Thursday, July 29, 2010
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Beach Tarball Bingo
Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Beach Tarball Bingo
The real question is why tarballs are called tarballs, since they are neither tar nor balls, and can’t be used for roofing or for games.
Last week I spent a few days at Crystal Beach considering such matters, but not deeply.
Frankie and Annette’s movie beach was always perfect – impossibly clean sand and impossibly clean teens in an impossibly clean early 1960s vision of youth. Perhaps the closest in real life is China Beach near DaNang, but whether the young in Viet-Nam are permitted to be young is much in doubt. If the goose-stepping comrades would give over persecuting Christians and Montagnards and each other they could all score some major tourist euros, yen, pounds, and dollars by developing the beaches of Viet-Nam.
In truth, no beach is a cinema image, no more than Bambi is a documentary about the ecosystem of a forest. Any beach is where the relatively few bits of land encounter the dominant oceans on this water planet, and that means conflict: tides, storms, bacteria, mosquitoes, debris, and predatory wildlife.
Consider the pelican, often cartooned as a comic figure with a bulbous beak. In reality the pelican is a somewhat sinister, pre-historic-looking creature that joins with its comrades to fly in attack formation not unlike those old films of Stuka dive bombers. The pelican’s long beak is designed for strength and violence in wild dives into the water to kill and devour.
And then there was the shark, which turned out to be some old, pre-Ike carpeting rolling in the surf.
Crystal Beach was never crystal, but last week some extra oil showed up, mostly attached to dead vegetation and to walkers’ feet. Local television news featured discussions on whether the oil was BP (nee’ British Petroleum, nee’ Anglo-Iranian) or just some ordinary old oil unworthy of notice. The seabirds appeared to continue to fly and fish, and the waves broke as usual between a rusted propane tank and a concrete septic tank, bringing in their usual nightly quota of driftwood and foam cups.
The beach is more than sand and water and critters. It attracts not only vacationers but residents, some of them more colorful than Frankie and Annette. I encountered a fellow who had braided his long white beard into a long white rope. Just why he had done this is subject to speculation. Perhaps he had finished his library book, or possibly his cable was off, and he needed something to occupy his leisure hours. Or maybe he just wanted some attention, so here it is.
The signs at Crystal Beach are mostly hand-lettered, which adds to the charm, and point the ways to little shops and grocery stores and marinas and restaurants (no shoes, no problem) and surfboard rentals. In law motor vehicles aren’t permitted on the beach; in practice one rattles by occasionally, usually slowly and usually carrying rental toys or maintenance equipment. Folks saunter along the beach looking for shells, and in the evenings build driftwood campfires and swat ‘skeeters. Life is summer-slow at Crystal Beach, and the breeze is warm and salty, and the waves are the same ones that First Nations people fished and played in centuries ago in their food-gathering wanderings. Yes, sometimes the best restorative for the jarred nerves of modern life is sand between one’s toes, and a few hours of not-thinking.
The nights are made even more slumberous by the soothing, sibilant sounds of the sea, which can be heard and felt comfortingly through the air-conditioned (I will give up my air-conditioning when Al Gore’s minions pry my hot, dead fingers off the thermostat) walls of a lovely rental house atop its sturdy piers.
Crystal Beach is a little world on the edge of the planetary sea, a world I visit only occasionally but which is very important to me. I am glad that people live there, people who don’t shave or put on makeup every day and who almost never wear shoes and who give their boats funny names. I hope that they are never regulated out of existence and that their (and our) peninsula is never made very prosperous, for then it wouldn’t be ours anymore. The world needs plywood hotdog stands, bare feet, soda shops made out of abandoned trailers, accessible beaches, the smells of salt air and mosquito repellent, and sand and cheesy snapshots and happy memories of happy hours by the Gulf of Mexico.
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
Beach Tarball Bingo
The real question is why tarballs are called tarballs, since they are neither tar nor balls, and can’t be used for roofing or for games.
Last week I spent a few days at Crystal Beach considering such matters, but not deeply.
Frankie and Annette’s movie beach was always perfect – impossibly clean sand and impossibly clean teens in an impossibly clean early 1960s vision of youth. Perhaps the closest in real life is China Beach near DaNang, but whether the young in Viet-Nam are permitted to be young is much in doubt. If the goose-stepping comrades would give over persecuting Christians and Montagnards and each other they could all score some major tourist euros, yen, pounds, and dollars by developing the beaches of Viet-Nam.
In truth, no beach is a cinema image, no more than Bambi is a documentary about the ecosystem of a forest. Any beach is where the relatively few bits of land encounter the dominant oceans on this water planet, and that means conflict: tides, storms, bacteria, mosquitoes, debris, and predatory wildlife.
Consider the pelican, often cartooned as a comic figure with a bulbous beak. In reality the pelican is a somewhat sinister, pre-historic-looking creature that joins with its comrades to fly in attack formation not unlike those old films of Stuka dive bombers. The pelican’s long beak is designed for strength and violence in wild dives into the water to kill and devour.
And then there was the shark, which turned out to be some old, pre-Ike carpeting rolling in the surf.
Crystal Beach was never crystal, but last week some extra oil showed up, mostly attached to dead vegetation and to walkers’ feet. Local television news featured discussions on whether the oil was BP (nee’ British Petroleum, nee’ Anglo-Iranian) or just some ordinary old oil unworthy of notice. The seabirds appeared to continue to fly and fish, and the waves broke as usual between a rusted propane tank and a concrete septic tank, bringing in their usual nightly quota of driftwood and foam cups.
The beach is more than sand and water and critters. It attracts not only vacationers but residents, some of them more colorful than Frankie and Annette. I encountered a fellow who had braided his long white beard into a long white rope. Just why he had done this is subject to speculation. Perhaps he had finished his library book, or possibly his cable was off, and he needed something to occupy his leisure hours. Or maybe he just wanted some attention, so here it is.
The signs at Crystal Beach are mostly hand-lettered, which adds to the charm, and point the ways to little shops and grocery stores and marinas and restaurants (no shoes, no problem) and surfboard rentals. In law motor vehicles aren’t permitted on the beach; in practice one rattles by occasionally, usually slowly and usually carrying rental toys or maintenance equipment. Folks saunter along the beach looking for shells, and in the evenings build driftwood campfires and swat ‘skeeters. Life is summer-slow at Crystal Beach, and the breeze is warm and salty, and the waves are the same ones that First Nations people fished and played in centuries ago in their food-gathering wanderings. Yes, sometimes the best restorative for the jarred nerves of modern life is sand between one’s toes, and a few hours of not-thinking.
The nights are made even more slumberous by the soothing, sibilant sounds of the sea, which can be heard and felt comfortingly through the air-conditioned (I will give up my air-conditioning when Al Gore’s minions pry my hot, dead fingers off the thermostat) walls of a lovely rental house atop its sturdy piers.
Crystal Beach is a little world on the edge of the planetary sea, a world I visit only occasionally but which is very important to me. I am glad that people live there, people who don’t shave or put on makeup every day and who almost never wear shoes and who give their boats funny names. I hope that they are never regulated out of existence and that their (and our) peninsula is never made very prosperous, for then it wouldn’t be ours anymore. The world needs plywood hotdog stands, bare feet, soda shops made out of abandoned trailers, accessible beaches, the smells of salt air and mosquito repellent, and sand and cheesy snapshots and happy memories of happy hours by the Gulf of Mexico.
-30-
Monday, July 5, 2010
Jihad Joe Inspires the Troops
Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Jihad Joe Inspires the Troops
On Independence Day Vice-President Joe Biden, America’s ambassador of good will, made a surprise visit to our Frankenstein’s monster, Iraq. While giving a speech about how well the war is going or something, some of the lads outside The Green Zone dropped a mortar round into Fort Maginot to remind the white-wine-and-cheese set that Abdul and Achmed are a little miffed about not being invited to the party.
A spokesman said that this was an isolated incident, no one was hurt, and no damage was done. Nothing to see here, folks, just move along, no cameras, please, and just ignore those dead bodies on the croquet lawns and that little man behind the curtain.
Jihad Joe can now join John Fitzgerald Kerry and Hillary Clinton in the pantheon of great American war heroes. He’ll probably get a medal for cussing small business owners while under fire. In the meantime, the E-4 on patrol protecting Fort Maginot will consider himself lucky if he gets a hot shower sometime this week.
Jihad Joe was earning his combat honors in the new American embassy, a modest endeavor said to cost some $700,000,000 dollars. At that price it ought to have restrooms, unlike the proposed Amtrak railroad stop in Beaumont, Texas.
$700 million dollars. For an embassy. In Iraq. Has anyone asked why?
Whatever business is being transacted in Bagdad could surely be accomplished on a couple of floors rented from the Hilton or the Holiday Inn or something. Heck, General Eisenhower led the allied forces in Europe while living in a travel trailer. Does an ambassador need anything better?
When Saddamn took the long walk from a short rope there was much mockery about all his palaces, about how large and pretentious they were, and how much they cost the poor Iraqi people. And yet the ambassadors from our modest republic founded on the rocky shores of New England by sturdy Puritans now seem to expect to live as high on the camel as any supremeissimo generalissimo grandissimo beloved of Allah.
I don’t suppose there are any oil slicks in His Highness the Ambassador’s swimming pool.
Books in the ambassador’s library should include Bernard Fall’s Street Without Joy and Hell in a Small Place, Brian Farrell’s Defence and Fall of Singapore 1940-1942, Charles Morris’ Massacre of an Army, Michael Asher’s Khartoum, Tacitus’ Annals, Tim Saunders’ Fort Eban Emael 1940, and perhaps just one useful line from Kipling: “Here lies a fool who tried to hustle the East.”
$700 million for an embassy. I guess that means that the wounded and the shell-shocked are getting some really good treatment, then, eh?
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
Jihad Joe Inspires the Troops
On Independence Day Vice-President Joe Biden, America’s ambassador of good will, made a surprise visit to our Frankenstein’s monster, Iraq. While giving a speech about how well the war is going or something, some of the lads outside The Green Zone dropped a mortar round into Fort Maginot to remind the white-wine-and-cheese set that Abdul and Achmed are a little miffed about not being invited to the party.
A spokesman said that this was an isolated incident, no one was hurt, and no damage was done. Nothing to see here, folks, just move along, no cameras, please, and just ignore those dead bodies on the croquet lawns and that little man behind the curtain.
Jihad Joe can now join John Fitzgerald Kerry and Hillary Clinton in the pantheon of great American war heroes. He’ll probably get a medal for cussing small business owners while under fire. In the meantime, the E-4 on patrol protecting Fort Maginot will consider himself lucky if he gets a hot shower sometime this week.
Jihad Joe was earning his combat honors in the new American embassy, a modest endeavor said to cost some $700,000,000 dollars. At that price it ought to have restrooms, unlike the proposed Amtrak railroad stop in Beaumont, Texas.
$700 million dollars. For an embassy. In Iraq. Has anyone asked why?
Whatever business is being transacted in Bagdad could surely be accomplished on a couple of floors rented from the Hilton or the Holiday Inn or something. Heck, General Eisenhower led the allied forces in Europe while living in a travel trailer. Does an ambassador need anything better?
When Saddamn took the long walk from a short rope there was much mockery about all his palaces, about how large and pretentious they were, and how much they cost the poor Iraqi people. And yet the ambassadors from our modest republic founded on the rocky shores of New England by sturdy Puritans now seem to expect to live as high on the camel as any supremeissimo generalissimo grandissimo beloved of Allah.
I don’t suppose there are any oil slicks in His Highness the Ambassador’s swimming pool.
Books in the ambassador’s library should include Bernard Fall’s Street Without Joy and Hell in a Small Place, Brian Farrell’s Defence and Fall of Singapore 1940-1942, Charles Morris’ Massacre of an Army, Michael Asher’s Khartoum, Tacitus’ Annals, Tim Saunders’ Fort Eban Emael 1940, and perhaps just one useful line from Kipling: “Here lies a fool who tried to hustle the East.”
$700 million for an embassy. I guess that means that the wounded and the shell-shocked are getting some really good treatment, then, eh?
-30-
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Pre-Broken Icon
Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Broken Before You Buy It
Many American retailers, ever on the trailing edge of progress, have eliminated the need for you to use up or wear out products you buy; the products are now often broken even before you buy them. Instant landfill!
For the benefit of the fashionable, the iconic author of this iconic piece will now re-cast the iconic first paragraph in the iconic contemporary iconic idiom: Many iconic American retailers, ever on the iconic trailing edge of iconic progress, have eliminated the iconic need for iconic you to use up or wear out iconic products you buy; the iconic products are now often broken even before you buy iconic them.
Gentle Reader, you may now employ your own icons.
Two reliable signs of ageing are maintaining hummingbird feeders and bellyaching about how things used to be built better. A friend and I (we both feed hummingbirds) were marveling the other day about how we had each bought an item in the previous week that actually worked, and how functionality had become so rare that it was a topic of conversation.
You see, children, once upon a time long, long ago, back in th’ day, when you bought something – coffee maker, pencil, pocketknife, alarm clock – the item actually worked. You didn’t bother to save receipts because the concept of implied merchantability.
If you bought a coffee pot, the thing made coffee. For years and years.
Pencils from upstate New York – the cedar smelled great when you sharpened them, and they made a nice, clean line.
You sharpened your pencil with your good ol’ American pocket knife, and no one gasped in horror or called in the S.W.A.T. team. If you wanted something fancy in the way of cutlery you bought a knife made in England or Germany, but that was really just for showing off. A lot of us carry American-made pocket knives that belonged to our grandfathers. Those knives do not feature Chinese pictures of Chinese John Wayne or Chinese American eagles; real tools don’t need ornamentation. They simply work.
The nice people in Alabama who assembled inexpensive wind-up alarm clocks out of metal and glass had this archaic concept that an alarm clock should tell time and that if you set it to ring at 0600 it would actually ring – usually somewhere between 0545 and 0615, but then, you were buying plain-vanilla American functionality at a reasonable price and not German craftsmanship at a German price.
But now, over breakfast early this century, it was something of a rare treat to praise a Famous Name Brand product that, although made in China, actually worked.
The joy was transitory.
After visiting with my friend I drove over to Famous Name Iconic pet store to buy a box of Famous Name Iconic doggie treats. When I got home and opened the box of Famous Name Iconic doggie treats I was suddenly enveloped in a cloud of small, moth-like critters. Now I don’t know about your pups, but mine aren’t much for moths; they’re picky like that. I immediately took the cloud of airborne critters and their box outside.
I telephoned the 1-800-Your-Call-Is-Important-To-Us number and May answered. Now on some other occasion I would be happy to assist May (for some reason I don’t think that’s really her name) improve her rudimentary English-language skills, but my mission was doggie treats. Sometimes it’s all about the doggie treats. So I rang off and emailed to Famous Name Iconic pet store a polite letter in block format stating that I would be returning the box of moths next week in exchange for a box of doggie treats, and that I would like to open the next box in the store to verify that there are no extraneous life forms in residence.
And you know how this will work out -- if you want to play Godzilla and cause people to flee in terror, just go to a store and look like you might need some assistance.
While I was on the ‘net I looked up the name of the company with reference to complaints, and there were lots of ‘em. I don’t know how reliable any of the complaints were. One lady complained bitterly because she had bought a pet rat from Famous Iconic Name pet store and she had run up thousands of dollars of veterinarian bills for her sick rat. Where to begin, where to begin.
Maybe it’s because she had to pay for her rat; my moth-thingies came for free.
Maybe they’re iconic moths.
Say, what do you get if you cross your rat with a moth?
Mickey Moth!
Sorry. I’ll go quietly and iconically now.
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
Broken Before You Buy It
Many American retailers, ever on the trailing edge of progress, have eliminated the need for you to use up or wear out products you buy; the products are now often broken even before you buy them. Instant landfill!
For the benefit of the fashionable, the iconic author of this iconic piece will now re-cast the iconic first paragraph in the iconic contemporary iconic idiom: Many iconic American retailers, ever on the iconic trailing edge of iconic progress, have eliminated the iconic need for iconic you to use up or wear out iconic products you buy; the iconic products are now often broken even before you buy iconic them.
Gentle Reader, you may now employ your own icons.
Two reliable signs of ageing are maintaining hummingbird feeders and bellyaching about how things used to be built better. A friend and I (we both feed hummingbirds) were marveling the other day about how we had each bought an item in the previous week that actually worked, and how functionality had become so rare that it was a topic of conversation.
You see, children, once upon a time long, long ago, back in th’ day, when you bought something – coffee maker, pencil, pocketknife, alarm clock – the item actually worked. You didn’t bother to save receipts because the concept of implied merchantability.
If you bought a coffee pot, the thing made coffee. For years and years.
Pencils from upstate New York – the cedar smelled great when you sharpened them, and they made a nice, clean line.
You sharpened your pencil with your good ol’ American pocket knife, and no one gasped in horror or called in the S.W.A.T. team. If you wanted something fancy in the way of cutlery you bought a knife made in England or Germany, but that was really just for showing off. A lot of us carry American-made pocket knives that belonged to our grandfathers. Those knives do not feature Chinese pictures of Chinese John Wayne or Chinese American eagles; real tools don’t need ornamentation. They simply work.
The nice people in Alabama who assembled inexpensive wind-up alarm clocks out of metal and glass had this archaic concept that an alarm clock should tell time and that if you set it to ring at 0600 it would actually ring – usually somewhere between 0545 and 0615, but then, you were buying plain-vanilla American functionality at a reasonable price and not German craftsmanship at a German price.
But now, over breakfast early this century, it was something of a rare treat to praise a Famous Name Brand product that, although made in China, actually worked.
The joy was transitory.
After visiting with my friend I drove over to Famous Name Iconic pet store to buy a box of Famous Name Iconic doggie treats. When I got home and opened the box of Famous Name Iconic doggie treats I was suddenly enveloped in a cloud of small, moth-like critters. Now I don’t know about your pups, but mine aren’t much for moths; they’re picky like that. I immediately took the cloud of airborne critters and their box outside.
I telephoned the 1-800-Your-Call-Is-Important-To-Us number and May answered. Now on some other occasion I would be happy to assist May (for some reason I don’t think that’s really her name) improve her rudimentary English-language skills, but my mission was doggie treats. Sometimes it’s all about the doggie treats. So I rang off and emailed to Famous Name Iconic pet store a polite letter in block format stating that I would be returning the box of moths next week in exchange for a box of doggie treats, and that I would like to open the next box in the store to verify that there are no extraneous life forms in residence.
And you know how this will work out -- if you want to play Godzilla and cause people to flee in terror, just go to a store and look like you might need some assistance.
While I was on the ‘net I looked up the name of the company with reference to complaints, and there were lots of ‘em. I don’t know how reliable any of the complaints were. One lady complained bitterly because she had bought a pet rat from Famous Iconic Name pet store and she had run up thousands of dollars of veterinarian bills for her sick rat. Where to begin, where to begin.
Maybe it’s because she had to pay for her rat; my moth-thingies came for free.
Maybe they’re iconic moths.
Say, what do you get if you cross your rat with a moth?
Mickey Moth!
Sorry. I’ll go quietly and iconically now.
-30-
Pre-Broken Icon
Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Broken Before You Buy It
Many American retailers, ever on the trailing edge of progress, have eliminated the need for you to use up or wear out products you buy; the products are now often broken even before you buy them. Instant landfill!
For the benefit of the fashionable, the iconic author of this iconic piece will now re-cast the iconic first paragraph in the iconic contemporary iconic idiom: Many iconic American retailers, ever on the iconic trailing edge of iconic progress, have eliminated the iconic need for iconic you to use up or wear out iconic products you buy; the iconic products are now often broken even before you buy iconic them.
Gentle Reader, you may now employ your own icons.
Two reliable signs of ageing are maintaining hummingbird feeders and bellyaching about how things used to be built better. A friend and I (we both feed hummingbirds) were marveling the other day about how we had each bought an item in the previous week that actually worked, and how functionality had become so rare that it was a topic of conversation.
You see, children, once upon a time long, long ago, back in th’ day, when you bought something – coffee maker, pencil, pocketknife, alarm clock – the item actually worked. You didn’t bother to save receipts because the concept of implied merchantability.
If you bought a coffee pot, the thing made coffee. For years and years.
Pencils from upstate New York – the cedar smelled great when you sharpened them, and they made a nice, clean line.
You sharpened your pencil with your good ol’ American pocket knife, and no one gasped in horror or called in the S.W.A.T. team. If you wanted something fancy in the way of cutlery you bought a knife made in England or Germany, but that was really just for showing off. A lot of us carry American-made pocket knives that belonged to our grandfathers. Those knives do not feature Chinese pictures of Chinese John Wayne or Chinese American eagles; real tools don’t need ornamentation. They simply work.
The nice people in Alabama who assembled inexpensive wind-up alarm clocks out of metal and glass had this archaic concept that an alarm clock should tell time and that if you set it to ring at 0600 it would actually ring – usually somewhere between 0545 and 0615, but then, you were buying plain-vanilla American functionality at a reasonable price and not German craftsmanship at a German price.
But now, over breakfast early this century, it was something of a rare treat to praise a Famous Name Brand product that, although made in China, actually worked.
The joy was transitory.
After visiting with my friend I drove over to Famous Name Iconic pet store to buy a box of Famous Name Iconic doggie treats. When I got home and opened the box of Famous Name Iconic doggie treats I was suddenly enveloped in a cloud of small, moth-like critters. Now I don’t know about your pups, but mine aren’t much for moths; they’re picky like that. I immediately took the cloud of airborne critters and their box outside.
I telephoned the 1-800-Your-Call-Is-Important-To-Us number and May answered. Now on some other occasion I would be happy to assist May (for some reason I don’t think that’s really her name) improve her rudimentary English-language skills, but my mission was doggie treats. Sometimes it’s all about the doggie treats. So I rang off and emailed to Famous Name Iconic pet store a polite letter in block format stating that I would be returning the box of moths next week in exchange for a box of doggie treats, and that I would like to open the next box in the store to verify that there are no extraneous life forms in residence.
And you know how this will work out -- if you want to play Godzilla and cause people to flee in terror, just go to a store and look like you might need some assistance.
While I was on the ‘net I looked up the name of the company with reference to complaints, and there were lots of ‘em. I don’t know how reliable any of the complaints were. One lady complained bitterly because she had bought a pet rat from Famous Iconic Name pet store and she had run up thousands of dollars of veterinarian bills for her sick rat. Where to begin, where to begin.
Maybe it’s because she had to pay for her rat; my moth-thingies came for free.
Maybe they’re iconic moths.
Say, what do you get if you cross your rat with a moth?
Mickey Moth!
Sorry. I’ll go quietly and iconically now.
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
Broken Before You Buy It
Many American retailers, ever on the trailing edge of progress, have eliminated the need for you to use up or wear out products you buy; the products are now often broken even before you buy them. Instant landfill!
For the benefit of the fashionable, the iconic author of this iconic piece will now re-cast the iconic first paragraph in the iconic contemporary iconic idiom: Many iconic American retailers, ever on the iconic trailing edge of iconic progress, have eliminated the iconic need for iconic you to use up or wear out iconic products you buy; the iconic products are now often broken even before you buy iconic them.
Gentle Reader, you may now employ your own icons.
Two reliable signs of ageing are maintaining hummingbird feeders and bellyaching about how things used to be built better. A friend and I (we both feed hummingbirds) were marveling the other day about how we had each bought an item in the previous week that actually worked, and how functionality had become so rare that it was a topic of conversation.
You see, children, once upon a time long, long ago, back in th’ day, when you bought something – coffee maker, pencil, pocketknife, alarm clock – the item actually worked. You didn’t bother to save receipts because the concept of implied merchantability.
If you bought a coffee pot, the thing made coffee. For years and years.
Pencils from upstate New York – the cedar smelled great when you sharpened them, and they made a nice, clean line.
You sharpened your pencil with your good ol’ American pocket knife, and no one gasped in horror or called in the S.W.A.T. team. If you wanted something fancy in the way of cutlery you bought a knife made in England or Germany, but that was really just for showing off. A lot of us carry American-made pocket knives that belonged to our grandfathers. Those knives do not feature Chinese pictures of Chinese John Wayne or Chinese American eagles; real tools don’t need ornamentation. They simply work.
The nice people in Alabama who assembled inexpensive wind-up alarm clocks out of metal and glass had this archaic concept that an alarm clock should tell time and that if you set it to ring at 0600 it would actually ring – usually somewhere between 0545 and 0615, but then, you were buying plain-vanilla American functionality at a reasonable price and not German craftsmanship at a German price.
But now, over breakfast early this century, it was something of a rare treat to praise a Famous Name Brand product that, although made in China, actually worked.
The joy was transitory.
After visiting with my friend I drove over to Famous Name Iconic pet store to buy a box of Famous Name Iconic doggie treats. When I got home and opened the box of Famous Name Iconic doggie treats I was suddenly enveloped in a cloud of small, moth-like critters. Now I don’t know about your pups, but mine aren’t much for moths; they’re picky like that. I immediately took the cloud of airborne critters and their box outside.
I telephoned the 1-800-Your-Call-Is-Important-To-Us number and May answered. Now on some other occasion I would be happy to assist May (for some reason I don’t think that’s really her name) improve her rudimentary English-language skills, but my mission was doggie treats. Sometimes it’s all about the doggie treats. So I rang off and emailed to Famous Name Iconic pet store a polite letter in block format stating that I would be returning the box of moths next week in exchange for a box of doggie treats, and that I would like to open the next box in the store to verify that there are no extraneous life forms in residence.
And you know how this will work out -- if you want to play Godzilla and cause people to flee in terror, just go to a store and look like you might need some assistance.
While I was on the ‘net I looked up the name of the company with reference to complaints, and there were lots of ‘em. I don’t know how reliable any of the complaints were. One lady complained bitterly because she had bought a pet rat from Famous Iconic Name pet store and she had run up thousands of dollars of veterinarian bills for her sick rat. Where to begin, where to begin.
Maybe it’s because she had to pay for her rat; my moth-thingies came for free.
Maybe they’re iconic moths.
Say, what do you get if you cross your rat with a moth?
Mickey Moth!
Sorry. I’ll go quietly and iconically now.
-30-
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Flying Topless
Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Flying Topless
Are you thinking of leaving your body to science? Well, use your head before making that decision.
As of last week, some “40 to 60 whole and partial heads” (Associated Press) were being held by the Pulaski County coroner after they were denied boarding at Little Rock by Southwest Airlines. Man, don’t you just wonder what conversation was like at the gate!
Maybe there was a problem with the head count. And with 40-60 of them, there was certainly no chance of an employee dead-heading home on that flight.
The heads were not packaged or labeled properly, and a lot of loose and unidentified human heads on an airplane is a situation with which few travelers would be comfortable. It just sort of breaks up the holiday mood.
Let this be a lesson to all of us: when shipping body parts, give the airline a heads-up.
The heads were being shipped by an organization styling itself JLS Consulting LLC of Conway, Arkansas. And one can understand the name. If a fellow is trying to pick up a cute girl – maybe a Southwest Airlines employee – at a bar, “I’m a consultant” is so much more alpha-male than “I’m a guy who cuts heads off corpses with a hacksaw.”
The police became nosy in this matter of boxes of human heads (police are like that), and asked a few questions. JLS Consulting said that the heads were headed to Fort Worth for physicians to use in continuing education. Education. And you had trouble getting your head into algebra. Talk about a skull session!
And as St. Thomas More might have said, “Why, Richard, what does it profit a man to give his soul for the whole world. But for Fort Worth!”
Still, the authorities remain unclear on several issues, such as where the heads came from. Lots of folks happily donate blood; donating one’s head is somewhat more of a commitment and usually not voluntary. And so the heads wait, chillin’ in the Pulaski County morgue, hoping for the message to “Head ‘em up! Move ‘em out!”
All fooling aside, leaving one’s body to science or donating organs for one’s fellow humans is a wonderful gift of life. How good it would be, upon passing, to know that someone still alive would benefit from one’s eyes or heart, or that physicians would learn something new for the betterment of mankind.
But one’s head rattling around in a box in the belly of an airplane – would that help anyone?
Old Bill was clear about our human need to respect the departed, which means a Christian funeral, not a cardboard box and a shipping error:
Do we all holy rites.
Let there be sung “Non nobis” and “Te Deum,”
The dead with charity enclosed in clay…
- Henry V, IV.viii.117-119
Mhall46184@aol.com
Flying Topless
Are you thinking of leaving your body to science? Well, use your head before making that decision.
As of last week, some “40 to 60 whole and partial heads” (Associated Press) were being held by the Pulaski County coroner after they were denied boarding at Little Rock by Southwest Airlines. Man, don’t you just wonder what conversation was like at the gate!
Maybe there was a problem with the head count. And with 40-60 of them, there was certainly no chance of an employee dead-heading home on that flight.
The heads were not packaged or labeled properly, and a lot of loose and unidentified human heads on an airplane is a situation with which few travelers would be comfortable. It just sort of breaks up the holiday mood.
Let this be a lesson to all of us: when shipping body parts, give the airline a heads-up.
The heads were being shipped by an organization styling itself JLS Consulting LLC of Conway, Arkansas. And one can understand the name. If a fellow is trying to pick up a cute girl – maybe a Southwest Airlines employee – at a bar, “I’m a consultant” is so much more alpha-male than “I’m a guy who cuts heads off corpses with a hacksaw.”
The police became nosy in this matter of boxes of human heads (police are like that), and asked a few questions. JLS Consulting said that the heads were headed to Fort Worth for physicians to use in continuing education. Education. And you had trouble getting your head into algebra. Talk about a skull session!
And as St. Thomas More might have said, “Why, Richard, what does it profit a man to give his soul for the whole world. But for Fort Worth!”
Still, the authorities remain unclear on several issues, such as where the heads came from. Lots of folks happily donate blood; donating one’s head is somewhat more of a commitment and usually not voluntary. And so the heads wait, chillin’ in the Pulaski County morgue, hoping for the message to “Head ‘em up! Move ‘em out!”
All fooling aside, leaving one’s body to science or donating organs for one’s fellow humans is a wonderful gift of life. How good it would be, upon passing, to know that someone still alive would benefit from one’s eyes or heart, or that physicians would learn something new for the betterment of mankind.
But one’s head rattling around in a box in the belly of an airplane – would that help anyone?
Old Bill was clear about our human need to respect the departed, which means a Christian funeral, not a cardboard box and a shipping error:
Do we all holy rites.
Let there be sung “Non nobis” and “Te Deum,”
The dead with charity enclosed in clay…
- Henry V, IV.viii.117-119
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Don't Cry for Me, Vuvuzela
Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Don’t Cry for Me, Vuvuzela
Vuvuzela is not a South American country, nor is it an obscure anatomical term; it is a long plastic horn first associated with South African football (we unsophisticated Americans call the game soccer).
Footballers don’t play the vuvuzela in a match because it’s not actually part of the game, and, indeed, in a crush a player could risk getting one shoved up his vuvuzela. The noisemaker, a meter long (we God-fearing folks would say that it’s somewhat over a yard; real Christians don’t do metric), is employed by the fans in order to make, well, noise. Purists say that this could ruin the traditional restrained, gentlemanly demeanor that has always obtained in the stands during soccer matches.
The vuvuzela is said to make a monotone racket, a sort of buzzing sound, and so when thousands of these are blown at the same time the effect is like a stadium assaulted by an apocalyptic horde of lust-crazed uberwasps from outer space, and if that’s not a reason for going to a footie match then what is? The vuvuzela is also said to ruin hearing, so perhaps it is a C.I.A. plot to sell millions of those $14.95 bionic hearing aids as advertised by the Six Million Geritol Man.
The classic South African vuvuzela strategy is to maintain a reasonable lung effort throughout the match but to save some energy for the last part of the game and then make a sustained and concerted racket to kill the spirits of the opposition. If both teams blow vuvuzelas, a match could end up like the finale of Hamlet with all those dead bodies littering the stage.
The vuvuzela must be really cool, because it’s used in soccer matches, and nothing says cool like a few thousand drunk Englishmen throwing up in the bleachers.
Some South African patriots claim that the vuvzela is an ancient African tradition. No doubt these made-in-China plastic horns were buried as priceless grave goods in the tombs of long-ago kings, or were traded north so that Moses and Pharaoh could marvel at the Chinese craftsmanship available from merchants beyond the Nile.
The two or three Americans actually interested in soccer / footer will no doubt transplant the idea here, and this fall we can expect Ye Olde American Cowbell and the traditional Tres Elegante’ Airhorn to be augmented at our real football games by the ancient Chinese-made African Vuvuzela, which can be ordered online.
Before ordering, one might want to consider that the thrifty Chinese make their novelty products, including the vuvuzela, from all sorts of recycled plastic and latex goods, including pre-owned condom(inium)s. As your mother always told you, don’t put some things in your mouth; you don’t know where they’ve been.
The vuvuzela gives fatuous failing footers fresh facesavings for fiascos. When France tied Uruguay last week, the French captain blamed the poor performance of his team on the racket of the vuvuzelas. Yeah, that’s what happened at Buena Vista and Camerone; the Mexicans charged across the blasted landscape with massed vuvuzelas, chasing the French away.
One hopes the vuvuzela doesn’t catch on here. Called me an old-fashioned flag-waver, but there’s nothing that captures the healthy, competitive spirit of American athletics like cheeseheads, Viking helmets, cowbells, platters of toxic nachos, giant foam fingers, air horns, and giant illuminated signs that suck up more electricity than the Taco Bell in Branson, Missouri on a Saturday night.
The United States Border Patrol must be put on alert for gangs trying to smuggle undocumented vuvuzelas across the border, and British Petroleum needs to clean up all those vuvuzelas polluting the Gulf of Mexico.
Let us true Americans always keep this in our hearts: there were no vuvuzelas at Plymouth Rock.
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
Don’t Cry for Me, Vuvuzela
Vuvuzela is not a South American country, nor is it an obscure anatomical term; it is a long plastic horn first associated with South African football (we unsophisticated Americans call the game soccer).
Footballers don’t play the vuvuzela in a match because it’s not actually part of the game, and, indeed, in a crush a player could risk getting one shoved up his vuvuzela. The noisemaker, a meter long (we God-fearing folks would say that it’s somewhat over a yard; real Christians don’t do metric), is employed by the fans in order to make, well, noise. Purists say that this could ruin the traditional restrained, gentlemanly demeanor that has always obtained in the stands during soccer matches.
The vuvuzela is said to make a monotone racket, a sort of buzzing sound, and so when thousands of these are blown at the same time the effect is like a stadium assaulted by an apocalyptic horde of lust-crazed uberwasps from outer space, and if that’s not a reason for going to a footie match then what is? The vuvuzela is also said to ruin hearing, so perhaps it is a C.I.A. plot to sell millions of those $14.95 bionic hearing aids as advertised by the Six Million Geritol Man.
The classic South African vuvuzela strategy is to maintain a reasonable lung effort throughout the match but to save some energy for the last part of the game and then make a sustained and concerted racket to kill the spirits of the opposition. If both teams blow vuvuzelas, a match could end up like the finale of Hamlet with all those dead bodies littering the stage.
The vuvuzela must be really cool, because it’s used in soccer matches, and nothing says cool like a few thousand drunk Englishmen throwing up in the bleachers.
Some South African patriots claim that the vuvzela is an ancient African tradition. No doubt these made-in-China plastic horns were buried as priceless grave goods in the tombs of long-ago kings, or were traded north so that Moses and Pharaoh could marvel at the Chinese craftsmanship available from merchants beyond the Nile.
The two or three Americans actually interested in soccer / footer will no doubt transplant the idea here, and this fall we can expect Ye Olde American Cowbell and the traditional Tres Elegante’ Airhorn to be augmented at our real football games by the ancient Chinese-made African Vuvuzela, which can be ordered online.
Before ordering, one might want to consider that the thrifty Chinese make their novelty products, including the vuvuzela, from all sorts of recycled plastic and latex goods, including pre-owned condom(inium)s. As your mother always told you, don’t put some things in your mouth; you don’t know where they’ve been.
The vuvuzela gives fatuous failing footers fresh facesavings for fiascos. When France tied Uruguay last week, the French captain blamed the poor performance of his team on the racket of the vuvuzelas. Yeah, that’s what happened at Buena Vista and Camerone; the Mexicans charged across the blasted landscape with massed vuvuzelas, chasing the French away.
One hopes the vuvuzela doesn’t catch on here. Called me an old-fashioned flag-waver, but there’s nothing that captures the healthy, competitive spirit of American athletics like cheeseheads, Viking helmets, cowbells, platters of toxic nachos, giant foam fingers, air horns, and giant illuminated signs that suck up more electricity than the Taco Bell in Branson, Missouri on a Saturday night.
The United States Border Patrol must be put on alert for gangs trying to smuggle undocumented vuvuzelas across the border, and British Petroleum needs to clean up all those vuvuzelas polluting the Gulf of Mexico.
Let us true Americans always keep this in our hearts: there were no vuvuzelas at Plymouth Rock.
-30-
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Rush Limbaugh and Helen Thomas Got Married?
Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Paintballs and the White House Press Corps
Because Israel is a tiny country that can be overflown by hostile aircraft in seconds, it has in its short history developed a citizen-soldier army that, despite its small size and its heavy dependence on reservists, is one of the most flexible, effective, and professional militaries in history.
The ever-changing basement governments in what some are pleased to call Palestine (a Roman designation) are careless with their own citizens’ lives but have lots of money to spend in firing thousands of rockets onto Israel.
Just as President Lincoln did to the Confederacy, President Roosevelt to the Axis, and President Kennedy to Cuba, the Israelis have set an ongoing blockade of hostile areas. Their reasoning is that if the neighbors are shooting at you all the time, you do the best you can to see that they can’t easily get more bullets.
So when some peace (cough) activists, no doubt wearing Che Guevera tees, sent several ships to break the blockade, Israel announced that the ships would be boarded and searched, and that non-military goods would be sent on to Gaza.
Alas, some genius decided that, in order to avoid offending anyone, the Israeli commandos would go into action with paintball guns. Oh, some wore pistols, but were all but forbidden to use them. In the event, the peace-loving peace activists, when they stopped laughing, peacefully beat the snot out of the Israeli paintball commandos with peaceful iron bars, even seizing some of the pistols. Finally, someone on the Israeli side made a decision that the lads could fight back, and nine deaths resulted. These deaths could possibly have been avoided if the commandos had been permitted to board fully armed and in a Gunny Ermey mode.
As Czech, Polish, French, Belgian, Dutch, English, and Norwegian diplomats of the last century could attest, trying to make peace with evil gets your country peacefully destroyed and your citizens peacefully killed or peacefully enslaved.
Paintball guns don’t say Churchill; they say Chamberlain.
Imagine how the world might be now if during World War II the allies had employed paintball guns against the Axis powers.
Whatever some Israeli desk-commander was thinking, he wasn’t thinking of his young soldiers. He may have been thinking of trying to save the lives of Israel’s enemies by a show of weakness, but that didn’t work either.
Looking past the paintballs, our own nation has for the past few years been drifting into European-style anti-Semitism unworthy of any civilized man or woman. The dean of the White House press corps, for decades petted and indulged despite her coarseness and vulgarity, this week spat out her wishes that all Israelis would return “home” to Germany and Poland. This journalist’s historical ignorance is commensurate with her malevolence.
You’d think that the White House press corps’ lead reporter’s near-death experience from a house falling on her back in 1939 would have helped her focus on the basic concepts of right and wrong.
We haven’t heard from Helen Thomas or Rush Limbaugh this weekend, and Mr. Limbaugh is rumored to have gotten married. Do you think…? Imagine them exiting the office of a justice of the peace under the arched paintball guns of an honor guard of the Fox Network faithful.
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
Paintballs and the White House Press Corps
Because Israel is a tiny country that can be overflown by hostile aircraft in seconds, it has in its short history developed a citizen-soldier army that, despite its small size and its heavy dependence on reservists, is one of the most flexible, effective, and professional militaries in history.
The ever-changing basement governments in what some are pleased to call Palestine (a Roman designation) are careless with their own citizens’ lives but have lots of money to spend in firing thousands of rockets onto Israel.
Just as President Lincoln did to the Confederacy, President Roosevelt to the Axis, and President Kennedy to Cuba, the Israelis have set an ongoing blockade of hostile areas. Their reasoning is that if the neighbors are shooting at you all the time, you do the best you can to see that they can’t easily get more bullets.
So when some peace (cough) activists, no doubt wearing Che Guevera tees, sent several ships to break the blockade, Israel announced that the ships would be boarded and searched, and that non-military goods would be sent on to Gaza.
Alas, some genius decided that, in order to avoid offending anyone, the Israeli commandos would go into action with paintball guns. Oh, some wore pistols, but were all but forbidden to use them. In the event, the peace-loving peace activists, when they stopped laughing, peacefully beat the snot out of the Israeli paintball commandos with peaceful iron bars, even seizing some of the pistols. Finally, someone on the Israeli side made a decision that the lads could fight back, and nine deaths resulted. These deaths could possibly have been avoided if the commandos had been permitted to board fully armed and in a Gunny Ermey mode.
As Czech, Polish, French, Belgian, Dutch, English, and Norwegian diplomats of the last century could attest, trying to make peace with evil gets your country peacefully destroyed and your citizens peacefully killed or peacefully enslaved.
Paintball guns don’t say Churchill; they say Chamberlain.
Imagine how the world might be now if during World War II the allies had employed paintball guns against the Axis powers.
Whatever some Israeli desk-commander was thinking, he wasn’t thinking of his young soldiers. He may have been thinking of trying to save the lives of Israel’s enemies by a show of weakness, but that didn’t work either.
Looking past the paintballs, our own nation has for the past few years been drifting into European-style anti-Semitism unworthy of any civilized man or woman. The dean of the White House press corps, for decades petted and indulged despite her coarseness and vulgarity, this week spat out her wishes that all Israelis would return “home” to Germany and Poland. This journalist’s historical ignorance is commensurate with her malevolence.
You’d think that the White House press corps’ lead reporter’s near-death experience from a house falling on her back in 1939 would have helped her focus on the basic concepts of right and wrong.
We haven’t heard from Helen Thomas or Rush Limbaugh this weekend, and Mr. Limbaugh is rumored to have gotten married. Do you think…? Imagine them exiting the office of a justice of the peace under the arched paintball guns of an honor guard of the Fox Network faithful.
-30-
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