The Starbuck's on Mount Everest

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

The Starbuck’s on Mount Everest

The Truth is Out There (whispered in all caps)
Hidden in a tax-sheltered bucket list
Guarded by albino republicans
On the nepallingly deadly ice
Of the something-est mountain in the world.
Where the Sherpas are like, so cool and stuff,
So at one with their, like, inner thing-ness,

Spiritual advisors to lemmings lined up

Like padded, rainbow-colored walruses
In baseball caps, lining up patiently,
Lining up in the cold for group lattes
Lining up in the cold to twit their deaths
Civilization lining up to die
A litter of bodies frozen ice-green
Above, beyond the death-hot Syrian plains.
After making, perhaps, pallid obeisance
To a little god-king playing at cards,
His picture-card death-lists for Nobel peace.

Poor Blind Milton

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

Poor Blind Milton

Will those who risk the bleak and arid heights
Of grim Paradise Lost require a guide,
A Sherpa of iambics for the trail?
The high blue ice of true discovery
Is littered with the tinkling toys of time:
Manifestos and men of destiny,
Loud ideologies like frail free verse
Evolving night by night, bringing, each dawn,
This morning’s firm eternal verities
Hammered in smoke upon the hissing wind,
For man’s first fall was to believe himself
To be Himself, th’eternal Self-ness,
An Orpheus before whom nothing was,
Or yet a better Vainamoinen
Here now to sing the broken world aright
With his latest electronic Sampo
Recording styled Myself Agonistes.

Their bodies litter for a time the earth

Beneath the leaf-fall orchards of the Now.

But Milton, poor blind Milton, sang the Truth

In soul-seared pain, in self-awareness bleak,
Since Milton, too, composed a song of death,
First-person singular in Satan’s voice;
He knew of Hell: for he betrayed his King.

Telephony Candidates

Mack Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Telephony Candidates

“Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”

“To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”

“The dog did nothing in the night-time.”

“That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes.

-      Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “Silver Blaze”

That curious silence on Wednesday morning of last week was your telephone not ringing, not ringing at last, after weeks of auditory assault on your work, your leisure, and your home.

Mr. Alexander Graham Bell probably did not anticipate the ubiquity of the ‘phone or its susceptibility to misuse by governments.  For the past few weeks our ‘phones have been occupied by folks who proclaim their desire to be politicians by decrying politicians.  Governor Palin and Governor Perry wanted to be my automated best friends forever, and all sorts of strange people interrupted my day to tell me their opponents are bad people.

Here’s the problem – candidates use my telephone in order to bother me.  They are not paying for my telephone; I am.  Private-sector vendors are now forbidden to bother people with unwanted telephone calls, but clearly Section 1 of the 14^th Amendment of the Constitution does not apply to political candidates who propose to protect and defend Section 1 of the 14^th Amendment of the Constitution, and that’s some serious irony indeed.

If someone other than a political candidate telephones you repeatedly, you have a legal case regarding stalking.  Political candidates get a free pass, a free telephone pass, and you have to pay for it and you have to put up with it.

Even the most casual observer would deduce (elementary, Watson, elementary) that unwanted telephone calls invariably result in negative feelings.  A candidate or his minions who bother folks by telephoning them have given the annoyed citizen one good reason for NOT voting for said candidate. 

Public Utilities Commission of Texas probably can’t do anything about political ice-calls, but you could write them a brief email letter (block format, six parts, just as you were taught in school) POLITELY telling them how you feel about receiving repeated unwanted telephone calls (my personal best is nine in one day) from political candidates:

Public Utilities Commission of Texas

1701 N. Congress Avenue
P. O. Box 13326
Austin, Texas 78711-3326
customer@puc.state.tx.us

No, no, don’t call the fat boys on a.m. radio; email the P.U.C.

But my feelings are really hurt – Governor Palin ignores me now.  She just wanted me for my vote.  Sniff.

Graduation 2012

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

It’s on the ‘Net; It Must be True

Alexander Graham Bell, a Canadian who was born in Scotland, invented the telephone so that young Americans could use the thing to talk, text, tweet, and twit to each other during high school graduation and thus ignore high school graduation.  Since Mr. Bell never finished school, we may appreciate the layers of irony.

In May of every year, like buzzards returning to wherever it is buzzards return to, tiresome screeds about the ignorance of graduates arrive to roost in one’s in-box. 

One of the most popular is wrongly attributed to Bill Gates, another successful fellow who did not finish school and who does not write silly stuff, and is usually titled “Rules They Didn’t Teach You in School” or some such, and is forwarded by the sort of people who never vote in their local school board elections because they’re too busy complaining.

The idea of hopeless naivete is not true of most high school students, and it’s certainly not true of college students.  Very few graduates ever finish a degree on the mummy-and-daddy nickel, and for those who do, well, good for their mums and dads.

The reality is that most college students work their way through school, usually in minimum-wage jobs and at odd hours.  A student who works the night shift flipping burgers can only wonder about why he is falsely stereotyped as someone who thinks he’s too good to flip burgers.

My daughter spent some college time shoveling (Newark, New Jersey) in a stable.  Hamburgers would have been better.

Any college classroom will feature, yes, a few princesses of both sexes, but they are far outnumbered by folks who know their way around the loading dock, Afghanistan, and hospital wards at 0-Dark-Thirty, and who can wield with great skill an M4, a broom, and a bedpan.

One of my fish English students was a former sergeant who left the Army after sixteen years.  When I asked him why he didn’t finish his twenty he said that after three combat tours in the desert he figured he had pushed his luck enough.

He and his mates studied English literature in a college hydraulics lab because of a shortage of classroom space.  No ivy grew on the equipment.

Two of my students were in their mid-thirties, had been pals from childhood, owned a roofing company, and were nursing students.  In their late thirties, they said they were getting a little old for climbing up on roofs all the year ‘round and were going to sell the company and work in the shade for a while.  I asked them why they didn’t keep the company and spend well-earned time out of the sun by delegating more authority to their employees.  They said that their names were on each roof (metaphorically), and that they would never sign off on a job if they didn’t have first-hand knowledge of each square inch of that roof.

Oh, yeah, some dumb college kids, huh?

Age and experience are good, but they are only predictors: there are adult students who become angry when they are required to show up on time (which, presumably, was required of them on the job) and actually do some work (ditto).  In the same class there can be 18-year-olds demonstrating a far better work ethic (not the one texting behind her Volkswagen-size purse, second seat, second table on the right) than their elders.

In the end, success is almost always the result of an individual’s choice to show up for work, whether on the factory floor or in the classroom, and hit a lick at it.

That is, after the individual takes the tin cricket out of his ear.  In school we were taught that in ye olden days of yore crazy people who stumbled around mumbling to themselves were kept safely away from others by being chained to a wall somewhere.  We thought that was a bad punishment.  Silly us.

One of life’s lessons – it needn’t come from the classroom – is that stereotyping is wrong.  Just because something’s on the ‘net doesn’t mean it’s true.  Those giddy folks waving their diplomae (“diplomae,” he wrote, for he had been to night school) around and yelling almost surely worked very hard for the moment, both in and out of the classrooms and laboratories.

+Ray Bradbury

Some years ago I attended a computer convention at which Ray Bradbury spoke, and I wish I had a transcript of his speech -- he was so logical, so reasonable, so balanced in his discussion of civilization and technology.

Afterward we were told that Mr. B would be happy to sign copies of his books, but not other bits of paper -- the man was not naive about marketing! I had with me my boyhood copy of Fahrenheit 401 and wanted him to sign that. I don't think he was happy about signing a thirty-year-old paperback but he did, and an acquaintance took our picture. The expression on his face very clearly expresses his thought: "Who is this strange man and why couldn't the cheapskate have bothered to buy a new copy of my book in the lobby?"

Tim Horton's

The Drones' Club

Mack Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

The Drones' Club

The FAA is expected to grant permission for public and private entities to fling into the spacious if somewhat crowded skies above the fruited plains of freedom some 30,000 pilotless aircraft to spy on Americans (http://rt.com/usa/news/drone-spying-memo-leaked-088/) in addition to the hundreds flyin’ ‘n’ spyin’ domestically now.  Further, no privacy rights in public or in private are recognized; the Fourth Amendment has, oh, evolved.  And, hey, is that an electronic eye peeking through your bedroom window?

There is some babble about how useful these 30,000 projected drones will be in finding lost hikers, and, sure, if there’s anything the Founding Fathers focused on, it was finding lost hikers.

Indeed, the repeated drone telephone calls that interrupt our days and evenings have repeatedly stressed how important this election is for lost hikers.

The Daily Mail recently published maps of drone-launching sites in use now – there’s one near you: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2134376/Is-drone-neighbourhood-Rise-killer-spy-planes-exposed-FAA-forced-reveal-63-launch-sites-U-S.html. 

The drone looking at you can be as big as a fighter aircraft or as small as a toy rubber-band airplane.  Not only are these almost silent flying Orwellian telescreens capable of face-recognition and wifi intercepts, they can be armed with a catalogue of missiles, machine guns, and death rays.

Thus, when you step outside your door tomorrow morning you can be monitored by a pimply oaf whose online name is Dork Lord of the Thunder-Sith and who perhaps has access to a little red button connected to Newarkfire missiles aboard his remote-control hunter-killer, the USS Steve Jobs.  May it please God he isn’t still traumatized by that late-night hissy-fit-flap in Starbuck’s over Star Trek versus Star Wars.

Once upon a time the skies over America were guarded by brave military airmen who had taken the military oath and who were the products of a culture of honor and integrity.  They protected us by watching for Soviet missiles flying in over the Arctic Circle or from Stooge Castro’s occupied Cuba.

Now we are snooped on by peeping-tom nerds in Pink Floyd tee-shirts.

The greatest risk to a not-a-pilot in some bunker is tennis-finger from playing with his joy-stick (Resist the obvious joke.  Resist it.).

A young man or woman who successfully completes flight training is honored to have a loved one pin his pilot’s wings to his uniform.  A drone-hero asks a guy in an R2D2 costume pin a plastic thumby-toggle-thingie to his knee-pants.

A real pilot returning from a successful mission does a victory roll; a drone-pilot high-fives his Bill Gates poster.

The dialogue in new war movies will certainly be different: “You’ve got an enemy fighter on your tush!” and “We have a decaf triple latte at twelve o’clock high.”

But, seriously, one is sure we need those drones.  After all, private enterprise clearly reads our emails and site accessions now, and governments at all levels can do so if they wish.  If we travel, we are subject to identification checks, strip-searches, and touchy-feely-we’re-not-even-married searches by capos.  All that is left to make control complete is visual spying.  What are you growing in your garden?  Now move your thumb so the Eye can read the complete serial number on your grandpa’s 1955 J. C. Higgins .22.  Where are you going?  Is that a low-flush toilet, comrade?  Let’s check to see if you possess illegal light bulbs.

There is an old hymn about how you’ll never walk alone.  And it is truer than ever.

-30-

No Political Signs on Church Property

Old Ford Truck, Zavalla, Texas

About That Bill Gates Forward...

Mack Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

It’s on the ‘Net; It Must be True

Alexander Graham Bell, a Canadian who was born in Scotland, invented the telephone so that young Americans could use the thing to talk, text, tweet, and twit to each other during high school graduation and thus ignore high school graduation.  Since Mr. Bell never finished school, we may appreciate the layers of irony.

In May of every year, like buzzards returning to wherever it is buzzards return to, tiresome screeds about the ignorance of graduates arrive to roost in one’s in-box. 

One of the most popular is wrongly attributed to Bill Gates, another successful fellow who did not finish school and who does not write silly stuff, and is usually titled “Rules They Didn’t Teach You in School” or some such, and is forwarded by the sort of people who never vote in their local school board elections because they’re too busy complaining.

The idea of hopeless naivete is not true of most high school students, and it’s certainly not true of college students.  Very few graduates ever finish a degree on the mummy-and-daddy nickel, and for those who do, well, good for their mums and dads.

The reality is that most college students work their way through school, usually in minimum-wage jobs and at odd hours.  A student who works the night shift flipping burgers can only wonder about why he is falsely stereotyped as someone who thinks he’s too good to flip burgers.

My daughter spent some college time shoveling (Newark, New Jersey) in a stable.  Hamburgers would have been better.

Any college classroom will feature, yes, a few princesses of both sexes, but they are far outnumbered by folks who know their way around the loading dock, Afghanistan, and hospital wards at 0-Dark-Thirty, and who can wield with great skill an M4, a broom, and a bedpan.

One of my fish English students was a former sergeant who left the Army after sixteen years.  When I asked him why he didn’t finish his twenty he said that after three combat tours in the desert he figured he had pushed his luck enough.

He and his mates studied English literature in a college hydraulics lab because of a shortage of classroom space.  No ivy grew on the equipment.

Two of my students were in their mid-thirties, had been pals from childhood, owned a roofing company, and were nursing students.  In their late thirties, they said they were getting a little old for climbing up on roofs all the year ‘round and were going to sell the company and work in the shade for a while.  I asked them why they didn’t keep the company and spend well-earned time out of the sun by delegating more authority to their employees.  They said that their names were on each roof (metaphorically), and that they would never sign off on a job if they didn’t have first-hand knowledge of each square inch of that roof.

Oh, yeah, some dumb college kids, huh?

Age and experience are good, but they are only predictors: there are adult students who become angry when they are required to show up on time (which, presumably, was required of them on the job) and actually do some work (ditto).  In the same class there can be 18-year-olds demonstrating a far better work ethic (not the one texting behind her Volkswagen-size purse, second seat, second table on the right) than their elders.

In the end, success is almost always the result of an individual’s choice to show up for work, whether on the factory floor or in the classroom, and hit a lick at it.

That is, after the individual takes the tin cricket out of his ear.  In school we were taught that in ye olden days of yore crazy people who stumbled around talking to themselves were kept safely away from others by being chained to a wall somewhere.  We thought that was a bad punishment.  Silly us.

One of life’s lessons – it needn’t come from the classroom – is that stereotyping is wrong.  Just because something’s on the ‘net doesn’t mean it’s true.  Those giddy folks waving their diplomae (“diplomae,” he wrote, for he had been to night school) around and yelling almost surely worked very hard for the moment, both in and out of the classrooms and laboratories.

-30-

Flip This Dancing Storage Unit off Bridezilla Island

Mack Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Flip This Dancing Storage Unit off Bridezilla Island

Viewing reality television is rather like watching Republicans trying to dance to rock music, repulsive and yet somehow fascinating.

A current entertainment is the flatscreening of shaky images of people arguing with each other about other folks’ junk. 

Back in ye olden times television filmmakers hired writers who then generated scripts featuring plot, character, and setting.  Producers then hired actors, cameramen, set designers, electricians, carpenters, and other professionals to put together often-beautiful works of art.

Perhaps the ultimate Hegelian dialectic of television art now would be James Arness, Loretta Young, and Patrick McGoohan shrieking at each other while bidding on a cowboy boot that was once seen in Gilley’s Place, like babushkas squabbling over the last bowl of lentil soup in Petrograd in the winter of 1917.

What might the obsession with abandoned storage units symbolize?

“Look at this, dude – rare monaural recordings of Duke Ellington’s early work!”

“Who’s Duke Ellington?”

“I dunno; I guess we could get something for these old records from the recyclers.  But, hey, look at this old book. Nice leather.  Must be worth something.”

“That’s a Bible; someone will want that for a dashboard decoration, you know, along with fuzzy dice.”

“Okay, we’ll keep that.  Oh, hey, look at all this metal junk.”

“Oh, I know what those are – that’s a hammer, that’s a saw, that’s a folding carpenter’s rule, and those pointy things in that bucket are nails.  I’ve seen pictures of such things on my laptop.”

“But what are they for?”

“Oh, back in the Dark Ages, y’know, in the 1980s, people used them to, like, cut wood, and, like, build and repair their own stuff.”

“Freakin’ primitive, dude!  But how do you plug them in?  Or do they have batteries?”

“No, the cavemen used these things by hand.”

“So did they get to sue someone for that?”

“No, I think I remember being told that they felt fulfilled or something by work and sweat and creativity – totally old school.”

“Wow, that’s like, you know, existential and stuff.  People were, like, so spiritual back in the day when they did stuff with hammers and read books and stuff.”

“What does ‘Made in USA’ mean?”

“Back during the Civil War in the 1930s people used to make their own stuff in this country, polluting the rivers and killing the striped owls or something.”

“That was dumb.  Stuff comes from the mall, and doesn’t pollute.”

“Hey, what’s that covered by dust?”

“This?  Oh, it’s the soul of a civilization.”

“What’s civilization?”

“Oh, art, music, literature, faith – you could look ‘em up on Wonkiepedia.”

“Can we get any money out of it?”

“No.  Old stuff.  Forget it.”

“So the meaning of life is outbidding other people for old golf clubs and record players in an abandoned storage shed?”

“Gosh, dude, you make it sound so inadequate.”

-30-

The Class of 2012

The Class of 2012

On graduation night you’ll sit among
Your friends, a make-the-sponsors-flustered crowd
Of the alphabetized, well-rehearsed young,
Well-shepherded, well-chaperoned - still loud!

And yet, somehow, surprisingly alone
You’ll be, your thoughts spinning wildly, your heart
Aflutter as you stifle a nervous yawn,
Yes, one among many, but still apart.

For this brief hour is when your childhood ends,
An awkward, happy, frightening, joyful truth,
And you must make your way without those friends
Who with your loving family blessed your youth.

But, oh! It’s here, it’s here – up stands your row;
Adjust your cap – it’s time for you to go.

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

James Bond is Assigned a Chaperone

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

James Bond’s Chaperone

The Secret Service is so secret that they’ve got their own web site:

http://www.secretservice.gov/join/index.shtml.  One wonders if they’ve also got their own lingerie catalogue.

The matter of the lads in the Preobrazhensky Regiment doing a geriatric spring break in Bogota, the capital of Colombia, is no secret, either, and like Fyodor Karamazov making goo-goo eyes at a tired waitress at closing time, the matter simply won’t go away.

One of the many problems with the Victoria’s Secret…um…Secret Service is that not even they seem to know their purpose.  An American might infer that the boys in buzz-do’s are assigned to guard the President, but consider these two paragraphs from the SS’s own site:

The United States Secret Service culture is represented through the agency’s five core values: justice, duty, courage, honesty and loyalty. These values, and the Secret Service adage “Worthy of Trust and Confidence,” resonate with each man and woman who has sworn to uphold these principles. Not only do these values foster a culture of success, but they also hold each person to the highest standards of personal and professional integrity.

Because our highly-trained workforce is one of our greatest assets, we empower each individual to realize their full potential and more. The Secret Service offers career growth and opportunities to make your future as dynamic and rewarding as it can be. Those who are dedicated, driven by integrity and welcome unique challenges often find that the Secret Service is a perfect match.

And let The People say: Huh?

The SS has cores that resonate with dynamic thing-ness fostering assets whose potential is dedicated and unique, and, like stuff.

Who wrote this obtuse, cliché’-sodden, Mission Statement drivel?

Shocked, shocked that there are hormones (and possum-poor English usage) going on in here, our otherwise let-it-all-Bill-Clinton-out government is suffering its quadrennial election-year spasm of Puritanism and has promulgated a Willy Wonka list for the superannuated frat boys who trifle with girls’ hearts while carrying weapons.

The first rule is that on overseas trips the SS agents must not have foreigners in their rooms.

You see, there’s already a problem here.  If you are a Yank visiting, say, Liechtenstein, you are the foreigner.  One is reminded of the Bill Mauldin cartoon of Willie and Joe on pass in Paris and remarking “Did you ever see so many foreigners in all your life?”

The second rule is that SS agents may not patronize “non-reputable” (minus two points for not writing “disreputable”) establishments.  Y’know, back in the day that would have pretty much put all of San Diego’s Lower Broadway off limits.

The next three rules detail drinking.  Excuse me, ma’am, but shouldn’t a forty-year-old SS agent pretty much know how to order a single glass of wine with dinner, go to bed early (and alone), and behave himself?  And if not, why have you given a drunk guy weapons and turned him loose among our nation’s friends?

Another new rule advises the Boys Gone Wild that from now on they will be accompanied by a chaperone.  This leads one to consider whether our we’re-a-world-power government is clear on the distinction between the Praetorian Guard and a high school marching band trip to Waco:

“Okay, kids, ten more minutes in the pool and then room check and weapons check.”

“Jimmy, you left your shoulder-held, gas-operated, fully automatic M4 in the lobby again!  I am so tired of picking up after you!”

“No, Billy, you won’t need your concussion grenades at breakfast.”

“You forgot your shoulder holster, Bobby?  But all the other agents remembered their shoulder holsters.”

“No, Timmy, filling the French president’s office with clown balloons would not be funny.”

“Biff, you were told very clearly to bring along tear gas, not poison gas.  And you think you lost those canisters where?”

In all seriousness, any nation’s leader is a target for evil.  The President should be protected.  To this end he should reassign his current Streltsy to parking-lot duty and hire some old-fashioned street cops for the White House grounds and a couple of no-b…um…no-nonsense Army or Marine sergeants for his trips.

-30-

Courthouse Square, Jasper

Verizon: Massive FAIL

A lovely photograph of a foggy street scene in Jasper should be here; I suppose, as the Chorus in Henry V says, you can picture it in your imagination.

And picture this: Verizon lies. 

Alyssa

Verizon Spent Some Ten Minutes of the Customer's Time...

...scrolled a green bar bar back and forth, and STILL did not paste a really nice picture. 

Thanks for nothin', Verizon.

"Sam" at the Verizon kiosk at the mall lies.

Jasper, Texas

Scripture and Marlboros

English Ivy

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

English Ivy

Why do some call this vine an English ivy?

Does it wear tweeds, call for a cup of tea,
And tut-tut over a pipe and The Times?
But far away from England climbs this vine,
Far up the bark and branches of an oak
Wanting to see, perhaps, the spring-blue sky,
A squirrel’s nest, the perfect leaf, a bird
Spying on the curious cats below,
On pups in happy repose, tummies up
To the dog-friendly sun. 

                                       O peaceful vine!

Your contract is renewed each day without
An interview, evaluation, or
The filing of an annual report.
You play your days in leafy-green ascent,
Dependant on your sturdy tree, yourself
A pastoral road for ladybugs and ants,
The occasional ceremonial worm
Or caterpillar; an auditor of
The coos and whos and cawks and squawks and trills
There cooed and who’d and cawk’d and squawked and trilled
By merry jays and robins, mockingbirds,
And silly, so-sad-seeming whippoorwills.
Oh, ivy, glad indeed, to celebrate
Your liturgical seasons dutifully!