Mack Hall
You’ll Never Hear This on NPR
In an unsettled time when some discount stores will sell a customer only 100 pounds of rice a week (Oh, no! How will we survive the coming winter?), one is strangely comforted by the eternal 1968-ness of National Public Radio. Here are some observations that will never be heard on NPR:
We’ve polled everyone who works for the station, and no one here knows what “Hegelian dialectic” means.
Food prices are skyrocketing, huh? Does this mean we have to scratch our files of stories about greedy, overweight Americans?
We really are being just a little too, too precious by bragging about how we don’t have advertising but then really do have advertising anyway, and then spend hours and hours of air time begging for money because we don’t have advertising. We also receive hundreds of millions of your dollars in tax support every year, and voluntary donations are tax-deductible. This message is sponsored by the Calvin and Ethel Plonk Foundation for a Greener and More Diverse Recycled America.
Have you noticed how cleverly we phased out global warming in favor of climate change? Clearly the planet, which has been cooling and warming in cycles for millions of years, is little influenced by your lawnmower. However, if today there is rain and tomorrow there is sunshine we can call it climate change and still blame it on your lawnmower. Climate change – formerly known as weather.
Today on All Things Considered we’re not going to feature a single story about some lazy oaf in New Orleans who can’t be bothered to clean up his own front yard while whining about how the rest of you aren’t sending him enough money.
Following All Things Considered we’ll have Car Talk and then Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me, known to radio professionals as dead-air time.
And now an interview with AlleeSHEyah von O’Hara y Gomez d’Raheem, the daughter of a Chinese-Irish father and a Spanish-Moroccan mother whose parents were persecuted everywhere else and who then came to America and received lots of freebies but were snubbed by a grocery-store carryout which is why AlleeSHEyah hates America and wrote an award-winning book of I, I, I, me, me, me poetry that doesn’t scan detailing her existential angst. And, honestly, her book stinks.
In the next hour we’ll feature an award-winning musician, Friedrich “Stubby” Hamncheese who plays fusion Afro-German-Suomi on an Indian sitar hand-made by unemployed Sherpa draft evaders in Toronto, and, really, that doesn’t make any sense at all.
You people need to get real about fair-trade coffee. If some grocery chain re-labels a can of coffee with pictures of happy Colombians holding hands and dancing barefoot in the rain forest, and charges you two more dollars for it, are you stupid or something?
We use words like existential, ethnic, fusion, diversity, and fair-trade a great deal because that makes us sound, like, you know, smart and stuff.
And now, commentary by grumpy old Daniel Schorr, who disapproves of everyone.
In the end, we at NPR are just a bunch of otherwise unemployable white liberal arts graduates who play old records and subtly sneer at people who have real jobs and love America. We even think Al Franken is an intellectual. So why would you send us money?
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Art by Kennkarte
Mack Hall
The Denver Center Theatre Company, founded in 1978 by visionaries seeing the possibilities in an abandoned downtown stage, has enjoyed a remarkable history in its few years, and has helped make Denver an arts capital.
Unhappily, under the direction of its new leader, Kent Thompson, the Denver Center Theatre Company is now regressing in the direction of art through genetic coding.
When Leader Thompson became artistic director three years ago he perused the list of the 264 plays performed by the DCTC and judged each play – and thus judged the directors, the board, and the audiences of the last thirty years -- by its genetic origins. The results: not enough women and Latinos. Leader Thompson will now commission plays by genetic standards, with three or four plays written by women and one play by a Latino per year.
What is not clear is whether or not women may write more than four plays and the solo Latino may write more than one play per year. There is no quota for black or Chinese writers, which suggests that they do not need to be approved by someone like Leader Thompson.
Will writers and actors and set designers and other artists now be required to submit proof of genetic identity before they can be employed? What is the correct procedure for classifying new playwright Heather-Misty-Shannon-Dawn Gonzales whose parents are surnamed Olafson but who is happily married to Carlos? How will Leader Thompson categorize set designer Muffin who was born Bob but has decided to transgender him- or herself?
A photograph of Leader Thompson suggests that he is a generic white boy, though without perusal of his kennkarte, or racial identity card, one can’t be sure. If he is white and male, then who is he to judge authentic female or Latino writing? And what is the genetic makeup of the past directors of the Denver Center Theatre Company? Is Leader Thompson just another privileged white male?
Humanity has done the blood-and-soil thing before; the twentieth century still stinks of the millions of corpses of people who were killed because they were not of the genetic coding approved by their governments.
And most governments have for political purposes attempted to control art at times, sometimes through bad laws, sometimes by violence, sometimes by the gentle control of funding. Happily, there have always been rebels: swing kids in the Nazi time, samizdat publications under the Communists, photographs smuggled out of Tibet, and artists working in secret in Cuba. Art ennobles humanity and celebrates truth, and so annoys tyrants.
The Denver Center Theatre Company is funded by profits and by contributions, and thus is free to follow Leader Thompson’s curious, if not creepy, ideology of art-by-genetics. But those who love art, freedom, and the dignity of the individual are equally free to avoid the submission of art to ideology and to follow their own hearts and intellects as they celebrate their own, non-regulation creativity.
The Denver Center Theatre Company, founded in 1978 by visionaries seeing the possibilities in an abandoned downtown stage, has enjoyed a remarkable history in its few years, and has helped make Denver an arts capital.
Unhappily, under the direction of its new leader, Kent Thompson, the Denver Center Theatre Company is now regressing in the direction of art through genetic coding.
When Leader Thompson became artistic director three years ago he perused the list of the 264 plays performed by the DCTC and judged each play – and thus judged the directors, the board, and the audiences of the last thirty years -- by its genetic origins. The results: not enough women and Latinos. Leader Thompson will now commission plays by genetic standards, with three or four plays written by women and one play by a Latino per year.
What is not clear is whether or not women may write more than four plays and the solo Latino may write more than one play per year. There is no quota for black or Chinese writers, which suggests that they do not need to be approved by someone like Leader Thompson.
Will writers and actors and set designers and other artists now be required to submit proof of genetic identity before they can be employed? What is the correct procedure for classifying new playwright Heather-Misty-Shannon-Dawn Gonzales whose parents are surnamed Olafson but who is happily married to Carlos? How will Leader Thompson categorize set designer Muffin who was born Bob but has decided to transgender him- or herself?
A photograph of Leader Thompson suggests that he is a generic white boy, though without perusal of his kennkarte, or racial identity card, one can’t be sure. If he is white and male, then who is he to judge authentic female or Latino writing? And what is the genetic makeup of the past directors of the Denver Center Theatre Company? Is Leader Thompson just another privileged white male?
Humanity has done the blood-and-soil thing before; the twentieth century still stinks of the millions of corpses of people who were killed because they were not of the genetic coding approved by their governments.
And most governments have for political purposes attempted to control art at times, sometimes through bad laws, sometimes by violence, sometimes by the gentle control of funding. Happily, there have always been rebels: swing kids in the Nazi time, samizdat publications under the Communists, photographs smuggled out of Tibet, and artists working in secret in Cuba. Art ennobles humanity and celebrates truth, and so annoys tyrants.
The Denver Center Theatre Company is funded by profits and by contributions, and thus is free to follow Leader Thompson’s curious, if not creepy, ideology of art-by-genetics. But those who love art, freedom, and the dignity of the individual are equally free to avoid the submission of art to ideology and to follow their own hearts and intellects as they celebrate their own, non-regulation creativity.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Conscription? Armchair Heroes First!
Mack Hall
A surprising number of people – people who are never going to have to risk dying in the dust of Iraq – are proposing a return to military conscription.
Serving one’s country under arms is a noble idea. Conscription is a bad idea.
Military service to one’s nation is an honorable gift of effort and years and youth and health, and these can never be recovered. Further, although few soldiers choose to give their lives, their lives may well be ripped from them by nasty little men whose one skill is to make a Kalashnikov discharge its rounds. Our young men and women fight and sometimes die so that we can safely whine about gas prices and second-guess every squaddie making the tough decisions in combat.
When a young man or young woman takes the military oath, he places his life completely at the disposal of other people, and therefore should never be forced to do so under penalty of law.
We are told that military service is a great leveller, that the children of the rich should be forced to serve with the children of the poor so that they can all be multi-cultural or vibrant or nuanced or something together.
Well, toad-spit.
Press-gangs are British; they are not American. No one should be forced from his job, his home, his family, and his life and driven into a dangerous and highly-regimented situation so that some ideologue tapping on computer keys in an air-conditioned office can feel good about social engineering.
Conscription is an example of raw democracy gone sour; it is the idea that a majority can legally bully a minority into doing something that the majority cannot or will not do. And that’s just plain wrong. Further, that camel’s nose under the tent flap serves as a precedent for further thuggery. Perhaps a majority of The People will then vote to impound the car you’ve worked hard for and give it to someone who doesn’t have one. If the majority can take your life, then taking your car or your home or your savings will be but a trifle.
We must consider another problem. A soldier takes a personal oath of loyalty not to the country or the government or the Constitution, but to the person of the President of the United States in his capacity as war leader. Given this, consider the characters of the three people standing for President. Think about the one you find the most repulsive. Do you really want to entrust the dignity and the life of your eighteen-year-old son or daughter to the judgment of that individual?
Those who argue for conscription mean one thing, that a collection of other people should be empowered to force your son or daughter to surrender everything and be menaced into taking a forced oath to a leader who almost surely doesn’t give a lizard’s eyeball about the kid’s life.
Those who argue for conscription have no intention of taking your child’s place in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in scrubbing a ten-holer in Fort Polk, or in guarding a chain-link fence around a B52 in 20-below weather in North Dakota.
The United States has, man for man and woman for woman, the best military in the world, better-educated and better-trained than any military in history, and led by officers who love their nation and who take care of the troops. This is a military that can kick *ss and take names, and they are all volunteers. Leave ‘em alone and let ‘em do their jobs.
Conscription? Only after the last fantasy warrior in his discount-store camouflage has died on the barricades defending this nation.
A surprising number of people – people who are never going to have to risk dying in the dust of Iraq – are proposing a return to military conscription.
Serving one’s country under arms is a noble idea. Conscription is a bad idea.
Military service to one’s nation is an honorable gift of effort and years and youth and health, and these can never be recovered. Further, although few soldiers choose to give their lives, their lives may well be ripped from them by nasty little men whose one skill is to make a Kalashnikov discharge its rounds. Our young men and women fight and sometimes die so that we can safely whine about gas prices and second-guess every squaddie making the tough decisions in combat.
When a young man or young woman takes the military oath, he places his life completely at the disposal of other people, and therefore should never be forced to do so under penalty of law.
We are told that military service is a great leveller, that the children of the rich should be forced to serve with the children of the poor so that they can all be multi-cultural or vibrant or nuanced or something together.
Well, toad-spit.
Press-gangs are British; they are not American. No one should be forced from his job, his home, his family, and his life and driven into a dangerous and highly-regimented situation so that some ideologue tapping on computer keys in an air-conditioned office can feel good about social engineering.
Conscription is an example of raw democracy gone sour; it is the idea that a majority can legally bully a minority into doing something that the majority cannot or will not do. And that’s just plain wrong. Further, that camel’s nose under the tent flap serves as a precedent for further thuggery. Perhaps a majority of The People will then vote to impound the car you’ve worked hard for and give it to someone who doesn’t have one. If the majority can take your life, then taking your car or your home or your savings will be but a trifle.
We must consider another problem. A soldier takes a personal oath of loyalty not to the country or the government or the Constitution, but to the person of the President of the United States in his capacity as war leader. Given this, consider the characters of the three people standing for President. Think about the one you find the most repulsive. Do you really want to entrust the dignity and the life of your eighteen-year-old son or daughter to the judgment of that individual?
Those who argue for conscription mean one thing, that a collection of other people should be empowered to force your son or daughter to surrender everything and be menaced into taking a forced oath to a leader who almost surely doesn’t give a lizard’s eyeball about the kid’s life.
Those who argue for conscription have no intention of taking your child’s place in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in scrubbing a ten-holer in Fort Polk, or in guarding a chain-link fence around a B52 in 20-below weather in North Dakota.
The United States has, man for man and woman for woman, the best military in the world, better-educated and better-trained than any military in history, and led by officers who love their nation and who take care of the troops. This is a military that can kick *ss and take names, and they are all volunteers. Leave ‘em alone and let ‘em do their jobs.
Conscription? Only after the last fantasy warrior in his discount-store camouflage has died on the barricades defending this nation.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Down With Big 'Phone!
Mack Hall
Studies show (hey, if radio personalities boasting questionable doctorates can resort to such vapid lead-ins as “studies show…,” we humble high school graduates can too). Anyway, studies show that cell ‘phones cause cancer.
Most folks will casually dismiss this caution, reasoning quite correctly that they never smoke cell ‘phones.
However, inhaling burning cell ‘phones is not the problem; radiation is the problem. Cell ‘phones beam electroluxes and proteins and stuff like that through the air along with desperately important messages such as “Can you hear me now?” and “She all up in my face…!” These enrons are emitted from the ‘phone and blasted through the head, heating up the brain cells and turning the ‘phoner into a demented bibliophile or something.
Reports suggest that the first symptom of cell ‘phone cancer is a desire to embrace the concept of super delegates.
Based these reports, America will need to make itself cell ‘phone free for a healthy future. We must pass laws and exert social pressure until the last few cell ‘phoners are clustered furtively outside their work places on their cell ‘phone breaks, taking a last drag of radiation.
As we know, multi-national Big ‘Phone corporations have forced these dangerous devices on us. We were perfectly happy writing long letters by hand and actually speaking to people around us until Big ‘Phone brutally jammed these deadly gadgets to our ears. Let the people go forth and cry out to all the other people of the world (only not by cell ‘phone), especially fair-trade coffee drinkers and NPR listeners: down with BIG ‘PHONE!
Let the people demand that the United States Senate, that temple of virtue and temperance, hold hearings, summoning the evil executives of Big ‘Phone to grovel under oath and apologize for being meanies.
Let the people demand more taxes on Big ‘Phone to fund support groups so that cell ‘phone addicts can hold hands and chant “We’re all pathetic addicts and it’s somebody else’s fault.”
Let the people demand that China stop sending cell ‘phones to Tibet.
Let the people demand that presidential candidates reveal whether they ever used cell ‘phones in their youth.
Let the people demand that Big ‘Phone fund studies regarding the connection between cell ‘phones and global warming.
Let the people demand that President Bush require Vladimir Putin to stop sending cell ‘phone technology to Iran.
Let the people demand that Big ‘Phone fund classes in semaphore and morse code. Anyone suffering a heart attack can surely muster the strength to tap out 9-1-1 on a tin can attached to a string.
Let the people demand that Big ‘Phone stop drilling for protons in the Arctic!
No more Big ‘Phone! Let the people not rest until every American has been strip-searched for dangerous cell ‘phones! It’s for the children. And the environment. And, like, you know, stuff.
Studies show (hey, if radio personalities boasting questionable doctorates can resort to such vapid lead-ins as “studies show…,” we humble high school graduates can too). Anyway, studies show that cell ‘phones cause cancer.
Most folks will casually dismiss this caution, reasoning quite correctly that they never smoke cell ‘phones.
However, inhaling burning cell ‘phones is not the problem; radiation is the problem. Cell ‘phones beam electroluxes and proteins and stuff like that through the air along with desperately important messages such as “Can you hear me now?” and “She all up in my face…!” These enrons are emitted from the ‘phone and blasted through the head, heating up the brain cells and turning the ‘phoner into a demented bibliophile or something.
Reports suggest that the first symptom of cell ‘phone cancer is a desire to embrace the concept of super delegates.
Based these reports, America will need to make itself cell ‘phone free for a healthy future. We must pass laws and exert social pressure until the last few cell ‘phoners are clustered furtively outside their work places on their cell ‘phone breaks, taking a last drag of radiation.
As we know, multi-national Big ‘Phone corporations have forced these dangerous devices on us. We were perfectly happy writing long letters by hand and actually speaking to people around us until Big ‘Phone brutally jammed these deadly gadgets to our ears. Let the people go forth and cry out to all the other people of the world (only not by cell ‘phone), especially fair-trade coffee drinkers and NPR listeners: down with BIG ‘PHONE!
Let the people demand that the United States Senate, that temple of virtue and temperance, hold hearings, summoning the evil executives of Big ‘Phone to grovel under oath and apologize for being meanies.
Let the people demand more taxes on Big ‘Phone to fund support groups so that cell ‘phone addicts can hold hands and chant “We’re all pathetic addicts and it’s somebody else’s fault.”
Let the people demand that China stop sending cell ‘phones to Tibet.
Let the people demand that presidential candidates reveal whether they ever used cell ‘phones in their youth.
Let the people demand that Big ‘Phone fund studies regarding the connection between cell ‘phones and global warming.
Let the people demand that President Bush require Vladimir Putin to stop sending cell ‘phone technology to Iran.
Let the people demand that Big ‘Phone fund classes in semaphore and morse code. Anyone suffering a heart attack can surely muster the strength to tap out 9-1-1 on a tin can attached to a string.
Let the people demand that Big ‘Phone stop drilling for protons in the Arctic!
No more Big ‘Phone! Let the people not rest until every American has been strip-searched for dangerous cell ‘phones! It’s for the children. And the environment. And, like, you know, stuff.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Versin' on th' Chain Gang
Mack Hall
A woman in California has started a company specializing in greeting cards for prisoners. Let us unlock the possibilities, and look beyond the bars to the stars:
From a Secret Pal:
Roses are red,
A woman in California has started a company specializing in greeting cards for prisoners. Let us unlock the possibilities, and look beyond the bars to the stars:
From a Secret Pal:
Roses are red,
Violets are blue;
Big Sven in Block 34B
Is in love with you.
From a wife:
My dearest husband,
I promised that I would always be true,
From a wife:
My dearest husband,
I promised that I would always be true,
That I loved you like I loved no other,
But now I’ve found someone new:
I’ve moved in with your brother.
From a pal:
Hey, dude!
Sorry you got caught, and are doing twenty.
From a pal:
Hey, dude!
Sorry you got caught, and are doing twenty.
Me, I’m in an unnamed location, and I’ve got plenty;
I bought a new Hummer with your share of the loot
I’ll see ya in 2028, ya big galoot!
To a Lifer:
I’m sorry you’re havin’ a real bad time,
To a Lifer:
I’m sorry you’re havin’ a real bad time,
Ya say your cell-mates are nothin’ but slime,
Ya say prison’s hard, ya say it’s a bore --
Well, it’s your fault ya ate that sophomore!
How about prison MeMeMeSpace blogs?
My fav movies:
The Great Escape
How about prison MeMeMeSpace blogs?
My fav movies:
The Great Escape
Stalag 17
Escape From Alcatraz
Machine Gun Kelly
Scarface
The Sound of Music
More of my favs:
Long walks in the exercise yard with a couple of hundred of my best friends.
More of my favs:
Long walks in the exercise yard with a couple of hundred of my best friends.
Kool-Aid on Friday’s menu.
The rancid smell of lowest-bidder mattresses.
The sun setting behind the sewage treatment plant.
Flinging feces at the guards.
Exchanging tattoo designs with my friends.
Making shanks in arts and crafts.
To a war criminal in Guantanamo:
Free lawyers, free Korans, three squares a day,
To a war criminal in Guantanamo:
Free lawyers, free Korans, three squares a day,
No work, no hassles, no taxes, no way,
A lovely room overlooking the sea:
Oh, please, Jihadist, trade places with me!
To a Recidivist:
Ya stupid clown,
To a Recidivist:
Ya stupid clown,
Ya stupid louse,
Ya went and burned down
The halfway house!
From the Inside to the Outside:
Hey, citizens, ya think us prisoners is gorms,
From the Inside to the Outside:
Hey, citizens, ya think us prisoners is gorms,
And not at all worthy of prison reforms?
Well, you’d better not give reform a miss;
Stay cool, fool, and think about this:
Think about November, and discuss:
With a change of government,
You might be in here with us!
-30-
-30-
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Typical White Passport
Mack Hall
The typical American can only be deeply offended and hurt by the insensitivity of the State Department in snooping through the passport records only of the rich and famous and weird. This class-based apartheid must end! You and I, gentle reader, must demand that our government demonstrate genuine and relevant inclusiveness and openness to the audacious hopes and needs and aspirations of Jose’ Jamail Bubba Sixpack by snooping through the just plain workin’ folks’ records too.
Sometimes we typical Americans feel like former Boeing employees waiting for the employment office to open and seeing a French-built Airbus of the United States Air Force fly over.
A French-built Airbus of the United States Air Force would not be permitted to fly over France, of course, not even over those thousands of American graves in Normandy, Chateau-Thierry, Belleau Wood, and hundreds of other places where young Americans met death “at some disputed barricade.”
Passport (not required for visiting France in 1917 and 1944) applications contain such dangerous information as the applicant’s date of birth. Oooooooooooooooooooooooh! We wouldn’t want that to get out, would we?
And then when the typical American arrives in one of those funny little countries burdened by the curse of not being the USA he’s asked really intrusive questions such as “Are you visiting Canada for business or for pleasure, sir? Eh.” Who wants to know? Why? Why does the Canadian secret service (three retired Mounties, Neville, Clive, and Trevor, in a small office just behind The Department of Dog Sleds, or Bureau de Sleds de Pooches) keep a dossier on me?
Someone in Ottawa asked me if I were a Yank and I said “No, thank God, I’m from Texas.” I heard a camera shaped like a puffin click and a tape recorder hidden in a moose whir.
Americans post their exualsay peccadilloes, drug preferences, relationships, and thong pix on MeMeMeMeSpace and MeMeMeMeTube and then complain about privacy issues.
Recently I downloaded and printed my father’s 1941 Army enlistment, a record which is not supposed to be available even to relatives without a real letter and proof of kinship. Should someone apologize to me? Should I apologize to someone? I’m confused here. Whose turn is it to be the outraged victim?
The State Department is investigating three contract employees who were accused of snooping through the passport files of the weird and famous, and will even polygraph them (the employees, not the candidates). But why? The investigators should just look up the employees’ MeMeMeMeSpace ‘blogs; it’ll all be there.
Maybe someone doesn’t want to miss out on all the fun of waterboarding a gum-chewing, Days of Our Lives-watching GS-2 clerk named Heather-Mistee-Bree.
The contract employees were hired last summer to speed up passport applications. Obviously that went well. Perhaps the contract employees were former inspectors of construction cranes in New York.
Two of the three employees involved have been sacked; the only one who was not required to make fresh arrangements for his future works for a placement company owned, according to The Washington Times, by John Brennan, a former CIA agent – who outed him? – who is an advisor to Barack Fitzgerald Obama.
Hmmm. Outrage to order?
Senator Hillary Clinton, who dodged sniper fire to keep the world safe from fresh-baked cookies, was undoubtedly relieved to hear that someone had snooped into her super-secret passport file too. After all, during her tenure as co-President, snooping into secret files was one of her specialties.
In the meantime, I demand that the State Department report to me that someone has been snooping through my electronic passport file, and I demand a written apology. Money would be nice too. I want to be outraged just like the rich folks.
Oh – and God BLESS America.
The typical American can only be deeply offended and hurt by the insensitivity of the State Department in snooping through the passport records only of the rich and famous and weird. This class-based apartheid must end! You and I, gentle reader, must demand that our government demonstrate genuine and relevant inclusiveness and openness to the audacious hopes and needs and aspirations of Jose’ Jamail Bubba Sixpack by snooping through the just plain workin’ folks’ records too.
Sometimes we typical Americans feel like former Boeing employees waiting for the employment office to open and seeing a French-built Airbus of the United States Air Force fly over.
A French-built Airbus of the United States Air Force would not be permitted to fly over France, of course, not even over those thousands of American graves in Normandy, Chateau-Thierry, Belleau Wood, and hundreds of other places where young Americans met death “at some disputed barricade.”
Passport (not required for visiting France in 1917 and 1944) applications contain such dangerous information as the applicant’s date of birth. Oooooooooooooooooooooooh! We wouldn’t want that to get out, would we?
And then when the typical American arrives in one of those funny little countries burdened by the curse of not being the USA he’s asked really intrusive questions such as “Are you visiting Canada for business or for pleasure, sir? Eh.” Who wants to know? Why? Why does the Canadian secret service (three retired Mounties, Neville, Clive, and Trevor, in a small office just behind The Department of Dog Sleds, or Bureau de Sleds de Pooches) keep a dossier on me?
Someone in Ottawa asked me if I were a Yank and I said “No, thank God, I’m from Texas.” I heard a camera shaped like a puffin click and a tape recorder hidden in a moose whir.
Americans post their exualsay peccadilloes, drug preferences, relationships, and thong pix on MeMeMeMeSpace and MeMeMeMeTube and then complain about privacy issues.
Recently I downloaded and printed my father’s 1941 Army enlistment, a record which is not supposed to be available even to relatives without a real letter and proof of kinship. Should someone apologize to me? Should I apologize to someone? I’m confused here. Whose turn is it to be the outraged victim?
The State Department is investigating three contract employees who were accused of snooping through the passport files of the weird and famous, and will even polygraph them (the employees, not the candidates). But why? The investigators should just look up the employees’ MeMeMeMeSpace ‘blogs; it’ll all be there.
Maybe someone doesn’t want to miss out on all the fun of waterboarding a gum-chewing, Days of Our Lives-watching GS-2 clerk named Heather-Mistee-Bree.
The contract employees were hired last summer to speed up passport applications. Obviously that went well. Perhaps the contract employees were former inspectors of construction cranes in New York.
Two of the three employees involved have been sacked; the only one who was not required to make fresh arrangements for his future works for a placement company owned, according to The Washington Times, by John Brennan, a former CIA agent – who outed him? – who is an advisor to Barack Fitzgerald Obama.
Hmmm. Outrage to order?
Senator Hillary Clinton, who dodged sniper fire to keep the world safe from fresh-baked cookies, was undoubtedly relieved to hear that someone had snooped into her super-secret passport file too. After all, during her tenure as co-President, snooping into secret files was one of her specialties.
In the meantime, I demand that the State Department report to me that someone has been snooping through my electronic passport file, and I demand a written apology. Money would be nice too. I want to be outraged just like the rich folks.
Oh – and God BLESS America.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Saturday Morning Thoughts Over Coffee With Other Old Geezers
Mack Hall
Saturday Morning Thoughts Over Coffee With Other Old Geezers
If American money is so worthless, why does our government take it away from us under penalty of imprisonment? And why does our money go to people who don’t like us?…
So that’s what a thousand-dollars-an-hour, um, friend looks like. Yawn.…
Is the rebuilding of Iraq going any better than the eternal rebuilding of Interstate 10 between Orange and Beaumont?…
Tibet has risen in an unorganized but fierce rebellion against its Chinese occupiers. The streets of Lhasa are smoking with the fires of burnt cars and shops, people are hiding inside their houses, Tibetans are beating up and maybe killing Han Chinese, and Han Chinese are beating up and maybe killing Tibetans. The curious thing is that no one has yet blamed America. Well, maybe the Reverend Doctor Wright has.…
Some ministers are certainly tacking on the adjectives these days. Brother Noisy is now The Reverend Doctor Bishop Noisy. But just what university grants degrees in shouting at people?…
What, exactly, is a superdelegate? Does he leap tall voters in a single bound?…
Presidential candidate Senator / Mrs. Hillary Rodham Clinton wants to control the evil, wicked, greedy oil companies who explore, drill, ship, and process oil despite increasing taxes, regulations, and criticism. The federal government’s record in regulating into oblivion passenger trains, hospitals, physicians, and our national borders suggests that this is probably not a good idea.…
Democrats in Florida and Michigan may get to vote for a second time in the Democratic Party primaries because the Democratic Party did not permit their votes to matter the first time. The Democratic Party in Texas held both primary elections and primary caucuses, so the old gag about Vote Early, Vote Often really is true. Even so, superdelegates can override the state primaries. So does anyone really know what’s going on?…
What is a subprime lender? What is a subprime anything? Is there a superprime?…
If a car can be pre-owned, does that mean it can also be post-owned?…
The very limited and highly-regulated sealing season is about to commence in Newfoundland, so expect the usual pictures of cute widdle iddy biddy baby seals, carnivorous varmints who are as about as cuddly as rabid raccoons on crack, being clubbed to death. Then in our profound sorrow we can all drive past the abortion clinic to the fast-food joint for some dead cow. It is a pity, though – a pity that the pelts of carnivore-rights activists aren’t worth anything.…
Why doesn’t anyone feel sorry for the cute little fishies and other marine life who die screaming in the greedy jaws of evil seals? Where are the eel-rights activists?…
Does progress mean that soon we will watch embarrassed husbands standing bravely by, shedding a tear or two, as their middle-aged wives confess to kinky, um, chess with 20-something boys and stealing public funds?
Saturday Morning Thoughts Over Coffee With Other Old Geezers
If American money is so worthless, why does our government take it away from us under penalty of imprisonment? And why does our money go to people who don’t like us?…
So that’s what a thousand-dollars-an-hour, um, friend looks like. Yawn.…
Is the rebuilding of Iraq going any better than the eternal rebuilding of Interstate 10 between Orange and Beaumont?…
Tibet has risen in an unorganized but fierce rebellion against its Chinese occupiers. The streets of Lhasa are smoking with the fires of burnt cars and shops, people are hiding inside their houses, Tibetans are beating up and maybe killing Han Chinese, and Han Chinese are beating up and maybe killing Tibetans. The curious thing is that no one has yet blamed America. Well, maybe the Reverend Doctor Wright has.…
Some ministers are certainly tacking on the adjectives these days. Brother Noisy is now The Reverend Doctor Bishop Noisy. But just what university grants degrees in shouting at people?…
What, exactly, is a superdelegate? Does he leap tall voters in a single bound?…
Presidential candidate Senator / Mrs. Hillary Rodham Clinton wants to control the evil, wicked, greedy oil companies who explore, drill, ship, and process oil despite increasing taxes, regulations, and criticism. The federal government’s record in regulating into oblivion passenger trains, hospitals, physicians, and our national borders suggests that this is probably not a good idea.…
Democrats in Florida and Michigan may get to vote for a second time in the Democratic Party primaries because the Democratic Party did not permit their votes to matter the first time. The Democratic Party in Texas held both primary elections and primary caucuses, so the old gag about Vote Early, Vote Often really is true. Even so, superdelegates can override the state primaries. So does anyone really know what’s going on?…
What is a subprime lender? What is a subprime anything? Is there a superprime?…
If a car can be pre-owned, does that mean it can also be post-owned?…
The very limited and highly-regulated sealing season is about to commence in Newfoundland, so expect the usual pictures of cute widdle iddy biddy baby seals, carnivorous varmints who are as about as cuddly as rabid raccoons on crack, being clubbed to death. Then in our profound sorrow we can all drive past the abortion clinic to the fast-food joint for some dead cow. It is a pity, though – a pity that the pelts of carnivore-rights activists aren’t worth anything.…
Why doesn’t anyone feel sorry for the cute little fishies and other marine life who die screaming in the greedy jaws of evil seals? Where are the eel-rights activists?…
Does progress mean that soon we will watch embarrassed husbands standing bravely by, shedding a tear or two, as their middle-aged wives confess to kinky, um, chess with 20-something boys and stealing public funds?
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Change. Maybe
Mack Hall
Downtown Beaumont is a great place for photography. Many buildings there are survivors of a happier architectural age and display remarkable artistry in their brickwork, stonework, glass, and iron. Note, for instance, the detail work on and around the Hotel Beaumont and the Jefferson Theatre. Other structures, in a state of decay or repair, present their own transient appeal as they are adapted or bulldozed for Beaumont’s renascent prosperity. We’d better click before they’re replaced by fake new fronts advertising Data Solutions, Antique Solutions, Insurance Solutions, Coffee Solutions, and Sobriety Solutions (formerly known as the Kit-Kat Club).
Is there a new business without “Solutions” as part of its name? A shopper might want a coat, a cup of coffee, a book, or a cigar; he seldom wants a solution. Does one walk into a sporting goods store and ask for that great-looking solution he saw advertised? Does anyone sit down in a café’ and ask for a cup of solution?
In front of the Hotel Beaumont, now a retirement home, I saw several folks taking the air and having a smoke and laughing merrily, wholly unimpressed that only a few hours before Senator If-You-Mention-My-Middle-Name-You’re-a-Meanie and his entourage had passed by. The chairman of this informal committee was a large-ish old gentleman with a cowboy hat, a prosperous waistline, and a big ol’ cigar, and he was enjoying life immensely. Some will sniff disapprovingly and maintain that this health-crime should have been stopped by the Don’t-You-Know-That’s-Bad-For-You Miz Grundy Police, but I say that if you’ve made it to eighty you’ve won, and have earned a cigar and a good laugh with friends on a soft evening.
On the east side of the Jefferson Theatre I spotted a blanket, a coat, and a few other trifles indicating that this was the world headquarters of someone whose world is now the streets. Atop this modest assemblage some kind soul had left a sandwich or a burger in a fast-foot bag, adding a smiley-face and “Enjoy!”
Before large audiences, perhaps in the Jefferson Theatre itself, a brick wall away from the coat, the blanket, and the sandwich, deeply concerned men and women in nice suits give speeches proposing solutions – solutions again -- for the homeless. Someone happily had a more immediate solution: give the homeless a fresh sandwich.
This solution would probably not occur to a bishop whose communications with poor people are pretty much limited to asking them to give him more money.
The secular government probably wouldn’t like this solution because the sandwich was not served inside an inspected establishment by a vaccinated person wearing a hair net and gloves.
The Diet Ogpu would demand to know if the sandwich was vegan, or if it consisted of parts of an animal that died unhappy and without a vision for the future.
If we wait on those folks, nothing will get done. Do we want change? Well, someone made a change one evening on a Beaumont street, real change, neatly packaged not in senate bills or proposals or speeches, but in a sandwich for someone who needed it.
Downtown Beaumont is a great place for photography. Many buildings there are survivors of a happier architectural age and display remarkable artistry in their brickwork, stonework, glass, and iron. Note, for instance, the detail work on and around the Hotel Beaumont and the Jefferson Theatre. Other structures, in a state of decay or repair, present their own transient appeal as they are adapted or bulldozed for Beaumont’s renascent prosperity. We’d better click before they’re replaced by fake new fronts advertising Data Solutions, Antique Solutions, Insurance Solutions, Coffee Solutions, and Sobriety Solutions (formerly known as the Kit-Kat Club).
Is there a new business without “Solutions” as part of its name? A shopper might want a coat, a cup of coffee, a book, or a cigar; he seldom wants a solution. Does one walk into a sporting goods store and ask for that great-looking solution he saw advertised? Does anyone sit down in a café’ and ask for a cup of solution?
In front of the Hotel Beaumont, now a retirement home, I saw several folks taking the air and having a smoke and laughing merrily, wholly unimpressed that only a few hours before Senator If-You-Mention-My-Middle-Name-You’re-a-Meanie and his entourage had passed by. The chairman of this informal committee was a large-ish old gentleman with a cowboy hat, a prosperous waistline, and a big ol’ cigar, and he was enjoying life immensely. Some will sniff disapprovingly and maintain that this health-crime should have been stopped by the Don’t-You-Know-That’s-Bad-For-You Miz Grundy Police, but I say that if you’ve made it to eighty you’ve won, and have earned a cigar and a good laugh with friends on a soft evening.
On the east side of the Jefferson Theatre I spotted a blanket, a coat, and a few other trifles indicating that this was the world headquarters of someone whose world is now the streets. Atop this modest assemblage some kind soul had left a sandwich or a burger in a fast-foot bag, adding a smiley-face and “Enjoy!”
Before large audiences, perhaps in the Jefferson Theatre itself, a brick wall away from the coat, the blanket, and the sandwich, deeply concerned men and women in nice suits give speeches proposing solutions – solutions again -- for the homeless. Someone happily had a more immediate solution: give the homeless a fresh sandwich.
This solution would probably not occur to a bishop whose communications with poor people are pretty much limited to asking them to give him more money.
The secular government probably wouldn’t like this solution because the sandwich was not served inside an inspected establishment by a vaccinated person wearing a hair net and gloves.
The Diet Ogpu would demand to know if the sandwich was vegan, or if it consisted of parts of an animal that died unhappy and without a vision for the future.
If we wait on those folks, nothing will get done. Do we want change? Well, someone made a change one evening on a Beaumont street, real change, neatly packaged not in senate bills or proposals or speeches, but in a sandwich for someone who needed it.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Humans -- Chock Full of Vitamins and Other Essential Nutrients
Mack Hall
In Hawaii a tiger took a walk on the mild side last week, escaping its catdominium and strolling around the human parts of the zoo, checking out the sights, maybe taking a few snapshots, and looking for a snack.
This follows another escape by a tiger in a San Francisco zoo on Christmas Day, a back-to-nature event in which one man was killed near a snack bar. One imagines the survivors running and screaming in fear while text-messaging on their cell ‘phones and chugging bottled water.
And then the souvenirs: “I Survived the San Francisco Tiger Massacre” and “My Parents Watched a Guy Get Eaten by a Tiger and All I Got Was This Lousy tee-shirt.”
Many people question how big cats can escape their enclosure, but the real question should be why cats bother to do so. In the zoo tigers spend their days lying around in the sun while being given free medical care, free housing, and free food according to their dietary wants and needs, and occasionally eating some of their benefactors. Give them a holy book they can’t even read and their lives would be pretty much complete. The reader may now deconstruct the metaphor for himself.
Hundreds of television viewers hundred of miles from any zoo are probably filing disability claims, suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome involving nightcats, and thus unable to work. O Lord, send Thy grief counselors among us.
What, exactly, is a grief counselor? Is that what we used to call a busy-body?
The smart tiger will lurk at the updated watering hole, the bottled-water machine, waiting for its thirsty prey.
Unfortunately, PETA members are out of their cages too, terribly concerned lest Fluffy suffer from a human femur caught in his throat.
A house-cat is a tiger writ small, insolent and carnivorous, lounging on the windowsill and dreaming of killing mice and birds, and through its heavy-lidded eyes perhaps measuring its human companion and pondering the nutritive possibilities. To a pussycat the living room is the African veldt, and the cat’s pet human little more than a large, munchable monkey with opposable thumbs.
Sure your kitty purrs when you stroke his chin; he’s fantasizing about eating you.
Human – it’s what’s for dinner.
Even harmless-looking animals on the loose are dangerous; an innocent zoo visitor could be trampled to death by sheep stampeding to some presidential candidate’s rally.
And then the snakes – they might escape to become editors at The New York Times, swallowing whole the few remaining specimens of another endangered species, real reporters.
In Hawaii a tiger took a walk on the mild side last week, escaping its catdominium and strolling around the human parts of the zoo, checking out the sights, maybe taking a few snapshots, and looking for a snack.
This follows another escape by a tiger in a San Francisco zoo on Christmas Day, a back-to-nature event in which one man was killed near a snack bar. One imagines the survivors running and screaming in fear while text-messaging on their cell ‘phones and chugging bottled water.
And then the souvenirs: “I Survived the San Francisco Tiger Massacre” and “My Parents Watched a Guy Get Eaten by a Tiger and All I Got Was This Lousy tee-shirt.”
Many people question how big cats can escape their enclosure, but the real question should be why cats bother to do so. In the zoo tigers spend their days lying around in the sun while being given free medical care, free housing, and free food according to their dietary wants and needs, and occasionally eating some of their benefactors. Give them a holy book they can’t even read and their lives would be pretty much complete. The reader may now deconstruct the metaphor for himself.
Hundreds of television viewers hundred of miles from any zoo are probably filing disability claims, suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome involving nightcats, and thus unable to work. O Lord, send Thy grief counselors among us.
What, exactly, is a grief counselor? Is that what we used to call a busy-body?
The smart tiger will lurk at the updated watering hole, the bottled-water machine, waiting for its thirsty prey.
Unfortunately, PETA members are out of their cages too, terribly concerned lest Fluffy suffer from a human femur caught in his throat.
A house-cat is a tiger writ small, insolent and carnivorous, lounging on the windowsill and dreaming of killing mice and birds, and through its heavy-lidded eyes perhaps measuring its human companion and pondering the nutritive possibilities. To a pussycat the living room is the African veldt, and the cat’s pet human little more than a large, munchable monkey with opposable thumbs.
Sure your kitty purrs when you stroke his chin; he’s fantasizing about eating you.
Human – it’s what’s for dinner.
Even harmless-looking animals on the loose are dangerous; an innocent zoo visitor could be trampled to death by sheep stampeding to some presidential candidate’s rally.
And then the snakes – they might escape to become editors at The New York Times, swallowing whole the few remaining specimens of another endangered species, real reporters.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
House, Nursing Assistant
Mack Hall
House is a reasonably intelligent television show featuring the eponymous lead as a Byronic hero who is never sacked despite his drug abuse, ill manners, television watching, and video gaming, all on the job, because he develops brilliant solutions to apparently impossible medical problems.
Where House breaks down is its unreality, which is not a criticism because this is a television show. In House the few nurses do things on computer screens and are never seen giving patient care. Patients suffer seizures or coronary occlusions only when a team of physicians happens to be in the room. The hospital in which House works has no admissions staff, nursing assistants, cleaner-uppers, security guards, or bulletin boards. Each fictional doctor enjoys a spacious, glass-walled office which any real-life physician can only envy, and when said physician needs a crash cart, a suture tray, or a specific medicine it is immediately available.
What if House were more like a real hospital?
House, Nursing Assistant. House is fired for having a drug problem, even though he saves lives.
House, Pharmacist. House is fired for being rude, although he saves lives.
House, Cleaning Staff. House is fired for pausing thirty seconds to watch a bit of soap opera on a patient’s television while tidying his fiftieth or so room of his shift, even though skilled and science-based hygiene and maintenance save lives.
House, Hospital Security. House, after wrestling with drunks most of his shift, is fired for playing a video game on his watch at four in the morning although his presence in a creepy world saves lives.
House, R.N. House, after helping deliver a baby in E.R., giving resuscitation to a heart-attack victim, getting coughed on by ‘flu patients, barfed on by someone with food poisoning, and supervising the care of dozens of other patients, all without lunch or even a potty break, is fired for telling an career FEMA recipient complaining about the formaldehyde in his free trailer that he doesn’t even know what formaldehyde is and why doesn’t he just open the windows if he doesn’t like the new-car smell?
House, Admissions Clerk. House, after years of loyal service to the same hospital doing his part to help save lives, is fired for not learning Spanish rapidly enough.
Short season, huh? And now, back to Flipping Homezillas Off the Island.
House is a reasonably intelligent television show featuring the eponymous lead as a Byronic hero who is never sacked despite his drug abuse, ill manners, television watching, and video gaming, all on the job, because he develops brilliant solutions to apparently impossible medical problems.
Where House breaks down is its unreality, which is not a criticism because this is a television show. In House the few nurses do things on computer screens and are never seen giving patient care. Patients suffer seizures or coronary occlusions only when a team of physicians happens to be in the room. The hospital in which House works has no admissions staff, nursing assistants, cleaner-uppers, security guards, or bulletin boards. Each fictional doctor enjoys a spacious, glass-walled office which any real-life physician can only envy, and when said physician needs a crash cart, a suture tray, or a specific medicine it is immediately available.
What if House were more like a real hospital?
House, Nursing Assistant. House is fired for having a drug problem, even though he saves lives.
House, Pharmacist. House is fired for being rude, although he saves lives.
House, Cleaning Staff. House is fired for pausing thirty seconds to watch a bit of soap opera on a patient’s television while tidying his fiftieth or so room of his shift, even though skilled and science-based hygiene and maintenance save lives.
House, Hospital Security. House, after wrestling with drunks most of his shift, is fired for playing a video game on his watch at four in the morning although his presence in a creepy world saves lives.
House, R.N. House, after helping deliver a baby in E.R., giving resuscitation to a heart-attack victim, getting coughed on by ‘flu patients, barfed on by someone with food poisoning, and supervising the care of dozens of other patients, all without lunch or even a potty break, is fired for telling an career FEMA recipient complaining about the formaldehyde in his free trailer that he doesn’t even know what formaldehyde is and why doesn’t he just open the windows if he doesn’t like the new-car smell?
House, Admissions Clerk. House, after years of loyal service to the same hospital doing his part to help save lives, is fired for not learning Spanish rapidly enough.
Short season, huh? And now, back to Flipping Homezillas Off the Island.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Jesus' Carbon Footprint
Mack Hall
The (Anglican) bishops of London and Liverpool want you to cut back on carbon for Lent.
Senator Obama’s supporters, shoaling from event to event, might chant “Yes, we can! Yes, we can!” over and over without thinking about it, while the more perceptive carbon-based life form, thinking for himself, might ask the Bishops of London and Liverpool “Why?”
Does Governor Huckabee give up squirrel for Lent? Just a thought.
The Bishops of London and Liverpool in holy conclave in Trafalgar Square, the heart of the Christian world, tell us that a carbon fast during these forty days of Lent will raise awareness (awareness has been raised constantly since 1968; it must be quite high by now) of global warming and how our energy-hungry lifestyles are hurting poor communities.
Yes, you, reading this column under a light bulb – that light bulb is starving a child somewhere. Have you no shame? Turn that light bulb off, sit in the dark, and meditate on how some kid now has a steak dinner because you are sitting in the dark.
Other forms of denial, according to the Bishop of London and the Bishop of Liverpool, include avoiding plastic bags.
Yes, the devout Christian has always associated self-indulgence with Demon Plastic Bags. Many a poor wife has had to force her way into a grimy East End pub with her starving children in order to shame her husband away from consuming freezer bags among bad companions.
One employee of Tearfund (wherever one finds a bishop, one finds a fund), of which the Bishop of Liverpool just happens to be vice-president, will camp outside the charity’s offices in Teddington (which is not Liverpool), in order to reduce his carbon footprint to that of “an average Malawian farmer.”
Carbon footprints are bad things, of course, soiling the rug and so on.
Just why this employee of Tearfund wants to reduce his carbon footprint probably eludes even the poor farmer in Malawi, who would probably like to expand his carbon footprint through ownership of a nice little tractor. Our hypothetical farmer, working hard to make a living as he observes his government officials zipping around in nice cars, must ask why his carbon footprint must be the standard for anything. The Bishop of London, who surely takes the tube, not his car, to his look-at-me events, called for individual and collective action.
One can only imagine that our farmer in Malawi is all giddy about the Bishop of London calling for things.
The Bishop of Liverpool didn’t call for anything, but said "It is the poor who are already suffering the effects of climate change.”
Apparently the rich are exempt from, oh, volcanoes and earthquakes.
Lent, forty days of penance, prayer, and almsgiving (now known as “social justice”) in anticipation of Easter, is as old as the Church. The idea is not that penance, prayer, and almsgiving may then be ignored for the rest of the year, but are emphasized even more during this liturgical season.
And certainly much suffering is involved during this time of prayer and reflection. One must suffer, for instance, tiresome people asking others “What are you giving up for Lent?” The response ought to be “It’s none of your *&^%$# business,” but one must remember to be charitable.
Lent has unfortunately become part of the extended MySpace world, where the mythology of global warming replaces sin, and look-at-me-ness replaces the Gospel admonition against such things.
The Bishop of London and the Bishop of Liverpool do well to worry about a hypothetical farmer in Malawi, though perhaps the government of Malawi might do better in making sure the world’s largesse to Malawi actually gets to the farmer. Maybe the Bishop of London could also spare a thought to the poor sleeping under bridges only a few blocks away from Trafalgar Square, instead of MySpacing in the Square for the cameras.
The (Anglican) bishops of London and Liverpool want you to cut back on carbon for Lent.
Senator Obama’s supporters, shoaling from event to event, might chant “Yes, we can! Yes, we can!” over and over without thinking about it, while the more perceptive carbon-based life form, thinking for himself, might ask the Bishops of London and Liverpool “Why?”
Does Governor Huckabee give up squirrel for Lent? Just a thought.
The Bishops of London and Liverpool in holy conclave in Trafalgar Square, the heart of the Christian world, tell us that a carbon fast during these forty days of Lent will raise awareness (awareness has been raised constantly since 1968; it must be quite high by now) of global warming and how our energy-hungry lifestyles are hurting poor communities.
Yes, you, reading this column under a light bulb – that light bulb is starving a child somewhere. Have you no shame? Turn that light bulb off, sit in the dark, and meditate on how some kid now has a steak dinner because you are sitting in the dark.
Other forms of denial, according to the Bishop of London and the Bishop of Liverpool, include avoiding plastic bags.
Yes, the devout Christian has always associated self-indulgence with Demon Plastic Bags. Many a poor wife has had to force her way into a grimy East End pub with her starving children in order to shame her husband away from consuming freezer bags among bad companions.
One employee of Tearfund (wherever one finds a bishop, one finds a fund), of which the Bishop of Liverpool just happens to be vice-president, will camp outside the charity’s offices in Teddington (which is not Liverpool), in order to reduce his carbon footprint to that of “an average Malawian farmer.”
Carbon footprints are bad things, of course, soiling the rug and so on.
Just why this employee of Tearfund wants to reduce his carbon footprint probably eludes even the poor farmer in Malawi, who would probably like to expand his carbon footprint through ownership of a nice little tractor. Our hypothetical farmer, working hard to make a living as he observes his government officials zipping around in nice cars, must ask why his carbon footprint must be the standard for anything. The Bishop of London, who surely takes the tube, not his car, to his look-at-me events, called for individual and collective action.
One can only imagine that our farmer in Malawi is all giddy about the Bishop of London calling for things.
The Bishop of Liverpool didn’t call for anything, but said "It is the poor who are already suffering the effects of climate change.”
Apparently the rich are exempt from, oh, volcanoes and earthquakes.
Lent, forty days of penance, prayer, and almsgiving (now known as “social justice”) in anticipation of Easter, is as old as the Church. The idea is not that penance, prayer, and almsgiving may then be ignored for the rest of the year, but are emphasized even more during this liturgical season.
And certainly much suffering is involved during this time of prayer and reflection. One must suffer, for instance, tiresome people asking others “What are you giving up for Lent?” The response ought to be “It’s none of your *&^%$# business,” but one must remember to be charitable.
Lent has unfortunately become part of the extended MySpace world, where the mythology of global warming replaces sin, and look-at-me-ness replaces the Gospel admonition against such things.
The Bishop of London and the Bishop of Liverpool do well to worry about a hypothetical farmer in Malawi, though perhaps the government of Malawi might do better in making sure the world’s largesse to Malawi actually gets to the farmer. Maybe the Bishop of London could also spare a thought to the poor sleeping under bridges only a few blocks away from Trafalgar Square, instead of MySpacing in the Square for the cameras.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
A Mugging in South Park
Mack Hall
Last week we learned that 21% of Lamar University students are working their way through school; the other 79% voted to spend someone else’s money for a football team.
The increase of eight dollars per credit hour works out to $120 extra each semester for a student taking a typical load of fifteen hours. That would buy maybe one textbook or part ownership in a cup of fashionable chain-store coffee.
This send-the-bill-to-my-mommy-and-daddy-fee comes one month after the State of Texas imposed another tax / fee / contribution / love offering of five dollars per consumer at strip clubs. The five dollars are to go to a fund – there’s always a fund – to assist women who are the victims of sexual abuse. The State of Texas bureaucrats who will administer this fund (solely out of the goodness of their pancreases) will determine who qualifies as a victim and will distribute the money (after expenses) to other State of Texas functionaries to counsel the officially approved victims.
If our elected State of Texas bureaucrats are indeed concerned about victims of sexual abuse, wouldn’t it save time and effort if the money went straight to the dancers at the club?
And does a girl working her way through college as a dancer at Les Clubbe Le Chat du Exotique catch a break on her tuition?
Following the logic of guilt-by-association, perhaps Lamar University donate the student football fee to the victims of violence. After all, one reads on the ‘net (and if it’s on the ‘net it must be true) that on Super Bowl Sunday normally mild-mannered men inspired by a good tackle or a blocked punt beat up women. Men are such beasts.
Lamar University could combine these ideas in order to fund a football team: have the players moonlight as topless dancers. Who wouldn’t pay extra to see a lineman in a thong bench-pressing a Volkswagen to a jazz-mix recording of Andy Williams singing “Moon River!”
For something more exciting the quarterback could do calisthenics on a pole while the theme from Hot Fuzz blares through the speakers.
This could give a new meaning to “tight end.”
To encourage the customers to buy more Saigon tea the coaches might wear cute little dresses and sit on dudes’ knees and coo sweet nothings in their ears.
The State taxes us for good things that are just not do-able in the private sector: roads, cops, courts, and pomade for Governor Perry’s helmet-hair. Beyond those needs, the State should exercise restraint in picking the pockets of people who work.
If someone wants to console unhappy strippers, great. If someone wants to play football, she should have at it. If someone wants to attend a football match, fine. While we’re at it, Lamar’s chess club should have cheerleaders, too. But just because someone in government has a good idea doesn’t mean the guy out in the weather switching rail cars across the road from Lamar should almost automatically be taxed for it.
Last week we learned that 21% of Lamar University students are working their way through school; the other 79% voted to spend someone else’s money for a football team.
The increase of eight dollars per credit hour works out to $120 extra each semester for a student taking a typical load of fifteen hours. That would buy maybe one textbook or part ownership in a cup of fashionable chain-store coffee.
This send-the-bill-to-my-mommy-and-daddy-fee comes one month after the State of Texas imposed another tax / fee / contribution / love offering of five dollars per consumer at strip clubs. The five dollars are to go to a fund – there’s always a fund – to assist women who are the victims of sexual abuse. The State of Texas bureaucrats who will administer this fund (solely out of the goodness of their pancreases) will determine who qualifies as a victim and will distribute the money (after expenses) to other State of Texas functionaries to counsel the officially approved victims.
If our elected State of Texas bureaucrats are indeed concerned about victims of sexual abuse, wouldn’t it save time and effort if the money went straight to the dancers at the club?
And does a girl working her way through college as a dancer at Les Clubbe Le Chat du Exotique catch a break on her tuition?
Following the logic of guilt-by-association, perhaps Lamar University donate the student football fee to the victims of violence. After all, one reads on the ‘net (and if it’s on the ‘net it must be true) that on Super Bowl Sunday normally mild-mannered men inspired by a good tackle or a blocked punt beat up women. Men are such beasts.
Lamar University could combine these ideas in order to fund a football team: have the players moonlight as topless dancers. Who wouldn’t pay extra to see a lineman in a thong bench-pressing a Volkswagen to a jazz-mix recording of Andy Williams singing “Moon River!”
For something more exciting the quarterback could do calisthenics on a pole while the theme from Hot Fuzz blares through the speakers.
This could give a new meaning to “tight end.”
To encourage the customers to buy more Saigon tea the coaches might wear cute little dresses and sit on dudes’ knees and coo sweet nothings in their ears.
The State taxes us for good things that are just not do-able in the private sector: roads, cops, courts, and pomade for Governor Perry’s helmet-hair. Beyond those needs, the State should exercise restraint in picking the pockets of people who work.
If someone wants to console unhappy strippers, great. If someone wants to play football, she should have at it. If someone wants to attend a football match, fine. While we’re at it, Lamar’s chess club should have cheerleaders, too. But just because someone in government has a good idea doesn’t mean the guy out in the weather switching rail cars across the road from Lamar should almost automatically be taxed for it.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Blame the Welder
Mack Hall
The first smoke had barely risen from a famous no-tell in Las Vegas before someone said that the fire was probably caused by – surprise -- a welder’s spark.
Why is almost every fire attributed to a welder’s spark? Why is the cause never an accountant’s cigarette? Or someone’s made-in-China electric heater octopussed into one outlet along with a computer, a television, and a hair dryer?
Welders, who practice applied metallurgy, must study for multiple certifications before they may perform their art and science with a catalogue of impedimenta, including gasses, glasses, rods, electrical gadgets, helmets, and safety lines, and are repeatedly tested by each employer or contractor. A welder is thus highly unlikely to be unaware that his endeavors involve the generation of great heat.
Surely no welder ever said "Gee, I don’t want to make a mess; let me spread lots of old newspaper on the floor beneath this task," or perhaps "Hmmm, I’ll bet this job would go faster if I propped these two pieces of metal across a couple of tanks of gasoline."
And yet, for all their knowledge and experience, welders are the first to receive scornful scowls of uniformed judgment and focused fingers of Clintonian accusation when an unplanned fire spoils someone’s afternoon.
One begins to infer that the phrase "welder’s spark" is coded into some sort of speed-dial system for news agencies.
Is there a fire in a hundred-year-old building amateurishly re-wired by its owners based on internet directions? Must be a welder’s spark.
Is a ship aflame off Alaska? Must be a welder’s spark.
Does a sensitive senator suffer a headache? Must be a welder’s spark.
That busy little welder’s spark sure gets around. What other mischief might a welder’s spark cause?
Colonel Mustard murdered Professor Plum in the library with a welder’s spark.
Macbeth famously asked "Is this is a welder’s spark which I see before me…?"
High school athletes may be tested for illicit welders’ sparks.
California legalizes sniffing welder’s sparks by prescription.
Angelina Jolie is pregnant by a welder’s spark.
Police and animal control officers raid filthy house crowded with starving welders’ sparks.
President Bill Clinton blames Senator Obama for playing the welders’ sparks card.
Welders’ sparks cause global warming.
Child mauled by unleashed welders’ sparks.
James Dobson says welders’ sparks are not a real religion.
Detroit Mayor sends steamy welders’ sparks to his lover via email.
Activists demand that welders’ sparks be removed from school vending machines.
Yep, you can bet your cigarette lighter, candles, leaky gas cans, and overloaded circuits on this – the first reporter on the scene of a fire will always blame it on a welder’s spark.
The first smoke had barely risen from a famous no-tell in Las Vegas before someone said that the fire was probably caused by – surprise -- a welder’s spark.
Why is almost every fire attributed to a welder’s spark? Why is the cause never an accountant’s cigarette? Or someone’s made-in-China electric heater octopussed into one outlet along with a computer, a television, and a hair dryer?
Welders, who practice applied metallurgy, must study for multiple certifications before they may perform their art and science with a catalogue of impedimenta, including gasses, glasses, rods, electrical gadgets, helmets, and safety lines, and are repeatedly tested by each employer or contractor. A welder is thus highly unlikely to be unaware that his endeavors involve the generation of great heat.
Surely no welder ever said "Gee, I don’t want to make a mess; let me spread lots of old newspaper on the floor beneath this task," or perhaps "Hmmm, I’ll bet this job would go faster if I propped these two pieces of metal across a couple of tanks of gasoline."
And yet, for all their knowledge and experience, welders are the first to receive scornful scowls of uniformed judgment and focused fingers of Clintonian accusation when an unplanned fire spoils someone’s afternoon.
One begins to infer that the phrase "welder’s spark" is coded into some sort of speed-dial system for news agencies.
Is there a fire in a hundred-year-old building amateurishly re-wired by its owners based on internet directions? Must be a welder’s spark.
Is a ship aflame off Alaska? Must be a welder’s spark.
Does a sensitive senator suffer a headache? Must be a welder’s spark.
That busy little welder’s spark sure gets around. What other mischief might a welder’s spark cause?
Colonel Mustard murdered Professor Plum in the library with a welder’s spark.
Macbeth famously asked "Is this is a welder’s spark which I see before me…?"
High school athletes may be tested for illicit welders’ sparks.
California legalizes sniffing welder’s sparks by prescription.
Angelina Jolie is pregnant by a welder’s spark.
Police and animal control officers raid filthy house crowded with starving welders’ sparks.
President Bill Clinton blames Senator Obama for playing the welders’ sparks card.
Welders’ sparks cause global warming.
Child mauled by unleashed welders’ sparks.
James Dobson says welders’ sparks are not a real religion.
Detroit Mayor sends steamy welders’ sparks to his lover via email.
Activists demand that welders’ sparks be removed from school vending machines.
Yep, you can bet your cigarette lighter, candles, leaky gas cans, and overloaded circuits on this – the first reporter on the scene of a fire will always blame it on a welder’s spark.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Huckabee and the Squirrel
Mack Hall
Mike Huckabee ate Rocky the Flying Squirrel!
Okay, he really didn’t, but he did state while campaigning in Las Vegas that when he was in college he cooked squirrels in his popcorn popper.
This naturally leads the American voter to ask two salient questions about why a college student cooked squirrels in a popcorn popper: Was this because of a shortage of popcorn? Or of a shortage of neighborhood cats?
One imagines Senator Edwards ordering squirrel in French – but only so that he can sue it. Or Senator Hillary Rodham dropping a squirrel at thirty feet with only her Glare of Death.
What we are dealing with, my fellow Americans, is a candidate for the Presidency of the United States who may have struck on a solution for starvation in third-world countries: let them eat squirrel.
President Bill Clinton might interrupt to maintain that he personally saw squirrels bullying union culinary workers during the cauci in Las Vegas.
Both President Bill Clinton and Governor / Reverend Mike Huckabee are from Hope, Arkansas, which may explain much.
Several years ago a friend and I spent the night in Hope, and had a sandwich at the local Dairy Queen. There was no squirrel on the electric menu, but I think the culinary workers were humming the theme from Deliverance.
I too have eaten the arboreal rodent; it was one of those experiences my Depression-raised father thought I ought to know about. Those of us raised in the security of plenty mock such a diet only from our ignorance, for mankind has always lived on the margins of starvation. We who motor along highways lined with cafes’ and grocery stores full of good, inexpensive food almost never think about the harsh reality that our ancestors almost always needed a little more protein for the pot.
And you never, ever joke about food with Depression babies. Once upon a time I pushed away a plate (not squirrel), and my father said "Eat your supper; there are children starving in China who would love to have those beans / peas / potatoes / corn."
Suffering from a pre-adolescent failure to think critically, I said "Well, they can have mine."
The sequel was not pretty, and to this day its memory makes me sit lightly.
A modern host might ask you of a meal "How did you like the presentation?"
A host raised in the 1950s may ask "Was it good?"
But your Mawmaw and Pawpaw will ask, in genuine concern, "Did you get enough to eat?"
The psychic pain of real hunger and fear of hunger runs deep.
As for me, I am a good hundred pounds away from ever again eating squirrel or broccoli.
And as for the candidates’ dietary choices, who gets eaten next – Alvin the Chipmunk?
Mike Huckabee ate Rocky the Flying Squirrel!
Okay, he really didn’t, but he did state while campaigning in Las Vegas that when he was in college he cooked squirrels in his popcorn popper.
This naturally leads the American voter to ask two salient questions about why a college student cooked squirrels in a popcorn popper: Was this because of a shortage of popcorn? Or of a shortage of neighborhood cats?
One imagines Senator Edwards ordering squirrel in French – but only so that he can sue it. Or Senator Hillary Rodham dropping a squirrel at thirty feet with only her Glare of Death.
What we are dealing with, my fellow Americans, is a candidate for the Presidency of the United States who may have struck on a solution for starvation in third-world countries: let them eat squirrel.
President Bill Clinton might interrupt to maintain that he personally saw squirrels bullying union culinary workers during the cauci in Las Vegas.
Both President Bill Clinton and Governor / Reverend Mike Huckabee are from Hope, Arkansas, which may explain much.
Several years ago a friend and I spent the night in Hope, and had a sandwich at the local Dairy Queen. There was no squirrel on the electric menu, but I think the culinary workers were humming the theme from Deliverance.
I too have eaten the arboreal rodent; it was one of those experiences my Depression-raised father thought I ought to know about. Those of us raised in the security of plenty mock such a diet only from our ignorance, for mankind has always lived on the margins of starvation. We who motor along highways lined with cafes’ and grocery stores full of good, inexpensive food almost never think about the harsh reality that our ancestors almost always needed a little more protein for the pot.
And you never, ever joke about food with Depression babies. Once upon a time I pushed away a plate (not squirrel), and my father said "Eat your supper; there are children starving in China who would love to have those beans / peas / potatoes / corn."
Suffering from a pre-adolescent failure to think critically, I said "Well, they can have mine."
The sequel was not pretty, and to this day its memory makes me sit lightly.
A modern host might ask you of a meal "How did you like the presentation?"
A host raised in the 1950s may ask "Was it good?"
But your Mawmaw and Pawpaw will ask, in genuine concern, "Did you get enough to eat?"
The psychic pain of real hunger and fear of hunger runs deep.
As for me, I am a good hundred pounds away from ever again eating squirrel or broccoli.
And as for the candidates’ dietary choices, who gets eaten next – Alvin the Chipmunk?
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Chariots of Plastic
Mack Hall
Seventy-something years after Germany invented The People’s Car, India has reinvented it.
The Tata Group (I’m not sure what a group of Tatas is, or even a single Tata) has built the prototype of a five-seater sedan, the Nano, which will cost $2,500, about the price of a couple of cups of de-fatinated cuppacino at Starbuck’s.
The Nano features a two-cylinder gasoline engine, will putt-putt down the road for fifty miles on a gallon of gas, and meets all European safety and emissions standards. The Nano features no power windows, no radio, and no air-conditioning. In short – and the Nano is fairly short – it’s pretty much a Hindu reincarnation of the Model T.
You and I can’t buy one. For now.
The next step up is the Maruti 800 from India and the Chery from China at about $5,000 each.
You and I can’t buy one of those either. For now.
These first-world cars (because we are now exporters of raw materials, not manufactured goods, to China and India) are cheap and efficient, and so naturally the environmentalists are concerned about the planet. This means they are concerned about uppity peasants enjoying freedom. After all, if Gupta and Chang can afford their own cars, they can drive to the next town for a better job, and maybe even move out to the suburbs. No longer will Gupta and Chang be restricted to living in the center of Bombay and Shanghai, dependent on politically-controlled public transportation and public housing.
An advantage for Hindus is that getting together to burn Christian churches will be more convenient. Instead of mobs with pitchforks and torches running down the streets, India can have mobs in their Nanos and plastic cigarette lighters driving down the streets. The old days of spreading rumors by word of mouth will be replaced with spreading rumors via text-messaging, thus advancing civilization.
One wonders – does a mob burning a church have to buy carbon-offsets for the event?
India is a remarkable nation. Controlled by the British for almost two hundred years, India after independence has become more British than the British. India is a capitalist nation that exports teachers, investors, technology, and manufactured goods all over the world, while Britain, where the Industrial Revolution began, is now little more than a Soviet Socialist Disneyland increasingly controlled by…I’m supposed to say extremists, I suppose, or disaffected youths.
India, having fought for the British in World War I, World War II, and the colonial wars, kept its British military traditions, and, unlike Britain, is proud of its army, its navy, its nuclear weapons, and its developing space program. India, like China, is taking its turn as an awakening and dynamic giant, while America and Europe seem to be idling in a lotus-land of self-indulgent pop culture, dime-store religious mysticism, junk food, and interminable lawsuits.
In sum, we might someday be driving our Nanos to our jobs at a Mahindra plant in Beaumont, and reporting to Mr. Gupta.
Seventy-something years after Germany invented The People’s Car, India has reinvented it.
The Tata Group (I’m not sure what a group of Tatas is, or even a single Tata) has built the prototype of a five-seater sedan, the Nano, which will cost $2,500, about the price of a couple of cups of de-fatinated cuppacino at Starbuck’s.
The Nano features a two-cylinder gasoline engine, will putt-putt down the road for fifty miles on a gallon of gas, and meets all European safety and emissions standards. The Nano features no power windows, no radio, and no air-conditioning. In short – and the Nano is fairly short – it’s pretty much a Hindu reincarnation of the Model T.
You and I can’t buy one. For now.
The next step up is the Maruti 800 from India and the Chery from China at about $5,000 each.
You and I can’t buy one of those either. For now.
These first-world cars (because we are now exporters of raw materials, not manufactured goods, to China and India) are cheap and efficient, and so naturally the environmentalists are concerned about the planet. This means they are concerned about uppity peasants enjoying freedom. After all, if Gupta and Chang can afford their own cars, they can drive to the next town for a better job, and maybe even move out to the suburbs. No longer will Gupta and Chang be restricted to living in the center of Bombay and Shanghai, dependent on politically-controlled public transportation and public housing.
An advantage for Hindus is that getting together to burn Christian churches will be more convenient. Instead of mobs with pitchforks and torches running down the streets, India can have mobs in their Nanos and plastic cigarette lighters driving down the streets. The old days of spreading rumors by word of mouth will be replaced with spreading rumors via text-messaging, thus advancing civilization.
One wonders – does a mob burning a church have to buy carbon-offsets for the event?
India is a remarkable nation. Controlled by the British for almost two hundred years, India after independence has become more British than the British. India is a capitalist nation that exports teachers, investors, technology, and manufactured goods all over the world, while Britain, where the Industrial Revolution began, is now little more than a Soviet Socialist Disneyland increasingly controlled by…I’m supposed to say extremists, I suppose, or disaffected youths.
India, having fought for the British in World War I, World War II, and the colonial wars, kept its British military traditions, and, unlike Britain, is proud of its army, its navy, its nuclear weapons, and its developing space program. India, like China, is taking its turn as an awakening and dynamic giant, while America and Europe seem to be idling in a lotus-land of self-indulgent pop culture, dime-store religious mysticism, junk food, and interminable lawsuits.
In sum, we might someday be driving our Nanos to our jobs at a Mahindra plant in Beaumont, and reporting to Mr. Gupta.
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Is Primary Voting Primarily for Primates?
Mack Hall
The non-system of primaries and caucussing is fascinating, possibly because, like John Kerry’s self-invented war record, it is a great mystery. However, after much study one can figure out how the typical primary caucus works.
In the rural South, of course, there is no mystery – One Party, One Primary, One Folk.
But in New England, the home of the bean and the codpiece, a citizen enjoys choices, and those funny little states up there in Robert Frost country entertain the world with an eclecticity of Ye Olde New England gatherings to determine, well, not much of anything.
On the appointed day for a pricus or a caucary, the sturdy New England farmers and their wives, and the less sturdy New England investment bankers and their significant others, tramp through the snow carrying blunderbusses and Geneva Bibles to gather in houses, schools, and Farmer Ezekiel’s barn to invoke folksy ain’t-they-quainte Ye Olde New England votingness.
In one corner of the room the Obama supporters, young and energetic, cluster together in their Dockers and Earth Shoes and cable-knit sweaters and say nice things about Change and Hope and a New Day in America.
In another corner of the room the Hillary supporters, both of them wearing red power-blazers and sturdy shoes and 1970s jet-pilot glasses, hug each other and reminisce about 1968 and The Revolution while saying nice things about Change and Hope and a New Day in America. The McCain straight-talk expressos wander between this group and the kitchen, checking their GPS systems for Change and Hope and a New Day in America.
In yet another corner of the room the Romney supporters in their Cole-Haan pinch-tassle loafers and Izod shirts try desperately to sound like what they imagine The People to be while saying nice things about Change and Hope and a New Day in America.
In the remaining corner the Huckabee supporters clutch their spit-cups, cinch up their gimme caps another notch, look around suspiciously, and say nice things about Change and Hope and a New Day in America.
Outside in the snow, Ron Paul’s obedientiaries practice marching in step by torchlight, breaking occasionally to chase reporters and to beat up anyone who says nice things about Change and Hope and a New Day in America.
Members of each group are free to say nice things about Change and Hope and a New Day in America, and then shift allegiances to move to another group which says nice things about Change and Hope and a New Day in America. After a period of Red (or Blue) Rover, Red Rover, Can Ebenezer Come Over, folks make their decisions, their heads are counted, and the results are sent to the state election commission and to the world.
Now this works only if the groundhog doesn’t see his shadow by the light of one of those squiggly little glass thingies full of poisonous mercury, in which case the town crier cries "Oyez! Oyez!’ and the quaint New Englanders do the dance of the mid-winter fertility festival in wooden clogs, and start over.
The Huckabeings angrily maintain that the results were pre-determined by evil functionaries in the Vatican and sent to secret operatives via the secret radios in the secret basement of Bob Newhart’s inn.
At the end of the Norman Rockwellian evening the caucasians enjoy a mug of Ye Old New England cider or something, and then go outside to be screamed at and threatened by the Ron Paulistas.
With one per cent of precincts counted Fox News calls the races, and the candidates stand before their sound-alike-cheering faithful to say Nice Things about Change and Hope and a New Day in America, thank the state from the bottoms of their pancreases or something, talk about how honest they are and how they just want to serve The Just Plain Ol’ Common Workin’ People, and then fly away in private jets to shake babies and kiss hands (or some other body part) in other little snowbound states where the most excitement for four years running is watching the statue of Revolutionary Colonel Hiram Smedleybottom change reflected colors as the town’s traffic light changes.
And yet, somehow, the Republic survives.
The non-system of primaries and caucussing is fascinating, possibly because, like John Kerry’s self-invented war record, it is a great mystery. However, after much study one can figure out how the typical primary caucus works.
In the rural South, of course, there is no mystery – One Party, One Primary, One Folk.
But in New England, the home of the bean and the codpiece, a citizen enjoys choices, and those funny little states up there in Robert Frost country entertain the world with an eclecticity of Ye Olde New England gatherings to determine, well, not much of anything.
On the appointed day for a pricus or a caucary, the sturdy New England farmers and their wives, and the less sturdy New England investment bankers and their significant others, tramp through the snow carrying blunderbusses and Geneva Bibles to gather in houses, schools, and Farmer Ezekiel’s barn to invoke folksy ain’t-they-quainte Ye Olde New England votingness.
In one corner of the room the Obama supporters, young and energetic, cluster together in their Dockers and Earth Shoes and cable-knit sweaters and say nice things about Change and Hope and a New Day in America.
In another corner of the room the Hillary supporters, both of them wearing red power-blazers and sturdy shoes and 1970s jet-pilot glasses, hug each other and reminisce about 1968 and The Revolution while saying nice things about Change and Hope and a New Day in America. The McCain straight-talk expressos wander between this group and the kitchen, checking their GPS systems for Change and Hope and a New Day in America.
In yet another corner of the room the Romney supporters in their Cole-Haan pinch-tassle loafers and Izod shirts try desperately to sound like what they imagine The People to be while saying nice things about Change and Hope and a New Day in America.
In the remaining corner the Huckabee supporters clutch their spit-cups, cinch up their gimme caps another notch, look around suspiciously, and say nice things about Change and Hope and a New Day in America.
Outside in the snow, Ron Paul’s obedientiaries practice marching in step by torchlight, breaking occasionally to chase reporters and to beat up anyone who says nice things about Change and Hope and a New Day in America.
Members of each group are free to say nice things about Change and Hope and a New Day in America, and then shift allegiances to move to another group which says nice things about Change and Hope and a New Day in America. After a period of Red (or Blue) Rover, Red Rover, Can Ebenezer Come Over, folks make their decisions, their heads are counted, and the results are sent to the state election commission and to the world.
Now this works only if the groundhog doesn’t see his shadow by the light of one of those squiggly little glass thingies full of poisonous mercury, in which case the town crier cries "Oyez! Oyez!’ and the quaint New Englanders do the dance of the mid-winter fertility festival in wooden clogs, and start over.
The Huckabeings angrily maintain that the results were pre-determined by evil functionaries in the Vatican and sent to secret operatives via the secret radios in the secret basement of Bob Newhart’s inn.
At the end of the Norman Rockwellian evening the caucasians enjoy a mug of Ye Old New England cider or something, and then go outside to be screamed at and threatened by the Ron Paulistas.
With one per cent of precincts counted Fox News calls the races, and the candidates stand before their sound-alike-cheering faithful to say Nice Things about Change and Hope and a New Day in America, thank the state from the bottoms of their pancreases or something, talk about how honest they are and how they just want to serve The Just Plain Ol’ Common Workin’ People, and then fly away in private jets to shake babies and kiss hands (or some other body part) in other little snowbound states where the most excitement for four years running is watching the statue of Revolutionary Colonel Hiram Smedleybottom change reflected colors as the town’s traffic light changes.
And yet, somehow, the Republic survives.
Thursday, January 3, 2008
White Lung Syndrome
Mack Hall
Trying to understand the writers’ strike is genuinely problematic. There are only about 10,000 entertainment writers along the New York – Hollywood axis, and while some actually are on strike, others of the brothers / sisters / comrades are cutting separate deals with Big Media.
And for what are some of (not all) the writers striking? A reduction in job injuries from paper cuts? The issue appears to be the arcane matter of residuals from internet reproduction or re-broadcast of movies and television shows. This makes some sense – when a movie is re-broadcast, income from the advertisements and sales of tickets means that someone is making money from the exhibition, so the writers and actors should receive some part of that.
Where the argument falls apart is that the concept of residuals does not obtain in other fields of endeavor.
Consider the modest little Ford Escape owned by an aging and not very successful writer. Once upon a time auto workers in Michigan assembled the little car, for which labor they were paid. The aging and not very successful then bought the little Ford Escape, and enjoys driving the machine around. The workers who built the car do not enjoy residuals every time the car is driven, repaired, or re-sold.
Several years ago, following Hurricane Rita (which never happened because it had nothing to do with New Orleans), the aging and not very successful writer hired a roofing company to re-roof his hurricane de-roofed house, and a good job it was. Every time the rain falls or the cold winds blow the aging and not very successful writer enjoys the benefits of his excellent new roof, and yet the roofer and his crew receive no residuals.
If the guy who scribbled “Take my wife – please!” receives residuals for the rest of his life based on a one-time effort, why not residuals for auto workers and roofers?
The nice lady who cuts the hair of the aging and not very successful writer does not receive a residual every time some lissome lass coos “Oooooh, look at the geriatric hottie with the great haircut!”
The Writers (sic – that should of course be “writers’”) Guild of America forbids actors to cross their picket lines and has forbade Jay Leno to deliver his own monologue made up of his own jokes that he thought up himself. One gathers that the WGA is not exactly a hotbed of freedom and individuality.
Now the WGA, somehow involved with SAG in striking against NBC and HFPA (Where Have All the Acronyms Gone, Long Time Passing…?), is threatening not to write for the awards shows.
Does this mean that awards shows had writers in the first place? Does it really take a professional writer to create the babble issuing forth from the heavily-lipsticked and decidedly foul mouth of some aging starlet receiving some sort of plastic award for having had a hit show in the 1960s and now peddling medications? “I just…oh, gosh…I mean…I just wanna…like, you know…um…you know, like…um…thank all my briefcase holders…um…and all the, like, you know, other little people…not that you’re really little…I mean, like…um, and you little people all over America…like, you know, in flyover country…like, you little people who worship me…because, like, you know…I bring some meaning…like…into…your pathetic little lives because you can’t read a freakin’ book or newspaper, and you just stare into that stupid glowing tube all the time…and…like…(BLEEP) that evil (BLEEP)ing George Bush and his (BLEEP)ing colonialist imperialist running dog capitalist war against the, like, you know, South Africans or something, like…you know…those funny little people in Argentina or somewhere like that…gosh, ain’t I cute!”
Residuals for writing jokes? Maybe. But first let the writers argue for residuals for miners and linemen and other people whose jobs keep us safe and warm and fed, and which involve more risk than dry-air allergens from an air-conditioned office atmosphere
Trying to understand the writers’ strike is genuinely problematic. There are only about 10,000 entertainment writers along the New York – Hollywood axis, and while some actually are on strike, others of the brothers / sisters / comrades are cutting separate deals with Big Media.
And for what are some of (not all) the writers striking? A reduction in job injuries from paper cuts? The issue appears to be the arcane matter of residuals from internet reproduction or re-broadcast of movies and television shows. This makes some sense – when a movie is re-broadcast, income from the advertisements and sales of tickets means that someone is making money from the exhibition, so the writers and actors should receive some part of that.
Where the argument falls apart is that the concept of residuals does not obtain in other fields of endeavor.
Consider the modest little Ford Escape owned by an aging and not very successful writer. Once upon a time auto workers in Michigan assembled the little car, for which labor they were paid. The aging and not very successful then bought the little Ford Escape, and enjoys driving the machine around. The workers who built the car do not enjoy residuals every time the car is driven, repaired, or re-sold.
Several years ago, following Hurricane Rita (which never happened because it had nothing to do with New Orleans), the aging and not very successful writer hired a roofing company to re-roof his hurricane de-roofed house, and a good job it was. Every time the rain falls or the cold winds blow the aging and not very successful writer enjoys the benefits of his excellent new roof, and yet the roofer and his crew receive no residuals.
If the guy who scribbled “Take my wife – please!” receives residuals for the rest of his life based on a one-time effort, why not residuals for auto workers and roofers?
The nice lady who cuts the hair of the aging and not very successful writer does not receive a residual every time some lissome lass coos “Oooooh, look at the geriatric hottie with the great haircut!”
The Writers (sic – that should of course be “writers’”) Guild of America forbids actors to cross their picket lines and has forbade Jay Leno to deliver his own monologue made up of his own jokes that he thought up himself. One gathers that the WGA is not exactly a hotbed of freedom and individuality.
Now the WGA, somehow involved with SAG in striking against NBC and HFPA (Where Have All the Acronyms Gone, Long Time Passing…?), is threatening not to write for the awards shows.
Does this mean that awards shows had writers in the first place? Does it really take a professional writer to create the babble issuing forth from the heavily-lipsticked and decidedly foul mouth of some aging starlet receiving some sort of plastic award for having had a hit show in the 1960s and now peddling medications? “I just…oh, gosh…I mean…I just wanna…like, you know…um…you know, like…um…thank all my briefcase holders…um…and all the, like, you know, other little people…not that you’re really little…I mean, like…um, and you little people all over America…like, you know, in flyover country…like, you little people who worship me…because, like, you know…I bring some meaning…like…into…your pathetic little lives because you can’t read a freakin’ book or newspaper, and you just stare into that stupid glowing tube all the time…and…like…(BLEEP) that evil (BLEEP)ing George Bush and his (BLEEP)ing colonialist imperialist running dog capitalist war against the, like, you know, South Africans or something, like…you know…those funny little people in Argentina or somewhere like that…gosh, ain’t I cute!”
Residuals for writing jokes? Maybe. But first let the writers argue for residuals for miners and linemen and other people whose jobs keep us safe and warm and fed, and which involve more risk than dry-air allergens from an air-conditioned office atmosphere
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Send Out the Clowns
Mack Hall
Send out the clowns. No, this is not a piece about the candidates for the presidency.
Imagine, if you will, a film in black-and-white from the 1940s or 1950s. A man (perhaps his name is Bill, or maybe Augie) smokes a cigarette pensively while leaning against a light pole on a street corner at night. He flicks the cigarette butt away and walks across to a church. He removes his hat (this concept also may need explaining to anyone under forty) as he enters, walks down an aisle, and kneels before a side altar.
Bill (or Augie) may or may not be a Catholic, but that’s not important: as Father O’Malley (it’s always Father O’Malley, or Father O’Flaherty, or Father O’Something) gives his Irish-brogue-y homily during evening Mass, something in his words brings Bill (or Augie) to a moral decision on which the plot of the movie hinges.
The next scene shows us Bill (or Augie) leaving the church, fitting his fedora firmly to his head, and striding purposefully off to propose marriage to his girl or face the villains or stand up to the corrupt mayor.
But then imagine, if you will, Bill (or Augie) entering the church to find a clown Mass in progress, with Father O’Trendy dressed as a cartoon pirate and pushing Kool-Aid and Ritz Crackers as The Lord’s Supper.
No, this is not a piece about the cardinal-archbishop of Los Angeles. We’re talking about a priest or minister dressed as a clown. Paint. Makeup. Big funny shoes. Multi-colored costume. The kind of goof who mouths such decades-old drivel as “we need to reach the people where they are,” and “the spirit of Vatican II.”
Bill (or Augie) turns and leaves, and lights another cigarette in confusion on the street corner. A clown Mass has not inspired him to propose marriage, face the villains, stand up to the corrupt mayor, or forswear smoking.
The sad reality is the non-fictional part – there actually are priests and ministers who feel called by some spirit, possibly not a very nice spirit, to, as Chaucer said, “make monkeys of the…congregation.” Like bongos and guitars in the 1960s, clown liturgies are an embarrassing fashion perpetrated by ill-advised men with a desperate need to call attention to themselves.
Well, hey, who doesn’t want a clown spraying seltzer water during a loved one’s funeral, eh?
After all, if the pastor is going to do a clown act during Sunday services, why not at funerals? Imagine a bunch of clowns hopping out of a tiny hearse and repeatedly dropping Grandpa’s coffin for laughs.
Clown Last Supper: Jesus reclines on a whoopee cushion and the Apostles laugh hysterically and high-five each other.
Or maybe clown Stations of the Cross: Simon of Cyrene honks a rubber-bulb car horn and dances away.
On Easter morning the women approach the Tomb and are greeted by the Marx Brothers who chase them off while making suggestive remarks.
Think of martyrs for the faith in our time, with a firing squad dressed as clowns and the officer in charge waving a carrot instead of a sword.
Clowns in church? No, it won’t do. No quantity of quoting isolated snippets from St. Paul can excuse desecration; that only makes it worse.
There are times and places for playing the fool – presidential candidates campaigning in Iowa come to mind – because life should be fun. But to turn a religious service into the crudest sort of entertainment is to laugh at, not with, the people the pastor is presumably commissioned to teach and serve and love.
Send out the clowns. No, this is not a piece about the candidates for the presidency.
Imagine, if you will, a film in black-and-white from the 1940s or 1950s. A man (perhaps his name is Bill, or maybe Augie) smokes a cigarette pensively while leaning against a light pole on a street corner at night. He flicks the cigarette butt away and walks across to a church. He removes his hat (this concept also may need explaining to anyone under forty) as he enters, walks down an aisle, and kneels before a side altar.
Bill (or Augie) may or may not be a Catholic, but that’s not important: as Father O’Malley (it’s always Father O’Malley, or Father O’Flaherty, or Father O’Something) gives his Irish-brogue-y homily during evening Mass, something in his words brings Bill (or Augie) to a moral decision on which the plot of the movie hinges.
The next scene shows us Bill (or Augie) leaving the church, fitting his fedora firmly to his head, and striding purposefully off to propose marriage to his girl or face the villains or stand up to the corrupt mayor.
But then imagine, if you will, Bill (or Augie) entering the church to find a clown Mass in progress, with Father O’Trendy dressed as a cartoon pirate and pushing Kool-Aid and Ritz Crackers as The Lord’s Supper.
No, this is not a piece about the cardinal-archbishop of Los Angeles. We’re talking about a priest or minister dressed as a clown. Paint. Makeup. Big funny shoes. Multi-colored costume. The kind of goof who mouths such decades-old drivel as “we need to reach the people where they are,” and “the spirit of Vatican II.”
Bill (or Augie) turns and leaves, and lights another cigarette in confusion on the street corner. A clown Mass has not inspired him to propose marriage, face the villains, stand up to the corrupt mayor, or forswear smoking.
The sad reality is the non-fictional part – there actually are priests and ministers who feel called by some spirit, possibly not a very nice spirit, to, as Chaucer said, “make monkeys of the…congregation.” Like bongos and guitars in the 1960s, clown liturgies are an embarrassing fashion perpetrated by ill-advised men with a desperate need to call attention to themselves.
Well, hey, who doesn’t want a clown spraying seltzer water during a loved one’s funeral, eh?
After all, if the pastor is going to do a clown act during Sunday services, why not at funerals? Imagine a bunch of clowns hopping out of a tiny hearse and repeatedly dropping Grandpa’s coffin for laughs.
Clown Last Supper: Jesus reclines on a whoopee cushion and the Apostles laugh hysterically and high-five each other.
Or maybe clown Stations of the Cross: Simon of Cyrene honks a rubber-bulb car horn and dances away.
On Easter morning the women approach the Tomb and are greeted by the Marx Brothers who chase them off while making suggestive remarks.
Think of martyrs for the faith in our time, with a firing squad dressed as clowns and the officer in charge waving a carrot instead of a sword.
Clowns in church? No, it won’t do. No quantity of quoting isolated snippets from St. Paul can excuse desecration; that only makes it worse.
There are times and places for playing the fool – presidential candidates campaigning in Iowa come to mind – because life should be fun. But to turn a religious service into the crudest sort of entertainment is to laugh at, not with, the people the pastor is presumably commissioned to teach and serve and love.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
It's Not Over Until January 6th
Mack Hall
Every year some folks take up their crayons and write querulously to the newspapers to demand that Christ be returned to Christmas, as if the newspapers are somehow at fault because Christmas is not what the writers of letters to the editor think it ought to be.
The real irony is that for much of Christian history Christ was not in Christmas because there was no Christmas at all.
Christmas as a Feast of the Church was formally established by Pope Julius I in 350. Even then our poor, ignorant, superstitious ancestors only went to church on Christmas to worship God, and failed to buy masses of made-in-China stuff.
Over time, European nations slowly developed the concept of the twelve days, keeping Christmas from the 25th of December until the Feast of the Epiphany, or Three Kings, on the 6th of January. This worked well in agricultural societies in cold Europe because unless Sven and Gunter wanted to throw snowballs or hunt wolves or count icicles or something there wasn’t a whole lot to do in mid-winter except stay indoors next to the fire.
While Martin Luther was rather fond of Christmas – and was devoted to the Blessed Mother, too – other reformers said “Bah, humbug!” to Christmas and forbade it under penalty of law. In England and in the colonies Puritans and their spiritual descendants, including Baptists and Methodists, were sternly opposed to the celebration of Christmas as Romish superstition. To this day some evangelical congregations will not open the church doors when Christmas falls on a weekday.
In Scotland, Christmas was banned for over four hundred years, and not restored until 1958. 1958. Not 1658 or 1758 or even 1858. 1958. Put Christ into Christmas? Nae, laddie, ye’d better not be thinkin’ such evil thoughts.
Christmas as we know it is pretty much an invention of Charles Dickens, who imagined a merrie old English Christmas that never really was and wrote it into his books. Dickens’ Christmas is little more than some vague, fuzzy good feelings and some innocent partying, although he does allow his characters to walk to divine services on Christmas morning.
Christmas trees are a German tradition (someone will bring up the pagans at this point, and I say that if the pagans thought well of trees, good for them) Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha remembered the Christmas trees of his youth and popularized them in England. American anglophiles followed the lead of Victoria and Albert, and Christmas trees became a symbol of Christmas in the English-speaking world late in the 19th century.
Christmas was and is a Feast Day of the Church, a day in which the Incarnation is realized. Its other main purpose seems to be to serve as an institutional inadequacy for grumpy people to fault.
Well, grumpy people, that’s all right. Perhaps we do eat more than we should on Christmas, and buy too much stuff, and indulge our children more than we ought to, but it’s all a great deal of fun anyway.
"Let the children have their night of fun and laughter,let the gifts of Father Christmas delight their play.Let us grown-ups share to the full in their unstinted pleasuresbefore we turn again to the stern task and the formidable years that lie before us,resolved that, by our sacrifice and daring,these same children shall not be robbed of their inheritanceor denied their right to live in a free and decent world.And so, in God's mercy, a happy Christmas to you all."
-- Winston Churchill, 1941
Every year some folks take up their crayons and write querulously to the newspapers to demand that Christ be returned to Christmas, as if the newspapers are somehow at fault because Christmas is not what the writers of letters to the editor think it ought to be.
The real irony is that for much of Christian history Christ was not in Christmas because there was no Christmas at all.
Christmas as a Feast of the Church was formally established by Pope Julius I in 350. Even then our poor, ignorant, superstitious ancestors only went to church on Christmas to worship God, and failed to buy masses of made-in-China stuff.
Over time, European nations slowly developed the concept of the twelve days, keeping Christmas from the 25th of December until the Feast of the Epiphany, or Three Kings, on the 6th of January. This worked well in agricultural societies in cold Europe because unless Sven and Gunter wanted to throw snowballs or hunt wolves or count icicles or something there wasn’t a whole lot to do in mid-winter except stay indoors next to the fire.
While Martin Luther was rather fond of Christmas – and was devoted to the Blessed Mother, too – other reformers said “Bah, humbug!” to Christmas and forbade it under penalty of law. In England and in the colonies Puritans and their spiritual descendants, including Baptists and Methodists, were sternly opposed to the celebration of Christmas as Romish superstition. To this day some evangelical congregations will not open the church doors when Christmas falls on a weekday.
In Scotland, Christmas was banned for over four hundred years, and not restored until 1958. 1958. Not 1658 or 1758 or even 1858. 1958. Put Christ into Christmas? Nae, laddie, ye’d better not be thinkin’ such evil thoughts.
Christmas as we know it is pretty much an invention of Charles Dickens, who imagined a merrie old English Christmas that never really was and wrote it into his books. Dickens’ Christmas is little more than some vague, fuzzy good feelings and some innocent partying, although he does allow his characters to walk to divine services on Christmas morning.
Christmas trees are a German tradition (someone will bring up the pagans at this point, and I say that if the pagans thought well of trees, good for them) Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha remembered the Christmas trees of his youth and popularized them in England. American anglophiles followed the lead of Victoria and Albert, and Christmas trees became a symbol of Christmas in the English-speaking world late in the 19th century.
Christmas was and is a Feast Day of the Church, a day in which the Incarnation is realized. Its other main purpose seems to be to serve as an institutional inadequacy for grumpy people to fault.
Well, grumpy people, that’s all right. Perhaps we do eat more than we should on Christmas, and buy too much stuff, and indulge our children more than we ought to, but it’s all a great deal of fun anyway.
"Let the children have their night of fun and laughter,let the gifts of Father Christmas delight their play.Let us grown-ups share to the full in their unstinted pleasuresbefore we turn again to the stern task and the formidable years that lie before us,resolved that, by our sacrifice and daring,these same children shall not be robbed of their inheritanceor denied their right to live in a free and decent world.And so, in God's mercy, a happy Christmas to you all."
-- Winston Churchill, 1941
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Drug Testing at Valley Forge
Mack Hall
Last week the most recent drug scandal took everyone’s attention away from lead-painted Chinese Christmas toys, and no wonder. Who among us has not walked across a dark parking lot fearing an attack by a spaced-out baseball team leaping out from behind a Yugo? And that scary rustle of leaves outside one’s bedroom window in the middle of the night – that’s not Grendel; that’s a steroid-zombie outfielder hungry for human flesh.
George Mitchell’s many pages of he-said / he-said (there seems to be no she-said) tittle-tattle and McCarthy-ite lists are interesting reading, but one doubts that Mr. Mitchell himself will be required to pee into a cup before he gets paid lots and lots of taxpayers’ money for repeating gossip.
If the drug menace is properly addressed in baseball players, the focus should be expanded to practitioners other critical fields of endeavor, such as chess players, cooking-show hosts, and dancing-with-the-stars contestants.
The purity of sport – but no drug-testing for newscasters, writers, movie stars, or the weird little man in the bedsheet mumbling what he says are prayers at the airplane departure gate.
How drug-free and clear is the mind of someone freezing – since the ice has cut the power to his heater -- in midwestern blizzards while working out in said mind – since the ice has cut the power to his computer -- a stern letter to capitalist oppressors about global warming?
People who walk around with tin crickets stuck to their ears and talking to themselves are definitely in need of testing for something – such as a life.
Have you noticed that drug testing is aimed at the working people in America, not at the deadbeats? An argument can be made that a pilot or trucker or railway engineer should be tested for drugs, but why are lazy, useless layabouts (Congress comes to mind) the pilot or trucker or railway engineer must support never tested?
If a young man must pee into a cup before throwing a baseball, should not a priest or minister do the same before giving a sermon? After all, which event is more important?
If a citizen is accused of a drug-related crime, true justice requires that the investigators and attorneys and judges prove themselves drug-free first – here’s your cup, your honor.
The Constitution gives the people three branches of government – the executive, the legislative, and the judicial; no mention is made in that venerable document of fourth and fifth branches, the contract medical lab and MySpace. Let us have a return to justice for all, not suspicion and humiliation for some Americans and class privilege for others.
Last week the most recent drug scandal took everyone’s attention away from lead-painted Chinese Christmas toys, and no wonder. Who among us has not walked across a dark parking lot fearing an attack by a spaced-out baseball team leaping out from behind a Yugo? And that scary rustle of leaves outside one’s bedroom window in the middle of the night – that’s not Grendel; that’s a steroid-zombie outfielder hungry for human flesh.
George Mitchell’s many pages of he-said / he-said (there seems to be no she-said) tittle-tattle and McCarthy-ite lists are interesting reading, but one doubts that Mr. Mitchell himself will be required to pee into a cup before he gets paid lots and lots of taxpayers’ money for repeating gossip.
If the drug menace is properly addressed in baseball players, the focus should be expanded to practitioners other critical fields of endeavor, such as chess players, cooking-show hosts, and dancing-with-the-stars contestants.
The purity of sport – but no drug-testing for newscasters, writers, movie stars, or the weird little man in the bedsheet mumbling what he says are prayers at the airplane departure gate.
How drug-free and clear is the mind of someone freezing – since the ice has cut the power to his heater -- in midwestern blizzards while working out in said mind – since the ice has cut the power to his computer -- a stern letter to capitalist oppressors about global warming?
People who walk around with tin crickets stuck to their ears and talking to themselves are definitely in need of testing for something – such as a life.
Have you noticed that drug testing is aimed at the working people in America, not at the deadbeats? An argument can be made that a pilot or trucker or railway engineer should be tested for drugs, but why are lazy, useless layabouts (Congress comes to mind) the pilot or trucker or railway engineer must support never tested?
If a young man must pee into a cup before throwing a baseball, should not a priest or minister do the same before giving a sermon? After all, which event is more important?
If a citizen is accused of a drug-related crime, true justice requires that the investigators and attorneys and judges prove themselves drug-free first – here’s your cup, your honor.
The Constitution gives the people three branches of government – the executive, the legislative, and the judicial; no mention is made in that venerable document of fourth and fifth branches, the contract medical lab and MySpace. Let us have a return to justice for all, not suspicion and humiliation for some Americans and class privilege for others.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
