Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
The Government in Your Underwear
Suppose that you were in World War II. Or perhaps in Korea, Lebanon, Viet-Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan, or some bleak air base along the Arctic circle, or hazarding yourself in a patrol plane or aboard a destroyer between here and Cuba during one of Kruschev and Castro’s giddier moments. Or suppose that you are an ordinary working American – and you surely are – who goes off to work most days. You pay your taxes, rake your leaves, and try to save enough to take the rug-rats to Disney World before they grow up. Your encounters with the awful majesty of the law are limited to a speeding ticket from Al Caldwell’s friend Officer Fatback.
Why, then, should you, before boarding an aircraft to take your kids on that long-promised adventure to Disney World, be forced to take off your shoes, empty your pockets, be zapped with nudity rays by blinking, hooting, beeping machines designed by Captain Nemo, raise your hands in surrender, and suffer the gropings of the Roderick Spodes of the Transportation Security Administration?
In sum, why is the ordinary American presumed by his own government to be the enemy?
Security on airplanes, trains, buses, and ships is not trivial matter in a time of war, and just now we cannot expect to board a vessel as blithely as folks did as recently as the 1970s. Even so, why are the OGPU assigned to make our transit secure so focused on humiliating Americans?
Not so long ago airport security apologetically looked through your carry-on bag and wished you a safe journey. Because of The Religion of Peace and their exploding panties security has become more intense, and rightly so, but why have TSA personnel become so hostile to the traveling public? Is freedom of movement a matter of suspicion?
Our democratically-elected government has, for our safety, forbidden us to travel with nail clippers, shampoo bottles, or one of those itty-bitty Swiss Army knives, and requires us to eat our airline meals – provided you can get one – with flimsy, brittle flatware. Our democratically-elected government has dictated that Americans cannot be trusted with nail clippers, shampoo, pocketknives, or even a usable fork and (eek!) knife.
We Americans who could once travel freely within the borders of our own country are now subjected to strange radiation from strange machines and fondling from strange people. And these strange people yell a great deal, slam our possessions around, and don’t wash between gropings.
Excuse me for asking, dear elected government, but shouldn’t the TSA be going after evil people instead of functional dinner forks and our grandmothers?
TSA and this family newspaper leave you with some random thoughts for this new age of luxury air travel:
Briefs? Or boxers?
When ink cartridges are outlawed, only outlaws will have ink cartridges.
When panties are outlawed, only outlaws will have panties.
America – love it or get nekkid on TSA tellyvision in order to leave it.
Fourth Amendment? What’s that?
Work harder – thousands of TSA functionaries depend on you to pay them to humiliate you and your children.
Show me your papers and your body parts, comrade.
Abandon dignity all ye who enter here.
Be nice to the TSA guy touchy-feely-ing your children; he’s going to choose your cell.
Keep your shirt on, pal – until Security Officer Igor lovingly tells you to take it off.
Don’t get your panties in a twist; the TSA will do that for you.
And if you’re boarding Aer Lingus – it’s a thong way to Tipperary.
-30-
Sunday, November 14, 2010
The Government in Your Underwear
Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
The Government in Your Underwear
Suppose that you were in World War II. Or perhaps in Korea, Lebanon, Viet-Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan, or some bleak air base along the Arctic circle, or hazarding yourself in a patrol plane or aboard a destroyer between here and Cuba during one of Kruschev and Castro’s giddier moments. Or suppose that you are an ordinary working American – and you surely are – who goes off to work most days. You pay your taxes, rake your leaves, and try to save enough to take the rug-rats to Disney World before they grow up. Your encounters with the awful majesty of the law are limited to a speeding ticket from Al Caldwell’s friend Officer Fatback.
Why, then, should you, before boarding an aircraft to take your kids on that long-promised adventure to Disney World, be forced to take off your shoes, empty your pockets, be zapped with nudity rays by blinking, hooting, beeping machines designed by Captain Nemo, raise your hands in surrender, and suffer the gropings of the Roderick Spodes of the Transportation Security Administration?
In sum, why is the ordinary American presumed by his own government to be the enemy?
Security on airplanes, trains, buses, and ships is not trivial matter in a time of war, and just now we cannot expect to board a vessel as blithely as folks did as recently as the 1970s. Even so, why are the OGPU assigned to make our transit secure so focused on humiliating Americans?
Not so long ago airport security apologetically looked through your carry-on bag and wished you a safe journey. Because of The Religion of Peace and their exploding panties security has become more intense, and rightly so, but why have TSA personnel become so hostile to the traveling public? Is freedom of movement a matter of suspicion?
Our democratically-elected government has, for our safety, forbidden us to travel with nail clippers, shampoo bottles, or one of those itty-bitty Swiss Army knives, and requires us to eat our airline meals – provided you can get one – with flimsy, brittle flatware. Our democratically-elected government has dictated that Americans cannot be trusted with nail clippers, shampoo, pocketknives, or even a usable fork and (eek!) knife.
We Americans who could once travel freely within the borders of our own country are now subjected to strange radiation from strange machines and fondling from strange people. And these strange people yell a great deal, slam our possessions around, and don’t wash between gropings.
Excuse me for asking, dear elected government, but shouldn’t the TSA be going after evil people instead of functional dinner forks and our grandmothers?
TSA and this family newspaper leave you with some random thoughts for this new age of luxury air travel:
Briefs? Or boxers?
When ink cartridges are outlawed, only outlaws will have ink cartridges.
When panties are outlawed, only outlaws will have panties.
America – love it or get nekkid on TSA tellyvision in order to leave it.
Fourth Amendment? What’s that?
Work harder – thousands of TSA functionaries depend on you to pay them to humiliate you and your children.
Show me your papers and your body parts, comrade.
Abandon dignity all ye who enter here.
Be nice to the TSA guy touchy-feely-ing your children; he’s going to choose your cell.
Keep your shirt on, pal – until Security Officer Igor lovingly tells you to take it off.
Don’t get your panties in a twist; the TSA will do that for you.
And if you’re boarding Aer Lingus – it’s a thong way to Tipperary.
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
The Government in Your Underwear
Suppose that you were in World War II. Or perhaps in Korea, Lebanon, Viet-Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan, or some bleak air base along the Arctic circle, or hazarding yourself in a patrol plane or aboard a destroyer between here and Cuba during one of Kruschev and Castro’s giddier moments. Or suppose that you are an ordinary working American – and you surely are – who goes off to work most days. You pay your taxes, rake your leaves, and try to save enough to take the rug-rats to Disney World before they grow up. Your encounters with the awful majesty of the law are limited to a speeding ticket from Al Caldwell’s friend Officer Fatback.
Why, then, should you, before boarding an aircraft to take your kids on that long-promised adventure to Disney World, be forced to take off your shoes, empty your pockets, be zapped with nudity rays by blinking, hooting, beeping machines designed by Captain Nemo, raise your hands in surrender, and suffer the gropings of the Roderick Spodes of the Transportation Security Administration?
In sum, why is the ordinary American presumed by his own government to be the enemy?
Security on airplanes, trains, buses, and ships is not trivial matter in a time of war, and just now we cannot expect to board a vessel as blithely as folks did as recently as the 1970s. Even so, why are the OGPU assigned to make our transit secure so focused on humiliating Americans?
Not so long ago airport security apologetically looked through your carry-on bag and wished you a safe journey. Because of The Religion of Peace and their exploding panties security has become more intense, and rightly so, but why have TSA personnel become so hostile to the traveling public? Is freedom of movement a matter of suspicion?
Our democratically-elected government has, for our safety, forbidden us to travel with nail clippers, shampoo bottles, or one of those itty-bitty Swiss Army knives, and requires us to eat our airline meals – provided you can get one – with flimsy, brittle flatware. Our democratically-elected government has dictated that Americans cannot be trusted with nail clippers, shampoo, pocketknives, or even a usable fork and (eek!) knife.
We Americans who could once travel freely within the borders of our own country are now subjected to strange radiation from strange machines and fondling from strange people. And these strange people yell a great deal, slam our possessions around, and don’t wash between gropings.
Excuse me for asking, dear elected government, but shouldn’t the TSA be going after evil people instead of functional dinner forks and our grandmothers?
TSA and this family newspaper leave you with some random thoughts for this new age of luxury air travel:
Briefs? Or boxers?
When ink cartridges are outlawed, only outlaws will have ink cartridges.
When panties are outlawed, only outlaws will have panties.
America – love it or get nekkid on TSA tellyvision in order to leave it.
Fourth Amendment? What’s that?
Work harder – thousands of TSA functionaries depend on you to pay them to humiliate you and your children.
Show me your papers and your body parts, comrade.
Abandon dignity all ye who enter here.
Be nice to the TSA guy touchy-feely-ing your children; he’s going to choose your cell.
Keep your shirt on, pal – until Security Officer Igor lovingly tells you to take it off.
Don’t get your panties in a twist; the TSA will do that for you.
And if you’re boarding Aer Lingus – it’s a thong way to Tipperary.
-30-
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Cleopatra in Rome
Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Cleopatra in Rome
In 46 B.C. Cleopatra and her entourage of sycophants and slaves journeyed to Rome to make obeisance to the new dominant world power and to claim a husband. Cleo had given birth to Julius’ son, but Julius went back to Rome to arrange things so he could be acclaimed king. He had a wife in Rome, Calpurnia, and Cal probably wasn’t really happy about sharing her husband with a Macedonian-Egyptian love-goddess, even for state reasons. Women are like that.
Cleopatra co-ruled with her little brother, who was also her husband. The Ptolemys were like that. She later had him murdered. The Ptolemys were like that. Indeed, Cleopatra had any number of her family murdered. Yes, the Ptolemys were like that. Ptolemy family reunions must have resembled Bagdad on one of its more festive evenings.
Meanwhile, back in the Senate, Cassius, Brutus, and other republicans did the Gensu thing to Julius, and so Cleo fled home to Egypt, where later she lived in domestic bliss for a while with Julius’ old pal Marc.
20th Century Fox’s 1963 film Cleopatra featured as its centerpiece Cleo’s entry into Rome with gazillions of slaves pulling the royal float in the form of a sphinx. Aboard were negligee-sort-of-clad girls adoring the putative incarnation of Isis, and servants and fan-wavers and security guards and lots of other of her folks putting on the Anubis for the Roman crowd. Cleo awed the Romans (but not Julius’s wife) with exotic displays, exotic dancers, and exotic animals, and her exotic self. This film scene alone was so expensive that it nearly put Fox into bankruptcy. Fox was financed by investors, however; the real thing over 2,000 years ago was financed by starving Egyptians suffering economic collapse and civil unrest back along the Nile.
Happily, in our more democratic time our elected leaders modestly regard themselves as mere mortals, equals among their fellow citizens. Our elected American leaders would never give offense to another nation by bringing along such a huge field-force that the trip would appear to be a colonial expedition among barbaric peoples in the shadows of the Hindu Kush rather than a state visit to a great and prosperous nation. Our leaders would never take the taxes of hard-working fellow-citizens in order to provide themselves and their retinues grotesquely expensive flying barges. Our leaders would never surround themselves with a Praetorian Guard for fear of their own fellow-citizens. Our of-the-people leaders, certainly our Congress, would never even dream of, say, appropriating military aircraft for the privileged use of themselves and their families.
No, no American would ever play the Romanov, the Ptolemy, or the Hohenzollern (say that five times really quickly).
As Alexander Hamilton said during a debate, “Here, sir, the people govern.” And, by cracky, he was right.
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
Cleopatra in Rome
In 46 B.C. Cleopatra and her entourage of sycophants and slaves journeyed to Rome to make obeisance to the new dominant world power and to claim a husband. Cleo had given birth to Julius’ son, but Julius went back to Rome to arrange things so he could be acclaimed king. He had a wife in Rome, Calpurnia, and Cal probably wasn’t really happy about sharing her husband with a Macedonian-Egyptian love-goddess, even for state reasons. Women are like that.
Cleopatra co-ruled with her little brother, who was also her husband. The Ptolemys were like that. She later had him murdered. The Ptolemys were like that. Indeed, Cleopatra had any number of her family murdered. Yes, the Ptolemys were like that. Ptolemy family reunions must have resembled Bagdad on one of its more festive evenings.
Meanwhile, back in the Senate, Cassius, Brutus, and other republicans did the Gensu thing to Julius, and so Cleo fled home to Egypt, where later she lived in domestic bliss for a while with Julius’ old pal Marc.
20th Century Fox’s 1963 film Cleopatra featured as its centerpiece Cleo’s entry into Rome with gazillions of slaves pulling the royal float in the form of a sphinx. Aboard were negligee-sort-of-clad girls adoring the putative incarnation of Isis, and servants and fan-wavers and security guards and lots of other of her folks putting on the Anubis for the Roman crowd. Cleo awed the Romans (but not Julius’s wife) with exotic displays, exotic dancers, and exotic animals, and her exotic self. This film scene alone was so expensive that it nearly put Fox into bankruptcy. Fox was financed by investors, however; the real thing over 2,000 years ago was financed by starving Egyptians suffering economic collapse and civil unrest back along the Nile.
Happily, in our more democratic time our elected leaders modestly regard themselves as mere mortals, equals among their fellow citizens. Our elected American leaders would never give offense to another nation by bringing along such a huge field-force that the trip would appear to be a colonial expedition among barbaric peoples in the shadows of the Hindu Kush rather than a state visit to a great and prosperous nation. Our leaders would never take the taxes of hard-working fellow-citizens in order to provide themselves and their retinues grotesquely expensive flying barges. Our leaders would never surround themselves with a Praetorian Guard for fear of their own fellow-citizens. Our of-the-people leaders, certainly our Congress, would never even dream of, say, appropriating military aircraft for the privileged use of themselves and their families.
No, no American would ever play the Romanov, the Ptolemy, or the Hohenzollern (say that five times really quickly).
As Alexander Hamilton said during a debate, “Here, sir, the people govern.” And, by cracky, he was right.
-30-
Education for the 21st Century
Bubbles. #2 pencils. Bubbles. #2 pencils. If the greatest challenge to American youth is a blank bubble that needs shading with a #2 pencil, we've made them ready.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
What's in Your Calendar?
Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
What’s in Your Calendar?
Ipops and Blueberries are not a part of my life; small electronic gadgets look at me, sigh mournfully, and die lingeringly like small, made-in-China Isoldes. Larger electronics are more French; they will neither work nor go away. They take up space on my desk and make rude noises, but otherwise in true Gallic fashion often refuse to work.
Thus, I carry a pocket calendar provided by the nice folks at Balfour, and note appointments in it employing a pen. As with clocks with dials, this concept is pretty much unknown to anyone who doesn’t remember reading the casualty lists from Gettysburg.
Calendars reflect the dominant culture. For the ancient pagans and for farmers in all times a calendar is essential in anticipating the agricultural cycle. Those of us who grew up on farms (where our favorite reading was The Farmer-Stockman and Charles Dickens’ latest novel) remember how our parents planned planting, harvesting, milking, hunting, and gathering in almanacs and on feed-and-seed calendars.
The Church’s liturgical calendar also follows the natural cycles of the seasons, although unlike the pagan Romans the Church recognizes the beginning of the year with Advent, four weeks before Christmas.
Most calendars in use now are products of committees in climate-controlled offices in cities, far from forests and plowed fields, and with almost no references to Christianity or to nature.
The 31st day of October has now been established as something called Halloween, a corruption of the concept of the evening before the religious observance of All Saints. Some religious traditions for a long time recognized the day as Reformation Day, but now both Catholics and Protestants have pretty much ditched all references to the day in any religious context. Well, it’s nice that we can all get along in vapidity.
November 11th is Veterans’ Day in this country. The calendar reminds us that in Canada, marked with a C, this is Remembrance Day, ignoring the rest of the British Commonwealth. The day has also for some 1700 years been honored as St. Martin’s Day, and so Veterans’ Day fits nicely. St. Martin of Tours was a Roman soldier who became a Christian and was martyred for the Faith. He is depicted as giving his warm cloak to a freezing beggar, and in this anticipated the generations of American and Canadian soldiers who have shared their food and clothing with the victims of tyrannies.
Advent, the four weeks of quiet anticipation of the Nativity, has been replaced with a psychic dysfunction miscalled the Christmas season, but the true Christmas seasons lasts from Christmas Day until the Feast of the Epiphany, the liturgical seasons again reflecting the natural cycle. Such does not appear in fashionable calendars which sport artificial attempts to replace the Faith and the seasons with artificial inventions, foreign intrusions, and outright lies, such as the fake holiday invented in 1966 by an F.B.I. informant.
The calendar tells us that the 30th of August is the end of Ramadan, ignoring the fact that it is the Christian feast day of St. Rose of Lima. The calendar marks the first of May as Labor Day in some countries, stolen from the feast day of St. Joseph, patron saint of workers. The modern concepts of Labor Day ignore any mention of God or St. Joseph.
The pillaging of the Christian calendar is certainly less violent than the actions of the Soviets and, oh, the religion of peace in dynamiting churches and shooting priests and ministers, but the intent, while more subtle, is no less sincere: the complete secularization and air-conditioning of the rhythm of our daily lives.
Even so, the seasons come and go as they always have, and cannot be changed by committees or by fashions or by disposable little plastic gadgets that light up ad make squeaky noises.
Now then, let us consider Linus and The Great Pumpkin.
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
What’s in Your Calendar?
Ipops and Blueberries are not a part of my life; small electronic gadgets look at me, sigh mournfully, and die lingeringly like small, made-in-China Isoldes. Larger electronics are more French; they will neither work nor go away. They take up space on my desk and make rude noises, but otherwise in true Gallic fashion often refuse to work.
Thus, I carry a pocket calendar provided by the nice folks at Balfour, and note appointments in it employing a pen. As with clocks with dials, this concept is pretty much unknown to anyone who doesn’t remember reading the casualty lists from Gettysburg.
Calendars reflect the dominant culture. For the ancient pagans and for farmers in all times a calendar is essential in anticipating the agricultural cycle. Those of us who grew up on farms (where our favorite reading was The Farmer-Stockman and Charles Dickens’ latest novel) remember how our parents planned planting, harvesting, milking, hunting, and gathering in almanacs and on feed-and-seed calendars.
The Church’s liturgical calendar also follows the natural cycles of the seasons, although unlike the pagan Romans the Church recognizes the beginning of the year with Advent, four weeks before Christmas.
Most calendars in use now are products of committees in climate-controlled offices in cities, far from forests and plowed fields, and with almost no references to Christianity or to nature.
The 31st day of October has now been established as something called Halloween, a corruption of the concept of the evening before the religious observance of All Saints. Some religious traditions for a long time recognized the day as Reformation Day, but now both Catholics and Protestants have pretty much ditched all references to the day in any religious context. Well, it’s nice that we can all get along in vapidity.
November 11th is Veterans’ Day in this country. The calendar reminds us that in Canada, marked with a C, this is Remembrance Day, ignoring the rest of the British Commonwealth. The day has also for some 1700 years been honored as St. Martin’s Day, and so Veterans’ Day fits nicely. St. Martin of Tours was a Roman soldier who became a Christian and was martyred for the Faith. He is depicted as giving his warm cloak to a freezing beggar, and in this anticipated the generations of American and Canadian soldiers who have shared their food and clothing with the victims of tyrannies.
Advent, the four weeks of quiet anticipation of the Nativity, has been replaced with a psychic dysfunction miscalled the Christmas season, but the true Christmas seasons lasts from Christmas Day until the Feast of the Epiphany, the liturgical seasons again reflecting the natural cycle. Such does not appear in fashionable calendars which sport artificial attempts to replace the Faith and the seasons with artificial inventions, foreign intrusions, and outright lies, such as the fake holiday invented in 1966 by an F.B.I. informant.
The calendar tells us that the 30th of August is the end of Ramadan, ignoring the fact that it is the Christian feast day of St. Rose of Lima. The calendar marks the first of May as Labor Day in some countries, stolen from the feast day of St. Joseph, patron saint of workers. The modern concepts of Labor Day ignore any mention of God or St. Joseph.
The pillaging of the Christian calendar is certainly less violent than the actions of the Soviets and, oh, the religion of peace in dynamiting churches and shooting priests and ministers, but the intent, while more subtle, is no less sincere: the complete secularization and air-conditioning of the rhythm of our daily lives.
Even so, the seasons come and go as they always have, and cannot be changed by committees or by fashions or by disposable little plastic gadgets that light up ad make squeaky noises.
Now then, let us consider Linus and The Great Pumpkin.
-30-
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Coffee, Tea, or Justice?
Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Coffee, Tea, or Justice?
Even though my favorite waitress owns her little café’ I always tip her anyway – I know she’s going to take that bit of money and do some good for others with it.
Waitresses in the corporate / franchise / world along the interstate don’t own their own cafes, though, and they’re not paid minimum wage.
According to the Fair Labor Standards Act (http://www.dol.gov/wb/faq26.htm), employees in occupations where tips are customary and who receive more than $30 (BIG money) a month in tips can legally be paid as little as $2.13 an hour.
How’s that for fair labor standards, eh?
Recently I breakfasted at a joint which used to belong to a national franchise who then sold it to another national franchise with the proviso that the employees got to keep their jobs. And the new franchise did keep the help – after reducing their wages.
The first change in the place was obvious – the nice lady who used to greet customers cheerfully had been replaced with two young persons who ignored customers sullenly. The cheerful former head waitress / greeter, a long-time employee, was relegated to the back and reduced in pay and status in gratitude for her years of loyal service.
Employers reasonably expect loyalty from employees, but shouldn’t that work both ways?
The fat boys on midday radio would no doubt airily suggest that the humiliated waitresses should find new jobs. How easy it is to say! But we can’t all be N.C.I.S. guys or Dr. House. Neither the President nor a long-haul trucker makes his own coffee, and the travelling public are no longer permitted to camp out, build a campfire, and discharge firearms at critters to cook up for supper. All of us dine out occasionally, and that means we don’t go to the café kitchen and help ourselves. Waiters and waitresses are a big part of our economy and our lives, and we show our respect for them by not paying them.
Some folks claim that the minimum wage is a bad idea. I dunno. I gather that the people who think the minimum wage should be abolished aren’t themselves on minimum wage. I do know that there are employers who would squeeze employees, not that metaphorical penny. But I really don’t know whether or not the minimum wage is a good idea.
But since this nation does in fact require a minimum wage under the law, why isn’t the law extended to all as mandated by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution? The fantasy that an employee’s tips will equal the minimum wage is mere speculation, and speculation is not justice.
A cute young waitress shorting out the pacemakers of well-to-do old men in a high-Euro restaurant may well draw a great deal in tips, but cute is not a career option; time terminates cute. To consider the tips-income of a very few waitresses in a very few expensive restaurants and clubs and then to suppose that such is the income of all waiters and waitresses is an inexcusable cruelty that even a 19th-century timber baron might find shabby.
How can it be that in the 21st century equal protection under the law is still denied to some American citizens?
The laborer is worth of his – or her – hire. The Alice or Flo or Vera or Belle or Jolene who brings you that hot, comforting cup of coffee in the middle of the night when you still have miles to go before you sleep (cf Robert Frost) is a real American who deserves a fair deal.
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
Coffee, Tea, or Justice?
Even though my favorite waitress owns her little café’ I always tip her anyway – I know she’s going to take that bit of money and do some good for others with it.
Waitresses in the corporate / franchise / world along the interstate don’t own their own cafes, though, and they’re not paid minimum wage.
According to the Fair Labor Standards Act (http://www.dol.gov/wb/faq26.htm), employees in occupations where tips are customary and who receive more than $30 (BIG money) a month in tips can legally be paid as little as $2.13 an hour.
How’s that for fair labor standards, eh?
Recently I breakfasted at a joint which used to belong to a national franchise who then sold it to another national franchise with the proviso that the employees got to keep their jobs. And the new franchise did keep the help – after reducing their wages.
The first change in the place was obvious – the nice lady who used to greet customers cheerfully had been replaced with two young persons who ignored customers sullenly. The cheerful former head waitress / greeter, a long-time employee, was relegated to the back and reduced in pay and status in gratitude for her years of loyal service.
Employers reasonably expect loyalty from employees, but shouldn’t that work both ways?
The fat boys on midday radio would no doubt airily suggest that the humiliated waitresses should find new jobs. How easy it is to say! But we can’t all be N.C.I.S. guys or Dr. House. Neither the President nor a long-haul trucker makes his own coffee, and the travelling public are no longer permitted to camp out, build a campfire, and discharge firearms at critters to cook up for supper. All of us dine out occasionally, and that means we don’t go to the café kitchen and help ourselves. Waiters and waitresses are a big part of our economy and our lives, and we show our respect for them by not paying them.
Some folks claim that the minimum wage is a bad idea. I dunno. I gather that the people who think the minimum wage should be abolished aren’t themselves on minimum wage. I do know that there are employers who would squeeze employees, not that metaphorical penny. But I really don’t know whether or not the minimum wage is a good idea.
But since this nation does in fact require a minimum wage under the law, why isn’t the law extended to all as mandated by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution? The fantasy that an employee’s tips will equal the minimum wage is mere speculation, and speculation is not justice.
A cute young waitress shorting out the pacemakers of well-to-do old men in a high-Euro restaurant may well draw a great deal in tips, but cute is not a career option; time terminates cute. To consider the tips-income of a very few waitresses in a very few expensive restaurants and clubs and then to suppose that such is the income of all waiters and waitresses is an inexcusable cruelty that even a 19th-century timber baron might find shabby.
How can it be that in the 21st century equal protection under the law is still denied to some American citizens?
The laborer is worth of his – or her – hire. The Alice or Flo or Vera or Belle or Jolene who brings you that hot, comforting cup of coffee in the middle of the night when you still have miles to go before you sleep (cf Robert Frost) is a real American who deserves a fair deal.
-30-
Sunday, October 17, 2010
The Prophet's New Car
Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
The Prophet’s New Car
A Florida pastor has demanded that a New Jersey car dealer give him a new car for not burning a copy of the Koran. The curious bit is that the pastor may have a legal claim.
Brad Benson, who owns a car franchise in Brunswick (New Jersey, not Germany), has been very successful in working for a living, providing employment for others, and paying lots and lots of taxes. His car ads are famous for their whimsy – once he offered a free car to Saddamn Hussein if he (Saddamn, not Mr. Benson) would surrender. As Saddamn took his last walk a few years later he surely thought that he should have taken that car deal instead.
More recently Mr. Benson offered a new car to the pyromanic pastor of an Adjective Church and / or Outreach and / or Fellowship if the pastor would refrain from his announced plan of publicly Zippo-ing a copy of the Koran.
The minister hosts a set of moldy whiskers that look as if they had been packed in General Burnside’s suitcase in 1865, stored in an attic, and pulled out only recently for a masquerade. The minister may perhaps be striving for a stern, intimidating Old Testament appearance but this works only if any Old Testament figure looked like a querulous old rescue rabbit in need of dentures. Even so, he (the pastor, not an Old Testament figure) managed to trouble the councils of our wise and powerful leaders.
The President appealed to Brother Whiskers on television not to flick his Bic, and a general telephoned the thundering profit – um, prophet – asking the hothead to refrain from the flame lest American soldiers be endangered, as if they were not already in danger anyway.
There is no mention of presidents or generals telephoning Mr. Benson or any of his many employees to thank them for working hard and paying taxes. But perhaps presidents or generals were busy that day calling you and thanking you for your honest work and your service to America instead of fanning the flaming ego of an unhappy man who missed his true vocation as a minor character in Tobacco Road.
In the event the matchless Brother Bonfire did not combust a copy of the Koran but apparently was not aware of Mr. Benson’s offer of a new set of wheels until weeks later. And now, retroactively, he demands that free car. After all, this is what Moses or Habakkuk would do. The posturing pastor now says he’s going to give the car to abused Moslem women, even though Moslem women are not permitted by their menfolk to drive.
Mr. Benson, whose gag went south (to Florida, actually), is going to give Frater Firebug a new car, a $15,000 import, and be rid of the nuisance (the arsonist, not the automobile).
Given this historic precedent, I pledge not to burn the Jack Chick Catholics-Are-Going-To-(Newark) toilet paper someone left on my desk if my demands are met:
1. I demand a personal telephone call from an admiral or general begging me not to burn the Jack Chick booklet.
2. I demand a new car in return for not burning this fine specimen of Jack Chick’s theology. Oh, yeah, sure, I’ll donate the car to a worthy cause. Sure. You bet.
Gentle reader, you could do the same. One of my books, A Liturgy for the Emperor, is for sale through Amazon.com and Lulu.com; the other, Christmas in the Summer Country, is available only through Lulu.com. After coaxing a few pals to ordain you a reverend or something you could buy my books and then demand that someone important reward you for not burning them.
Don’t ask me; I haven’t made enough on my books to buy more than a box or two of matches.
This clerical hostage-taking of a book may not be what Isaiah or St. Paul would have done, but Chaucer’s Pardoner and Summoner would be proud – and would want a cut of the take.
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
The Prophet’s New Car
A Florida pastor has demanded that a New Jersey car dealer give him a new car for not burning a copy of the Koran. The curious bit is that the pastor may have a legal claim.
Brad Benson, who owns a car franchise in Brunswick (New Jersey, not Germany), has been very successful in working for a living, providing employment for others, and paying lots and lots of taxes. His car ads are famous for their whimsy – once he offered a free car to Saddamn Hussein if he (Saddamn, not Mr. Benson) would surrender. As Saddamn took his last walk a few years later he surely thought that he should have taken that car deal instead.
More recently Mr. Benson offered a new car to the pyromanic pastor of an Adjective Church and / or Outreach and / or Fellowship if the pastor would refrain from his announced plan of publicly Zippo-ing a copy of the Koran.
The minister hosts a set of moldy whiskers that look as if they had been packed in General Burnside’s suitcase in 1865, stored in an attic, and pulled out only recently for a masquerade. The minister may perhaps be striving for a stern, intimidating Old Testament appearance but this works only if any Old Testament figure looked like a querulous old rescue rabbit in need of dentures. Even so, he (the pastor, not an Old Testament figure) managed to trouble the councils of our wise and powerful leaders.
The President appealed to Brother Whiskers on television not to flick his Bic, and a general telephoned the thundering profit – um, prophet – asking the hothead to refrain from the flame lest American soldiers be endangered, as if they were not already in danger anyway.
There is no mention of presidents or generals telephoning Mr. Benson or any of his many employees to thank them for working hard and paying taxes. But perhaps presidents or generals were busy that day calling you and thanking you for your honest work and your service to America instead of fanning the flaming ego of an unhappy man who missed his true vocation as a minor character in Tobacco Road.
In the event the matchless Brother Bonfire did not combust a copy of the Koran but apparently was not aware of Mr. Benson’s offer of a new set of wheels until weeks later. And now, retroactively, he demands that free car. After all, this is what Moses or Habakkuk would do. The posturing pastor now says he’s going to give the car to abused Moslem women, even though Moslem women are not permitted by their menfolk to drive.
Mr. Benson, whose gag went south (to Florida, actually), is going to give Frater Firebug a new car, a $15,000 import, and be rid of the nuisance (the arsonist, not the automobile).
Given this historic precedent, I pledge not to burn the Jack Chick Catholics-Are-Going-To-(Newark) toilet paper someone left on my desk if my demands are met:
1. I demand a personal telephone call from an admiral or general begging me not to burn the Jack Chick booklet.
2. I demand a new car in return for not burning this fine specimen of Jack Chick’s theology. Oh, yeah, sure, I’ll donate the car to a worthy cause. Sure. You bet.
Gentle reader, you could do the same. One of my books, A Liturgy for the Emperor, is for sale through Amazon.com and Lulu.com; the other, Christmas in the Summer Country, is available only through Lulu.com. After coaxing a few pals to ordain you a reverend or something you could buy my books and then demand that someone important reward you for not burning them.
Don’t ask me; I haven’t made enough on my books to buy more than a box or two of matches.
This clerical hostage-taking of a book may not be what Isaiah or St. Paul would have done, but Chaucer’s Pardoner and Summoner would be proud – and would want a cut of the take.
-30-
Sunday, October 10, 2010
The Red Menace
I'm especially proud of the loopy run-on sentence in the third-to-last paragraph. It's not "Who's on First" but, by golly, I'm proud of it.
Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
The Red Menace
In the early 1980s the red power blazer became a cliché for young professional women, succeeding the power pantsuit of the 1960s and the dark-blue, knee-length power suit of the 1970s. To encounter a klaven of power-women was to think that one had fallen in with a reunion of Hessian mercenaries exchanging jolly reminiscences of torching New England farms during the Revolution.
A difference is that Hessian mercenaries didn’t always execute their prisoners.
After a hiatus the red power blazer is back, but for Republican women only, and for the Republican men, red power ties. Democratic men wear blue power ties, and so now our political parties are nicely color-coordinated, stupiding-down an already pretty low process of party affiliation.
Back in th’ day (it’s never “back in th’ night,” is it) children were coached to cockatoo certain phrases: “Our people good Democrats” or “Our people good Republicans.” And the young obedientiaries grew up to vote as their parents had trained them in youth. Raising a right-thinking child was easy enough then, and is even easier now in this post-videocassette world: “Me vote Red” or “Me vote Blue.” In the past critical thinking about party labels was simply unfashionable; now it is hardly even possible. Red. Blue. Red. Blue. Red. Blue. That’s all we need to know, comrades.
Party colors are not new; indeed, they’re ancient. In Byzantium the two conflicting parties were the Blues and the Greens, predicated on racing colors. The Blues and the Greens took turns installing and then murdering emperors, usually in a public and grotesque fashion, but beyond that no one seems to know what either party actually stood for except for some remarkable riots that make Northern Ireland look like a Sunday school.
A generation ago an American reporter on the streets of Belfast was commanded “You’ll be takin’ that tie off, mister.” I forget if he was wearing a green tie or a red tie; up until that moment the reporter had thought it simply a nice tie, but he had forgotten the political code of colors in Belfast.
And now this potentially violent silliness of color codes infects the USA. The question is now not “Am I a spring? Or an autumn?” but rather “Am I a good party comrade?”
Some attribute the identification of red with Republicans and blue with Democrats to Tim Russert of happy memory, who in all innocence employed the colors for convenience on maps during the presidential election of 2000, and this accident became a habit. Like the bumper stickers of past elections the red and blue can’t be scraped away.
Thus, when you see men or women on the telescreen wearing red ties or red blazers you immediately tag then as Republicans, either to be obeyed without actually listening to anything they say or to be dismissed without actually listening to anything they say.
Similarly, otherwise identical mouthpieces in blue on the Sunday morning babblings are Democrats, similarly to be stereotyped.
Curiously, red is the Conservative color (or colour) in English politics and historically of Communists everywhere. For any American with some sense of history the association of red and Republicans-with-a-capital-R must always be an irony. This does not obtain with small-r republicans who in other countries are socialists and so tend to be red already. In sum, Capital-R Republicans in America are Tories who in other countries would be red but Capital-R Republicans used to hate red and surely preferred blue although they now wear red, while small-r republicans are socialists and red and surely wouldn’t wear blue, except that we don’t have small-r republicans (who are red) in this country because we have Democrats who are blue, not red, but we do have Capital-R Republicans who are red, not blue, while other countries don’t have Capital-R Republicans at all and so color is not an issue.
Is everyone clear on all that?
Now, then, where’s my red sweater for the next football game?
-30-
Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
The Red Menace
In the early 1980s the red power blazer became a cliché for young professional women, succeeding the power pantsuit of the 1960s and the dark-blue, knee-length power suit of the 1970s. To encounter a klaven of power-women was to think that one had fallen in with a reunion of Hessian mercenaries exchanging jolly reminiscences of torching New England farms during the Revolution.
A difference is that Hessian mercenaries didn’t always execute their prisoners.
After a hiatus the red power blazer is back, but for Republican women only, and for the Republican men, red power ties. Democratic men wear blue power ties, and so now our political parties are nicely color-coordinated, stupiding-down an already pretty low process of party affiliation.
Back in th’ day (it’s never “back in th’ night,” is it) children were coached to cockatoo certain phrases: “Our people good Democrats” or “Our people good Republicans.” And the young obedientiaries grew up to vote as their parents had trained them in youth. Raising a right-thinking child was easy enough then, and is even easier now in this post-videocassette world: “Me vote Red” or “Me vote Blue.” In the past critical thinking about party labels was simply unfashionable; now it is hardly even possible. Red. Blue. Red. Blue. Red. Blue. That’s all we need to know, comrades.
Party colors are not new; indeed, they’re ancient. In Byzantium the two conflicting parties were the Blues and the Greens, predicated on racing colors. The Blues and the Greens took turns installing and then murdering emperors, usually in a public and grotesque fashion, but beyond that no one seems to know what either party actually stood for except for some remarkable riots that make Northern Ireland look like a Sunday school.
A generation ago an American reporter on the streets of Belfast was commanded “You’ll be takin’ that tie off, mister.” I forget if he was wearing a green tie or a red tie; up until that moment the reporter had thought it simply a nice tie, but he had forgotten the political code of colors in Belfast.
And now this potentially violent silliness of color codes infects the USA. The question is now not “Am I a spring? Or an autumn?” but rather “Am I a good party comrade?”
Some attribute the identification of red with Republicans and blue with Democrats to Tim Russert of happy memory, who in all innocence employed the colors for convenience on maps during the presidential election of 2000, and this accident became a habit. Like the bumper stickers of past elections the red and blue can’t be scraped away.
Thus, when you see men or women on the telescreen wearing red ties or red blazers you immediately tag then as Republicans, either to be obeyed without actually listening to anything they say or to be dismissed without actually listening to anything they say.
Similarly, otherwise identical mouthpieces in blue on the Sunday morning babblings are Democrats, similarly to be stereotyped.
Curiously, red is the Conservative color (or colour) in English politics and historically of Communists everywhere. For any American with some sense of history the association of red and Republicans-with-a-capital-R must always be an irony. This does not obtain with small-r republicans who in other countries are socialists and so tend to be red already. In sum, Capital-R Republicans in America are Tories who in other countries would be red but Capital-R Republicans used to hate red and surely preferred blue although they now wear red, while small-r republicans are socialists and red and surely wouldn’t wear blue, except that we don’t have small-r republicans (who are red) in this country because we have Democrats who are blue, not red, but we do have Capital-R Republicans who are red, not blue, while other countries don’t have Capital-R Republicans at all and so color is not an issue.
Is everyone clear on all that?
Now, then, where’s my red sweater for the next football game?
-30-
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Love and the Ascending Aorta
Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Love and the Ascending Aorta
The other day I saw some pink ladies advertising along a street. They were waving signs, one of which read something to the effect of “If You (heart) (puerile slang for a certain body part), Donate!”
What times we live in, when grown women employ in public the vocabulary of the junior-high locker room.
Let us, for the sake of the gentle readership of this excellent newspaper, say that the endangered body part was the ascending aorta. It wasn’t, of course, and naughty little boys don’t snicker and giggle at slang expressions about the ascending aorta. One does not hear “Wow, think what her ascending aorta must be like – man, I can almost palpate the palpitations of her atrial fibrillation now!”
“Yeah, dude, her ascending aorta, like, y’know, gets me so into ventrical tachycardia!”
However, for the sake of discussion let the ascending aorta serve as our Maltese Chickadee.
No one is as supportive of ascending aortas as I. Sometimes friends and even strangers approach me to ask what I think of ascending aortas, and I always express my enthusiastic approbation. Ascending aortas are nifty, and I think everyone ought to have one or two of them. I’m even thinking of sporting a little lapel pin, a tiny little ascending aorta with a happy face.
However, no appeals for money have ever been the sequelae to conversations I’ve had with folks – and I know you have too – about merry little ascending aortas: “You like healthy ascending aortas, Mr. H? Why, so do I. Give me some money and I’ll see to it that there are healthier ascending aortas in the world.”
In sum and in short and all in all and at the end of the day the bottom line is that when the skinny lady sings I see no reason to stop my car in a busy street in order to give money to complete strangers, no matter how pink they are, simply because they maintain that this act will somehow make the world a better place for ascending aortas.
Who says my dollar will provide a meal or something for an ascending aorta? Who? If someone gives money, someone is receiving money. And who is that receiver? Is there some starving, bespectacled scientist down to his last test-tube and his last packet of Ramen noodles in some FEMA trailer laboratory, a starving, bespectacled scientist just on the cuspidor or bicuspid or something of discovering a cure for honey-glazed ascending aortas, a starving, bespectacled scientist to whom the beggars will happily fly at the end of the day with their salvific buckets of healing money for the rectification of faulty ascending aortas?
Another question is this: when did we become a nation of beggars?
The ascending aorta ladies were begging perhaps up the road from the safe-graduation beggars (because, as we all know, putting young people into the street is so safe for them, and having them beg teaches them such valuable life-lessons) and maybe down the road from the send-my-something-team-to-the-state-championship-something-playoffs-in-some-other-city beggars.
Once upon a time, in a quaint ye olde USA when the world trembled at the might of our washers and dryers, Boy Scouts washed one’s windshield for quarters safely off the road, cheerleaders washed the rest of the car safely in a church parking lot, the Sunday school / CCD class safely peddled homemade cakes after church / Mass, and the marching band sold muffins safely in front of the grocery store. The Boy Scouts might have scratched the car’s windshield, the cheerleaders might have scratched the car’s paint, the band’s muffins might have scratched the lining of one’s stomach, and the Sunday school / CCD cakes – well, actually, those were quite good -- but the point is that the young’uns’ parents and sponsors required their charges to practice work, not beggary.
More importantly, parents taught their children to stay away from the street lest they get run over or abducted. You might say those parents had a heart, ascending aorta and all.
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
Love and the Ascending Aorta
The other day I saw some pink ladies advertising along a street. They were waving signs, one of which read something to the effect of “If You (heart) (puerile slang for a certain body part), Donate!”
What times we live in, when grown women employ in public the vocabulary of the junior-high locker room.
Let us, for the sake of the gentle readership of this excellent newspaper, say that the endangered body part was the ascending aorta. It wasn’t, of course, and naughty little boys don’t snicker and giggle at slang expressions about the ascending aorta. One does not hear “Wow, think what her ascending aorta must be like – man, I can almost palpate the palpitations of her atrial fibrillation now!”
“Yeah, dude, her ascending aorta, like, y’know, gets me so into ventrical tachycardia!”
However, for the sake of discussion let the ascending aorta serve as our Maltese Chickadee.
No one is as supportive of ascending aortas as I. Sometimes friends and even strangers approach me to ask what I think of ascending aortas, and I always express my enthusiastic approbation. Ascending aortas are nifty, and I think everyone ought to have one or two of them. I’m even thinking of sporting a little lapel pin, a tiny little ascending aorta with a happy face.
However, no appeals for money have ever been the sequelae to conversations I’ve had with folks – and I know you have too – about merry little ascending aortas: “You like healthy ascending aortas, Mr. H? Why, so do I. Give me some money and I’ll see to it that there are healthier ascending aortas in the world.”
In sum and in short and all in all and at the end of the day the bottom line is that when the skinny lady sings I see no reason to stop my car in a busy street in order to give money to complete strangers, no matter how pink they are, simply because they maintain that this act will somehow make the world a better place for ascending aortas.
Who says my dollar will provide a meal or something for an ascending aorta? Who? If someone gives money, someone is receiving money. And who is that receiver? Is there some starving, bespectacled scientist down to his last test-tube and his last packet of Ramen noodles in some FEMA trailer laboratory, a starving, bespectacled scientist just on the cuspidor or bicuspid or something of discovering a cure for honey-glazed ascending aortas, a starving, bespectacled scientist to whom the beggars will happily fly at the end of the day with their salvific buckets of healing money for the rectification of faulty ascending aortas?
Another question is this: when did we become a nation of beggars?
The ascending aorta ladies were begging perhaps up the road from the safe-graduation beggars (because, as we all know, putting young people into the street is so safe for them, and having them beg teaches them such valuable life-lessons) and maybe down the road from the send-my-something-team-to-the-state-championship-something-playoffs-in-some-other-city beggars.
Once upon a time, in a quaint ye olde USA when the world trembled at the might of our washers and dryers, Boy Scouts washed one’s windshield for quarters safely off the road, cheerleaders washed the rest of the car safely in a church parking lot, the Sunday school / CCD class safely peddled homemade cakes after church / Mass, and the marching band sold muffins safely in front of the grocery store. The Boy Scouts might have scratched the car’s windshield, the cheerleaders might have scratched the car’s paint, the band’s muffins might have scratched the lining of one’s stomach, and the Sunday school / CCD cakes – well, actually, those were quite good -- but the point is that the young’uns’ parents and sponsors required their charges to practice work, not beggary.
More importantly, parents taught their children to stay away from the street lest they get run over or abducted. You might say those parents had a heart, ascending aorta and all.
-30-
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Saturday Morning in the Bookstore
Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Saturday Morning in the Bookstore
Why are there now so many books of lists of ten things we must do before we die? Why not nine, or eleven? And why should pay someone for a list of experiences he says you and I must fulfill before we shuffle off what Shakespeare is pleased to call this mortal coil? Will my life be meaningless if I don’t jump out of an airplane over Scotland, see a famous statue in a Buddhist temple in Bangladesh, eat fried snake in Singapore, bicycle through Kenya, visit some snaky island off Honduras, or flush a certain Czarist toilet in St. Petersburg?
The history magazines are mostly about war. One magazine I perused featured a photograph of a Nazi general about to be executed in Italy in December of 1945. He looks distressed. Perhaps his “Top Ten Things to Do Before I Die” list was incomplete: “#9 – murder more Italian and American prisoners.”
History magazines sometimes publish articles about what a nice lad General Rommel was, a worthy opponent and all that (stuff), and kind to kittens and children. No, it just won’t do. Rommel was a Nazi general. His career choice was to travel to other countries and then destroy them, killing lots of people while doing so. But then, hey, maybe he was just trying to find himself.
A Nazi connection sells books – any formula-plotted thriller will sell if a big ol’ swishtika adorns the cover. Such stories always begin on a dark, narrow, bleak, foggy, smells-of-cooking-cabbage, wartime London street where our hero (1) stumbles across a corpse bearing Secret Papers, and then (2) finds his way to an old building which discreetly houses a Special Branch of MI5, MI6, MI6 1/2,or MI7 which is more Special Branchy than any other Special Branch, and in which a mysterious Colonel Ponsonby-Snitt rules over a mysterious league of mysterious functionaries who hold the mysterious key – there’s always a key, real or metaphorical – which is going to win the war against jolly Rommel.
Zombies and vampires – I don’t get these genres at all. If someone wants blood, let him order a steak, rare. One reads in the news that some teens – obviously not the smart ones – are in imitation of vampire stories biting each other and swapping blood and, hence, bacteria and viruses. Were they not listening to parental teachings about basic hygiene and the myriads of blood-borne diseases? Well, no. Over in the magazine section one can find magazines devoted to tattoos and piercings. The book retailer could efficiently combine the books on zombies, vampires, tattoos, and piercings into one category: Disfigurement and Disease.
Books about the Tudors, especially Tudor queens and girlfriends, are still big. A nice side-effect is that readers also learn a little history.
Eat / Pray / Love / Drink / Vomit – How many women who work at the fast-food joint or at Big Box get to leave all behind and spend a year in Italy discovering themselves? Heck, most folks consider themselves lucky if they can take the kids to Disney once or twice before the little boogers grow up.
A recent fashion are books bearing covers of vapid-looking girls wearing yarmulkes with strings hanging down from them – one infers that these books, and they are Legion, are about a beautiful but misunderstood Hutterite / Amish / Mennonite girl who finds both Jesus and true love in a buggy while a modest church steeple and some perfect trees pose picturesquely in the background. But I sure wouldn’t know, and never will.
Detective stories – Agatha Christie is still the best. Hercule Poirot is my hero. Well, okay, him, John Wayne, Sergeant Schultz, and Bob Newhart.
Poetry – just keep moving; nothin’ to read here. That which now passes for poetry is pretty much me, me, me, my, my, my in content and free verse (which is a contradiction) in non-structure tricked out with the shabbiest sort of rhetorical bling. If the poet doesn’t dot the i he must be really cool, right? There is neither passion nor intellect nor aesthetics in contemporary poetry, only squalid self-pity flung like a temper-tantrum onto the page.
Westerns – the selection is smaller than it used to be. A current trend is to publish the books that were made into films, which is a great idea. Anyone who thinks John Wayne was one-dimensional has never seen The Searchers, John Ford’s brilliant examination of racism and redemption.
Harry Potter appears to be hiding, at least until the next movie comes out. The first book in the series was mildly interesting, but then the next forty or fifty were but the first book tiresomely recycled – cute kids scream at each other and then fight Him / He Who Must Not Be Named and then some minor character gets killed and then the cute kids reconcile with teary eyes and we learn about friendship being The Most Important Thing. Yawn.
Time for coffee.
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
Saturday Morning in the Bookstore
Why are there now so many books of lists of ten things we must do before we die? Why not nine, or eleven? And why should pay someone for a list of experiences he says you and I must fulfill before we shuffle off what Shakespeare is pleased to call this mortal coil? Will my life be meaningless if I don’t jump out of an airplane over Scotland, see a famous statue in a Buddhist temple in Bangladesh, eat fried snake in Singapore, bicycle through Kenya, visit some snaky island off Honduras, or flush a certain Czarist toilet in St. Petersburg?
The history magazines are mostly about war. One magazine I perused featured a photograph of a Nazi general about to be executed in Italy in December of 1945. He looks distressed. Perhaps his “Top Ten Things to Do Before I Die” list was incomplete: “#9 – murder more Italian and American prisoners.”
History magazines sometimes publish articles about what a nice lad General Rommel was, a worthy opponent and all that (stuff), and kind to kittens and children. No, it just won’t do. Rommel was a Nazi general. His career choice was to travel to other countries and then destroy them, killing lots of people while doing so. But then, hey, maybe he was just trying to find himself.
A Nazi connection sells books – any formula-plotted thriller will sell if a big ol’ swishtika adorns the cover. Such stories always begin on a dark, narrow, bleak, foggy, smells-of-cooking-cabbage, wartime London street where our hero (1) stumbles across a corpse bearing Secret Papers, and then (2) finds his way to an old building which discreetly houses a Special Branch of MI5, MI6, MI6 1/2,or MI7 which is more Special Branchy than any other Special Branch, and in which a mysterious Colonel Ponsonby-Snitt rules over a mysterious league of mysterious functionaries who hold the mysterious key – there’s always a key, real or metaphorical – which is going to win the war against jolly Rommel.
Zombies and vampires – I don’t get these genres at all. If someone wants blood, let him order a steak, rare. One reads in the news that some teens – obviously not the smart ones – are in imitation of vampire stories biting each other and swapping blood and, hence, bacteria and viruses. Were they not listening to parental teachings about basic hygiene and the myriads of blood-borne diseases? Well, no. Over in the magazine section one can find magazines devoted to tattoos and piercings. The book retailer could efficiently combine the books on zombies, vampires, tattoos, and piercings into one category: Disfigurement and Disease.
Books about the Tudors, especially Tudor queens and girlfriends, are still big. A nice side-effect is that readers also learn a little history.
Eat / Pray / Love / Drink / Vomit – How many women who work at the fast-food joint or at Big Box get to leave all behind and spend a year in Italy discovering themselves? Heck, most folks consider themselves lucky if they can take the kids to Disney once or twice before the little boogers grow up.
A recent fashion are books bearing covers of vapid-looking girls wearing yarmulkes with strings hanging down from them – one infers that these books, and they are Legion, are about a beautiful but misunderstood Hutterite / Amish / Mennonite girl who finds both Jesus and true love in a buggy while a modest church steeple and some perfect trees pose picturesquely in the background. But I sure wouldn’t know, and never will.
Detective stories – Agatha Christie is still the best. Hercule Poirot is my hero. Well, okay, him, John Wayne, Sergeant Schultz, and Bob Newhart.
Poetry – just keep moving; nothin’ to read here. That which now passes for poetry is pretty much me, me, me, my, my, my in content and free verse (which is a contradiction) in non-structure tricked out with the shabbiest sort of rhetorical bling. If the poet doesn’t dot the i he must be really cool, right? There is neither passion nor intellect nor aesthetics in contemporary poetry, only squalid self-pity flung like a temper-tantrum onto the page.
Westerns – the selection is smaller than it used to be. A current trend is to publish the books that were made into films, which is a great idea. Anyone who thinks John Wayne was one-dimensional has never seen The Searchers, John Ford’s brilliant examination of racism and redemption.
Harry Potter appears to be hiding, at least until the next movie comes out. The first book in the series was mildly interesting, but then the next forty or fifty were but the first book tiresomely recycled – cute kids scream at each other and then fight Him / He Who Must Not Be Named and then some minor character gets killed and then the cute kids reconcile with teary eyes and we learn about friendship being The Most Important Thing. Yawn.
Time for coffee.
-30-
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Sunday, September 19, 2010
For a Football Player Dying Young
Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
In the Light
All of us must die; few of us are permitted to die while doing exactly what we should be doing.
There are no easy answers to the eternal why of death. We mourn those who die in the autumn of their lives; we mourn even more those who die in their springtime. Our intellects tell us that death is the natural progression of living; our hearts, in pain, tell us that the intellect’s understanding is inadequate.
Reggie Garrett, as young and proud as one of Beowulf’s warriors, sweat-stained in his West Orange-Stark uniform, died clean and honest and good. He threw a touchdown pass to a longtime friend, trotted off the field to the applause of his teammates, and died.
For the rest of their lives a few good men will speak a little, yes, of their own time on the field, but more often they will say, with great pride, “I played football with Reggie Garrett.”
For high school football is a clean game, clean and honest and good, a celebration of young manhood at the peak of strength and speed and skill. Football is played in the light, sometimes beneath God’s sun and sometimes under the electric lights which push the darkness away for the sake of a fair field for manly sport. Football is played by teams of youths of all sorts of backgrounds who have learned to live and work and play together. Football, always in the light, is happily antithetical to the dark broodings of a misanthrope lurking alone in a dark room hugging his dark resentments to himself in dark echoes of Grendel.
And no doubt there was some fat, cholesterol-sodden old poop in the bleachers popping off about how the pass and the catch could have been done better, but he is irrelevant. The only thing wrong with football is not football itself but with the flawless sideline quarterbacks who are oh, so quarterbackier than the young men who actually play the game.
Football is for the young athlete, not for the old critic.
Reggie did not die in the dark; he did not die watching television or idling on a street corner or doing something wrong or feeling sorry for himself. He died in the light, doing what was right, doing something he loved and doing it very well, glorious in his young manhood.
Reggie, an honor student, was to attend the University of Texas and study architecture. One imagines that the buildings he would have designed would have been filled with light.
“Eternal rest give unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him.”
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
In the Light
All of us must die; few of us are permitted to die while doing exactly what we should be doing.
There are no easy answers to the eternal why of death. We mourn those who die in the autumn of their lives; we mourn even more those who die in their springtime. Our intellects tell us that death is the natural progression of living; our hearts, in pain, tell us that the intellect’s understanding is inadequate.
Reggie Garrett, as young and proud as one of Beowulf’s warriors, sweat-stained in his West Orange-Stark uniform, died clean and honest and good. He threw a touchdown pass to a longtime friend, trotted off the field to the applause of his teammates, and died.
For the rest of their lives a few good men will speak a little, yes, of their own time on the field, but more often they will say, with great pride, “I played football with Reggie Garrett.”
For high school football is a clean game, clean and honest and good, a celebration of young manhood at the peak of strength and speed and skill. Football is played in the light, sometimes beneath God’s sun and sometimes under the electric lights which push the darkness away for the sake of a fair field for manly sport. Football is played by teams of youths of all sorts of backgrounds who have learned to live and work and play together. Football, always in the light, is happily antithetical to the dark broodings of a misanthrope lurking alone in a dark room hugging his dark resentments to himself in dark echoes of Grendel.
And no doubt there was some fat, cholesterol-sodden old poop in the bleachers popping off about how the pass and the catch could have been done better, but he is irrelevant. The only thing wrong with football is not football itself but with the flawless sideline quarterbacks who are oh, so quarterbackier than the young men who actually play the game.
Football is for the young athlete, not for the old critic.
Reggie did not die in the dark; he did not die watching television or idling on a street corner or doing something wrong or feeling sorry for himself. He died in the light, doing what was right, doing something he loved and doing it very well, glorious in his young manhood.
Reggie, an honor student, was to attend the University of Texas and study architecture. One imagines that the buildings he would have designed would have been filled with light.
“Eternal rest give unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him.”
-30-
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Door Prizes at the Last Supper
Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Door Prizes at the Last Supper
This year a church (let us call it St. Waycool’s) in a certain university town was pleased to begin the academic term by asking the students attending Mass to bring their cell ‘phones. The reason was not given because, according to the youth minister’s ‘blog, “the intrigue is half the fun.”
Oh, yeah, the Gospel and the Eucharist are Laff Riots. Perhaps what Jesus really says at every celebration of Holy Communion is “Do this in memory of Me – and bring your electronic toys.”
The goal was to coax students to register in the college parish. Now this part was good – the light bill must be paid and the roof repaired and the floors mopped, and all that costs money. People should support the church they attend appropriate to their means. Further, as the youth minister said, young people away from home for the first time have probably never thought of registering in a parish because, as with paying car notes, their parents did that.
All right, then, the homilist could have explained this and probably without a puppet ministry because, after all, the temporary parishioners are university students and can understand, like, y’know, thoughts and big words and stuff. And let the people say “existential.”
Sadly, some church functionaries appear to perceive any sort of outreach, even to university students and other adults, as a junior high experience.
After the homily and before the Eucharist the celebrant at each Mass had the participants whup out their cell ‘phones. Now, now, we mustn’t cling to the old ways, right? No doubt a parish priest in the early 19th century required his parishioners to take out their newest technology, the steel pen, and script their registrations then and there. And perhaps later in the century another priest asked the faithful to bring their wind-up gramophones to Mass. And then came the fruits of Vatican II: eight-track tapes, the Sony Walkman, and the Palm Pilot.
Anyway, at this point two functionaries at St. Waycool’s held up, smack in front of the altar and the crucifix (altar, crucifix – soooo last week), a large banner – what? No Power Point? – instructing the faithful how to report themselves to the parish authorities electronically.
The youth minister on his ‘blog proudly tapped out that this novelty “has never been tried in any other church.”
Wow! After 2,000 years the liturgy is at last enriched by lock-step text-messaging. All the saints and martyrs cry out with joy: “Can you hear me now? How many bars ya got?”
But wait – there’s more! Door prizes! If the faithful obediently texted during Mass and then obediently responded to an email on the following Tuesday they were automatically eligible for one of the following door prizes:
One Apple Ipod.
Five students got to lunch with the football coach.
Five students got to lunch with the basketball coach.
Twenty gift certificates.
Man, if only Padre Pio or Mother Theresa had been so cool!
Clearly the filter through which Christians perceive history must be upgraded because of the epiphany of electronic gadgetry:
The Magi followed their GPS devices (“Recalculating…”), not the Star.
St. Paul lost his signal on the road to Damascus.
“Suffer the little children to come unto me – after they register.”
St. Thomas More was beheaded for claiming his cell ‘phone signal was clearer than King Henry’s.
The Disciples in the photoshopped DaVinci’s Last Supper don’t hear Jesus because they’re all yakking into their cell ‘phones.
St. Joan of Arc was burned at the stake for listening to The Voices through a tin cricket in her ear.
The Great Schism of 1170 was due to a rift between Cingular and AT&T users.
Moses received the Commandments via voicemail.
Jesus said to Peter, “If you love Me, tweet My sheep.”
The Centurion at the Crucifixion cried out, “Truly this was the Son of Verizon!”
At St. WayCool’s on that unhappy Sunday there was surely a faithful remnant of young men and women who bravely and stubbornly kept their cell ‘phones pocketed or pursed, and refused to desecrate the liturgy with this mummery. They won’t receive a gift certificate to Kitchen, Bed, Outhouse ‘N’ Stuff, but they won’t need it. They’ve got much, much more.
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
Door Prizes at the Last Supper
This year a church (let us call it St. Waycool’s) in a certain university town was pleased to begin the academic term by asking the students attending Mass to bring their cell ‘phones. The reason was not given because, according to the youth minister’s ‘blog, “the intrigue is half the fun.”
Oh, yeah, the Gospel and the Eucharist are Laff Riots. Perhaps what Jesus really says at every celebration of Holy Communion is “Do this in memory of Me – and bring your electronic toys.”
The goal was to coax students to register in the college parish. Now this part was good – the light bill must be paid and the roof repaired and the floors mopped, and all that costs money. People should support the church they attend appropriate to their means. Further, as the youth minister said, young people away from home for the first time have probably never thought of registering in a parish because, as with paying car notes, their parents did that.
All right, then, the homilist could have explained this and probably without a puppet ministry because, after all, the temporary parishioners are university students and can understand, like, y’know, thoughts and big words and stuff. And let the people say “existential.”
Sadly, some church functionaries appear to perceive any sort of outreach, even to university students and other adults, as a junior high experience.
After the homily and before the Eucharist the celebrant at each Mass had the participants whup out their cell ‘phones. Now, now, we mustn’t cling to the old ways, right? No doubt a parish priest in the early 19th century required his parishioners to take out their newest technology, the steel pen, and script their registrations then and there. And perhaps later in the century another priest asked the faithful to bring their wind-up gramophones to Mass. And then came the fruits of Vatican II: eight-track tapes, the Sony Walkman, and the Palm Pilot.
Anyway, at this point two functionaries at St. Waycool’s held up, smack in front of the altar and the crucifix (altar, crucifix – soooo last week), a large banner – what? No Power Point? – instructing the faithful how to report themselves to the parish authorities electronically.
The youth minister on his ‘blog proudly tapped out that this novelty “has never been tried in any other church.”
Wow! After 2,000 years the liturgy is at last enriched by lock-step text-messaging. All the saints and martyrs cry out with joy: “Can you hear me now? How many bars ya got?”
But wait – there’s more! Door prizes! If the faithful obediently texted during Mass and then obediently responded to an email on the following Tuesday they were automatically eligible for one of the following door prizes:
One Apple Ipod.
Five students got to lunch with the football coach.
Five students got to lunch with the basketball coach.
Twenty gift certificates.
Man, if only Padre Pio or Mother Theresa had been so cool!
Clearly the filter through which Christians perceive history must be upgraded because of the epiphany of electronic gadgetry:
The Magi followed their GPS devices (“Recalculating…”), not the Star.
St. Paul lost his signal on the road to Damascus.
“Suffer the little children to come unto me – after they register.”
St. Thomas More was beheaded for claiming his cell ‘phone signal was clearer than King Henry’s.
The Disciples in the photoshopped DaVinci’s Last Supper don’t hear Jesus because they’re all yakking into their cell ‘phones.
St. Joan of Arc was burned at the stake for listening to The Voices through a tin cricket in her ear.
The Great Schism of 1170 was due to a rift between Cingular and AT&T users.
Moses received the Commandments via voicemail.
Jesus said to Peter, “If you love Me, tweet My sheep.”
The Centurion at the Crucifixion cried out, “Truly this was the Son of Verizon!”
At St. WayCool’s on that unhappy Sunday there was surely a faithful remnant of young men and women who bravely and stubbornly kept their cell ‘phones pocketed or pursed, and refused to desecrate the liturgy with this mummery. They won’t receive a gift certificate to Kitchen, Bed, Outhouse ‘N’ Stuff, but they won’t need it. They’ve got much, much more.
-30-
The Green Martyrdom
One wonders if any martyr tortured to death ever cried as loudly as does a certain bishop who does not receive the veneration and money he feels are his due.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
"I'm learning shoemaking..."
"I'm learning shoemaking and poetry, all at the same time."
-- David in Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg
-- David in Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Random Acts of Thinkfulness
Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Random Acts of Thinkfulness
A great mystery of our time – are American children too fat, or are they starving? One reads an outraged writer’s thesis, complete with statistics, that American children are fat, and so their school cafeterias must be beaten into obedience. But then another writer, with equal anger and another catalogue of stats, declares with the authority of Mount Sinai that American children are starving, and again the school cafeteria (it’s always the school cafeteria’s fault) must be remade in the commentator’s image.
Stop.
In the past few weeks y’r ‘umble scrivener re-read Plato’s Phaedo (which is not Fido), Apologia, Crito, and Symposium. The real philosophical question is why the Athenian state didn’t off Socrates long before.
Snap.
Doctors. So many doctors. No, not M.D.s; we need more of them: I refer to all the other folks who are now doctors of this and that occupation which needed not doctors before. Will it soon be a matter that everyone is a doctor? Heck, I had trouble finishing high school. And now all the reverends are becoming doctors, too, and I have read of one fellow who is a Reverend Doctor Master Bishop. I sure wish I were that enlightened.
Click.
One still hears of those who want to make the world a better place. What if the world doesn’t want to be re-made? And isn’t it rather judgmental for some tweeter to find the world lacking without first having gotten a job?
Go.
I watched a young fellow decant from a city bus while obediently wearing the complete dress code as dictated to him by popular culture: bulbous plasticky shoes, those awful kneepants, billowing fake athletic shirt, and a backward baseball cap with an ironed-flat brim. In his hand he bore a cell ‘phone, and his head was festooned with wiring so he could receive his instructions.
He fled the immediate area of the bus with a practiced insouciance but also with some speed, for despite all his ornamental cool, the unhappy and decidedly uncool fact remained: he had arrived by city bus, and desperately did not want to be seen doing so.
Whirrrr.
Electronic books – the appeal is there, especially while traveling. You can carry your business reading, your travel books, and your Hercule Poirot novel, plus hundreds of other books, all within one little plastic case. Also, you own the books you buy for downloading. When your little machine breaks, as it will, you can buy another one and get all your books back.
Still, it’s a gadget, a successor to the cassette tape, the VCR, and the Polaroid. It’s not actually a book, and you can’t recharge it with a kerosene lamp during a hurricane. You can’t use your pen to argue with the writer, and your grandchildren won’t turn the same pages you did and delight in your marginalia.
Buzzzzzzz.
Several Saturdays ago two rival demagogues (Webster’s New Collegiate, demagogue – “a leader who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power”), as jealous of each other as the final two beauties competing for the crown of Miss Watermelon Festival, hosted rival body-counts in the nation’s capital.
Demagogues are free to gogue, and people living under the protection of the Constitution are free to lemming-up in doe-eyed adoration of the latest Dear Leader, but why would they want to?
When the competing golden-calf sessions were over, the two groups happened to encounter each other on the fringes (no pun). The folks involved apparently greeted each other courteously and wished each other well, demonstrating much more dignity than their masters. And, truly, Americans are much better off without masters.
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
Random Acts of Thinkfulness
A great mystery of our time – are American children too fat, or are they starving? One reads an outraged writer’s thesis, complete with statistics, that American children are fat, and so their school cafeterias must be beaten into obedience. But then another writer, with equal anger and another catalogue of stats, declares with the authority of Mount Sinai that American children are starving, and again the school cafeteria (it’s always the school cafeteria’s fault) must be remade in the commentator’s image.
Stop.
In the past few weeks y’r ‘umble scrivener re-read Plato’s Phaedo (which is not Fido), Apologia, Crito, and Symposium. The real philosophical question is why the Athenian state didn’t off Socrates long before.
Snap.
Doctors. So many doctors. No, not M.D.s; we need more of them: I refer to all the other folks who are now doctors of this and that occupation which needed not doctors before. Will it soon be a matter that everyone is a doctor? Heck, I had trouble finishing high school. And now all the reverends are becoming doctors, too, and I have read of one fellow who is a Reverend Doctor Master Bishop. I sure wish I were that enlightened.
Click.
One still hears of those who want to make the world a better place. What if the world doesn’t want to be re-made? And isn’t it rather judgmental for some tweeter to find the world lacking without first having gotten a job?
Go.
I watched a young fellow decant from a city bus while obediently wearing the complete dress code as dictated to him by popular culture: bulbous plasticky shoes, those awful kneepants, billowing fake athletic shirt, and a backward baseball cap with an ironed-flat brim. In his hand he bore a cell ‘phone, and his head was festooned with wiring so he could receive his instructions.
He fled the immediate area of the bus with a practiced insouciance but also with some speed, for despite all his ornamental cool, the unhappy and decidedly uncool fact remained: he had arrived by city bus, and desperately did not want to be seen doing so.
Whirrrr.
Electronic books – the appeal is there, especially while traveling. You can carry your business reading, your travel books, and your Hercule Poirot novel, plus hundreds of other books, all within one little plastic case. Also, you own the books you buy for downloading. When your little machine breaks, as it will, you can buy another one and get all your books back.
Still, it’s a gadget, a successor to the cassette tape, the VCR, and the Polaroid. It’s not actually a book, and you can’t recharge it with a kerosene lamp during a hurricane. You can’t use your pen to argue with the writer, and your grandchildren won’t turn the same pages you did and delight in your marginalia.
Buzzzzzzz.
Several Saturdays ago two rival demagogues (Webster’s New Collegiate, demagogue – “a leader who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power”), as jealous of each other as the final two beauties competing for the crown of Miss Watermelon Festival, hosted rival body-counts in the nation’s capital.
Demagogues are free to gogue, and people living under the protection of the Constitution are free to lemming-up in doe-eyed adoration of the latest Dear Leader, but why would they want to?
When the competing golden-calf sessions were over, the two groups happened to encounter each other on the fringes (no pun). The folks involved apparently greeted each other courteously and wished each other well, demonstrating much more dignity than their masters. And, truly, Americans are much better off without masters.
-30-
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Plato and His Perhaps Imaginary Friend Socrates
In the past few weeks I have re-read Apologia, Crito, Phaedo, and The Symposium. I marvel that the Athenian state did not possess the good sense to poison Socrates earlier.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Ham and Lima Beans and Inspiration
Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Ham and Lima Beans and Inspiration
Motivational / inspirational speakers often employ war metaphors and quote admirals and generals. That’s a good sign that their war experience is pretty much limited to watching The Hitler Channel and reading the memoirs of the beribboned and famous. And then there’s the matter of the ham and lima beans barking in the night-time.
What if motivational speakers quoted enlisted men instead of generals? Here are some original sources for them for their next speeches. N.B.: although the wording may not be precise, almost none of this, except for the “be inspired” motif, is fictional.
“All ready for night patrol. Ain’t the C.O. coming?”
“Naw, he’s in his air-conditioned bedroom – I mean, the radio room – practicing his these-eyes-have-seen-it-all stare for his election speeches after the war.”
“He’s inspiring.”
“The FNG got dinged real bad. Anyone told the lieutenant?”
“Yeah, he and the C.O. are in the command bunker writing each other citations for medals.”
“Oh, yeah, they’re inspiring.”
“That swing ship brought the first mail we’ve had in two weeks – where is it?”
“It’s coming; the officers are getting theirs first.”
“Officers inspire me.”
“That idiot C.O. sat in the bunker and radioed conflicting orders all last night. If not for the Chief none of us would have gotten out of that mess alive. Why isn’t the Chief in charge since he knows what he’s doing?”
“’Cause the C.O.’s got a college degree and the Chief ain’t.”
“Oh, well, that’s inspiring.”
“Chief, what’s PTSD?”
“That’s something for officers and for civilians back home; you ain’t entitled. Now get them bullet holes patched and this boat washed down.”
“Okay, Chief.”
“And be inspired, son, be inspired.”
“Get the stand-down crews up. Night patrol’s coming in early. One boat’s burning and being towed. Five dead, a bunch wounded. Man, the generals and admirals in Saigon and D.C. will sure get a bunch of medals for this.”
“I’m inspired.”
“Bubba, what did you do before you joined up?”
“Bathed. Didn’t cuss as much. Didn’t know how popular ham-and-lima beans was.”
“Ham-and-lima-beans inspire me.”
“I got paid more as a sack boy back home than I do here in Cambodia makin’ th’ world safe for democracy and stuff.”
“Inspiring.”
“Say, who are those pretty fellows in the nice new uniforms funnin’ with the C.O.?”
“Those are some famous reporters. They’re going out with us for a few hours to take pictures and talk into their recorders. They’ll be back for the cocktail hour in their hotel in Saigon tonight and back in the states in a couple of days to get journalism awards for talking about how rough it is out here.”
“I’m so inspired.”
“I tossed a c-rat can of ham-and-lima beans over the perimeter to some hungry Vietnamese kids.”
“Yeah?”
“They tossed it back.”
“I ain’t that hungry either. But I’m sure inspired.”
“Do officers ever have to eat ham-and-lima beans?”
“I saw one do it once, but he was just drunk and showin’ off. That was after he ate a cockroach.”
“Most inspiring.”
“Say, whose bright idea was it to make so many c-rations out of ham-and-lima beans?”
“Probably Ho Chi Minh’s.”
“Ah! He was inspired!”
“Why are these boats made out of plastic?”
“Cheap to repair.”
“Are we cheap to repair?”
“Just be inspired, sailor, just be inspired.”
“Man, you don’t want to be captured alive by the V.C.”
“Why? They gonna make me eat ham-and-lima beans?”
“Ain’t you inspired yet?”
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
Ham and Lima Beans and Inspiration
Motivational / inspirational speakers often employ war metaphors and quote admirals and generals. That’s a good sign that their war experience is pretty much limited to watching The Hitler Channel and reading the memoirs of the beribboned and famous. And then there’s the matter of the ham and lima beans barking in the night-time.
What if motivational speakers quoted enlisted men instead of generals? Here are some original sources for them for their next speeches. N.B.: although the wording may not be precise, almost none of this, except for the “be inspired” motif, is fictional.
“All ready for night patrol. Ain’t the C.O. coming?”
“Naw, he’s in his air-conditioned bedroom – I mean, the radio room – practicing his these-eyes-have-seen-it-all stare for his election speeches after the war.”
“He’s inspiring.”
“The FNG got dinged real bad. Anyone told the lieutenant?”
“Yeah, he and the C.O. are in the command bunker writing each other citations for medals.”
“Oh, yeah, they’re inspiring.”
“That swing ship brought the first mail we’ve had in two weeks – where is it?”
“It’s coming; the officers are getting theirs first.”
“Officers inspire me.”
“That idiot C.O. sat in the bunker and radioed conflicting orders all last night. If not for the Chief none of us would have gotten out of that mess alive. Why isn’t the Chief in charge since he knows what he’s doing?”
“’Cause the C.O.’s got a college degree and the Chief ain’t.”
“Oh, well, that’s inspiring.”
“Chief, what’s PTSD?”
“That’s something for officers and for civilians back home; you ain’t entitled. Now get them bullet holes patched and this boat washed down.”
“Okay, Chief.”
“And be inspired, son, be inspired.”
“Get the stand-down crews up. Night patrol’s coming in early. One boat’s burning and being towed. Five dead, a bunch wounded. Man, the generals and admirals in Saigon and D.C. will sure get a bunch of medals for this.”
“I’m inspired.”
“Bubba, what did you do before you joined up?”
“Bathed. Didn’t cuss as much. Didn’t know how popular ham-and-lima beans was.”
“Ham-and-lima-beans inspire me.”
“I got paid more as a sack boy back home than I do here in Cambodia makin’ th’ world safe for democracy and stuff.”
“Inspiring.”
“Say, who are those pretty fellows in the nice new uniforms funnin’ with the C.O.?”
“Those are some famous reporters. They’re going out with us for a few hours to take pictures and talk into their recorders. They’ll be back for the cocktail hour in their hotel in Saigon tonight and back in the states in a couple of days to get journalism awards for talking about how rough it is out here.”
“I’m so inspired.”
“I tossed a c-rat can of ham-and-lima beans over the perimeter to some hungry Vietnamese kids.”
“Yeah?”
“They tossed it back.”
“I ain’t that hungry either. But I’m sure inspired.”
“Do officers ever have to eat ham-and-lima beans?”
“I saw one do it once, but he was just drunk and showin’ off. That was after he ate a cockroach.”
“Most inspiring.”
“Say, whose bright idea was it to make so many c-rations out of ham-and-lima beans?”
“Probably Ho Chi Minh’s.”
“Ah! He was inspired!”
“Why are these boats made out of plastic?”
“Cheap to repair.”
“Are we cheap to repair?”
“Just be inspired, sailor, just be inspired.”
“Man, you don’t want to be captured alive by the V.C.”
“Why? They gonna make me eat ham-and-lima beans?”
“Ain’t you inspired yet?”
-30-
Monday, August 23, 2010
A Review of Paul I. Wellman's THE FEMALE
The Female by Paul I. Wellman. Wellman is remembered for his western history and western fiction, including The Comancheros, the basis for one of the best Saturday matinee John Wayne films.
The Female is a stab-'em-up, though, not a shoot-'em-up, a fictional bio of Empress Theodora, and it is a curious book much in need of editing. The first third or so is quite pornographic, unnecessarily so -- I'm not, not, not being prissy; there is just no need of page after page of and-then-she-dropped-the-gauzy-whatever-she-was-wearing-and-was-completely-you-know-what, and it drags the plot. After Theodora finds her way to then-Prince Justinian's bed by a clunky plot device the narrative does move faster, esp. in the matter of the Nike / Nika riots. Overall, Wellman clearly did a thorough job of researching Constantinople, but then didn't seem to know what to do with the material.
Wellman's hostility to any form of organized religion is another problem; he dismisses Orthodoxy / Catholicism (this is long before the Schism, remember) as contemptuously as he does Monophysitism. He also -- and this is most curious -- despises all Byzantines of all classes, and, indeed, doesn't seem to like anyone except the person of Theodora herself. Justinian is rendered first as a good, solid man, and then illogically reduced to a useless religious fanatic helplessly wringing his hands. One can conclude that Wellman constructed a Theodora who is nothing more than a somewhat twisted sexual and philosophical fantasy, and makes what could have been an entertaining and useful fiction into something rather creepy.
The Female is a stab-'em-up, though, not a shoot-'em-up, a fictional bio of Empress Theodora, and it is a curious book much in need of editing. The first third or so is quite pornographic, unnecessarily so -- I'm not, not, not being prissy; there is just no need of page after page of and-then-she-dropped-the-gauzy-whatever-she-was-wearing-and-was-completely-you-know-what, and it drags the plot. After Theodora finds her way to then-Prince Justinian's bed by a clunky plot device the narrative does move faster, esp. in the matter of the Nike / Nika riots. Overall, Wellman clearly did a thorough job of researching Constantinople, but then didn't seem to know what to do with the material.
Wellman's hostility to any form of organized religion is another problem; he dismisses Orthodoxy / Catholicism (this is long before the Schism, remember) as contemptuously as he does Monophysitism. He also -- and this is most curious -- despises all Byzantines of all classes, and, indeed, doesn't seem to like anyone except the person of Theodora herself. Justinian is rendered first as a good, solid man, and then illogically reduced to a useless religious fanatic helplessly wringing his hands. One can conclude that Wellman constructed a Theodora who is nothing more than a somewhat twisted sexual and philosophical fantasy, and makes what could have been an entertaining and useful fiction into something rather creepy.
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