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-
Saturday, May 29, 2010
The 1914 Model is Outdated
Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
The 1914 Model is Outdated
Some weeks ago a South Korean warship blew up and now the North Koreans and the South Koreans are calling each other rude names. South Korea and Secretary of State Clinton have done the CSI thing on scraps of metal and claim that a North Korean submarine sank the South Korean warship with a torpedo.
What does this have to do with us? Plenty.
Because of 1914-model interlocking treaties, this country backs South Korea, who despises us, and China, who also despises us, backs North Korea, who loathes and fears us.
North Korea is run by an anonymous klaven of frozen-faced men headed by a demonic dwarf in elevator shoes. These characters should be laughable as the villains in an episode of The Avengers or The Man from U.N.C.L.E.; alas for civilization that they are very real and command a huge army, air force, and navy, all equipped with nuclear weapons. As with any Communist nation, North Korea has made its military power and its workers’ paradise by shooting and starving millions of workers. They have nothing to lose.
Standing between these crazies, who, remember, loathe us, and the South Koreans, who, remember, despise us, are a few thousand American soldiers. Don’t expect Belgium or Switzerland to lend a hand with this one, and, really, why should they? And why should we?
Switzerland, as always, will profit from this war, and the Chinese will do their best to stay out of it too, except to sell the North Koreans more weapons to use again others.
South Korea is now one of the world’s most economically developed nations, and maybe it’s time they guarded their own eggs-and-ham border.
Indeed, maybe it’s time we started guarding our borders too. The American military is fighting all over the world, and the people our solders are fighting are genuinely evil. Some of them mean to conquer the world, which is clear in their own book if anyone here would bother to read it.
But the question must be asked: why is it always Americans who must go and try to make chicken soup out of chicken armpit? Other nations help, especially Canada and England, but given that our current regime does not like Canada and has certainly stiffed England with unforgivable ill manners, they may not feel like allying themselves with us in the future.
In the meantime, a sturdy but far too small American army may find itself stranded and annihilated defending a country that doesn’t like us. Remember that the North Koreans possess, thanks to China and Russia, nuclear weapons, and the flight time from North Korean launch sites to our lads on the ground is but mere seconds. Seconds.
This ain’t pretty.
Must more thousands of American young die for South Korea?
Perhaps the next time two nations who hate us go to war with each other, we could stay out of it.
But, hey, how about American Idol and next year’s football season, eh?
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
The 1914 Model is Outdated
Some weeks ago a South Korean warship blew up and now the North Koreans and the South Koreans are calling each other rude names. South Korea and Secretary of State Clinton have done the CSI thing on scraps of metal and claim that a North Korean submarine sank the South Korean warship with a torpedo.
What does this have to do with us? Plenty.
Because of 1914-model interlocking treaties, this country backs South Korea, who despises us, and China, who also despises us, backs North Korea, who loathes and fears us.
North Korea is run by an anonymous klaven of frozen-faced men headed by a demonic dwarf in elevator shoes. These characters should be laughable as the villains in an episode of The Avengers or The Man from U.N.C.L.E.; alas for civilization that they are very real and command a huge army, air force, and navy, all equipped with nuclear weapons. As with any Communist nation, North Korea has made its military power and its workers’ paradise by shooting and starving millions of workers. They have nothing to lose.
Standing between these crazies, who, remember, loathe us, and the South Koreans, who, remember, despise us, are a few thousand American soldiers. Don’t expect Belgium or Switzerland to lend a hand with this one, and, really, why should they? And why should we?
Switzerland, as always, will profit from this war, and the Chinese will do their best to stay out of it too, except to sell the North Koreans more weapons to use again others.
South Korea is now one of the world’s most economically developed nations, and maybe it’s time they guarded their own eggs-and-ham border.
Indeed, maybe it’s time we started guarding our borders too. The American military is fighting all over the world, and the people our solders are fighting are genuinely evil. Some of them mean to conquer the world, which is clear in their own book if anyone here would bother to read it.
But the question must be asked: why is it always Americans who must go and try to make chicken soup out of chicken armpit? Other nations help, especially Canada and England, but given that our current regime does not like Canada and has certainly stiffed England with unforgivable ill manners, they may not feel like allying themselves with us in the future.
In the meantime, a sturdy but far too small American army may find itself stranded and annihilated defending a country that doesn’t like us. Remember that the North Koreans possess, thanks to China and Russia, nuclear weapons, and the flight time from North Korean launch sites to our lads on the ground is but mere seconds. Seconds.
This ain’t pretty.
Must more thousands of American young die for South Korea?
Perhaps the next time two nations who hate us go to war with each other, we could stay out of it.
But, hey, how about American Idol and next year’s football season, eh?
-30-
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Press One for Rational Thought Concerning Arizona
Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Press One for Rational Thought
Arizona, a most unfashionable state after firing on Fort Sumter earlier this spring, is now a pariah (or is that a piranha?) for wanting the English teachers in its public schools to speak, well, English.
There is no word on whether Spanish teachers in Arizona schools must know Spanish.
Employing standard English is clearly not a requirement for holding a sinecure as a super special golly administrative assistant czarina in some school districts, but, generally speaking (speaking in English), English teachers really should have pretty good control of the language of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Belloc, Churchill, Tolkien, and Thomas the Tank Engine.
If a strong accent is a bar to employment as an English teacher, any native Texan currently employed as such ain’t a-gonna be much longer; he’s gonna have t’ drag up pronto an’ mosey into th’ sunset, y’all.
English teachers must know English, just as a nurse ought to know patient care and a welder should use more than Elmer’s Glue for bonding.
Imagine taking your wheezing pickup truck to your mechanic: “Hey, Cletus, Ol’ Blue’s stalling on acceleration again…hey, where are you going?”
“Sorry, old friend, I’ve been reassigned by the government as a dental assistant. Diversity and multiculturalism, they say.”
“Dental assistant? Cletus, you don’t know anything about teeth; you only got two of ‘em anyway! And who’s gonna take care of Ol’ Blue, my 1956 pickup?”
“Here’s Sven, your new mechanic. He’s an expert in Swedish massage.”
“Massage!? Ol’ Blue don’t need a massage! It’s the carburetor!”
“Ja, me fix carburetor good with warm towels, ja. Ze government say so, ja. Ich bin ein multicultural sensitive mechanic now, is good, ja?”
Arizona is catching a lot of flak (which is a German import) for trying to control the international border and protect American citizens in the absence of enforcement of federal laws by the federal government. The reaction in some in the salons of D.C. has been to sneer and to wear the now-obligatory cause-of-the-month rubber wrist bands pooh-poohing a state that was home to sophisticated cultures hundreds of years before Washington was inhabited by anything more than mud turtles and malaria mosquitoes.
Some states are proposing an economic boycott of Arizona. Two problems obtain – Arizona is an exporter of electrical power and water to other states in a nation that, due to governmental short-sightedness, is lacking in both. California, for instance, is no more in a position to dictate terms to Arizona than Washington is to our Chinese masters.
The second issue is this – whom (“whom,” he said, for he had been to school) do the critics think live in Arizona? Vikings? Arizona has enjoyed a Spanish culture for some 500 years, and numerous First Nations cultures for millennia longer than that.
In Arizona you eat breakfast at Juanita’s café’, not at Janice’s, and if you speed you don’t get a ticket from Al Caldwell’s friend Officer Fatback but from Officer Rodriguez. You might buy your gasoline from a station owned by an Apache whose folks have lived on the same bit of land for a thousand years. All these American citizens want to live under the same Constitutional protections as the rest of us.
Boycott them? Why?
For the record, I, unlike the Attorney General of the United States, have read Arizona’s new bill regarding folks who cross the international border without a passport, a driver’s license, or at least a Sam’s Club card. The law is positively Merovingian in its harmlessness and inadequacy. Crossing into the USA for work or study (or, sadly, crime) remains a great deal easier than trying – trying, because you might not be permitted – to pop across the Canadian border to visit Niagara Falls for an hour.
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
Press One for Rational Thought
Arizona, a most unfashionable state after firing on Fort Sumter earlier this spring, is now a pariah (or is that a piranha?) for wanting the English teachers in its public schools to speak, well, English.
There is no word on whether Spanish teachers in Arizona schools must know Spanish.
Employing standard English is clearly not a requirement for holding a sinecure as a super special golly administrative assistant czarina in some school districts, but, generally speaking (speaking in English), English teachers really should have pretty good control of the language of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Belloc, Churchill, Tolkien, and Thomas the Tank Engine.
If a strong accent is a bar to employment as an English teacher, any native Texan currently employed as such ain’t a-gonna be much longer; he’s gonna have t’ drag up pronto an’ mosey into th’ sunset, y’all.
English teachers must know English, just as a nurse ought to know patient care and a welder should use more than Elmer’s Glue for bonding.
Imagine taking your wheezing pickup truck to your mechanic: “Hey, Cletus, Ol’ Blue’s stalling on acceleration again…hey, where are you going?”
“Sorry, old friend, I’ve been reassigned by the government as a dental assistant. Diversity and multiculturalism, they say.”
“Dental assistant? Cletus, you don’t know anything about teeth; you only got two of ‘em anyway! And who’s gonna take care of Ol’ Blue, my 1956 pickup?”
“Here’s Sven, your new mechanic. He’s an expert in Swedish massage.”
“Massage!? Ol’ Blue don’t need a massage! It’s the carburetor!”
“Ja, me fix carburetor good with warm towels, ja. Ze government say so, ja. Ich bin ein multicultural sensitive mechanic now, is good, ja?”
Arizona is catching a lot of flak (which is a German import) for trying to control the international border and protect American citizens in the absence of enforcement of federal laws by the federal government. The reaction in some in the salons of D.C. has been to sneer and to wear the now-obligatory cause-of-the-month rubber wrist bands pooh-poohing a state that was home to sophisticated cultures hundreds of years before Washington was inhabited by anything more than mud turtles and malaria mosquitoes.
Some states are proposing an economic boycott of Arizona. Two problems obtain – Arizona is an exporter of electrical power and water to other states in a nation that, due to governmental short-sightedness, is lacking in both. California, for instance, is no more in a position to dictate terms to Arizona than Washington is to our Chinese masters.
The second issue is this – whom (“whom,” he said, for he had been to school) do the critics think live in Arizona? Vikings? Arizona has enjoyed a Spanish culture for some 500 years, and numerous First Nations cultures for millennia longer than that.
In Arizona you eat breakfast at Juanita’s café’, not at Janice’s, and if you speed you don’t get a ticket from Al Caldwell’s friend Officer Fatback but from Officer Rodriguez. You might buy your gasoline from a station owned by an Apache whose folks have lived on the same bit of land for a thousand years. All these American citizens want to live under the same Constitutional protections as the rest of us.
Boycott them? Why?
For the record, I, unlike the Attorney General of the United States, have read Arizona’s new bill regarding folks who cross the international border without a passport, a driver’s license, or at least a Sam’s Club card. The law is positively Merovingian in its harmlessness and inadequacy. Crossing into the USA for work or study (or, sadly, crime) remains a great deal easier than trying – trying, because you might not be permitted – to pop across the Canadian border to visit Niagara Falls for an hour.
-30-
Sunday, May 16, 2010
The Class of 2010
Mack Hall
Children insist on growing up and going away. Every year the old…um, venerable parents and faculty see their high school seniors off to the new world they must make for themselves. Oh, sure, there are always one or two graduates of whom one can sing “Thank God and Greyhound you’re gone,” but the loss of most of the young’uns is very painful, very real, very acute, and very forever. And while some old guy taught them not to ever split (cough) infinitives, which they immediately forgot, the block form for business letters, which they usually remember, and the possible symbolism of Grendel in Beowulf, there are always lots of other little things parents and teachers hope they have learned along the way.
Here then, Class of 2010 are some disconnected factoids your old English teacher meant to share with you earlier in the year, before the month of May very cleverly sneaked up on all of us:
1. In October you will return for homecoming. You will find pretty much the same teachers, school, and friends you left behind. It will all seem very familiar at first. But you won’t be on the team or in the band; it isn’t about you anymore, and that will be oddly disturbing. The same school that once nagged you for tardiness and absenteeism will now require you to wear a visitor’s badge. By October of next year most of the students in your old high school won’t know who you are -- or were. And they won't care. You'll just be old people.
2. Some day surprisingly soon you will hear shrieks of insolent laughter from your child’s room. You will find your child and her friends laughing at your yearbook pictures. You and your friends will be subject to scornful dismissal by a new, cooler-than-cool generation. You will feel very old.
3. Change the oil in your car more often than the manufacturer recommends.
4. Billy Graham attended a public school; Adolf Hitler attended a Christian school. Don’t obsess on labels.
5. You are not going to win the Texas lottery.
6. T-shirts are underwear.
7. For a whole year folks have been telling you how special you are; on the morning after graduation you’ll be just another unemployed American.
8. Don’t whine that you’re old enough to fight in Afghanistan but “they” won’t let you buy a beer. You’re not in Afghanistan.
9. Have you ever noticed that you never see “Matthew 6:5-6” on a sign or bumper sticker?
10. College is not high school.
11. Work is not high school. There is no such thing as an excused absence in adult life. The boss will not care about your special needs, sensitivities, artistic gifts, or traumatic childhood.
12. God made the world. We have the testimony of Genesis and of the Incarnation that all Creation is good. Never let anyone try to tell you that the world is evil.
13. Listening to radio commentators with whom you already agree is not participating in our democracy. Until he was in his thirties, Rush Limbaugh never even registered to vote in any place he ever lived. You can do better than that.
14. Why should someone else have to raise your child?
15. Tattoos do serve one useful purpose – they will help your relatives identify your body after you die of some weird disease that was on the needle. Yeah, sure, the process is sterile – a tattoo parlor looks like a hospital, right?
16. Your class ranking is little more than a seating chart for graduation, reflecting your performance in a sometimes artificial and often passive situation for the last four years. Your future is up to you.
17. Knowing how to repair things gives you power and autonomy. You will amaze yourself with what you can do with duct-tape, a set of screwdrivers, a set of wrenches, a hammer, and a pair of Vise-grip pliers.
18. Movies are made by committees of thousands of people. Sometimes they get it right. Books are usually written by one person. Sometimes he or she gets it wrong. But there are lots more good books than there are good movies.
19. Put the 'phone down. Grasp the steering wheel firmly with both hands. Stay alive.
20. Save the planet? Reform the establishment? Stop meanies from beating harp seals to death? Hey, get a job first.
21. Time to wear the big-boy pants.
22. Some people are Democrats because they believe the Democratic Party is best at protecting the rights of the individual. Other people are Democrats because they are part of the Socialist / Communist continuum and believe that government is a weapon to bludgeon people into obedience. Some people are Republicans because they believe the Republican Party is best at protecting the rights of the individual. Other people are Republicans because they have Fascist tendencies and believe that government is a weapon to bludgeon people into obedience. Hiding out in the woods and refusing to participate is not a logical option.
23. You are the “they.” You are the adult. You are the government. You are the Church. You are the public school system. You decide what movies will be watched (if not made). You decide what will be on the television screen in your home. Your life is your own – don’t become one of the sheep.
24. Giving back to your community begins now. Serve humanity -- join the volunteer fire department, teach Sunday school, clean up the city park one hour a week, or assist at the nursing home.
25. Don’t bore people with sad stories about your horrible childhood. No one ever lived a Leave It To Beaver or Cosby existence. And besides, you might have been the problem. Get over it.
26. The shouting, abusive, 1-900-Send-Money TV preacher with the bouffant hairdo strutting about on the low-prole stage set while beating on a Bible and yelling is not going to come to your house in the middle of the night when your child is sick, you don’t have a job, and you don’t know where to turn. Your pastor – Chaucer’s Parsoun -- may not be cool and may not sport a Rolex watch, but he’s here for you. Support your local congregation.
27. If you insist on taking your shirt off in public, shave your armpit hair. Or braid it. Or something.
28. Don’t wear a shirt that says “(bleep) Civilization” to a job interview.
29. When someone asks for a love offering, offer him your love and watch his reaction. He doesn’t want a love offering; he wants money. Sloppy language is used to manipulate people. Call things by their proper names, and hang on to your wallet.
30. Stop eating out of bags and boxes, and learn how to use a knife and fork. From now on the menu should be in words, not in pictures.
31. What is the truth? Is it something you want to believe? Something repeated over and over until you come to believe it in spite of your own experience?
32. A great secret to success in a job or in life is simply to show up.
33. Most people do not look good in baseball caps.
34. You will always be your parents’ child. You may become a doctor, lawyer, banker, or, God help you, president, but your mother will still ask you if you’ve had enough to eat and remind you to take your jacket in case the night turns cold. And parents are a constant surprise -- they always have new knowledge you need to acquire.
35. Strunk & White’s Elements of Style is all the English grammar and usage book you’ll ever need. If more people understood that and had a library card, every English teacher in America would be an ex-English teacher standing in line at the Wal-Mart employment office. Keep it a secret, okay?
36. According to some vaguely named family institute or some such, raising a child to the age of eighteen costs the family $153,000 and a few odd cents. The taxpayers of this state spend about $5,000 per year on each student. Thus, a great many people have pooled their resources and spent about $213,000 on you since you were born. They did not do this in order for you to sit around complaining about how unfair life is. Do something.
37. There was never a powerful secret society variously known as The Preps, The Rich Kids, or The Popular Kids, just as there are no unmarked U.N. helicopters. But if you ask me, those guys who play chess need watching; I hear that the pawns are reporting all your movements to The 666 Beast computer in Belgium via computer chips in your school i.d. card.
38. Thank you notes: write ’em. It shows class. You don’t have to pay big money for pre-printed notes; buy notepaper with pictures (hunting scenes for the guys; flowers for the girls) on the outside and nothing on the inside. You can write; you’re a high school graduate, remember?
39. Babies cry. That’s not a crime. However, in public places, other people do have a right to hear a sermon or attend a movie without prolonged yowling. You may feel awkward about getting up and quietly taking the infant outside; you shouldn’t. When you discreetly carry your crying baby away for a few minutes to attend to its needs, other people are grateful to you for respecting both them and your child, and are pleased that the child has such great parents.
40. Take a long, lingering look at your classmates during graduation. You’ll never see all of them ever again. In ten years many of you will be happy and honorable. Others at only 28 will be sad, tired, bitter old men and women with no hope. Given that you all went to the same cinder-block school with the same blinky fluorescent lights, suffered the same old boring teachers, drove along the same dusty roads, and grew up in the same fading little town, what will have made the difference?
Well, Class of 2010, it’s time to let go. Thanks for everything: for the pictures and paper balls and pizza and pep rallies and recitals and concerts and games, for your thoughts and essays, for your laughter and jokes, for usually paying attention (“Focus, class... focus...focus...focus...class…class…class…class…”), for really thinking about Macbeth and Becket and Beowulf, and those wonderful pilgrims (who, of course, are us) forever journeying to Canterbury, for doing those business letters and resumes’ over and over until YOU were proud of them, for wrestling with iambic pentameter, for all the love you gave everyone around you every day. Take all those good things with you in your adventures through life.
And whether we shall meet again I know not.
Therefore our everlasting farewell take:
For ever, and for ever, farewell...
--Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, IV.iii.115-117
-30-
Children insist on growing up and going away. Every year the old…um, venerable parents and faculty see their high school seniors off to the new world they must make for themselves. Oh, sure, there are always one or two graduates of whom one can sing “Thank God and Greyhound you’re gone,” but the loss of most of the young’uns is very painful, very real, very acute, and very forever. And while some old guy taught them not to ever split (cough) infinitives, which they immediately forgot, the block form for business letters, which they usually remember, and the possible symbolism of Grendel in Beowulf, there are always lots of other little things parents and teachers hope they have learned along the way.
Here then, Class of 2010 are some disconnected factoids your old English teacher meant to share with you earlier in the year, before the month of May very cleverly sneaked up on all of us:
1. In October you will return for homecoming. You will find pretty much the same teachers, school, and friends you left behind. It will all seem very familiar at first. But you won’t be on the team or in the band; it isn’t about you anymore, and that will be oddly disturbing. The same school that once nagged you for tardiness and absenteeism will now require you to wear a visitor’s badge. By October of next year most of the students in your old high school won’t know who you are -- or were. And they won't care. You'll just be old people.
2. Some day surprisingly soon you will hear shrieks of insolent laughter from your child’s room. You will find your child and her friends laughing at your yearbook pictures. You and your friends will be subject to scornful dismissal by a new, cooler-than-cool generation. You will feel very old.
3. Change the oil in your car more often than the manufacturer recommends.
4. Billy Graham attended a public school; Adolf Hitler attended a Christian school. Don’t obsess on labels.
5. You are not going to win the Texas lottery.
6. T-shirts are underwear.
7. For a whole year folks have been telling you how special you are; on the morning after graduation you’ll be just another unemployed American.
8. Don’t whine that you’re old enough to fight in Afghanistan but “they” won’t let you buy a beer. You’re not in Afghanistan.
9. Have you ever noticed that you never see “Matthew 6:5-6” on a sign or bumper sticker?
10. College is not high school.
11. Work is not high school. There is no such thing as an excused absence in adult life. The boss will not care about your special needs, sensitivities, artistic gifts, or traumatic childhood.
12. God made the world. We have the testimony of Genesis and of the Incarnation that all Creation is good. Never let anyone try to tell you that the world is evil.
13. Listening to radio commentators with whom you already agree is not participating in our democracy. Until he was in his thirties, Rush Limbaugh never even registered to vote in any place he ever lived. You can do better than that.
14. Why should someone else have to raise your child?
15. Tattoos do serve one useful purpose – they will help your relatives identify your body after you die of some weird disease that was on the needle. Yeah, sure, the process is sterile – a tattoo parlor looks like a hospital, right?
16. Your class ranking is little more than a seating chart for graduation, reflecting your performance in a sometimes artificial and often passive situation for the last four years. Your future is up to you.
17. Knowing how to repair things gives you power and autonomy. You will amaze yourself with what you can do with duct-tape, a set of screwdrivers, a set of wrenches, a hammer, and a pair of Vise-grip pliers.
18. Movies are made by committees of thousands of people. Sometimes they get it right. Books are usually written by one person. Sometimes he or she gets it wrong. But there are lots more good books than there are good movies.
19. Put the 'phone down. Grasp the steering wheel firmly with both hands. Stay alive.
20. Save the planet? Reform the establishment? Stop meanies from beating harp seals to death? Hey, get a job first.
21. Time to wear the big-boy pants.
22. Some people are Democrats because they believe the Democratic Party is best at protecting the rights of the individual. Other people are Democrats because they are part of the Socialist / Communist continuum and believe that government is a weapon to bludgeon people into obedience. Some people are Republicans because they believe the Republican Party is best at protecting the rights of the individual. Other people are Republicans because they have Fascist tendencies and believe that government is a weapon to bludgeon people into obedience. Hiding out in the woods and refusing to participate is not a logical option.
23. You are the “they.” You are the adult. You are the government. You are the Church. You are the public school system. You decide what movies will be watched (if not made). You decide what will be on the television screen in your home. Your life is your own – don’t become one of the sheep.
24. Giving back to your community begins now. Serve humanity -- join the volunteer fire department, teach Sunday school, clean up the city park one hour a week, or assist at the nursing home.
25. Don’t bore people with sad stories about your horrible childhood. No one ever lived a Leave It To Beaver or Cosby existence. And besides, you might have been the problem. Get over it.
26. The shouting, abusive, 1-900-Send-Money TV preacher with the bouffant hairdo strutting about on the low-prole stage set while beating on a Bible and yelling is not going to come to your house in the middle of the night when your child is sick, you don’t have a job, and you don’t know where to turn. Your pastor – Chaucer’s Parsoun -- may not be cool and may not sport a Rolex watch, but he’s here for you. Support your local congregation.
27. If you insist on taking your shirt off in public, shave your armpit hair. Or braid it. Or something.
28. Don’t wear a shirt that says “(bleep) Civilization” to a job interview.
29. When someone asks for a love offering, offer him your love and watch his reaction. He doesn’t want a love offering; he wants money. Sloppy language is used to manipulate people. Call things by their proper names, and hang on to your wallet.
30. Stop eating out of bags and boxes, and learn how to use a knife and fork. From now on the menu should be in words, not in pictures.
31. What is the truth? Is it something you want to believe? Something repeated over and over until you come to believe it in spite of your own experience?
32. A great secret to success in a job or in life is simply to show up.
33. Most people do not look good in baseball caps.
34. You will always be your parents’ child. You may become a doctor, lawyer, banker, or, God help you, president, but your mother will still ask you if you’ve had enough to eat and remind you to take your jacket in case the night turns cold. And parents are a constant surprise -- they always have new knowledge you need to acquire.
35. Strunk & White’s Elements of Style is all the English grammar and usage book you’ll ever need. If more people understood that and had a library card, every English teacher in America would be an ex-English teacher standing in line at the Wal-Mart employment office. Keep it a secret, okay?
36. According to some vaguely named family institute or some such, raising a child to the age of eighteen costs the family $153,000 and a few odd cents. The taxpayers of this state spend about $5,000 per year on each student. Thus, a great many people have pooled their resources and spent about $213,000 on you since you were born. They did not do this in order for you to sit around complaining about how unfair life is. Do something.
37. There was never a powerful secret society variously known as The Preps, The Rich Kids, or The Popular Kids, just as there are no unmarked U.N. helicopters. But if you ask me, those guys who play chess need watching; I hear that the pawns are reporting all your movements to The 666 Beast computer in Belgium via computer chips in your school i.d. card.
38. Thank you notes: write ’em. It shows class. You don’t have to pay big money for pre-printed notes; buy notepaper with pictures (hunting scenes for the guys; flowers for the girls) on the outside and nothing on the inside. You can write; you’re a high school graduate, remember?
39. Babies cry. That’s not a crime. However, in public places, other people do have a right to hear a sermon or attend a movie without prolonged yowling. You may feel awkward about getting up and quietly taking the infant outside; you shouldn’t. When you discreetly carry your crying baby away for a few minutes to attend to its needs, other people are grateful to you for respecting both them and your child, and are pleased that the child has such great parents.
40. Take a long, lingering look at your classmates during graduation. You’ll never see all of them ever again. In ten years many of you will be happy and honorable. Others at only 28 will be sad, tired, bitter old men and women with no hope. Given that you all went to the same cinder-block school with the same blinky fluorescent lights, suffered the same old boring teachers, drove along the same dusty roads, and grew up in the same fading little town, what will have made the difference?
Well, Class of 2010, it’s time to let go. Thanks for everything: for the pictures and paper balls and pizza and pep rallies and recitals and concerts and games, for your thoughts and essays, for your laughter and jokes, for usually paying attention (“Focus, class... focus...focus...focus...class…class…class…class…”), for really thinking about Macbeth and Becket and Beowulf, and those wonderful pilgrims (who, of course, are us) forever journeying to Canterbury, for doing those business letters and resumes’ over and over until YOU were proud of them, for wrestling with iambic pentameter, for all the love you gave everyone around you every day. Take all those good things with you in your adventures through life.
And whether we shall meet again I know not.
Therefore our everlasting farewell take:
For ever, and for ever, farewell...
--Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, IV.iii.115-117
-30-
Friday, May 7, 2010
Sidonian Dido
Mack Hall
(Rough draft scribbled in class long ago)
Sidonian Dido
Sidonian Dido, Africa’s Queen –
Dreamer on the Mediterranean shore,
Why is it that your truth has not been seen?
In singing ancient songs there is far more
Than tall tales treacherous Trojans tend to tell,
Crude calumnies by Teucerian bores
Your faithful friends followed when your star fell
In your Phoenician homeland far away;
In Africa you built anew, built well
Your city between the desert and bay,
Carthage, homeland of courtesy and grace,
Where even Juno deigned to dwell, some say
Sidonian Dido, your ancient race
Brought to the desert the lute and the lyre,
Made moonlit music in that dream-scaped place
Sidonian Dido, Africa’s Queen!
The bitter black smoke of your funeral pyre
Cannot obscure the brilliance of your fire,
Cannot win honor for Dardanian liars
Sidonian Dido, a dreamer’s queen –
Sing to us who love you on African nights
When the deep desert dreams in limpid light,
When eyes and hearts and moon are full and bright
(Rough draft scribbled in class long ago)
Sidonian Dido
Sidonian Dido, Africa’s Queen –
Dreamer on the Mediterranean shore,
Why is it that your truth has not been seen?
In singing ancient songs there is far more
Than tall tales treacherous Trojans tend to tell,
Crude calumnies by Teucerian bores
Your faithful friends followed when your star fell
In your Phoenician homeland far away;
In Africa you built anew, built well
Your city between the desert and bay,
Carthage, homeland of courtesy and grace,
Where even Juno deigned to dwell, some say
Sidonian Dido, your ancient race
Brought to the desert the lute and the lyre,
Made moonlit music in that dream-scaped place
Sidonian Dido, Africa’s Queen!
The bitter black smoke of your funeral pyre
Cannot obscure the brilliance of your fire,
Cannot win honor for Dardanian liars
Sidonian Dido, a dreamer’s queen –
Sing to us who love you on African nights
When the deep desert dreams in limpid light,
When eyes and hearts and moon are full and bright
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