Shopping for a Gun on a Snowy Evening

Shouldn't a sporting goods store clerk be just a little nervous about selling weapons to customers who break down doors and stomp on each other?

'Tis the Season to be Feral

Mack Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

‘Tis the Season to be Feral

Perhaps the chaos began on election day, when most Texans lined up in the darkness, some camping in tents, eagerly awaiting the opening of the polls so that they could make wise, prayerful choices in the selection of their own laws and leaders.

The real crowd dynamics began with the Annual Holy Buying of Chinese %#@&, just before Advent.  On Envy Friday a woman shopping in an Up-Against-the-Wall Mart in California discharged pepper spray at dozens of her fellow believers.  She was desperate to buy the last in-stock microscope to help her daughter win a science scholarship. 

Screaming hordes of wild-eyed literates bashed down the doors of bookstores in cities everywhere, fighting for the latest translation of St. Augustine’s City of God.  One man was stabbed in the hand while reaching for a copy of John Milton’s Paradise Lost.  “It’s a metaphorical jungle reminiscent of the post-modernist school of deconstructionist theory in there,” he said while being bandaged by the medics in the parking lot.

In music stores, the theft of boxed sets of Poulenc, Rautavaara, and Corigliana have caused real safety problems.  “We had mall security escort a woman to her car with her Lyons Opera Chorus and Orchestra CD of Les Dialogues des Carmelites,” reported Tiffany Defarge, a store employee.

Police responded to a 911 call from a religious goods store one minute after midnight with a report that two women were trying to strangle each other with rosary beads and that a flash-mob was stampeding through the aisles stealing bibles.  The situation grew really ugly with an embedded dispute regarding the merits of the Douay-Rheims versus the Precious Moments versions.  The brawl spilled outside with The Spirit of Vatican II-istas and the Traditionalissimos punching each other in a bitter dispute about dynamic equivalence as opposed to closer Latin meanings in the new English translation of the canon of the Mass.

Crowd control was also a problem outside Goodwill and Salvation Army stores because of people camping out in long lines all night long, each fiercely determined to be the first to donate warm winter coats and good used toys to poor children.

Another crowd situation obtained in shoe stores where concerned fathers lined up to buy their children good, sensible, feet-healthy shoes.

Numerous flight delays were reported because in overcrowded airports all over America healthy people were insistent that the disabled and the elderly be allowed to board first.

Finally, a representative of the NBA has announced that the basketball season will not begin on Christmas Day.  “It would be insensitive for any for-profit organization to show disrespect to a minority religion on one of their holy days.  Christians will want to be home with their families after morning worship, opening gifts and playing with their children and enjoying Christmas dinner.  We want to join with America’s leading retailers and the American people who have in the past month led the way in demonstrating respect for 2,000 years of Christian faith.”

Oh, yeah.

Now back to The Hallmark Channel.

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The Crusader Birdwatcher

A mediaeval knight was an enthusiastic birdwatcher, so enthusiastic that he was more than a little pushy, and intimidated birds.  He was a martlet-haunting Templar.
cf. Macbeth I.vi.4

Advent Calendars

Titles seen at Barnes & Noble:


Chocolate Advent Calendar with Poem
Peanuts Christmas Advent Calendar

What, really, is a jackboot?

Just asking.

In Europe, Water is Not Water

Mack Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

In Europe, Water is Not Water

England…is now bound in with shame

With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds 

Richard II, II.i.64ff

After a three-year study, government courtiers in Europe – that is, the Belgian Empire -- have concluded – or have been ordered to conclude - that water is not water, and that anyone who observes the scientific and logical fact that water is indeed water can be imprisoned for two years (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/8897662/EU-bans-claim-that-water-can-prevent-dehydration.html).

Specifically, any claim, such as the label on a bottle, that water can help rehydrate a thirsty human is illegal. 

What would the oligarchs assembled in Brussels prescribe in place of water – dust?

The root word of hydration and dehydration is hydor, Greek for water.  Greece, another colony of the Belgian Empire, might want to bring up a point of order in the matter.  Hydration means the presence of water, and dehydration means a lack of water.  It’s all about the water, except that by Belgian colonial law, it had better not be.

This is the same empire which until 2008 promulgated punitive laws against selling bananas that are bent.  Clearly Belgian imperial scientists are more bananas than the fruit.  Perhaps the Brussels sprouts will someday rule against bananas that taper towards their ends, against tomatoes for being red, or against celery for being crunchy. 

The law that water shall not be water becomes operative next month.

Any authoritative body that can rule that water shall not be water and can require that people be imprisoned for disagreeing with the edict is a monstrosity to which no nation and no individual can be required to obey.  Certainly the people of Britain are up in metaphorical arms – because they are no longer permitted to own real arms – about being bullied by their colonial masters in Brussels. 

Perhaps Britons under Belgian humiliation have read with fresh understanding the second chapter of the American Declaration of Independence.

The Queen, who can speak in defense of her people, is silent in the face of Belgian colonial oppression.

The democratically elected Parliament, which must speak, is as a body equally acquiescent in the matter of “a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations” against the people they purport to represent.

The Prime Minister?  Too busy doing the white-wine-and-cheese thing with the evil little empire.

Individual Britons who speak against being subject to a foreign power are dismissed as racists, which is curious on several levels, the least of which is that the British and their Belgian overlords share much the same DNA.  A more relevant point is this – what has DNA got to do with justice?  A human is a human is a human, whether in Peterborough or in Naples, and needs lots of clean drinking water for survival each day.  All the kept scriveners in all the porphyry halls of power cannot change the truth.

More than one observer has noted another truth, that while the Constitution of the United States begins with “We the People…,” the European Constitution begins with ”HIS MAJESTY, THE KING OF THE BELGIANS…” (http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:C:2008:115:0001:01:EN:HTML), in all capital letters.

And that’s all wet.

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Have Yourself a Misplaced Prepositional Christmas

Have Yourself a Misplaced Prepositional Christmas

Christmas on the Main

Christmas in the Park

Christmas on the Strand

Dickens on the Strand

Christmas Around the World

Christmas in the Country

Christmas on the Square

And Advent is not here yet.



Thanksgiving Week

1.  I am extending the period for earning ten extra points to Wednesday.  If I have your well-written and complete research paper in my hand by 11:10 A.M. on Wednesday, I will award you ten extra points unless your paper is awful.  I will also accept your paper as an email attachment that I actually receive -- good intentions cannot be graded -- and that will print out on the very ordinary electronic gadgets I possess. 

Remember always to print extra copies of your research paper.  Computers, emails, and friends who swear they will get your paper to me are not reliable.

2. Given our week of come-and-go English buffet, make an effort to meet with me if you are having problems with your research paper or with your persuasive mini-essays; I am here for you and want you to succeed.  I will be available at the usual class times and am almost always on campus an hour or more before class.  If you don't see me, ask someone -- don't be shy! 

3. There are no extra points for turning in your persuasive mini-essays early, but you'll enjoy your holiday more if you do.

Waterboard Texas?

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Waterboard Texas?

When the crowds in the mall are just a bit too much, the wise shopper knows that for a little solitude you simply pop over to the book store.  After all, most folks own more pairs of shoes than they do books, and avoid book stores as they would the more malodorous sorts of reptiles.  Parents fearfully yank children away from book store windows – “Don’t go in there, son; you might start thinking or something.  Let’s go to Xtreem Outlet Junction Factory Outfitters and get us some tee-shirts with pictures of guitar-playing vampires on ‘em.”

Democracy, sadly, is much the same way – if you want to be alone, just go vote.

On Election Day very few of us flouted the memory of King George III and all tyrants everywhere by marking a ballot.  My assigned poll was not at a church or synagogue of my choice, and certainly not convenient; the Attorney General of the State of Texas apparently feels that exploring the countryside will keep y’r ‘umble scrivener out of trouble.  Perhaps real Texans don’t vote close to home; they make great journeys.  Or maybe the attorney general just doesn’t like me.

As I made my lonely way to the polls I fancied I heard in the distance the ghostly voice of Colonel Rogers calling out “I’ll see you at sundown.”

But at my assigned vote-arena there were no A.C.O.R.N.istas in berets and leather coats and sunglasses wielding baseball bats, and no comrades yelping at loyal Americans, so voting was a pleasant if somewhat isolated experience.  Dust blew silently across the empty parking lot, and lonely election signs fluttered forlornly in the desolate wind. 

But where were The People?

O where were the descendants of those sturdy patriots who braved the winter at Valley Forge?  Where were the scions of the thousands of men who at Gettysburg established forever the noble idea that all Americans shall be free?  Where were the inheritors of all the men and women who first plowed this land, who cleared the forests, who fought diseases, who with work and sweat and blood and faith established this Shining City on a Hill?

Possibly at home nodding agreement to Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck on the made-in-China radio.

The most annoying and least informative radio ad this election season featured a very small and inarticulate rent-a-mob chanting something that sounded like “Waterboard Texas!  Phluf-Phluf-Phloo!”  Really.  And after an individual said something about Texas needing more water, the occupy-a-mob again bayed “Waterboard Texas!  Phluf-Phluf-Phloo!  Waterboard Texas!  Phluf-Phluf-Phloo!” 

Upon examining the ballot I opined that the aforegarbled “Phloo” was probably an allusion to Proposition (or “prop,” as we political sophisticates like to say) 2 on the ballot, which did indeed refer to water, but which was unclear as to purpose of the allusion.  Would voting for this amendment causeth the gentle rain to falleth from the empty skyeth?  Since the wording was unhelpful, and the radio ad was both unhelpful and annoying, I voted against the amendment.

What genius thought that four or five Occupy-rejects mumbling a chant would constitute (as it were) a rational argument for a constitutional amendment?

In the event, Proposition (proposition – doesn’t sound quite nice, does it?) 2 won by a few percentage points, suggesting that two or three other folks in Texas also voted.

Given that certain elements in our bureaucracies have on occasion disallowed the ballots of our young men and women serving overseas, our domestic failure to vote is not simply a failure to observe an abstract principle.  A failure to vote lets down the young people protecting our right to vote.  Serving in the military often means loneliness, separation from the soldier’s loved ones; voting should never be a matter of isolation.

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John Steinbeck - "We have only one story"

We have only one story. All novels, all poetry are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.

John Steinbeck, East of Eden

 

quoted in the website Happy Catholic

Remembrance Day, 2011

Mack Hall, HSG Mhall46184@aol.com

Keeping the Faith on Remembrance Day

"I will never stand for a national anthem again. I will turn my back and I will raise a fist."

-      S.E.A.L. / Not-a-S.E.A.L  Viet-Nam-Veteran / Not-a-Viet-Nam-Veteran Jesse Ventura, nee’ James Janos, on having a bad day at an airport

In the spring of 1915 a 45-year-old physician buried a young friend outside a dressing station along a canal in Belgium.  Major McCrae was too old to be serving in the mud of Ypres, he was asthmatic, and this was his second war, but he never broke faith with Canada or with the wounded lads who needed him.

Major McCrae read the Anglican burial service – “in the sure and certain hope of the Resurrection” - over Lieutenant Alexis Helmer because the chaplain was elsewhere in the field.

The next day, while taking a break from surgery and rounds, Major McCrae strolled outside the tents (donated by the people of Bhopal) and sat on the tailgate of an ambulance alongside a canal.  He looked out across the wreckage and the mud, and considered the only brightly-colored things in that blighted landscape of disaster.  He took out a notebook, and wrote “In Flanders fields the poppies blow…”

John McCrae’s life was one of purpose, work, learning, and service.  He was born in Ontario in 1872, and joined his home town militia at age 16.  While working his way through college he was commissioned in the Toronto militia, The Queen’s Own Rifles, and at 22 was the commanding officer.

Commanding officer.  At 22.  He was not sitting in a Tim Horton’s or a Starbuck’s wearing knee-pants and a child’s cap while whining into a cell ‘phone about how unfair life was, even though he suffered asthma and had to, well, work.

John McCrae served with an artillery unit in the Boer War in South Africa, and then worked as a physician and professor of medicine in the United States and in Canada.

Long before the Guns of August (cf. Barbara Tuchman), John McCrae, from the little town of Guelph, Ontario lived a life of such adventure that even Teddy Roosevelt might have envied him:

Militia (we would call it the National Guard) as a private soldier, as an officer, and later as commanding officer

High school teacher - mathematics and English Literature

Artilleryman

Poet (as in published, not the perpetrator of undisciplined whines on MyBookFaceSpaceMeMeMe)

Physician – surgeon, pathologist, epidemiologist, pediatrician

Professor of medicine

Author of several medical textbooks

Explorer

Horseman

In 1914, Dr. John McCrae, a successful physician and author in his mid-forties, a veteran who’d done his bit in South Africa at the turn of the century, a man of uncertain health, didn’t have to go anywhere.  He could have stayed in private practice, written more books, and admired the flowers in his own garden in Canada instead of the blood-poppies in Belgium.

But he went.  And he wrote:

In Flanders fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

The words may sound shallow to some who have been poisoned with decades of fashionable cynicism, but they were not to Major McCrae.  He was not a computerized cartoon or a muscled oaf posturing for the television. Indeed, his photograph is of a quite ordinary-looking man in a rather untidy uniform featuring but one modest ribbon.  He was real.  And he was there.

In January of 1916, only eight months later, Lieutenant-Colonel McCrae, suffering from cold, exhaustion, overwork, and the horrors of two wars, died of pneumonia in the hospital he commanded in France.

John McCrae did not break faith with his country.

He did not break faith with his patients – English, Canadian, French, Belgian, and Indian soldiers.  He did not break faith even with the wounded German boys who were brought in to his care.

John McCrae did not break faith.  He did not turn his back.

Something to remember on Remembrance Day.

-30-

For Our Mothers on Christmas

Mack Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

For our Mothers on Christmas

Beyond all other nights, on this strange Night,

A strangers’ star, a silent, seeking star,

Helps set the wreckage of our souls aright:

It leads us to a stable door ajar   
                                                      

And we are not alone in peeking in:

An ox, an ass, a lamb, some shepherds, too -

Bright star without; a brighter Light within

We children see the Truth three Wise Men knew

For we are children there in Bethlehem

Still shivering in that winter long ago

We watch and listened there, in star-light dim,

In cold Judea, in a soft, soft snow

The Stable and the Star, yes, we believe:

Our mothers sing us there each Christmas Eve

A Prisoner of Triskelion. Chapter 3: The Doctors' Plot

A Prisoner of Triskelion

Chapter 3

The Doctors’ Plot

“So you have no university degree?”  asked Doctor Vetula.

“Ma’am…um, doctor, really, I barely graduated from high school.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“That’s what I’m wondering.  Why are any of us here?”

“I refer to this assembly.  We are six academics forming an ad hoc fellowship to formulate a feasible plan of escape and then executing it.  The problem is a most subtle one.”

“The Cloud isn’t subtle.”

“Who told you of the Cloud?”

“A little rainstorm did.”

“Most amusing.  An now I’m sure you’ll want to excuse yourself and go dig a tunnel or something.”

“Doctors all, have you considered a certain reality of this prison?”

“Yes!  It’s brutal!  And the food – I’m sure some of it’s genetically modified.”

“And tinned.  Now just off campus there was a holistic foods store where only fresh, all-natural grains grown by quaint ethnic women in Guatemala…”

“And the collection in this library – so plebeian.  Romance novels, for God’s sake.”

“No, no, no – I’m talking about how un-prison-y this place is.  Look, I’ve never been in prison; only in jail after the Dragon Boat Festival when…but that’s not important.  What’s important is that this is not like a prison at all.  We dress how we want, we haven’t been beaten up, the other prisoners don’t look as if they know a shiv from Shiva from Shinola, and we’ve got more freedom to move around than in a high school.”

“I’m sure your concepts of freedom and mine would seldom intersect.”

“Stop intruding personalities.  The question is this: why are we here?  If we answer that, we might have a clue or a cue about how not to be here.”

“Mr. O’Cannan, I hope you will not take this amiss when I suggest to you that this is not an Agatha Christie novel.  If it would amuse you, you might want to go dig a tunnel or search for clues.”

“Most amusing – and I will.”

And he did.

“I trust your interview with the doctors’ escape committee went satisfactorily, sir?”

“Father Travers, I detect a certain sense of humor in you.  You knew I was about to entangle with some princesses of both sexes.  You’re enjoying this, aren’t you.”

“Immensely, Mr. O’Cannan.”

“Please call me Brendan; Mr. O’Cannan was my father.”

“And you may call me Travers or Father Travers, but I prefer that you address me as Your Worship.”

“Your Worship it is.  And now I’m off for a walk outside.  I want to smell fresh air and to feel the sun.”

“Fresh air obtains in abundance; the sun, I regret to say, often absents himself from these Viking skies.  Perhaps he’s holidaying in Italy.”

“I’m reminded to ask – just where are we, Your Worship?”

“The answer lies not in scripture, my son, nor in your heart nor in the words of the wise among us; it lies outside.  Actually it flies outside,” replied Father Travers with a smile.”

O’Cannan, by well-marked passages and doors, old and new, found his way outside.  A few feet of grey-green gravel just outside a huge, mediaeval – or at least mediaeval-ish – door yielded to a margin of cold-green grass and then to a glacis – for some of it appeared to have been worked - or scree to the dark blue water.

The very air was Viking, cold and clean and salt-wet, almost soul-healing.  Sea-fowl flew and cried, like “The Seafarer’s” icy-feathered terns.  Although to the eponymous Anglo-Saxon sailor the cries of the feathered travelers of the ocean’s roof were like harbingers of death, to O’Cannan, on this day, they sang of freedom and life.

Among the larger rocks other prisoners were nurturing plots of garden by hoarding and composting seaweed, dead fish, and whatever other biologicals they could access.

O’Cannan hoped that no part of the accessed biologicals included the body parts of dead humans.  He was reminded of an often-repeated wheeze from an old teacher: “I like young people; they go so well with a nice salad, potatoes, and a nice Quidi Vidi ale.”

Other prisoners – or, rather, guests; Triskelion employed many evasive euphemisms – were fishing, reading, smoking, idling, or forlornly scanning the mist-hidden horizon for a now lost world.

In their bright sweaters and coats and knit wool caps and innocent recreations they made the island of Triskelion appear to be a Baltic holiday camp.

The snapping of fabric in a wind gust caused O’Cannan to look up.  And in that cold, cloud-blown grey sky he observed the flag of a small nation with a glorious history, a nation now known mostly for the export of Christmas cookies and the domestic consumption of hashish.

So.

So what was the connection among Cuba, Triskelion, and Christmas Cookie Country?  Was the Guestmaster truthful in this matter?

But that was all probably irrelevant.  Employing Hercule Poirot’s concept of order and method, O’Cannan set out for himself the conditions of his present life, and proposals for amending it:

1.   He, Brendan O’Cannan, was in a place where he wished not to be.

2.   Thus, he should remove himself to a different place, preferably God’s holy island of Newfoundland.

3.    Item #2 is compromised by:

A.   A firm promise of death if he were attempt to leave Triskelion.

B.   The Cloud of Electronic Unknowing was death to any form of communication, even the footer scores.  Of course the good thing about the Cloud’s obdurate behavior was that he was spared the agony of having to listen to the cricket results.

4.   At least one of the Dotty Doctors had once built a wireless receiver.  If all the scientists were to work together instead of comparing the magnificent magnitudes of their academic dimensions, not unlike naughty adolescents behind the vocational laboratory at school, could construct a powerful wireless transmitter for calling for help.

5.   IF The Cloud could be disabled.

6.   Thus (a second thus), he must urge the Monstrous Regiment of Perfidious Princess (of both sexes, or two, or three) Professors to assemble, from whatever bits and pieces he and they could find, not one but several transmitters of different types to conceal in different locations.

7.   Further, he and they must find the source of The Cloud of Electronic Unknowing and determine a way of unplugging the thing.

8.   However, being shot and then ground into fish flakes would be an unfortunate game-ender.

O’Cannan lay on a warm rock, looked out to sea, and thought and thought until a bell rang for lunch.

He found the galley by following other prisoners, with whom he exchanged relaxed greetings.  They sat at long tables in a barn-like hall which perhaps really had been a barn at one time in the island’s history.  At the end of the hall a large, gilded Triskelion was painted on the wall.  Lunch was beef over pasta of some sort, with two very English vegetables and a pudding, served, perhaps to keep portions controlled, by other prisoners taking their monthly turn as would O’Cannan.  That he had not yet been assigned to work details was simply an oversight or perhaps a delay in process, but the assigned labors seemed to take only a part of each prisoner’s day and appeared mostly to be of the light housekeeping and maintenance sort.  Father Travers, for instance, kept the intake dormitory tidy, and another prisoner was the librarian.

O’Cannan thought he would try to wangle a job in maintenance so that he could score some tools and perhaps enjoy freer access to parts unknown.

After lunch O’Cannan returned to the library to place his proposals before the Insipid Sedentary Soviet of Six.  They were in stately conclave met, appearing not to have moved since that morning although he had seen them hull-defilade in a defensive position at an apartheid table at lunch.

O’Cannan was tempted to genuflect or curtsey, but wisely chose to suppress his I’s d’ b’ys pub humor; he really did respect the very real scientific and mathematical knowledge of the Perfectly Pouty Pedants and knew that their effective work was essential to escape.  He was worried that their very real abilities would be dissipated in common-room contention.

“Excuse me, everyone.”

Most of the klaven looked at him as if he were wearing bells and crying out “Unclean!  Unclean!”

“May we help you?” asked Doctor Vetula in that superior senior clerk’s voice that suggested that the pitiful object of the question really might feel more comfortable somewhere else among his own kind.

“I’ve been thinking…” began O’Cannan.

“Well, goodie for you,” interrupted Doctor Mulier.

“Now, please, hear me out.  You all are brilliant, freaking brilliant.  You have explored the heights and depths of arcane maths and sciences in ways most people could never begin to understand.  I certainly don’t.”

Oh, yeah, the flatteries of the serpent were working their old charms yet again.

“We all want to escape,” O’Cannan continued.  “And without your superior intellects that’s impossible.  Escape is impossible unless The Cloud can be disabled, and disabling The Cloud is impossible to anyone (brief but suspense-sodden pause) except you.

“Look, I deliver stuff.  I possess few higher order thinking skills, and the nuances even of the concept of the Hegelian dialectic elude me.  But I can do things, find out things.  Triskelion isn’t going to pay much attention to me because I’m a nobody.  I can wander around in ways you can’t because Triskelion will want to know what you’re doing, not me.

Self-satisfied nods scudded around the table like a PBS announcer’s yacht in calm seas off Cape Cod.

“So – I ask you please to consider these possibilities: if you can somehow unplug The Cloud, and if you can build not one but several radio transmitters that you can power up and call for help, then you will liberate the people.”

“I think the idea of…harrumph…unplugging The Cloud is somewhat simplistic,” said Doctor Vertex.  “Now what you don’t know…”

“He doesn’t need to know,” said Doctor Mulier.  “The fewer people who know, the safer we are.  Remember that the penalty for attempting to escape is death.”

“I don’t know,” mused Doctor Vercelli, exhibited his bandaged hands.  “I constructed a primitive but workable AM receiver from my electric shaver, and if Triskelion noticed they didn’t intervene.”

“They blew the thing up in your hands when you switched it on.  They were laughing at you.”

“I don’t think so,” replied Doctor Vercelli.  “The Cloud responded to the first interaction of the long waves.  Only The Cloud was watching.  I don’t say that Triskelion is making a hollow threat, only that they perhaps depend too much on The Cloud.”

“Mr. O’Cannan is quite right,” ruled Doctor Vertex.  “While we, indeed, might be more circumspect in our deliberations and demeanor, Triskelion surely considers us academics to be the threat, not a – excuse me if I seem to be somewhat patronizing, Mr. O’Cannan; I’m not; I’ve always felt at one with the working people – not a deliveryman.  But please continue.”

“Right, then, eh.  But that’s about it.  I find you stuff, you build radios, and we somehow find a way to cut off The Cloud at the knees.  Not that it has knees.  But perhaps it does.”

“I think we can do better than that,” sniffed Doctor Saltator.  “Even a gulag personed by kulaks would not allow prisoners to access a power plant or other high-security installation.  Triskelion is sure to be watching the source of The Cloud especially carefully.”

“But think of this, Doctor,” replied O’Cannan, “we’re already inside.  We are inside a high-security installation now.”

“You are speculating quite above your pay scale,” said Doctor Vertex.  Lowering his voice he continued: “And, anyway, we are already working on a jamming device which will employ multiple layers of multiple waves along the communications spectrum.”

“And the radio transmitters?”

“Well, we have one almost finished.  Your suggestion that we construct several is excellent.  We will provide you with a list of necessities, but perhaps you’d better locate and identify them for now, since we have no place to store anything.  We need a secure work space.”

“I assembled a radio in the bathroom,” said Doctor Vercelli.

“I think we can do better than that,” sniffed Doctor Saltator.

“And I think we can adjourn for today to pursue innocent recreations to entertain and deceive Triskelion’s watchers.  In the meantime, observe and think.  Shall we meet again after breakfast in the morning.

“In thunder, lightning, or in rain,” said O’Cannan.

“I beg your pardon?” asked Doctor Mulier.

“Just something from Macbeth.”

“I think we can do better than that,” sniffed Doctor Saltator.  And with that the meeting broke up.

O’Cannan made a quick tour of the library, checked out an Agatha Christie omnibus, and with it under his arm took another walk, a more purposeful one, both inside and out.  The island, the castle, and the accumulation of outbuildings were such a miscellaney of structures and ruins of different centuries and different purposes that any mental map was impossible, and a collection of paper maps would be as confusing at one of those multiple-level chessboards, only with many more levels, all oddly shaped and sized, and with chessmen of many styles.

He studiously passed by doors and gates marked NO ADMITTANCE, but began the tedious process of firming their locations in his mind and trying to sort out from context clues what might lie behind each one.  He looked at doors and wires and pipes and walkways and where the drainage went.  And he thought.

The dark came on and O’Cannan returned to the dormitory for a wash before supper.

“Still sweeping, Father Travers?”

“Oh, yes, Brendan.  ‘Tis my limited service, but ‘tis one.’  And I’m quite fond of this broom; it’s the one Doctor Mulier flew in on.”

“I keep wondering what Triskelion is all about, why you’re here and why I’m here.”

“And the mathematicians?”

“Oh, not so much, mathematicians belong in prison.”

“I heard that,” growled a voice from a bunk in the back.

“Ah, well, there’s the bell; let’s all to supper,” said Father Travers.

O’Cannan observed that, like lunch, supper was pleasant enough – salad, soup, rolls – but with minimal portions and no seconds.  Either Triskelion was very, very slowly starving its guests by a few calories a day, or perhaps the small portions were a matter of something far less sinister: perhaps Triskelion’s functionaries were as subject to corruption as those in any any other institution.  An audit of the accounts of even the Vatican kitchens might reveal a few discrepancies.

After supper O’Cannan sat at a table in the library, reading a little and making notes on Triskelion’s flimsy paper with a Triskelion gel pen.  A puddle of comforting light fell upon his books and papers, and the night-sea lulled him.

A chime sang, and a voice from above said: “Attention, everyone.  Lights out in thirty minutes.  All day stations and day watches close for the night; all night stations and night watches stand to.  Again, thirty minutes, everyone.”

“Closing time,” yawned the librarian, taking off his glasses and putting down his own read.  “Anything to check out before I secure the area?”

Papers folded and in his pocket; O’Cannan returned to the transient dormitory.  The passages were busy with other prisoners quietly, almost submissively, making their ways to their own sleeping spaces.

The transient dorm was thinly populated – the Six Silly Sorcerers occupied a corner they set aside as their Olympus of metal bunks, Father Travers lived beside the door, and two or three patients O’Cannan hadn’t met were occupied, as were they all, with wash-ups and changing into night clothes. Storage was a matter of a few pegs and showing one’s gear underneath the bunks.  O’Cannan thanked Father Travers for having made up his rack.

“And now, if anyone wishes to join me for a brief Compline…”

An audible academic snort issued from Olympus.

O’Cannan and a man in dungarees somewhat self-consciously joined Father Travers.  O’Cannan wasn’t much of a pew-jumper, but his death sentence seemed to focus him.  Father Travers read Compline from a quite worn old Missal, the minuscule congregation crossed themselves, and they found their racks.

“Mass in the morning,” said Father Travers.  “Reveille is at 0600, so why don’t we meet at the door when they unlock us for the day, and we’ll find a quiet place for Mass before we’re off to breakfast.”

“I’m up for it,” said O’Cannan, “but someone better wake me up.”

O’Cannan tried to read a little before lights out, but the overheads were glaring and he put the book away.  He was glad that the room was well-vented by blowers far away somewhere; he wasn’t sure that mathematicians weren’t somewhat malodorous.

And then he saw Doctor Mulier leaving the head in a gauzy nightie.  A mathematician in a nightie is a horror to make even the most devout man despair of salvation.  “Dear God,” prayed O’Cannan, “please get me out of this.”

A chime sang, and except for a dim bulb in the head the lights winked out.

O’Cannan lay under some nation’s military surplus blanket – a blanket which perhaps had seen service in the Crimea – and stared wide-eyed into the darkness above him.  He was in prison under a temporarily suspended sentence of death, and did not know if tomorrow or perhaps tonight might see his last breath.  He was hungry.  He was frightened.  And worse than all that, he had seen Doctor Mulier in a nightie.

Raise High the Red Flag, Comrades Biffy and Muffin!

Mack Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Raise High the Red Flag, Comrades Biffy and Muffin!

In a time of high unemployment and economic challenges for many of us, the idle rich are amusing themselves by taking their high-dollar camping gear and electronics and blocking the streets so that working people cannot get to their jobs.

Quite wisely, local authorities are doing their best to ignore Beret Barbie and Counter-Cultural Ken, knowing that they will go away when people stop paying attention to their look-at-me-ness.  And, too, there is the problem of our Vichy-ite regime who apparently side with the spoiled uberklasse in demanding that you and I pay for their indolence and for their Harvard and Yale degrees.

Too thrilling.

Too bad we can’t release a pack of attack-dachshunds on them.

But one can hope and dream of better times.

Consider the street protestors early in Doctor Zhivago.  When cute ‘n’ cuddly Victor Kamarovsky suggests that perhaps the protestors will “sing in tune after the revolution,” the first-time viewer thinks that nothing in the film could be funnier.  But then, the merry mounted Cossacks charge into the crowd with sabers and make Moscow’s streets run red with cliches’.  He would be a dour, cold, heartless man indeed who could not cry tears of joyful laughter when a musician, entangled in his tuba, is trampled by Czarist cavalry and by his fleeing comrades.

I suppose now he would be entangled in his earphones.

The current Occupy annoyance, a spontaneous (hmmm?) metafecal impaction that manifested itself in many American cities all at once, is clearly well-funded and well-organized by some wealthy conspiracy sending Stalinist useful idiots to play in the streets with the luxury goods and toys that Mummy and Daddy bought for them.  The ‘way cool happening fashion for these vapid Eloi (cf. H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine) is to Occupy – occupy something, occupy anything, even though the little darlings seem unable to express a purpose.

A transient vocabulary of occupy-ness has entered vulgar usage, and anyone fond of playing with words can only be eager to join the fun of neologisms.  Consider these modest contributions to the next edition of the Oxford Dictionary of American Usage:

Occupie – taking over a pastry shop

Occuprattle – a political speech

OccuPop – George Soros?

Occupom – Che Guevera’s hat

Occupuss – Che Guevera’s cat

Occupap – Che Guevera’s ideology

Occup*** - Che Guevera’s father

Occupuddle – controlling the low ground on rainy days

Occupad – incontinence control for aging hippies

Occupompous – celebrities who fly in for a photo

Occupork – a fat protestor

Occupot – a revolutionary toilet

Occupoop – the anti-Semitic thugs who appear to dominate the Occupy scene

Occupup – Seizing the dog pound in the name of The People

iOccupy – a sit-in at Apple, Inc., whose products are made by slave labor in China and which are so beloved of the protestors

Occupoodle – a true believer

Occupaddle – mutiny on the Central Park Lake rowboats

OccuPaddy – the Occupy movement in Dublin

OccuPierre – the Occupy movement in Paris

Occupest – a rich revolutionary idling in the street

Occupeeyew – old hippie crones dancing topless (“Grandma, noooo…!”)

Occupine – a protestor who gets all prickly when asked his purpose

Occupavlovian –  Leftists with limited cognitive skills who have been trained into happy obedience

Occupayoff – who stands to benefit from all this?

Occupedant – a professor or teacher who urges stupid young people into the gutters instead of making any effort to help them learn to think for themselves

Occupique – annoyance felt by Lefties when they realize they’ve burned the only coffee shop on the street and now can’t have a double-decaf-latte’-ventral-snorkle on Mummy’s credit card

Occuparroting – Mindlessly repeating empty slogans as ordered

Other new words include occuprecious, occuprince, and occuprincess.

Taboo words which may not be spoken lest global warming fall upon us in baleful wrath include occuwork, occuthink, occustudy, and occubathe.

Yes, this is the season for cultural remakes, and 1968 wasn’t very good the first time.

-30

A Prisoner of Triskelion. Chapter 2: What Did The Prisoner Not Know, And When Did He Not Know It?

                                           A Prisoner of Triskelion

Chapter 2.

What Did The Prisoner Not Know, And When Did He Not Know It?

Carry On, Jeeves.  Well, the meaning was clear – to Triskelion, O’Cannan was a drone who should accept the situation.  Or sitch, as Bertie would say.

When The Empress of Blandings flies, O’Cannan thought to himself.

The odd thing was, he realized, that the situation really was a mistake.  O’Cannan was not a spy of any kind, national, international, industrial, super, or even I-spy-with-my-little-eye.  He worked as a courier for a couple of old Navy buddies who had formed a shipping company after they were all de-mobbed.  For two years Hannan had wasted the time of several perfectly good if somewhat tiresome instructors at Memorial University before dropping out.  Actually, he had dropped out only minutes before a weary dean of something or other would have accomplished the dropping himself. 

One day shortly after recycling a biology book in a green fashion by tossing it into a dumpster he was moistening his ennui at the Golden Flagon in George Street and met Tim and Honkers – Honkers’ real name was Lorenz; no one seemed to recall the doubtless alcoholic origins of the nickname – lifting a Quidi Vidi or three or four themselves, celebrating their new partnership.  The next day O’Cannan was driving around St. John’s and Pearl in his babe-repellent old Honda, delivering large envelopes and small packages.

Several weeks later, after a few night courses and exams, he bore a commercial driving license and was bonded, whatever that meant in addition to stuffing more official bits of paper into his wallet.  Although he still made deliveries on The Rock, he sometimes carried other large envelopes and other small packages on flights to St. Pierre, to various cities in Darkest Canada, and along the Arctic Rim to Europe – Iceland, Greenland, Denmark, Scotland, Poland, the Baltics, Scotland, and perfectly-clear London town.

There could be nothing untoward in his deliveries, for more often than not everything was opened and searched, especially his one time in Finland, where an ice-mannered customs officer with ice-blue eyes and ice-blonde hair questioned him for a full hour as if his proposed entry into Helsinki was an attempt to steal the Sampo and then solicit little Suomi children to be cooked and eaten by Laplanders.

One exception to his northern flights was a recent trip to Cuba.

Cuba.

Oh.

Oh, oh, oh.

Cuba. 

Before O’Cannan’s St. John’s / Toronto / Barbados / Havana seat-ache-a-thon departed, Honkers had given him a nifty little Canon camera with a somewhat pink-ish case, a spare battery, and a spare memory card.

“Take me some pictures in Havana, eh.  Take lots of pictures – here in St. John’s, getting on the planes, on the planes, from the planes, getting off the planes, here, there, while in Havana.  Here’s some extra cash; do some tourist stuff and take lots of pictures, old cars, Spanish forts, hot chicks on the beach.  But in the middle of this, take some pictures from the plane – just some snapshots, y’know – when the plane makes its turn off the runway and onto the taxi way.  No big deal, just more poops-and-giggles snaps.  When you leave Jose Marti, same thing, take some snaps of your umbrella-drink and then out the window when the plane turns off the taxiway and onto the runway.  And, hey, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do eh?”

Wink-wink, nudge-nudge.

Cuba.

O’Cannan’s three days in Cuba had been pleasant.  He bought some Cuban cigars, went to a jiggle show, took a ride in a 1958 DeSoto cab, drank the local rum, and marveled how grim and crumbled and subtly desperate and hungry Havana was.  No problems coming into the country, no problems delivering the company mail, and no problems leaving. 

And it was all camouflage for some snapshots.  Someone wanted him to take pictures of something in the area of the airport, and someone else was unhappy that he had done so.

For three purgatorial days O’Cannan was cocooned in the white light of his white space.  He read.  He thought.  He slept badly.  He examined again everything he could reach (the ceiling was too high) in his white-coffined white world: water taps, sink, under the sink, all the hems of the white cotton sheets and the white cotton blankets and the white cotton pillow and the white cotton towel.  Nothing.

“Finding anything?” asked an amused mechanical voice from on high.

“I’m looking for my lost virginity; have you seen it?”

“Oh, well, good luck with that, O’Cannan; Triskelion’s got your soul but not your honor.  Just to tell you: you don’t have a light switch but I do; when you want to beddy-bye just sing out for some dimness.”

“Okay, thanks; I’m feeling pretty dim already, though.”

O’Cannan kept on, inspecting everything centimeter in the whiteness of the only world he was permitted for three days.

And on the third day the whale coughed him up.

After breakfast the mechanical voice beeped.  “Okay, O’Cannan, you’re normal enough for us; we’re moving you onto the beach in a half-hour.  Take only your personal stuff; leave the bedding.”

A committee of black-uniformed Triskelions, one carrying a clipboard while O’Cannan carried the useless cloth slippers, escorted O’Cannan through corridors and up a lift and through another corridor to yet another painted door, this one clearly marked: “Lucky Bag.”

“Got a customer for you, 11.”

Number 11 lazed behind a long, steel-topped counter just like those used for issuing military uniforms at the beginning of recruit training.  He displayed the insouciance and indolence of a four-year corporal, with just a soupcon of the resentment of the girl at the courtesy booth at a piles-of-Chinese-junk-store who must interrupt her ‘phone calls to speak with a customer.

11 flipped a cigarette away.  “Oo’s this, then?”

“Don’t you know?  This is the notorious Brendan O’Cannan.  Everyone’s heard of him.  Kit him out, would you?”

“Right.  Okay…hmmm…here’s yer own stuff, yeah.”  11 pushed O’Cannan’s own traveling clothes, freshly cleaned, and his old canvas hiking bag across the counter to him.  “Now, then, you’ll need some more clothes.  You like blazers; goin’ for the Patrick McGoohan look?  Take a look at these…oh…this one’s got holes in it.  I missed that one.  Now take a look at these…

O’Cannan and his escort left the new wing of the installation and crossed a glassed-in flyover to a much older stone structure.  O’Cannan barefooted along carrying his bag, the clothes he had been wearing on his last delivery, Carry On, Jeeves, and of course the useless cotton slippers.

“Old castle and fort,” said his escort, indicating the old, joined together just anyhow parts of the building they were walking through.

The corridor floors here were uneven and all was darker.  For the first time O’Cannan saw other prisoners, all wearing apparently the clothes of their choice, no uniforms, going about their routines. 

“You’re an accomplished man, O’Cannan, you won’t be mopping floors, I’m thinking.”

“Well, I was in the Navy, eh; it wouldn’t be a new experience.”

“You were in the Navy?” asked the caregiver with the clipboard, flipping papers.  “Navy?  Is this the wrong file…no…oh, well, it’ll be sorted out later.  And here is your home for the next week or so.  We’ll get you your own cubby and more freedom later if you show us that you can play nice with our other children.”

O’Cannan entered a long, low room with rows of cubicles with four bunks each.  There were no hatch covers, only curtained openings, and the walls of the cubes reached neither to the overhead nor to the deck.

The only other person in the area was an elderly man in dungarees and smoking a cigarette.  He pushed a broom with the speed of a union hand, and eyed the arrivals with some curiosity but said nothing as he worked.

“Find an empty bunk anywhere, and welcome aboard,” said the minder with the clipboard, and she and the other warders left.

“Where is everyone?” O’Cannan asked the old man.

“They are doubtless in the library conspiring to escape; conspiracy has become their morning custom in the few days they have been here, and almost surely a futile endeavor.  If you will proceed along the passageway to your left, turn left at the next crossing, and carry on until the end, you will surely find the library.”

You can’t miss it.  Translation: you’ll be hard put not to find yourself in the dark on an unmarked road in the next county with the headlights showing only glowing eyes in the underbrush. 

“Fine.  Bunk anywhere?”

“You may indeed.  May I be of any assistance?  I’m Neville Travers, by the way.”

“My name’s O’Cannan, Brendan O’Cannan.”

“Pleased to meet you.  I’m a priest.”

“Oh, one of those black-hearted Anglican heretics, eh?”

“Lord, no, I’m a Catholic. A bad one. Born in Manchester, council school for a bit and then later Downside Abbey on a burse.  Diocesan studies, then a year in Rome, a year in Louvain…”

“But why…?”

“Oh, here I sweep the floors and make the beds in the Lord’s service.  Rather keeps me humble, you know.  Neither Triskelion nor most of the customers here are much concerned with the state of their souls or why Saint Jerome and Saint Augustine couldn’t get along or whether the Luminous Mysteries are not really heretical.  They’re not, of course.  Not that anyone prays the Rosary.  Not even in Rome.  And most assuredly not in Louvain.”

“So they made you a cleaner-upper.”

“‘Tis my limited service, but ‘tis one.’”

“Macbeth, Act II, I think, when Macduff exits to awaken the King.”

“So you know your Shakespeare!  Delightful, young man!”

“Nah, my teacher showed us the movie.  Over and over. And over.”

“Oh, well, quite good enough, rather.”

“But why are you here, Father?  Did you annoy a bishop?”

“Possibly, and I surely did annoy the diocesan contract accounting firm by writing the bishop letters asking unseemly questions about the figures regarding donations from the Walk for Colon Cancer and the Save the Rain Forest-Athon, among other numerous, numerical, and fiscal activities.  The diocesan accountant was the bishop’s brother-in-law, it seems, and was also somehow connected with a member of the cabinet.  I’m only speculating, of course, but thousands and thousands of pounds were disappearing, one charity at a time.  One day I was practicing my googly in the alley after morning Mass and the next day I was here.  So now I sweep floors and make beds and clean toilets.  It’s a much cleaner vocation than finance, really, more honorable and decent.  And Triskelion do let me offer Mass for the faithful daily; I hope you’ll come and increase my customary parish attendance by precisely 33.3333 percent.

“I will.  Oh, Father Travers, we Catholics are a sorry lot.”

“Indeed; we’re not to be trusted at all.”

“We should all be taken out and shot.”

“I used to read than in the London newspapers.”

“So you’re not with the others, planning to escape or overthrow Doctor No, or whatever it is?”

“No.  Tidying up keeps me out of trouble and keeps me humble.  I needed some humility.  And besides, I wasn’t asked to join.  Rather an exclusive club, you know.”  Father Travers winked.  “But go along and find them.  Perhaps you will be the one to get us all out of this.  Not to sound as if I were a stereotype, but I do miss cricket.  Cricket on a village green, cricket at Lords.  Holy cricket.”  He sighed.

“Cricket.  And the real crickets chirp when that yawn-inducer is played.  But I’m pleased to meet you, Father.  I’m going to change and find the others.  And shoes – I’m looking forward to wearing shoes again.”

Father Travers smiled.  “Just deposit your jammies in the laundry hamper.”

“Thanks.  And, Father, you needn’t make my bed.”

“My son, I wouldn’t dream of not doing so.  Would you deprive a poor man of his place in God’s ekonomia?”

A few minutes later O’Cannan, feeling much more the man in his own old slacks, old shirt, old blazer, and old shoes, real shoes, was alone in the centuries-old corridor, walking to the library, walking without an escort.

Left turn…or was that a right turn…nope, this was it.

The library doors were open to the corridor, and the collection, at a distance, at least, seemed pretty good, not unlike a nice little red-brick university in the era before glowing screens.  Individuals were reading here and there, or searching the stacks, but the assembly of six men and women somewhat proprietarily occupying the table with the best view over the scree and the ocean appeared to be the group of which Father Travers had spoken.

He approached, but no one welcomed him.

“And you are…?”  The clipped, neutering, interrogatory sentence was left unfinished by a young woman who, O’Cannan speculated, wore a red blazer in her previous life and who made existence pure Newark for anyone subordinate to her.

“Brendan O’Cannan.”

“Doctor O’Cannan, we are so pleased to meet you!” exclaimed the bald gentleman in the sweater-vest and half-rimmed spectacles, half rising from his seat.

“Oh, no, I’m high school graduate O’Cannan, eh.”

“You’re not Doctor O’Cannan, the ethno-eco-bio-engineer and visiting fellow of ethno-eco-bio-engineering at the Ali Bin D’Ouevre Institute in Beauville?”  asked the grey-haired lady in the Che Guevera pullover.

“No, I’m ‘umble Mr. O’Cannan, the delivery man.”

“Oh, ho, ho, you will have your little joke with us, Doctor O’Cannan.  Come and join us; I’ll make introductions all ‘round.  We’re all new here, it seems.”

O’Cannan sat at the table; red-blazer woman pointedly moved her chair away by a millimeter or two.

“I’ll begin with myself – I’m Doctor Calvus Vertex, astronomy, University of Trout Creek, occupying the Mr. and Mrs. Bertram Augustus Gloriosus Chair of Astral Studies.”

O’Cannan nodded slightly.

“This is Doctor Sordida Mulier, professor of chemistry and advisor to the educational commission of the government of the Channel Islands.”

O’Cannan nodded slightly and murmured “Ma’am.”

“Quite,” replied Doctor Mulier, as if she were saying “quiet.”

“To my right is Doctor Anicula Vetula, former chair of mathematics…”

“That is ‘Chair of Higher Mathematics,’ thank you, doctor.”  One could hear the capital letters.

“My apologies, esteemed colleague.  Chair of Higher Mathematics” – Dr. Vertex accented the ‘higher’ ever so slightly, microscopically south of anything that could be adjudged irony – “at Inflatio Composite University.”

O’Cannan nodded slightly and murmured “Ma’am.”

“Kindly do not call me ‘ma’am.’  I am Doctor Vetula.  You just don’t understand.  I worked so hard for my doctorate, and I would appreciate it ever so much if you would call me Doctor Vetula.”

“Doctor Vetula,” replied O’Cannan slowly, slowly, selecting his words cautiously, “I apologize for greeting you respectfully as a gentleman to a lady.  I will always regard you as a doctor of higher mathematics.”

“You Americans simply don’t understand how to comport yourselves in an academic setting.  At a recent conference in San Francisco…”

“Doctor Vetula, I further apologize if I have unintentionally led you to infer that I am an American.  I am in fact from Newfoundland.”

“Newfoundland – well, that’s a part of America.”

“Doctor Vetula, Newfoundland is, sure, a part of the North American continent, but although we like to think that I’s d’ bys, we are unfortunately associated politically with the Canadian regime, who too often do indeed act like the more unfortunate aspects of lower Canada, meaning our separated colonial brethren and sistren of the United States.”

“I’m sure I don’t understand your sub-cultural folkways and dialect.  And, anyway, I have had little time for indulging in – harrumph -- geography while developing my quondam theory of higher geometrical progression of albino waves with regard to bio-tabular mega-micro-mechanics as interpreted through a holistic feminist filter of self-actuated thoroughness.”

“Damme if I wasn’t reading that in The Sun just last week, Doc; it was right next to the picture of Miss Saskatchewan Tractor Pull.  Man, you shoulda seen the power takeoff on that little hottie..."

“I THINK WE MIGHT NOW CONTINUE WITH THE INTRODUCTIONS,” said Doctor Vertex in a suddenly powerful let’s-get-on-with-this voice.  “Doctor O’Cannan, we also share incarceration with Doctor Inanus Vercelli, mathematician and consultant to numerous Silicon Valley firms.”

Doctor Vertex was speaking rapidly now.

“Here we are pleased to have Doctor Contus Saltator, who has reached the height of the study of physics, and next to her is Doctor Tarde Progreti, famous for his publications in impedance studies. 

“Well, then, that’s our merry little band of intellectuals, as unfashionable as that term and that concept may be to certain disaffected right-wing no-nothings who would take us back to the Dark Ages of the 12^th Century. 

“And now to our new member, Doctor Brendan O’Cannan, the famous ethno-eco-bio-engineer whose radical and ground-breaking theories in ethno-eco-bio-engineering have pushed the envelope of the boundaries outside the box in that earth-shattering new mathematical discipline.  His ideas will be of immense and immeasurable and uncountable help as we struggle to free humankind of the shackles of Triskelion.”

“Um…thank you, Doctor Vertex, but two problems appear to obtain.  And before I begin, is everyone taking notes?  Okay, here goes: (1) Don’t you think Triskelion is monitoring everything we say? And (2) I’m really, truly, and honestly not a doctor of anything; I barely graduated from high school.  Honorable doctors, I am as I say, a deliveryman.”

“I understand,” whisper Doctor Vertex.  “You want to fly under the radar.  If Triskelion only knew…”

“I am quite sure Mister O’Cannan is no academic,” said Doctor Vetula.  “He shouldn’t even be here.  He can help that old fool who does such a poor job of cleaning up our dungeon.”

“I agree,” said Doctor Mulier.  “He shouldn’t be here.  He isn’t known.”

“Aw, I’m havin’ so much fun,” drawled O’Cannan.  “Think I’ll sit a spell and rest my feet.  Not used to shoes yet, eh.”  Turning to Doctor Vertex he asked “So what’s the plan for getting’ off this rock, eh?”

“It could be worse," said Doctor Progreti.  “He could be an English major.  Goodness knows we don’t want anyone of that sort around here.  Beowulf.  Romantics.  Blank verse.  How perfectly reactionary and, well, déclassé.”

Doctor Vertex, barely suppressing a grin, held his lapels in his practiced Churchillian fashion and intoned:  “Our plan is to shut down the Cloud of Electronic Unknowing, send radio and visual signals offshore free of interference, and thereby effect our escape from this fascist concentration camp.”

O’Cannan considered the six decidedly ineffective oddities at the table and said to himself: Escape? Bet me.

-30-