one of them growled “Have a blessed day,” and the two stumbled away.
The “have a blessed day” really meant “go to (somewhere far, far under even the possibility of a rainbow).”
More recently a singer / songwriter (no doubt) presented himself uninvited at my door to try to sell me what he alleged (and who am I to judge? The Bible says you shouldn’t judge.) was fresh meat. Since I seldom purchase proffered and possibly putrefying perishables from the backs of pickup trucks in high summer, I declined the offer to inspect and buy whatever the peddler had decaying in the heat in my driveway by employing my New Orleans “no.”
He was persistent in urging conversation, asking about the neighbors and so on, and my repeated use of my now well-exercised New Orleans “no” exasperated him. Finally he told me to “have a blessed day” in a somewhat hostile manner, rather like my acquaintances in New Orleans, which suggested to me that, whatever he intended for the day, there was no blessing for me in it.
What does “have a blessed day” mean? It typically means nothing. As used by the shop assistant or the waiter, “have a blessed day” is but conventional sales exchange noise replacing the venerable “have a nice day,” said day maybe being a nice day or perhaps it could be a bad day but either way a day so decidedly yesterday, unlike “have a blessed day,” which is so today.
As used by someone whose expectations you have not met, “have a blessed day” appears to be a curse, just like the “I’ll pray for you!” screamed at you by someone who has deemed you unworthy of salvation.
Even with the perhaps Pollyanna-ish presumption of a positive purpose, “have a blessed day” still says nothing. What, after all, is a “blessed day” as opposed to, say, an unblessed day? All days are created by God, and so all are in that sense blessed. What, then, are the speaker’s intentions for you? If he wished to bless you, he could say so: “God bless you.” That’s clear enough, and your day, as well as your porch and your dog and your washing machine, would all come under the protection of that blessing. Or does he wish the day, not you, to be blessed?
“Have a blessed day” has infected, like a pus-oozing tattoo, the speech of young waiters, the gum-chewing sort who would address even an assemblage of supreme court justices and elderly nuns (for the purpose of this illustration you must now imagine supreme court judges and elderly nuns out on the town together) as “you guys,” sometimes “y’all guys.”
And then, when you thank the waiter (as you do, because your momma raised you right) for a coffee refill, more often than not he now nasals the cliché “no problem” instead of speaking manfully the elegant and correct response, “you’re welcome.” You would like to think that his momma raised him right too, but that in his youth he has fallen under the wicked influence of bad companions who chant “no problem” over and over in the scullery because they have seen too many Harry Potter movies, and that he will grow out of it.
I haven’t actually heard a waiter say “No problem, guys; have a blessed day” all together, but I know it’s happened. That’s why the economy collapsed; Chinese waiters never say “No problem, guys.”
If you are blessed (forgive me) with a waiter or waitress who refers to you as a lady or a gentleman, says “sir” or “ma’am,” “please,” “thank you,” and “you’re welcome,” and avoids the guy thing, that fine young person deserves a little extra on the tip.
Have a blessed day, y’all guys. No problem.
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
No Problem, Guys; Have a Blessed Day
When did “Have a blessed day” replace the equally irrelevant noise “Have a nice day?”
Several weeks ago I was in New Orleans, gasping in the heat, when a couple of fellows asked for my camera. I said no. Then they asked for money. Again I said no. Then one of them growled “Have a blessed day,” and the two stumbled away.
The “have a blessed day” really meant “go to (somewhere far, far under even the possibility of a rainbow).”
More recently a singer / songwriter (no doubt) presented himself uninvited at my door to try to sell me what he alleged (and who am I to judge? The Bible says you shouldn’t judge.) was fresh meat. Since I seldom purchase proffered and possibly putrefying perishables from the backs of pickup trucks in high summer, I declined the offer to inspect and buy whatever the peddler had decaying in the heat in my driveway by employing my New Orleans “no.”
He was persistent in urging conversation, asking about the neighbors and so on, and my repeated use of my now well-exercised New Orleans “no” exasperated him. Finally he told me to “have a blessed day” in a somewhat hostile manner, rather like my acquaintances in New Orleans, which suggested to me that, whatever he intended for the day, there was no blessing for me in it.
What does “have a blessed day” mean? It typically means nothing. As used by the shop assistant or the waiter, “have a blessed day” is but conventional sales exchange noise replacing the venerable “have a nice day,” said day maybe being a nice day or perhaps it could be a bad day but either way a day so decidedly yesterday, unlike “have a blessed day,” which is so today.
As used by someone whose expectations you have not met, “have a blessed day” appears to be a curse, just like the “I’ll pray for you!” screamed at you by someone who has deemed you unworthy of salvation.
Even with the perhaps Pollyanna-ish presumption of a positive purpose, “have a blessed day” still says nothing. What, after all, is a “blessed day” as opposed to, say, an unblessed day? All days are created by God, and so all are in that sense blessed. What, then, are the speaker’s intentions for you? If he wished to bless you, he could say so: “God bless you.” That’s clear enough, and your day, as well as your porch and your dog and your washing machine, would all come under the protection of that blessing. Or does he wish the day, not you, to be blessed?
“Have a blessed day” has infected, like a pus-oozing tattoo, the speech of young waiters, the gum-chewing sort who would address even an assemblage of supreme court justices and elderly nuns (for the purpose of this illustration you must now imagine supreme court judges and elderly nuns out on the town together) as “you guys,” sometimes “y’all guys.”
And then, when you thank the waiter (as you do, because your momma raised you right) for a coffee refill, more often than not he now nasals the cliché “no problem” instead of speaking manfully the elegant and correct response, “you’re welcome.” You would like to think that his momma raised him right too, but that in his youth he has fallen under the wicked influence of bad companions who chant “no problem” over and over in the scullery because they have seen too many Harry Potter movies, and that he will grow out of it.
I haven’t actually heard a waiter say “No problem, guys; have a blessed day” all together, but I know it’s happened. That’s why the economy collapsed; Chinese waiters never say “No problem, guys.”
If you are blessed (forgive me) with a waiter or waitress who refers to you as a lady or a gentleman, says “sir” or “ma’am,” “please,” “thank you,” and “you’re welcome,” and avoids the guy thing, that fine young person deserves a little extra on the tip.
Have a blessed day, y’all guys. No problem.
-30-
Sunday, July 31, 2011
The Smurfs at the O.K. Corral
Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
The Smurfs at the O.K. Corral
We may take this as official: the something-istas who make movies think you and I are idiots. Exhibit A, The Smoking Phaser: Cowboys and Aliens.
Movies are art. They fuse visuals with the essentials of literature, plot, character, and setting, and through this dialectic make something new. This relatively new art is still evaluated by transcendent aesthetics: Is this beautiful? Does this speak well of the human condition? Does this speak truth? Is the audience in some way better or happier for having considered the work?
Films, like other forms of art, tend to follow genres. One does not compare The Bells of St. Mary’s to a Three Stooges wheeze because while both address misunderstandings and portray humans positively, they do so in entirely different ways. We see conflicts of good and evil both in Robin Hood and in Star Wars, but we would be greatly surprised if the Sheriff of Nottingham and merry Robin were to draw light-sabres on each other. Even within a genre the forms of address can be so very different that they could not with integrity be conflated: Support Your Local Sheriff isn’t Red River, nor should it be; each film enjoys its own valid artistry.
Given an aesthetic reality which is obvious to a ten-year-old, what were the producers of Cowboys and Aliens thinking? Not much of the audience, certainly.
However, not wanting to miss out on the possible profits to be ill-gotten from this trend, I offer to modern film producers the following cowboy-fusion treatments for their consideration:
The Smurfs at the O.K. Corral
Bridezillas Meet Jesse James
Sushi Red River
The Ballet Russe at the Alamo
Beavis and Butthead Ride the High Country
The Man from Laramie’s Starbuck’s
The Lone Ranger and Captain Kirk
Sergeant Rutledge on Sesame Street
The Northwest Mounted Therapists
Across the Wide Ganges with Daniel Boone and Mohandas Ghandi
Belle Starr Does Riverdance
Zorro and Princess Leia Save the Harp Seals from the Evil Canadians
They Died With Their Cell ‘Phones On
The Short Texan
Davy Crockett and Ringo Starr Solve the Debt Crisis at Fort Apache
The Santa Fe Email
Gabby Hayes – Vampire
Roy Rogers and Dale Evans in Libya
Buffalo Bill Meets Mussolini
Zorro and Mickey Mouse against the Martians
Gene Autry and the Invisible Copper Wire Thieves of El Dorado Meet Batman
Annie Oakley and the Hell’s Angels in Hawaii
Cochise, Shogun Peace Activist
Pancho Villa and Hercule Poirot in Old Kentucky
Destry Bicycles Again
The Nazi Undead Who Shot Liberty Valance
Ho Chi Minh and the Cosmic Apaches
Gabby Hayes – Vampire. Dude! That has Palm d’Or written all over it.
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
The Smurfs at the O.K. Corral
We may take this as official: the something-istas who make movies think you and I are idiots. Exhibit A, The Smoking Phaser: Cowboys and Aliens.
Movies are art. They fuse visuals with the essentials of literature, plot, character, and setting, and through this dialectic make something new. This relatively new art is still evaluated by transcendent aesthetics: Is this beautiful? Does this speak well of the human condition? Does this speak truth? Is the audience in some way better or happier for having considered the work?
Films, like other forms of art, tend to follow genres. One does not compare The Bells of St. Mary’s to a Three Stooges wheeze because while both address misunderstandings and portray humans positively, they do so in entirely different ways. We see conflicts of good and evil both in Robin Hood and in Star Wars, but we would be greatly surprised if the Sheriff of Nottingham and merry Robin were to draw light-sabres on each other. Even within a genre the forms of address can be so very different that they could not with integrity be conflated: Support Your Local Sheriff isn’t Red River, nor should it be; each film enjoys its own valid artistry.
Given an aesthetic reality which is obvious to a ten-year-old, what were the producers of Cowboys and Aliens thinking? Not much of the audience, certainly.
However, not wanting to miss out on the possible profits to be ill-gotten from this trend, I offer to modern film producers the following cowboy-fusion treatments for their consideration:
The Smurfs at the O.K. Corral
Bridezillas Meet Jesse James
Sushi Red River
The Ballet Russe at the Alamo
Beavis and Butthead Ride the High Country
The Man from Laramie’s Starbuck’s
The Lone Ranger and Captain Kirk
Sergeant Rutledge on Sesame Street
The Northwest Mounted Therapists
Across the Wide Ganges with Daniel Boone and Mohandas Ghandi
Belle Starr Does Riverdance
Zorro and Princess Leia Save the Harp Seals from the Evil Canadians
They Died With Their Cell ‘Phones On
The Short Texan
Davy Crockett and Ringo Starr Solve the Debt Crisis at Fort Apache
The Santa Fe Email
Gabby Hayes – Vampire
Roy Rogers and Dale Evans in Libya
Buffalo Bill Meets Mussolini
Zorro and Mickey Mouse against the Martians
Gene Autry and the Invisible Copper Wire Thieves of El Dorado Meet Batman
Annie Oakley and the Hell’s Angels in Hawaii
Cochise, Shogun Peace Activist
Pancho Villa and Hercule Poirot in Old Kentucky
Destry Bicycles Again
The Nazi Undead Who Shot Liberty Valance
Ho Chi Minh and the Cosmic Apaches
Gabby Hayes – Vampire. Dude! That has Palm d’Or written all over it.
-30-
Friday, July 22, 2011
A Tribute to the Cigar Box
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
A Tribute to the Cigar Box
Cigar boxes are no longer a part of childhood. In an office supply store last week I saw a display of plastic boxes for children for use in school, for storing pens and pencils and glue and scissors and all the other easily-misplaced little impedimenta of very young artists.
Once upon a time, children employed wooden cigars boxes for such purposes; if one’s father didn’t smoke cigars then someone else’s did, and so nice little wooden boxes were as common as 1943 steel pennies. I suppose that if now a child were to carry his art supplies to school in a cigar box he would be sent for therapy and his parents filed on with some state agency for Not Thinking Correctly.
The plastic boxes for sale now contain only air, and to a father that’s disappointing; wooden cigar boxes came filled with, well, cigars, so everyone was happy. Contemporary boxes are filled with nothing more than the chemical aromas of Shanghai, and no one ever celebrated an accomplishment or a birth by lighting up a victory Chinese air molecule.
In another time-space dimension, the birth of a child was celebrated by the proud father handing out cigars to his pals. Upon retrospect one realizes that the young mother probably needed a cigar more than anyone, but such an image would not make an appropriately-sentimental greeting card. One wonders if somewhere there is at least one mother who smokes cigars while holding her infant, in Newton County, perhaps.
For children, though, a cigar box was not about stinky rolls of vegetation being ignited, but rather about creativity. The good old wooden cigar box had two purposes: (1) storage of treasures and (2) as a quarry for building projects.
Childhood is even now manifested in little treasures: a Christmas pocket knife, a rock from the beach, a few illicit firecrackers, coins, marbles, an old watch that doesn’t work. The best pirate’s treasure chest for these valuables is a cigar box, carefully hidden under the bed or in the back of a closet, away from snoopy siblings.
A wooden cigar box was equally useful in its parts for construction projects – wood and those tiny little brass nails. The sides suggested airplane wings, and often became such. The top and bottom could, with care, be split into spans useful for the cabins of aircraft, hulls of boats, or the bodies of cars. With glue and rubber bands and the tiny nails a child could cobble together something that, well, it looked like an airplane to the kid, and no other audience got a voice in the matter.
Children now carry bottled water and little plastic thingies that light up and make noise. If they want to make an airplane they call up a program on one of their little plastic thingies that light up and make noise, tap on its screen, and look passively at a flat image of an airplane. The computer program will even make the “Zoom! Zoom!” noises for them. Oh, well, at least they won’t prick their little fingers with little brass nails.
Last week I had occasion to visit a little storefront on Decatur Street in New Orleans, and inside the store men were rolling cigars and smoking cigars. I bought a few stogies, and the nice young man included with my purchase a real cigar box, made of wood, made in the Dominican Republic. I’m going to have to find a boy to give the box to, maybe around Christmas (“Gee, thanks, Mr. H, a box. Wow. Just what I asked Santa for.”).
And as for the cigars that came in little wooden boxes in the long ago: those of us of a certain generation remember our fathers, strong and lean, young survivors of the Depression and World War II, work-stained in overalls or khakis after a long day on the farm or in the refinery, leaning on the pasture fence and looking over the cows grazing, celebrating life with a gasper, far happier than we can imagine at the joy of simply being alive, of being able to raise a family, of being able to feed their children. No longer rationed by desperate poverty or by whatever supplies survived the trip to the battlefront, they could enjoy more than three cigarettes a week; they could even splurge on that glorious, for-the-silk-hat-set-only luxury, a box of cigars. The cigars weren’t very good, but that wasn’t important. That there were cigars at all was the hard-won celebration for men who had not known much in the way of food or clothes or shoes in boyhood. To them, every cigar was a victory cigar.
They were men – may their eternities include their cigars; God knows they deserve them.
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
A Tribute to the Cigar Box
Cigar boxes are no longer a part of childhood. In an office supply store last week I saw a display of plastic boxes for children for use in school, for storing pens and pencils and glue and scissors and all the other easily-misplaced little impedimenta of very young artists.
Once upon a time, children employed wooden cigars boxes for such purposes; if one’s father didn’t smoke cigars then someone else’s did, and so nice little wooden boxes were as common as 1943 steel pennies. I suppose that if now a child were to carry his art supplies to school in a cigar box he would be sent for therapy and his parents filed on with some state agency for Not Thinking Correctly.
The plastic boxes for sale now contain only air, and to a father that’s disappointing; wooden cigar boxes came filled with, well, cigars, so everyone was happy. Contemporary boxes are filled with nothing more than the chemical aromas of Shanghai, and no one ever celebrated an accomplishment or a birth by lighting up a victory Chinese air molecule.
In another time-space dimension, the birth of a child was celebrated by the proud father handing out cigars to his pals. Upon retrospect one realizes that the young mother probably needed a cigar more than anyone, but such an image would not make an appropriately-sentimental greeting card. One wonders if somewhere there is at least one mother who smokes cigars while holding her infant, in Newton County, perhaps.
For children, though, a cigar box was not about stinky rolls of vegetation being ignited, but rather about creativity. The good old wooden cigar box had two purposes: (1) storage of treasures and (2) as a quarry for building projects.
Childhood is even now manifested in little treasures: a Christmas pocket knife, a rock from the beach, a few illicit firecrackers, coins, marbles, an old watch that doesn’t work. The best pirate’s treasure chest for these valuables is a cigar box, carefully hidden under the bed or in the back of a closet, away from snoopy siblings.
A wooden cigar box was equally useful in its parts for construction projects – wood and those tiny little brass nails. The sides suggested airplane wings, and often became such. The top and bottom could, with care, be split into spans useful for the cabins of aircraft, hulls of boats, or the bodies of cars. With glue and rubber bands and the tiny nails a child could cobble together something that, well, it looked like an airplane to the kid, and no other audience got a voice in the matter.
Children now carry bottled water and little plastic thingies that light up and make noise. If they want to make an airplane they call up a program on one of their little plastic thingies that light up and make noise, tap on its screen, and look passively at a flat image of an airplane. The computer program will even make the “Zoom! Zoom!” noises for them. Oh, well, at least they won’t prick their little fingers with little brass nails.
Last week I had occasion to visit a little storefront on Decatur Street in New Orleans, and inside the store men were rolling cigars and smoking cigars. I bought a few stogies, and the nice young man included with my purchase a real cigar box, made of wood, made in the Dominican Republic. I’m going to have to find a boy to give the box to, maybe around Christmas (“Gee, thanks, Mr. H, a box. Wow. Just what I asked Santa for.”).
And as for the cigars that came in little wooden boxes in the long ago: those of us of a certain generation remember our fathers, strong and lean, young survivors of the Depression and World War II, work-stained in overalls or khakis after a long day on the farm or in the refinery, leaning on the pasture fence and looking over the cows grazing, celebrating life with a gasper, far happier than we can imagine at the joy of simply being alive, of being able to raise a family, of being able to feed their children. No longer rationed by desperate poverty or by whatever supplies survived the trip to the battlefront, they could enjoy more than three cigarettes a week; they could even splurge on that glorious, for-the-silk-hat-set-only luxury, a box of cigars. The cigars weren’t very good, but that wasn’t important. That there were cigars at all was the hard-won celebration for men who had not known much in the way of food or clothes or shoes in boyhood. To them, every cigar was a victory cigar.
They were men – may their eternities include their cigars; God knows they deserve them.
-30-
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Blue Bell Ice Cream
Blue Bell Ice Cream commercials are as annoying as screaming children on a long flight. The only mercy in them (the commercials, not the screaming children) is that the narration is not yet whined in a fake Australian accent.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
The Governor and the Guru
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
The Governor and the Guru
Wel coude he rede a lesson and a storye,
But alderbest he soong an offertorye
- Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, General Prologue, 711-715
Last week the President was pleased to host the ever-fashionable Dalai Lama at The People’s House, while Governor Perry was sued for planning to attend a Christian prayer service in August.
The thesis here seems to be is that hanging out with a Buddhist of very questionable background who claims to have been reincarnated fourteen times rocks, dude, but associating with Baptists is a crime.
Folks are inexplicably drawn to trendy gurus, and without much thought in the matter: the Tibetan in Dorothy Lamour’s old sarong, Fred Phelps, the Hale-Bopp spaceship guy, John Corapi, and other opportunists all the way back to Chaucer’s Pardoner (General Prologue 671-716). They may have their eyes on the Heavens but their hands so often wish to reside in your wallet.
President Bush I, President Clinton, President Bush II, and President Obama have all had the Dalai Lama over to the White House for some greeting-card theology, and no one seems to know why. But, like, hey, the Dalai Lama’s, like, cool, y’know. One would like to think that presidents exchange, like, hey, ideas, and, like, stuff, y’know just to annoy the Chinese, who have in effect commanded the President not to receive the DL, but one never knows. The fourteenth incarnation of the Dalai Lama posing in the White House is no more significant than Elvis visiting President Nixon, and no more substantive.
The President didn’t wear a tie for the occasion, but then, neither did the DL.
The last time the DL visited the President he (the DL, not the President) had to leave by the back door, next to the Presidential garbage cans, The Garbager Can-ers of the Free World. Well, hey, can you claim that of your garbage can?
The Dalai Lama, channeling Oprah Winfrey, said of his visit to our own Dear Leader that “we developed a very close sort of feeling for each other.” Good grief, couldn’t these two just Facebook each other?
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Governor Rick Perry, a Methodist, is being sued by something styling itself the Freedom from Religion Foundation because he plans to spend a day in prayer at the holy temple of Reliant Stadium, nee’ Enron Field. When you think of prayer you just naturally think of Reliant Stadium’s home plate.
If the Dalai Lama shows up, maybe to share some Green Beret stories with John Corapi, will the Freedom from Religion Foundation call off the lawsuit?
This event is being hosted by the American Family Association, which is wonderfully vague. The prayer service is billed as non-denominational and folks are encouraged to come and bring a Bible and a notebook (is the material testable?). No mention of a Rosary, though.
Governor Perry has urged other governors to declare the 6th of August a day of prayer, which implies that the 5th and the 7th aren’t. We’ll have to check in with Fred Phelps and the good folks at Westboro Baptist to see if all this caesaropapism stuff is cool with the 10th Amendment.
We haven’t heard if some large guys in leathers and Tats for Jesus are going to rip apart telephone books. Perhaps that’s how St. Paul got the attention of the crowd at Ikonium.
Security could be an issue at St. Reliant Stadium – rumors abound that Rupert Murdoch is going to try to hack in to Governor Perry’s Bible. This would be pretty easy since Rupert owns Zondervan, said to be the world’s largest publisher of Bibles. How’s that for news of the world, eh?
And speaking of security, we can only hope no one falls from the bleachers while trying to catch a pop Our Father.
The Secret Service may have to be deputed to guard the first-base ikon of the Theotokos from metal thieves.
And when the 6th of August ends, will folks leaving Notre Dame de Reliant Stadium consider the old, old question: “What went ye into the desert to see?”
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
The Governor and the Guru
Wel coude he rede a lesson and a storye,
But alderbest he soong an offertorye
- Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, General Prologue, 711-715
Last week the President was pleased to host the ever-fashionable Dalai Lama at The People’s House, while Governor Perry was sued for planning to attend a Christian prayer service in August.
The thesis here seems to be is that hanging out with a Buddhist of very questionable background who claims to have been reincarnated fourteen times rocks, dude, but associating with Baptists is a crime.
Folks are inexplicably drawn to trendy gurus, and without much thought in the matter: the Tibetan in Dorothy Lamour’s old sarong, Fred Phelps, the Hale-Bopp spaceship guy, John Corapi, and other opportunists all the way back to Chaucer’s Pardoner (General Prologue 671-716). They may have their eyes on the Heavens but their hands so often wish to reside in your wallet.
President Bush I, President Clinton, President Bush II, and President Obama have all had the Dalai Lama over to the White House for some greeting-card theology, and no one seems to know why. But, like, hey, the Dalai Lama’s, like, cool, y’know. One would like to think that presidents exchange, like, hey, ideas, and, like, stuff, y’know just to annoy the Chinese, who have in effect commanded the President not to receive the DL, but one never knows. The fourteenth incarnation of the Dalai Lama posing in the White House is no more significant than Elvis visiting President Nixon, and no more substantive.
The President didn’t wear a tie for the occasion, but then, neither did the DL.
The last time the DL visited the President he (the DL, not the President) had to leave by the back door, next to the Presidential garbage cans, The Garbager Can-ers of the Free World. Well, hey, can you claim that of your garbage can?
The Dalai Lama, channeling Oprah Winfrey, said of his visit to our own Dear Leader that “we developed a very close sort of feeling for each other.” Good grief, couldn’t these two just Facebook each other?
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Governor Rick Perry, a Methodist, is being sued by something styling itself the Freedom from Religion Foundation because he plans to spend a day in prayer at the holy temple of Reliant Stadium, nee’ Enron Field. When you think of prayer you just naturally think of Reliant Stadium’s home plate.
If the Dalai Lama shows up, maybe to share some Green Beret stories with John Corapi, will the Freedom from Religion Foundation call off the lawsuit?
This event is being hosted by the American Family Association, which is wonderfully vague. The prayer service is billed as non-denominational and folks are encouraged to come and bring a Bible and a notebook (is the material testable?). No mention of a Rosary, though.
Governor Perry has urged other governors to declare the 6th of August a day of prayer, which implies that the 5th and the 7th aren’t. We’ll have to check in with Fred Phelps and the good folks at Westboro Baptist to see if all this caesaropapism stuff is cool with the 10th Amendment.
We haven’t heard if some large guys in leathers and Tats for Jesus are going to rip apart telephone books. Perhaps that’s how St. Paul got the attention of the crowd at Ikonium.
Security could be an issue at St. Reliant Stadium – rumors abound that Rupert Murdoch is going to try to hack in to Governor Perry’s Bible. This would be pretty easy since Rupert owns Zondervan, said to be the world’s largest publisher of Bibles. How’s that for news of the world, eh?
And speaking of security, we can only hope no one falls from the bleachers while trying to catch a pop Our Father.
The Secret Service may have to be deputed to guard the first-base ikon of the Theotokos from metal thieves.
And when the 6th of August ends, will folks leaving Notre Dame de Reliant Stadium consider the old, old question: “What went ye into the desert to see?”
-30-
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Veggies du Mal
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Veggies du Mal
The President may cultivate his little vegetable garden at the White House without fear of let or hindrance, but such freedom of agriculture does not obtain in Oak Park, Michigan, where the oaks had better be oaks; no apple trees need apply.
Julie Bass’s lawn was dug up because of repairs to the sewer system, and she chose to re-plant part of her own yard with cabbages, carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, and herbs.
You and I, Julie’s fellow Americans, do not possess a veto in the matter, nor do we want one. Julie owns her yard and pays her taxes, and if she wishes to plant salads instead of grasses, such is her small expression of the freedom we all share. We are free to approve or disapprove of her horticultural aesthetics, and she is free to ignore us.
Your ‘umble scrivener highly approves, not that anyone cares or should care. A tomato plant is aesthetically pleasing, all pretty and green in the summer sun and, with care, soon accented with attractive red spheroids which are also edible.
One of Julie’s neighbors, who is not into freedom, turned her in to the Oak Park plant police, the corn constabulary, the marrow marshals, the veggie vigilantes, the cabbage carabinieri, the potato Peelers, the gourd Guardai, the carrot crop cops, the mustard green Mounties, the soybean shore patrol, the broccoli bobbies, the hominy highway patrol, the garlic gendarmerie, the peas posse, the dandelion deputies, the shallot sheriffs, the chive Cheka, and the sweet potato S.W.A.T.
Oak Park’s Planning and Technology Director (that is a real title) ruled that Julie’s veggies are disruptive. No kidding. Disruptive. And he wrote her a ticket for growing vegetables in her own yard. Your peppers, please, comrade.
T. H. White, in The Book of Merlin, posits that the rule of an ant colony is “That which is not forbidden is mandatory; that which is not mandatory is forbidden.” Such is not the rule of a free people, but such is, alas, the rule of Oak Park, Michigan.
How infinitely ant-colony-y of Oak Park to spend scarce public funds on the pumpkin patrol; in these troublesome times every American walking a lonely street fears assault by a drugged-out rutabaga or a gang of feral Brussels sprouts.
We have elected a federal government which has sent thousands of illegal automatic garden trowels across the border to Mexican garbanzo gangs who in turn used the garden trowels. Given this, there is no logical reason why assault garden rakes in America should not be registered and regulated. Thus, Julie and her disruptive vegetables may be sentenced to 93 days in jail, and perhaps her unlicensed hummingbird feeder confiscated.
What a country – a woman may kill her baby with the approval of the courts but she can be jailed for raising a row of carrots.
Perhaps the problem is that vegetable gardens, like Julie, are productive, and don’t gee-haw with the current behavioral template of passivity and dependence.
We’re waiting for the telly reality show: Vegetable Cops – Houston. In tonight’s episode, Inspector Digg Durt is in hot pursuit of a dozen crazed cucumbers who have hijacked a tomato tray. Tomorrow – Durt goes under groundcover and gets the dirt on a woman reportedly smuggling concealed potash.
And what if the Oak Park comrades were to picket the White House and demand that the President surrender his sweet corn? Imagine the protest signs: “Beer Summits, Yes; Fresh Vegetables, NO!” “No Irish Potatoes in Our Country!” “We Demand to See the Guest List in The Old Farmer’s Almanac!” “No Vegetation Without Representation!” “Sweet Corn is Not in the Constitution!”
Oak Park’s most famous resident was Ernest Hemingway, the Gabby Hayes look-alike who never met a tyrant he didn’t like, especially his pal Fidel Castro. His socialist ideology has indeed come home to Oak Park. Perhaps Julie Bass should give up gardening to become a writer. Her books might include: The Sunflower Also Rises, But Only With a Permit; The Old Man and the Unmutual Seeds; For Whom the Bell Pepper Tolls; Across the River and into the Government-Approved Trees; The Short, Happy Life of a Socialist Cucumber; A Moveable or Else Feast; and A Farewell to Broccoli.
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
Veggies du Mal
The President may cultivate his little vegetable garden at the White House without fear of let or hindrance, but such freedom of agriculture does not obtain in Oak Park, Michigan, where the oaks had better be oaks; no apple trees need apply.
Julie Bass’s lawn was dug up because of repairs to the sewer system, and she chose to re-plant part of her own yard with cabbages, carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, and herbs.
You and I, Julie’s fellow Americans, do not possess a veto in the matter, nor do we want one. Julie owns her yard and pays her taxes, and if she wishes to plant salads instead of grasses, such is her small expression of the freedom we all share. We are free to approve or disapprove of her horticultural aesthetics, and she is free to ignore us.
Your ‘umble scrivener highly approves, not that anyone cares or should care. A tomato plant is aesthetically pleasing, all pretty and green in the summer sun and, with care, soon accented with attractive red spheroids which are also edible.
One of Julie’s neighbors, who is not into freedom, turned her in to the Oak Park plant police, the corn constabulary, the marrow marshals, the veggie vigilantes, the cabbage carabinieri, the potato Peelers, the gourd Guardai, the carrot crop cops, the mustard green Mounties, the soybean shore patrol, the broccoli bobbies, the hominy highway patrol, the garlic gendarmerie, the peas posse, the dandelion deputies, the shallot sheriffs, the chive Cheka, and the sweet potato S.W.A.T.
Oak Park’s Planning and Technology Director (that is a real title) ruled that Julie’s veggies are disruptive. No kidding. Disruptive. And he wrote her a ticket for growing vegetables in her own yard. Your peppers, please, comrade.
T. H. White, in The Book of Merlin, posits that the rule of an ant colony is “That which is not forbidden is mandatory; that which is not mandatory is forbidden.” Such is not the rule of a free people, but such is, alas, the rule of Oak Park, Michigan.
How infinitely ant-colony-y of Oak Park to spend scarce public funds on the pumpkin patrol; in these troublesome times every American walking a lonely street fears assault by a drugged-out rutabaga or a gang of feral Brussels sprouts.
We have elected a federal government which has sent thousands of illegal automatic garden trowels across the border to Mexican garbanzo gangs who in turn used the garden trowels. Given this, there is no logical reason why assault garden rakes in America should not be registered and regulated. Thus, Julie and her disruptive vegetables may be sentenced to 93 days in jail, and perhaps her unlicensed hummingbird feeder confiscated.
What a country – a woman may kill her baby with the approval of the courts but she can be jailed for raising a row of carrots.
Perhaps the problem is that vegetable gardens, like Julie, are productive, and don’t gee-haw with the current behavioral template of passivity and dependence.
We’re waiting for the telly reality show: Vegetable Cops – Houston. In tonight’s episode, Inspector Digg Durt is in hot pursuit of a dozen crazed cucumbers who have hijacked a tomato tray. Tomorrow – Durt goes under groundcover and gets the dirt on a woman reportedly smuggling concealed potash.
And what if the Oak Park comrades were to picket the White House and demand that the President surrender his sweet corn? Imagine the protest signs: “Beer Summits, Yes; Fresh Vegetables, NO!” “No Irish Potatoes in Our Country!” “We Demand to See the Guest List in The Old Farmer’s Almanac!” “No Vegetation Without Representation!” “Sweet Corn is Not in the Constitution!”
Oak Park’s most famous resident was Ernest Hemingway, the Gabby Hayes look-alike who never met a tyrant he didn’t like, especially his pal Fidel Castro. His socialist ideology has indeed come home to Oak Park. Perhaps Julie Bass should give up gardening to become a writer. Her books might include: The Sunflower Also Rises, But Only With a Permit; The Old Man and the Unmutual Seeds; For Whom the Bell Pepper Tolls; Across the River and into the Government-Approved Trees; The Short, Happy Life of a Socialist Cucumber; A Moveable or Else Feast; and A Farewell to Broccoli.
-30-
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Ken Follett's THE PILLARS ON THE EARTH on DVD
Sometimes you risk a few dollars on a DVD based on a book anticipating that it will probably disappoint, and are pleasantly surprised to learn that the filmmakers have done a good job.
This was not one of those times.
Cartoons, cliches', and drivel.
This was not one of those times.
Cartoons, cliches', and drivel.
Bubble-Gum Government
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Bubble-Gum Government
George: “Did I ever tell you dudes that I was once in a band?”
Ben: “You rock, dude!”
Tom: “Dude, what did you riff?”
George: “Dude! We were, like, y’know, a fusion of neo-Caribbean folk-punk, indigenous African mountain vegetarian-dysharmonic, and, like, y’know, Tibetan urban squalor existentialist nihilism.”
Ben and Tom: “Dude! You’re so, like, ready to be, totally, commander-in-chief of the army of the rockin’ new republic!”
- A conversation not attributed to George Washington, Ben Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson
Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, Republican candidate for president, was pettily faulted by some, oh, artist, for playing one of his screeds in her campaign. Anyone who follows politics even casually will recall the lengthy catalogue of Republican candidates who have been forbidden to spin some rockin’ platters of bubblegum music despite having paid off ASCAP or BMI in order to do so.
The rational Republican faults Congresswoman Bachmann for bringing cheap music to an occasion of rational discourse. But she’s not the first politician to patronize the American people; Senator Bob Dole’s long-ago campaign riff, “I’m a Dole Man,” is still cringe-making.
At what point in history did soft-rock mucous – um, music – become obligatory in any political campaign beyond running for parliamentarian of the junior high school student council?
Consider Abraham Lincoln hiring a garbage – um, garage – band to sing “California Dreamin’” as an intro at Gettysburg.
Imagine Winston Churchill, in Britain’s darkest hour, prefacing his “We shall fight on the beaches” speech with a recording of “Heyyyyyyyyyyyyy, heyuh, baby, why don’cha be my gurllll!”
Perhaps President Reagan should have bracketed his memorial to the Challenger astronauts by twanging out a few chords from “Hang on, Sloopy.”
Think of the combined houses of Congress waving their hands in unison and singin’ along to “Heartbreak Hotel” in response to President Churchill’s “Infamy” speech.
No. Let’s not do any of that.
Democracy is not grounded on a soundtrack; democracy is grounded on a collection of documents which promote the dignity of man based on reasoning from natural law and from divine revelation.
But is music important? Of course it is, along with literature and the visual arts. However, someone standing for political office does not drag along a swiped Shoney’s Big Boy statue to show he’s one of The People sculpturally.
And music has long been employed in political campaigns, John Philip Sousa, for instance, and a bit of Aaron Copeland. These fellows ain’t Mahler or Wagner, but they celebrate an outward and exuberent America in a way that the whiny, introspective me, me, me-ness of adolescent roller-skatin’ noise never can. The reality is that contemporary campaign music is to music what rest-room graffiti is to Cezanne and Matisse.
If politicians must have campaign music then let them bring on something a little more grown-up than Peaches and Herb.
Beyond the election campaigns, this country also needs to consider an appropriate sound-track for bombing the he** out of countries with whom we’re not at war. I suggest “There’s a Kind of Hush all over the World” by Herman’s Hermits.
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
Bubble-Gum Government
George: “Did I ever tell you dudes that I was once in a band?”
Ben: “You rock, dude!”
Tom: “Dude, what did you riff?”
George: “Dude! We were, like, y’know, a fusion of neo-Caribbean folk-punk, indigenous African mountain vegetarian-dysharmonic, and, like, y’know, Tibetan urban squalor existentialist nihilism.”
Ben and Tom: “Dude! You’re so, like, ready to be, totally, commander-in-chief of the army of the rockin’ new republic!”
- A conversation not attributed to George Washington, Ben Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson
Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, Republican candidate for president, was pettily faulted by some, oh, artist, for playing one of his screeds in her campaign. Anyone who follows politics even casually will recall the lengthy catalogue of Republican candidates who have been forbidden to spin some rockin’ platters of bubblegum music despite having paid off ASCAP or BMI in order to do so.
The rational Republican faults Congresswoman Bachmann for bringing cheap music to an occasion of rational discourse. But she’s not the first politician to patronize the American people; Senator Bob Dole’s long-ago campaign riff, “I’m a Dole Man,” is still cringe-making.
At what point in history did soft-rock mucous – um, music – become obligatory in any political campaign beyond running for parliamentarian of the junior high school student council?
Consider Abraham Lincoln hiring a garbage – um, garage – band to sing “California Dreamin’” as an intro at Gettysburg.
Imagine Winston Churchill, in Britain’s darkest hour, prefacing his “We shall fight on the beaches” speech with a recording of “Heyyyyyyyyyyyyy, heyuh, baby, why don’cha be my gurllll!”
Perhaps President Reagan should have bracketed his memorial to the Challenger astronauts by twanging out a few chords from “Hang on, Sloopy.”
Think of the combined houses of Congress waving their hands in unison and singin’ along to “Heartbreak Hotel” in response to President Churchill’s “Infamy” speech.
No. Let’s not do any of that.
Democracy is not grounded on a soundtrack; democracy is grounded on a collection of documents which promote the dignity of man based on reasoning from natural law and from divine revelation.
But is music important? Of course it is, along with literature and the visual arts. However, someone standing for political office does not drag along a swiped Shoney’s Big Boy statue to show he’s one of The People sculpturally.
And music has long been employed in political campaigns, John Philip Sousa, for instance, and a bit of Aaron Copeland. These fellows ain’t Mahler or Wagner, but they celebrate an outward and exuberent America in a way that the whiny, introspective me, me, me-ness of adolescent roller-skatin’ noise never can. The reality is that contemporary campaign music is to music what rest-room graffiti is to Cezanne and Matisse.
If politicians must have campaign music then let them bring on something a little more grown-up than Peaches and Herb.
Beyond the election campaigns, this country also needs to consider an appropriate sound-track for bombing the he** out of countries with whom we’re not at war. I suggest “There’s a Kind of Hush all over the World” by Herman’s Hermits.
-30-
Monday, June 27, 2011
Ash Wednesday in Libya
Ash Wednesday in Libya
For Anthony Germain
The wisdom of the desert is dispersed
Among the industrial monuments
To mechanized murder, wireless chaos,
And war-porn for touch-screen degenerates.
On this Ash Wednesday night while smoky flares
Obscure, with false, flickering fumes, the stars
God sent to dance above those ancient lands,
You choke and weep among the ashes of
More victims of pale Herod’s shopping trips.
So of your kindness grant that we, your friends,
May wear your ashes for you on this night,
And for the weary innocents who flee
The ashes of their burnt and blasted world.
For Anthony Germain
The wisdom of the desert is dispersed
Among the industrial monuments
To mechanized murder, wireless chaos,
And war-porn for touch-screen degenerates.
On this Ash Wednesday night while smoky flares
Obscure, with false, flickering fumes, the stars
God sent to dance above those ancient lands,
You choke and weep among the ashes of
More victims of pale Herod’s shopping trips.
So of your kindness grant that we, your friends,
May wear your ashes for you on this night,
And for the weary innocents who flee
The ashes of their burnt and blasted world.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Rule by Frat Boys
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Rule by Fraternitaspuerate
Remember Joel Fleischman, Northern Exposure’s lead whose sense of entitlement clashed with his obligations to the taxpayers who funded his medical school? Our government at present seems to consist of an oligarchy of Joel Fleischmans, and we the people elected them.
In high school civics class we were told about the basic forms of governance: oligarchy, monarchy, democracy, republic, dictatorship, and so on, and some of the murderous variants such as the concept of the soviet, committee of public safety, and triumvirate.
In our time we have a new form of government, rule by fraernitaspuerate – rule by frat boy, by Joel Fleischman and his partners in perceived privilege.
When Britain stood alone against the Nazi menace, Churchill did not don knee pants and take to the golf course to yuck it up with King George in a baseball cap while England was being bombed. Crockett, Travis, and Bowie did not compromise their differences during 18 rounds on the Alamo’s golf course (officers only, except for Wednesdays and Thursdays). There is no report of a golf course on Masada, but perhaps the Chinese will have built one by next week, along with a luxury hotel near the western gate.
In the news we read of our military operations all over the world, operations of dubious legality that even Emperor Vespasian would find pointless, and on the same page we also read about our President and our Speaker of the House playing golf in the midst of economic and moral crises. Our Merovingian Congress squeaks harmlessly, left leaderless by the knee-pants abdication of John Boehner, R-Ohio, who sacrificed his ethics at the first tee.
Well into the 1970s the leadership of this country, locally and nationally, consisted of folks who suffered through the Depression and World War II, and who worked at real jobs. The question was not “What fraternity did you belong to?” but “What was your outfit?” Some of them had some college but few of them had four-year degrees.
Our leaders now seem to be superannuated frat boys with little sense of responsibility: John Kerry, John Edwards, Anthony Weiner, and now Congressman Boehner and his new-found golfing buddy. Heck, even Sarah Palin has not really explained why she abandoned the Alaskan voters. The lack of gravitas, the nonexistent sense of duty, and the inability to discern between right and wrong seem to be defining characteristics of our leadership and, thus, of the electorate who empowered them.
Perhaps we should asked future prospective candidates to electoral office to respond to the following prompts:
1. Tell us all about your social network issues.
2. Have you ever heard of the Constitution? Does Section 8 of Article 1 mean anything to you? How about the 4th Amendment?
3. Does your church have a history leading further back than, say, last week, and a leadership that consists of more than the pastor’s extended family? Codicil: is your copy of the Bible larger than Bill Clinton’s?
4. Have you misrepresented your military history?
5. Have you ever belonged to a fraternity – that is, have you paid people to humiliate you so they’d be your friends?
6. Have you ever had a job that required you to sweat? (Not going populist on ya here, folks, but all these 4.0-GPA-idea-men are wrecking us)
7. Do you solemnly vow never to use a screen-thingie during your speeches?
8. Do you solemnly vow never to wear a white tie with a dinner jacket?
9. Do you solemnly vow never to wear knee pants / pedal-pushers?
10. Do you solemnly vow never to wear lumberjack shirts while campaigning?
11. Do you play golf? Why? Explain yourself.
12. Do you wear those dime-store wraparound sunglasses that make you look like a dragonfly with glaucoma? Why?
13. Do you understand that if we elect you to office, the airplane, the house, the cars, the staff, the money – they’re not yours; they’re ours?
14. No more soft/pop 1960s rock at the conventions. Seriously. As a codicil, no Republicans trying to dance; there’s enough sorrow in the world already.
15. You ain’t the Queen. If you ever, ever, ever lapse into the first-person plural, you will be required to resign immediately and will lose your citizenship for cause.
Now, then, agree to these terms and one or two of us might consider you for public office; the rest of the electorate are too busy listening to Rush Limbaugh or Oprah Winfrey to vote.
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
Rule by Fraternitaspuerate
Remember Joel Fleischman, Northern Exposure’s lead whose sense of entitlement clashed with his obligations to the taxpayers who funded his medical school? Our government at present seems to consist of an oligarchy of Joel Fleischmans, and we the people elected them.
In high school civics class we were told about the basic forms of governance: oligarchy, monarchy, democracy, republic, dictatorship, and so on, and some of the murderous variants such as the concept of the soviet, committee of public safety, and triumvirate.
In our time we have a new form of government, rule by fraernitaspuerate – rule by frat boy, by Joel Fleischman and his partners in perceived privilege.
When Britain stood alone against the Nazi menace, Churchill did not don knee pants and take to the golf course to yuck it up with King George in a baseball cap while England was being bombed. Crockett, Travis, and Bowie did not compromise their differences during 18 rounds on the Alamo’s golf course (officers only, except for Wednesdays and Thursdays). There is no report of a golf course on Masada, but perhaps the Chinese will have built one by next week, along with a luxury hotel near the western gate.
In the news we read of our military operations all over the world, operations of dubious legality that even Emperor Vespasian would find pointless, and on the same page we also read about our President and our Speaker of the House playing golf in the midst of economic and moral crises. Our Merovingian Congress squeaks harmlessly, left leaderless by the knee-pants abdication of John Boehner, R-Ohio, who sacrificed his ethics at the first tee.
Well into the 1970s the leadership of this country, locally and nationally, consisted of folks who suffered through the Depression and World War II, and who worked at real jobs. The question was not “What fraternity did you belong to?” but “What was your outfit?” Some of them had some college but few of them had four-year degrees.
Our leaders now seem to be superannuated frat boys with little sense of responsibility: John Kerry, John Edwards, Anthony Weiner, and now Congressman Boehner and his new-found golfing buddy. Heck, even Sarah Palin has not really explained why she abandoned the Alaskan voters. The lack of gravitas, the nonexistent sense of duty, and the inability to discern between right and wrong seem to be defining characteristics of our leadership and, thus, of the electorate who empowered them.
Perhaps we should asked future prospective candidates to electoral office to respond to the following prompts:
1. Tell us all about your social network issues.
2. Have you ever heard of the Constitution? Does Section 8 of Article 1 mean anything to you? How about the 4th Amendment?
3. Does your church have a history leading further back than, say, last week, and a leadership that consists of more than the pastor’s extended family? Codicil: is your copy of the Bible larger than Bill Clinton’s?
4. Have you misrepresented your military history?
5. Have you ever belonged to a fraternity – that is, have you paid people to humiliate you so they’d be your friends?
6. Have you ever had a job that required you to sweat? (Not going populist on ya here, folks, but all these 4.0-GPA-idea-men are wrecking us)
7. Do you solemnly vow never to use a screen-thingie during your speeches?
8. Do you solemnly vow never to wear a white tie with a dinner jacket?
9. Do you solemnly vow never to wear knee pants / pedal-pushers?
10. Do you solemnly vow never to wear lumberjack shirts while campaigning?
11. Do you play golf? Why? Explain yourself.
12. Do you wear those dime-store wraparound sunglasses that make you look like a dragonfly with glaucoma? Why?
13. Do you understand that if we elect you to office, the airplane, the house, the cars, the staff, the money – they’re not yours; they’re ours?
14. No more soft/pop 1960s rock at the conventions. Seriously. As a codicil, no Republicans trying to dance; there’s enough sorrow in the world already.
15. You ain’t the Queen. If you ever, ever, ever lapse into the first-person plural, you will be required to resign immediately and will lose your citizenship for cause.
Now, then, agree to these terms and one or two of us might consider you for public office; the rest of the electorate are too busy listening to Rush Limbaugh or Oprah Winfrey to vote.
-30-
Smoke Break
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Smoke Break
By late next year all cigarette packages in this nation must bear pictures of diseased lungs, smoke issuing from a tracheostomy, and perhaps even dead bodies. The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) believes that these grotesqueries will turn folks off to smoking.
The reality, of course, is that pictures of cancerous corpses are just the thing to attract the attention and pocket money of the typical 16-year-old.
If cigarettes really are fatal, then why don’t government entities ban the darned things? Is it possible that quitting tobacco taxes is harder for a government than quitting tobacco is for a three-pack-a-day man?
But the really cosmic question is this: do cigarette company workers have to go outside for a smoke break?
We’ve all heard the news about cigarettes; there are more urgent warnings necessary on these other objects:
Guitar: “Caution – picking up this instrument will give you delusions of talent.”
Television: “Warning – this is not your life.”
Video game: “Danger – play this only if you don’t have any friends.”
Goatee: “Before wearing this, um, style, consider the root word of ‘goatee.’”
Goatee II: “Aviso – the goatee is the hirsute equivalent of the Nehru jacket.”
Big-Box Electronics Store: “Please note that every employee in this building is programmed to lie to you.”
Telephone message: “When we say your call is important to us, we don’t mean it. If your call were important, you wouldn’t be listening to a recording. Have a nice day. If you believe that this recording cares.”
Pencil: “This device does not know mathematics.”
Restaurant: “The servers here have been instructed to nasal out ‘no problem’ instead of saying ‘you’re welcome.’”
Family restaurant: “The ‘family’ bit means screaming children throwing food.”
Vegetarian restaurant: “You can hear the carrots scream when you bite into them. Really. Carrots are your friends. Why would you eat your friends?”
Radio talk show: “Listening obediently to the following millionaire who never had a real job does not constitute participatory democracy.”
Bible: “Reading this does not make you judge of the universe.”
Golf club: “Using this stick to hit a little ball into a hole in the ground does not empower you to send young people to their deaths in other countries.”
State line: “Welcome to New York. You may not marry your bicycle. Yet.”
Bottled water: “This is just water. We took it out of a tap and drained it into a bottle made of weird chemicals. And you’re going to pay for this?”
National Public Radio: “As we go into yet another annoying fund-raising campaign, remember than some of our announcers are given over $300,000 a year to babble on the radio. And now, let’s dig into those pockets, little people; NPR needs the money for, like, y’know, social justice and global warming.”
Oh, yeah, there’s a whole lotta smoke being blown these days.
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
Smoke Break
By late next year all cigarette packages in this nation must bear pictures of diseased lungs, smoke issuing from a tracheostomy, and perhaps even dead bodies. The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) believes that these grotesqueries will turn folks off to smoking.
The reality, of course, is that pictures of cancerous corpses are just the thing to attract the attention and pocket money of the typical 16-year-old.
If cigarettes really are fatal, then why don’t government entities ban the darned things? Is it possible that quitting tobacco taxes is harder for a government than quitting tobacco is for a three-pack-a-day man?
But the really cosmic question is this: do cigarette company workers have to go outside for a smoke break?
We’ve all heard the news about cigarettes; there are more urgent warnings necessary on these other objects:
Guitar: “Caution – picking up this instrument will give you delusions of talent.”
Television: “Warning – this is not your life.”
Video game: “Danger – play this only if you don’t have any friends.”
Goatee: “Before wearing this, um, style, consider the root word of ‘goatee.’”
Goatee II: “Aviso – the goatee is the hirsute equivalent of the Nehru jacket.”
Big-Box Electronics Store: “Please note that every employee in this building is programmed to lie to you.”
Telephone message: “When we say your call is important to us, we don’t mean it. If your call were important, you wouldn’t be listening to a recording. Have a nice day. If you believe that this recording cares.”
Pencil: “This device does not know mathematics.”
Restaurant: “The servers here have been instructed to nasal out ‘no problem’ instead of saying ‘you’re welcome.’”
Family restaurant: “The ‘family’ bit means screaming children throwing food.”
Vegetarian restaurant: “You can hear the carrots scream when you bite into them. Really. Carrots are your friends. Why would you eat your friends?”
Radio talk show: “Listening obediently to the following millionaire who never had a real job does not constitute participatory democracy.”
Bible: “Reading this does not make you judge of the universe.”
Golf club: “Using this stick to hit a little ball into a hole in the ground does not empower you to send young people to their deaths in other countries.”
State line: “Welcome to New York. You may not marry your bicycle. Yet.”
Bottled water: “This is just water. We took it out of a tap and drained it into a bottle made of weird chemicals. And you’re going to pay for this?”
National Public Radio: “As we go into yet another annoying fund-raising campaign, remember than some of our announcers are given over $300,000 a year to babble on the radio. And now, let’s dig into those pockets, little people; NPR needs the money for, like, y’know, social justice and global warming.”
Oh, yeah, there’s a whole lotta smoke being blown these days.
-30-
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Barnes and Noble -- The Nook's Disappearing Books
The Nook is an amusing gadget, but mine -- this is, of course, a sampling of somewhat less than 100 Nooks -- is unreliable.
When I bought my Nook I decided to download only free books until I found something I really wanted to buy. After all, most of us have the books we really want, and the Nook would be good for travel books, detective stories, easy road-reads, and so on. In the event, I will never purchase a book for the Nook because the free ones have a bad habit of disappearing when wanted, not unlike the sales folks in big-box stores in Beaumont, Texas. Why, then, would I buy a book that might then disappear?
Barnes and Noble's customer service on the 'net and in the Beaumont store are great, and I cannot fault them at all. The problem lies in an ill-tried and clumsy technology, and in gadgets made by the lowest Chinese Communist bidder.
At one point everything I had downloaded was not accessible; the books were only titles on the screen. I went to the store and tried to download them again, and this didn't work either. Finally, the nice B & N staff formed a committee, examined the problem and the machine, and concluded that the only solution was to de-register the Nook and then re-register it.
A critical Why? goes here.
So I spent an hour re-re-downloading my books, some twenty of which wouldn't download again. A problem with this is that the titles still exist, and the only way of getting rid of them is to access one's B & N account on a computer (again, why should this be necessary?), and deleting the non-downloadable titles, one at a time. And this does not always work.
The screen has frozen at least twice, maybe thrice, and while the solution is not demanding -- prying the Nook apart and removing the battery for a few minutes -- why should this be necessary at all?
The e-reader has a great future, and I enjoy downloading obscure, out-of-print books for free. But the Nook is not yet ready. If you buy the gadget, don't trust it.
When I bought my Nook I decided to download only free books until I found something I really wanted to buy. After all, most of us have the books we really want, and the Nook would be good for travel books, detective stories, easy road-reads, and so on. In the event, I will never purchase a book for the Nook because the free ones have a bad habit of disappearing when wanted, not unlike the sales folks in big-box stores in Beaumont, Texas. Why, then, would I buy a book that might then disappear?
Barnes and Noble's customer service on the 'net and in the Beaumont store are great, and I cannot fault them at all. The problem lies in an ill-tried and clumsy technology, and in gadgets made by the lowest Chinese Communist bidder.
At one point everything I had downloaded was not accessible; the books were only titles on the screen. I went to the store and tried to download them again, and this didn't work either. Finally, the nice B & N staff formed a committee, examined the problem and the machine, and concluded that the only solution was to de-register the Nook and then re-register it.
A critical Why? goes here.
So I spent an hour re-re-downloading my books, some twenty of which wouldn't download again. A problem with this is that the titles still exist, and the only way of getting rid of them is to access one's B & N account on a computer (again, why should this be necessary?), and deleting the non-downloadable titles, one at a time. And this does not always work.
The screen has frozen at least twice, maybe thrice, and while the solution is not demanding -- prying the Nook apart and removing the battery for a few minutes -- why should this be necessary at all?
The e-reader has a great future, and I enjoy downloading obscure, out-of-print books for free. But the Nook is not yet ready. If you buy the gadget, don't trust it.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Little House in the Big (and burning) Woods
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Little House in the Big (and burning) Woods
Around 7:45 P.M. evening last week I was enjoying the dusk and giving the plants a drink when I noticed that the fields and woods to the northwest of the house were hidden in a thick white cloud, and with that quickness of mind which is a marvel to all who know me I deduced that we had a woods fire.
I did the 911 thing and then drove across the field to the tree line. I walked into the deepening-dusk woods and heard something moving -- arsonist? Deer? Wolf? Congressman Weiner? Hillary Clinton wearing a Richard Nixon mask?
"Hey!" I called. The moving stopped. I pushed my way perhaps thirty feet into that thickety, attack-briary mess and gave it up, bruised, scratched, and humbled, and returned to the open.
The first responder on the scene was a city police officer, and quick upon his tire-treads followed the Kirbyville VFD. Their sirens set the wolves – and my dachshund, Thunderbolt -- to howling mightily.
The firemen tried to walk into the brush, made it about thirty feet, and returned, scratched and sweating and gasping in the foul heat. This was a sub-theme of the evening -- everyone who responded to the fire, neighbors, firemen, and Forest Service, charged into the thicket against briars and vines, and all returned much exercised. A five-year growth of thicket in East Texas is as effective a barrier as all the barbed-wire in Viet-Nam bunched together.
An advance team from the Forest Service arrived, all kitted out in Darth Vadar helmets with recessed blue lights for forward visuals and blinking red lights on the rear. They charged into the woods and shortly reappeared, frustrated as the rest of us, their navigational lights still shining and blinking.
Two Forest Service bulldozers arrived and were quickly off-loaded, and just as quickly charged into the woods and disappeared, thundering unseen in the darkness toward the flames. These iron dragons surrounded the fire within an hour, isolating it to die, and within an hour or so were back on their trailers being transported to another fire.
The field was crowded with cars and trucks and four-wheelers and all sorts of people smoking cigarettes and talking on radios and cussing and enjoying themselves mightily in the hot night. And God bless 'em, for within a few hours they had the situation controlled. All the neighbors showed up, most of them with shovels, ready to get with it. Good folks, good folks.
The source of the fire is unknown; there was some speculation about lightning strikes from the cruel, teasing black clouds that sail above our year-long drought most afternoons.
Y’r ‘umble scrivener still has a house in which to live because of the quick response of the fire and forest services, but if they had been away on another fire -- the village idiots are loose, you know, loping along with their knuckles scraping the ground, playing with matches, their two or three brain cells misfiring at the synapses -- this narrative might not have ended happily.
Thanks, everyone.
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
Little House in the Big (and burning) Woods
Around 7:45 P.M. evening last week I was enjoying the dusk and giving the plants a drink when I noticed that the fields and woods to the northwest of the house were hidden in a thick white cloud, and with that quickness of mind which is a marvel to all who know me I deduced that we had a woods fire.
I did the 911 thing and then drove across the field to the tree line. I walked into the deepening-dusk woods and heard something moving -- arsonist? Deer? Wolf? Congressman Weiner? Hillary Clinton wearing a Richard Nixon mask?
"Hey!" I called. The moving stopped. I pushed my way perhaps thirty feet into that thickety, attack-briary mess and gave it up, bruised, scratched, and humbled, and returned to the open.
The first responder on the scene was a city police officer, and quick upon his tire-treads followed the Kirbyville VFD. Their sirens set the wolves – and my dachshund, Thunderbolt -- to howling mightily.
The firemen tried to walk into the brush, made it about thirty feet, and returned, scratched and sweating and gasping in the foul heat. This was a sub-theme of the evening -- everyone who responded to the fire, neighbors, firemen, and Forest Service, charged into the thicket against briars and vines, and all returned much exercised. A five-year growth of thicket in East Texas is as effective a barrier as all the barbed-wire in Viet-Nam bunched together.
An advance team from the Forest Service arrived, all kitted out in Darth Vadar helmets with recessed blue lights for forward visuals and blinking red lights on the rear. They charged into the woods and shortly reappeared, frustrated as the rest of us, their navigational lights still shining and blinking.
Two Forest Service bulldozers arrived and were quickly off-loaded, and just as quickly charged into the woods and disappeared, thundering unseen in the darkness toward the flames. These iron dragons surrounded the fire within an hour, isolating it to die, and within an hour or so were back on their trailers being transported to another fire.
The field was crowded with cars and trucks and four-wheelers and all sorts of people smoking cigarettes and talking on radios and cussing and enjoying themselves mightily in the hot night. And God bless 'em, for within a few hours they had the situation controlled. All the neighbors showed up, most of them with shovels, ready to get with it. Good folks, good folks.
The source of the fire is unknown; there was some speculation about lightning strikes from the cruel, teasing black clouds that sail above our year-long drought most afternoons.
Y’r ‘umble scrivener still has a house in which to live because of the quick response of the fire and forest services, but if they had been away on another fire -- the village idiots are loose, you know, loping along with their knuckles scraping the ground, playing with matches, their two or three brain cells misfiring at the synapses -- this narrative might not have ended happily.
Thanks, everyone.
-30-
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Quotations from the 45th President
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Quotations from the 45th President
“Golf? No, never tried it. But now let me tell you about hunting squirrels when I was a child…”
“I swear to you, the American people, that I will never appear in public in knee-pants, a baseball cap, or those bug-eyed sunglasses that look like a dragon-fly wearing an oil spill.”
“Today I told the Air Force and the Marine Corps to take away the presidential jets and helicopters, and to employ them for medevac purposes for our sick and wounded soldiers. I don’t need all that look-at-me junk and you sure don’t need to pay for it.”
“I told my (husband / wife) that if (he / she) didn’t shut up in public I was going to ship (him / her) to a (monastery / convent) in the Ural Mountains of Russia until this presidential term is over.”
“This morning I apologized to the British people and asked if we could have back that bust of Winston Churchill. Then I had a GS-2 clerk telephone Hamad Kharzi in Afghanistan and advise him that he might want to make his funeral arrangements because as of noon tomorrow I’m withdrawing military protection and leaving him to the mercy of his own folks.”
“I want to apologize to the American taxpayer for all the security that’s around me. I’m told it’s a necessity but I know it cuts me off from reality. I promise you that I’ll do my best to reduce the private armies with which so many politicians, including presidents, surround themselves. If the ordinary working American doesn’t have security guards on the job or at home, why should he have to pay more taxes so others can have them?”
“This morning I withdrew all limousines and drivers from federal service, including the presidential ain’t-I-special-mobile. If an undersecretary for the secretary to the czar of the Bureau of Resume’-Building can’t find his way to work on the salary you’re paying him, then maybe he’s not qualified for the job.”
“I can’t require this, of course, but today I ask all state governors, beginning with the Republicans, to get rid of their taxpayer-funded helicopters and limousines.”
“But folks, you’ve got to do your part. Only about half of you are voting, and so no wonder you’ve got fat governors flying to their children’s ball games while asking you to sacrifice. Don’t complain if you’re not voting.”
“During this presidency the presidential dinnerware and silverware will gather dust. In the White House folks will eat like you do at your house. Also, the self-conscious attempts at culture are over – no more bogus poets who don’t know an iamb from an anapest. No more musical evenings. You elected a president, not a cruise director.”
“Several congressmen suggested to me that somehow it would be to this nation’s advantage if a great many 19-year-old Americans were to die in Libya, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and God knows where else. I assured those congressmen that if this nation ever goes to war it will be with a congressional declaration as required by the Constitution, and that their children and mine would be conscripted as enlisted soldiers and sent into combat first.”
“And, now, on the second day of this presidency…”
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
Quotations from the 45th President
“Golf? No, never tried it. But now let me tell you about hunting squirrels when I was a child…”
“I swear to you, the American people, that I will never appear in public in knee-pants, a baseball cap, or those bug-eyed sunglasses that look like a dragon-fly wearing an oil spill.”
“Today I told the Air Force and the Marine Corps to take away the presidential jets and helicopters, and to employ them for medevac purposes for our sick and wounded soldiers. I don’t need all that look-at-me junk and you sure don’t need to pay for it.”
“I told my (husband / wife) that if (he / she) didn’t shut up in public I was going to ship (him / her) to a (monastery / convent) in the Ural Mountains of Russia until this presidential term is over.”
“This morning I apologized to the British people and asked if we could have back that bust of Winston Churchill. Then I had a GS-2 clerk telephone Hamad Kharzi in Afghanistan and advise him that he might want to make his funeral arrangements because as of noon tomorrow I’m withdrawing military protection and leaving him to the mercy of his own folks.”
“I want to apologize to the American taxpayer for all the security that’s around me. I’m told it’s a necessity but I know it cuts me off from reality. I promise you that I’ll do my best to reduce the private armies with which so many politicians, including presidents, surround themselves. If the ordinary working American doesn’t have security guards on the job or at home, why should he have to pay more taxes so others can have them?”
“This morning I withdrew all limousines and drivers from federal service, including the presidential ain’t-I-special-mobile. If an undersecretary for the secretary to the czar of the Bureau of Resume’-Building can’t find his way to work on the salary you’re paying him, then maybe he’s not qualified for the job.”
“I can’t require this, of course, but today I ask all state governors, beginning with the Republicans, to get rid of their taxpayer-funded helicopters and limousines.”
“But folks, you’ve got to do your part. Only about half of you are voting, and so no wonder you’ve got fat governors flying to their children’s ball games while asking you to sacrifice. Don’t complain if you’re not voting.”
“During this presidency the presidential dinnerware and silverware will gather dust. In the White House folks will eat like you do at your house. Also, the self-conscious attempts at culture are over – no more bogus poets who don’t know an iamb from an anapest. No more musical evenings. You elected a president, not a cruise director.”
“Several congressmen suggested to me that somehow it would be to this nation’s advantage if a great many 19-year-old Americans were to die in Libya, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and God knows where else. I assured those congressmen that if this nation ever goes to war it will be with a congressional declaration as required by the Constitution, and that their children and mine would be conscripted as enlisted soldiers and sent into combat first.”
“And, now, on the second day of this presidency…”
-30-
Sunday, May 29, 2011
The Autopen is Mightier than the Reality Show
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
The Autopen is Mightier than the Reality Show
Techniques for job seekers change with the times, but although a dark suit might not be required now, reporting for a job interview while wearing a red cape is probably a no-no.
What’s really funny – laugh now -- is that you’re paying for the red cape.
A taxpayer-funded body called Workplace Central Florida (“employment agency” is, like, y’know, so old-school) has wasted – um, invested -- some $14,000 for red capes for central Floridians looking for work. Folks in the off-center parts of Florida can be grateful that they are merely unemployed, not both unemployed and made to dress like really fey superheroes. The feeling – obviously not thinking – behind this public humiliation of the unemployed is that if they are required to costume themselves like fools they will then take heart as they battle the scourge of (I am not making this up) “Doctor Evil Unemployment.”
Just why the former Mister Unemployment has been granted a doctorate and by what institution eludes the perceptive reader, but then one supposes that “Reverend Unemployment” would offend the millions of men and not a few women who like to be saluted in that market place mentioned in the Gospels.
Workplace Central Florida receives $24 million dollars annually from those of you who already have jobs, and I say that’s money well-spent. If working people were to keep more of the dollars they earn they’d probably waste their income on a new roof or a more dependable car. How good of the wise and benevolent government people vote for to relieve them of making decisions about the results of their own work.
A few states up, in North Carolina, a Presbyterian church in Charlotte has been fined $4,000 for pruning their own crepe myrtle trees (otherwise known as really big weeds) on their own property.
The city of Charlotte employs a “senior urban forester,” who missed his true calling as a Nazi UberSturmPoopFuhrer, to punish people for taking care of their lawns. If there is a senior urban forester then it follows that there are junior urban foresters and perhaps even stadtwaldjugend marching about in black shorts and snooping in Charlotte’s back yards for unauthorized and disharmonious vegetation.
If you wish to trim your own trees in your own yard in Charlotte you must apply to the city foresters, the Green Gestapo, for a permit, preferably with your cloth cap clutched in your dirty hands, you swine, and your head ‘umbly bowed. If your papers are not in order you will be punished at $100 per branch. The North Carolina Division of Forestry makes the friendly suggestion that you should be should be certified by the National Horticulture Board in order to lop off a branch that’s scratching your car, but we’ll overlook it this time, comrade. We have ways of making your daisies talk, and we know where your tomato plants live.
Punishing people for being tidy and responsible is clearly very profitable for the thugs – um, public servants -- in Charlotte’s city hall: look at a tree, decide that you don’t like the way it’s shaped, and write a ticket for $4,000. Someone in Charlotte, North Carolina is looting lots of money from the people through the misuse of police powers.
But, again, the people of Charlotte, just like the people of every city, have exactly the city government for which they voted.
But in fact most people don’t vote. The turnout for presidential autopen elections every four years barely tops 50% of the electorate; off-year state and local elections are characterized by a few dutiful poll-watchers who are as lonely as a touring opera company in Nashville. Perhaps those who don’t vote are too busy listening to Rush Limbaugh and Oprah Winfrey.
But have no fear, the Republicans are here – only it turns out that some of those running for the office of Autopen of the United States don’t have much of a voting record either. They want your money, though.
Sarah Palin, for instance, is touring the United States in a big ol’ bus in order to ask for money. Now since Mrs. Palin already has lots and lots of money from her book and even more from her speaking tour, and according to rumor has recently bought a really big house in Arizona, just why she needs the few pot-metal coins the Tree Gauleiters haven’t yet seized from you is another philosophical question.
Maybe the voters aren’t showing up because there isn’t much to vote for; the Dancing With the Stars audition rejects presented to us by the Republicans won’t cut it any more than the autopen. To paraphrase Wordsworth, “Patrick Henry! Thou shouldst be living at this hour!”
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
The Autopen is Mightier than the Reality Show
Techniques for job seekers change with the times, but although a dark suit might not be required now, reporting for a job interview while wearing a red cape is probably a no-no.
What’s really funny – laugh now -- is that you’re paying for the red cape.
A taxpayer-funded body called Workplace Central Florida (“employment agency” is, like, y’know, so old-school) has wasted – um, invested -- some $14,000 for red capes for central Floridians looking for work. Folks in the off-center parts of Florida can be grateful that they are merely unemployed, not both unemployed and made to dress like really fey superheroes. The feeling – obviously not thinking – behind this public humiliation of the unemployed is that if they are required to costume themselves like fools they will then take heart as they battle the scourge of (I am not making this up) “Doctor Evil Unemployment.”
Just why the former Mister Unemployment has been granted a doctorate and by what institution eludes the perceptive reader, but then one supposes that “Reverend Unemployment” would offend the millions of men and not a few women who like to be saluted in that market place mentioned in the Gospels.
Workplace Central Florida receives $24 million dollars annually from those of you who already have jobs, and I say that’s money well-spent. If working people were to keep more of the dollars they earn they’d probably waste their income on a new roof or a more dependable car. How good of the wise and benevolent government people vote for to relieve them of making decisions about the results of their own work.
A few states up, in North Carolina, a Presbyterian church in Charlotte has been fined $4,000 for pruning their own crepe myrtle trees (otherwise known as really big weeds) on their own property.
The city of Charlotte employs a “senior urban forester,” who missed his true calling as a Nazi UberSturmPoopFuhrer, to punish people for taking care of their lawns. If there is a senior urban forester then it follows that there are junior urban foresters and perhaps even stadtwaldjugend marching about in black shorts and snooping in Charlotte’s back yards for unauthorized and disharmonious vegetation.
If you wish to trim your own trees in your own yard in Charlotte you must apply to the city foresters, the Green Gestapo, for a permit, preferably with your cloth cap clutched in your dirty hands, you swine, and your head ‘umbly bowed. If your papers are not in order you will be punished at $100 per branch. The North Carolina Division of Forestry makes the friendly suggestion that you should be should be certified by the National Horticulture Board in order to lop off a branch that’s scratching your car, but we’ll overlook it this time, comrade. We have ways of making your daisies talk, and we know where your tomato plants live.
Punishing people for being tidy and responsible is clearly very profitable for the thugs – um, public servants -- in Charlotte’s city hall: look at a tree, decide that you don’t like the way it’s shaped, and write a ticket for $4,000. Someone in Charlotte, North Carolina is looting lots of money from the people through the misuse of police powers.
But, again, the people of Charlotte, just like the people of every city, have exactly the city government for which they voted.
But in fact most people don’t vote. The turnout for presidential autopen elections every four years barely tops 50% of the electorate; off-year state and local elections are characterized by a few dutiful poll-watchers who are as lonely as a touring opera company in Nashville. Perhaps those who don’t vote are too busy listening to Rush Limbaugh and Oprah Winfrey.
But have no fear, the Republicans are here – only it turns out that some of those running for the office of Autopen of the United States don’t have much of a voting record either. They want your money, though.
Sarah Palin, for instance, is touring the United States in a big ol’ bus in order to ask for money. Now since Mrs. Palin already has lots and lots of money from her book and even more from her speaking tour, and according to rumor has recently bought a really big house in Arizona, just why she needs the few pot-metal coins the Tree Gauleiters haven’t yet seized from you is another philosophical question.
Maybe the voters aren’t showing up because there isn’t much to vote for; the Dancing With the Stars audition rejects presented to us by the Republicans won’t cut it any more than the autopen. To paraphrase Wordsworth, “Patrick Henry! Thou shouldst be living at this hour!”
-30-
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Tour de Hello Kitty
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Tour de Hello Kitty
When did America cease to be a nation of workers and become a community of guys in knee pants?
A recent tiff among those of the male persuasion who address each other as “Dude!” and aren’t joking about it is the alleged doping scandal regarding Lance Armstrong, The All-American-French Boy.
France, the nation who gave the world the great Christian philosopher Blaise Pascal, took it all back by inventing the Tour de France. “Tour de France” is a French (obviously) phrase which translates roughly as “boys wearing brightly-colored plastic toadstools on their heads and racing their bicycles.”
Once a year the sort of people who subscribe to PBS and voted for John Kerry become excited about the Tour de Knee Pants, perhaps because their boats are being refitted for the yachting season.
Professional cyclists seem to be the sort of people who, if they actually had jobs, would come to work with cell ‘phones and keys in one hand, and designer bottles of designer water in the other.
As in all races, someone wins a pedally-thing, and the others complain. Lance (what were his parents thinking?) won the Tour de Dude on numerous occasions, much to the annoyance of the French. Now he is accused by his bike-riding guy-dude-homies of having taken dope in order to win the Tour de Pedal-Pushers. Why are these accusations made years after the fact? Did Lance sneer at another bike-riding-guy-dude-homie’s bicycle helmet?
And what is with bicycle helmets, anyway? How does a Glad-Bag on steroids reposing on the top of a bicyclist’s hair protect the bicyclist? If a sport requires a helmet, wear a helmet, not a Hello Kitty fashion accessory.
But here’s the thesis of this article: who could be so excited about winning a bicycle race that he would take strange chemicals and ruin his health in order to win it? And, really, who could be so excited about watching a bicycle race without chemicals, mega-doses of caffeine, for instance? “I say, Percy, wake up; here come the leaders in the Tour de Yawn. Rather. Wot.”
Bicycle racing seems so, well, not American. Does one imagine Zorro riding to the rescue on his trusty bicycle? General Patton on a Schwinn? John Wayne pedaling off into the sunset? President Reagan polishing the saddle of his Raleigh? Teddy Roosevelt wheeling up San Juan Hill with one of those bubbles on his head? George Washington kneeling in the snow and praying while his faithful bicycle stands by? I think not.
Look, bicycling is a healthy sport, and many of us grew up falling off our Western Flyers, but when we were old enough to borrow the car we didn’t reject the Ford Galaxie 500 and choose to go cruisin’ downtown on the old bicycle instead.
Bicycling as a serious sport – what next, helmets and knee-pants and accusations of drug usage in shooting marbles?
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
Tour de Hello Kitty
When did America cease to be a nation of workers and become a community of guys in knee pants?
A recent tiff among those of the male persuasion who address each other as “Dude!” and aren’t joking about it is the alleged doping scandal regarding Lance Armstrong, The All-American-French Boy.
France, the nation who gave the world the great Christian philosopher Blaise Pascal, took it all back by inventing the Tour de France. “Tour de France” is a French (obviously) phrase which translates roughly as “boys wearing brightly-colored plastic toadstools on their heads and racing their bicycles.”
Once a year the sort of people who subscribe to PBS and voted for John Kerry become excited about the Tour de Knee Pants, perhaps because their boats are being refitted for the yachting season.
Professional cyclists seem to be the sort of people who, if they actually had jobs, would come to work with cell ‘phones and keys in one hand, and designer bottles of designer water in the other.
As in all races, someone wins a pedally-thing, and the others complain. Lance (what were his parents thinking?) won the Tour de Dude on numerous occasions, much to the annoyance of the French. Now he is accused by his bike-riding guy-dude-homies of having taken dope in order to win the Tour de Pedal-Pushers. Why are these accusations made years after the fact? Did Lance sneer at another bike-riding-guy-dude-homie’s bicycle helmet?
And what is with bicycle helmets, anyway? How does a Glad-Bag on steroids reposing on the top of a bicyclist’s hair protect the bicyclist? If a sport requires a helmet, wear a helmet, not a Hello Kitty fashion accessory.
But here’s the thesis of this article: who could be so excited about winning a bicycle race that he would take strange chemicals and ruin his health in order to win it? And, really, who could be so excited about watching a bicycle race without chemicals, mega-doses of caffeine, for instance? “I say, Percy, wake up; here come the leaders in the Tour de Yawn. Rather. Wot.”
Bicycle racing seems so, well, not American. Does one imagine Zorro riding to the rescue on his trusty bicycle? General Patton on a Schwinn? John Wayne pedaling off into the sunset? President Reagan polishing the saddle of his Raleigh? Teddy Roosevelt wheeling up San Juan Hill with one of those bubbles on his head? George Washington kneeling in the snow and praying while his faithful bicycle stands by? I think not.
Look, bicycling is a healthy sport, and many of us grew up falling off our Western Flyers, but when we were old enough to borrow the car we didn’t reject the Ford Galaxie 500 and choose to go cruisin’ downtown on the old bicycle instead.
Bicycling as a serious sport – what next, helmets and knee-pants and accusations of drug usage in shooting marbles?
-30-
Sunday, May 15, 2011
The Class of 2011
Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com
THE CLASS OF 2011
Children insist on growing up and going away. Their teachers are not happy about that. Really. Every year the old…um…venerable faculty see their high school seniors off to the new world they will make for themselves. Oh, sure, there are always one or two of whom one can sing “Thank God and Greyhound you’re gone,” but the loss of most of the students is very real, very painful, and very forever. And while the teachers taught them not to ever split infinitives (cough), which they immediately forget, 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 one hopes they have learned along the way.
Here then, Class of 2011 are some disconnected factoids your old English teacher meant to tell you earlier in the year, before the month of May very cleverly sneaked up on all of us:
1. In October you will return for homecoming. You will find 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. By October of 2012 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 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. MyFace, SpaceBook, Tweeter, and all the rest are surprisingly dangerous to your career and to your safety.
8. When posing for a photograph, never hold your hands folded in front of, um, a certain area of your anatomy. It makes you look as if you just discovered that your zipper is undone.
9. Have you ever noticed that you never see “Matthew 6:5-6” on a 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 tell you that the world is evil.
13. Most people are good, and can be trusted. But the two-per-centers, like hemorrhoids, do tend to get your attention.
14. 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.
15. Why should someone else have to raise your child?
16. Tattoos do have one useful purpose – they will help your relatives identify your body after you die of some weird disease that was on the needle. Oh, yeah, sure, the process is sterile – a tattoo parlor looks like a hospital, right?
17. 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.
18. 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.
19. Movies are made by committees. 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.
20. Put the 'phone down. Grasp the steering wheel firmly with both hands. Stay alive.
21. Save the planet? Reform the establishment? Stop meanies from beating harp seals to death? Get a job first.
22. Time to wear the big-boy pants.
23. 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.
24. Everyone tells cheerleader jokes, but cheerleaders are among the most successful people in adult life. The discipline, the hard work, the physical demands, the aesthetics, the teamwork, and the refusal to die of embarrassment while one’s mother screams abuse at the cheerleader sponsor do pay off in life.
25. 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 will be on the television screen in your home. Your life is your own – don’t become one of the bleating, tweeting sheep.
26. Giving back to the community begins now. Do something as an act of service to humanity -- join the volunteer fire department, teach Sunday school, clean up the city park one hour a week, assist at the nursing home.
27. Don’t bore people with sad stories about your horrible childhood. No one ever lived a Leave It To Beaver or Cosby existence. Get over the narcissism.
28. The shouting, abusive, 1-900-Send-Money TV preacher with the bouffant hairdo strutting about on the low-prole stage set while beating on a Bible and yelling is not going to come to the house in the middle of the night when your child is dying, you don’t have a job, and you don’t know where to turn. Your pastor – Chaucer’s Parsoun -- may not be cool, may not be a clever speaker, may not sport a Rolex watch, and may not have a really bad wig, but he’s here for you.
29. If you insist on taking your shirt off in public, shave your armpit hair. Or braid it. Or something.
30. Don’t wear a shirt that says “(bleep) Civilization” to a job interview.
31. 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.
32. Stop eating out of bags and boxes. Learn how to use a knife and fork.
33. Life is not a beer commercial.
34. On the Monday after graduation you’ll be just another unemployed American.
35. When you find yourself facing a dinner setting with more than two forks, don’t panic; no one else knows quite what to do with three forks either. No one’s watching anyway, so just enjoy the meal.
36. 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?
37. Green ideology means that gasoline costs more than you make.
38. A great secret to success in a job or in life is simply to show up.
39. No one ever agrees on where commas go. If someone shows you a grammar book dictating the use of commas one way, you can find another grammar book to contradict it.
40. Most people do not look good in baseball caps.
41. There is no such thing as a non-denominational worship service.
42. 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.
43. 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?
44. From now on the menus should be in words, not pictures.
45. 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.
46. 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.
47. Thank you notes: write ’em. It shows class. You can write; you’re a high school graduate, remember?
48. Don’t reach for the pen in someone else’s pocket. Carry your own.
49. The school award you should have received: For Compassion. While I must confess that I was happy to see some of you on a daily basis because that way I was sure my tires would be safe, there was never one single instance of any of you taking any advantage or being unkind in any way to those who were emotionally or physically vulnerable. Indeed, most of you took the extra step in being very protective of the very special young people who are blended into the student population. There is no nicely-framed award for that compassion, not here, anyway, but even now there is one with your name on it on the walls of a mansion which, we are assured, awaits each of us, in a house with many mansions. God never asked you to be theologically correct; He asked you to be compassionate, and you were. Keep the kindness within you always.
50. Take a long, lingering look at your classmates during graduation. You’ll never see all of them ever again. In ten years many of you will be happy and honorable. Others will have failed life, and at only 28 will be sad, tired, bitter old men and women with no hope. Given that you all went to the same cinder-block school with the same blinky fluorescent lights, suffered the same old boring teachers, drove along the same dusty roads, and grew up in the same fading little town, what will have made the difference?
Well, Class of 2011, it’s time to let go. Thanks for everything: for the paper balls and pizza and pep rallies and recitals and concerts and games, for your thoughts and essays, for your laughter and jokes, for usually paying attention to roll call (“Focus, class... focus...focus...focus...”), for really thinking about Macbeth and Becket and Beowulf, and those wonderful pilgrims (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-
mhall46184@aol.com
THE CLASS OF 2011
Children insist on growing up and going away. Their teachers are not happy about that. Really. Every year the old…um…venerable faculty see their high school seniors off to the new world they will make for themselves. Oh, sure, there are always one or two of whom one can sing “Thank God and Greyhound you’re gone,” but the loss of most of the students is very real, very painful, and very forever. And while the teachers taught them not to ever split infinitives (cough), which they immediately forget, 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 one hopes they have learned along the way.
Here then, Class of 2011 are some disconnected factoids your old English teacher meant to tell you earlier in the year, before the month of May very cleverly sneaked up on all of us:
1. In October you will return for homecoming. You will find 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. By October of 2012 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 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. MyFace, SpaceBook, Tweeter, and all the rest are surprisingly dangerous to your career and to your safety.
8. When posing for a photograph, never hold your hands folded in front of, um, a certain area of your anatomy. It makes you look as if you just discovered that your zipper is undone.
9. Have you ever noticed that you never see “Matthew 6:5-6” on a 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 tell you that the world is evil.
13. Most people are good, and can be trusted. But the two-per-centers, like hemorrhoids, do tend to get your attention.
14. 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.
15. Why should someone else have to raise your child?
16. Tattoos do have one useful purpose – they will help your relatives identify your body after you die of some weird disease that was on the needle. Oh, yeah, sure, the process is sterile – a tattoo parlor looks like a hospital, right?
17. 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.
18. 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.
19. Movies are made by committees. 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.
20. Put the 'phone down. Grasp the steering wheel firmly with both hands. Stay alive.
21. Save the planet? Reform the establishment? Stop meanies from beating harp seals to death? Get a job first.
22. Time to wear the big-boy pants.
23. 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.
24. Everyone tells cheerleader jokes, but cheerleaders are among the most successful people in adult life. The discipline, the hard work, the physical demands, the aesthetics, the teamwork, and the refusal to die of embarrassment while one’s mother screams abuse at the cheerleader sponsor do pay off in life.
25. 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 will be on the television screen in your home. Your life is your own – don’t become one of the bleating, tweeting sheep.
26. Giving back to the community begins now. Do something as an act of service to humanity -- join the volunteer fire department, teach Sunday school, clean up the city park one hour a week, assist at the nursing home.
27. Don’t bore people with sad stories about your horrible childhood. No one ever lived a Leave It To Beaver or Cosby existence. Get over the narcissism.
28. The shouting, abusive, 1-900-Send-Money TV preacher with the bouffant hairdo strutting about on the low-prole stage set while beating on a Bible and yelling is not going to come to the house in the middle of the night when your child is dying, you don’t have a job, and you don’t know where to turn. Your pastor – Chaucer’s Parsoun -- may not be cool, may not be a clever speaker, may not sport a Rolex watch, and may not have a really bad wig, but he’s here for you.
29. If you insist on taking your shirt off in public, shave your armpit hair. Or braid it. Or something.
30. Don’t wear a shirt that says “(bleep) Civilization” to a job interview.
31. 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.
32. Stop eating out of bags and boxes. Learn how to use a knife and fork.
33. Life is not a beer commercial.
34. On the Monday after graduation you’ll be just another unemployed American.
35. When you find yourself facing a dinner setting with more than two forks, don’t panic; no one else knows quite what to do with three forks either. No one’s watching anyway, so just enjoy the meal.
36. 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?
37. Green ideology means that gasoline costs more than you make.
38. A great secret to success in a job or in life is simply to show up.
39. No one ever agrees on where commas go. If someone shows you a grammar book dictating the use of commas one way, you can find another grammar book to contradict it.
40. Most people do not look good in baseball caps.
41. There is no such thing as a non-denominational worship service.
42. 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.
43. 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?
44. From now on the menus should be in words, not pictures.
45. 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.
46. 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.
47. Thank you notes: write ’em. It shows class. You can write; you’re a high school graduate, remember?
48. Don’t reach for the pen in someone else’s pocket. Carry your own.
49. The school award you should have received: For Compassion. While I must confess that I was happy to see some of you on a daily basis because that way I was sure my tires would be safe, there was never one single instance of any of you taking any advantage or being unkind in any way to those who were emotionally or physically vulnerable. Indeed, most of you took the extra step in being very protective of the very special young people who are blended into the student population. There is no nicely-framed award for that compassion, not here, anyway, but even now there is one with your name on it on the walls of a mansion which, we are assured, awaits each of us, in a house with many mansions. God never asked you to be theologically correct; He asked you to be compassionate, and you were. Keep the kindness within you always.
50. Take a long, lingering look at your classmates during graduation. You’ll never see all of them ever again. In ten years many of you will be happy and honorable. Others will have failed life, and at only 28 will be sad, tired, bitter old men and women with no hope. Given that you all went to the same cinder-block school with the same blinky fluorescent lights, suffered the same old boring teachers, drove along the same dusty roads, and grew up in the same fading little town, what will have made the difference?
Well, Class of 2011, it’s time to let go. Thanks for everything: for the paper balls and pizza and pep rallies and recitals and concerts and games, for your thoughts and essays, for your laughter and jokes, for usually paying attention to roll call (“Focus, class... focus...focus...focus...”), for really thinking about Macbeth and Becket and Beowulf, and those wonderful pilgrims (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-
Sunday, May 8, 2011
With Our Thrift-Shop Televisions We Will Conquer the World
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
With Our Thrift-Shop Televisions We Will Conquer the World
With the death of what’s-his-name in a small airborne assault in the great tradition of American raiders dating back to John Paul Jones, the world waits and wonders and ponders this great question: couldn’t the Scourge of Allah afford a better television set?
Did anyone ever tell The Pride of Riyadh “Hey, Fatwallah Guy, they’ve got flat screens now. I can score you one down at the souk for maybe two hundred filthy pagan dollars.”
But The Big Wookie was apparently comfortable with his thrift shop 15-inch and his Just For Bin dye job. Images of the old poop show him squatting on the floor huddled in a blanket and surfing the channels in a filthy room that any monotoothed Hardin County nester would disdain.
Wikipedia reports that the Lyin’ of the Desert’s favorite activities were charity, reading, horses, writing poetry, and following the English soccer team Arsenal. He was a soft-spoken man who perhaps enjoyed walks on the beach and candle-light beheadings of infidels. Hey, girls, isn’t that pretty much the blind date your well-meaning cousin set you up with after your guy Skippy cheated on you with your best friend Tammy?
The Big O was quite the family man, too. No one is clear on just how many wives he infested, and several of his exes (none in Texas) were never seen again. He sperm-donored some 20-25 children, and before his death was living with three wives, which may explain the haunted look on his face.
Did this Ward Cleaver of the Sands attend PTA meetings?
And imagine the home life of the family:
“Daddy, daddy! We’re playing Arabs and Jews, and Brother #12 won’t ever let me be the Arab! Why do I have to be tortured and beheaded all the time?”
“Now, boys, your father’s very busy plotting world domination and global genocide of the infidels; you go outside and play with the nice new Russian Kalashnikovs he gave you for World Peace Day.”
“Aw, shucks, honey, you’re the greatest. I think I’ll wait awhile before having you stoned to death.”
The sad reality is that Lurch was an evil man, a genocidal maniac who inspired others to murder thousands of people, most of them of his own religion. This spoiled son of the rich was technically trained but not educated, and loved machines – especially machine guns – but disposed of humans as mere obstacles to his demon-haunted fantasies of a perfect world.
When a good man dies one often says “We shall not see his like again,” and this is true. All good men exhibit the traits of honesty, loyalty, courage, and civilization, and yet they really are individuals.
But the evil little men who bedevil the world – they are drainage-ditch-common, mumbling and muttering as they listen to The Voices in grubby rented rooms or even grubbier tents, scribbling into their notebooks or tapping into their machines their eternal shrieks against God and man, their endlessly recycled versions of Mein Kampf, The Turner Diaries, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Das Kapital, and warehouses full of sophomoric manifestos.
Alas that we will see his like again.
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
With Our Thrift-Shop Televisions We Will Conquer the World
With the death of what’s-his-name in a small airborne assault in the great tradition of American raiders dating back to John Paul Jones, the world waits and wonders and ponders this great question: couldn’t the Scourge of Allah afford a better television set?
Did anyone ever tell The Pride of Riyadh “Hey, Fatwallah Guy, they’ve got flat screens now. I can score you one down at the souk for maybe two hundred filthy pagan dollars.”
But The Big Wookie was apparently comfortable with his thrift shop 15-inch and his Just For Bin dye job. Images of the old poop show him squatting on the floor huddled in a blanket and surfing the channels in a filthy room that any monotoothed Hardin County nester would disdain.
Wikipedia reports that the Lyin’ of the Desert’s favorite activities were charity, reading, horses, writing poetry, and following the English soccer team Arsenal. He was a soft-spoken man who perhaps enjoyed walks on the beach and candle-light beheadings of infidels. Hey, girls, isn’t that pretty much the blind date your well-meaning cousin set you up with after your guy Skippy cheated on you with your best friend Tammy?
The Big O was quite the family man, too. No one is clear on just how many wives he infested, and several of his exes (none in Texas) were never seen again. He sperm-donored some 20-25 children, and before his death was living with three wives, which may explain the haunted look on his face.
Did this Ward Cleaver of the Sands attend PTA meetings?
And imagine the home life of the family:
“Daddy, daddy! We’re playing Arabs and Jews, and Brother #12 won’t ever let me be the Arab! Why do I have to be tortured and beheaded all the time?”
“Now, boys, your father’s very busy plotting world domination and global genocide of the infidels; you go outside and play with the nice new Russian Kalashnikovs he gave you for World Peace Day.”
“Aw, shucks, honey, you’re the greatest. I think I’ll wait awhile before having you stoned to death.”
The sad reality is that Lurch was an evil man, a genocidal maniac who inspired others to murder thousands of people, most of them of his own religion. This spoiled son of the rich was technically trained but not educated, and loved machines – especially machine guns – but disposed of humans as mere obstacles to his demon-haunted fantasies of a perfect world.
When a good man dies one often says “We shall not see his like again,” and this is true. All good men exhibit the traits of honesty, loyalty, courage, and civilization, and yet they really are individuals.
But the evil little men who bedevil the world – they are drainage-ditch-common, mumbling and muttering as they listen to The Voices in grubby rented rooms or even grubbier tents, scribbling into their notebooks or tapping into their machines their eternal shrieks against God and man, their endlessly recycled versions of Mein Kampf, The Turner Diaries, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Das Kapital, and warehouses full of sophomoric manifestos.
Alas that we will see his like again.
-30-
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Always Wear a Clean Shirt at a Wedding
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Always Wear a Clean Shirt at a Wedding
During the recent royal wedding one could not help noticing the wild, bizarre headgear that seemed to detract from the sacredness of the occasion – I refer to hairy Prince Harry’s hair, of course. He seemed to be channeling Donald Trump. Oh, the follicles of one’s youth!
Prince Harry was in military uniform, and one wonders why his commanding officer didn’t tell him “Lieutenant, prince or no prince, you get that hair cut to regulation.”
Otherwise, how good to see women wearing hats in church and men respectfully bareheaded in the presence of God. Many middle-aged men have done great harm with the me-me-me thing of teaching younger men that respect for God, women, and country is secondary to keeping one’s costume ballcap on during all occasions because, like, y’know, this cap is who I am.
Yes, what man does not want to be a made-in-China cap?
The young princes, both pilots, looked great in their uniforms, and their families and friends were very proud of them. One imagines the awkwardness of someone opposed to military service getting married: “The groom and best man were resplendent in matching cable-knit sweaters.”
No one in the congregation displayed a cell ‘phone. Now that’s class.
No one in the congregation wore tee-shirts.
No one in the congregation wore advertising on his or her clothing.
No guitars. Thank God.
No cringe-making amateur musical moments.
No microphones or loudspeakers dangling from the ceiling.
No miscued audiotapes of “She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy.”
No one in the congregation called out “Where’s the birth certificate, William!?”
Baby sister as maid of honor and baby brother as best man – a brilliant way of avoiding squabbles and crowds on the altar.
The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London both mentioned God. This could distress NBC and CBS.
There were no air-raid sirens during the wedding; NATO hasn’t yet gotten around to bombing England.
Some gossipy old women on the television judged the guest list and found it wanting. Hey, Miz Grundy and Aunt Pittypat, not your call, okay? Not your family, not your decision. Just be happy if your own children ask you to their weddings.
Finally, although the wedding pictures were lovely, let us not neglect the great photograph of Princess Kate in khaki and boots in a muddy field, a shotgun in one hand and a brace of fowl in the other. Now that’s an English princess of the old school! Cue that country song about the tractor.
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
Always Wear a Clean Shirt at a Wedding
During the recent royal wedding one could not help noticing the wild, bizarre headgear that seemed to detract from the sacredness of the occasion – I refer to hairy Prince Harry’s hair, of course. He seemed to be channeling Donald Trump. Oh, the follicles of one’s youth!
Prince Harry was in military uniform, and one wonders why his commanding officer didn’t tell him “Lieutenant, prince or no prince, you get that hair cut to regulation.”
Otherwise, how good to see women wearing hats in church and men respectfully bareheaded in the presence of God. Many middle-aged men have done great harm with the me-me-me thing of teaching younger men that respect for God, women, and country is secondary to keeping one’s costume ballcap on during all occasions because, like, y’know, this cap is who I am.
Yes, what man does not want to be a made-in-China cap?
The young princes, both pilots, looked great in their uniforms, and their families and friends were very proud of them. One imagines the awkwardness of someone opposed to military service getting married: “The groom and best man were resplendent in matching cable-knit sweaters.”
No one in the congregation displayed a cell ‘phone. Now that’s class.
No one in the congregation wore tee-shirts.
No one in the congregation wore advertising on his or her clothing.
No guitars. Thank God.
No cringe-making amateur musical moments.
No microphones or loudspeakers dangling from the ceiling.
No miscued audiotapes of “She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy.”
No one in the congregation called out “Where’s the birth certificate, William!?”
Baby sister as maid of honor and baby brother as best man – a brilliant way of avoiding squabbles and crowds on the altar.
The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London both mentioned God. This could distress NBC and CBS.
There were no air-raid sirens during the wedding; NATO hasn’t yet gotten around to bombing England.
Some gossipy old women on the television judged the guest list and found it wanting. Hey, Miz Grundy and Aunt Pittypat, not your call, okay? Not your family, not your decision. Just be happy if your own children ask you to their weddings.
Finally, although the wedding pictures were lovely, let us not neglect the great photograph of Princess Kate in khaki and boots in a muddy field, a shotgun in one hand and a brace of fowl in the other. Now that’s an English princess of the old school! Cue that country song about the tractor.
-30-
Sunday, April 24, 2011
The Mice That Ate My Car
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
The Mice That Ate My Car
The micezillas are eating my car.
Why do mice eat the wiring of some makes of cars but, apparently, not of others? My mother’s pickup, made by Brand X, has lived in the country for years, and has yet to host the first mouse. My car, on the other paw, Brand Y, is like a cruise-ship buffet for the better class of rural rodentia.
This is probably because of man-made global warming and so is your fault for not using squiggly light bulbs.
The folks at the dealership are kind and patient and helpful, but lately they look from the gnawed wiring to me and then back to the gnawed wiring, all with profound disappointment, not unlike my parents when they saw the algebra grade on my report card.
The latest manifestation of rats in the wiring was the failure of my right-turn signal. I was quite worried about not having a right-turn signal, not only because I did not want a ticket but because of the safety issue. Further, I felt that good people would stare and point, and dismiss me as unworthy of civilized company because I wasn’t deploying the signal for right turns. I needn’t have worried; in East Texas folks almost never use turn signals at all. Indeed, the safe driver who signals for a turn is an eccentric.
But I drove the afflicted vehicle for a while because I could not endure the guilt-making of the guys at the shop. No sidewalk yellevangelist appears to be as despairing of your soul as a quiet, mournful service writer who really wants the best for you but can only shake his head at your miserable failure to control your rats. A yellevangelist loudly demands “How’s your soul, sinner!?” A service writer quietly and sympathetically asks “Do you know how much a new wiring harness will cost you?”
Were mice one of the plagues of Egypt? Was the harness of Pharaoh’s custom-built chariot cursed with critters? “So let it be bitten; so let it not run.”
I have sewn the ground beneath my car with rat poison, but anything that feasts on wiring laughs scornfully at poison. Someone suggested mothballs, which seems illogical since the wiring is not being eaten with moths. I placed sticky traps, which stuck nothing. After a water moccasin beat itself to death with a shovel (because, PETA knows, I would never, ever wish harm to one of our reptilian co-inhabitants of Gaia, the Water Planet) I respectfully flung its corpse underneath the car as a critter-deterrent.
If I had placed the snake on the windshield it would have been a windshield viper.
And yet the mice cometh and they goeth, and they doeth so in insolence.
In my despair I turned my hopes to a higher power, the internet, which sayeth unto us that some new wiring is coated with soy-based insulation which rats and mice find a part of this complete, nutritious breakfast. Hey, it was on the internet, so it must be true, right?
The ‘net says that I should spread forth rat poison, mothballs, and sticky traps, which I had already done, and avoid soy-based wiring harnesses. The dead snake was my idea; I’m thinking of getting a patent for it. As for the putative soy-based insulation, is there anyone who ever asked a car salesman about the nutritional quality of the wiring harness? Is the battery labeled for its calorie count? Are cruise controls fattening?
I’m at my rats’ end in the matter of the micezillas, and am definitely open to suggestion.
In the meantime, as you go to sleep tonight, remember that The Mice of the Baskervilles might be coming for your car in the hours of darkness when evil is exalted. They might even be under your bed, lurking there, grinning, with glowing green eyes, waiting to feast upon your soy-based flesh, waiting, waiting, waiting….
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
The Mice That Ate My Car
The micezillas are eating my car.
Why do mice eat the wiring of some makes of cars but, apparently, not of others? My mother’s pickup, made by Brand X, has lived in the country for years, and has yet to host the first mouse. My car, on the other paw, Brand Y, is like a cruise-ship buffet for the better class of rural rodentia.
This is probably because of man-made global warming and so is your fault for not using squiggly light bulbs.
The folks at the dealership are kind and patient and helpful, but lately they look from the gnawed wiring to me and then back to the gnawed wiring, all with profound disappointment, not unlike my parents when they saw the algebra grade on my report card.
The latest manifestation of rats in the wiring was the failure of my right-turn signal. I was quite worried about not having a right-turn signal, not only because I did not want a ticket but because of the safety issue. Further, I felt that good people would stare and point, and dismiss me as unworthy of civilized company because I wasn’t deploying the signal for right turns. I needn’t have worried; in East Texas folks almost never use turn signals at all. Indeed, the safe driver who signals for a turn is an eccentric.
But I drove the afflicted vehicle for a while because I could not endure the guilt-making of the guys at the shop. No sidewalk yellevangelist appears to be as despairing of your soul as a quiet, mournful service writer who really wants the best for you but can only shake his head at your miserable failure to control your rats. A yellevangelist loudly demands “How’s your soul, sinner!?” A service writer quietly and sympathetically asks “Do you know how much a new wiring harness will cost you?”
Were mice one of the plagues of Egypt? Was the harness of Pharaoh’s custom-built chariot cursed with critters? “So let it be bitten; so let it not run.”
I have sewn the ground beneath my car with rat poison, but anything that feasts on wiring laughs scornfully at poison. Someone suggested mothballs, which seems illogical since the wiring is not being eaten with moths. I placed sticky traps, which stuck nothing. After a water moccasin beat itself to death with a shovel (because, PETA knows, I would never, ever wish harm to one of our reptilian co-inhabitants of Gaia, the Water Planet) I respectfully flung its corpse underneath the car as a critter-deterrent.
If I had placed the snake on the windshield it would have been a windshield viper.
And yet the mice cometh and they goeth, and they doeth so in insolence.
In my despair I turned my hopes to a higher power, the internet, which sayeth unto us that some new wiring is coated with soy-based insulation which rats and mice find a part of this complete, nutritious breakfast. Hey, it was on the internet, so it must be true, right?
The ‘net says that I should spread forth rat poison, mothballs, and sticky traps, which I had already done, and avoid soy-based wiring harnesses. The dead snake was my idea; I’m thinking of getting a patent for it. As for the putative soy-based insulation, is there anyone who ever asked a car salesman about the nutritional quality of the wiring harness? Is the battery labeled for its calorie count? Are cruise controls fattening?
I’m at my rats’ end in the matter of the micezillas, and am definitely open to suggestion.
In the meantime, as you go to sleep tonight, remember that The Mice of the Baskervilles might be coming for your car in the hours of darkness when evil is exalted. They might even be under your bed, lurking there, grinning, with glowing green eyes, waiting to feast upon your soy-based flesh, waiting, waiting, waiting….
-30-
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Russian Easter Overture
Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Russian Easter Overture
Rimsky-Korsakov’s orchestral piece “Russian Easter Overture” premiered during Christmas of 1888. This is not necessarily an irony since, as the old saying goes, there is no Easter without Christmas and no Christmas without Easter.
REO lasts about as long as “Bye, Bye, Miss American Pie,” that once well-known whine about the local and the temporary, but is a sound poem that celebrates the universal and the transcendent. REO begins very solemnly with echoes of Russian Orthodox hymnology as an image of the grimness of Holy Saturday: Jesus has been murdered and all is darkness and waiting. The music then transitions to the glory of the Resurrection on Easter morning, and finally in the third part is light and frivolous, symbolizing the innocent fun of feasting and merriment that is fitting and proper in its time and place.
The progression of the piece, then, is mourning, joy, and secular delight, all sanctioned by God.
But here’s a problem: to understand the Russian Easter Overture in any of its parts one would have to know more about the Easter than plastic Easter eggs made by slaves in China toiling under their argus-eyed masters.
This is not to deny that Easter eggs should be hunted, even though whole forests have been leveled by Republican (no doubt) chainsaws so that bleak, humorless scriveners sourcing Jack Chick comics could write newspaper articles (their number is legion) denouncing Easter eggs as pagan.
Well, they probably are.
And so are Christmas trees. And, come to think of it, marriage pre-dates Christianity too.
But as St. Teresa of Avila said, there is a time for penance and there is a time for partridge, the partridge part meaning a good, merry meal with lots of jokes and laughter.
I am sorry that I can’t remember anything else St. Teresa said; I should have paid better attention in Sunday school.
Our parents taught us that dessert comes after the meat-and-potatoes. First we eat a good, solid, no-nonsense meal so that we may enjoy good health, and then, if we have been good, we are permitted ice cream or cake. Easter is like that, and so is Christmas. First comes the sense, and then comes the nonsense, and both are good in their proper sequence.
One reads of such events as community Easter egg hunts being held not after Easter morning, but before, and even on Good Friday, and that is teaching our children that they may gorge themselves on candy and not bother with the meat and vegetables at all.
And speaking of vegetables, you may have noticed that most of the secular calendars and even some Christian ones have been bullied this year into recognizing next Friday as Earth Day, which is silly at best. On this planet every day is an earth day, just as on Venus every day is a venusian day. C. S. Lewis, in his brilliant A Preface to Paradise Lost, observes that in Milton’s brilliant poem Adam and Eve, who became too proud to bow to God, ended up humbling themselves before a tree, a really large vegetable. Enviros have never met any created life form, including an amoeba or paramecium, to which they are unwilling to degrade themselves and sacrifice other humans.
Rimsky-Korsakov remembered what he was taught in Sunday school, and so did not write the “Russian Earth Day Overture.”
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
Russian Easter Overture
Rimsky-Korsakov’s orchestral piece “Russian Easter Overture” premiered during Christmas of 1888. This is not necessarily an irony since, as the old saying goes, there is no Easter without Christmas and no Christmas without Easter.
REO lasts about as long as “Bye, Bye, Miss American Pie,” that once well-known whine about the local and the temporary, but is a sound poem that celebrates the universal and the transcendent. REO begins very solemnly with echoes of Russian Orthodox hymnology as an image of the grimness of Holy Saturday: Jesus has been murdered and all is darkness and waiting. The music then transitions to the glory of the Resurrection on Easter morning, and finally in the third part is light and frivolous, symbolizing the innocent fun of feasting and merriment that is fitting and proper in its time and place.
The progression of the piece, then, is mourning, joy, and secular delight, all sanctioned by God.
But here’s a problem: to understand the Russian Easter Overture in any of its parts one would have to know more about the Easter than plastic Easter eggs made by slaves in China toiling under their argus-eyed masters.
This is not to deny that Easter eggs should be hunted, even though whole forests have been leveled by Republican (no doubt) chainsaws so that bleak, humorless scriveners sourcing Jack Chick comics could write newspaper articles (their number is legion) denouncing Easter eggs as pagan.
Well, they probably are.
And so are Christmas trees. And, come to think of it, marriage pre-dates Christianity too.
But as St. Teresa of Avila said, there is a time for penance and there is a time for partridge, the partridge part meaning a good, merry meal with lots of jokes and laughter.
I am sorry that I can’t remember anything else St. Teresa said; I should have paid better attention in Sunday school.
Our parents taught us that dessert comes after the meat-and-potatoes. First we eat a good, solid, no-nonsense meal so that we may enjoy good health, and then, if we have been good, we are permitted ice cream or cake. Easter is like that, and so is Christmas. First comes the sense, and then comes the nonsense, and both are good in their proper sequence.
One reads of such events as community Easter egg hunts being held not after Easter morning, but before, and even on Good Friday, and that is teaching our children that they may gorge themselves on candy and not bother with the meat and vegetables at all.
And speaking of vegetables, you may have noticed that most of the secular calendars and even some Christian ones have been bullied this year into recognizing next Friday as Earth Day, which is silly at best. On this planet every day is an earth day, just as on Venus every day is a venusian day. C. S. Lewis, in his brilliant A Preface to Paradise Lost, observes that in Milton’s brilliant poem Adam and Eve, who became too proud to bow to God, ended up humbling themselves before a tree, a really large vegetable. Enviros have never met any created life form, including an amoeba or paramecium, to which they are unwilling to degrade themselves and sacrifice other humans.
Rimsky-Korsakov remembered what he was taught in Sunday school, and so did not write the “Russian Earth Day Overture.”
-30-
Sunday, April 10, 2011
With Our Number Two Pencils We Will Rule the World!
Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
With Our Number Two Pencils We Will Rule the World
The other day I spent several hours proctoring a standardized test of the sort so beloved of a multinational entity named Pearson – young Texans sitting alphabetically at tables in a gymnasium and silently blotting bubbles and writing essays within the lines.
If you want to know who or what Pearson is, go to www.pearson.com and, well, good luck. I think Pearson, not China, owns us.
The State of Pearson, um, Texas gave me not just one but two different booklets explaining my difficult task, and a sheet of paper with an oath of secrecy requiring me not to know anything about what a hundred or so young’uns were doing and not to speak to anyone about that which I did not know about what a hundred or so young’uns were doing, and what could be more logical than that?
As I walked my post in an unmilitary fashion for Pearson-ness I thought upon these things:
1. I am old.
2. I am overweight.
3. I am holding a coffee cup.
4. I am supervising people who are working but am not actually doing anything useful myself.
5. Thus, I must be a Chief Petty Officer.
Some works of literature will never serve as sources of gobbets for standardized tests. You may have noticed that there are now only three contemporary categories of fiction, one for men and two for women.
The covers of every new book for men feature, in dark tones, any combination of the following: 1. an image of the Moscow Kremlin, 2. an image of an onion-domed Russian church, 3. a swastika, 4. a hammer-and-sickle, and 5. a semi-automatic pistol.
For women there are two categories. All the covers of books in the first category show precisely two – never one, never three – Adirondack chairs on a beach. As we all know, every woman’s life is centered on two Adirondack chairs on a beach and not on her job at BurgerX-Treem while her parasite accessory hangs out in their trailer all day playing video games. Also note that the beach is never cluttered with ranks of rotting seaweed or piles of beer cans.
The second category of fiction for women is all about a pale, rather vacant-eyed young blonde wearing a white beanie with two white strings hanging down. I have no idea why.
What is The Main Idea? Give support from the text. Do not write outside the lines.
As for me, I look forward to seeing a book with a cover featuring a Chinese girl wearing a white beanie while posing in front of the Kremlin with a semi-automatic pistol, tap-dancing on a swastika, and proctoring a standardized test, all at the same time.
Let us compare notes by candlelight, in a hidden underground bunker outside Prague, about conspiracy theories, albino test proctors lurking in shadowy Vatican corridors, secret Templar codes, hidden Nazi gold stashed in a 1939 Imperial Airways passenger plane submerged at the bottom of Lake Sam Rayburn, the Club of Rome, the Third Murderer in Macbeth, the 666 Beast Computer in Belgium, demented Navy CPOs on secret missions to poison the world’s supply of lapsang souchang, and King Solomon’s DNA hidden in a microchip – they can all be traced back to (dramatic pause) Pearson’s. Bwahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
With Our Number Two Pencils We Will Rule the World
The other day I spent several hours proctoring a standardized test of the sort so beloved of a multinational entity named Pearson – young Texans sitting alphabetically at tables in a gymnasium and silently blotting bubbles and writing essays within the lines.
If you want to know who or what Pearson is, go to www.pearson.com and, well, good luck. I think Pearson, not China, owns us.
The State of Pearson, um, Texas gave me not just one but two different booklets explaining my difficult task, and a sheet of paper with an oath of secrecy requiring me not to know anything about what a hundred or so young’uns were doing and not to speak to anyone about that which I did not know about what a hundred or so young’uns were doing, and what could be more logical than that?
As I walked my post in an unmilitary fashion for Pearson-ness I thought upon these things:
1. I am old.
2. I am overweight.
3. I am holding a coffee cup.
4. I am supervising people who are working but am not actually doing anything useful myself.
5. Thus, I must be a Chief Petty Officer.
Some works of literature will never serve as sources of gobbets for standardized tests. You may have noticed that there are now only three contemporary categories of fiction, one for men and two for women.
The covers of every new book for men feature, in dark tones, any combination of the following: 1. an image of the Moscow Kremlin, 2. an image of an onion-domed Russian church, 3. a swastika, 4. a hammer-and-sickle, and 5. a semi-automatic pistol.
For women there are two categories. All the covers of books in the first category show precisely two – never one, never three – Adirondack chairs on a beach. As we all know, every woman’s life is centered on two Adirondack chairs on a beach and not on her job at BurgerX-Treem while her parasite accessory hangs out in their trailer all day playing video games. Also note that the beach is never cluttered with ranks of rotting seaweed or piles of beer cans.
The second category of fiction for women is all about a pale, rather vacant-eyed young blonde wearing a white beanie with two white strings hanging down. I have no idea why.
What is The Main Idea? Give support from the text. Do not write outside the lines.
As for me, I look forward to seeing a book with a cover featuring a Chinese girl wearing a white beanie while posing in front of the Kremlin with a semi-automatic pistol, tap-dancing on a swastika, and proctoring a standardized test, all at the same time.
Let us compare notes by candlelight, in a hidden underground bunker outside Prague, about conspiracy theories, albino test proctors lurking in shadowy Vatican corridors, secret Templar codes, hidden Nazi gold stashed in a 1939 Imperial Airways passenger plane submerged at the bottom of Lake Sam Rayburn, the Club of Rome, the Third Murderer in Macbeth, the 666 Beast Computer in Belgium, demented Navy CPOs on secret missions to poison the world’s supply of lapsang souchang, and King Solomon’s DNA hidden in a microchip – they can all be traced back to (dramatic pause) Pearson’s. Bwahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
-30-
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