Russians in Moc Hoa

I read lots of Russian lit (in translation, of course) while in Viet-Nam

Mack Hall

Russians in Moc Hoa

I understood poor, young Raskolnikov
And read all I found by Anton Chekhov
Remembered nothing about Bulgakhov
Heard naughty whispers about Nabokov
Thrilled to the Cossacks in old Sholokov
And then I learned about Kalashnikov –
This, I decided, is where I get off!

Little Known Fact #4 About THE PRISONER

#6 hides his Winnie-the-Pooh books unders his pillow. If #2 ever finds out...

Ubi Petrus

Mack Hall

For Inky and Jason

"Ubi Petrus, ibi Ecclesia."
- St. Ambrose of Milan

Where Peter was, there also was the Tomb --
Blood-sodden dreams cold-rotting in old sin,
The Chalice left unwashed, the Upper Room
A three-days’ grave for hope-forsaken men.

Where Peter is, there also should we be,
Poor pilgrims, his, a-kneel before the Throne
Of Eosian Christendom, and none but he
Is called to lead the Church to eternal Dawn.

Where Peter then will be, there is the Faith,
Transubstantiation, whipped blood, ripped flesh
A solid reality, not a wraith
Of shop-soiled heresies labeled as fresh.

Where Peter is, O Lord, there let us pray,
Poor battered wanderers along Your way.

Pontius Pilate's Pleynt

Mack Hall

My Caesar and my Empire have I served,
A diplomatic functionary, true
To distant duties, and never unnerved
By greedy Greek or perfidious Jew.

Outside the arca archa have I thought,
Festooned my desk and office with awards;
My Caesar’s honour only have I sought
While sparing for myself but few rewards.

I built with focused care my resume’
And filed each memorandum, note, and scrip;
I justly ruled (no matter what they say),
And seldom sent men to the cross or whip.

But, oh! That thing about an open vault –
I never got it. And why was that my fault?

Another Fact About THE PRISONER

#6 would have rescued the Maersk Alabama but #2 strapped #6 to that aluminum see-saw in the control room and made him too sea-sick to go.

The Maersk Alabama Incident: One Shot, One Kill, One Million Lawsuits

Mack Hall


The brilliant rescue of Captain Richard Phillips of the Maersk Alabama by the United States Navy leads one to wonder if the roaring we hear is caused by a tidal wave (“tsunami” is so last six months) of lawsuits being filed against America by Americans.

We are awaiting the usual pictures of the requisite peaceful anti-American rioting in London and Paris by peaceful peace activists peacefully chanting “Death to America” and “Peacefully behead those who disapprove of peaceful Islam.”

What has not yet been decided is when the Navy SEALS involved will be turned over to the Belgians for a show trial – uh – fair trial, or when The Leader of the Free World will next genuflect before another thug and apologize for evil, perfidious America’s brutality, colonialism, and carbon-footprintism.

Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, America’s leading druggie Republicans, will whoop and strut like the couch-carrot emperor in Gladiator.

Maersk will probably pay off somebody anyway: “Pretty-please don’t steal our ships.”

Mexico will claim that this is all the fault of the few remaining American gun manufacturers.

The American taxpayer will probably be made to give all the Somali relatives (“He was my third cousin twice removed…sob!”) far more money than is granted to American war widows and orphans.

Greenpeace will sue for the global warming caused by the discharge of weapons.

PETA will kill some more dogs while griping that the First Family did not rescue Bo from a shelter. The President’s Death Star limousine will sport a bumper sticker reading “I (heart) My Portuguese Water Dog.” This will replace the Maersk Alabama in the news.

Germany, Britain, and Norway will squabble about the Altmark incident in 1940, but will in the end agree that it was America’s fault. Descendants will sue America because Texaco sold the British government a can of oil that was later used (according to expert testimony) to lubricate a galley ventilation fan on HMS Cossack.

Hey, how about the Chinese navy stepping in and helping out off East Africa, eh?

U.S. Navy officers anywhere in the world who may have heard of the Maersk Alabama will receive medals; the enlisted men who risked their lives will be told to go clean something.

And in the meantime, between satellite-phone consultations with their American attorneys, Somali pirate-lords will be having the lads clean their AK-47s and brush up on their boarding-party skills.

Fact #2 About THE PRISONER

The control room staff don't give each other Secret Pal gifts.

Little Known Fact #1 About THE PRISONER

#6 finally realized he could intimidate Rover by glaring at him in that head down / eyes up way he uses in the opening.

History's Lost E-Mails - a Rebuttal to an Anonymous Committee of Merovingians

Dear Anonymous Accuser:

 

Thank you for your note, the contents of which sound much like the block warden’s caution (“Your attitude is noticed, comrade.”) to Yuri in the film version of Doctor Zhivago.

 

I have re-read the column, which I wrote nine years ago, and find nothing offensive in it (although it is rather puerile), nor do you detail exactly what is offensive in it and why I should be sanctioned. You are being Kafka-esque, and I say this as someone who has read Kafka: you do not tell me what offense I have purportedly committed nor do you face me with an accuser. You do not even face me with you, for you do not give your name. You employ the passive voice in referring to an “Adult Content policy” and to “Community Guidelines,” which sounds like something from an episode of Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner: “The Committee won’t like this, Number Six.”

 

Google (and one could find “google” offensive, with its history mocking someone’s physical characteristics) is a private company, and so is free to publish or not publish, as is only right.  And I am free to pity Google for moral, ethical, and literary cowardice.

 

I was raised in situational poverty, barely graduated from high school, and spent 18 months in Viet-Nam. Upon returning to the USA (with life-long skin cancer which the DVA denies) I worked straight nights (double shifts on weekends) as an ambulance driver and later an LVN to put myself through university. I taught for almost forty years in public school, community college, and university as an adjunct instructor of no status whatsoever. In retirement I volunteered with our local school’s reading program until the Covid ended that, and I still volunteer with the lads at the local prison. I volunteer in community cleanup after our hurricanes (tho’ I’m getting a little old for that). I’ve worked hard all my life, paid my taxes, paid off my house at age 70, receive only half of my Social Security because of some vague law, and never gamed the system. Indeed, I would say that the system has gamed me.

 

And was all of this so that some frightened committee of anonymous inquisitors staring at an Orwellian telescreen or a Mordor-ish Palantir could find an innocuous scribble insensitive?

 

Pffffft.

 

Sincerely,

 

Lawrence Hall

 

 

Mack Hall A gigantic computer (the 555, not the 666, so it’s okay) hidden away in Belgium has recovered and reconstructed long-lost emails that help give us all new insights (or exsights) into history: From: whitestar.designoffice@wet.uk To: titanicbuff@reallywet.uk Date: 15 April 1912 Subject: Steering Hey, chaps, like, you know, we made the rudder too bleedin’ small for a ship that size, so you can’t, like, steer around objects very well. If you, like, think you’re going to hit something, like Manhattan Island or an iceberg, the best thing to do is to keep the rudder straight and set all the props in reverse. Hey, you might scrape some paint off the bow, but, like, that’s better than sinking. Any cute girls on board? Been swimming yet? From: FlowerFairyHitler@happynet.de To: CigarBoy@downingstreet.uk Date: 5 April 1945 Subject: Purported note of 3 September 1939 Winnie, my man! What’s shakin’? Hey, big guy, there’s some rumor that your predecessor had an email sent to our ambassador on 3 September back in 1939, but, dude, he never got it! Really! And I sent you some serious emails back in th’ day which you never answered, so, y’know, this whole World War II thing is really your fault, okay? So King’s X or I’m gonna tell my mom on you. From: Pinkertonspys-are-us@col.com To: tallguyinthetallhat@gov.com Subject: Agent Smith and Tomorrow Night’s Theatre Plans Date: 13 April 1865 Dear Mr. President: Sir, we need to tell you that Agent Smith, whom we appointed as part of your security detail, has ambitions of being a theatre critic. He tends to pay attention to plays rather than to his job, so I suggest you take a different agent when you go to see Our American Cousin tomorrow night. Vy. Ob’tly yrs, Allan Pinkerton“We Never Sleep” From: uberairshippen@oops.de To: hindenberg@hotsy.de Subject: In-flight repairs. Date: 5 May 1937 Max, old boy! Word from the ground crew back here is that aircraft mechanic Schmidt is worried that he didn’t fully check electromechanical panel 43A, which has something to do with static electricity. Schmidt says if you would have the boys open that panel and make sure that Switch A is pushed to the left and Switch B is centered then your landing in degenerate America will be a whole bunch better. Happy landings, and have a hot time in New Jersey! To: Hefbaby@gatefold.com From: therchurchofnowness@something.com Subject: Admittance to divinity school Date: 13 February 1952 Dear Mr. Hefner: Upon reviewing your application and your references, we are offering you a place in the freshman class this term at St. Ponsonby’s School of Divinity. In your letter you referred to your interests in art and publishing, but I can assure you that your gifts seem oriented to the ministry. Sincerely, Doctor Reverend Bishop Brother Whittlesby Snark Yes, we all wonder about the emails that never were.

The Mirror of a Man

The Mirror of a Man

For Robin

As his adventures continue

A good knife is the mirror of a man,
Carefully crafted by the Master’s hands,
Forged in the fire, hammered, water-baptized,
And forged again, made strong and sharp and true.

A good knife is the mirror of a friend,
A fellow pilgrim on the sunlit road,
A needful companion, always at hand,
Welcome as sunrise and coffee at dawn.

A good knife is the mirror of a life
Lived humbly in this sometimes Lenten world,
But proven a sword when, at journey’s end,
A man at last enters Jerusalem.


-- Mack Hall, 4 April 2009

Notre Dame and the Upside-Down Helmet

Mack Hall

You can talk of your Judge Judy and your high school principal and your mother-in-law, but you have never been truly judged and found wanting until you have had a dinner-jacketed maitre d’ at the Notre Dame faculty club evaluate – and find inadequate – your very soul with the subtle arching of an eyebrow above his unblinking reptilian eye.

I was honored to spend a happy summer at Notre Dame under the mentoring of the brilliant and wonderfully humorous Thomas Morris (whom you can find at http://www.morrisinstitute.com and whose books you can find at Amazon.com and other good bookstores). I and the other Fellows of that year’s National Endowment for the Humanities were nominally – remember that adverb – members of the Notre Dame faculty for the six weeks, and I still have my faculty I.D. card somewhere.

Toward the end of our summer we Fellows decided to put on shoes and clean shirts and take a celebratory dinner in the faculty club just to say we had done so, and after appalling Jeeves and some members of the real faculty we enjoyed ourselves immensely in the elegant dining room. It was a fitting end to a marvelous six weeks.

Notre Dame was founded in the middle of the 19th century by a French missionary order, but its football reputation rests on generations of Irish lads who were not welcome at Harvard or Yale. Thus, an accident of immigration resulted in the school mascot NOT being “The Fighting French.” This paragraph has nothing to do with the narrative, and as a teacher I’d take points off for it, but I like it so I’m leaving it in.

The Notre Dame adventure continued when Tom asked me and several others to read and comment on the draft of what would be one of his best books, Making Sense of It All. This was an enjoyable labor for which he gave me many thanks. In all humility I must confess that Tom did not ask me to read or comment on the draft of his next book.

Notre Dame remains dear to me all these years later. I remember with a “I Survived” mentality how our lot were billeted in Saint Edward’s Hall, Lentenly un-air-conditioned during a record-hot summer in which the temps reached 106 day after day. Thus we sloshed in the covered pool when possible, spent our off-class hours reading and writing in the mechanized air of the student commons, and walked in the cool of the evenings, sometimes participating in the Notre Dame tradition of praying the Rosary in the Grotto at dusk.

The Basilica of the Sacred Heart is only a few steps away from St. Edward’s Hall, and we usually entered by the east door beneath these words carved in the stone of the arch: “God, Country, and Notre Dame.” This is much better than “Me, Me, and AIG” or “Me, Me, and Enron” or perhaps “He Who Dies With the Most Toys Wins.” On either side are bronze plaques commemorating the sons – and now daughters, I fear – of Notre Dame who died in America’s wars.

Someone pointed out to me the light at the entrance – a bulb fitted into the upside-down World War I helmet of Fr. Charles O’Connell, who survived and became the 12th president of Notre Dame. I suppose Fr. O’Connell wanted to make sure he could find his helmet in the middle of the night the next time Germany started a war.

Notre Dame du Lac (“Our Lady of the Lake”) began as a grade school in a log cabin in a frozen wilderness in the 1840s, but the French missionary priests envisioned a great university topped by a golden dome and a statue of the Blessed Mother. Generations of sacrifice and service made it so.

The whole point of Notre Dame is that it is a Catholic university. The football team, the upside-down helmet with a light bulb in it, the lovely lakes, the reconstructed log cabin, the rather stupid-looking leprechaun, Knute Rockne and The Gipper – all these are fun, but they are not what Notre Dame is about, the transmission of Christian civilization, via such great teachers as Thomas Morris, from one generation to the next.

The current administration of Notre Dame has invited the President of the United States to speak at graduation in May. Normally this would be a “how nice” thing, because no one listens to graduation speakers, not even to presidents. One attends graduation to dress up like a monk or monkette, pose for pictures, and toss one’s hat and maybe one’s cookies later on, not to listen to someone expel the usual flatus about dreams being the key (there’s always a key) that unlocks the road to the future of the door or something. I dare to say that were Jesus Himself to speak at Notre Dame’s ceremonies in May the graduates would be too busy text-messaging each other to notice: “dud hu d dud in whit keg mi pl8s l8ter.”

Unfortunately, the current president’s fashionable enthusiasm (hey, all the cool kids are doing it, right?) for infanticide has gotten all tangled up in this Christianity thing. When Jesus said that children should be permitted to come to Him, He didn’t mean that the children should be shot, gassed, burnt, poisoned, or flushed first. Indeed, He was very clear that a failure to protect children would be severely punished.

Jesus appeared in a time when the dominant Greco-Roman culture highly approved of killing off any babies, especially girls, whom the sperm-donor or the state found lacking. The modern science of economics under Hitler would later label such children – and folks past retirement age -- as “useless feeders.”

Certainly one may speak freely in a public forum, and the president probably won’t even mention killing babies anyway.

But this forum is different. This forum is Notre Dame, named for Jesus’ Mother, who chooses life. Further, the speaker is going to be given an honorary doctorate in, oh, doctorness or something, which would imply a Christian school’s ratification of his contempt for the lives of the most vulnerable among us. This ratification is to be made during the graduation of hundreds of young men and women who are now forced into an unhappy alternative: to attend the graduation they have earned and thus possibly be construed as approving of the killing of babies, or staying away entirely and denying themselves their special day. That choice that was not part of the deal when they entered Notre Dame four years ago.

One wonders if the current maitre d’ at the Notre Dame faculty club -– or anyone else -- will lift an eyebrow at that.

The Grouchy Man's MeMeMeSpaceBookThingie

Mack Hall


About ME, ME, ME: Why do you care? Why would I care if you care? Get lost.

MY, MY, MY Ten Favorite Movies: Read a book, dummy. But I, I, I confess to enjoying Braveheart and Titanic for their happy endings. Any movie featuring Mel Gibson being ripped apart by cackling torturers is okay by ME, ME, ME.

MY, MY, MY Ten Favorite Television Shows: At the moment I, I, I’m watching The Tudors, but only for the beheading scenes.

MY, MY, MY Turn-Ons: Scotch, cigars, and imagining the inventor of this self-indulgent site falling to his death through a faulty airplane toilet.

MY, MY, MY Turn-Offs: Kittens, puppies, long walks on the beach, sincere people, flowers, candle-light dinners.

MY, MY, MY Music: Wagner. All that 19th-century pseudo-paganism with lots of violence and shrieking makes ME, ME, ME want to go out and conquer France. The repeated “Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho!” bits are confusing, though. Was Wagner trying to make the iambics work, or was he yelling for a cracker?

MY, MY, MY Most Specialist Favoritist Memory: When I, I, I ran over a bunny rabbit with MY, MY, MY lawnmower.

In MY, MY, MY Room I, I, I Have Posters of: Vlad the Impaler, Saddamn Hussein, Henry VIII, Mussolini, and Hannah Montana.

MY, MY, MY Bestest Wish For the Mother Earth: Al Gore being eaten by polar bears. Or maybe Heather McCartney’s wooden leg being gnawed by a harp seal.

MY, MY, MY Greatest Fear: Happy children singing and dancing in a sunlit meadow. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!

MY, MY, MY Favoritest Food: Critter. Killed. Cooked.

MY, MY, MY Favorite Television Shows: Anything with people being humiliated for laughs. And snakes.

MY, MY, MY Motto: Take time to stomp the flowers.

MY, MY, MY Favorite Car: Anything with treads and a cannon.

MY, MY, MY Favorite Clothes: Coats made from the skins of cute little hamsters sacrificed to weird gods under a full moon.

MY, MY, MY Favorite Song: “Lenin Lived Here,” by the Red Army Chorus.

MY, MY, MY Wish For You: Go Away. A MyMyMySpaceBookThingie site is all about ME, ME, ME.

Books as Kindling

Mack Hall

Amazon.com is selling its Kindle II, and most of us have never even seen its predecessor, the Kindle I.

The Kindle is a small, light, flat electronic gadget that displays a book one page at a time on its 6" diagonal screen. The real utility of this device is that, according to Amazon, it can store approximately 1,500 books. The number would vary because Peter Rabbit and The City of God, each a book of wisdom in its own way, differ in size.

The Kindle II as advertised by Amazon.com costs $359.00, which includes a one-year warranty with a one-time I-dropped-it protection. A leather Kindle cover – in case you fear you might drop the thing a second time – is $29.99. A two-year extended warranty, which really means only one year following the first year, is $65. Guts, feathers, and all, then, a fully kitted-out and protected Kindle II is $453.99.

Now you’re ready and rarin’ to read, right?

Whoa, pardner; don’t polish those bi-focals just yet.

You’ve bought only the book-holder-thingie. Now you have to buy a book for it. That’s right – this pricey revolution in reading books doesn’t include a book.

Amazon.com offers some 245,000 titles for over-the-air download, most – not all – for $9.99.

Buying a Kindle, then, is rather like paying forty or fifty dollars for a coffee cup at BigBuck’s and then having to pay another couple of dollars for some coffee to put into it.

And while you are buying your cup of coffee and your back is turned someone else will help himself to your Kindle while ignoring the unguarded paperback at the next table.

There are a few people who will pay a great deal of money for the Kindle simply because it is a fashion and they want to be seen to be sporting the latest. For most of us, $350 for a shiny book-holder-thingie that will surely suffer the fragility and mortality of all electronics seems a poor investment. Besides, in a year or two such devices will probably be on sale in a bubble-package at the supermarket checkout, and the downloads will be a few dollars each.

Oppressors won’t like electronic reading devices such as the Kindle because they will make burning books more less theatrical. Instead of tossing each book into a jolly bookfire while chanting "Saint Augustine, we burn you! We burn you!" and "Beatrix Potter, we burn you! We burn you!" the GooberTroopers will be burning only one plastic gadget:

"Comrade Brother UberPhartenFuhrer Smith, why isn’t there a bigger fire?"

"I’m sorry, Comrade Brother UberDooberFuhrer Jones; we found only one Kindle. We had to beat up a reactionary fourth-grader to get it away from her."

"Well, just rake it out of the fire and throw it in again."

"The fourth-grader, mein Comrade Brother UberdooberFuhrer?"

"No, no, no, we burn books only; destroying children is the prerogative of the new Director of Health and Human Services."

-30-

Books as Kindling

Mack Hall

Amazon.com is selling its Kindle II, and most of us have never even seen its predecessor, the Kindle I.

The Kindle is a small, light, flat electronic gadget that displays a book one page at a time on its 6" diagonal screen. The real utility of this device is that, according to Amazon, it can store approximately 1,500 books. The number would vary because Peter Rabbit and The City of God, each a book of wisdom in its own way, differ in size.

The Kindle II as advertised by Amazon.com costs $359.00, which includes a one-year warranty with a one-time I-dropped-it protection. A leather Kindle cover – in case you fear you might drop the thing a second time – is $29.99. A two-year extended warranty, which really means only one year following the first year, is $65. Guts, feathers, and all, then, a fully kitted-out and protected Kindle II is $453.99.

Now you’re ready and rarin’ to read, right?

Whoa, pardner; don’t polish those bi-focals just yet.

You’ve bought only the book-holder-thingie. Now you have to buy a book for it. That’s right – this pricey revolution in reading books doesn’t include a book.

Amazon.com offers some 245,000 titles for over-the-air download, most – not all – for $9.99.

Buying a Kindle, then, is rather like paying forty or fifty dollars for a coffee cup at BigBuck’s and then having to pay another couple of dollars for some coffee to put into it.

And while you are buying your cup of coffee and your back is turned someone else will help himself to your Kindle while ignoring the unguarded paperback at the next table.

There are a few people who will pay a great deal of money for the Kindle simply because it is a fashion and they want to be seen to be sporting the latest. For most of us, $350 for a shiny book-holder-thingie that will surely suffer the fragility and mortality of all electronics seems a poor investment. Besides, in a year or two such devices will probably be on sale in a bubble-package at the supermarket checkout, and the downloads will be a few dollars each.

Oppressors won’t like electronic reading devices such as the Kindle because they will make burning books more less theatrical. Instead of tossing each book into a jolly bookfire while chanting "Saint Augustine, we burn you! We burn you!" and "Beatrix Potter, we burn you! We burn you!" the GooberTroopers will be burning only one plastic gadget:

"Comrade Brother UberPhartenFuhrer Smith, why isn’t there a bigger fire?"

"I’m sorry, Comrade Brother UberDooberFuhrer Jones; we found only one Kindle. We had to beat up a reactionary fourth-grader to get it away from her."

"Well, just rake it out of the fire and throw it in again."

"The fourth-grader, mein Comrade Brother UberdooberFuhrer?"

"No, no, no, we burn books only; destroying children is the prerogative of the new Director of Health and Human Services."

-30-

Luminous Mysteries, a Poem

Mack Hall

Luminous Mysteries

For Brandon-in-the-Hallway, Leah-Talky-Smurf, Chase-in-the-Back-of-the-Room, Alyssa-the-Troublemaker, Kyle-the-Baby-Bell, Marci-Marci, Erica Diane, Kandace, Christy & Misty (one of 'em is bad, bad, bad -- but which one!?), Kylie Brooke, Drew-the Pretty, Traci Natalia, Queen Amanda, Princess Jerrica, Kayla Drew, Lindsey-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, and Merry Barbie!

You fluttered through the fluorescented halls
Like butterflies upon their springtime wings,
And softly touched each flowering soul with love,
Gentling Lent into merry Eastertide
With joy, with happiness, with coffee cups.
Coffee and happiness are but two parts
Of holiness, the Rosary of youth:
Old cars, after-school jobs, crawling the mall,
Your untied shoelaces, your awful jokes
Giving comfort to a suffering, sin-stained world.
And though you yawned at Sunday morning Mass,
Our Lady's Church was ever a kid-safe place
To be, to think, to pray, to love, and you
Are forever a Luminous Mystery
Prayed in the happy morning of your lives.

We're All Bankers Now

Mack Hall

Our government has, for reasons of its own, decided that failing banks – meaning their owners in Belgium or Spain, not the employees here in the USA -- should be rescued by the rest of us. Since our taxes will be employed for these endeavors, we, The People (bless us) are now owners of The People’s Banks.

Now that you and I are Owner-Comrade Bankers, shouldn’t we enjoy some of the old-fashioned perqs that go with swelling about as merchant bankers?

I wouldn’t bet on it, not that I could afford to bet. I think our lives as bankers will be the new style:

A banker’s life, old style: The occasional, um, conference in Las Vegas
A banker’s life, new style: Christmas party at Katfish Kloset

A banker’s life, old style: Cash bonuses
A banker’s life, new style: Coupons for two cups of drive-through coffee

A banker’s life, old style: Being greeted at the door by deferential employees
A banker’s life, new style: Being greeted at the door by a sullen security guard wielding an electronic wand that’s been places you really don’t want to know about

A banker’s life, old style: carpeted office with large windows
A banker’s life, new style: wherever you are now, probably with dim, energy-saving, mercury-poisoning, squiggly light bulbs

A banker’s life, old style: showing up for work at eight or nine
A banker’s life, new style: Dragging out of bed at four or five for the long drive to the plant which is due to close before autumn but you’ll have to find money to support the bank anyway

A banker’s life, old style: president of the Rotary Club
A banker’s life, new style: waiter at Rotary Club suppers

A banker’s life, old style: tailored suits
A banker’s life, new style: Nomex

A banker’s life, old style: leisurely luncheons at the club
A banker’s life, new style: a bag of cholesterol from GlopBurger

A banker’s life, old style: walnut-paneled boardrooms
A banker’s life, new style: a quick smoke out back by the dumpster

A banker’s life, old style: Rolex
A banker’s life, new style: Timex

A banker’s life, old style: Mont Blanc
A banker’s life, new style: Mont Bic

A banker’s life, old style: Cole-Haan
A banker’s life, new style: Goodwill

A banker’s life, old style: Private school for your kid in Switzerland
A banker’s life, new style: Hoping your kid can keep his job bagging groceries

A banker’s life, old style: Exchanging bon mots about the old days in the Skull and Bones
A banker’s life, new style: Swapping yarns about the old days in Iraq and Afghanistan

A banker’s life, old style: Skiing in Switzerland every winter
A banker’s life, new style: Disney World. Once. Maybe.

Work hard, my fellow Banker-Comrades; thousands of European and Chinese millionaires are depending on you.

-30-

Dirty Books

Mack Hall

I am a product of…endless books…books in the study, books in the drawing room, books in the cloakroom, books…in the great bookcase on the landing, books in a bedroom, books piled as high as my shoulder…books of all kinds…

-- C. S. Lewis in Surprised by Joy

The Congress of the United States, having passed laws to protect us from psychotic nail clippers and large, menacing bottles of shampoo is now banning children’s books for our own good. The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA), passed last August as a response to lead-based paints on Chinese toys (the North Pole has been outsourced to Shanghai), embraces in a B-movie death-hug all children’s books printed before 1985.

Inks produced before that magical year are said to contain lead, and thus are said to endanger children. Said. But said by whom?

Just how many hundreds of copies of Little House on the Prairie a child would have to eat in order to ingest a measurable amount of lead has not been determined, nor is that Congress’ problem. The burden is ours. Anyone – meaning you or me – who gives a child a book printed before 1985 is obligated by law to spend hundreds of dollars having that book tested for lead.

Mom or Grandma, under that law you can be prosecuted for passing on to your favorite rug-rat that untested, unregistered copy of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm you so enjoyed as a girl.

After all, every parent’s worst nightmare is of his child being pursued down a dark street by lead-intoxicated Scuffy the Tugboat.

Pops, giving the lads in your life your boyhood copies of Old Yeller and Rifles for Watie is verboten unless you pay a great deal of money to have them tested and approved by a benevolent government.

One wonders if this book-banning is an expression of backdoor censorship of old and now incorrect books. A solid American kid who reads Johnny Tremain might be a little more uppity about oppressive governments than some glassy-eyed serf malnourished on the weirdness of Captain Underpants.

So many books have never been reprinted, and exist only because old copies reside in home libraries, public libraries, and used bookstores. The destruction of these books by government edict would be as great a crime against civilization as the Taliban blowing up ancient cultural artifacts in Afghanistan. 2,000-year-old works of art aren’t in harmony with Islam, and 100-year-old children’s books might not be in harmony with powerful and relatively anonymous functionaries within our federal government.

Government controls the means of distribution of intellectual property through the licensing, regulation, and monitoring of radio, television, telephones, and the ‘net. A printed book, though, is a silent expression of freedom. Reading a printed book is an activity that cannot easily be monitored. A book on one’s own shelves cannot be rewritten by a government agency’s computer technicians overnight.

But a book is not completely safe – it can be lost, burned, stolen, or seized. Nor are you safe. Someone in our government has found a way to threaten your freedom to read not by crudely banning books outright but by promoting a bogus health issue: who but a cad could possibly be against safeguarding the safety of children? Thus the book is not demonized, but rather the possibility of content of lead in the type, and by extension he who owns the book. To expose a child to a book thus becomes a crime.

To tyrants, buying your child an old book full of stories of heroes is a criminal act. In truth, giving your child that book makes you a real hero yourself.

Just be careful to look over your shoulder.


“I mean they’ve erased our history and are rewriting what remains…whole zones of literature are now forbidden and are disappearing from libraries.”

-- Antun to Josip re Tito’s Yugoslavia in Michael O’Brien’s The Island of the World

-30-

Cargo Cult

Mack Hall

A wise man of my acquaintance speaks the truest words I have ever heard about materialism: “It’s only stuff.”

My usual rejoinder is “I like my stuff!”

But he is right. As the anonymous author of “The Seafarer” said some 1500 years ago, the wealth of the world neither goes with us when we die nor does it remain. One’s car, pocketknife, fountain pen, watch, boat, tractor, Brickberry – all will eventually be sold, stolen, rusted, rotted, recycled, or simply lost in the passage of the centuries.

Even so, while one is here on earth a reasonable amount of stuff is good: a nice coat, a radio, plumbing, sensible shoes, a glass of iced tea, a bed, a roof, a good book.

Modern economies are based on the exchange of work, goods, and services, but right now all that seems to have slowed mightily. We are not selling enough hamburgers, insurance, and lawsuits these days.

Japan is in bad shape too, and Panasonic Corporation is demanding that all its employees help Panasonic by buying lots of Panasonic stuff with their paychecks. You make it, you buy it.

If all organizations followed Panasonic’s closed-loop scheme, here are the possibilities:

“Cowboys, ya done a good job in herdin’ these longhorns from Texas to Abilene, fightin’ drought, wolves, Apaches, rustlers, and that satanic bread truck near Waco. 3,000 head o’ cows, and ya got 2,500 through. Now buy them.”

“Hey, Fred, great work in rebuilding those three carburetors today. Now the company executives expect you to do your duty and buy these three carbs plus the one that Bob didn’t finish. At wholesale, natch.”

“Nurse Aide Smith, you are one good caregiver, a true Flo Nightingale. We appreciate you, and the patients appreciate you. In exchange for your paycheck we demand that you take two hundred used bedpans home to your family.”

“Spuds, you are a great short-order cook, and you’ve worked here at Awful House for years. Tell ya what – instead of paying you this week we’re gonna let you eat all you want of the customer leftovers, okay? Do it for the company that loves you so much.”

"Wanda Fay, you have been a great asset here at the newspaper for over twenty years, but we’re having some rough times and are going to have to let you go. We can't give you severance pay, so we’re going to let you have today’s entire press run of 150,000 copies of the newspaper you helped make great. Good bye, and good luck.”

“Corporal Steele, you saved Fort Spitcup from being overrun by wave after wave of screaming terrorists armed with AK47s, AK48s, and suicide underpants through your expert command of your platoon after Sergeant Ironguts was killed in action. In recognition of your bravery and professionalism, and in lieu of treatment or VA benefits for the arm you lost in combat, we’re going to give you all the dead bodies. A grateful nation thanks you.”

“Employees of the sewage plant: as you know, the city is having a cash-flow problem…”

Stimulus Package

Mack Hall

The financial depression is getting so bad that day and night I see poor people on three-wheelers fleeing poverty in terror along my road. Yep, rattle-trap old three-wheelers all day long, with mattresses and chickens and Grandma piled on, headed to California.

But I’m okay; I got my stimulus packages, two of ‘em, the other day: DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico, Hecho en China. Someday I will thrill my grandchildren with yarns about the Not-So-Great Depression: “Boy, we was so pore we had only two television sets, and they was analog at that! Thank God for the federal government who came to our rescue with two Convertido Analogicos! I just don’t think we would have made it through the terrible winter of ‘08-’09 without ‘em.”

Rosie the Riveter will be updated to Rosie the DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en China Installer. The iconic poster will show Rosie flexing her cell ‘phone and crying “My boss is a sexist meanie!”

Installing a DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en China will soon be a WPA job, with four supervisors watching one installer do the work.

Standing along the streets the newly unemployed will hold up signs that read “Will Install Your DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en China For Food.”

As hospitals wrecked by Hurricane Ike finally have to close forever, patients dying in the weedy parking lots will each be comforted by a brand-new DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en China.

As the economy collapses, once-respectable women will stand on street corners smoking cigarettes and whispering, “Hey, mister, want a good DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en China tonight?”

An Olympic gold medallist will be photographed smoking something grassy through a DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en China.

Women with serious pyschosexual issues will take off their clothes to protest global warming caused by the use of DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en Chinas.

The Pentagon will pay $4,000 for each DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en China.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will demand a DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en China for each of her offices and houses, and a gold-plated one for her government jet.

Members of The Bright Light Free Will Foursquare Three-and-a-Half Gospels Missionary Temple Fellowship of The Something-or-Other under the The Reverend Doctor Brother Bishop Billy will gather on rooftops at midnight on Ground Squirrel Day trying to receive messages from the Mother Ship on their DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en Chinas.

Congress will subpoena tobacco executives to grill them about why teenagers are smoking DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en Chinas.

Old people will yarn that “In my day we didn’t need a DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en China; we sat around watching rocks, and by golly we were glad to have an extra rock for Christmas. We didn’t have DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en Chinas, but we had love, and if we didn’t have love my ol’ daddy’d take a razor strap to my heinie and I grew up just fine, so you know what you kids can do with your fancy DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en Chinas that you think you got to have.”

In the Khyber Pass an outnumbered, outgunned American patrol, surrounded by extremist Methodists, will radio its last, defiant message: “Send us more DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en Chinas!”

War? Depression? Hurricanes? Homelessness? Foreclosures? Unemployment? Republicans lurking under the bed? Stand tall, America; with our DTV Digital a Convertidor Analogico Hecho en Chinas we can tackle anything!

Irrelevant -- a Poem

Mack Hall

Irrelevant

For Tod

How wonderful to be irrelevant:
An old car rusting in sere autumn weeds,
An unheard voice no longer pertinent,
A silent solitary bidding his beads.

In youth one roams the glades with Robin Hood,
Sails dream-ships far beyond the classroom wall,
Dances with fairies in a moonlit wood,
Gives homage to our King in Arthur’s hall.

A man, alas, drags Dante’s darksome dreams
Through corridors haunted with smoke and mist,
Where truth is bought and sold by mad regimes,
And lies are given a sly, sensitive twist.

But, oh! Peace! To be nothing at the end,
Nunc dimittis, thou happiest of men!