Monkey With all the Trimmings

Mack Hall

Monkey With all the Trimmings

Mrs. Mamie Manneh of New York faces trial for importing bits of dead monkey.

Back in 2006 customs inspectors examined twelve cardboard boxes mailed to Mrs. Manneh from West Africa. The manifest said that the boxes contained only dresses and dried fish, but beneath the fish was the late Curious George.

Mrs. Manneh said this must be some sort of mistake; she never ordered dead monkeys.

And one can understand. I don’t know how many times I’ve ordered a book or a watch or a shirt through the mail and gotten a parcel of dead monkey instead.

A search of Mrs. Manneh’s house revealed (I quote from the AP report) “a tiny, hairy arm” hidden in her garage.

Mrs. Manneh said that the arm was sent to her by God, and that consuming dead monkeys is a part of her religion.

She didn’t say whether or not they taste like chicken.

Mrs. Manneh’s attorney is claiming cultural insensitivity, while the feds are touchy about the importation of unregulated meat products with the potential for disease transmission.

Hey, anyone who gets teary-eyed about the little girl saying that every time a bell rings an angel gets its wings needn’t be snotty about other cultures, okay?

And, after all, Mr. Pickwick carried a big codfish with him to Dingley Dell for Christmas, and H.M. Government never asked for its papers.

Some of us wonder about a god who makes home delivery of meats. What, no side dishes? And is this religious discrimination against vegetarians?

Mrs. Manneh won’t be difficult to find for the trial; she’s in prison for trying to run over her husband. He’s upset because for now he must raise their twelve children by himself.

“Hey, kids, how about some yummy dachshunds for lunch?”

“Aw, Dad, we had dachshunds yesterday. Make us some hamster stew!”

Don’t tell me hamster stew is yucky. Ya want yucky? Watch any of those Hallmark Christmas movies.

A monkey on the table for Christmas? Well, maybe. Several weeks ago an Australian environmental group recommended eating kangaroos as an antidote to global warming (http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22562480-662,00.html) and Heather Mills (Lady Paul McCartney) touts the drinking of rat’s milk (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/11/20/nmills120.xml).

Monkey and kangaroo, all washed down with rat’s milk. It doesn’t work for me, but then, as a friend suggested last week, I’m definitely lacking in sophistication.

The House That Rodney and His Friends Built

Mack Hall

"That in this moment there is life and food
For future years."

-- Wordsworth

When Rodney died he left behind an unfinished garage and unfinished grandchildren, so on the Saturday morning following his funeral his friends mustered to work on the one and to inspire the others.

Rodney had his garage framed, a lacey assemblage exhibiting all the geometric constructs Miz Bonnie Carter taught us (well, taught Rodney, at least; the minds of some of us were rather resistant to pie are square) in the long ago, all open to an impossibly perfect autumn sky.

And that was the problem, of course; perfect autumn skies soon deteriorate into imperfect winter ones, and Rodney’s last project needed drying-in.

And so men and boys and a dog gathered, for what is a communal building project without some boys and a dog? Manly men with pickups and trailers sagging with lumber and air-powered tools and ladders and leather tool belts and camouflage ball caps and all the other impedimenta of the independent American yeomanry swarmed the joists and rafters noisily and happily, trailing pneumatic and electric lines and emitting clouds of sawdust and calling out numbers: "I need a four by eleven-and-a-half over here!"

All was much like a house-raising scene in a John Ford film, except that The Old West didn’t suffer from cell ‘phones.

One hopes that some government agency or some The People’s Progressive Committee Activist Front doesn’t send a committee of comrades or lawyers to investigate, but while the menfolk labored on the garages (three parking spaces, pump room, workshop, deck, upstairs apartment), the womenfolk (accept the John Ford-ism, okay?) set out lunch under the shade of an oak tree. Mr. Folk, Rodney’s ag teacher, led the assembly in prayer, a happy duty that until a week before would have fallen to Rodney.

The little boys and the little girls and the dog occasionally ran through the project to be fussed at, and then out to the field to play an all-day game of football whose curious and inexplicable (to adults) rules were invented for and limited to that one occasion. They ate too much and got sunburned and laughed and shrieked and scraped some knees and celebrated their childhood world out under the high blue sky and in the fields and woods of a perfect October day.

They will forever remember this week, when Papa died and was mourned, and then how on a marvelous day they burst forth from the sadness for a while to run wild in Papa’s field, which is exactly what he wanted for them. And they will remember how Papa’s friends joined in prayer and in fun and in work to push forward, in a small way, his life for them.

The children – they are the house being built. And they will remember.

I expect the hammering and sawing and noisy good fellowship were heard all the way from Magnolia Springs Cemetery.
-

Father of the Bridesmaid

Mack Hall

Once upon a time two Aggie chicks shared an apartment almost in the shadow of blessed Kyle Field in the holy city of College Station.

One cold night the blonde one telephoned the sort-of-blonde one: "Sarah, I’m at the gas station; I’ve locked my keys in my car. What do I do?"

And Sarah said "Just call Something-a-Lock; they’ll come out and open it up for twenty dollars."

"Okay," said Jan, "but will you come and wait with me?"

So Sarah left her studies (probably) and her big orange cat, and motored in her cute little blue Volkswagen to the gas station where, upon seeing Jan’s car, the car in which the keys were imprisoned, she remembered something she had long known but had forgotten in the moment of her friend’s stress: Jan’s car was a cute little red Jeep. With a cloth top.

This is a true blonde / Aggie story, but probably does not connect in any way with A & M’s just-wait’ll-next-year football season.

Both Jan and Sarah gave up their cute cars after graduation. Sarah now owns a sedate Republican Ford appropriate for a graduate student, and Jan owns a husband.

The wedding vows were exchanged in Cedar Bayou’s beautiful First United Methodist Church, a congregation dating from 1844. One knew immediately it was not a Catholic church because the music included "Panis Angelicus" and "Ave Maria." In a Catholic church music is now pretty much all about whining Jesuits abusing three endlessly recycled guitar chords on a poor recording made in 1968.

One of the many blessings of the service was that the bride and groom did not sing to each other.

Another blessing was that the minister sternly forbade amateur photography, which meant that the procession was spared the now common cell-phone-camera-Hitler-salute thing.

And yet another blessing was that the whole service came in at twenty-five minutes.

And another: the beautiful Sarah was honored to stand as one of Jan’s bridesmaids, and didn’t have to drive through a cold night to unfasten a Jeep’s cloth top.

But the greatest blessing of all was Jan, Sarah’s blue-jeans-and-hamburgers gal-pal of college days, now all grown up in a long, elegant gown, the most beautiful bride ever, on the most wonderful day of her life.

Thanksgiving Causes Global Warming

Mack Hall

Long, long ago the Mayflower was sunk by an iceberg and the Pilgrims stepped ashore with the Really, Really Revised New Interglobal Standard Golly-Gee-Wow Bible in, Like, Y’know, Today’s English to be greeted by Brandon Chingachgook and Tiffany Pocahontas walking across the land bridge from Asia and handing out fliers for the Golden Wampum Casino Hotel and Resort.

“Greetings,” said Captain Stubing. “We are the white heterosexual European male oppressors who have come here to steal your land and oppress you. Want some beads?”

“Hey, you can try those at the casino, double returns on the slots today,” replied Chingachgook. “Corn and codfish bar is free. And, um, look, you might want to try to step up to the dress code, okay?”

And so the Pilgrims and the Indians got together in peace and harmony, and held The First Thanksgiving, following another The First Thanksgiving sponsored by Martin Frobisher and companions some years earlier in Canada, and yet another The First Thanksgiving celebrated even earlier by Spanish explorers…um…white European male heterosexual oppressors…along the Rio Grande.

“I like turkey,” said Captain Bradford Stubing. “It tastes a lot like sophomore. Could use some more habanera sauce, though.”

“After dinner, let’s go invade the French in Canada or the Spanish in Florida,” suggested Miles Smith.

“Or we could just scream at the television awhile and then take a nap while the women clean up everything,” said Neville Van Winkle.

“It’s their job,” agreed The Last of the Mohicans. “You boys have another cigar; tobacco is our most heartfelt gift to you.”

“Clean everything up yourselves,” said Tiffany, “I’ve got to study for my bar exam.”

And so America grew, with the descendants of all the above learning how to sneer at each other disapprovingly as the centuries passed. At future Thanksgivings they made their children wear construction-paper hats and construction-paper headdresses in styles known only to Currier and Ives, invented global warming to replace ghost stories, drove Toyotas, and gave away the fruits of their labors to mainland China in exchange for toxic landfills of plastic junk. They ate genetically-engineered turkey from grossly fat birds that couldn’t even reproduce without the help of a weird little man with a syringe, thought that milk came from the supermarket, came to disapprove of themselves and their democracy, invented thousands of religious denominations and then generally avoided them, believed with all their hearts (tho’ not their brains) that polar bears were drowning, lived in fear of unmarked black UN helicopters, thought Barry Bonds terribly wronged, and took turns testing each other for drugs.

And yet by the time this is published the United States will have sent the Air Force and the Navy to Bangladesh with food, water, medical aid, tents, and material aid to help put things together after the flooding.

That would be the United States Air Force and the United States Navy commanded by the evil Yankee imperialist cowboy George Bush – don’t look for the Europeans to be kicking in to help others after a disaster; they’re too sophisticated.

Yup, we Americans may be a little confused about our history, and maybe more confused about our future, but we’re the best thing happening on this planet, and that’s reason enough for giving thanks.

Thanksgiving Causes Global Warming

Mack Hall

Long, long ago the Mayflower was sunk by an iceberg and the Pilgrims stepped ashore with the Really, Really Revised New Interglobal Standard Golly-Gee-Wow Bible in, Like, Y’know, Today’s English to be greeted by Brandon Chingachgook and Tiffany Pocahontas walking across the land bridge from Asia and handing out fliers for the Golden Wampum Casino Hotel and Resort.

“Greetings,” said Captain Stubing. “We are the white heterosexual European male oppressors who have come here to steal your land and oppress you. Want some beads?”

“Hey, you can try those at the casino, double returns on the slots today,” replied Chingachgook. “Corn and codfish bar is free. And, um, look, you might want to try to step up to the dress code, okay?”

And so the Pilgrims and the Indians got together in peace and harmony, and held The First Thanksgiving, following another The First Thanksgiving sponsored by Martin Frobisher and companions some years earlier in Canada, and yet another The First Thanksgiving celebrated even earlier by Spanish explorers…um…white European male heterosexual oppressors…along the Rio Grande.

“I like turkey,” said Captain Bradford Stubing. “It tastes a lot like sophomore. Could use some more habanera sauce, though.”

“After dinner, let’s go invade the French in Canada or the Spanish in Florida,” suggested Miles Smith.

“Or we could just scream at the television awhile and then take a nap while the women clean up everything,” said Neville Van Winkle.

“It’s their job,” agreed The Last of the Mohicans. “You boys have another cigar; tobacco is our most heartfelt gift to you.”

“Clean everything up yourselves,” said Tiffany, “I’ve got to study for my bar exam.”

And so America grew, with the descendants of all the above learning how to sneer at each other disapprovingly as the centuries passed. At future Thanksgivings they made their children wear construction-paper hats and construction-paper headdresses in styles known only to Currier and Ives, invented global warming to replace ghost stories, drove Toyotas, and gave away the fruits of their labors to mainland China in exchange for toxic landfills of plastic junk. They ate genetically-engineered turkey from grossly fat birds that couldn’t even reproduce without the help of a weird little man with a syringe, thought that milk came from the supermarket, came to disapprove of themselves and their democracy, invented thousands of religious denominations and then generally avoided them, believed with all their hearts (tho’ not their brains) that polar bears were drowning, lived in fear of unmarked black UN helicopters, thought Barry Bonds terribly wronged, and took turns testing each other for drugs.

And yet by the time this is published the United States will have sent the Air Force and the Navy to Bangladesh with food, water, medical aid, tents, and material aid to help put things together after the flooding.

That would be the United States Air Force and the United States Navy commanded by the evil Yankee imperialist cowboy George Bush – don’t look for the Europeans to be kicking in to help others after a disaster; they’re too sophisticated.

Yup, we Americans may be a little confused about our history, and maybe more confused about our future, but we’re the best thing happening on this planet, and that’s reason enough for giving thanks.

Pontius Pilate's Pleynt

Mack Hall

Pontius Pilate's Pleynt

My Caesar and my Empire have I served,
A diplomatic functionary, true
To my distant duties, never unnerved
By greedy Greek or perfidious Jew.

Outside the arca archa have I thought,
Festooned my desk and office with awards;
My Caesar’s honour only have I sought
While sparing for myself but few rewards.

I built with focused care my resume’
And filed each memorandum, note, and scrip;
I justly ruled (no matter what they say),
And seldom sent men to the cross or whip.

But, oh! That thing about an open vault –
I never got it. And why was it my fault?

L'Affaire Bagdad: The American Diplomatic Service Inaction, not In Action

“I shall have to delay you for a few minutes. You see the Legation is only just open and we have not yet got our full equipment. We are expecting the rubber stamp any minute now.”

-- A diplomat in Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop

The American diplomatic corps, the envy of the world of pallid wine and crumbly cheese, is afraid to go to Bagdad – so afraid that no one is volunteering, and diplomats may have to be dragged out of cocktail parties in Ottawa and the racing season at Epson Downs and ordered to report to The Cradle of Civilization.

Working Americans whose taxes support civil servants can certainly understand the reluctance of diplomats to serve civility in Bagdad. What towboat captain or steelworker cannot appreciate the difficulty in finding a really good tailor in Port Said Street? And, after all, embassy soirees in Bagdad are more likely to be explosive rather than sparkling, and the paucity of wine merchants is appalling, simply appalling. Worse, the shopping along Muthana Al Shaiban Street is simply not up to Paris standards, m’dear. Picnicking along the Tigris is quite impossible given the heat, and trying to punt through the bobbing, malodorous corpses is so, so tiresome.

A with-it diplomat in Bagdad can only resent the sad reality that so many of his personal bodyguards are not Harvard or Yale, and don’t appreciate amusing anecdotes about yachting with Walter Cronkite off Martha’s Vineyard and tittering about people who actually have jobs and love America.

And then there are the Christian priests in Iraq. In New England, anyone who’s anyone keeps a tame bishop or two for amusement. In Iraq, though, priests and bishops are not much fun at parties, didn’t go to the right schools, and suffer a tendency to be martyred by the sort of people American bishops like to be palsy with for the cameras. Yawn.

Doesn’t anyone understand that stern diplomatic notes can be exchanged just as easily after one’s afternoon nap in Brussels as well as after one’s afternoon nap in Iraq? And the embassy in Brussels is so convenient to the theatre.

And then there’s the bother of domestic staff in Bagdad. When interviewing and hiring a suitable kitchen staff (soooooooo exhausting), one must check references very carefully so that one does not hire a pastry chef who might bring explosives into the morning room. The maids, the housekeeper, the porters, the gardeners – can one find staff up to scratch in Iraq? Yes, a life of public service is terribly demanding.

Entertaining can be quite a bother too. In Europe one knows that a grand duke l’orange takes precedent over a charge’ du flatus, but how does one seat a Sunny mahdi and a Shirty sheik at dinner without causing a row? Gracious! And what is the proper dress for receptions during a rocket attack – black-tie body armor or white-tie body armor?

And must those beastly American soldiers get blown up in the street outside the embassy? Can’t they go out to the countryside and get blown up there? An American diplomat needs his sleep, after all, and having all those persons from the flyover states fighting and dying just outside is so unseemly.

The American diplomatic service – always a step and six feet of reinforced concrete behind our fighting men and women. Why should they have to serve in Bagdad – or anywhere else?

News From the Real World

Researchers from a Welsh university have discovered a 400-year-old clam off Iceland. When the clam was transported to Wales it immediately demanded refugee status, a government apartment, social services in its own language, and a weekly check, and declared a bitter hatred of all things Welsh.

California prisoners are helping fight wildfires at one dollar an hour, while FEMA employees have held a completely fake press conference in order to deceive the American people. Given their record, perhaps FEMA staffers should be the ones dressed in orange jump suits and working for a dollar an hour.

According to the BBC, many Bolivians consider a llama fetus to be sacred. Perhaps the typical resident of La Paz drives around with a llama fetus on his dashboard, or carries one in a knitted cover. Maybe Bolivians have silly religious arguments that are prefaced with “Well, my llama fetus says….”

Do Bolivian schools feature a Meet Me at the Pole With Your Llama Fetus day?

A theorist (whatever that is) from the London School of Economics predicts that the human race will split into two different species. This is old news, as there are already two kinds of human beings, those who believe there are two kinds of human beings and those who do not.

Who does a grief counselor visit when he has a grief?

According to The New York Times, Democrats in Congress are planning a shorter work-week. And some people say there is no God.

California’s state environmentalist pests are distressed about the air pollution from the fires. Smoke. It’s called smoke.

Homeland Security has pressured New York to grant driving licenses to illegal aliens. So what will New York do if illegal aliens drive without licenses? Arrest them for violating the law?

The Italian government has determined that a series of unexplained house fires is due to space aliens. Maybe the space aliens are angry about not being issued driving licenses.

A police ball in Philadelphia when a police officer and his ex-girlfriend, a former police officer retired on disability, traded punches. The news article does not mention who answered the 911 call.

The CEO of the premiere American manufacturer of body armor has been arrested for spending some ten million (yep, that’s seven zeroes in all) of his company’s dollars on a party for his daughter. Other young people, posted to Iraq, will be glad to hear that.

Ten million dollars of other people’s money for his own bloated ego -- who does this guy think he is, the Archbishop of Los Angeles?

G. I. Joe is going Belgian. He will now be part of an international based in Brussels, the imperial capital of Europe, and will be fighting a Scotch arms dealer. And one can understand; every man or woman in Europe sleeps fitfully because of the ongoing fear of being attacked by Angus and his Flaming Haggis of Death.

A Japanese-owned English-language school system in Japan has collapsed, leaving hundreds of English teachers, all British subjects, stranded and moneyless. One would think that even an English teacher would have enough sense to keep a return ticket and some backup funds.

CBS reports that French Prez Sarkozy walked out of a 60 Minutes interview. The question is why he ever agreed to visit that last barricade of Roosevelt’s New Deal and risk being gummed to death by cranky old men who haven’t enjoyed a fresh idea since 1956.

And now you may fold this excellent newspaper, sit peacefully on your porch with a cup of coffee, and take comfort from the fact that competent men and women, most of them freely elected, are running the world.

"It looked like a war zone."

No, it didn't.

First of all, there is no such thing as a war zone. There is war, of course, and it is nasty, ugly, violent, foul, and loud.

The only thing that looks like war is war.

And there is no such thing as a war zone, as if some committee were putting up signs restricting the colors of tanks or guns or something.

To compare a burning building or a car wreck, no matter how bad these things are, with war is the worst sort of hyperbole.

Chaucer and the Laboratory Tales

I call therefore a complete and generous education that which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously all the offices, both public and private, of peace and war.

- John Milton

On Wednesday nights an English literature course, taught by a wise and learned man, meets in the hydraulics lab at Angelina College’s Jasper campus. This placement is not an accident; this is because all the other rooms were already booked for classes in nursing, criminal justice, mathematics (shudder!), art, music, engineering, physics, chemistry, and other intellectual disciplines. Angelina College may never be another Oxford University (which, given the decaying intellectual climate of modern England, is probably just as well), but her graduates are grounded in both conceptual thinking and pragmatic applications of thought.

No, it’s not all Benthamitism and Utilitarianism at Angelina; a human being, before all, is far more than an economic unit. A whiff of hydraulic fluid quite enhances the study of literature, though, and literature is a reflection on and a celebration of life. The 6th century Rule of Saint Benedict requires that a monastic’s life be one of study, physical labor, and prayer, and this is a good model for anyone who wants a life beyond the dreariness of a no-hope-of-promotion job and the even drearier vapidity of passive entertainment as programmed by our would-be masters along the New York – Los Angeles axis.

Because in a small school the hard sciences and the fuzzy studies share the space, the learned English instructor must scribble on the board his by-night brilliant notes on Chaucer among the by-day trails of scientific formulae headed by the stern injunction “DO NOT ERASE.” The result is somehow quite pleasing aesthetically. As an English major might say, “Look at all the pretty number-squiggly-thingies!”

But now consider the following, part of an assignment in trouble-shooting some sort of control device for some sort of hydraulics device found in the classroom among the wires and switches and computers and machinery: “This assignment is intended to refresh your ability to program the PLC and make external connections. Remember that the 24Vdc used for the PLC inputs will not be used to power the outputs or any of the output devices.”

Oh, yeah, and some people say that iambic pentameter is hard.

Another part of the assignment reads: “If the red lamps are selected, the two lamps will alternate, one on while the other is off at the selected flash rate. The same is true of the other colors: yellow, green, and blue.”

And the art major says “Oooooh! Look at the pretty lights!”

Further: “Use your voltmeter and continuity meter to find the error. Avoid trying to locate the problem by touching the wires or by trial and error. At this point you should know what voltages to expect at various points in the circuit.”

You know, even a wheezy old English teacher can figure out that a fellow who has to be reminded not to try to identify a problem by touching live electrical wires probably belongs in the Senate and should kept away from sharp objects.

When you walk down the hallways of Angelina you will pass by the dangling skeleton in a nursing lab, math formulae in the next room, and of course the gadgetry in the dear old hydraulics lab (kinda makes you want to sing “Gaudeamus Igitur,” huh?). The eager and focused students, most of them not young at all, who are going to help make our county prosper enjoy the opportunity to observe, and thus honor, the disciplines of others, and when they someday run their own businesses or work their ways up in the large companies and in county government, their mutual respect and work ethic are going to make life better for us all.

Learning is good.

And the flashing red, green, and yellow lights sure are pretty.

Another Doping Scandal

Mack Hall

"Hello. Sniff. Boohoo. I know that my name, Winthrop Postlewaithe, is on everyone’s lips, and that millions of little boys and girls look up to me as the World Champion Turbo-Four-Way-Chess Champion and want to follow in my footsteps – Queen’s Blasto-Rook to Knight’s Nuclear-Drive-Pawn 32 ½ -- and be just like me, me, me. Sniff. Boohoo. But I stand here before you today a disgraced person. Sniff. Boohoo. I want to apologize to my kazillions of fans, to my mom and dad who raised me to be strong and unafraid in a universe not always kind to a little boy whose dreams of piloting the Starship Enemaprize to nebulae really, really, really, really, really far away and defeating asteroido-serpents with his made-in-China-and-covered-with-lead-paint GollyGeeWhizSabre (four 3A batteries sold separately) were cruelly trashed by neighborhood meanies (I’ll get you for pantsing me in my Captain Quiche space suit, Ficus Norstenwhortle; you see if I don’t!).

"Sniff. I want to apologize to the whole world, because I know everyone on the planet has been following my, my, my career (and to Kim Il Jong in North Korea, which must be a really rockin’ place, thanks for all your emails of support, dude. You rock!). I, I, I know the whole world revolves around me, me, me and my, my, my Turbo-Four-Way-Chess career, especially when I, I, I won three Sorta-Gold-Like medals and two Sorta-Silver-Like medals in the 2004 Delphic Games in Threefrogs, Louisiana, I passed every doping test there was, and I swore to the people of the world that I had never and would never take unfair advantage of my, my, my special gifts by the Vague, Nebulous, Fuzzy Something-or-Other Being-ness Thing or Whatever Mr. Glock has to go away and meditate to in some episodes of Space-Rangers-in-Tight-Bodysuits by taking unauthorized dark chocolate with more than 60% hamster-sweat.

"Sniff. Boohoo. I, I, I must tell you all how I have let you down, because of course you spend all your pathetic little lives thinking about me, me, me and being so sorry that you could not be me, me, me. I mean, like, you know, who wouldn’t want to spend every waking hour sweating and agonizing over every moved in Turbo-Four-Way-Chess (not like those loser nerds who play Three-Way-Chess) just like I, I, I do, and wanting to be the gosh-darnest-bestest player in the whole wide universe. Sniff. Boohoo. I mean, like, who wants to be a mere entrepreneur or skilled craftsman or shop owner or doctor or truck driver or any of that bourgeois stuff when you could be the galactic expression of a superior mind drooling over a four-way-turbo chessboard? I mean, like, that’s even better than running foot-races.

" I, I, I also want to apologize to the Intergalactic Truth Investigative Vapor Team, who knew that probing deep into my, my, my really deep soul to find the poison planted there by evil doping coaches (I, I, I, of course, did not know that the Gypsum Mind-Melt was being practiced on me, me, me by an operative of the Dork Side of the Farce) was much more important than searching out Klink-the-Kans who want to blow up Planet Earth.

"I, I, I want to thank my soul-shadow, Hether-Mystyeyey-Shannin-Cheyyenne-Dauwn-La’To’tisha, and all you little people out there for standing by me, me, me in my, my, my dark mid-day of my, my, my existential soul, and, like, y’know, stuff. Way to go, H-M-S-C-D-L. And now I’ll take a few questions from the media before the ITIVT take me away to a penal colony. Yes…?"

First (and only) reporter: "Who did you say you were?"

Jesus and the Twelve Apostrophes

Recently I had occasion to visit a facility offering something called healthcare (sic). Such an event used to be called going to the doctor, and health care, as two words, was part of the phraseology of insurance forms.
In times long past, one said hello to the receptionist (probably a high school classmate), and sat in a waiting room to read a ten-year-old copy of National Geographic. After a bit a registered nurse in a crisp (forgive the cliché’, but it is apt) white uniform complete with nursing cap and school pin opened a door to say, "The doctor will see you now."

Now one says hello to the receptionist (still probably an old pal from school), who gives the bearer of a fevered brow a greasy ball-point pen and a portfolio of almost illegible forms, photocopies of photocopies of photocopies, over which to labor while the receptionist photocopies the patient’s insurance card, pharmacy card, Sam’s Club card, and driving license. After a wait in a room full of the sick staring slack-jawed at CNN on a widescreen telly, a person of indeterminate rank and skills, wearing pajamas of indeterminate color and hygiene, admits the suffering for healthcare.

I suppose the coming phrase is "The healthcare provider will healthcare you now."

Combining words and employing nouns as verbs are fashions now ("cutting edge," I believe it’s called, "educating for the 21st century"), along with the elimination of punctuation.

In school a drill team is now called a colorguard, and they aren’t guarding the colors or even carrying them; the FFA does that. The denotation of color guard is the assemblage of soldiers carrying the national and unit colors, flanked by two riflemen, and don’t even think of messin’ with those colors unless you want to die. Now color guard, jammed into colorguard, is a team of dancers who wave bright cloths on the ends of sticks. These routines are certainly entertaining, and I yield to no one in my admiration of dance from ballet to Gene Kelly to boot-scootin’ something-or-other. But a dance troupe is not a color guard; one might with equal accuracy call it small-unit action against a gun emplacement.

One also reads of the modern tendency to exile commas and apostrophes to the same outlands as the semi-colon; one who has suffered through sixth-grade grammar drills is initially tempted to stand and applaud. But before we push the poor old apostrophe into a boxcar of the Siberian Express (return ticket not an issue), let us rememberer the real purpose (not Ol’ Miz Grundy’s sadistic got’cha game) of punctuation. Consider the following line:

PATERNOSTERQVIINCOELISESTSANCTIFICETVRNOMENTVVMADVENIATREGNVMTVVMFIATVOLVNTVSTVAINTERRAETINCOELVM…

Makes no sense, right? Now let’s separate the words, allow for little letters, and add some punctuation:

Pater Noster, Qui in Coelis est, sanctificetur Nomen Tuum, adveniat regnum Tuum, fiat voluntus tua in Terra et in Coelum…

Now we’re getting somewhere. As with geometry, accept as a given that Pater Noster means Father Ours, and the rest can easily be worked out. However, even in English we would have problems with no word separation, no small letters, and no punctuation:

OURFATHERWHOARTINHEAVENHALLOWEDBETHYNAMETHYKINGDOMCOMETHYWILLBEDONEINEARTHASITISINHEAVEN…

Oh, easy enough to sort out a line or two, but can one imagine reading The Bible (and which one, anyway?), work orders, nursing notes, bills of lading, or a Louis L’Amour shoot-‘em-up printed like that?

Language changes, but that change should flow naturally with the passage of time and with the need to express new technologies. We should not scurry like mice in obedience to the chief mouse to discard the carefully worked out usages of time and reality. Punctuation and word usage are about clarity and aesthetics, not ideology.

So for now, at the end of the day, the bottom line is, when push comes to shove, in today’s society, in a heartbeat, at this point in time, when the skinny lady sings, the cutting edge of education for the 21st century means thinking outside the box 24/7 in order to define a generation along a long and winding dusty country road for the just plain common people changed our lives forever as a person met his or her fate when a hurricane was brewing and then slammed ashore in an expression of freedom of choice for women’s healthcare because the wrath of Mother Nature…(fade to a Blue Bell commercial).

Canada Takes Charge

The Canadian dollar is worth more than the American dollar for the first time since our invasion of Canada in 1775, which of course we Americans won.

The Canadian dollar is called The Looney because it bears a picture of a loon. The reason why there is a picture of a loon on the Canadian dollar is a state secret wrapped carefully in the skin of a cute widdle baby harp seal and hidden deep in an abandoned gold mine outside Dawson and guarded by Sergeant Preston of the Yukon.

Canadians are celebrating the power of their dollar by crossing the border and buying made-in-China stuff in America instead of buying made-in-China stuff in Canada. Because our funny-money is no longer quite up to the mark, goods are cheaper here in Canada’s Back Yard. A gallon of gasoline in Canada, for instance, costs almost five dollars, and that’s five sturdy Canadian dollars, not our flimsy Yank dollars, and so all those cars bearing patriotic maple leaf bumper stickers nip discreetly across The World’s Friendliest Border to buy cheap American petrol.

Being an underdeveloped country could be interesting. This winter Canadians will flee the ice and cold for the warmth of the Gulf of Mexico. We locals might find jobs wearing funny hats and selling overpriced drinks with umbrellas stuck in them to haughty tourists who will write postcards home about us quaint, colorful Americans in our native peasant garb:

“Dear Neville and Beryl, Having the most amusing time among the natives down here, eh. Charming towel boy named Bubba who was once a great logger or something among his tribe until we flooded the American market with our softwood, eh. Given the exchange rate, I and some of the lads at the fishery are thinking of getting together and buying Beaumont as a lark, eh. What they call a dollar is so charming, but of course it’s not real money, eh. See you on Dominion Day, eh. Your pals, Pierre et Marie”

Our illegal aliens could grow to be quite the snobs too: “’Ey, Yankee-boy, you are a bunch of losers. We’re going to Canada for better welfare and to learn how to say ‘Go, Maple Leafs! Eh.’”

Canadian dudes will swagger down the streets of our once-great cities and steal our girlfriends away by flashing their wallets full of Looneys and Tooneys. We will complain that the loud, pushy Canadians are overpaid, oversexed, and over here.

Canadians will patronize (or patronise) us by assuring us that our decaying Republic is so last week’s news, and that in the twenty-first century being a part of the British Empire is the coming thing.

Our children will have to go to special night schools to learn how to spell colour, armour, and eh if they want to be part of the world economy.

Little boys will discard G.I. Joe in favor (or favour) of RCMP Smedley.

American nationalists will gather in secret to whisper about the nefarious Canadian plot to invade us and steal our sand.

Manly men will gather around the telly on Sunday afternoon to watch soccer as the NFL is relegated to sandlots and supermarket openings.

The White House will feature a Tim Horton’s in the lobby, and the President will eagerly claim to be the Prime Minister’s best pal.

This Moosehead’s For You.

Cindy Sheehan and Al Sharpton will picket outside Parliament in Ottawa screaming “Canada Out of Canada!”

Canadian movies will feature the streets of Los Angeles pretending to be the streets of Toronto, partly because of the exchange rate but mostly because the streets of Los Angeles are safer.

Hummer? Ha! Now it’s all Bombardier.

And the final humiliation resulting from Canada’s economic and cultural dominance of North America: Newfoundlanders will be telling Amerifie jokes.

Anticipating November

Mist and Meteors

Little Leonids, falling from the stars
Space dust, they say, sailing from far away
Why have you come to us, and why so far?
So tell me now -- what do you have to say?

The stars are dimming as the mist rolls in
A curtain between the heavens and me
A metaphor, perhaps, suggesting sin,
Separating what is from what might be.

And yet you use even the fog to light
The very air as you fall and die
A glowing, healing, mysterious sight
That closes the gap between earth and sky

I don't know -- are you a message from God?
In this strange night -- that's not so very odd.

Madonna, the Yenta Ouijazilla

Poor Israel – surrounded by genocidal neighbors who stay up late polishing their North Korean nukes and listening to The Voices. And now, perhaps a worse threat, a Kabbalah convention in Tel Aviv featuring Madonna.

Greek Orthodox everywhere breathe a grateful sigh of relief that Madonna’s parents did not name her Theotokos.

Whatever the Kabbalah is – and to ask for a definition is to suffer a smothering tribble-drop of New Age cliches’ – it has become the newest fashion among rich people without underwear. Scientology is, like, soooo last week.

And, really, one can understand – wearing a red string on one’s wrist is so much more understated than lugging an e-meter around.

And what’s with the red string, named Red String? Well, you buy it for some twenty-six dollars or so, and it has, like, y’know, seven knots in it, and, like, stuff, and it wards off the Evil Eye.

Whew! Gotta get me one! I don’t know of a day in my life when I haven’t been menaced by evil eyes glaring at me from my toothbrush and my toaster, and now my salvation is here, in a red string! You can buy your own Red String at Kabbalah.com, along with incense, candles, posters – golly, the sixties are back!

Other followers of Kabbalism are said to include Britney Spears, David and Victoria Beckham, Roseanne Barr, Donna Karan, Lindsey Lohan, Sandra Bernhard, Demi Moore, and Ashton Kutcher, all the greats.

Last week Madonna, who has taken the name of Esther, was a guest of Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, who, according to the Associated Press, gave her a copy of the Old Testament. Note to AP: That’s not what they call it in Israel. In return, Madonna gave Mr. Peres a copy of a Kabbalist text, The Book of Splendor, inscribed "To Shimon Peres, the man I admire and love, Madonna." Now that, not dictators with nuclear weapons, will have the man waking up at 0200 dripping sweat and screaming in fear.

Why is it that the rich and famous seem genetically unable to sit modestly and humbly in a pew, donate to the soup kitchen, help serve coffee after divine services, and just shut up?

Because duty is not nearly as thrilling as being part of an in-group: all the corpse-littered films and the secret -– so secret that they have their own web sites – societies puttering about with secret Egyptian / Babylonian / Chaldean / Crusader books, candles, magic healing water, sacred vessels (stamped “Made in Taiwan” on the bottom), codes (Da Vinci and otherwise), arcane ceremonies featuring robes and wands and stuff, Grail legends, Templar legends, crystals, rocks, ouija boards, seances, tarot cards – it’s all old news. Have we learned nothing from Chaucer’s Pardoner with his pig bones and handkerchiefs? Or from pompously sad Yeats with his table-thumping seances and his orange magic robes?

Poor Madonna. If she really wants to encounter Jewish mysticism she could not do better than to visit an ordinary synagogue on a Friday evening. She could sit next to a woman whose husband has died and whose children are grown and gone. She could ask this woman, a real Esther, “What is the meaning of life?” And perhaps Esther would smile with the wisdom of genuine suffering, and whisper “Shhhhh,” and point to the Torah.

But What About New Orleans?

Hey, people -- stop cleaning up now, go back into the house (if you still have one), and write a big ol' check to send to New Orleans. Thousands of career victims are depending on you. (fade out from a weedy, sepia-colored railway track with a harmonica background)

Hurricane Humberto

Al Caldwell and KLVI always get life right. In crises and on ordinary mornings the discerning listener will roll the little red line to AM 560 for news, wheezy jokes, and INTELLIGENT conversation.

A Workman

Mack Hall

Flavius: Thou art a cobbler, art thou?

Second Commoner: Truly, sir, all that I live by is with the awl. I meddle with no tradesman’s matters, nor women’s matters, but with awl. I am indeed, sir, a surgeon to old shoes. When they are in great danger I recover them. As proper men as ever trod upon neat’s leather have gone upon my handiwork.

-- Julius Caesar

Last week I had occasion to visit a shoemaker to have a pair of shoes re-soled and re-heeled, a practice common even a generation ago but now almost unheard of.

Shoes now come from slave factories in China, and when worn out are thrown away (“recycled”), as are redundant Chinese workers, not mended. China is now progressing in robotics to the point where one’s new leather shoes are perhaps not made by Prisoner Chang but of Prisoner Chang.

Most shoes look like cancerous mushrooms on steroids, but people are convinced by advertising that these blobs are cool because they are worn by some millionaire while he kills dogs or something. Looking for shoes that take a polish is now an adventure.

My cobbler is a smart young man who can discourse expertly on the merits of digital vs. film as media for recording images as well as on leather. He looked at my shoes and immediately knew the brand, the place of manufacture, and the eccentricities of the stitchery unique to the company who made the shoe.

His shop, marked appropriately by a wooden silhouette of a boot hanging from a chain, smelled of leather, wood, oils, and tools, all very much like The City Shoe Shop of happy memory.

And can you say “City Shoe Shop” over and over, really fast, without saying something naughty?

Nowhere was there any evidence of a computer in the cobbler’s shop; indeed, the only evidence of technology was the electric light. The tools were all hand tools, honest wood and iron, and the work bench was an archaeological site, worn and scratched and battered, among the litter of which history could be studied. And isn’t that the way art should be!

Here were no pixellated penguins, no electronic sermons yapping about my ideological failures, no preachments about why I should walk barefoot instead of killing a cow for shoes, no fashionable bottles of water, no body piercings, but rather that increasingly rare man, a real artisan pursuing his craft with his hands and his brain.

I am not nearly so gifted, but I can manage a bit of the rough carpentry I learned on the farm. Recently I felt the need to build some bookshelves. I have most of the tools I need for such small projects, including the hammer my father gave me for my 8th grade graduation for a summer of building fences. I was hoping for something more entertaining -– a car would have been nice -- but in the event my Tru-Temper Rocket has served me honorably for more than forty years.

Whenever I shop for tools I look for that Made In The USA stamp and can almost always find it. Although most manufacturers are now offshore, some of their older products are still trickling out of warehouses, and they are worth the hunt. An American-made hammer, saw, or screwdriver enjoys a heft, a balance, a solidity that you just won’t see or feel or weigh in some shiny thing stamped out of scrap metal by Prisoner Chang before he was harvested for his lungs.

We don’t need another filmmaker, another cartoonist, another nasal thirty-something abusing a guitar, another book on existentialism, another advertiser. We just don’t need ‘em. But a man who can make you some shoes or plumb your house or build cabinets or make the electricity go – in him you've met a true artist.

Archbishop of Los Angeles Evicts Elderly Nuns

Thanks to Gerald Augustinus at The Cafeteria is Closed for this heads-up from The Los Angeles Times:

L.A. Archdiocese plans to sell the Santa Barbara site to help pay its priest abuse settlement. The nuns will likely have to leave the city where they've served the poor.

By Rebecca Trounson, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
September 7, 2007

SANTA BARBARA -- For 43 years, Sister Angela Escalera has lived and often worked out of her order's small convent on this city's east side, helping the area's many poor and undocumented residents with translation, counseling and other needs.

Now retired and partly disabled at 69, the nun thought she would live out her days here, in the community where she is still an active volunteer and in the dwelling that was built for the order in 1952.

Nuns EvictedBut she and the other two nuns at the Sisters of Bethany house recently received word that their convent, which is owned by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, will be sold to help pay the bill for the church's recent, multimillion-dollar priest sex abuse settlement.

The nuns have four months to move out, according to a letter from the archdiocese. The notice, which was dated June 28 but not received until the end of August, asked the women to vacate the property no later than Dec. 31 -- and noted that an earlier departure "would be acceptable as well." Signed by Msgr. Royale M. Vadakin, the archdiocese's vicar general, the letter offers the nuns no recourse but thanks them for their understanding and cooperation during a difficult time.

Oh, yes, "The Spirit of Vatican II" strikes again.

September

Mack Hall

The hot, humid air hangs heavily, old,
On unnaturally green late summer days
Afternoon clouds billow up, blues and greys,
And thunder in impatience, high and cold

But here below the earth is exhausted
From growth and green, and from sunlight and heat
It wishes for sleep beneath winter sleet
As the air is cleaned and fields are frosted

I wish for autumn, earth’s time for yawning
As it prepares for bed. The morning deer
Along a distant line of trees seem near,
Nibbling gently in the misty dawning

Perhaps they, too, sense a change in the air
And feel the days of heavy summer pass
Into thin winter. Heavy summer grass
Fattens their bellies and thickens their hair

My morning coffee doesn’t satisfy;
I drink half a cup, toss the rest away,
Drift to work on a hot, late summer day,
And watch the far north for geese in the sky