Sunday, December 22, 2013
For our Mothers on Christmas Eve
Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
For our Mothers on Christmas Eve
Beyond all other nights, on this strange Night,
A strangers’ star, a silent, seeking star,
Helps set the wreckage of our souls aright:
It leads us to a stable door ajar.
And we are not alone in peeking in:
An ox, an ass, a lamb, some shepherds, too -
Bright star without; a brighter Light within
We children see the Truth three Wise Men knew.
For we are children there in Bethlehem
Soft-shivering in that winter long ago
We watch and listen there, in star-light dim,
In cold Judea, in a soft, soft snow.
The Stable and the Star, yes, we believe:
Our mothers sing us there each Christmas Eve.
Christmas in the China Seas
Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Christmas in the China Seas
In the run-up to Christmas, cult leaders Martha Stewart and Kim Jong Un have both reduced their staffs.
Martha Stewart gave some 100 of her employees more time to spend with their families this holiday season by sacking them. Kim Jong Un will miss seeing his favorite uncle and political advisor at the festive board; Kim had the old man shot.
And their remaining followers all said “it’s a good thing™.” Or else.
Will Martha Stewart and Kim Jong Un’s surviving office staffs play Secret Santa this year?
What does the pudgy little dictator do for Christmas after he’s pruned his gift list by one relative? Perhaps he could buy one of those snuggie-blankie-thingies as advertised on the Orwellian telescreen and cuddle up with his good buddy Dennis Rodman while they watch It’s a Wonderful Life in the Communist translation, It’s a Miserable Death.
“Wow, Uncle Jang sure would enjoy the scene where Jimmy Stewart has Mr. Potter executed. Oh…wait…!”
“What’s up, man?” asks Dennis.
“Dang!” replies Kim Jong Un. “I just realized that I mixed up my death list with my gift list! I so hate it when that happens. Okay, so I’ve got a new Y-Box I don’t need. Can you use it?”
Martha might conjure up some chips and dips recycled from leftover snacks found in her former employees’ desks and garnished with bitter gall and a smile. Then she and the boys could pose at the gate to one of Dear Leader’s death camps for a look-at-us-ain’t-we-cute selfie complete with duck lips while all the generals clap desperately.
In North Korea, inadequate clapping is a neglect of social principle, and neglect of social principle is punishable by firing squad, having to hold still and wait for mortar rounds, or, on especially merry occasions, being eaten by hungry neighbors. The generals clap desperately.
On Christmas morning John Kerry, who says he was wounded three times in Viet-Nam, might swiftly boat up the river to join the party, with John Kerry Wounded Three Times in Viet-Nam™ tees (each featuring a patented glow-in-the-dark Purple Heart) for everyone. This will cause a row because Kim Jong Un’s gifts are Kim Jong Un™ tees, featuring Dear Leader Himself sporting a cool Che Guevera™ beret. At this point, Martha Stewart™ will quickly dial the USA to see if there’s a clause stipulating her cut on Kerry and Un tees in her many contracts with department stores. The generals clap desperately.
Following Christmas dinner, and the jolly throwing of the leftovers to the starving liberated people on the pointy ends of the bayonets, the party could take a cruise downriver to the several China Seas to fire missiles over Japan and watch the Chinese Navy and the United States Navy playing bumper-boats. The generals clap desperately.
You’re right – it’s not funny. How many young Americans home for Christmas will die before next Christmas in yet another undeclared war? Japan, China, Viet-Nam, Cambodia, Taiwan, South Korea, and North Korea take turns menacing each other and despising the American people who stand in lines to buy their junk. Our government appears to feel that 19-year-old Americans are disposable foreign aid that will somehow make other nations hold hands, get along, and approve of us.
One wonders if our generals are clapping desperately.
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
Christmas in the China Seas
In the run-up to Christmas, cult leaders Martha Stewart and Kim Jong Un have both reduced their staffs.
Martha Stewart gave some 100 of her employees more time to spend with their families this holiday season by sacking them. Kim Jong Un will miss seeing his favorite uncle and political advisor at the festive board; Kim had the old man shot.
And their remaining followers all said “it’s a good thing™.” Or else.
Will Martha Stewart and Kim Jong Un’s surviving office staffs play Secret Santa this year?
What does the pudgy little dictator do for Christmas after he’s pruned his gift list by one relative? Perhaps he could buy one of those snuggie-blankie-thingies as advertised on the Orwellian telescreen and cuddle up with his good buddy Dennis Rodman while they watch It’s a Wonderful Life in the Communist translation, It’s a Miserable Death.
“Wow, Uncle Jang sure would enjoy the scene where Jimmy Stewart has Mr. Potter executed. Oh…wait…!”
“What’s up, man?” asks Dennis.
“Dang!” replies Kim Jong Un. “I just realized that I mixed up my death list with my gift list! I so hate it when that happens. Okay, so I’ve got a new Y-Box I don’t need. Can you use it?”
Martha might conjure up some chips and dips recycled from leftover snacks found in her former employees’ desks and garnished with bitter gall and a smile. Then she and the boys could pose at the gate to one of Dear Leader’s death camps for a look-at-us-ain’t-we-cute selfie complete with duck lips while all the generals clap desperately.
In North Korea, inadequate clapping is a neglect of social principle, and neglect of social principle is punishable by firing squad, having to hold still and wait for mortar rounds, or, on especially merry occasions, being eaten by hungry neighbors. The generals clap desperately.
On Christmas morning John Kerry, who says he was wounded three times in Viet-Nam, might swiftly boat up the river to join the party, with John Kerry Wounded Three Times in Viet-Nam™ tees (each featuring a patented glow-in-the-dark Purple Heart) for everyone. This will cause a row because Kim Jong Un’s gifts are Kim Jong Un™ tees, featuring Dear Leader Himself sporting a cool Che Guevera™ beret. At this point, Martha Stewart™ will quickly dial the USA to see if there’s a clause stipulating her cut on Kerry and Un tees in her many contracts with department stores. The generals clap desperately.
Following Christmas dinner, and the jolly throwing of the leftovers to the starving liberated people on the pointy ends of the bayonets, the party could take a cruise downriver to the several China Seas to fire missiles over Japan and watch the Chinese Navy and the United States Navy playing bumper-boats. The generals clap desperately.
You’re right – it’s not funny. How many young Americans home for Christmas will die before next Christmas in yet another undeclared war? Japan, China, Viet-Nam, Cambodia, Taiwan, South Korea, and North Korea take turns menacing each other and despising the American people who stand in lines to buy their junk. Our government appears to feel that 19-year-old Americans are disposable foreign aid that will somehow make other nations hold hands, get along, and approve of us.
One wonders if our generals are clapping desperately.
-30-
A Watching Star
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
A Watching Star
On Christmas Eve in Bethlehem the Holy Family were put through a rough time, but they were spared moderns on MyMyMyFaceSpaceBook telling them how they got it all wrong: that science proves the Star could not have been there at that time, or that the Holy Family were cave-dwellers, or that someone’s misreading of this text or that inscription conclusively proves that, oh, a species of now-extinct giant hamsters, not oxen, were present.
Someone once said of a 2,000-year-old teaching “Well, maybe we’ve gotten it wrong for 2,000 years.”
How casually old stories and transcendent truths are tossed away.
No one has yet proposed that the shepherds weren’t present on that Night of all nights. They saw a Star and angels, not tweets or twerks, and in obedience to God, not to fashion, walked across the hills to see and to worship.
The conventions of advertising tell us that Christmas is only about really nice houses in the middle of snowy landscapes, and that people riding about in horse-drawn sleighs visit each other while laden with Orwellian telescreens and bottles of liquids labeled champagne (of the sort aged in railway tank cars for days), while some holly and lights and impossibly happy children hang about looking enthusiastically merry. Everyone, by the script, is home for the holidays.
In reality, on Christmas Eve a great many people aren’t home to hang socks on fireplace mantles. Just like the hotelier who had no room, and the shepherds watching their sheep, caretakers and guardians are out and about beneath our lesser stars: if the power fails, linemen will be out and up high in the cold and storms making it work again. Police will be on patrol because crime, too, will be on patrol, and hospitals, fire departments, railways, communications, air traffic control, and all the other necessities of a complex civilization will operating because a nation can’t simply turn off the lights for the night. Young sailors, Marines, soldiers, and airmen posted from Frozenb*tt Air Force Base in North Dakota to some rocky pit in Afghanistan must be awake and doing.
They are all our watchers, making our Christmas safe, and may that eternal Star shine upon them always.
-30-
Sunday, December 8, 2013
How do You Solve a Problem Like Maria Critics?
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
How do You Solve a Problem like Maria Critics?
Last week Carrie Underwood was told, over and over, that she isn’t John Wayne. Or was it someone else she was told she’s not?
NBC and the legal entity that holds the rights to the literary estates of Rodgers and Hammerstein recently staged and televised a live production of The Sound of Music. There is nothing surprising in this; TSOM was a big Broadway production fifty years ago, and continues to be a popular show performed by professionals and amateurs.
Most people, though, know the songs and story through the 1965 film version starring Julie Andrews, who isn’t Mary Martin, the first not-really-Maria. And for the devout faithful, the film is forever ossified as the only production of The Sound of Music there ever was, that there was no TSOM before and by all that’s holy in blue hair rinse there shall never be another.
Carrie Underwood is indeed not Julie Andrews (both of them probably know that), and Julie Andrews is not Mary Martin, and Mary Martin is not the real Maria, just as (we’re being almost algebraic here) Jude Law is not Kenneth Branagh, and Kenneth Branagh is not Laurence Olivier, and Laurence Olivier is not the real Henry V.
For those who live in a never-neverland where it is forever 1965, the cry is “Sede vacantes!” They want their Maria mummified and locked away in an emotional crypt. Their doomsday rule is that a cute Anglican girl from England is the sole anointed one to sing the role of a cute Catholic girl from Austria, and that a cute Baptist girl from Oklahoma is verboten.
Happily, Maria Von Trapp, Rodgers and Hammerstein, their heirs, and their successors have never seen it that way. People involved with the various productions have not always agreed with details, but none of ‘em wants to turn off the gold that flows from them thar hills in Austria. The yodeling will continue, and many young women will don Maria’s Dirndlgewand and sing about larks and hills while dancing on stages in New York and Peoria and at local high schools for a long, long time to come.
The first Maria, the real one, famously got on very well with the third Maria, Julie Andrews, who in her turn gave her imprimatur and nihil obstat to Carrie Underwood. And y’know, if Julie Andrews says you can sing, well, you can take that to the bank in dollars, euros, or do-re-mi.
In the event, Carrie Underwood was smashing. For three hours, live, with no possibility of re-takes, she was Maria, singing, dancing, and acting among the stage hills and the stage chateau and through numerous set, lighting, and costume changes. Her voice is indeed a little bit country, but then she is a country girl, as was the original Maria.
Not all the cast were as well chosen – what’s with the almost middle-aged Rolfe in those silly shorts? – but Mother Abbess and Baroness Schroeder are outstanding. Audra McDonald (Mother Abbess) studied at Juilliard and has a lengthy resume’ of solid accomplishments on stage and on the Orwellian telescreen. She projects wisdom and benevolence with great skill. Laura Benanti (Baroness) vamps, flirts, and slithers through her role as a predator, clearly enjoying herself immensely. McDonald and Benanti’s classically trained voices are a perfect counterpoint to Carrie Underwoods’ Great Plains voice, all of them making a series of delightful songs all the better.
Stage sets are usually minimalist because of the limitations of space and the desire to focus on characterization and plot. The producers of TSOM 13 took a chance and built a series of realistic and connecting sets that really challenged the actors’ blocking and the cameras’ movements, and made it work. The miniature hillside does look stagey -- because it’s a stage – but the scenes set in the solar or garden room of Von Trapp’s mansion are redolent of Maxfield Parrish, especially in the use of gold and blue in the lighting. These scenes of a dreamy, Pre-Raphaelite world contrast with the menacing progressivism of the Nazis.
This contrast is fulfilled in the festival scene with intrusive technology, such as the microphone, and the series of huge swastika hangings in primary colors almost overwhelming the Von Trapp family in subdued clothing as they sing truth to power. Earlier in the play Max Dettweiler repeatedly urged the family to move with the times, to adapt, to compromise, and now with the usurpation of state power by National Socialism they are commanded to. Singing “Edelweiss” with its images of nature and innocence is their act of defiance.
Carrie and company gave us a great production, and the old grouches in the balcony don’t possess a veto over excellence. The irony is that in a generation or so when a new group makes a new film or Orwellian telescreen, perhaps The Sound of Music 2063, critics then will fault the new Maria for not being Carrie Underwood.
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
How do You Solve a Problem like Maria Critics?
Last week Carrie Underwood was told, over and over, that she isn’t John Wayne. Or was it someone else she was told she’s not?
NBC and the legal entity that holds the rights to the literary estates of Rodgers and Hammerstein recently staged and televised a live production of The Sound of Music. There is nothing surprising in this; TSOM was a big Broadway production fifty years ago, and continues to be a popular show performed by professionals and amateurs.
Most people, though, know the songs and story through the 1965 film version starring Julie Andrews, who isn’t Mary Martin, the first not-really-Maria. And for the devout faithful, the film is forever ossified as the only production of The Sound of Music there ever was, that there was no TSOM before and by all that’s holy in blue hair rinse there shall never be another.
Carrie Underwood is indeed not Julie Andrews (both of them probably know that), and Julie Andrews is not Mary Martin, and Mary Martin is not the real Maria, just as (we’re being almost algebraic here) Jude Law is not Kenneth Branagh, and Kenneth Branagh is not Laurence Olivier, and Laurence Olivier is not the real Henry V.
For those who live in a never-neverland where it is forever 1965, the cry is “Sede vacantes!” They want their Maria mummified and locked away in an emotional crypt. Their doomsday rule is that a cute Anglican girl from England is the sole anointed one to sing the role of a cute Catholic girl from Austria, and that a cute Baptist girl from Oklahoma is verboten.
Happily, Maria Von Trapp, Rodgers and Hammerstein, their heirs, and their successors have never seen it that way. People involved with the various productions have not always agreed with details, but none of ‘em wants to turn off the gold that flows from them thar hills in Austria. The yodeling will continue, and many young women will don Maria’s Dirndlgewand and sing about larks and hills while dancing on stages in New York and Peoria and at local high schools for a long, long time to come.
The first Maria, the real one, famously got on very well with the third Maria, Julie Andrews, who in her turn gave her imprimatur and nihil obstat to Carrie Underwood. And y’know, if Julie Andrews says you can sing, well, you can take that to the bank in dollars, euros, or do-re-mi.
In the event, Carrie Underwood was smashing. For three hours, live, with no possibility of re-takes, she was Maria, singing, dancing, and acting among the stage hills and the stage chateau and through numerous set, lighting, and costume changes. Her voice is indeed a little bit country, but then she is a country girl, as was the original Maria.
Not all the cast were as well chosen – what’s with the almost middle-aged Rolfe in those silly shorts? – but Mother Abbess and Baroness Schroeder are outstanding. Audra McDonald (Mother Abbess) studied at Juilliard and has a lengthy resume’ of solid accomplishments on stage and on the Orwellian telescreen. She projects wisdom and benevolence with great skill. Laura Benanti (Baroness) vamps, flirts, and slithers through her role as a predator, clearly enjoying herself immensely. McDonald and Benanti’s classically trained voices are a perfect counterpoint to Carrie Underwoods’ Great Plains voice, all of them making a series of delightful songs all the better.
Stage sets are usually minimalist because of the limitations of space and the desire to focus on characterization and plot. The producers of TSOM 13 took a chance and built a series of realistic and connecting sets that really challenged the actors’ blocking and the cameras’ movements, and made it work. The miniature hillside does look stagey -- because it’s a stage – but the scenes set in the solar or garden room of Von Trapp’s mansion are redolent of Maxfield Parrish, especially in the use of gold and blue in the lighting. These scenes of a dreamy, Pre-Raphaelite world contrast with the menacing progressivism of the Nazis.
This contrast is fulfilled in the festival scene with intrusive technology, such as the microphone, and the series of huge swastika hangings in primary colors almost overwhelming the Von Trapp family in subdued clothing as they sing truth to power. Earlier in the play Max Dettweiler repeatedly urged the family to move with the times, to adapt, to compromise, and now with the usurpation of state power by National Socialism they are commanded to. Singing “Edelweiss” with its images of nature and innocence is their act of defiance.
Carrie and company gave us a great production, and the old grouches in the balcony don’t possess a veto over excellence. The irony is that in a generation or so when a new group makes a new film or Orwellian telescreen, perhaps The Sound of Music 2063, critics then will fault the new Maria for not being Carrie Underwood.
-30-
Monday, December 2, 2013
The Sky to Moc Hoa
Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
The Sky to Moc Hoa
The sky to Moc Hoa is hazily blue,
Layered between Heaven and heat. The damp
Rots even the air with the menace of death.
The ground below, all green and holed, dies too;
It seems to gasp: You will not live, young lad,
You will not live to read your books or dream
About a little room, a fire, a pipe,
A chair, a pen, a dog, a truth-told poem
Flung courteously in manuscript pages
Upon a coffee-stained table, halo’d
In a 60-watt puddle of lamp-light.
You skinny, stupid kid. You will not live.
Then circling, and circling again, again,
Searching, perhaps, for festive rotting meals,
Down-spinning, fear-spinning onto Moc Hoa,
Palm trees, iron roofs, spinning in a dead sun,
Spinning up to a swing-ship spinning down.
A square of iron matting in a green marsh,
Hot, green, wet, fetid with old Samsara.
Gunboats diesel across the Van Co Tay,
Little green gunboats, red nylon mail sacks,
Engines, cheery yells, sloshing mud, heat, rot.
Mail sacks off, mail sacks on, men off, men on,
Dark blades beating against the heavy heat,
The door gunners, the pilot impatient.
All clear to lift, heads down, humans crouching
Ape-like against the grass, against the slime
In sweating, stinking, slinking, feral fear
As the dragon-blades roar and finally fly,
And the beaten grass and beaten men
Now stand again erect in gasping heat,
Some silent in a new and fearful world.
You will not live, young hero; you will die.
What then of Dostoyevsky and Chekhov?
What then of your Modern Library editions,
A dollar each at the Stars & Stripes store
Far away and long ago in DaNang,
All marked and underlined? What is the point?
What then of your notebook scribbled with words,
Your weak attempts at poetry? So sad,
So irrelevant in the nights of death.
The corpses on the gunboat decks won’t care,
Their flare-lit faces staring into smoke
At 0-Two-Damned Thirty in the morning –
Of what truth or beauty are your words to them?
You haven’t any words anyway;
They’re out of movies and books, all of them.
What truth can adventure-story words speak
To corpses with their eyes eaten away?
Write your used emotions onto a page;
You haven’t any emotions anyway;
They’re out of the past, all of them.
What truth can used emotions speak to death?
So sling your useless gear aboard the boat:
A seabag of utilities, clean socks,
Letters, a pocket knife, a Rosary,
Some underwear, some dreams, and lots of books.
And board yourself. Try not to fall, to drown,
To be a floating, bloating, eyeless face.
Not yet. Think of your books, your words. Look up:
The sky to Moc Hoa is hazily blue.
Notes:
1. Moc Hoa, pronounced Mock Wah -- a town on the Vam Co Tay River near the border with Cambodia.
2. “Young lad” or “lad” – employed sarcastically of recruits by chief petty officers.
3. “Young hero” – employed sarcastically of recruits by chief petty officers and of Navy Corpsman in Field Medical Service School by Marine sergeant-instructors.
4. Utilities – heavy, olive-drab, 1950s style Marine Corps battle-dress issued to Navy personnel on their way to Viet-Nam. Too darned hot. I had to scrounge lighter clothing from which the blood never completely washed out.
5. Samsara – in some Eastern religions, Samsara is the ocean of birth and death.
6. Gunboats – here, PBRs, or Patrol Boat, River. The history and characteristics of this excellent craft and its use in river warfare are well documented.
Mhall46184@aol.com
The Sky to Moc Hoa
The sky to Moc Hoa is hazily blue,
Layered between Heaven and heat. The damp
Rots even the air with the menace of death.
The ground below, all green and holed, dies too;
It seems to gasp: You will not live, young lad,
You will not live to read your books or dream
About a little room, a fire, a pipe,
A chair, a pen, a dog, a truth-told poem
Flung courteously in manuscript pages
Upon a coffee-stained table, halo’d
In a 60-watt puddle of lamp-light.
You skinny, stupid kid. You will not live.
Then circling, and circling again, again,
Searching, perhaps, for festive rotting meals,
Down-spinning, fear-spinning onto Moc Hoa,
Palm trees, iron roofs, spinning in a dead sun,
Spinning up to a swing-ship spinning down.
A square of iron matting in a green marsh,
Hot, green, wet, fetid with old Samsara.
Gunboats diesel across the Van Co Tay,
Little green gunboats, red nylon mail sacks,
Engines, cheery yells, sloshing mud, heat, rot.
Mail sacks off, mail sacks on, men off, men on,
Dark blades beating against the heavy heat,
The door gunners, the pilot impatient.
All clear to lift, heads down, humans crouching
Ape-like against the grass, against the slime
In sweating, stinking, slinking, feral fear
As the dragon-blades roar and finally fly,
And the beaten grass and beaten men
Now stand again erect in gasping heat,
Some silent in a new and fearful world.
You will not live, young hero; you will die.
What then of Dostoyevsky and Chekhov?
What then of your Modern Library editions,
A dollar each at the Stars & Stripes store
Far away and long ago in DaNang,
All marked and underlined? What is the point?
What then of your notebook scribbled with words,
Your weak attempts at poetry? So sad,
So irrelevant in the nights of death.
The corpses on the gunboat decks won’t care,
Their flare-lit faces staring into smoke
At 0-Two-Damned Thirty in the morning –
Of what truth or beauty are your words to them?
You haven’t any words anyway;
They’re out of movies and books, all of them.
What truth can adventure-story words speak
To corpses with their eyes eaten away?
Write your used emotions onto a page;
You haven’t any emotions anyway;
They’re out of the past, all of them.
What truth can used emotions speak to death?
So sling your useless gear aboard the boat:
A seabag of utilities, clean socks,
Letters, a pocket knife, a Rosary,
Some underwear, some dreams, and lots of books.
And board yourself. Try not to fall, to drown,
To be a floating, bloating, eyeless face.
Not yet. Think of your books, your words. Look up:
The sky to Moc Hoa is hazily blue.
Notes:
1. Moc Hoa, pronounced Mock Wah -- a town on the Vam Co Tay River near the border with Cambodia.
2. “Young lad” or “lad” – employed sarcastically of recruits by chief petty officers.
3. “Young hero” – employed sarcastically of recruits by chief petty officers and of Navy Corpsman in Field Medical Service School by Marine sergeant-instructors.
4. Utilities – heavy, olive-drab, 1950s style Marine Corps battle-dress issued to Navy personnel on their way to Viet-Nam. Too darned hot. I had to scrounge lighter clothing from which the blood never completely washed out.
5. Samsara – in some Eastern religions, Samsara is the ocean of birth and death.
6. Gunboats – here, PBRs, or Patrol Boat, River. The history and characteristics of this excellent craft and its use in river warfare are well documented.
Let's Put the Friday Back into Black Friday
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Let’s Put the Friday Back into Black Friday
Two figures scrambled through the smoke and rubble under fire, and tumbled into a shell hole for cover.
“Whew!” exclaimed the younger one, wiping her brow and reloading her fifty shades-of-blue-death eye shadow. “That was close. But Mother, isn’t ‘door-buster’ a metaphor?”
“I won’t hear un-American talk like that!” exclaimed the older, wiping the blood from her credit card. “When Giganto-Mart advertises a door-buster sale, then by all that’s holy in the sales papers we’re gonna bust the door.”
“You didn’t have to take down that poor clerk. You hit him with his own walker, after all.”
“Oh, well, he’ll just have to accept the holiday merriment. Casualty lists are part of the fun of Black Friday. Besides, he was between me and the 20% discount sale on Orwellian telescreens.”
“But what about the old woman you ran down in the parking lot?”
“Dear, you’re missing the plot – it’s all about the 20% discount. Hey, What Would Darwin Do? I’m sure the old gal was glad to go. She lived a happy life. She needed to clear the way for a new generation of shoppers.”
“Is that what happened to my father? Darwinianism?”
“Ah, your father. Now there was a total guy. Never worked unless he needed a bottle or a fix between checks. Beaten to death for his sleeping bag on a cold night outside a Giganto-Mart. But he died happy – he was the first in line that October for a 20% discount sale, and got his picture on television chanting our national anthems, ‘Woo, woo!’ and ‘20% off!’ His life had meaning because he was shown on television waiting passively in front of a Giganto-Mart. That’s what keeps America great.”
“Mother, didn’t the ancients call this season something different?”
“There were several seasons, in fact. The two Christian holy days of All Saints and All souls were dismissed in favor of something called Halloween. That was when everyone began demanding free stuff. Then there was the ancient Christian season of Advent, which was renamed The Christmas Season. The original Christmas lasted from midnight on December 24th until January 6th, the Epiphany, but all that was jammed together as New Year’s.”
“I’ll gaggle it on my Dumbphone after I check my, my, my MeMeMeSpace for meaningless comments in order to validate my meaningless life.”
“Most of that old stuff is gone, and in our progressive age The Holiday Season is from the Back-to-School Salesmas in June to the holy Spring Salesmas in February. The anchor holidays are Pre-Black Friday, which some old people still call All Saints and All Souls, the two weeks of Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Buystuffmas, New Year’s Salesmas, and Easter Bunny Salesmas.”
“So our seasons and our lives are predicated on losing sleep, waiting in lines, and pushing around other people in order to buy more of the same made-in-China stuff we already have? That’s our gift to civilization? All because advertising and our culture tell us we are defined by how much toxic plastic debris we acquire?”
“At a 20% discount, child, at a 20& discount. Remember those sacred words, and remember to stand stall and chant them proudly: Woo, woo! 20% discount!”
“Lock and load, Mama, lock and load.”
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
Let’s Put the Friday Back into Black Friday
Two figures scrambled through the smoke and rubble under fire, and tumbled into a shell hole for cover.
“Whew!” exclaimed the younger one, wiping her brow and reloading her fifty shades-of-blue-death eye shadow. “That was close. But Mother, isn’t ‘door-buster’ a metaphor?”
“I won’t hear un-American talk like that!” exclaimed the older, wiping the blood from her credit card. “When Giganto-Mart advertises a door-buster sale, then by all that’s holy in the sales papers we’re gonna bust the door.”
“You didn’t have to take down that poor clerk. You hit him with his own walker, after all.”
“Oh, well, he’ll just have to accept the holiday merriment. Casualty lists are part of the fun of Black Friday. Besides, he was between me and the 20% discount sale on Orwellian telescreens.”
“But what about the old woman you ran down in the parking lot?”
“Dear, you’re missing the plot – it’s all about the 20% discount. Hey, What Would Darwin Do? I’m sure the old gal was glad to go. She lived a happy life. She needed to clear the way for a new generation of shoppers.”
“Is that what happened to my father? Darwinianism?”
“Ah, your father. Now there was a total guy. Never worked unless he needed a bottle or a fix between checks. Beaten to death for his sleeping bag on a cold night outside a Giganto-Mart. But he died happy – he was the first in line that October for a 20% discount sale, and got his picture on television chanting our national anthems, ‘Woo, woo!’ and ‘20% off!’ His life had meaning because he was shown on television waiting passively in front of a Giganto-Mart. That’s what keeps America great.”
“Mother, didn’t the ancients call this season something different?”
“There were several seasons, in fact. The two Christian holy days of All Saints and All souls were dismissed in favor of something called Halloween. That was when everyone began demanding free stuff. Then there was the ancient Christian season of Advent, which was renamed The Christmas Season. The original Christmas lasted from midnight on December 24th until January 6th, the Epiphany, but all that was jammed together as New Year’s.”
“I’ll gaggle it on my Dumbphone after I check my, my, my MeMeMeSpace for meaningless comments in order to validate my meaningless life.”
“Most of that old stuff is gone, and in our progressive age The Holiday Season is from the Back-to-School Salesmas in June to the holy Spring Salesmas in February. The anchor holidays are Pre-Black Friday, which some old people still call All Saints and All Souls, the two weeks of Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Buystuffmas, New Year’s Salesmas, and Easter Bunny Salesmas.”
“So our seasons and our lives are predicated on losing sleep, waiting in lines, and pushing around other people in order to buy more of the same made-in-China stuff we already have? That’s our gift to civilization? All because advertising and our culture tell us we are defined by how much toxic plastic debris we acquire?”
“At a 20% discount, child, at a 20& discount. Remember those sacred words, and remember to stand stall and chant them proudly: Woo, woo! 20% discount!”
“Lock and load, Mama, lock and load.”
-30-
Sunday, November 24, 2013
Poetic Shutdown
Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com
Poetic Shutdown
As lonely iambs roam cold, empty streets,
The sky is red with burning anapests,
And fluttering sonnets bewail their fate,
Adrift past barricades of turgid prose.
Raise high the Red Editorial Pen!
Lift up your tattered hypermonosyllables!
Let slip the hamsters of metaphorical war,
And upon this overdue library charge slip
Cry "God! for Canada, coffee, and blank verse!"
mhall46184@aol.com
Poetic Shutdown
As lonely iambs roam cold, empty streets,
The sky is red with burning anapests,
And fluttering sonnets bewail their fate,
Adrift past barricades of turgid prose.
Raise high the Red Editorial Pen!
Lift up your tattered hypermonosyllables!
Let slip the hamsters of metaphorical war,
And upon this overdue library charge slip
Cry "God! for Canada, coffee, and blank verse!"
The Sacred White Bowl of Our People
Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com
The Sacred White Bowl of Our People
A man may think himself a king, a god,
The master of his mind, if not his soul,
But bacteria know he’s a mess of sod,
Often enthroned on The Sacred White Bowl.
mhall46184@aol.com
The Sacred White Bowl of Our People
A man may think himself a king, a god,
The master of his mind, if not his soul,
But bacteria know he’s a mess of sod,
Often enthroned on The Sacred White Bowl.
Autumn - a Variant
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Autumn – a variant
In some confusion, laughing through the leaves,
Wild, giddy Autumn, her hair disheveled,
Happily dances sweet October in,
Unsure if the morning calls for a frost
Or should stray sunbeams whisper through the clouds.
Autumn is the golden antiphon to Spring;
She vests herself among the morning mists;
Her favorite flowers are her coronet,
Wild, wanton flowers, yellow and white and gold,
To celebrate the liturgies of time.
The seasons-turning coverts sigh in the breeze
As Autumn teaches each leaf how to fly:
A delicate descent, and then a brief repose
Until a giggling little breeze skips through
To cue chaotic minuets, and so
Like faeries laughing on a moonlit night
Leaves scatter and skitter across the leas
Across the lanes, across the lawns to lead
The drifting months through Advent’s silences,
And finally to the joys of Christmastide.
Mhall46184@aol.com
Autumn – a variant
In some confusion, laughing through the leaves,
Wild, giddy Autumn, her hair disheveled,
Happily dances sweet October in,
Unsure if the morning calls for a frost
Or should stray sunbeams whisper through the clouds.
Autumn is the golden antiphon to Spring;
She vests herself among the morning mists;
Her favorite flowers are her coronet,
Wild, wanton flowers, yellow and white and gold,
To celebrate the liturgies of time.
The seasons-turning coverts sigh in the breeze
As Autumn teaches each leaf how to fly:
A delicate descent, and then a brief repose
Until a giggling little breeze skips through
To cue chaotic minuets, and so
Like faeries laughing on a moonlit night
Leaves scatter and skitter across the leas
Across the lanes, across the lawns to lead
The drifting months through Advent’s silences,
And finally to the joys of Christmastide.
Nearer my Darwin to Thee
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Nearer my Darwin to Thee
In his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, C. S. Lewis mentions that the elderly tutor who helped him prep for his university admissions exams was an atheist who remained such a dour Ulsterman that on Sunday mornings he wore his best suit for working in the yard.
Similarly, a recent movement among atheists, a movement perhaps enhanced by a gentle softener, is to gather on Sundays to kinda / sorta play at church. These Sunday assemblies are becoming popular, even to the point of mega-not-churches.
One wonders what exactly one does at an atheist kinda / sorta church. Does the service begin with the traditional “I will go to the altar of me, me, me?”
A really scary matter for the children of atheists is that the story of the slaughter of the Holy Innocents would be read with approval, with perhaps a round of applause for Herod’s freedom of choice. Following the reading, the assembly sings “Ave Margaret Sanger.”
Other atheist hymns and carols might include:
The Old Rugged Hammer-and-Sickle
How Great I Art
Good Comrade Wenceslaus
Nothing We Have Heard on High
Nothing Came Upon a Midnight Clear
Go Tell Nothing on the Mountain
At That First Wine-and-Cheese Tasting
O Come All Ye Faithless
O Little Town of Silicon Valley
O Go, O Go, Emmanuel
There is a Health-Care Plan in Gilead
We Gather Together to Ask a 504C Blessing
Amazing Graceless
Play-Doh® of Ages
This Little Energy-Efficient Light of Mine
Shall we gather at the Sewage Recycling Plant?
Nearer my Darwin to Thee
I Heard the Shopping Carts on Christmas Day
Joyful, Joyful, I Adore Me
Away in an Abortion Clinic
Now Thank we all our National Security Agency
Just a Closer Walk with my 4G Connection
All Hail the Power of Hubris’ Name
These Forty Days of Self-indulgence
If the atheist not-a-church thing becomes fashionable, will cowboy atheists and trucker atheists agree that they don’t worship the same God who doesn’t exist? Will rural atheists disdain town atheists? Will some atheists not worship God in Latin, while others not worship God in Greek? Will atheists argue whether L. Ron Hubbard should be read in Elizabethan English or in modern English? Will atheists abstain from food and drink an hour before not taking Communion?
That anyone would gather to worship as a way to deny worship is curious. People who don’t believe in Klingons don’t form associations denying Klingons, and those who don’t believe in fairies and pixie dust don’t put up posters desperately trying to explain how their lives are full, rich, and rewarding without accepting fairies and pixie dust.
But a group of lonely people who have no place to go on Sunday – isn’t that pretty much what those fashionable, overpriced coffee shops are for?
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
Nearer my Darwin to Thee
In his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, C. S. Lewis mentions that the elderly tutor who helped him prep for his university admissions exams was an atheist who remained such a dour Ulsterman that on Sunday mornings he wore his best suit for working in the yard.
Similarly, a recent movement among atheists, a movement perhaps enhanced by a gentle softener, is to gather on Sundays to kinda / sorta play at church. These Sunday assemblies are becoming popular, even to the point of mega-not-churches.
One wonders what exactly one does at an atheist kinda / sorta church. Does the service begin with the traditional “I will go to the altar of me, me, me?”
A really scary matter for the children of atheists is that the story of the slaughter of the Holy Innocents would be read with approval, with perhaps a round of applause for Herod’s freedom of choice. Following the reading, the assembly sings “Ave Margaret Sanger.”
Other atheist hymns and carols might include:
The Old Rugged Hammer-and-Sickle
How Great I Art
Good Comrade Wenceslaus
Nothing We Have Heard on High
Nothing Came Upon a Midnight Clear
Go Tell Nothing on the Mountain
At That First Wine-and-Cheese Tasting
O Come All Ye Faithless
O Little Town of Silicon Valley
O Go, O Go, Emmanuel
There is a Health-Care Plan in Gilead
We Gather Together to Ask a 504C Blessing
Amazing Graceless
Play-Doh® of Ages
This Little Energy-Efficient Light of Mine
Shall we gather at the Sewage Recycling Plant?
Nearer my Darwin to Thee
I Heard the Shopping Carts on Christmas Day
Joyful, Joyful, I Adore Me
Away in an Abortion Clinic
Now Thank we all our National Security Agency
Just a Closer Walk with my 4G Connection
All Hail the Power of Hubris’ Name
These Forty Days of Self-indulgence
If the atheist not-a-church thing becomes fashionable, will cowboy atheists and trucker atheists agree that they don’t worship the same God who doesn’t exist? Will rural atheists disdain town atheists? Will some atheists not worship God in Latin, while others not worship God in Greek? Will atheists argue whether L. Ron Hubbard should be read in Elizabethan English or in modern English? Will atheists abstain from food and drink an hour before not taking Communion?
That anyone would gather to worship as a way to deny worship is curious. People who don’t believe in Klingons don’t form associations denying Klingons, and those who don’t believe in fairies and pixie dust don’t put up posters desperately trying to explain how their lives are full, rich, and rewarding without accepting fairies and pixie dust.
But a group of lonely people who have no place to go on Sunday – isn’t that pretty much what those fashionable, overpriced coffee shops are for?
-30-
Why Americans South of the 49th Parallel Like Toronto Mayor Rob Ford
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Why Americans South of the 49th Parallel Like Toronto Mayor Rob Ford
“You in the West have no idea what it’s like to be ruled by peasants.”
- Mihai in Balkan Ghosts
1. Rob Ford on that wrecking ball with Miley Khardassian and Kim Cyrus would pretty much epitomize contemporary pop culture.
2. Rob Ford appeals to the sort of person who, without any sense of irony, uses “hater” as an expression of opprobrium.
3. Rob Ford makes Glenn Beck seem almost reasonable.
4. Any mention of “Toronto Mayor Rob Ford” on the Orwellian telescreen updates the old Bob Newhart (“Hi, Bob!”) game.
5. Our Darwinian friends are reinvigorated, and can shout with Merry Generic Winter Holiday glee to the rest of us “Aha! The Missing Link at last! We told you so!”
6. USA-ians tend to perceive Canada as a nation of kind, thoughtful, industrious, educated people who, after a hard day of building igloos and cuddling harp seals, put away their red coats and spend their leisure hours exchanging Shakespearean bon mots in both English and French while cataloging the origins of Newfoundland sea-chanties in a Tim Horton’s across the street from Canadian Tire, compared with whom we are a lot of indolent slobs who care only for football and takeout; Rob Ford is an occasion for schadenfreude, our one opportunity to point a disapproving finger due north and crow “Nanny, nanny boo-booooo!”
7. Given that south-of-the-border Orwellian telescreen programming favorites include Duck Dynasty, Jerry Springer, and Doctor Phil, Rob Ford seems to be a real tater-chip-sody-water Yank.
8. In this coming season of Black Friday Weekend (which replaces the old, colonialist, imperialist, eat-animal-flesh Thanksgiving) one can fantasize about Rob Ford visiting Martha Stewart and knocking over her perfect Christmas tree while cracked out.
9. Consider Toronto Mayor Rob Ford and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie in a sumo wrestling match. Hey, it’s a thought. Strange thought. Okay, maybe not.
10. Parents no longer threaten naughty children with the bogey-man; they threaten ‘em with Rob Ford.
11. Whenever sub-49th-parallelians feel depressed about unemployment, the Affordable Health Care Act, the scorn with which their decaying nation is held by others, and the sad reality that the death penalty does not apply to the man who invented reality shows, they can always lighten the mood and, indeed, elicit sustained laughter by using “Rob Ford,” “Justin Bieber,” and “Canada” in the same sentence.
12. The existence of Rob Ford convinces even the loopiest racial supremacists in Massachusetts and Idaho that God really doesn’t consider them to be His last word.
13. Rob Ford and Honey Boo-Boo – soulmates? Or simply cousins somewhere along a DNA continuum we just don’t need to know about?
14. Those who exist on the New York-Chicago-Los Angeles Axis of infobrainpuddingment are grateful to Canada for introducing them to high culture – Moulsen’s, hockey, Rob Ford, and swerving around dead moose on the Trans-Canada Highway.
15. Finally, the USA and its New Model Army of Plain Women can be grateful that General Isaac Brock, Chief Tecumseh, and the lads kicked General Stephen Van Rensselaer III, the other lads, and all their blunderbusses back across the Niagara River in 1812. The possibility that Rob Ford could have been elected President of the United States gives anyone a dead-moose-in-the-road feeling.
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
Why Americans South of the 49th Parallel Like Toronto Mayor Rob Ford
“You in the West have no idea what it’s like to be ruled by peasants.”
- Mihai in Balkan Ghosts
1. Rob Ford on that wrecking ball with Miley Khardassian and Kim Cyrus would pretty much epitomize contemporary pop culture.
2. Rob Ford appeals to the sort of person who, without any sense of irony, uses “hater” as an expression of opprobrium.
3. Rob Ford makes Glenn Beck seem almost reasonable.
4. Any mention of “Toronto Mayor Rob Ford” on the Orwellian telescreen updates the old Bob Newhart (“Hi, Bob!”) game.
5. Our Darwinian friends are reinvigorated, and can shout with Merry Generic Winter Holiday glee to the rest of us “Aha! The Missing Link at last! We told you so!”
6. USA-ians tend to perceive Canada as a nation of kind, thoughtful, industrious, educated people who, after a hard day of building igloos and cuddling harp seals, put away their red coats and spend their leisure hours exchanging Shakespearean bon mots in both English and French while cataloging the origins of Newfoundland sea-chanties in a Tim Horton’s across the street from Canadian Tire, compared with whom we are a lot of indolent slobs who care only for football and takeout; Rob Ford is an occasion for schadenfreude, our one opportunity to point a disapproving finger due north and crow “Nanny, nanny boo-booooo!”
7. Given that south-of-the-border Orwellian telescreen programming favorites include Duck Dynasty, Jerry Springer, and Doctor Phil, Rob Ford seems to be a real tater-chip-sody-water Yank.
8. In this coming season of Black Friday Weekend (which replaces the old, colonialist, imperialist, eat-animal-flesh Thanksgiving) one can fantasize about Rob Ford visiting Martha Stewart and knocking over her perfect Christmas tree while cracked out.
9. Consider Toronto Mayor Rob Ford and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie in a sumo wrestling match. Hey, it’s a thought. Strange thought. Okay, maybe not.
10. Parents no longer threaten naughty children with the bogey-man; they threaten ‘em with Rob Ford.
11. Whenever sub-49th-parallelians feel depressed about unemployment, the Affordable Health Care Act, the scorn with which their decaying nation is held by others, and the sad reality that the death penalty does not apply to the man who invented reality shows, they can always lighten the mood and, indeed, elicit sustained laughter by using “Rob Ford,” “Justin Bieber,” and “Canada” in the same sentence.
12. The existence of Rob Ford convinces even the loopiest racial supremacists in Massachusetts and Idaho that God really doesn’t consider them to be His last word.
13. Rob Ford and Honey Boo-Boo – soulmates? Or simply cousins somewhere along a DNA continuum we just don’t need to know about?
14. Those who exist on the New York-Chicago-Los Angeles Axis of infobrainpuddingment are grateful to Canada for introducing them to high culture – Moulsen’s, hockey, Rob Ford, and swerving around dead moose on the Trans-Canada Highway.
15. Finally, the USA and its New Model Army of Plain Women can be grateful that General Isaac Brock, Chief Tecumseh, and the lads kicked General Stephen Van Rensselaer III, the other lads, and all their blunderbusses back across the Niagara River in 1812. The possibility that Rob Ford could have been elected President of the United States gives anyone a dead-moose-in-the-road feeling.
-30-
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