Mack Hall
To read that Denver has built a secret jail for the detention of Democrats (activists say so; it must be true) is a thought so heart-warming, so touching that it would bring a tear to Colonel Klink’s monocled eye. One imagines jack-booted goon-squads of blonde Russian supermen employing electric cattle prods – or at least Super-Soakers filled with tap water – to herd masses of bleating liberals, liberals shuffling along on their all-natural hemp sandals and clutching their meagre possessions in tattered Starbuck’s gift bags, into cold, dripping dungeons secured by clanging iron doors. O, be still, my heart.
Alas, it is not so.
The city of Denver, under siege by foreigners with bags of deadly poisons and by domestic crazies with bags of feces to fling at the Party worthies, has converted a warehouse into a processing area for citizens alleged by police officers to have committed criminal acts. Flinging poison or feces, for instance.
The center is on Steele Street, and Steele is homonymic with steel, and the Russian for steel is Stalin, if you get my meaning. Lift high the barbed wire, comrades!
Just why there should be protestors in a society with an almost universal franchise (Do you have a pulse? Hey, you can vote!) that can change its government every two years eludes the thinking person. What are the protestors protesting? The vote? Freedom? Democracy?
According to the city, the center is simply for the post-arrest processing of peace-lovers who fling poison and doo-doo, not for long-term detention.
But according to the protestors, the center is a Putinesque Gulag with whips and chains and waterboarding and posters of Ronald Reagan in every cell.
Sigh. If only.
The city says the facility has been expensively remodeled, certified by the fire marshal, and air-conditioned, and offers water, restrooms, and medical care, which is a much better deal than Denver’s homeless ever get.
What? No coffee shop? No Evian water? No religious services? No widescreen telly? No quiche for breakfast? No direct line to Rick Warren or the Dalai Lama? The horror! The horror!
Rumor has it that the speaker system will play the theme from The Great Escape as the prisoners are fingerprinted, photographed, and interviewed by Rolling Stone.
One anticipates that being arrested at the Democratic Party Convention will be a badge of honor among the bags of feces…I mean the carriers of bags of feces. Years from now aging leftists will brag at Old Comrades’ meetings about the brutality they suffered at the blood-stained hands of Officer Jennifer of the Denver Police: “She offered me a cup of house coffee – in a global-warming plastic cup!”
“I know where you’re coming from, comrade. When I asked for something to eat after ten long minutes of incarceration and starvation, Officer Stan gave me a sandwich on…sniff…white bread! Clearly that was racist code! Sob! And the sandwich contained meat from one of our animal comrades! Did they think I was a cannibal!?”
“You comrades are weak! You should have acted! I, in the name of the Revolution and of The Red Dawn of Aromatherapy, torched the twenty-year old car of a single-mother housekeeper at the Hilton! That taught her what it meant to cooperate with the oppressors!”
The Denver facility is supposed to be able to process sixty vegetarians an hour, but of course delays can happen, and Comrade Feces and Comrade Rycin may have to wait in holding areas. How will this be handled? Will roving, tattooed gangs of Hillaryites fight with roving, tattooed gangs of Obamistas in this Andersonville-in-the-Rockies?
Will sullen prisoners stare bleakly through the barbed wire at passing convoys of limousines carrying in degenerate capitalist luxury the more-comrade-than-thou Party functionaries?
Will prisoners raising clenched fists – fists clenching their PDAs -- generate manifestos demonstrating solidarity with the Russian workers’ and peasants’ liberation of fascist, war-mongering Georgia under the benevolent, all-seeing, all-knowing eyes of Comrade Putin?
Sergeant Schultz says “I know nothing! NOTHING!”
Ready the lawyers and grief counselors, Denver; it’s going to be a bumpy week.
Don’t laugh, you rascally Republicans; you’re next. Bwahahahahahaha!
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Preabsolutely
Mack Hall
Perhaps the excessive use of the prefix “pre” began with advertisements by funeral homes: we were urged to preplan preneed for our predemise. But of course a plan by definition is a pre thing, and if you are planning your funeral that too is pre since you are not yet posed (or preposed) in the coffin under the scientifically-arranged (or prearranged) lights to make you look pretty. To say “pre-plan” is like saying “plan-plan.” With the complementary use of “absolutely” as a universal four-syllable substitute for the perfectly utilitarian one-syllable “yes,” the language took a divergent road in the yellow wood, and the way back is blocked by an avalanche of obscurantism.
To help make the works of our culture more accessible to moderns lost in that wood, I propose (or prepropose) the following re-makes (pre-makes?) of certain literary and cinematic icons of our time:
Casablanca:
Rick: “Last night we presaid a great many prethings. Absolutely. You presaid I was to predo the prethinking for both of us. Well, I've predone a lot of it since then, and it all preadds up to one prething: you're pregetting on that preplane with Victor where you prebelong. Absolutely.”
Ilsa: “But, Richard, preno, I... I...”
Rick: “Now, you've got to prelisten to me! You have any preidea what you'd prehave to prelook preforward to if you prestayed here? Nine prechances out of ten, we'd both prewind up in a preconcentration camp. Isn't that pretrue, Louie?”
Captain Renault: “Absolutely.”
Ilsa: “You're presaying this only to premake me prego.“
Rick: “I'm presaying it because it's pretrue. Inside of us, we both preknow you prebelong with Victor. You're prepart of his prework, the thing that prekeeps him pregoing. If that plane preleaves the ground and you're not prewith him, you'll preregret it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but presoon and for the prerest of your prelife. Absolutely."
Ilsa: “But prewhat about us?”
Rick: “We'll always prehave Paris. We didn't have, we, we prelost it until you precame to Casablanca. We pregot it back last night. Absolutely.”
Ilsa: “And I presaid I would never preleave you. Absolutely.”
Rick: “And you never prewill. But I've got a prejob to do, too. Where I'm pregoing, you can't prefollow. What I've got to predo, you can't be any prepart of. Ilsa, I'm no pregood at prebeing prenoble, but it doesn't pretake much to presee that the problems of three little people don't preamount to a hill of beans in this precrazy world. Someday you'll preunderstand that. Now, now... Here's prelooking at you kid. Absolutely.”
Gone With the Wind:
Scarlett: “Oh, Rhett, prewhere shall I prego? What shall I predo?”Rhett: “Absolutely.”
President Kennedy: “Ich prebin ein preBerliner. Absolutely.”
John Wayne in True Grit: “Prefill your hand, you son-of-an-absolute!”
Ernest Hemingway: “There is prenothing to prewriting. All you do is presit down at a typewriter and prebleed. Absolutely.”
Thomas More: “I predie the King’s pregood servant, but God’s prefirst. Absolutely.”
Martin Luther King: “I prehave a predream. Absolutely.”
President Roosevelt: “Yesterday, a date which will prelive in preinfamy, the United States of America was predeliberately and preabsolutely preattacked by naval and forces of the Empire of Japan…”
And now, let us close with a prayer:
“Our Father, who preart in Heaven, prehallowed be Thy Name. Absolutely. Thy prekingdom come, Thy will be predone, on Earth as it is in Heaven. Absolutely. Pregiveus this day our predaily prebread, and preforgive us our pretresspasses as we preforgive those who pretresspass against us. Absolutely. And prelead us not into temptation, but predeliver us from preevil. Absolutely.”
Perhaps the excessive use of the prefix “pre” began with advertisements by funeral homes: we were urged to preplan preneed for our predemise. But of course a plan by definition is a pre thing, and if you are planning your funeral that too is pre since you are not yet posed (or preposed) in the coffin under the scientifically-arranged (or prearranged) lights to make you look pretty. To say “pre-plan” is like saying “plan-plan.” With the complementary use of “absolutely” as a universal four-syllable substitute for the perfectly utilitarian one-syllable “yes,” the language took a divergent road in the yellow wood, and the way back is blocked by an avalanche of obscurantism.
To help make the works of our culture more accessible to moderns lost in that wood, I propose (or prepropose) the following re-makes (pre-makes?) of certain literary and cinematic icons of our time:
Casablanca:
Rick: “Last night we presaid a great many prethings. Absolutely. You presaid I was to predo the prethinking for both of us. Well, I've predone a lot of it since then, and it all preadds up to one prething: you're pregetting on that preplane with Victor where you prebelong. Absolutely.”
Ilsa: “But, Richard, preno, I... I...”
Rick: “Now, you've got to prelisten to me! You have any preidea what you'd prehave to prelook preforward to if you prestayed here? Nine prechances out of ten, we'd both prewind up in a preconcentration camp. Isn't that pretrue, Louie?”
Captain Renault: “Absolutely.”
Ilsa: “You're presaying this only to premake me prego.“
Rick: “I'm presaying it because it's pretrue. Inside of us, we both preknow you prebelong with Victor. You're prepart of his prework, the thing that prekeeps him pregoing. If that plane preleaves the ground and you're not prewith him, you'll preregret it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but presoon and for the prerest of your prelife. Absolutely."
Ilsa: “But prewhat about us?”
Rick: “We'll always prehave Paris. We didn't have, we, we prelost it until you precame to Casablanca. We pregot it back last night. Absolutely.”
Ilsa: “And I presaid I would never preleave you. Absolutely.”
Rick: “And you never prewill. But I've got a prejob to do, too. Where I'm pregoing, you can't prefollow. What I've got to predo, you can't be any prepart of. Ilsa, I'm no pregood at prebeing prenoble, but it doesn't pretake much to presee that the problems of three little people don't preamount to a hill of beans in this precrazy world. Someday you'll preunderstand that. Now, now... Here's prelooking at you kid. Absolutely.”
Gone With the Wind:
Scarlett: “Oh, Rhett, prewhere shall I prego? What shall I predo?”Rhett: “Absolutely.”
President Kennedy: “Ich prebin ein preBerliner. Absolutely.”
John Wayne in True Grit: “Prefill your hand, you son-of-an-absolute!”
Ernest Hemingway: “There is prenothing to prewriting. All you do is presit down at a typewriter and prebleed. Absolutely.”
Thomas More: “I predie the King’s pregood servant, but God’s prefirst. Absolutely.”
Martin Luther King: “I prehave a predream. Absolutely.”
President Roosevelt: “Yesterday, a date which will prelive in preinfamy, the United States of America was predeliberately and preabsolutely preattacked by naval and forces of the Empire of Japan…”
And now, let us close with a prayer:
“Our Father, who preart in Heaven, prehallowed be Thy Name. Absolutely. Thy prekingdom come, Thy will be predone, on Earth as it is in Heaven. Absolutely. Pregiveus this day our predaily prebread, and preforgive us our pretresspasses as we preforgive those who pretresspass against us. Absolutely. And prelead us not into temptation, but predeliver us from preevil. Absolutely.”
-30-
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Beijing, We Have a Problem
Mack Hall
The 19th was the British century, and the 20th was the American. The 21st is said to be the Chinese century, but beijing has a problem with sex.
To be specific, the Communist Chinese need laboratories to determine what sex other peoples are. Maybe we all look the same to them.
How can a nation that means to rule the planet, the skies, the moon, and Barbie’s playhouse do so if they are unclear on some basics, such as what are little comrades made of?
Perhaps the problem originates with Barbie and Ken, those all-American toys made in China for a generation now, and both of whom are indeterminate in their equippage and orientation. G. I. Joe, made of toxic waste in the factory next slum over, is a little more butch, but who’s going to hassle a guy who doesn’t know what branch of the service he’s in but carries machine guns? Maybe the Chinese have been spending too many hours making toys and sniffing too much glue and too many chemicals to be clear on the concept of boy and girl anymore.
The hosts of the Olympics, which are to sports what the current Chinese regime is to parliamentary democracy, have set up a laboratory to determine if purportedly female athletes are in fact males. Apparently “drop ‘em” is not adequate; neither is “turn your head and cough.” And you can bet your bottom, well, bottom that the scientist chicken inspectors will all be comrades of the male persuasion.
“Okay, comrade, ve haf ways of making you talk in basso profundo.”
The laboratory will not be testing male athletes to determine if they are actually females passing for bubbas, which would appear to be a violation of some Universal Declaration of Something or Other which associations of overpaid suits who know entirely too many big words are always generating. Where is the equality, comrades?
Chess players are not tested to determine their sex, nor or bandsmen, though of course Hulk Hogan never tried out for twirler. Cheerleaders are not subjected to inspection by committees of drooling Commie scientists making memories with their cell-phone cameras, nor are girls’ softball teams.
The air pollution in Peiping / Peking / Beijing is so bad that perhaps the what-sex-are-you committee will listen to the athletes’ coughs with some sort of audiometer for tone and pitch in order to determine sex. This would be less intrusive than a blood or wee-wee test, except when the toxicity of the weird chemicals the Chinese use to make stuff to sell to us causes the occasional cough-up of a chunk of lung.
So what happens if the committee determines that Carlita is in fact Carlos?
“Comrade athlete, the first screening suggests that you are not what you purport to be. Prove to this committee that you are a woman – serve us tea. In high heels. And make sure you do the Bunny dip. Let us hear you giggle.”
And if an athlete is determined to be the wrong sex? “Comrade athlete, The New and Improved Glorious Workers’ and Peasants’ Republic of China is proud to be the world leader in selling and installing body parts. If you’ll just take a look at this catalogue of, oh, volunteers from Tibet as well as, cough, uppity local volunteers from the Han, all in primo condition, we can can shoot…um…harvest the volunteer and have you a new sex up and running by the time the games begin, complete with a certificate of authenticity. Yes, the East is Red and your VisaCard is welcome. Plus, if you act now, you get to keep the Ginsu knives we use for the surgery, as well as the stick-it-anywhere magic light bulb and the roach spray.”
ChiCom games – gotta love ‘em.
The 19th was the British century, and the 20th was the American. The 21st is said to be the Chinese century, but beijing has a problem with sex.
To be specific, the Communist Chinese need laboratories to determine what sex other peoples are. Maybe we all look the same to them.
How can a nation that means to rule the planet, the skies, the moon, and Barbie’s playhouse do so if they are unclear on some basics, such as what are little comrades made of?
Perhaps the problem originates with Barbie and Ken, those all-American toys made in China for a generation now, and both of whom are indeterminate in their equippage and orientation. G. I. Joe, made of toxic waste in the factory next slum over, is a little more butch, but who’s going to hassle a guy who doesn’t know what branch of the service he’s in but carries machine guns? Maybe the Chinese have been spending too many hours making toys and sniffing too much glue and too many chemicals to be clear on the concept of boy and girl anymore.
The hosts of the Olympics, which are to sports what the current Chinese regime is to parliamentary democracy, have set up a laboratory to determine if purportedly female athletes are in fact males. Apparently “drop ‘em” is not adequate; neither is “turn your head and cough.” And you can bet your bottom, well, bottom that the scientist chicken inspectors will all be comrades of the male persuasion.
“Okay, comrade, ve haf ways of making you talk in basso profundo.”
The laboratory will not be testing male athletes to determine if they are actually females passing for bubbas, which would appear to be a violation of some Universal Declaration of Something or Other which associations of overpaid suits who know entirely too many big words are always generating. Where is the equality, comrades?
Chess players are not tested to determine their sex, nor or bandsmen, though of course Hulk Hogan never tried out for twirler. Cheerleaders are not subjected to inspection by committees of drooling Commie scientists making memories with their cell-phone cameras, nor are girls’ softball teams.
The air pollution in Peiping / Peking / Beijing is so bad that perhaps the what-sex-are-you committee will listen to the athletes’ coughs with some sort of audiometer for tone and pitch in order to determine sex. This would be less intrusive than a blood or wee-wee test, except when the toxicity of the weird chemicals the Chinese use to make stuff to sell to us causes the occasional cough-up of a chunk of lung.
So what happens if the committee determines that Carlita is in fact Carlos?
“Comrade athlete, the first screening suggests that you are not what you purport to be. Prove to this committee that you are a woman – serve us tea. In high heels. And make sure you do the Bunny dip. Let us hear you giggle.”
And if an athlete is determined to be the wrong sex? “Comrade athlete, The New and Improved Glorious Workers’ and Peasants’ Republic of China is proud to be the world leader in selling and installing body parts. If you’ll just take a look at this catalogue of, oh, volunteers from Tibet as well as, cough, uppity local volunteers from the Han, all in primo condition, we can can shoot…um…harvest the volunteer and have you a new sex up and running by the time the games begin, complete with a certificate of authenticity. Yes, the East is Red and your VisaCard is welcome. Plus, if you act now, you get to keep the Ginsu knives we use for the surgery, as well as the stick-it-anywhere magic light bulb and the roach spray.”
ChiCom games – gotta love ‘em.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Mack Reports on Hurricane Dolly
Mack Hall
Mighty Category (number) Hurricane Dolly demonstrated Mother Nature’s wrath and scorn for man’s place in the planet as she slammed / stormed / thundered ashore to make landfall at (place) while a terrified humanity bravely hunkered down with all escape routes cut, praying to dodge the bullet as this mother of all perfect storms angrily manifested her rage with rogue winds tossing cars about like matchboxes and snapping trees like matchsticks, drenching the earth in the mother of all rainfall, spawning tornadoes and cutting a swath of destruction and leaving in her wake a cataclysm of destruction and a tsunami of wrecked emotions impacting women, children, and minorities most, the situation on the ground evoking post-traumatic-syndrome personal-demon memories of Hurricane Katrina, a perfect storm that changed our lives forever and defined a generation. (Sepia filter on lens. Fade to a fellow sitting in the mud playing the harmonica. Cut to a toothpaste commercial.)
Mighty Category (number) Hurricane Dolly demonstrated Mother Nature’s wrath and scorn for man’s place in the planet as she slammed / stormed / thundered ashore to make landfall at (place) while a terrified humanity bravely hunkered down with all escape routes cut, praying to dodge the bullet as this mother of all perfect storms angrily manifested her rage with rogue winds tossing cars about like matchboxes and snapping trees like matchsticks, drenching the earth in the mother of all rainfall, spawning tornadoes and cutting a swath of destruction and leaving in her wake a cataclysm of destruction and a tsunami of wrecked emotions impacting women, children, and minorities most, the situation on the ground evoking post-traumatic-syndrome personal-demon memories of Hurricane Katrina, a perfect storm that changed our lives forever and defined a generation. (Sepia filter on lens. Fade to a fellow sitting in the mud playing the harmonica. Cut to a toothpaste commercial.)
Sunday, July 20, 2008
World Geezer Day
Mack Hall
With the close of World Youth Day in Australia, we aging Boomers naturally ask why we can’t have a day of our own with a visit by the Pope. After all, our parents said we were special, right?
The young people are fond of singing “Benedetto!” (Clap! Clap!) over and over while waiting for the B of R to land at the airport. For World Geezer Day it’s more likely to sound like “Benedetto!" (Wheeze! Wheeze!). Gotta keep that oxygen going, Gramps.
World Geezer Day will require clearly written rules, unlike World Youth Day. The kids in Sydney were by all reports just as nice as can be, but Boomers tend to feel (and it’s all about feelings, right?) that ordinary good behavior is so bourgeois and beneath them. Here, then, are the rules for the proposed World Geezer Day:
John Lennon, the Dalai Lama, and Heather Mills are not saints. The canonization of Jimmy Buffett, however, is up for discussion. Even so, “Margaritaville” will not be sung at the Elevation.
Please note the signs for the hand-holding section and the non-hand-holding section at Mass, as well as the hand-waving-mouth-open-eyes-closed section and the respectfully-modest-it’s-not-about-me section. If you don’t know how to behave at divine services, young people will be available to help you grow up.
The Mass will be in Latin. Deal with it. Your ancestors understood it perfectly, as do your children and grandchildren. It is only baby boomers, with all their college degrees and who are purportedly the most educated Americans ever, who wah-wah that they can’t understand the simple Latin of the Mass.
Teenagers will be provided to assist you with your oxygen tanks and to help you understand the difference between the Mass and Bob Dylan.
There will be no – repeat, NO – felt banners. Further, there will be no liturgical dance, no guitars, no sitars, no bongos, no tambourines, no dangling speakers, no slide shows, no films, no turning on and off of lights. The Mass is worship, not a hootenanny.
As a concession to politics…um…dietary needs, communion wafers are organic and fair trade, and made from wheat raised by barefoot First Nations farmers living in communes and singing songs about Chez Guano along an obscure tributary of the Verizon River in Lower Saxony (you paid attention in third-grade geography, didn’t you?).
One of the featured workshops will be on praying the Rosary. This will be taught by teens since obviously you people never paid attention to your mothers and fathers.
Sorry, no, the Holy Father will not autograph your tee-shirt.
Please understand that the Sacrament of Penance cannot be accomplished through text-messages (“4-giv me F 4 I have sind…”).
Incense, yes; marijuana, no.
When all else fails, remember that this is not 1968. Grief counselors under thirty will be available to help you find closure.
John Paul II began World Youth Day during his reign, and Benedict XVI has enthusiastically continued this happy custom. Perhaps this is because neither Karol nor Joe had a youth. Oh, technically they did, but they grew up under the Nazi tyranny, not exactly kegger time on the beach. Modern kids gather openly to celebrate the Faith; when young Karol and Joe were young they celebrated the Faith too, but usually in secret, and further celebrated finding something to eat occasionally, and celebrated being alive at the end of each regimented day and at the end of each terror-filled night. Perhaps it is this genuine deprivation in their teens and twenties that made them so determined to joy in the young people of our time as a new generation celebrates life and worships in freedom.
With the close of World Youth Day in Australia, we aging Boomers naturally ask why we can’t have a day of our own with a visit by the Pope. After all, our parents said we were special, right?
The young people are fond of singing “Benedetto!” (Clap! Clap!) over and over while waiting for the B of R to land at the airport. For World Geezer Day it’s more likely to sound like “Benedetto!" (Wheeze! Wheeze!). Gotta keep that oxygen going, Gramps.
World Geezer Day will require clearly written rules, unlike World Youth Day. The kids in Sydney were by all reports just as nice as can be, but Boomers tend to feel (and it’s all about feelings, right?) that ordinary good behavior is so bourgeois and beneath them. Here, then, are the rules for the proposed World Geezer Day:
John Lennon, the Dalai Lama, and Heather Mills are not saints. The canonization of Jimmy Buffett, however, is up for discussion. Even so, “Margaritaville” will not be sung at the Elevation.
Please note the signs for the hand-holding section and the non-hand-holding section at Mass, as well as the hand-waving-mouth-open-eyes-closed section and the respectfully-modest-it’s-not-about-me section. If you don’t know how to behave at divine services, young people will be available to help you grow up.
The Mass will be in Latin. Deal with it. Your ancestors understood it perfectly, as do your children and grandchildren. It is only baby boomers, with all their college degrees and who are purportedly the most educated Americans ever, who wah-wah that they can’t understand the simple Latin of the Mass.
Teenagers will be provided to assist you with your oxygen tanks and to help you understand the difference between the Mass and Bob Dylan.
There will be no – repeat, NO – felt banners. Further, there will be no liturgical dance, no guitars, no sitars, no bongos, no tambourines, no dangling speakers, no slide shows, no films, no turning on and off of lights. The Mass is worship, not a hootenanny.
As a concession to politics…um…dietary needs, communion wafers are organic and fair trade, and made from wheat raised by barefoot First Nations farmers living in communes and singing songs about Chez Guano along an obscure tributary of the Verizon River in Lower Saxony (you paid attention in third-grade geography, didn’t you?).
One of the featured workshops will be on praying the Rosary. This will be taught by teens since obviously you people never paid attention to your mothers and fathers.
Sorry, no, the Holy Father will not autograph your tee-shirt.
Please understand that the Sacrament of Penance cannot be accomplished through text-messages (“4-giv me F 4 I have sind…”).
Incense, yes; marijuana, no.
When all else fails, remember that this is not 1968. Grief counselors under thirty will be available to help you find closure.
John Paul II began World Youth Day during his reign, and Benedict XVI has enthusiastically continued this happy custom. Perhaps this is because neither Karol nor Joe had a youth. Oh, technically they did, but they grew up under the Nazi tyranny, not exactly kegger time on the beach. Modern kids gather openly to celebrate the Faith; when young Karol and Joe were young they celebrated the Faith too, but usually in secret, and further celebrated finding something to eat occasionally, and celebrated being alive at the end of each regimented day and at the end of each terror-filled night. Perhaps it is this genuine deprivation in their teens and twenties that made them so determined to joy in the young people of our time as a new generation celebrates life and worships in freedom.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
For Jason and Ingrid on the Pilgrimage Road to Santiago de Compostela
Mack Hall
An Old Man Takes His Evening Walk
For Young Jason and Inky on Their Morning Journey
An old man weary-wends his evening walk
Along a wood-walled way, soft-shadow shaded:
Our planet’s little star now makes report,
Passing the watch to mysteries-haunted dusk;
The spoors of animals, like chalk upon
A classroom board, the sums of life drawn out
In fear and pain, and soon to be erased,
Detail in mud the curious walks-about
Of deer and possum, dog and squirrel and snake,
And an armadillo’s sudden-wheeled death.
From Grendel’s darkening woods the heavy air,
Incensed by ghosts, patrols the twilit mists
In search of day-lingering happiness
To drag down, down into the rising chill
Of long-dead summer grasses sighing for
The hopes of a longer-dead spring. The moon,
Dry ages cold, rises above the trees
As an ice-dead witness to the decay
Of stubborn dreams caught out in the open,
Too far through the fog from the lamp-lit door.
Perhaps this night is a dreamed pilgrimage,
To Santiago, perhaps, or to Rome,
Or maybe to far Constantinople
Dreaming under the Bosphorean sun,
Notre Dame de LaSalette, Canterbury,
Or happy mysteries in some sunlit field,
Duct-tape-repaired sneakers slapping the dust
Happily, eagerly, laughingly as
The golden domes of our ancient young Faith
Rise beyond the dawn, where they always were.
May your nights and the road slip lovingly
Across your souls like Our Lady’s soft prayers,
And may you come at last to where you are.
An Old Man Takes His Evening Walk
For Young Jason and Inky on Their Morning Journey
An old man weary-wends his evening walk
Along a wood-walled way, soft-shadow shaded:
Our planet’s little star now makes report,
Passing the watch to mysteries-haunted dusk;
The spoors of animals, like chalk upon
A classroom board, the sums of life drawn out
In fear and pain, and soon to be erased,
Detail in mud the curious walks-about
Of deer and possum, dog and squirrel and snake,
And an armadillo’s sudden-wheeled death.
From Grendel’s darkening woods the heavy air,
Incensed by ghosts, patrols the twilit mists
In search of day-lingering happiness
To drag down, down into the rising chill
Of long-dead summer grasses sighing for
The hopes of a longer-dead spring. The moon,
Dry ages cold, rises above the trees
As an ice-dead witness to the decay
Of stubborn dreams caught out in the open,
Too far through the fog from the lamp-lit door.
Perhaps this night is a dreamed pilgrimage,
To Santiago, perhaps, or to Rome,
Or maybe to far Constantinople
Dreaming under the Bosphorean sun,
Notre Dame de LaSalette, Canterbury,
Or happy mysteries in some sunlit field,
Duct-tape-repaired sneakers slapping the dust
Happily, eagerly, laughingly as
The golden domes of our ancient young Faith
Rise beyond the dawn, where they always were.
May your nights and the road slip lovingly
Across your souls like Our Lady’s soft prayers,
And may you come at last to where you are.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Orwell Was Wrong
Mack Hall
Orwell got it wrong, of course. In 1984 the omnipresent telescreen is forced upon a subservient population by an omnipotent socialist government. The reality in the USA is that we, the people, demand telescreens from omnigoofy capitalist providers at omniexpense to ourselves.
My own telescreen began wonking out last month, and so I packed a small bag, said goodbye to the family, and sat down to spend much of the summer on the telephone talking to The Stepford Robots. Apparently the robots were tuned in to the DaVinci Templar Crystal Pyramid Club of Constantinople Matrix Continuum on Channel D via U.N.C.L.E. headquarters; they certainly weren’t listening to me.
The Stepford Humans who finally replaced the robots were as scripted and inattentive as the robots. The drill with technology appears to be that when your satellite service fails, it is your job to fix it. The Stepford Humans expect you to work through a diagnostic scheme that would challenge Bill Gates’ dog, a diagnostic scheme which includes climbing a ladder and looking at the satellite dish itself.
I’m paying how much a month for this?
Have you ever stood atop a ladder and meditated upon a satellite dish? Unless you are still living in a Neverland Where It Is Always 1968, practicing Incidental Pedicuration and chanting lines from Alan Watts on your sitar, I can’t recommend it. The device which brings Groomzillas, Flip This Double-Mortgaged House, and other classics of Western Civilization into your living room is in itself pretty dull. A satellite dish looks as if it grew up wanting to be a radar on a James Bond villain’s jet-powered gunboat with bikini babes and missiles, but somehow lost focus, dropped out of high school, hung out smoking magnetic tape with cast-off reel-to-reel tape recorders, and found its way to your roof, pondering a withered leaf, a dead lizard, and the mysteries of the universe in its existential concavity. And, like, y’know, stuff.
After a few occasions of robot crosstalk with both robots and humans, I finally had to say “Ma’am, stop.”
This barely broke the pattern of the Stepford Human reading her script.
“No, really, stop. I’ve done that. No, listen to me. Listen to me. I’ve done that. I’ve done that several times. I’m tired of getting out the ladder and climbing to the roof. I’m tired of checking cable this and cable that. I need a human being to come out here and check the system.”
“Have you checked the second receiver?” asked The Stepford Human.
“Ma’am, I don’t have a second receiver.”
“Our records show that you have two receivers.”
“Ma’am, technically, I do. I bought a new receiver to replace the old receiver when I thought the problem was in the old receiver. I made a ‘phone call and cleared that. The old receiver is in a box on a shelf and not hooked up to anything.”
“Yes, but you were supposed to make another call to deactivate the old receiver. Our records show that you have two receivers.”
“Ma’am, the old receiver was deactivated; that’s why I replaced it.”
“Yes, but you were suppose to make another call to deactivate the old receiver. Otherwise we will continue billing you for two receivers.”
“You’re billing me for two receivers?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, stop it.”
”That’s not my department. You’ll have to call another department.”
“Well, will you send a real human to come out here and look at all this? I’m not an electronics technician, and I’m too old and fat to be climbing up to the roof.”
The Stepford Human sighed, pondered all this, and grudgingly admitted that a technician, he’s very busy, you know, could come out in eleven days.
So let it be written; so let it be done. The technician arrived on the appointed date, his tattoos and piercings bridging the aesthetic gap between a storm trooper and PeeWee Herman. But he knew what he was doing. The problems were in some sort of pod (probably full of carnivorous Martians just waiting for the signal from evil President Bush to hatch and take over the planet) that the dish holds in a little arm, was as dysfunctional as a Hillary operative. This was a matter that a householder could not observe, diagnose, or repair, so take that, Stepford Robots and Stepford Humans who insisted I keep running diagnostics.
The fellow with the metal blobs sticking out of his face and the Iron Cross (he didn’t look old enough to have been in World War II, but who’s to say, eh?) on his body handed me his ‘phone; his supervisor wanted to talk to me.
“Allo? Ees thees Lorenz Haullllllll?”
“Yes, speaking.”
“Meeeeester Haulllllllllll, do you own you ownnnnnn houuussse?”
“Why? You want to buy it?”
“Eeeef yewwwww own you own house we haf a special offer…”
“Not interested.” I handed the ‘phone back to the technician, who was embarrassed by having to go through all this. And it must be pretty hard to embarrass a guy whose face is studded with metal parts (maybe a satellite dish exploded?) and who wears Iron Cross tattoos.
I pay for this, Gentle Reader. I pay for this.
Orwell, thou should be alive at this hour.
Orwell got it wrong, of course. In 1984 the omnipresent telescreen is forced upon a subservient population by an omnipotent socialist government. The reality in the USA is that we, the people, demand telescreens from omnigoofy capitalist providers at omniexpense to ourselves.
My own telescreen began wonking out last month, and so I packed a small bag, said goodbye to the family, and sat down to spend much of the summer on the telephone talking to The Stepford Robots. Apparently the robots were tuned in to the DaVinci Templar Crystal Pyramid Club of Constantinople Matrix Continuum on Channel D via U.N.C.L.E. headquarters; they certainly weren’t listening to me.
The Stepford Humans who finally replaced the robots were as scripted and inattentive as the robots. The drill with technology appears to be that when your satellite service fails, it is your job to fix it. The Stepford Humans expect you to work through a diagnostic scheme that would challenge Bill Gates’ dog, a diagnostic scheme which includes climbing a ladder and looking at the satellite dish itself.
I’m paying how much a month for this?
Have you ever stood atop a ladder and meditated upon a satellite dish? Unless you are still living in a Neverland Where It Is Always 1968, practicing Incidental Pedicuration and chanting lines from Alan Watts on your sitar, I can’t recommend it. The device which brings Groomzillas, Flip This Double-Mortgaged House, and other classics of Western Civilization into your living room is in itself pretty dull. A satellite dish looks as if it grew up wanting to be a radar on a James Bond villain’s jet-powered gunboat with bikini babes and missiles, but somehow lost focus, dropped out of high school, hung out smoking magnetic tape with cast-off reel-to-reel tape recorders, and found its way to your roof, pondering a withered leaf, a dead lizard, and the mysteries of the universe in its existential concavity. And, like, y’know, stuff.
After a few occasions of robot crosstalk with both robots and humans, I finally had to say “Ma’am, stop.”
This barely broke the pattern of the Stepford Human reading her script.
“No, really, stop. I’ve done that. No, listen to me. Listen to me. I’ve done that. I’ve done that several times. I’m tired of getting out the ladder and climbing to the roof. I’m tired of checking cable this and cable that. I need a human being to come out here and check the system.”
“Have you checked the second receiver?” asked The Stepford Human.
“Ma’am, I don’t have a second receiver.”
“Our records show that you have two receivers.”
“Ma’am, technically, I do. I bought a new receiver to replace the old receiver when I thought the problem was in the old receiver. I made a ‘phone call and cleared that. The old receiver is in a box on a shelf and not hooked up to anything.”
“Yes, but you were supposed to make another call to deactivate the old receiver. Our records show that you have two receivers.”
“Ma’am, the old receiver was deactivated; that’s why I replaced it.”
“Yes, but you were suppose to make another call to deactivate the old receiver. Otherwise we will continue billing you for two receivers.”
“You’re billing me for two receivers?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, stop it.”
”That’s not my department. You’ll have to call another department.”
“Well, will you send a real human to come out here and look at all this? I’m not an electronics technician, and I’m too old and fat to be climbing up to the roof.”
The Stepford Human sighed, pondered all this, and grudgingly admitted that a technician, he’s very busy, you know, could come out in eleven days.
So let it be written; so let it be done. The technician arrived on the appointed date, his tattoos and piercings bridging the aesthetic gap between a storm trooper and PeeWee Herman. But he knew what he was doing. The problems were in some sort of pod (probably full of carnivorous Martians just waiting for the signal from evil President Bush to hatch and take over the planet) that the dish holds in a little arm, was as dysfunctional as a Hillary operative. This was a matter that a householder could not observe, diagnose, or repair, so take that, Stepford Robots and Stepford Humans who insisted I keep running diagnostics.
The fellow with the metal blobs sticking out of his face and the Iron Cross (he didn’t look old enough to have been in World War II, but who’s to say, eh?) on his body handed me his ‘phone; his supervisor wanted to talk to me.
“Allo? Ees thees Lorenz Haullllllll?”
“Yes, speaking.”
“Meeeeester Haulllllllllll, do you own you ownnnnnn houuussse?”
“Why? You want to buy it?”
“Eeeef yewwwww own you own house we haf a special offer…”
“Not interested.” I handed the ‘phone back to the technician, who was embarrassed by having to go through all this. And it must be pretty hard to embarrass a guy whose face is studded with metal parts (maybe a satellite dish exploded?) and who wears Iron Cross tattoos.
I pay for this, Gentle Reader. I pay for this.
Orwell, thou should be alive at this hour.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Priestblock 25487, by Jean Bernard
A brief review for Amazon.com:
Father Bernard's narrative, written shortly after the war, is especially effective in its understatement. Fr. Bernard was an intellectual but not a writer, and so his narrative, seeking to tell only the facts, without any embellishment (really, is anyone today capable of writing a narrative without clouding it with "it changed my life forever," "defined a generation," "horrific," and all the other assembly-line filler-phrases and adjectives?)is focused, tightly-constructed, and useful. Acquaintances speak of reading through Fr. Bernard's little book of daily life in a concentration camp in one sitting -- it really is that good.
Father Bernard's narrative, written shortly after the war, is especially effective in its understatement. Fr. Bernard was an intellectual but not a writer, and so his narrative, seeking to tell only the facts, without any embellishment (really, is anyone today capable of writing a narrative without clouding it with "it changed my life forever," "defined a generation," "horrific," and all the other assembly-line filler-phrases and adjectives?)is focused, tightly-constructed, and useful. Acquaintances speak of reading through Fr. Bernard's little book of daily life in a concentration camp in one sitting -- it really is that good.
Monday, July 7, 2008
The Curse of the Headless Hitler
Mack Hall
In Berlin a Communist ex-policeman crossed a barrier in a private museum in order to twist the head off a wax statue of Adolf Hitler costing around 250,000 U.S. dollars. Or, in terms of real purchasing power, a couple of gallons of gasoline.
Was that not bravely done of the Communist? Of course one wonders if the Communist ex-policeman is aware that his hero Stalin and the now heil-less, headless Hitler were great chums at one time, sharing the occasional quiet evening over Poland.
One would think that an ex-policeman would respect the property rights of others, and twist off Hitlerian heads only with the permission of the owners. "I say, Franz, may I twist off the head of your wax statue of Hitler?" "I’d rather you didn’t, Heinrich, but over here I’ve got this lovely, pre-owned Admiral Darlan you might fancy."
Another question obtains: who would spend the equivalent of a cup of Starbuck’s coffees building a wax statue of an emo creep who murdered almost as many people as Stalin or Mao-Tse-Dung? If a private museum has a quarter-mill lying about gathering dust or wax, why not build something useful, like a library of history for the children of Berlin?
Will folks now make a habit of decapitating images of Saddamn Hussein, Osama Bin Ladin, Henry VIII, Nicolae Ceaucescu, Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh, and whoever invented TV reality shows?
Revising and sometimes eliminating history are as American as tortillas. All the schools that were named for George Washington or Davy Crockett or Kit Carson have long since become renamed for contemporary heroes or perceptions of heroes. William Barrett Travis Elementary becomes Emilio Zapata Elementary, and in a few years Chou En Lai Elementary.
Those type-A personalities who, for good or for evil, thundered through history and thought their names would live forever are as but dead double-A batteries leaking acid in a child’s discarded video game in a ditch next to the beer cans and the fast-food wrappers and the rotting armadillo done in by a speeding Hyundai.
Heck, even your bank changes names two or three times before you go through a couple of boxes of those prettily-printed checks. A friend suggests that banks would do well to put up their new signs in velcro; they’ll be coming down in a year or two. And do you know who owns your neighborhood bank? In my little town’s case, a company out of Spain at present; the revolutionary process seems to be reversing itself.
I wonder if there is a statue of a 19th-century Spanish financier somewhere. And would anyone care if its head were knocked off by some Communist screaming "Death to El Caudillo!"? Um, dude, like Hitler he's been dead for years now. Your show of righteous outrage is about eighty years too late.
What will happen when The People learn that the Dalai Lama was a slave-owner until the Chinese ran him out of Tibet? He’s living large now, though – jet planes, hotel suites, an entourage, medals of freedom here and there. There’s lots of money to be made in the holy man business. With no statues of the Dalai Lama, folks will just have to smash their made-in-China Dalai Lama coffee mugs in protest outside Abraham Lincoln – Teddy Roosevelt – Al Gore Consolidated High School.
Watch out for the carbon footprint, though.
In Berlin a Communist ex-policeman crossed a barrier in a private museum in order to twist the head off a wax statue of Adolf Hitler costing around 250,000 U.S. dollars. Or, in terms of real purchasing power, a couple of gallons of gasoline.
Was that not bravely done of the Communist? Of course one wonders if the Communist ex-policeman is aware that his hero Stalin and the now heil-less, headless Hitler were great chums at one time, sharing the occasional quiet evening over Poland.
One would think that an ex-policeman would respect the property rights of others, and twist off Hitlerian heads only with the permission of the owners. "I say, Franz, may I twist off the head of your wax statue of Hitler?" "I’d rather you didn’t, Heinrich, but over here I’ve got this lovely, pre-owned Admiral Darlan you might fancy."
Another question obtains: who would spend the equivalent of a cup of Starbuck’s coffees building a wax statue of an emo creep who murdered almost as many people as Stalin or Mao-Tse-Dung? If a private museum has a quarter-mill lying about gathering dust or wax, why not build something useful, like a library of history for the children of Berlin?
Will folks now make a habit of decapitating images of Saddamn Hussein, Osama Bin Ladin, Henry VIII, Nicolae Ceaucescu, Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh, and whoever invented TV reality shows?
Revising and sometimes eliminating history are as American as tortillas. All the schools that were named for George Washington or Davy Crockett or Kit Carson have long since become renamed for contemporary heroes or perceptions of heroes. William Barrett Travis Elementary becomes Emilio Zapata Elementary, and in a few years Chou En Lai Elementary.
Those type-A personalities who, for good or for evil, thundered through history and thought their names would live forever are as but dead double-A batteries leaking acid in a child’s discarded video game in a ditch next to the beer cans and the fast-food wrappers and the rotting armadillo done in by a speeding Hyundai.
Heck, even your bank changes names two or three times before you go through a couple of boxes of those prettily-printed checks. A friend suggests that banks would do well to put up their new signs in velcro; they’ll be coming down in a year or two. And do you know who owns your neighborhood bank? In my little town’s case, a company out of Spain at present; the revolutionary process seems to be reversing itself.
I wonder if there is a statue of a 19th-century Spanish financier somewhere. And would anyone care if its head were knocked off by some Communist screaming "Death to El Caudillo!"? Um, dude, like Hitler he's been dead for years now. Your show of righteous outrage is about eighty years too late.
What will happen when The People learn that the Dalai Lama was a slave-owner until the Chinese ran him out of Tibet? He’s living large now, though – jet planes, hotel suites, an entourage, medals of freedom here and there. There’s lots of money to be made in the holy man business. With no statues of the Dalai Lama, folks will just have to smash their made-in-China Dalai Lama coffee mugs in protest outside Abraham Lincoln – Teddy Roosevelt – Al Gore Consolidated High School.
Watch out for the carbon footprint, though.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Time to Wear the Big-Boy Pants
Mack Hall
Booze is at last legal in Jasper, Texas, and the first purchaser probably looked at the news cameras while heaving a case of Slough Dooky Beer into the trunk of his ’48 Hudson and squalling “These beer prices are ridiculous! Just ridiculous! How can I feed my children when beer prices are so high? This is all Bush’s fault!”
As we all know, Jasper County has always been a model of sobriety, with no alcohol abuse, no car crashes caused by drinking, no booze-fueled fights among neighbors, and no beer cans glinting like jewels in the Monday morning sunshine along its pristine roads.
Oh, yeah.
In this generally free nation various groups are always trying to limit the freedoms of other groups, and, sadly, often succeeding.
For almost a decade an amendment to the Constitution forbade the consumption of alcohol in any form in the entire country. But lighting up a cigarette was fine, as long as the substance smoked was tobacco.
Tobacco is now taking its time-out while alcohol becomes a health drink (well, St. Paul thought so), probably soon at a Starbuck’s near you.
Many localities ban the private ownership of firearms, contrary to the Constitution and, one may add, contrary to the Texas Declaration of Independence, which is very clear that possession of firearms is a right of free people. Banning home defense is a touchy-feely camera occasion for wealthy, peace-loving government officials who work in fortresses such as the Jefferson County Courthouse and live in gated communities guarded by armed security forces.
Peace-loving animal rights activists wearing chemical-based sneakers made in slave-labor camps in Asia beat up women who wear fur coats, and equally peace-loving vegetarians want laws passed forbidding you and me to eat Elsie-the-Cow.
Freedom of speech, the very first item in our Constitution’s Bill of Rights, is now subject to the sensitivity (don’t you just love the euphemism!) codes of corporations, campuses, and local governments. A, um, humorist can now scream vile obscenities at your children on broadcast channels (thank you, George Carlin), but you dare not publicly criticize, oh, religions of peace that strap bombs to their own children.
And, no, none of this should be happening. Americans – and everyone on this planet -- should enjoy their God-given rights to create and maintain individual and family lives in a strong civilization, and grown-up enough to show restraint without oppressive laws.
If a grownup wants to smoke a cigar in his own home on Saturday night, no agency should forbid it and no Soviet-ish snoopy neighbors should be tattling. On the other lung, if someone hasn’t figured out that choking on gaspers all day is bad for him, he probably doesn’t need to be loose in the street without a minder. Time to wear the big-boy pants.
If a couple wish to enjoy a glass of wine over a romantic dinner, that should not even be up for discussion by anyone else. But then everyone needs to remember that even that one glass compromises one’s ability to operate a motor vehicle safely. With freedom comes grown-up responsibility to limit one’s behavior. Time to wear the big-boy pants.
If a citizen wishes to speak or print criticisms of his government or of other institutions, the First Amendment should always be extended very broadly. But then a grownup ought to know better than to waddle through Parkdale Mall among children and screaming obscenities into her cell ‘phone. Time to wear the big-girl pants.
Come to think of it, she really was a big girl, but never mind.
If a citizen wishes to own a firearm for hunting or for putting a stop to the thugs who kick in doors in the middle of the night, even the Supreme Court backs him on that. But does someone living in an apartment complex surrounded by hundreds of innocent neighbors living behind cardboard walls really need to show off to other idiots with a .357 magnum? Time to wear the big-boy pants.
We don’t need plenipotentiary “human rights commissions” of the sort Canadians now suffer under. Freedom means telling King George III to take a hike. But freedom also means wearing the big-boy pants.
Booze is at last legal in Jasper, Texas, and the first purchaser probably looked at the news cameras while heaving a case of Slough Dooky Beer into the trunk of his ’48 Hudson and squalling “These beer prices are ridiculous! Just ridiculous! How can I feed my children when beer prices are so high? This is all Bush’s fault!”
As we all know, Jasper County has always been a model of sobriety, with no alcohol abuse, no car crashes caused by drinking, no booze-fueled fights among neighbors, and no beer cans glinting like jewels in the Monday morning sunshine along its pristine roads.
Oh, yeah.
In this generally free nation various groups are always trying to limit the freedoms of other groups, and, sadly, often succeeding.
For almost a decade an amendment to the Constitution forbade the consumption of alcohol in any form in the entire country. But lighting up a cigarette was fine, as long as the substance smoked was tobacco.
Tobacco is now taking its time-out while alcohol becomes a health drink (well, St. Paul thought so), probably soon at a Starbuck’s near you.
Many localities ban the private ownership of firearms, contrary to the Constitution and, one may add, contrary to the Texas Declaration of Independence, which is very clear that possession of firearms is a right of free people. Banning home defense is a touchy-feely camera occasion for wealthy, peace-loving government officials who work in fortresses such as the Jefferson County Courthouse and live in gated communities guarded by armed security forces.
Peace-loving animal rights activists wearing chemical-based sneakers made in slave-labor camps in Asia beat up women who wear fur coats, and equally peace-loving vegetarians want laws passed forbidding you and me to eat Elsie-the-Cow.
Freedom of speech, the very first item in our Constitution’s Bill of Rights, is now subject to the sensitivity (don’t you just love the euphemism!) codes of corporations, campuses, and local governments. A, um, humorist can now scream vile obscenities at your children on broadcast channels (thank you, George Carlin), but you dare not publicly criticize, oh, religions of peace that strap bombs to their own children.
And, no, none of this should be happening. Americans – and everyone on this planet -- should enjoy their God-given rights to create and maintain individual and family lives in a strong civilization, and grown-up enough to show restraint without oppressive laws.
If a grownup wants to smoke a cigar in his own home on Saturday night, no agency should forbid it and no Soviet-ish snoopy neighbors should be tattling. On the other lung, if someone hasn’t figured out that choking on gaspers all day is bad for him, he probably doesn’t need to be loose in the street without a minder. Time to wear the big-boy pants.
If a couple wish to enjoy a glass of wine over a romantic dinner, that should not even be up for discussion by anyone else. But then everyone needs to remember that even that one glass compromises one’s ability to operate a motor vehicle safely. With freedom comes grown-up responsibility to limit one’s behavior. Time to wear the big-boy pants.
If a citizen wishes to speak or print criticisms of his government or of other institutions, the First Amendment should always be extended very broadly. But then a grownup ought to know better than to waddle through Parkdale Mall among children and screaming obscenities into her cell ‘phone. Time to wear the big-girl pants.
Come to think of it, she really was a big girl, but never mind.
If a citizen wishes to own a firearm for hunting or for putting a stop to the thugs who kick in doors in the middle of the night, even the Supreme Court backs him on that. But does someone living in an apartment complex surrounded by hundreds of innocent neighbors living behind cardboard walls really need to show off to other idiots with a .357 magnum? Time to wear the big-boy pants.
We don’t need plenipotentiary “human rights commissions” of the sort Canadians now suffer under. Freedom means telling King George III to take a hike. But freedom also means wearing the big-boy pants.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Reality Funerals
Mack Hall
Several weeks ago a fellow who made his living arguing with people on the tellyvision died unexpectedly (but, really, does anyone expect to die on a given day?), and all the people he argued with suddenly got weepy about him.
Indeed, the retro-hagiography was fulsome enough to suggest that Jesus could have learned a lot from the tellyvision talk-show host.
Death has its fears, of course, the fear of God’s just punishments, the fear of what will happen to family members, and, even worse, the fear of someone interrupting the priest or minister at the funeral and suggesting "Hey, let’s each of us share a memory of the dear departed."
People who suffer these moments that bridge the cultural gap between Goofy and Oprah are the reason that wise people sit by the door at contemporary weddings and funerals, ready to bolt for sanity, safety, and freedom.
Imagine the eulogy if some sort of law or moral code required anyone speaking at a funeral to tell the plain, unperfumed truth about the more-or-less-dear departed:
He forgot where he came from.
Give back to the community? Give back what? Did he take something that wasn’t his?
When they made him did they broke the mold? No, he was just another man. And who are "they?" And what mold?
He often met strangers. And he sometimes met men he didn’t like.
He wasn’t sharing Jesus last week; he was sharing a bottle with some other old reprobate.
He didn’t have a favorite football team; he thought the idea of a bunch of grown men wearing made-in-China costumery and yelling at a television set pretty stupid.
No, he really wasn’t much of a family man.
He preferred poker to honest work.
He wondered why a fat kid with a cell ‘phone and tattoos needs a free lunch.
His word was his bond, and people who knew him didn’t trust either one.
He could have bathed more often.
He cheated widows and orphans.
He always talked about his working-class origins, but he wouldn’t hit a lick at a snake.
Oh, yeah, he was always bragging about being Irish. He couldn’t find Ireland on a map, though.
Oh, yeah, he was always bragging about being Irish, even though his monthly check was headed "The United States of America."
He was an old grouch who didn’t like dogs, though he did once admit that children went well enough with tater tots and habanera sauce.
He didn’t tip waitresses or sack boys; he thought they ought to be happy with minimum wage.
He always said that 100 channels of cable tv had more meaning for him than volunteering at the nursing home or the library or the school.
If you were down on your luck or needed help in any way, you could depend on him to refer you to somebody else.
When his hard-working wife of blessed memory gave him money to take the kids for their childhood vaccinations he spent it all on lottery tickets.
And, finally, his hero and role model was always Ted Kennedy.
Several weeks ago a fellow who made his living arguing with people on the tellyvision died unexpectedly (but, really, does anyone expect to die on a given day?), and all the people he argued with suddenly got weepy about him.
Indeed, the retro-hagiography was fulsome enough to suggest that Jesus could have learned a lot from the tellyvision talk-show host.
Death has its fears, of course, the fear of God’s just punishments, the fear of what will happen to family members, and, even worse, the fear of someone interrupting the priest or minister at the funeral and suggesting "Hey, let’s each of us share a memory of the dear departed."
People who suffer these moments that bridge the cultural gap between Goofy and Oprah are the reason that wise people sit by the door at contemporary weddings and funerals, ready to bolt for sanity, safety, and freedom.
Imagine the eulogy if some sort of law or moral code required anyone speaking at a funeral to tell the plain, unperfumed truth about the more-or-less-dear departed:
He forgot where he came from.
Give back to the community? Give back what? Did he take something that wasn’t his?
When they made him did they broke the mold? No, he was just another man. And who are "they?" And what mold?
He often met strangers. And he sometimes met men he didn’t like.
He wasn’t sharing Jesus last week; he was sharing a bottle with some other old reprobate.
He didn’t have a favorite football team; he thought the idea of a bunch of grown men wearing made-in-China costumery and yelling at a television set pretty stupid.
No, he really wasn’t much of a family man.
He preferred poker to honest work.
He wondered why a fat kid with a cell ‘phone and tattoos needs a free lunch.
His word was his bond, and people who knew him didn’t trust either one.
He could have bathed more often.
He cheated widows and orphans.
He always talked about his working-class origins, but he wouldn’t hit a lick at a snake.
Oh, yeah, he was always bragging about being Irish. He couldn’t find Ireland on a map, though.
Oh, yeah, he was always bragging about being Irish, even though his monthly check was headed "The United States of America."
He was an old grouch who didn’t like dogs, though he did once admit that children went well enough with tater tots and habanera sauce.
He didn’t tip waitresses or sack boys; he thought they ought to be happy with minimum wage.
He always said that 100 channels of cable tv had more meaning for him than volunteering at the nursing home or the library or the school.
If you were down on your luck or needed help in any way, you could depend on him to refer you to somebody else.
When his hard-working wife of blessed memory gave him money to take the kids for their childhood vaccinations he spent it all on lottery tickets.
And, finally, his hero and role model was always Ted Kennedy.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
No, It's Not Katrina
Mack Hall
All of Iowa’s major rivers are flooding, which means most of Iowa is flooding. Farms, suburbs, urban areas, the capital, the capitol, even the University of Iowa itself.
And, naturally, the flyover newsies seem unable to make any observation that does not include an allusion to Hurricane Katrina. The attitude seems to be “You think this is bad? Hah! This is nothing like Katrina.”
And indeed, the situation is nothing like Katrina. No one in Iowa is shooting at the rescue helicopters, for one thing. For another, the pictures indicate that people in Iowa, people of all ages, races, and socio-economic blah-blahs, are working on the levees and stacking sandbags. Working. Taking care of business.
This has really got to be frustrating for the networks. Imagine a blow-dried news reporter trying to get some drama on tape:
“I say, fellow, I’m Neville Ponsonby with National Consolidated World News Tonight, Tomorrow, and Now. Could you…”
“I’m kinda busy here, pal. Whaddaya need?”
“Well, I was wondering if you would put that sandbag down and step over here.”
“Why?”
“I want you to sit in the street and play this harmonica. Make some sad waaaah-waaaaaaaah sounds on it, like, you know?”
“Why in the (Newark) would I do that? I’m trying to protect our town library right now, so move out of the way. Besides, I don’t play the harmonica.”
“Oh, I see. Well, would you just sit in the street and cry or something? Say terrible things about the evil President?”
“No.”
“Would you pretend to break into that grocery store over there out of your deep sense of existential frustration?”
“No!”
“Hmmm. So you agree that this flooding is the result of evil capitalist middle-Americans driving SUVs and pickups to work.”
“No, I don’t. Now get gone.”
“You will when we feed this through the computer and have it come out the way we want.”
“Say, you had your face bashed in lately?”
“Get that angry face, cameraperson. This is another victim frustrated by the results of global warming.”
“You wanna help stack sandbags, or are you just gonna stand there like one of the leisure classes?”
“You Iowans are sooooooooooo boring. You don’t riot. You don’t loot. You don’t sit in the street and demand to know when help is coming. You’re just working. How can I make an artistic story out of that?”
“Art? You say that working isn’t art? That trying to save my town’s library is not art?”
“Well, I mean, do you play a musical instrument? Do you have an annual jollification when you have tourists come into town to buy booze and get drunk and expose themselves and get arrested?”
“I done all that when I was sixteen. Got over it. Grew up. Got a job.”
“But where is the art in that, O boring Iowan citizen? Where is the quaintness? The culture? The Europeanness?”
“Well, my great-grandpa Luigi was from Italy…”
“Sigh. Turn off the camera. It just won’t do. You Iowans – you don’t sing, you don’t dance, you don’t loot, you don’t beg, you don’t scream at the cameras, you don’t even shoot at the helicopters. You’re even working instead of sitting in the street whining. Just wait until I tell this at my next white wine and cheese salon when I get back to Martha’s Vineyard. They won’t believe it. No, alas, this isn’t Katrina. No Pulitzer prize for me here.”
All of Iowa’s major rivers are flooding, which means most of Iowa is flooding. Farms, suburbs, urban areas, the capital, the capitol, even the University of Iowa itself.
And, naturally, the flyover newsies seem unable to make any observation that does not include an allusion to Hurricane Katrina. The attitude seems to be “You think this is bad? Hah! This is nothing like Katrina.”
And indeed, the situation is nothing like Katrina. No one in Iowa is shooting at the rescue helicopters, for one thing. For another, the pictures indicate that people in Iowa, people of all ages, races, and socio-economic blah-blahs, are working on the levees and stacking sandbags. Working. Taking care of business.
This has really got to be frustrating for the networks. Imagine a blow-dried news reporter trying to get some drama on tape:
“I say, fellow, I’m Neville Ponsonby with National Consolidated World News Tonight, Tomorrow, and Now. Could you…”
“I’m kinda busy here, pal. Whaddaya need?”
“Well, I was wondering if you would put that sandbag down and step over here.”
“Why?”
“I want you to sit in the street and play this harmonica. Make some sad waaaah-waaaaaaaah sounds on it, like, you know?”
“Why in the (Newark) would I do that? I’m trying to protect our town library right now, so move out of the way. Besides, I don’t play the harmonica.”
“Oh, I see. Well, would you just sit in the street and cry or something? Say terrible things about the evil President?”
“No.”
“Would you pretend to break into that grocery store over there out of your deep sense of existential frustration?”
“No!”
“Hmmm. So you agree that this flooding is the result of evil capitalist middle-Americans driving SUVs and pickups to work.”
“No, I don’t. Now get gone.”
“You will when we feed this through the computer and have it come out the way we want.”
“Say, you had your face bashed in lately?”
“Get that angry face, cameraperson. This is another victim frustrated by the results of global warming.”
“You wanna help stack sandbags, or are you just gonna stand there like one of the leisure classes?”
“You Iowans are sooooooooooo boring. You don’t riot. You don’t loot. You don’t sit in the street and demand to know when help is coming. You’re just working. How can I make an artistic story out of that?”
“Art? You say that working isn’t art? That trying to save my town’s library is not art?”
“Well, I mean, do you play a musical instrument? Do you have an annual jollification when you have tourists come into town to buy booze and get drunk and expose themselves and get arrested?”
“I done all that when I was sixteen. Got over it. Grew up. Got a job.”
“But where is the art in that, O boring Iowan citizen? Where is the quaintness? The culture? The Europeanness?”
“Well, my great-grandpa Luigi was from Italy…”
“Sigh. Turn off the camera. It just won’t do. You Iowans – you don’t sing, you don’t dance, you don’t loot, you don’t beg, you don’t scream at the cameras, you don’t even shoot at the helicopters. You’re even working instead of sitting in the street whining. Just wait until I tell this at my next white wine and cheese salon when I get back to Martha’s Vineyard. They won’t believe it. No, alas, this isn’t Katrina. No Pulitzer prize for me here.”
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Beggars, Urban Climbers, and the Environment
Mack Hall
Last week one of the world’s superfluous rich climbed the New York Times Building (is there a connection?) to unfold a banner maintaining that economic activity – that is, working – is more deadly than the Muslim attacks on this country in 2001.
This activist-drone travels by jet around the world climbing buildings in the name of environmentalism (whatever that really is). One wonders how large his carbon buttprint is.
Better yet, how large would his carbon-based life form splatter-print be if he were to go ooopsy and fall? The only problem is that he might fall on someone who actually works for a living.
Activists are people who expect you to give them money for not doing much except travelling around and telling you what to think. Local television stations seem fond of these parasites. If some nutter bicycles through town wearing pink feathers and maintaining that he is pedalling coast to coast in order to raise money for hamster-abuse awareness, you can expect to see him being taken seriously by some wide-eyed young reporter on the evening news.
Begging may be beating out looking for a job. On a typical Saturday one cannot drive anywhere without having to slow down for a gauntlet of begging youths who no longer even plead the fig-leaf of a carwash. Three questions obtain:
1. Why do adults endanger children by setting them to begging in the streets and along highways?
2. Why do adults set children to begging at all?
3. Why should you give money to some fat kid standing around with a poster and his cell-phone? Couldn’t he go climb a building or something?
Hmmmmmmmmmmmm. This could work – or, rather, beg. The next time the Cletusville Newts are up for the semi-bi-whatever-district-pre-playoff-almost-championships in Weatherford, their parents and coaches could have them climb buildings with protest signs: IF YOU DON’T GIVE ME MONEY TO SEND ME TO THE CHESS CHAMPIONSHIPS IN WEATHERFORD YOU HATE THE ENVIRONMENT. AND YOU HATE JESUS, TOO.
The problem is that we don’t have many dramatic buildings around here. Protestors and beggers will have to learn how to shinny up blue FEMA tarps. Kids are good at climbing, and they’re less likely to be run over by a 1968 Chrysler or abducted by a vanload of paedophiles while they’re up on a roof.
Imagine some protester climbing up the side of your house some morning:
“Hey, man, what’re you doing on my roof?”
“Can’t you read the sign, you anti-environmental fascist? I’m raising awareness about Hurricane Katrina! Gimme some money!”
“Get down from there; you’re tearing up my FEMA tarp!”
“I can’t; your dog’s got me treed!”
“Good dog.”
Perhaps the best response to the roadside beggar-children who swarm your car at intersections is to beg in return: “No, kid, you give me some spare change; I just bought a tank of gas.”
Last week one of the world’s superfluous rich climbed the New York Times Building (is there a connection?) to unfold a banner maintaining that economic activity – that is, working – is more deadly than the Muslim attacks on this country in 2001.
This activist-drone travels by jet around the world climbing buildings in the name of environmentalism (whatever that really is). One wonders how large his carbon buttprint is.
Better yet, how large would his carbon-based life form splatter-print be if he were to go ooopsy and fall? The only problem is that he might fall on someone who actually works for a living.
Activists are people who expect you to give them money for not doing much except travelling around and telling you what to think. Local television stations seem fond of these parasites. If some nutter bicycles through town wearing pink feathers and maintaining that he is pedalling coast to coast in order to raise money for hamster-abuse awareness, you can expect to see him being taken seriously by some wide-eyed young reporter on the evening news.
Begging may be beating out looking for a job. On a typical Saturday one cannot drive anywhere without having to slow down for a gauntlet of begging youths who no longer even plead the fig-leaf of a carwash. Three questions obtain:
1. Why do adults endanger children by setting them to begging in the streets and along highways?
2. Why do adults set children to begging at all?
3. Why should you give money to some fat kid standing around with a poster and his cell-phone? Couldn’t he go climb a building or something?
Hmmmmmmmmmmmm. This could work – or, rather, beg. The next time the Cletusville Newts are up for the semi-bi-whatever-district-pre-playoff-almost-championships in Weatherford, their parents and coaches could have them climb buildings with protest signs: IF YOU DON’T GIVE ME MONEY TO SEND ME TO THE CHESS CHAMPIONSHIPS IN WEATHERFORD YOU HATE THE ENVIRONMENT. AND YOU HATE JESUS, TOO.
The problem is that we don’t have many dramatic buildings around here. Protestors and beggers will have to learn how to shinny up blue FEMA tarps. Kids are good at climbing, and they’re less likely to be run over by a 1968 Chrysler or abducted by a vanload of paedophiles while they’re up on a roof.
Imagine some protester climbing up the side of your house some morning:
“Hey, man, what’re you doing on my roof?”
“Can’t you read the sign, you anti-environmental fascist? I’m raising awareness about Hurricane Katrina! Gimme some money!”
“Get down from there; you’re tearing up my FEMA tarp!”
“I can’t; your dog’s got me treed!”
“Good dog.”
Perhaps the best response to the roadside beggar-children who swarm your car at intersections is to beg in return: “No, kid, you give me some spare change; I just bought a tank of gas.”
Sunday, June 1, 2008
When in Doubt, Blame the Soldier
Mack Hall
“War hath no fury like a non-combatant”
-- Charles Edward Montague
On the night of 6 June 1944 my father was on a ship in the English Channel with his armored car and crew and a few thousand of their closest friends, waiting for their turn to land in Normandy on the second day of the invasion. He said “it looked like all Europe was on fire.” He landed on 7 June, and was told by the beachmaster to “drive inland as far as you can go; drive like *&##; nothing is secure.”
“As far as you can go” turned out to be Zwickau some ten months later, with leisurely stops at Bastogne and Dachau.
Imagine a soldier in World War II landing on a beach in Normandy or anywhere else and being sent home for saying something rude about Hitler or the Emperor of Japan: “Sergeant Hall, stop that; mass-murderers have their feelings too, you know. We have to understand Hitler’s special needs. After all, he had a rough childhood. Didn’t you pay attention during the group therapy sessions that replaced lifeboat drill? We’re pulling you out of the invasion and sending you home for sensitivity training.”
Perhaps a journalist from, oh, Princess magazine heard about that exchange, and published it. In a few days Hitler could have read the sad story in the Washington Zeitgeist or the San Francisco Morning Screed and wept into his morning injection of weird drugs before filing a complaint with the United Nations.
Recently an American soldier was sent home from Iraq because he was accused of using a copy of the Koran for target practice. This was said to be offensive to the sort of people who strap bombs to their own children.
More recently a Marine was removed from checkpoint duty for handing out coins which bore the quotation from Saint John 3:16 on them instead of quotations from the Koran about how lovely it is to kill Jews.
Okay, okay, a soldier surely has better things to do than pot at a book, and a Marine at a checkpoint should be watching carefully for the little girl whose father packed her school bomb that morning so she can kill and die for his god.
Somewhere nearby there is a cranky old sergeant whose job is to growl “Private Ponsonby, if you want to discharge that firearm you find an Al Queda,” or “Corporal Snortborger, you ain’t no missionary.” And that should be the end of it. The United Nations, whose craven peacekeeping forces are a terror only to women and children, doesn’t get a say. Neither should the sort of people whose experience of war is limited to John Wayne movies and pose-for-the-camera protest marches.
A soldier who gives someone a token or religious medal with a few words about divine love on it may be a little off-task (or maybe not), but he’s the one who was sent in to clean up the mess the politicians made, and he appears to have a better idea than most politicians about how to do it.
Could we at least pause for a moment to say something at least slightly disapproving of an ideology that tortures and murders the few prisoners it manages to take? Dare we suggest that strapping bombs to one’s own child is not good parenting? Is it beastly to infer that cutting the throat of a diminutive stewardess is not nice? Is one boorish to notice that the previous Iraqi regime actually built a concentration camp for the children whose parents it had imprisoned or murdered?
Could we at least pause for a moment to say something at least slightly approving of the American soldiers we have sent into combat and, worse, “peace-keeping?”
Giving a Christian blessing to a civilian is not a soldier’s duty, but neither is it a war crime.
“War hath no fury like a non-combatant”
-- Charles Edward Montague
On the night of 6 June 1944 my father was on a ship in the English Channel with his armored car and crew and a few thousand of their closest friends, waiting for their turn to land in Normandy on the second day of the invasion. He said “it looked like all Europe was on fire.” He landed on 7 June, and was told by the beachmaster to “drive inland as far as you can go; drive like *&##; nothing is secure.”
“As far as you can go” turned out to be Zwickau some ten months later, with leisurely stops at Bastogne and Dachau.
Imagine a soldier in World War II landing on a beach in Normandy or anywhere else and being sent home for saying something rude about Hitler or the Emperor of Japan: “Sergeant Hall, stop that; mass-murderers have their feelings too, you know. We have to understand Hitler’s special needs. After all, he had a rough childhood. Didn’t you pay attention during the group therapy sessions that replaced lifeboat drill? We’re pulling you out of the invasion and sending you home for sensitivity training.”
Perhaps a journalist from, oh, Princess magazine heard about that exchange, and published it. In a few days Hitler could have read the sad story in the Washington Zeitgeist or the San Francisco Morning Screed and wept into his morning injection of weird drugs before filing a complaint with the United Nations.
Recently an American soldier was sent home from Iraq because he was accused of using a copy of the Koran for target practice. This was said to be offensive to the sort of people who strap bombs to their own children.
More recently a Marine was removed from checkpoint duty for handing out coins which bore the quotation from Saint John 3:16 on them instead of quotations from the Koran about how lovely it is to kill Jews.
Okay, okay, a soldier surely has better things to do than pot at a book, and a Marine at a checkpoint should be watching carefully for the little girl whose father packed her school bomb that morning so she can kill and die for his god.
Somewhere nearby there is a cranky old sergeant whose job is to growl “Private Ponsonby, if you want to discharge that firearm you find an Al Queda,” or “Corporal Snortborger, you ain’t no missionary.” And that should be the end of it. The United Nations, whose craven peacekeeping forces are a terror only to women and children, doesn’t get a say. Neither should the sort of people whose experience of war is limited to John Wayne movies and pose-for-the-camera protest marches.
A soldier who gives someone a token or religious medal with a few words about divine love on it may be a little off-task (or maybe not), but he’s the one who was sent in to clean up the mess the politicians made, and he appears to have a better idea than most politicians about how to do it.
Could we at least pause for a moment to say something at least slightly disapproving of an ideology that tortures and murders the few prisoners it manages to take? Dare we suggest that strapping bombs to one’s own child is not good parenting? Is it beastly to infer that cutting the throat of a diminutive stewardess is not nice? Is one boorish to notice that the previous Iraqi regime actually built a concentration camp for the children whose parents it had imprisoned or murdered?
Could we at least pause for a moment to say something at least slightly approving of the American soldiers we have sent into combat and, worse, “peace-keeping?”
Giving a Christian blessing to a civilian is not a soldier’s duty, but neither is it a war crime.
Monday, May 26, 2008
A Sequence of Iambs for Graduation Night
Mack Hall
A Sequence of Iambs for Graduation Night
A few clumsy iambs are not enough
A Sequence of Iambs for Graduation Night
A few clumsy iambs are not enough
To thank you for the blessings you have been;
Poetic meter always cuts up rough,
Even when shaped by old, Keats-haunted men.
But please accept this poor attempt at praise
In gratitude for all your gifts of grace:But please accept this poor attempt at praise
Your dreams made spring of rainy autumn days,
Sang summer to grey winter’s cold, bleak face.
But now that spring is really, truly here,
And summer waits impatiently for you,
This night closes your final childhood year:
Go build your lives with meaning, just and true.
The crowd awaits; adjust your cap just so --
And now it’s time; you really have to go.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Indiana Jones Wheezes Through
Mack Hall
When one thinks of high adventure one naturally thinks of Indiana with its menacing cornfields of death, gravity-defying flat lands, and the violent threats to civilized people posed by blood-crazed Amish street gangs.
No wonder Indiana Jones is such a hero to the future builders of empire among American boys.
Harrison Ford, still buff at 65, takes up his fedora, revolver, NRA membership, and kinky whip again in the new Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls, this time against the Bolshies in the 1950s.
You remember the Bolsheviks, right? In the 1930s they were our best friends, and then from 1938-1940 they were Hitler’s best friends, and then from 1940-1945 they were our best friends again, and then they were not our best friends, and then they kinda-sorta were, and then President Reagan said “We’re not going to feed you people anymore” and made Bolshevism morph into the Green movement.
America’s relationships with Communism are as confusing and mutable as the revolving-door religions of England in the 16th century: “Are you Catholic? Or C of E?” “I dunno; who’s Queen this week?”
The Communist Party of Saint Petersburg (which was Saint Petersburg, then Petrograd, then Leningrad, and, for the moment, Saint Petersburg again) has its collective panties in a twist about Indiana Jones, accusing him of anti-Communist sentiments.
And one can understand – those who invented death camps and genocide have feelings too, y’know?
If the series continues, the producers must adapt to changing times and the aging Harrison Ford. The humble scrivener of this piece has these plot-treatments ready for the next Indiana Jones movies:
Indiana Jones and the Hippie Punks of Doom
Indiana Jones and the Poisoned Polyester Bell-Bottoms
Indiana Jones Goes Disco
Indiana Jones and Saddamn Hussein’s Haunted Bi-Focals
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Walker
Indiana Jones and the Medication Error
Indiana Jones and the Soviet Mark II Wheelchair of Death
Indiana Jones and Senior Day at the Cafeteria
Indiana Jones, John McCain, and Rocky Get Cranky Together
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Lost Dentures
Indiana Jones and Miss Marple Lose Their Car in the Parking Lot
Indiana Jones Shoots at The Evil Swordsman – And Misses
At some point Harrison Ford will become the new Bub on the new My Three Sons, and the television ads will feature that three-pack-a-day-smoker’s-voice guy wheezing “Ashton Kutcher is Indiana Jones.”
When one thinks of high adventure one naturally thinks of Indiana with its menacing cornfields of death, gravity-defying flat lands, and the violent threats to civilized people posed by blood-crazed Amish street gangs.
No wonder Indiana Jones is such a hero to the future builders of empire among American boys.
Harrison Ford, still buff at 65, takes up his fedora, revolver, NRA membership, and kinky whip again in the new Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls, this time against the Bolshies in the 1950s.
You remember the Bolsheviks, right? In the 1930s they were our best friends, and then from 1938-1940 they were Hitler’s best friends, and then from 1940-1945 they were our best friends again, and then they were not our best friends, and then they kinda-sorta were, and then President Reagan said “We’re not going to feed you people anymore” and made Bolshevism morph into the Green movement.
America’s relationships with Communism are as confusing and mutable as the revolving-door religions of England in the 16th century: “Are you Catholic? Or C of E?” “I dunno; who’s Queen this week?”
The Communist Party of Saint Petersburg (which was Saint Petersburg, then Petrograd, then Leningrad, and, for the moment, Saint Petersburg again) has its collective panties in a twist about Indiana Jones, accusing him of anti-Communist sentiments.
And one can understand – those who invented death camps and genocide have feelings too, y’know?
If the series continues, the producers must adapt to changing times and the aging Harrison Ford. The humble scrivener of this piece has these plot-treatments ready for the next Indiana Jones movies:
Indiana Jones and the Hippie Punks of Doom
Indiana Jones and the Poisoned Polyester Bell-Bottoms
Indiana Jones Goes Disco
Indiana Jones and Saddamn Hussein’s Haunted Bi-Focals
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Walker
Indiana Jones and the Medication Error
Indiana Jones and the Soviet Mark II Wheelchair of Death
Indiana Jones and Senior Day at the Cafeteria
Indiana Jones, John McCain, and Rocky Get Cranky Together
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Lost Dentures
Indiana Jones and Miss Marple Lose Their Car in the Parking Lot
Indiana Jones Shoots at The Evil Swordsman – And Misses
At some point Harrison Ford will become the new Bub on the new My Three Sons, and the television ads will feature that three-pack-a-day-smoker’s-voice guy wheezing “Ashton Kutcher is Indiana Jones.”
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Kae and The Chancer
Mack Hall
The mystery of the Redemption of the world is…rooted in suffering, and this suffering in turn finds in the mystery of the Redemption its supreme and surest point of reference.
-- John Paul II
Chance’s few seasons ended in the springtime of his life, only a few weeks after his grandmother and dearest friend Kae was taken from him and from us in her high summer. The Chancer leaves to us his wheelchair and many happy, happy memories; he takes with him his unequalled collection of "Your momma is so fat…" jokes and our love.
Much of life is a mystery, and that’s okay; life, like the Rosary, is made up of meditations on mysteries, joyful and luminous and sorrowful and glorious. And there are deeper mysteries to Chance’s life – why was this brilliant, funny, brave kid limited to a wheelchair and a so-short life? But perhaps that is to question the reality that we were given Chance. We were given his brilliance and his great wit and his joyful sense of fun and his courage, and we must celebrate him and be grateful to God for him.
All life carries meaning, value, and dignity; Creation and the Incarnation infallibly prove this. We cannot know in this life to what extent each man and woman we meet is a gift of God, but there is purpose in every encounter. With Chance, you knew God had given you someone rare and wonderful. He made you laugh. He made you think. He made you reflect. He made you get out of the way of his high-speed wheelchair.
Anyone who knew Chance was blessed in the knowing. Chance made life fun. He was trapped in a wheelchair, and he hated that, and yet he made us laugh with his perfectly wheezy jokes. An old geezer English teacher of his acquaintance could hardly get through any presentation without being taught humility by The Chancer: "Geez, old man, blah, blah, blah; why don’t you go grade some papers or something?" or perhaps "You used to date Grendel, didn’t you?" and sometimes "Weren’t you and Fred Flintstone classmates?"
And all that was guy-code for "I love you."
I love you too, Chancer.
Wheelchairs possess no utility beyond this life; like all other possessions they are left to the pilgrims who follow. Chance runs now at last, as he always wanted, runs with his Kae, runs like the wind, the wind of an eternal golden morning in an eternal golden summer.
Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis.
The mystery of the Redemption of the world is…rooted in suffering, and this suffering in turn finds in the mystery of the Redemption its supreme and surest point of reference.
-- John Paul II
Chance’s few seasons ended in the springtime of his life, only a few weeks after his grandmother and dearest friend Kae was taken from him and from us in her high summer. The Chancer leaves to us his wheelchair and many happy, happy memories; he takes with him his unequalled collection of "Your momma is so fat…" jokes and our love.
Much of life is a mystery, and that’s okay; life, like the Rosary, is made up of meditations on mysteries, joyful and luminous and sorrowful and glorious. And there are deeper mysteries to Chance’s life – why was this brilliant, funny, brave kid limited to a wheelchair and a so-short life? But perhaps that is to question the reality that we were given Chance. We were given his brilliance and his great wit and his joyful sense of fun and his courage, and we must celebrate him and be grateful to God for him.
All life carries meaning, value, and dignity; Creation and the Incarnation infallibly prove this. We cannot know in this life to what extent each man and woman we meet is a gift of God, but there is purpose in every encounter. With Chance, you knew God had given you someone rare and wonderful. He made you laugh. He made you think. He made you reflect. He made you get out of the way of his high-speed wheelchair.
Anyone who knew Chance was blessed in the knowing. Chance made life fun. He was trapped in a wheelchair, and he hated that, and yet he made us laugh with his perfectly wheezy jokes. An old geezer English teacher of his acquaintance could hardly get through any presentation without being taught humility by The Chancer: "Geez, old man, blah, blah, blah; why don’t you go grade some papers or something?" or perhaps "You used to date Grendel, didn’t you?" and sometimes "Weren’t you and Fred Flintstone classmates?"
And all that was guy-code for "I love you."
I love you too, Chancer.
Wheelchairs possess no utility beyond this life; like all other possessions they are left to the pilgrims who follow. Chance runs now at last, as he always wanted, runs with his Kae, runs like the wind, the wind of an eternal golden morning in an eternal golden summer.
Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis.
The Class of 2008
Mack Hall
Children insist on growing up and going away. Their teachers are not happy about that. Really. Every year the old…um, venerable faculty see a hundred or so high school seniors off to the new world they will make for themselves as the old…um, seasoned citizens wave goodbye from the old-world dock of old age. Oh, sure, there are always one or two of whom one can sing "Thank God and Greyhound you’re gone," but the loss of most of them is very painful, very real, very acute, and very forever. 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 2008 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. The same school that once nagged you for tardiness and absenteeism will now require you to wear a visitor’s badge if you show up on a school day. By October of next year, most of the students in your old high school won’t know who you are -- or were. And they won't care. You'll just be old people.
2. Some day surprisingly soon you will hear shrieks of insolent laughter from your child’s room. You will find your child and her friends laughing at your yearbook pictures. You and your friends will be subject to scornful dismissal by a new, cooler-than-cool generation. You will feel very old.
3. 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. You're a little bit too old for a MySpace. Time to grow up.
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 funny, 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 sign or bumper sticker?
10. College is not high school.
11. Work is not high school. There is no such thing as an excused absence in adult life. The boss will not care about your special needs, sensitivities, artistic gifts, or traumatic childhood.
12. God made the world. We have the testimony of Genesis and of the Incarnation that all Creation is good. Never let anyone try to tell you that the world is evil.
13. 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 of thousands of people. Sometimes they get it right. Books are usually written by one person. Sometimes he or she gets it wrong. But there are lots more good books than there are good movies.
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 ability to accept 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 movies will be watched (if not made). You decide what will be on the television screen in your home. Your life is your own – don’t become one of the sheep.
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. However, if you find that more evenings and weekends are spent at these activities instead of raising your family, learn to say no to extra demands.
27. Don’t bore people with sad stories about your horrible childhood. No one ever lived a Leave It To Beaver or Cosby existence. And besides, you might have been the problem. Get over it.
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. Support your local congregation. Oh, and never say to anyone "We missed you in church last Sunday," because that’s really saying I was in church, and you weren’t, so nanny-nanny-boo-boo," and where does that imperial "we" come from anyway? God has not appointed you to be His attendance officer.
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, and learn how to use a knife and fork.
33. The groom’s role at a wedding is decorative rather than functional. Stand where the women tell you to stand, do what the women tell you to do, say what the women tell you to say, and nobody will get hurt.
34. Couples who write their own wedding vows probably have other embarrassing tendencies. The sixties are over.
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. This just in: Green is sooooooooooo yesterday.
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. Do something.
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 don’t have to pay big money for pre-printed notes; buy notepaper with pictures (hunting scenes for the guys; flowers for the girls) on the outside and nothing on the inside. You can write; you’re a high school graduate, remember?
48. Babies cry. That’s not a crime. However, in public places, other people do have a right to hear a sermon or attend a movie without prolonged yowling. You may feel awkward about getting up and quietly taking the infant outside; you shouldn’t. When you discreetly carry your crying baby away for a few minutes to attend to its needs, other people are grateful to you for respecting both them and your child, and are pleased that the child has such great parents.
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 2008, it’s time to let go. Thanks for everything: for the pictures and paper balls and pizza and pep rallies and recitals and concerts and games, for your thoughts and essays, for your laughter and jokes, for usually paying attention to roll call ("Focus, class... focus...focus...focus..."), for really thinking about Macbeth and Becket and Beowulf, and those wonderful pilgrims (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
Children insist on growing up and going away. Their teachers are not happy about that. Really. Every year the old…um, venerable faculty see a hundred or so high school seniors off to the new world they will make for themselves as the old…um, seasoned citizens wave goodbye from the old-world dock of old age. Oh, sure, there are always one or two of whom one can sing "Thank God and Greyhound you’re gone," but the loss of most of them is very painful, very real, very acute, and very forever. 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 2008 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. The same school that once nagged you for tardiness and absenteeism will now require you to wear a visitor’s badge if you show up on a school day. By October of next year, most of the students in your old high school won’t know who you are -- or were. And they won't care. You'll just be old people.
2. Some day surprisingly soon you will hear shrieks of insolent laughter from your child’s room. You will find your child and her friends laughing at your yearbook pictures. You and your friends will be subject to scornful dismissal by a new, cooler-than-cool generation. You will feel very old.
3. 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. You're a little bit too old for a MySpace. Time to grow up.
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 funny, 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 sign or bumper sticker?
10. College is not high school.
11. Work is not high school. There is no such thing as an excused absence in adult life. The boss will not care about your special needs, sensitivities, artistic gifts, or traumatic childhood.
12. God made the world. We have the testimony of Genesis and of the Incarnation that all Creation is good. Never let anyone try to tell you that the world is evil.
13. 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 of thousands of people. Sometimes they get it right. Books are usually written by one person. Sometimes he or she gets it wrong. But there are lots more good books than there are good movies.
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 ability to accept 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 movies will be watched (if not made). You decide what will be on the television screen in your home. Your life is your own – don’t become one of the sheep.
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. However, if you find that more evenings and weekends are spent at these activities instead of raising your family, learn to say no to extra demands.
27. Don’t bore people with sad stories about your horrible childhood. No one ever lived a Leave It To Beaver or Cosby existence. And besides, you might have been the problem. Get over it.
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. Support your local congregation. Oh, and never say to anyone "We missed you in church last Sunday," because that’s really saying I was in church, and you weren’t, so nanny-nanny-boo-boo," and where does that imperial "we" come from anyway? God has not appointed you to be His attendance officer.
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, and learn how to use a knife and fork.
33. The groom’s role at a wedding is decorative rather than functional. Stand where the women tell you to stand, do what the women tell you to do, say what the women tell you to say, and nobody will get hurt.
34. Couples who write their own wedding vows probably have other embarrassing tendencies. The sixties are over.
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. This just in: Green is sooooooooooo yesterday.
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. Do something.
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 don’t have to pay big money for pre-printed notes; buy notepaper with pictures (hunting scenes for the guys; flowers for the girls) on the outside and nothing on the inside. You can write; you’re a high school graduate, remember?
48. Babies cry. That’s not a crime. However, in public places, other people do have a right to hear a sermon or attend a movie without prolonged yowling. You may feel awkward about getting up and quietly taking the infant outside; you shouldn’t. When you discreetly carry your crying baby away for a few minutes to attend to its needs, other people are grateful to you for respecting both them and your child, and are pleased that the child has such great parents.
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 2008, it’s time to let go. Thanks for everything: for the pictures and paper balls and pizza and pep rallies and recitals and concerts and games, for your thoughts and essays, for your laughter and jokes, for usually paying attention to roll call ("Focus, class... focus...focus...focus..."), for really thinking about Macbeth and Becket and Beowulf, and those wonderful pilgrims (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
Sunday, May 11, 2008
"But I'm a College Graduate!"
Mack Hall
This is an old wheeze; this version is from the ‘blog Happy Catholic:
A young man hired by a supermarket reported for his first day of work. The manager greeted him with a warm handshake and a smile, gave him a broom, and said, “Your first job will be to sweep out the store. Work from the front to the back.”
“But I’m a college graduate,” the young man replied indignantly.
“Oh, I’m sorry, son. I didn’t know that,” said the manager. “Here, give me the broom - I’ll show you how.”
This is the season when schools turn ‘em loose, the “’em” being graduates of high school or university. The camera-hogs often appear minimally articulate; the ambitious ones probably left early for job interviews.
With degrees in interpretive-kinesio-psychology, piercings and tattoos from Mama Bluto’s downtown, and cellphones-to-the-ear by Verizon, like, you know, totally, dog-dude, the graduates are eager to change the world, save the planet, and make a difference.
Sure, okay, fine, but let’s not forget the story of King Alfred letting the bread burn. There is a time to plan the salvation of the nation and a time to watch the bread baking and make sure it isn’t ruined.
This is not to deny the world of ideas, quite the opposite, actually. If a man learns electricity he can use his knowledge to help install MRI machines or to electrify the perimeters of death camps. Ideas, critical thinking, and value systems help him decide what to do with the electricity.
Work, as in cobbling shoes or welding pipe or roofing a house, is pretty much discredited at present. Even a casual glance at popular entertainment indicates that the only careers at present are law enforcement (with much careless discharging of firearms), detective work (in shiny laboratories with unlimited budgets), or vaguely hanging around luxurious offices not doing much except anticipating a laugh-track. In the 1950s good ol’ Charlie Brown was very proud of his father the barber, but he would now expect ol’ dad to be a cool CIS dude.
The presidential candidates may spat with each other on talk shows, but they are in sweet accord on this: people who actually work with their hands are but a background of unwashed commoners to the candidates’ mighty passions of ambition. We are faced with the prospect of being ruled by law school graduates who have never held real jobs and never wondered how they are going to feed the kids, and who yet think they are victims of oppression.
Is not the purpose of a university to teach its graduates how to think better than that?
In sum, the story of the college graduate and the broom (we are not speaking of Hillary’s mode of transportation) may be a layered comment on the pretensions of college graduates, but more than that it may be an observation on the inadequate perceptions of reality in those who would presume to rule us.
This is an old wheeze; this version is from the ‘blog Happy Catholic:
A young man hired by a supermarket reported for his first day of work. The manager greeted him with a warm handshake and a smile, gave him a broom, and said, “Your first job will be to sweep out the store. Work from the front to the back.”
“But I’m a college graduate,” the young man replied indignantly.
“Oh, I’m sorry, son. I didn’t know that,” said the manager. “Here, give me the broom - I’ll show you how.”
This is the season when schools turn ‘em loose, the “’em” being graduates of high school or university. The camera-hogs often appear minimally articulate; the ambitious ones probably left early for job interviews.
With degrees in interpretive-kinesio-psychology, piercings and tattoos from Mama Bluto’s downtown, and cellphones-to-the-ear by Verizon, like, you know, totally, dog-dude, the graduates are eager to change the world, save the planet, and make a difference.
Sure, okay, fine, but let’s not forget the story of King Alfred letting the bread burn. There is a time to plan the salvation of the nation and a time to watch the bread baking and make sure it isn’t ruined.
This is not to deny the world of ideas, quite the opposite, actually. If a man learns electricity he can use his knowledge to help install MRI machines or to electrify the perimeters of death camps. Ideas, critical thinking, and value systems help him decide what to do with the electricity.
Work, as in cobbling shoes or welding pipe or roofing a house, is pretty much discredited at present. Even a casual glance at popular entertainment indicates that the only careers at present are law enforcement (with much careless discharging of firearms), detective work (in shiny laboratories with unlimited budgets), or vaguely hanging around luxurious offices not doing much except anticipating a laugh-track. In the 1950s good ol’ Charlie Brown was very proud of his father the barber, but he would now expect ol’ dad to be a cool CIS dude.
The presidential candidates may spat with each other on talk shows, but they are in sweet accord on this: people who actually work with their hands are but a background of unwashed commoners to the candidates’ mighty passions of ambition. We are faced with the prospect of being ruled by law school graduates who have never held real jobs and never wondered how they are going to feed the kids, and who yet think they are victims of oppression.
Is not the purpose of a university to teach its graduates how to think better than that?
In sum, the story of the college graduate and the broom (we are not speaking of Hillary’s mode of transportation) may be a layered comment on the pretensions of college graduates, but more than that it may be an observation on the inadequate perceptions of reality in those who would presume to rule us.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Well-Trained Americans
Mack Hall
Amtrak, first cousin to FEMA, wants Americans to come down to the railway station on May 10th and celebrate National Train Day.
The problem is that for almost all of America there are no trains and no railway stations.
Amtrak’s own web site is surprisingly frank about the Amtrak passenger station in Beaumont, Texas:
2555 West Cedar StreetBeaumont, TX 77704
Station Services
No Station Hours.
No Ticket Office Hours
No Quik-Trak Hours
No Checked Baggage Hours
No Help With Baggage
And that is because Amtrak’s station in Beaumont is a concrete slab in a weedy field, with not even a FEMA trailer for shelter. On Saturday Amtrak is going to spend over two million dollars on celebrating itself, so we’ll all want to get to the Beaumont Amtrak Slab early and bring lawn chairs.
We all know a couple of fellows with a pickup and some tools who for a few thousand dollars and maybe a case of beer could put up a pretty decent shelter with an air-conditioner and some electric lights. Amtrak’s Sunset Limited (it is a beautiful train) speeds through Beaumont six times a week, three trains from New Orleans to Los Angeles and three trains the other way. To order a ticket you have to access Amtrak on your computer, and to catch the train you must ask a brave friend, preferably armed, to drive you out to a dark desolation at the end of an obscure street and wait with you.
Amtrak station service is non-existent, but surely someone will open the train door for you.
According to Amtrak, “Services on the Sunset Limited include Superliner Sleeping and Dining Car accommodations and spectacular views from the renowned Sightseer Lounge Car.”
That’s rather like Ford selling a car by advertising a good view of New Mexico through the windshield as one of the features.
May 10th was selected as National Train Day because on this date in 1869 a golden spike joining the final rails was driven there, completing the first transcontinental rail service in the USA. The final irony is that there is no rail service to Promontory Point, Utah. There’s not much passenger service anywhere in America, and on Saturday Amtrak is going to spend $2.2 million of your tax dollars to celebrate that.
Amtrak, first cousin to FEMA, wants Americans to come down to the railway station on May 10th and celebrate National Train Day.
The problem is that for almost all of America there are no trains and no railway stations.
Amtrak’s own web site is surprisingly frank about the Amtrak passenger station in Beaumont, Texas:
2555 West Cedar StreetBeaumont, TX 77704
Station Services
No Station Hours.
No Ticket Office Hours
No Quik-Trak Hours
No Checked Baggage Hours
No Help With Baggage
And that is because Amtrak’s station in Beaumont is a concrete slab in a weedy field, with not even a FEMA trailer for shelter. On Saturday Amtrak is going to spend over two million dollars on celebrating itself, so we’ll all want to get to the Beaumont Amtrak Slab early and bring lawn chairs.
We all know a couple of fellows with a pickup and some tools who for a few thousand dollars and maybe a case of beer could put up a pretty decent shelter with an air-conditioner and some electric lights. Amtrak’s Sunset Limited (it is a beautiful train) speeds through Beaumont six times a week, three trains from New Orleans to Los Angeles and three trains the other way. To order a ticket you have to access Amtrak on your computer, and to catch the train you must ask a brave friend, preferably armed, to drive you out to a dark desolation at the end of an obscure street and wait with you.
Amtrak station service is non-existent, but surely someone will open the train door for you.
According to Amtrak, “Services on the Sunset Limited include Superliner Sleeping and Dining Car accommodations and spectacular views from the renowned Sightseer Lounge Car.”
That’s rather like Ford selling a car by advertising a good view of New Mexico through the windshield as one of the features.
May 10th was selected as National Train Day because on this date in 1869 a golden spike joining the final rails was driven there, completing the first transcontinental rail service in the USA. The final irony is that there is no rail service to Promontory Point, Utah. There’s not much passenger service anywhere in America, and on Saturday Amtrak is going to spend $2.2 million of your tax dollars to celebrate that.
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