11.18.2012, You Own That Hostess Twinkie

Mack Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

You Own That Hostess Twinkie®

 

If you were to say “Hostess CupCake®” this week, folks might reasonably think you were alluding to any of the industrial-strength, military-groupie housewives associated with some of this nation’s free-range, untamed-heart generals, steely-eyed men focused on the mission.

 

Hostess CupCakes® were made of chocolate with a gooey white center, and featured a glazed top with a series of white squiggles.  Other companies now make similar sugar-bombs, but the Hostess CupCake®, although modified in the 1950s, enjoyed a history dating back to 1919.

 

If you want a chocolate cupcake you’ll have to go with another brand, for Hostess, purveyors of hollow calories to generations, is no more.  The bakers’ union blames the company, and the company blames the bakers’ union.  Perhaps we should all just get along and agree that the demise of Hostess Brands is George Bush’s fault.

 

Y’r ‘umble scrivener went looking for a Hostess CupCake® last week, though he hadn’t had one since his boyhood.  He considered enjoying a last trip down amnesia lane as a salute to TWA, J. C. Higgins, PanAm, Westinghouse, Studebaker, Woolworth’s, Philco, Lone Star Beer, Kodak, Marx toys, and the concept of America as a wealthy nation.  Alas that he found none, for in the afternoon the online auctions were dealing in Hostess products for thousands of dollars.

 

Thus, if you see your child enjoying a delicious Hostess product, yank it out of his mouth, give him a can of nutritious asparagus, and hie thee (or Ho Ho® thee) to the internet.

 

Just in time for the holidays, 18,500 former Hostess employees are now looking for work more meaningful than selling their old uniforms or some leftover Twinkies® wrappers on the ‘net.  Their resumes’ don’t boast of honorary consulships, parties in Tampa, jetting around the world in the government executive jets their taxes paid for, dining with General So-and-So, schmoozing with Secretary Thus-and-Such, Harvard MBAs, or book deals.  Their union probably didn’t do them any good, but neither did the unnecessarily high price of utilities and transport, punitive tax structures for businesses and workers, over-regulation, a culture that despises workers, and the hemorrhaging of what remains of our economy by dropping expensive explosive toys in undeclared wars protecting people who hate our guts and our Hostess CupCakes® but who love to take our bribes. 

 

Perhaps at Christmas the unemployed former Hostess and associated workers can trudge through the snow to let their children peer through the windows of the government mansions of our government leaders and look at the Christmas trees and gifts they can never enjoy themselves before making their forlorn way to Christmas dinner at a soup kitchen.  As they say Grace they might perhaps hear the roar of yet another government executive jet flying yet another government executive to a wine-tasting tour of Australia or to a government executive conference in Switzerland or France.  The unemployed mom or dad can point to the vapor trail and tell the cold, hungry child “You own that.”

 

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First Methodist Church, Kirbyville

First Methodist, Kirbyville

Not very old, these stones; still, old enough

To witness as a careful heap the faith

Of men who saw the sun go down in France

As German shells sought out the living dead

Along ancient rivers that Charlemagne knew;

Of those who marked high noon by the sawmill,

Whose whistle shrilled far out into the fields;

The careless youths of a happier time

Whispering in Sunday school the dusty plot

Of yesterday’s Roy Rogers matinee;

The Women’s Society of Christian Service:

Gloves, purses, hats, dresses in flowered prints,

Those Vestal matrons in charge of What’s Right,

Setting men, boys, and coffee cups in order,

And the occasional minister, too.

The feasts and seasons pass, and so do we,

Remembered briefly in old photographs

On the wall of the Beeler Bible Class,

And the seasons turn ‘round again, and life

Renews, each Easter and Christmas,

The ordained rhythm of the universe

Until unknowing time itself is unknown.

The stones of our little parish age well,

Almost golden now, in the morning sun,

Following the seasons along with us;

The stones remember all, and if required,

As Jesus said, will sing the Truth aloud:

These, too, are the stones of Jerusalem.

And They Call the Wind Tiffany

Mack Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

And They Call the Wind Tiffany

The Weather Channel (D - Georgia), for reasons best known to its coven of Global Warmingistas, is going to name winter storms.

The Weather Channel, which really was founded as a weather channel, has since evolved into infotainment and ideology, and like most ideologies doesn’t tolerate dissent, so you’d better agree to the naming and to the names if you don’t want trouble.

Naming a storm could present legal problems: if The Weather Channel names a cold front Anastasia and you insist on calling it Bob, does The Weather Channel have a case against you?  And if you wish to name your child Anastasia, do you have to pay The Weather Channel copyright fees?

Perhaps other telly shows will begin naming meteorological features.  The Military Channel could name tomorrow morning’s sunrise General Patton while MSNBC calls it PeeWee Herman.  The Western Channel might brand a light overcast James Arness, while Fox News honors a heavy snow as Herman Cain.

General Motors might insist that the moon© is now the Volt©. 

The Weather Channel has issued its manifesto naming this winter’s storms

(http://www.weather.com/news/winter-storm-names-20121001): Athena, Brutus, Caesar, Draco, Euclid, Freyr, Gandolf, Helen, Iago, Jove, Khan, Luna, Magnus, Nemo, Orko, Plato, Q, Rocky, Saturn, Triton, Ukko, Virgil, Walda, Xerxes, Yogi, Zeus.

This list is provisional, since it has not yet been granted a nihil obstat by Representative Sheila Jackson Lee (D – Texas).

Too bad there’s not a Snooki, but maybe next year.

The reader might become excited about Yogi, thinking Jellystone National Park’s favorite bear was finally to be recognized for his many gifts to American culture, but The Weather Channel advises us that their Yogi is for one who does yoga. 

Iago is for most folks the Spanish for James, as in Saint James / Santiago, but The Weather Channel will have none of that Christian nonsense – their Iago is the villain in Shakespeare’s Othello. 

Draco is for the Athenian lawgiver, but The Weather Channel may not be aware that Draco’s laws (“Draconian”) favored the death penalty for most crimes, even for stealing a cabbage (http://ancienthistory.about.com/cs/greecehellas1/a/cylonanddraco_3.htm), and slavery for something less than stealing a cabbage, but only for the peasants; the nobility got a better deal from Draco.

What do we name The Weather Channel itself?  She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed?

In the delightful comic strip Hi and Lois, the youngest child, Trixie, still a rug-rat, greets the morning sun sharing her floor by singing out “Hi, sunbeam!”

A progressive, modern mother would of course put a stop to this nature stuff by drawing the blinds and setting Trixie before flickering images of America’s nasal-pitched answer to Oxford and Cambridge, Big Bird.

And then The Weather Channel would impose upon the sunbeam a progressive, modern name from an approved list respecting the delicate sensitivities of the loudest non-reader available.

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Not Exactly James Bond

Mack Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Not Exactly James Bond

Last week local police found a Secret Service agent passed-out-drunk on a Miami sidewalk.  Perhaps he had shaken, not stirred, one vodka martini too many.

Now we know what spy novels mean by a sleeper agent.

Who’s in charge of the Secret Service these days?  Jerry Springer?

The police found the agent despite the early morning darkness by tracing his Get Smart shoe phone through the ring tone: “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky-Tonk Angels.”

Pop culture says a Secret Service agent must be ready to take a bullet for the President, but who knew that said bullet might be a Silver Bullet? 

When Secret Service agents are on an operation, do they need a designated driver?

And how did the Miami police know that the cocktail commando was a secret agent?  Why, that information was readily available on the spirited man’s official Secret Service identity card.

Did the Secret Service agent’s identity card feature a secret glow-in-the-dark compass, a secret key to a secret code, and a secret Sergeant Preston of the Yukon map?

The Secret Service isn’t really all that secret anyway; they have their own web site: http://www.secretservice.gov/join/who.shtml. 

Maybe some of us have watched too many Patrick McGoohan films, but shouldn’t a Secret Service agent try to be, well, you know, secret?  Is snoring in the street in an alcoholic stupor while carrying a Junior G-Man identification card the most subtle way to infiltrate The Hidden Fortress of the Secret Seven? 

Earlier this year, in an episode of Guys Gone Wild, a number of Secret Service frat boys…um…agents got caught with their bulletproof vests down in South America. 

If they keep behaving like this, the Secret Service may soon be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

The Secret Service is involved in several aspects of federal law enforcement, but they are best known for protecting presidents, vice-presidents, former presidents, presidential candidates, and their families. 

As of late the President appears to be tired and worried, even haggard, and naturally one attributes this to the burdens of office and to a challenging re-election campaign.  But perhaps the reality is that the President is losing sleep because the snoring of his Secret Service keeps him awake at night.

-30-

Chris and Deedra's Porch

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Chris and Deedra’s Porch

Porch-exiled with our beer and cigarettes

We firmly urged the dogs, dead wasps, and heat
To move a bit and make some room for us.
There was no evening cool, no hope of it,
No hope in anything, and there we sank
Into drought-dusty, disreputable old chairs,
Surrendered to the heat and beer and smokes,
Avoided thinking about the death-still dusk.
But then a gentle tease, a gentle breeze
Came wafting coolly from across the fields
Only for a moment, and was gone again,
Not cruelly but of kindness, just a note,
A fairy’s note, soft-whispered through a leaf,
A hymn for exiles, a song of autumn.

Vigil of the Assumption

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Vigil of the Assumption

We will forever venerate our Queen,

Whom God Himself chose happily to be
His Mother, and the Mother of us all.
Each orphaned soul, rejected by mankind,
Adrift among the sloshing, foul debris
Of counsels falsely hissed behind the leaves
Must know that in the wild, sin-howling nights
Of desolation, clutching to himself
The fragments of his failed humanity,
Even so, his loving Mother comes to him,
To tend, to heal, to love, to hold in trust
For God this child of Hers, condemned by time.

Alternative Prayer Before a Crucifix

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Alternative Prayer Before a Crucifix

Our little plastic boxes glow and blink,

They wink, they clink, they link; they almost think -
Until the tenuous connections fail
To silence blown by the January gale,
And we are left in still, cold darkness there:
A candle, a Crucifix, and a prayer.

Night Class

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Night Class

The moonless night presents a nothingness,

As flickering cones of yellow light pursue
Pale wraiths and shadows through the conifers.
The radio hisses in its loneliness,
While miles and hours in meditation pass;
The coffee cup from several towns ago
Is empty now; its caffeine promises
Have faded like a statesman’s solemn vows
While Byron, Shelley, and Keats, in repose
Between the covers of a Moby Book,
Await those even later, owlish hours,
Then to renew their pleynts against the past.

Frogs x 2

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Frogs of August

After surprising summer showers in

A time of heat and dust and lethargy,
Forth from their hidden reptilian repose
The frogs of August rise, and sing a hymn,
A joyful hymn to rain and tasty bugs.

The Pickwickian toad sings of himself,

A stout old gentleman of means and thrift;

The bluff and hearty bullfrog by the pond

Bellows his boasts, and puffs his own praises.

Preferring window screens to rain-damp leaves,

The tiny tree frog trills his outsized voice.

The disparate, dissonant descantations
Of this catalogue of errant froggery
Drift in and out of transient harmony
And back again, an ancient unity
To please the late-night wanderer of hours.

 

O Ye of Little Frog 

For those who deny that frogs sing to God

O ye of little faith in night’s mysteries
Oft hasten to explain away God’s arts,
And dampen joys with your false-writ histories
Believing in dull books, and not your hearts.

You claim that frogs sing only to gain mates,

Based on some long-dead dullard’s science log,
Claiming the last word on reptilian traits -
What do you know of the love-life of a frog?

You might then with equal injustice claim

That Compline is sung in order to attract
Women – but is that Saint Benedict’s aim?
Poor frogs and monks sing hymns; and that’s a fact!