Austin, Texas: The Capital of Preciousness

Mack Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Austin, the Capital of Preciousness

The democratically-elected city council of Austin, Texas has inhaled the pixie dust.  Effective in March of 2013, retailers who provide customers with a sack for their purchases will be in violation of the awful majesty of the law and the dilated pupils of the Eyes of Texas.

And not a moment too soon, I say, for who, while visiting Austin, has not feared being stalked by a drug-crazed grocery sack in the parking garage late at night?

Grocery sacks are increasingly notorious for their home invasions, and don’t even get me started about the drunken grocery sacks staggering around 6^th Street.

Grocery sacks gang up at intersections and at the entrances to stores holding out buckets and demanding money “for the missions.”

You can see grocery sacks lurking in dark alleys making drug deals, and more grocery sacks luring children into lives of crime.

Grocery sacks hang out in the parks playing loud music and smoking cigarettes and stomping the flowers with their carbon feet-prints. 

There are some who presume to defend the capitalist grocery sack.  The humble grocery sack, they say, can be used over and over (in AustinSpeak, “post-consumer recycling”).  A grocery sack can cover the hot-dish for the church luncheon.  A grocery sack makes a pretty good Halloween mask.  The more Occupy-ish among us can use a grocery sack for a facial disguise when holding up a stop-and-rob in order to liberate The People’s goods from the belly of the capitalist beast.  A smaller sack can be popped loudly in order to annoy big sister – maybe the Big Sisters on the Austin City Roost.  Paper bags carry groceries, used dishes from a garage sale, good used clothes to Goodwill, ‘jammies and a toothbrush for a sleepover, and magazines and books for the nursing home. 

And in the end, the brave little grocery sack, its life of humble service at an end, is easily composted with full military honors.  If, for some reason, a beastly Republican disposes of it improperly, the remains of the grocery sack simply fly away into the country, there to biodegrade back into the natural world from whence it came, into the Samsara of life and death, to be reborn as a majestic oak tree or as a happy little petunia.

Well, comrade, that’s reactionary thinking.  Grocery sacks are evil; the Austin city council acting in concert with the will of The People and of the gods has decreed their banishment into the desert.  So let it be written; so let it be done.  Carry those carrots home in your pocket, you fascist.

Someone’s sister-in-law, and you know her, the unemployable thirty-something with the jet-pilot glasses and a master’s degree in fashion design or hospitality, is to be granted a $2 million dollar budget to persuade The People that nuisance and humiliation are somehow good for them.  Thus, subjects of Austin will not only be punished for possession of an illegal grocery sack, they will have to pay for the propaganda – um, teachable moment.

“Keep Austin Weird?”  But Austin no longer possesses a weird to be kept; Austin is now simply another dull, grey provincial town of fearful subjects trudging their grim, grocery-bagless streets with heads bowed in passive obedience to their heavy-handed soviet.

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A Meditation -- and Clinique - for Lent

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol. om

A Meditation

– and Clinique –

for Lent

True, true, the world – it makes no sense at all
Clinique on a corpse, well, it’s still a corpse
The People (bless them) look for a Saviour ap
Glowing in stereo from a little box
Salvation by P.I.N. number and YouTube
Satan’s scheduler – holding on Line 2
While Moloch coos on the chat-chat-chat news
And the Apostles deserve martyrdom
Because they’re an exclusive all-men’s club
A bumper-sticker shrieks “Herod Was Right!”
Our Lady is, like, wow, she’s so not cool
Let’s say funny things about the Rosary
And abstinence from demented hamsters
On Fridays because that is so grandma
Beggars blocking the car: “It’s for the children”
Beggars at Wal-Mart: “It’s for the missions”
Liars, liars, sunglasses and green vests on fire
I’m-spiritual-but-not-religious, dig?

“Man, thou art dust, and…”

                                        And O, it is true.

So carry the Ring, up into Mount Doom

Or sling your rifle; march into the mist

Or kneel among the bloated corpses, pray

To die beneath the Cross on your last day
O Seeker, Soldier, Monk, now march away
To beg for ashes, ashes of decay
And wash them in the River Lethe’s pale grey
Of blessed nothingness, in dead dismay
Until…palms, palms, we all wake up – to say,
To cry beyond the sad embalmer’s way

To be awakened past all tattered time

To gaze upon Objective Reality

For the Convenience of Whomever is Compiling the List

"And Fly into Egypt"

Mack Hall, HSG Mhall46184@aol.com

“And Fly into Egypt”

Football in all its variants – rugby, association (soccer), American – originates in mediaeval England, when young men formed teams to compete in kicking a pig’s head, a pig’s bladder, a pig’s spleen, and perhaps even a whole pig from village to village.  Some writers have suggested that the early English lads kicked around the heads of invading Danes.

When the referee called for heads or tails, that had to make the Danish prisoners nervous.

And why would young men kick pigs or Danes or parts thereof about?  Well, because young men do dumb things.  Usually they get over it.  Not the Danes, though.

In the 19^th century English schools considered the many footer folk-traditions, established rules to make the play less lethal, and organized the competition into games that became fashionable.

Association football, soccer, is said to be the most popular game on the planet, which is pretty good proof of the Fall of Man.  Muscular young men in footer bags (shorts) run around a field kicking a ball and each other, and once every two or three years someone makes a score and then marries a tall blonde and gets knighted by the Queen and tells children to stay in school and read a lot.  

The best thing that can be said about soccer is that it isn’t as sleep-inducing as basketball.

Soccer has long been ill-famed for its unrestrained violence – a primeval pagan blood-lust of crazed howling, kicking, beating, and biting.  All that’s by the fans, of course; the players are much more restrained.

Thus there is no surprise that last week in Port Said, Egypt a soccer match between the hometown Al-Masry lads and Cairo’s Al-Ahly team ended with the reported deaths of over seventy men. 

And why were no women involved?  Because in Egypt women are not permitted to attend footer matches.  Egypt cannot possibly be recognized as a democracy until women there enjoy the equal right to beat and burn other people to death just like men do.

One wonders what their halftime show was like.

And are the footballs in Moslem countries made of pigskin?

The squabbling thugs who constitute the (cough) government (cough) of Egypt investigated the tragedy and concluded that the mess was the fault of the former chief thug, Hosni Mubarak, who has been in captivity for the past year.

Blaming a former leader for a present regime’s failings – man, that’s weak; no American government would ever do that.

Kicking pig-parts around from village to village sounds barbaric, and so does a soccer game which features a casualty list instead of a final score.  Happily, we live in a nation which values human dignity and human lives – well, except for the Department of Health and Human Services.  One is not sure – is the Herodian thing Senate Bill Matthew 2:16-18, or House Bill Matthew 2:16-18?  Or simply an edict?

Once upon a time even Egypt was good at protecting children.

-30-

War-Metaphor-Catholic-Keyboard-Commando-Guy

Mack Hall, HSG Mhall46184@aol.com

War-Metaphor-Guy

Does keyboard-war-guy truly mean that he

Will shoulder rifle, pack, and spares, and range
On blistered, bleeding feet into dead hell,
Obedient to an ill-considered oath
That calls upon his soul to deny itself?

How noble is his war upon the screen!

Does he intend to suffer sin-stained years

Of deprivation, lowest-bidder tins
Of surplus slime stored since some previous war,
Of murky water gassed with chemicals,
Of gasping, breathless, sodden, rotting heat?

How easy is his war upon the screen!

So does he really want a poor man’s soul

Ripped screaming, sh*tting, bleeding from his life,
Intestines flyblown in the devil’s sun?
Will he be satisfied with an eyeless corpse
Bloat-floating down another Vam Co Tay?

How glorious is his war upon the screen!

Now, keyboard-war-guy, march away, away

And how God wills, dispose the video games.

The whole world is laughing.

The whole world is laughing.
The whole world is laughing.

The Arms Bazaar

Mack Hall, HSG Mhall46184@aol.com

The Arms Bazaar

Visiting a traditional arms bazaar in a decaying village in a decaying civilization is something of a culture shock: the quaint old men in their tribal garb, the hundreds of rifles old and new of all sorts of provenance and caliber, the creaky tables stacked with boxes of ammunition, the dogs thumping their tails, the children enjoying a snack among the firearms, the mostly silent women. 

I refer, of course, to the East Texas gun show I attended last week as a quaint old man in my own tribal garb.

In very truth, people at gun shows appear to be very nice, and given the presence of all the ironmongery, that’s best.  Some brought their children and some brought their little dogs, and it really was a pleasant occasion.

At the show I noted especially:

A 1943 Czech-made Mauser K98.  Beautiful.

Civil war muskets.  History.

A Moss-Nagant, the military rifle of both the Czars and the Reds.  Cheap - as cheap as the lives of soldiers are to their leaders.

Lots of bumper stickers: “Don’t Bring a Knife to a Gun Fight,” “I (heart) My Blood-Crazed Dachshund,” “God Bless America” (this one would go well with the ChiCom assault rifle), and so on.  I didn’t ask about a “Re-Elect the President” sticker.

Rosary beads.  Whaaaaaaaaaa?  Unexpected, until you realized that they were being sold as a fashion item to those whose sense of style derives from the guys who skulk around bus station restrooms.  Rosary beads as ornamentation are barely north of wearing a copy of the Bible as a hat. 

An AK-47.  Creepy.  Why did President Clinton sign the papers on these things?  And why hasn’t a subsequent government suppressed them?  We live under the erratic rule of a federal government that forbids us to choose our own light bulbs or toilet tanks, but winks at thousands of Chinese semi-automatic combat rifles in the possession of the sort of people who would buy Chinese semi-automatic combat rifles.

Oh, yeah, bring on the all-caps letters-to-the-editor.

Lots of pocket knives, most of them cheap, shiny, and Chinese.  A gentleman is not dressed without his pocket knife, but one wonders if the owner of the Shanghai factory that turns out all this junk carries a good, utilitarian, American-made Case, a Texas-made Moore, or a Canadian-made Grohmann.

J. C. Higgins shotguns, once the inexpensive and modest harvester of Sunday dinners for generations of poor rural folk, were among the most expensive firearms for sale at the show.  These were made by different companies under contract by Sears, neat but not gaudy, until 1961 or so.  They were not cool in their day; they only got the job done.  And now they are cool after all.

The food vendors at the gun show didn’t feature a vegetarian plate.  Why is that?

I saw a fellow wearing a Marine Corps / Viet-Nam baseball cap, hopping happily along on one leg and one crutch.  Was the leg untimely ripped from him in Viet-Nam, or in a motorcycle accident in Escondido in 1972?  But I think he was genuine because he wasn’t working the patented thousand-yard-stare thing so beloved of the phonies.

Many folks believe that at gun shows weapons can be bought and sold illegally, without reference to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.  Not so.  The United States Department of Justice under the little man with the little moustache may be pleased to donate thousands of military combat rifles to drug gangs along our borders so that they can murder you, but if you want to buy an old single-shot .22 just like the one you took rabbits with when you were a young’un you’re going to have to fill out the forms and wait for the computers to approve of you.

If only an American citizen could apply to the BATF for computerized permission to buy a toilet that works. 

-30-

A New Moleskine

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

A New Commonplace Book

Some say this book is blank, but ‘tis not so:

The pages speak unwritten, and in them
Are hidden the adventures of the mind,
And needing only there the gentle push
Of ink-charged nib to wand the words alight
Upon, across, within the rich leaves sewn,
Sewn each to each and to a spine for store;
The wanderings of one’s life, one’s soul, one’s art
Stored up on sorted pages in their leaves,
Embellished with, perhaps, depictions drawn,
Carved freely from the hand, or cuttings set
In neatness and in order regular
Or something thus of both, with letters clear
About, among, around the ideas here.