Mack Hall
College Station, where there is a college but no station, is segregating a section of its new city cemetery for Aggies only.
There is no word yet on whether the Aggies-only section will rest adjacent to the exclusive Elvis impersonator section. The answer might be indexed in the official guide to funerals in America, Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One.
Ross Albrecht (’84), marketing manager for the new cemetery, told the Associated Press that the use of Texas A & M symbols will be “correct and respectful.” The entrance to the Aggie section will be a “Spirit Gate” between two concrete columns faked up to look like limestone, and for the discerning Aggie there’s nothing that says correct and respectful like chunks of concrete painted to look like something else.
Correct and respectful pallbearers could be rounded up from The Dixie Chicken.
Maybe the maroon Aggie hearse will be drawn to the cemetery by twelve little Reveilles wearing maroon mourning plumes.
Although Texas A & M has no direct connection with the city cemetery, the school will license the use of trademarked A & M logos and other symbols. This means that if you – for reasons best known to yourself – wish to have your mortal remains decorated with an image of Ol’ Sarge, you will have to pay Texas A & M for permission.
Licensing agreements guarantee the quality of Texas A & M’s acounts receivable. The difference between a cheap, unlicensed, made-in-China tee-shirt proclaiming “Fightin’ Texas Aggies” and another cheap, licensed, made-in-China tee shirt proclaiming “Fightin’ Texas Aggies” is, well, nothing except a tag.
Will we ever see a tee proclaiming “Studyin’ Texas Aggies?”
Made-in-China Texas A & M coffee cups, made-in-China Texas A & M neckties, made-in-China Texas A & M lunch buckets, Made-in-China Texas A & M portable toilets, and now, dug-in-College Station Texas A & M holes in the ground, license fees payable to the university.
And some people say America isn’t a religious country.
A sales brochure preaches "The concept is that the Spirit of Aggieland travels in a ceremonial way from the campus to the Aggie Field of Honor through this final gateway." If that isn’t straight out of the Gospels I don’t what is.
At this writing no one is clear whether or not having posed nude or semi-nude will be a bar to resting in peace in The Aggie Field of Honor.
If the University of San Francisco were to feature a cemetery, would the trustees establish an Eternal Joint exuding faux marijuana smoke in The Mahareshi Yoga Guru Garden of Like, You Know, Where It Is Forever 1968?
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology would have to license Star Trek Action Figure grave markers from Paramount. Funeral services might be offered in Klingon.
A beauty school – the Dear Departed is buried with a 21-hair-dryer salute.
Good ol’ A & M, coming up with a brand-new century-old tradition every year or so.
But what if…just what if Aggies who Pass On To The Other Side make their last Whoop! at the pearly gates only to discover that Saint Peter wears burnt orange?
Hullabaloo, caneck, caneck!
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Saturday, May 9, 2009
THE PRISONER Fact #10
#6 often regaled the other prisoners in THE VILLAGE with crude jokes about a quite impossible relationship between #2 and Rover.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Writing: K.I.S.S.
One of my final-exam questions for my Lamar University, Angelina College, and Kirbyville High School students:
16. Rewrite the following CBS-ism as one complete sentence using five or fewer words:
In my own personal opinion, and in conclusion, at the end of the day, the bottom line is, when all is said and done, when the fat man sings, that Mother Nature, in the awesome form of mighty Hurricane Ike thundering and slamming ashore in a turbulent and fateful pre-dawn, wreaked havoc on our homeland, snapping trees like matchsticks and leaving a swath of destruction in her wake that looked like a war zone and changed our lives forever, requiring us to seek closure and healing from grief counselors.
16. Rewrite the following CBS-ism as one complete sentence using five or fewer words:
In my own personal opinion, and in conclusion, at the end of the day, the bottom line is, when all is said and done, when the fat man sings, that Mother Nature, in the awesome form of mighty Hurricane Ike thundering and slamming ashore in a turbulent and fateful pre-dawn, wreaked havoc on our homeland, snapping trees like matchsticks and leaving a swath of destruction in her wake that looked like a war zone and changed our lives forever, requiring us to seek closure and healing from grief counselors.
Writing: K.I.S.S.
One of my final-exam questions for my Lamar University, Angelina College, and Kirbyville High School students:
16. Rewrite the following CBS-ism as one complete sentence using five or fewer words:
In my own personal opinion, and in conclusion, at the end of the day, the bottom line is, when all is said and done, when the fat man sings, that Mother Nature, in the awesome form of mighty Hurricane Ike thundering and slamming ashore in a turbulent and fateful pre-dawn, wreaked havoc on our homeland, snapping trees like matchsticks and leaving a swath of destruction in her wake that looked like a war zone and changed our lives forever, requiring us to seek closure and healing from grief counselors.
16. Rewrite the following CBS-ism as one complete sentence using five or fewer words:
In my own personal opinion, and in conclusion, at the end of the day, the bottom line is, when all is said and done, when the fat man sings, that Mother Nature, in the awesome form of mighty Hurricane Ike thundering and slamming ashore in a turbulent and fateful pre-dawn, wreaked havoc on our homeland, snapping trees like matchsticks and leaving a swath of destruction in her wake that looked like a war zone and changed our lives forever, requiring us to seek closure and healing from grief counselors.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
THE PRISONER Fact #9
Yes, #6 catches the swine flu. He catches it, has a few quiet conversations with it, and persuades it to attack #2.
Freshly-Baked, Farm-Fresh, Home-Cooked Feed 'n' Seed
Mack Hall
Once upon a time Main Street in my little town featured The City Café’, but one never hears of that anymore. If the establishment still existed it would surely advertise itself as “Mama’s Country Café’” or “Country Cookery” or “The Country Home Cooking Lone Star Café.’”
Advertising in this part of the world is all about the country thing, even when the concept of country is irrelevant to the matter. When you sit down to the good ol’ bacon and eggs in the morning you know very well they were not cooked at home or in the country; they were cooked in the back of the café’ by Juan. If you want home-cooking, stay home and cook. If you want to start the day with the crossword and someone keeping the coffee flowing for you, you drive out of the country and into town. Town is where they keep the country cafes.’
And speaking of cafes’, a friend noted that one in Beaumont did not feature even a single rusty license plate on its walls. Is that legal? Doesn’t the health department cite restaurants for not having rusty license plates? I think I saw that on Channel 6.
And then there are the various car dealerships prefaced Cowboy. A cowboy is an agricultural worker who herds cows. There really aren’t any of those around here. Car dealerships based on real-world workers would be named Petrochemical Operator Fiat, or perhaps Receptionist Volkswagen, or maybe Pipefitter Opel.
Almost every bread product is billed as fresh-baked. Well, yeah, when a Kaiser roll (and does the Kaiser know about this?) is baked, it’s fresh. A more accurate labeling would be: “This Kaiser roll was baked, then packaged, then loaded on a truck, then driven around East Texas until it was finally off-loaded at this store, and now it’s resided on this shelf for an indeterminate time.”
This leads us to farm-fresh. Is a farm fresh? How fresh? A really honest ice-cream commercial would feature a cow with the scours.
One longs to see a church called Certified Public Accountants for Christ.
Maybe hospitals will follow the country theme: “Yes, ma’am, let us deliver your baby in the country fashion. And don’t mind the livestock grazing in the delivery room.”
Or lawyers: “You got a case against that company that employed you and put up with your absences and indolence and petty theft all those years before finally sacking you? Let our crack country team of country lawyers take th’ Burdizzos to ‘em! Yeeeeeeeee-hawwwwwwwwwwww!”
Chinese cars: “Howdy, pardner, this is Tex Chang of Shanghai Motors, and ah’m here to tell you about our proven line of Red Star hybrid pickups, now available in North America. Whether you’re haulin’ prisoners to execution or vegetables to th’ market, you’ll be country-proud you’re country-savin’ th’ country planet by country-drivin’ a country-hybrid Red Star pickup.”
And, hey, how about that country-swine flu, eh? Rumor has it that it’s going to be bought up by a foreign company and the virus out-sourced to Italy, with you and me paying for it all.
Once upon a time Main Street in my little town featured The City Café’, but one never hears of that anymore. If the establishment still existed it would surely advertise itself as “Mama’s Country Café’” or “Country Cookery” or “The Country Home Cooking Lone Star Café.’”
Advertising in this part of the world is all about the country thing, even when the concept of country is irrelevant to the matter. When you sit down to the good ol’ bacon and eggs in the morning you know very well they were not cooked at home or in the country; they were cooked in the back of the café’ by Juan. If you want home-cooking, stay home and cook. If you want to start the day with the crossword and someone keeping the coffee flowing for you, you drive out of the country and into town. Town is where they keep the country cafes.’
And speaking of cafes’, a friend noted that one in Beaumont did not feature even a single rusty license plate on its walls. Is that legal? Doesn’t the health department cite restaurants for not having rusty license plates? I think I saw that on Channel 6.
And then there are the various car dealerships prefaced Cowboy. A cowboy is an agricultural worker who herds cows. There really aren’t any of those around here. Car dealerships based on real-world workers would be named Petrochemical Operator Fiat, or perhaps Receptionist Volkswagen, or maybe Pipefitter Opel.
Almost every bread product is billed as fresh-baked. Well, yeah, when a Kaiser roll (and does the Kaiser know about this?) is baked, it’s fresh. A more accurate labeling would be: “This Kaiser roll was baked, then packaged, then loaded on a truck, then driven around East Texas until it was finally off-loaded at this store, and now it’s resided on this shelf for an indeterminate time.”
This leads us to farm-fresh. Is a farm fresh? How fresh? A really honest ice-cream commercial would feature a cow with the scours.
One longs to see a church called Certified Public Accountants for Christ.
Maybe hospitals will follow the country theme: “Yes, ma’am, let us deliver your baby in the country fashion. And don’t mind the livestock grazing in the delivery room.”
Or lawyers: “You got a case against that company that employed you and put up with your absences and indolence and petty theft all those years before finally sacking you? Let our crack country team of country lawyers take th’ Burdizzos to ‘em! Yeeeeeeeee-hawwwwwwwwwwww!”
Chinese cars: “Howdy, pardner, this is Tex Chang of Shanghai Motors, and ah’m here to tell you about our proven line of Red Star hybrid pickups, now available in North America. Whether you’re haulin’ prisoners to execution or vegetables to th’ market, you’ll be country-proud you’re country-savin’ th’ country planet by country-drivin’ a country-hybrid Red Star pickup.”
And, hey, how about that country-swine flu, eh? Rumor has it that it’s going to be bought up by a foreign company and the virus out-sourced to Italy, with you and me paying for it all.
The Sky to Moc Hoa
Mack Hall
The Sky to Moc Hoa
The sky to Moc Hoa is hazily blue,
Layered between heat and Heaven. The damp
Rots even the air with the menace of death.
The ground below, all green and holed, dies too;
It seems to gasp: You will not live, young lad,
You will not live to read your books or dream
About a little room, a fire, a pipe,
A chair, a pen, a dog, a truth-told poem
Flung courteously in manuscript pages
Upon a coffee-stained table, halo’d
In a 60-watt puddle of lamp-light.
You skinny, stupid kid. You will not live.
Then circling, and circling again, again,
Searching, perhaps, for festive rotting meals,
Down-spinning, fear-spinning onto Moc Hoa,
Palm trees, iron roofs, spinning in a dead sun,
Spinning up to a swing-ship spinning down.
A square of iron matting in a green marsh,
Hot, green, wet, fetid with old Samsara.
Gunboats diesel across the Van Co Tay,
Little green gunboats, red nylon mail sacks,
Engines, cheery yells, sloshing mud, heat, rot.
Mail sacks off, mail sacks on, men off, men on,
Dark blades beating against the heavy heat,
The door gunners, the pilot impatient.
All clear to lift, heads down, humans crouching
Ape-like against the grass, against the slime
In sweating, stinking, slinking, feral fear
As the dragon-blades roar and finally fly,
And the beaten grass and beaten men
Now stand again erect in gasping heat,
Some silent in a new and fearful world.
You will not live, young hero; you will die.
What then of Dostoyevsky and Chekhov?
What then of your Modern Library editions,
A dollar each at the Stars & Stripes store
Far away and long ago in DaNang,
All marked and underlined? What is the point?
What then of your notebook scribbled with words,
Your weak attempts at poetry? So sad,
So irrelevant in the nights of death.
The corpses on the gunboat decks won’t care,
Their flare-lit faces staring into smoke
At 0-Two-Damned Thirty in the morning –
Of what truth or beauty are your words to them?
You haven’t any words anyway;
They’re out of movies and books, all of them.
What truth can adventure-story words speak
To corpses with their eyes eaten away?
Write your used emotions onto a page;
You haven’t any emotions anyway;
They’re out of the past, all of them.
What truth can used emotions speak to death?
So sling your useless gear aboard the boat:
A seabag of utilities, clean socks,
Letters, a pocket knife, a Rosary,
Some underwear, some dreams, and lots of books.
And board yourself. Try not to fall, to drown,
To be a floating bloating, eyeless face.Not yet.
Think of your books, your words. Look up:
The sky to Moc Hoa is hazily blue.
Notes:
1. Moc Hoa, pronounced Mock Wah -- a town on the Vam Co Tay River near the border with Cambodia.
2. “Young lad” or “lad” – employed sarcastically of recruits by chief petty officers.
3. “Young hero” – employed sarcastically of recruits by chief petty officers and of Navy Corpsman in Field Medical Service School by Marine sergeant-instructors.
4. Utilities – heavy, olive-drab, 1950s style Marine Corps battle-dress issued to Navy personnel on their way to Viet-Nam. Too darned hot. I had to scrounge lighter clothing.
5. Samsara – in some Eastern religions the ocean of birth and death.
6. Gunboats – here, PBRs, or Patrol Boat, River. The history of this excellent craft and its use in river warfare is well documented.
7. Stars and Stripes store – more accurately, any one of the chain of Pacific Stars and Stripes book stores.
8. Swing ship – a helicopter, in my experience always the famous Huey, employed for carrying supplies and personnel on routine routes. The pilots sometimes spun them in very fast in order to try to avoid ground fire.
9. Seabag – duffel bag.
10. Skinny kid – most of us were.
The Sky to Moc Hoa
The sky to Moc Hoa is hazily blue,
Layered between heat and Heaven. The damp
Rots even the air with the menace of death.
The ground below, all green and holed, dies too;
It seems to gasp: You will not live, young lad,
You will not live to read your books or dream
About a little room, a fire, a pipe,
A chair, a pen, a dog, a truth-told poem
Flung courteously in manuscript pages
Upon a coffee-stained table, halo’d
In a 60-watt puddle of lamp-light.
You skinny, stupid kid. You will not live.
Then circling, and circling again, again,
Searching, perhaps, for festive rotting meals,
Down-spinning, fear-spinning onto Moc Hoa,
Palm trees, iron roofs, spinning in a dead sun,
Spinning up to a swing-ship spinning down.
A square of iron matting in a green marsh,
Hot, green, wet, fetid with old Samsara.
Gunboats diesel across the Van Co Tay,
Little green gunboats, red nylon mail sacks,
Engines, cheery yells, sloshing mud, heat, rot.
Mail sacks off, mail sacks on, men off, men on,
Dark blades beating against the heavy heat,
The door gunners, the pilot impatient.
All clear to lift, heads down, humans crouching
Ape-like against the grass, against the slime
In sweating, stinking, slinking, feral fear
As the dragon-blades roar and finally fly,
And the beaten grass and beaten men
Now stand again erect in gasping heat,
Some silent in a new and fearful world.
You will not live, young hero; you will die.
What then of Dostoyevsky and Chekhov?
What then of your Modern Library editions,
A dollar each at the Stars & Stripes store
Far away and long ago in DaNang,
All marked and underlined? What is the point?
What then of your notebook scribbled with words,
Your weak attempts at poetry? So sad,
So irrelevant in the nights of death.
The corpses on the gunboat decks won’t care,
Their flare-lit faces staring into smoke
At 0-Two-Damned Thirty in the morning –
Of what truth or beauty are your words to them?
You haven’t any words anyway;
They’re out of movies and books, all of them.
What truth can adventure-story words speak
To corpses with their eyes eaten away?
Write your used emotions onto a page;
You haven’t any emotions anyway;
They’re out of the past, all of them.
What truth can used emotions speak to death?
So sling your useless gear aboard the boat:
A seabag of utilities, clean socks,
Letters, a pocket knife, a Rosary,
Some underwear, some dreams, and lots of books.
And board yourself. Try not to fall, to drown,
To be a floating bloating, eyeless face.Not yet.
Think of your books, your words. Look up:
The sky to Moc Hoa is hazily blue.
Notes:
1. Moc Hoa, pronounced Mock Wah -- a town on the Vam Co Tay River near the border with Cambodia.
2. “Young lad” or “lad” – employed sarcastically of recruits by chief petty officers.
3. “Young hero” – employed sarcastically of recruits by chief petty officers and of Navy Corpsman in Field Medical Service School by Marine sergeant-instructors.
4. Utilities – heavy, olive-drab, 1950s style Marine Corps battle-dress issued to Navy personnel on their way to Viet-Nam. Too darned hot. I had to scrounge lighter clothing.
5. Samsara – in some Eastern religions the ocean of birth and death.
6. Gunboats – here, PBRs, or Patrol Boat, River. The history of this excellent craft and its use in river warfare is well documented.
7. Stars and Stripes store – more accurately, any one of the chain of Pacific Stars and Stripes book stores.
8. Swing ship – a helicopter, in my experience always the famous Huey, employed for carrying supplies and personnel on routine routes. The pilots sometimes spun them in very fast in order to try to avoid ground fire.
9. Seabag – duffel bag.
10. Skinny kid – most of us were.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
THE PRISONER Fact #8
#6 never dines in restaurants featuring old license plates hanging on the walls.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
THE PRISONER Fact #7
An unfortunate incident occurred on the outer perimeter when #34, a former Vatican superspy, tried to surrender to Rover in Latin.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Pilgrimage Along the A1
Mack Hall
From Peterborough drops a road
Across the Fens, into the past
(Where wary wraiths still wear the woad);
It comes to Chesterton at last.
And we will walk along that track,
Or hop a bus, perhaps; you know
How hard it is to sling a pack
When one is sixty-old, and slow.
That mapped blue line across our land
Follows along a Roman way
Where Hereward the Wake made stand
In mists where secret islands lay.
In Chesterton a Norman tower
Beside Saint Michael’s guards the fields;
Though clockless, still it counts slow hours
And centuries long hidden and sealed.
And there before a looted tomb,
Long bare of candles, flowers, and prayers,
We will in our poor Latin resume
Aves for old de Beauville’s cares.
From Peterborough drops a road
Across the Fens, into the past
(Where wary wraiths still wear the woad);
It comes to Chesterton at last.
And we will walk along that track,
Or hop a bus, perhaps; you know
How hard it is to sling a pack
When one is sixty-old, and slow.
That mapped blue line across our land
Follows along a Roman way
Where Hereward the Wake made stand
In mists where secret islands lay.
In Chesterton a Norman tower
Beside Saint Michael’s guards the fields;
Though clockless, still it counts slow hours
And centuries long hidden and sealed.
And there before a looted tomb,
Long bare of candles, flowers, and prayers,
We will in our poor Latin resume
Aves for old de Beauville’s cares.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Saint Joseph the Just
Mack Hall
For Joe Burns, Father and Teacher
Saint Joseph in a dreary winter night
Took to himself a newborn not his own,
Who yet is always his, the Child of Light
Whose crib Saint Joseph knew to be a throne.
Saint Joseph shows men truth: each child is ours,
Adopted by each good man upon birth;
True fatherhood ordained in starlit hours
And ratified in Heaven and on earth.
Saint Joseph is the man who looked into
The eyes of Mary in her happy youth;
This strong man looked into her eyes and knew
She bore within her all eternal Truth.
Our witness is Saint Joseph, ever just:
God calls each man to take each child in trust.
For Joe Burns, Father and Teacher
Saint Joseph in a dreary winter night
Took to himself a newborn not his own,
Who yet is always his, the Child of Light
Whose crib Saint Joseph knew to be a throne.
Saint Joseph shows men truth: each child is ours,
Adopted by each good man upon birth;
True fatherhood ordained in starlit hours
And ratified in Heaven and on earth.
Saint Joseph is the man who looked into
The eyes of Mary in her happy youth;
This strong man looked into her eyes and knew
She bore within her all eternal Truth.
Our witness is Saint Joseph, ever just:
God calls each man to take each child in trust.
THE PRISONER -- Fact #6 About #6
#6 is a STAR TREK man, and would not bother A, B, or C-ing to the galaxy next door to see a STAR WARS anything.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Weak Tea
Mack Hall
The Boston Tea Party of 1773 is said to have been a reasonable protest against taxation without representation. The English view is that after 150 years it was about time for the colonies to stop being a drag on the English economy and to start helping pay for their own maintenance and defense.
The tea parties of 2009 are less defensible, except for the environmental matter – the tea this year was drunk, not dumped into a harbor to pollute the little fishies. The reality is that our contemporary tea parties are not about lack of representation but rather about folks (wearing clothes made in slave-labor camps in the Far East) throwing polite hissy-fits for getting exactly the government for which they voted.
Or maybe the government for which they did not vote at all.
Indeed, if the one requirement for participation in a Taxed Enough Already Tea Party were the possession of an I-voted-last-November voter card, how many people could have shown up?
Under the kings the theory is that the hierarchy of power is from God to the Christian monarch to the people. Under a republic the usual hierarchy of power is from the people to their elected rulers, and there is no God. In our Republic the general idea has been that power is given by God to the people, who then prayerfully and thoughtfully elect their leaders, which explains the saintly Ted Kennedy, who once walked on water.
Unfortunately most Americans don’t vote. Some can’t, because of youth, mental incompetence, or felony conviction (which doesn’t apply to Rush Limbaugh with his illegal drug issues, because he’s special and you’re not). Of the rest, many don’t bother to register, and of those who register, only about half ever vote. One fears they are too busy obediently listening to Glenn Beck yell at them.
A protest against a federal government that was empowered by democratic vote only four months before seems to be pretty weak tea. Similarly, sitting around over coffee (or tea) and belly-aching about the state government, the county government, the city government, or the school board unless the belly-acher actually voted in those elections is an exercise of the absolute freedom to be a gaseous phony.
Historical minutiae of no particular importance:
1. George Washington was the 11th President, not the first. After independence from perfidious Albion, this country functioned (badly) under the Articles of Confederation. The argument that the first ten presidents were leaders of Congress, not of the Confederation, won’t brew.
2. The United States government has in the past sent the United States Army to shoot and hang tax protestors, beginning with Shay’s Rebellion and The Whiskey Rebellion. Being shot might have been a lesser punishment than having to endure that princess CNN reporter.
3. The first President (I capitalize the noun because of my deep respect for the office) born in the United States was Martin Van Buren. The ten Presidents under the Articles of Confederation were all born in English colonies, as were eight of the first nine Presidents under the Constitution. If the concept that an American President must be American born is valid, then the first President is Van Buren and the second is John Tyler, all those preceding being invalid.
4. The final irony about any American tea party is that very little tea is grown here; most tea consumed in America is grown in over forty countries in Asia and Africa, and imported mostly by English companies.
And, hey, how about that balance of trade with Communist China, eh?
The Boston Tea Party of 1773 is said to have been a reasonable protest against taxation without representation. The English view is that after 150 years it was about time for the colonies to stop being a drag on the English economy and to start helping pay for their own maintenance and defense.
The tea parties of 2009 are less defensible, except for the environmental matter – the tea this year was drunk, not dumped into a harbor to pollute the little fishies. The reality is that our contemporary tea parties are not about lack of representation but rather about folks (wearing clothes made in slave-labor camps in the Far East) throwing polite hissy-fits for getting exactly the government for which they voted.
Or maybe the government for which they did not vote at all.
Indeed, if the one requirement for participation in a Taxed Enough Already Tea Party were the possession of an I-voted-last-November voter card, how many people could have shown up?
Under the kings the theory is that the hierarchy of power is from God to the Christian monarch to the people. Under a republic the usual hierarchy of power is from the people to their elected rulers, and there is no God. In our Republic the general idea has been that power is given by God to the people, who then prayerfully and thoughtfully elect their leaders, which explains the saintly Ted Kennedy, who once walked on water.
Unfortunately most Americans don’t vote. Some can’t, because of youth, mental incompetence, or felony conviction (which doesn’t apply to Rush Limbaugh with his illegal drug issues, because he’s special and you’re not). Of the rest, many don’t bother to register, and of those who register, only about half ever vote. One fears they are too busy obediently listening to Glenn Beck yell at them.
A protest against a federal government that was empowered by democratic vote only four months before seems to be pretty weak tea. Similarly, sitting around over coffee (or tea) and belly-aching about the state government, the county government, the city government, or the school board unless the belly-acher actually voted in those elections is an exercise of the absolute freedom to be a gaseous phony.
Historical minutiae of no particular importance:
1. George Washington was the 11th President, not the first. After independence from perfidious Albion, this country functioned (badly) under the Articles of Confederation. The argument that the first ten presidents were leaders of Congress, not of the Confederation, won’t brew.
2. The United States government has in the past sent the United States Army to shoot and hang tax protestors, beginning with Shay’s Rebellion and The Whiskey Rebellion. Being shot might have been a lesser punishment than having to endure that princess CNN reporter.
3. The first President (I capitalize the noun because of my deep respect for the office) born in the United States was Martin Van Buren. The ten Presidents under the Articles of Confederation were all born in English colonies, as were eight of the first nine Presidents under the Constitution. If the concept that an American President must be American born is valid, then the first President is Van Buren and the second is John Tyler, all those preceding being invalid.
4. The final irony about any American tea party is that very little tea is grown here; most tea consumed in America is grown in over forty countries in Asia and Africa, and imported mostly by English companies.
And, hey, how about that balance of trade with Communist China, eh?
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
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!
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!
Monday, April 13, 2009
Little Known Fact #4 About THE PRISONER
#6 hides his Winnie-the-Pooh books unders his pillow. If #2 ever finds out...
Sunday, April 12, 2009
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.
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?
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.
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.
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