Reactionary Drivel

For the Convenience of Whomever is Compiling the List

2012-02-12T20:54:00.001-06:00

"And Fly into Egypt"

2012-02-05T21:06:00.000-06:00

“And Fly intoEgypt”

Footballin all its variants – rugby, association (soccer), American – originates inmediaeval England, when young men formed teams to compete in kicking a pig’shead, a pig’s bladder, a pig’s spleen, and perhaps even a whole pig fromvillage to village. Some writers havesuggested that the early English lads kicked around the heads of invadingDanes.

Whenthe referee called for heads or tails, that had to make the Danish prisonersnervous.

Andwhy 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.

Inthe 19^th century English schools considered the many footerfolk-traditions, established rules to make the play less lethal, and organizedthe competition into games that became fashionable.

Associationfootball, soccer, is said to be the most popular game on the planet, which ispretty good proof of the Fall of Man. Muscularyoung men in footer bags (shorts) run around a field kicking a ball and eachother, and once every two or three years someone makes a score and then marriesa tall blonde and gets knighted by the Queen and tells children to stay inschool and read a lot.

Thebest thing that can be said about soccer is that it isn’t as sleep-inducing asbasketball.

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

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

Andwhy were no women involved? Because inEgypt women are not permitted to attend footer matches. Egypt cannot possibly be recognized as ademocracy until women there enjoy the equal right to beat and burn other peopleto death just like men do.

Onewonders what their halftime show was like.

Andare the footballs in Moslem countries made of pigskin?

Thesquabbling thugs who constitute the (cough) government (cough) of Egyptinvestigated the tragedy and concluded that the mess was the fault of theformer chief thug, Hosni Mubarak, who has been in captivity for the past year.

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

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

Onceupon a time even Egypt was good at protecting children.

-30-

War-Metaphor-Catholic-Keyboard-Commando-Guy

2012-02-01T22:20:00.001-06:00

MackHall, HSGMhall46184@aol.com

War-Metaphor-Guy

Doeskeyboard-war-guy truly mean that he

Willshoulder rifle, pack, and spares, and range
Onblistered, bleeding feet into dead hell,
Obedientto an ill-considered oath
Thatcalls upon his soul to deny itself?

Hownoble is his war upon the screen!

Doeshe intend to suffer sin-stained years

Ofdeprivation, lowest-bidder tins
Ofsurplus slime stored since some previous war,
Ofmurky water gassed with chemicals,
Ofgasping, breathless, sodden, rotting heat?

Howeasy is his war upon the screen!

Sodoes he really want a poor man’s soul

Rippedscreaming, sh*tting, bleeding from his life,
Intestinesflyblown in the devil’s sun?
Willhe be satisfied with an eyeless corpse
Bloat-floatingdown another Vam Co Tay?

Howglorious is his war upon the screen!

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

Andhow God wills, dispose the video games.

Thewhole world is laughing.

Thewhole world is laughing.
Thewhole world is laughing.

The Arms Bazaar

2012-01-29T19:56:00.000-06:00

MackHall, HSGMhall46184@aol.com

The Arms Bazaar

Visitinga traditional arms bazaar in a decaying village in a decaying civilization issomething of a culture shock: the quaint old men in their tribal garb, the hundredsof rifles old and new of all sorts of provenance and caliber, the creaky tablesstacked with boxes of ammunition, the dogs thumping their tails, the childrenenjoying a snack among the firearms, the mostly silent women.

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

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

Atthe show I noted especially:

A1943 Czech-made Mauser K98. Beautiful.

Civilwar muskets. History.

AMoss-Nagant, the military rifle of both the Czars and the Reds. Cheap - as cheap as the lives of soldiers areto their leaders.

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

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

AnAK-47. Creepy. Why did President Clinton sign the papers onthese things? And why hasn’t asubsequent government suppressed them? We live under the erratic rule of a federal government that forbids usto choose our own light bulbs or toilet tanks, but winks at thousands ofChinese semi-automatic combat rifles in the possession of the sort of peoplewho would buy Chinese semi-automatic combat rifles.

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

Lotsof pocket knives, most of them cheap, shiny, and Chinese. A gentleman is not dressed without his pocketknife, but one wonders if the owner of the Shanghai factory that turns out allthis 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 Sundaydinners for generations of poor rural folk, were among the most expensivefirearms for sale at the show. Thesewere made by different companies under contract by Sears, neat but not gaudy,until 1961 or so. They were not cool intheir day; they only got the job done. And now they are cool after all.

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

Isaw a fellow wearing a Marine Corps / Viet-Nam baseball cap, hopping happilyalong on one leg and one crutch. Was theleg untimely ripped from him in Viet-Nam, or in a motorcycle accident inEscondido in 1972? But I think he wasgenuine because he wasn’t working the patented thousand-yard-stare thing sobeloved of the phonies.

Manyfolks 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 thelittle moustache may be pleased to donate thousands of military combat riflesto drug gangs along our borders so that they can murder you, but if you want tobuy an old single-shot .22 just like the one you took rabbits with when youwere a young’un you’re going to have to fill out the forms and wait for thecomputers to approve of you.

Ifonly an American citizen could apply to the BATF for computerized permission tobuy a toilet that works.

-30-

A New Moleskine

2012-01-28T06:20:00.000-06:00

MackHall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

A New Commonplace Book

Somesay this book is blank, but ‘tis not so:

Thepages speak unwritten, and in them
Arehidden the adventures of the mind,
Andneeding only there the gentle push
Ofink-charged nib to wand the words alight
Upon,across, within the rich leaves sewn,
Sewneach to each and to a spine for store;
Thewanderings of one’s life, one’s soul, one’s art
Storedup on sorted pages in their leaves,
Embellishedwith, perhaps, depictions drawn,
Carvedfreely from the hand, or cuttings set
Inneatness and in order regular
Orsomething thus of both, with letters clear
About,among, around the ideas here.

Confronted with Etouffe'

2012-01-26T14:22:00.001-06:00

MackHall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Confronted withEtouffe’

Noexoskeletons pollute my taste,
Formy profoundly English digestion
Rejectssuch critters as foul, unclean waste:
Thematter is not subject to question.

Assureme that a crawfish is nutritious?

I will offer you an earthworm instead.
Myproposal is merely meretricious:
Suckthou the brains from a crustacean’shead

Wetshrimp and mud crawfish, O what are these?

Roacheswith an aquatic attitude
Reallylittle more than sad seaborne fleas
Notthese did Jesus feed the multitude

Giveme some fish, with slick scales on their sides

Ormaybe a turkey (cut off its head)
Orgood dead cows (Moo! Moo!), once clothed in hides:
Endoskeletons,yes! (with buttered bread).

The Wagnerian Glories of a Trash Fire

2012-01-26T14:20:00.001-06:00

MackHall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Wagnerian Gloriesof a Trash Fire

Anorange juice carton writhes in tinted death,

Avowalsof recycling smoke and flame
Andboldly from the waxy cardboard shield
Thecartoon orange leaps to its funeral pyre
Onburning lines of fine and legal ink
Thatonce assured the green consumer that
Thejuice contained therein was pure of heart
Andgladly sacrificed its life for us.

A Mild Cold Front

2012-01-26T14:19:00.001-06:00

MackHall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

A Mild Cold Front

Anerrant frog’s the only voice to sing

Theday to sleep in this warm, blustery dusk.
Thewhippoorwill of yesternight is still;
Thedeep-voiced owl is silent too. The wind
Anddamp have silenced even the twilight dogs
(Dodogs make paw to the doghousey wood?).
Thegrasses sigh; the bare oak branches hum
Thelong-dead autumn leaves blow this way, that;
Theclouds - they darken, lower, hover, grim
Uponthe land, where winter ought to rest.

Shakespeare on CD-ROM

2012-01-26T14:17:00.000-06:00

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall 46184@aol.com
15 January 1996

Shakespeare onCD-ROM

Inplastic laminate Ophelia sings

WhileHamlet broods on moonless midnight walks
AndPortia celebrates the truths of rings
Asevil, humpbacked Richard plots and stalks.
SweetRosalind, as Ganymede, delights
Orlando’sardent Arden fantasies;
Herwords disturb his leafy bed at night
Andset him carving love tokens on trees.
Withinthis disc King Henry tells his men
Thebloody ground of Agincourt and they
Willbe remembered aeons without end
Whilegreybeards glory in Saint Crispin’s Day:
Warriorsand dreamers and passionate suitors
Canall now fit in slots in computers.

The Descriptive Essay

2012-01-26T14:16:00.001-06:00

MackHall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

The DescriptiveEssay

“Describeyour favorite space,” he innocently asked,

Anddutifully, in double-space, they wrote:

“Myfamily and I watch our new flatscreen.”

“Butwhat of microscopes and basketballs,

Guitarsand wrenches and sewing machines
Andsometimes fishing from the old sea wall,
Orplanting a garden with corn, peas, and beans?”

“Myfamily and I watch our big flatscreen.”

“Whatdo you like to read, what do you sing?

Doyou rebuild old cars, old houses, old souls?
Whatdo you write on the first day of spring?
Doyou like your job? And what are yourgoals?

“Thefamily and I watch our wide flatscreen.”

“Doyou sometimes throw a football around,

Refinishfurniture, or feed the birds,
Volunteeran hour at the local pound
Chantwith the choir those sacred, ancient words?”

“Meand the family watch our big flatscreen.”

“Doyou jam to the radio, rock that beat,

NewOrleans jazz or upriver blues?
Whatsounds pick up your heart, your hands, your feet?
Saint-Saensor Satchmo – so who’s your muse?”

“Thefamily and I watch our old flatscreen.”

Andthus anaesthesia displaces art

Thesons and daughters of great kings and queens
Fromtheir ancient heritage now depart
Andbow obediently before flatscreens.

Tornado Warning

2012-01-26T14:13:00.000-06:00

MackHall, HSGMhall46184@aol.com
25 January 2012

Tornado Warning

Thescanner squawks in protest ‘gainst the sky,

Shrillingits delicate electronics
Inirrelevant made-in-China fury
Whiledark, Wagnerian clouds fall upon
Ourfragile lives, and Wotan’s magic fire,
Inslashing shadow-blasts, encircles all.
Thewavering weaving of the Norns has ripped;
Wyrd’swilding winds now warp our weakening world,
Rainshrieks green agony upon the walls,
Andeven darkness shudders in the rage
Ofobscene anvil-music and dragon’s blood.

Censorpaedia

2012-01-26T14:11:00.000-06:00

MackHall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Censorpaedia

Lastweek three related events occurred: the governments of New Zealand and theUnited States cooperated in the arrest of a German citizen accused of providingfree (read: stolen) download access to copyrighted music and movies. The purported perp pocketed his profits bypeddling fast access modes and advertising. Within the United States a law regarding downloads of copyright music, alaw that no one appears to have read, was proposed and then ignored. Finally, several ‘net providers ofinformation – some say misinformation – shut themselves down for a day inprotest of censorship. Irony clearlyeludes them.

Allthis is part of the continuing confusion of property rights regarding culturalendeavors.

Themanufacturers of movies, for instance, enjoy repeated paydays under copyrightlaws. After a film is constructed, theowners and actors receive payments every time the flickering bits of light arelegally projected on a wall.

Incontrast, and in a clear denial of equal protection under the law, the buildersof a house are paid only once. Anunbilled actor who appears for ten seconds in the background of one scene in Star Trek XXIV: The Girl Scout ZombieCannibals of Mars will receive periodic residuals for the duration of the copyright,dependent on the marketability of the, um, art. An equally unbilled bricklayer is paid only once; he will receive noresiduals no matter how long the house he helped construct is inhabited or howmany times it is sold.

Thedefense of residuals for actors is that someone makes money every time the filmis (legally) displayed, so it’s only fair that the actors take a bit ofthat. However, a house, too, generatesprofits each time it is sold, and perhaps daily if it becomes a commercialproperty, but our hypothetical bricklayer receives nothing.

Y’r‘umble scrivener doesn’t have even a residual of a solution for that legalinconsistency: the laborer is worthy of his hire; why are most laborers paid once,but a privileged few, by law, over and over? No one can steal the bricklayer’s residual payments because he receivesnone.

Twoother problems with the electronic storage of movies, pictures, poems, and otherforms of art are these: (1) How do we know that a work of art has not beentampered with? and (2) How do we sustain the existence of a work given thefragility of electronics?

Thefirst problem is wonderfully Orwellian; without a verifiable original we can’tknow if anything stored or transmitted on the World Wide Wonk, the Internaif,or in some unknowable Fog is as originally built. Decades ago a few words in the introductorysong in the Disney film Aladdin weremodified because of perceived insensitivity. A first-run videotape contains the cruel words; all subsequent tapes andDVDs do not. Hardly anyone noticed;fewer cared. Those who follow the newsare well aware of how a re-broadcast of part of a speech or debate can changethe intent of a speaker or the significance of an event by cutting a few wordsor an audience response.

Theconventional fear of control and censorship is of a government (it’s all GeorgeBush’s fault, blah-blah-blah), but other than the more feral sorts of porn thefeds pretty much leave the aether alone; the proven censors (and thieves), overand over, are the private-enterprise owners of the servers.

Aphysical book is certainly vulnerable enough: paper burns and rots, and isconsumable by rats, mice, insects, and habitués of New Jersey. However, as long as a particular volumeexists, one can be sure it has not been altered; with an electrical book beameddown from moonbeams or rainbows no such assurance obtains.

Thesecond problem is the existence at all of a book, film, picture, or bit ofmusic. The oldest book y’r umblescrivener owns was printed in 1806, is in quite good shape, and is almostwithout value because of its commonality. Books over 1,500 years old are not unknown. Good paper, stable ink, a little reasonablecare, and avoiding Goths, Vandals, Anglo-Saxons, Frisians, Danes, Turks, Huns,and the New York subway means that a book written by a fellow, almost surely aBenedictine, in the 5^th century is easily readable today (if one canwork through schoolchild Latin).

Consider,though, the weakness of every little box that glows in the dark. No one has been spared the annoyance of theloss of information from an expensive device that, like Aunt Pittypat, faintedfrom the vapours.

Weare told that someone setting a metaphorical match to certain types ofeasily-constructed bombs can destroy all computer storage and functionalitycontinent-wide. Not only can one notread the blank screen on a now-useless chunk of dead weight, there would be nolight by which to read, not for years. All the books, music, pictures, and films entrusted to the good fairieswould cease to exist forever, while physical books, music scores, and pictureswould carry civilization successfully through a new dark age.

Electronicbooks and other works of art are convenient, but they’re all Aunt Pittypats (oris that Aunts Pittypat?).

-30-

The Beggar at Canterbury Gate

2012-01-19T21:19:00.001-06:00

Mack Hall, HSG

mhall46184@aol.com

The Beggar at CanterburyGate

Thebeggar sits at Canterbury Gate,

Thin,pale, unshaven, sad. His little dog
Sitspatiently as a Benedictine
AtVespers, pondering eternity.
Notthat rat terriers are permitted
Tomake solemn vows. Still, the pup appears
Totake his own vocation seriously,
Asso few humans do. For after all,
Dogsdemonstrate for us the duties of
Poverty,stability, obedience,
Inchoir, perhaps; among the garbage, yes,
Sothat perhaps we too might live aright.

Thegood dog’s human plays his tin whistle
Beneathusurper Henry’s¹ offering-arch
ForKings, as beggars do, must drag their sins
Andlay them before the Altar of God:
Thebeggar drinks and drugs and smokes, and so
Hispenance is to sit and suffer shame;
TheKing’s foul murders stain his honorable soul;
Hispenance is a stone-carved famous name
Ourbeggar, then, is a happier man,
Beggingfor bread at Canterbury Gate;
Tho’stones are scripted not with his poor name,
Hislittle dog will plead his cause to God.

¹Henry VII, who built the Cathedral Gatein 1517, long after the time of Henry II and St. Thomas Becket

False Spring

2012-01-18T20:09:00.000-06:00

Mack Hall, HSGmhall46184@aol.com

False Spring

Nospring is false when warm, sweet sunlight falls

Uponthe weathered field and woods and walls
Andfrogs shake off the mud and much to sing
Whilelizards leap and little bees take wing

Nospring is false when gentle roses bloom

Andwindows are opened on airless rooms
Afterthe time of ice, soft, gentle air
Comfortsthe cold world like a whispered prayer

ThisJanuary thaw cannot be wrong;

Itsings for us a little of spring’s song

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

2012-01-15T21:48:00.000-06:00

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

Second Sunday inOrdinary Time

TheInfant Samuel lay in the Sanctuary

Andin the night-watch heard the voice of God
Herose and responded.

What do we hear?

Themechanical hiss of central air
Thevaporous clangings of the plumbing
Acar passing by on some late errand
Ayawn, a sigh, a turn, a pillow foofed
Thesilent accusations of the night

Prepositions in 35 Millimeter

2012-01-15T20:54:00.002-06:00

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

Prepositions in35millimetre

Hyphen-HyphenCorporation Presents

ASnort-Ponsonby Presentation of

A Trans-SerbianFilms Production of

A Banco-GiganticoPicture of

A Startled Oysters Inc. Performanceof

AMixed-Metaphor Starshine Version of

A Death Meadows Companyfilm of

DirectorCorpuscle Smith’s rendering of

Alphonse Snortberger’s Immortal Story of

DEAD SNAILS

IN THE SUNSET

A Candidate Channels Jesus

2012-01-15T20:52:00.000-06:00

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

A CandidateChannels Jesus

MyJesus blessed me in a dream last night

MyJesus said you are to vote for me
Youdare not argue with my Jesus, right?
Andhenceforth I is past, since We are We

Weare the candidate, the chosen One

Godhas a plan for Us; vote as We say
We’llrun the good race; like Us there is none
Ourpastor says We’re the American way

We’llrally for Jesus, and, yes, for Us

WaveOur hands about with a merry shout
Anddrive Our land in a long Jesus bus --
Alove offering, please, Our hand’s ‘way out

ObeyUs in freedom; you know it’s true --

Weare so much more Jesus-y than you.

Searching for Sight

2012-01-15T20:49:00.003-06:00

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

Searching for Sight

Noone assures you that lenses are green

Thatspectacles are recycled from waste
Thatthe optometrist’s glow-in-the-dark
Boxes,little lights in white, green, and red,
Arecultivated by fair-trade farmers
Alongthe Neckar River in Hungary
Whereno one needs glasses to speak Magyar.
Eyes,like cans of squash, have expiration dates
Andmust be renewed and refreshed each year
Withlittle boxed lights in white, green, and red
Anda thirty-something voice assuring you
Thatyour eyes are good – for someone your age.
Wordsspilling out like a soft cataract
Ofdiffuse, bubbling comfort for a year
Witheyes recycled once again the seer
Seeksfor the book store and the coffee shop

Newbooks, fresh cups, old dreams held at odd angles

Registering Humans

2012-01-15T20:47:00.002-06:00

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

Registration

Sadrefugees, petitioners, lining the walls

Ofgrim, poorly-lit cinder-block hallways
Withbabies and luggage and desperate hope
Fora better world than the one they’ve fled.
Withpapers and permits clutched in their hands
Eachin turn approaches tired officials
Seatedbehind cheap desks beneath pale lights
Approving,disapproving, signing forms,
Pointingout other lines now to be joined.
Theformless, faceless crowds shuffle along.
Somehuddle in dark corners on the floor
Eatingslyly from sad bundles of food
Othershuddle conspiratorially
Outside,furtively smoking cigarettes
Theireyes darting about suspiciously
Inthis place where time is unmeasured, void.
Somestare at old notices on the walls
Unclearabout the meanings of the words.
Waiting,waiting, always waiting. For what?
Forthe scrawled signatures, the seals, the stamps,
Permissionto enter the strange new land:

Soslowly do the desperate make their way

Forthis is college registration day.

Epiphany, Transferred

2012-01-15T20:45:00.002-06:00

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

Epiphany,Transferred

How,then, does one transfer a holy day?

TheMagi reschedule their appointments
Thecamels are re-booked with a penalty
KingHerod’s social secretary sighs
Andjots a note for the distribution list
(HolyInnocents will die some other time)
Perdiem expenses and meal vouchers
“Wehave seen His star in the east,” yes, but
Gold,myrrh, and frankincense must clear customs,
Andwill your trip continue to Egypt,
Oris this your final destination?

Foxy John's Beer Wine Good Food Low Prices

2012-01-15T20:43:00.000-06:00

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

Foxy John’s

Beer Wine Good FoodLow Prices

Betweenclass and the night shift, Foxy John’s:

Booksand ideas, an old Sheaffer pen
Scribblednotes on a yellow pad, a pipe
OfHolland House, coffee, another cup
Theold MG stood loyally outside
TheSan Diego night smelled of the sea
Dampand cool out beyond the fluorescents
Andat dawn, between the night shift and class
Morecoffee, more tobacco, weary eyes
Ill-focusedon Henry at Canossa
Andthe ocean tides and the morning fogs
Turningthe seasons marked shifts and studies.

Howcurious never to have met John

Andso to learn whether he was foxy

The Girl with the Septic Tattoo -- Twenty Years Later

2012-01-15T20:41:00.000-06:00

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Girl with theSeptic Tattoo – Twenty Years Later

TheGirl with the Dragon Tattoo

Didjust what she was told to do
Herculture betrayed her
Andso she obeyed, sir:
TheCrone with the Draggin’ T_att_oo

Get More Smart

2012-01-15T20:38:00.001-06:00

Get More Smart

Secretagent stories entered popular culture with Ian Fleming’s James Bond in the1950s. Although there were only twoserious video versions – the first two Bond films and the superior Danger Man / Secret Agent / The Prisonertelevision series with Patrick McGoohan – this transient fashion of the early1960s has enjoyed a long half-life. Spoofs,all of them good-natured, began almost immediately and continue today. Even James Bond is no longer the patrioticfunctionary of a collapsing empire; he quickly became a self-parody in thedizzy Roger Moore era, and has lately fallen into to the sensitive slough ofcultural despond by lesser writers and directors, failing to use the greatacting talents of Young Blue Eyes.

Theearliest and best takeoff of spy thrillers is Get Smart, which aired on television from 1965 to 1969. All the spy conventions are there – thesecret spy organizations (CONTROL and its evil opposite, KAOS), the stern butfatherly director, two-seater drop-tops, glamorous clothes, beautiful women,unnecessarily complicated gadgets, the mad villains, and lots and lots offirearms. Secret Agent Maxwell Smart andthe gang at CONTROL take these usages and twist them into delightful illogic:CONTROL’s government budget is so low that in one episode The Chief takes apart-time job as a cleaner. Agent Smartis brave and tough but not very smart, and is often rescued by gorgeous Agent99 dressed in her Carney Street best. Thevarious mad geniuses are Bond villains who have had too much coffee, and thegunfire, explosions, visual gags, falls, tumbles, and car wrecks are straightout of The Three Stooges.

Andit is all wonderful, harmless fun.

Incable-channel retrospectives the cliches’ “cutting edge” and “ahead of itstime” are employed with illogic and abandon. Get Smart, happily, wasdefinitely of its time: Agent 99dresses in swinging London style, and Max and the Chief are dapper in suitswith narrow ties. The Cold War, hippies,Russians, Germans, desert sheiks, Chinese Communists, motorcycle gangs, thethreat of nuclear war, cooing seductresses, and South American dictators allcome in for a comic treatment that is no edgier than Leave it to Beaver. Cigarettes and cocktails abound in theirprelapsarian innocence, and Max and Agent 99 never, never, never overnight witheach other.

Repeatedlines from Get Smart were omnipresent in the 1960s, and many continue. Max’s nasal “Would you believe…?” survives,though few know of its origins. Atypical “Would you believe…?” occurs when Max is in the hands of the villains,and would go (my quote, from memory, is not precise) something like this:

Siegfried:“You are in the hands of KAOS. Put down your weapons.”

Max:“Would you believe that this island is surrounded by the 6^th Fleet?”

Siegfried:“I find that hard to believe.”

Max:“Would you believe the 1^st Fleet?”

Siegfried:“No.”

Max:“Would you believe two Boy Scouts in a canoe?”

Avery few of the other repeated gags:

Siegfried:“Zis iss KAOS; ve don’t ‘shush’ here!”

Max:“Missed it by that much.”

Long-suffering99: “Oh, Max.”

Max:“The old ____ in the _____ trick.”

Max(when his schemes go disastrously wrong): “Sorry about that, Chief.”

Get Smart would be funny asa stand-alone comedy without cultural references other than the fictional creationsof Ian Fleming and Patrick McGoohan. However,Get Smart engineered takeoffs ondozens of cultural markers, both transient and transcendent. The following is a partial list of books,movies, television shows, and poems (and how many gags based on Samuel TaylorColeridge or obscure Czech films have you heard lately?) celebrated by thebrilliant writers and actors of a show only the superficial would dismiss as,well, superficial:

One of Our Aircraftis Missing

Bye, Bye Birdie

The ReluctantDebutante

The Wild Ones

Peyton Place

Our Man in Havana

Murder on theOrient Express

Ship of Fools

Charlie Chan

Casablanca

The Prisoner ofZenda

Doctor No

Island of the Da(r)ned

The Man fromU.N.C.L.E.

The Girl fromU.N.C.L.E.

The Mummy

How to Succeed inBusiness without Really Trying

Appointment inSamarra

A Man Called Horse

The Greatest Showon Earth

Cinderella

Snow White

Gilligan’s Island

Goldfinger

Somebody up ThereLikes Me

Witness for theProsecution

The Fugitive

Zorba the Greek

The Good, the Bad,and the Ugly

Treasure of theSierra Madre

National Velvet

Spartacus

Alfie

Goodbye, Columbus

Bonnie and Clyde

To Sir With Love

Ironside

Rear Window

The Great Escape

The Secret of SantaVittoria

Closely WatchedTrains

A Tale of TwoCities

The Fugitive

House of Wax

The Avengers

“Rimeof the Ancient Mariner”

King Kong

The Grapes of Wrath

Ice Station Zebra

Rebecca ofSunnybrook Farm

The List of AdrianMessenger

Max:“Would you believe that Get Smart isthe best television show ever?”

Siegfried:“I find that hard to believe.”

Max:“Would you believe that Get Smart is the most popular television show inKhazakstan?”

Siegfried:“No.”

Max:“Would you believe that Get Smart isfunnier than Republicans?”

-30-

New Hampshire Primaries - Channeling Floyd Turbo

2012-01-08T17:45:00.000-06:00

MackHall, HSG

Channeling FloydTurbo

Abed-and-breakfast in New Hampshire has posted a hand-lettered sign banning allpoliticians. For a nickel’s worth ofcardboard and colored ink the B & B has accomplished the American dream, atransient Kardassian moment of look-at-me-me-me-ness which no one with avocabulary larger than 300 words takes seriously.

Fora few months every four years New Hampshire awakens from its somnolence (Listen– you can hear the chorus sighing “Brigadoon! Brigadoo-oon!”), sloshes on its makeup, and, like New Orleans, parodiesitself.

Presidentialcandidates prove themselves worthy of the power of nuclear winter by channelingJohnny Carson’s Floyd Turbo and yukking it up with The Just Plain Folks down atMa and Pa’s Cafe. They costumethemselves in ye olde New Hampshire quaint and colorful ethnic folk dress –baseball caps and plaid hunting shirts made in China – and pretend to be YourNeighbor. Of course Your Neighbors inNew Hampshire are only playing at being Your Neighbor, too, so it is allwonderfully confusing.

Perhapsit will help if we think of the New Hampshire primary as one of those historicalre-enactment events, only instead of everyone dressing up as Civil War soldiers,they pose as Ethan Allen’s Green Mountain Boys with mobile ‘phones locked andloaded.

Onecan understand any restaurant banning presidential candidates, if only becausethe candidates don’t know how many people they are. When a candidate completes the forms forstanding for election, he or she immediately becomes a “we,” as in “We aregoing win this state” and “We will not indulge in negative ads, unlike ourlying, depraved opponent who sacrifices hamsters to the moon goddess.” If the café’ has available a table for fourand the visiting candidate presents himself as “we,” the staff don’t know iffour seats are adequate or if they need to push some tables together.

Perhapsthe “we” connects with the candidate’s assertion of God’s backing; a number ofcandidates and their spouses have claimed that they have received personalrevelations from God telling them that God wants them to be Mr. and Mrs.President.

And,hey, who are the rest of us to go against the will of God as revealed to aplayer in a chambray shirt that will never be splattered with oil stains orsweat, eh?

DidGeorge Washington trade in his tricorn for a ball cap when he stood forPresident?

DidFDR switch his cigarette holder for a chaw of terbaccy and hang out in NewHampshire playing checkers with Larry, Daryl, and Daryl on the evening of the 7^thof December, 1941?

DidJohn Kennedy sport a faux work shirt while checking out the farmer’sdaughter…um…mingling with The People in 1960?

Onceupon a time presidential candidates were chosen in smoke-filled rooms. The air in the rooms is more aromatic thanever, but the scent is not that of smoke.

Butlet us remember that very few nations switch administrations without firingsquads, and we are one of the happy few. We can be thankful that the worst we have tosuffer is watching members of the Harvard Club pretend, like Marie Antoinette,to be rustics.

-30-

2012 Already?

2012-01-02T07:48:00.000-06:00

MackHall, HSG

2012 Already?

Anothernew year has noisily pushed its way into our lives, just as we were gettingcomfortable with the old one, and in a shrill voice demands inordinateattention, rather like a presidential candidate’s wife.

Thenew year means that now we should all make lists of new year’s resolutions to ignore,which is of course all of them. Why is aresolution made on the first of January somehow more significant than one madeon the 12^th of October?

Loseweight? Not gonna happen. Here, havesome more chocolate and enjoy life.

Hereare some resolutions that our political and cultural leaders might attempt,though they won’t:

Presidentialcandidates should resolve to drop the royal “we.” Even in local elections a candidate beginsreferring to himself as “we” as soon as he has filed the papers. When a candidate refers to himself as “we,”someone should ask him about his multiple-personality disorder issues.

Presidentialcandidates and their spouses should resolve to use a Christmas bookstore giftcard to buy a copy of the Constitution, wherein, they will note, there is nodelegation of power to a presidential spouse and no budget for a presidentialspouse.

Anypresidential candidate who resolves to have the Hohenzollern-ish (cue “ImperialMarch” from Star Wars) fleet ofpresidential jumbo jets and helicopters converted to medical evacuationaircraft for our wounded soldiers would probably win the election. Let’s hear it from all the candidates, boysand girls alike: “I solemnly resolve never to arrogate military aircraft formyself, my spouse and kids, my spouse’s lengthy catalogue of relatives, my dog,my butterfly collection, my anything. I swearthat if I have a constitutionally-mandated duty to fly somewhere as president,I will buy space on a civilian airliner, just like the Pope, the British royalfamily, and almost every other world leader. I further assure you that golf clubs will not be part of my baggage.”

Electioncommissions everywhere should resolve that on every ballot there will be a“none-of-the-above” option.

Themakers of films should make solemn vows, not mere resolutions, to return toholding the cameras still. The conceptof deliberately shaking the camera around is not artistic; it is merely aprecious, look-at-me gimmick.

Anothermatter of artistic integrity would be to list computer graphics as a percentageof content in a movie. The adaptationsof C. S. Lewis’ Narnia stories, for example, are excessively clotted withcomputer graphics, with the resultant minimizing of the plot and of thecharacters of the children.

Andyet another resolution for filmmakers: turn on the lights when setting a scene. So many films now are shown in such a dimmonotone that one wonders why projectors even bother with light bulbs.

AllUAW members should resolve to drive Chevy Volts.

Everycompany that sells cable, satellite, and wireless access should resolve to stoplying to their customers. With that,though, the world as we know it would end.

Mayyour new year be blessed with kittens, puppies, happy children, chocolate, goodwireless signals, and evenings under the trees talking with friends, and may itbe wholly devoid of resolutions, nasty surprises in the cable bill, and candidates’wives.

-30-

ICU Waiting Room

2011-12-30T16:51:00.002-06:00

MackHall, HSG

ICU Waiting Room atChristmas

Artisticgilded deer repose in peace

Amongthe store-room-dusty plastic leaves
Ofdecorator-decorated wreaths;
Fromthence they gaze serenely down upon
Sneeze-spottedpics in People magazine
Andempty coffee cups recyled from
Recyclednatural fibers recycled
Fromgreen fair trade recycled soy inks.

Noikons grace this dying-place, no cross,

Nocrucifix to focus farewell prayers;
Christ’speople gather lovingly around,
Theirbaseball caps thrall-ringed about their heads
Indevout remembrance of passing souls.
Theircell-phone aps pass through their vague, weak eyes
Asonce the ancient biddings and prayer-worn beads
Slippedgently through the lips and hands of men.

Thefuture is unknown, but at last report

‘Tiscivilization on life-support.

The Begging Season

2011-12-28T08:27:00.000-06:00

Begging by healthy people has become fashionable in East Texas, reflecting a decay in demeanor. On Tuesday morning a couple of large men in orange vests were in and out of traffic along US96 in Buna, holding out large buckets with crosses. What organization styling itself a church would promote this? Whether or not this is illegal, this is undignified. Get a job, fellows.

The intersection at Dowlen & 96 in Beaumont has been free of beggars for several years -- another purported church once had children begging in the streets; can't imagine Jesus being happy with child endangerment -- but the IHOP doorway and parking lot are increasingly infested with healthy looking individuals begging. On one Saturday two young women driving a Mustang and smoking cigarettes drove around to ask for money.

In the spring and summer more and more adults will set young people to begging along the highways for sports trips and, ironically, safe-graduation projects without even the metaphorical fig-leaf of a car wash. What does this teach the next generation?

A Light Shines in Jasper

2011-12-17T19:39:00.002-06:00

Mack Hall

A Light Shines inJasper

Lastweek, nine new Jasper nursing graduates were capped and pinned before their families,friends, instructors, and God in a traditional ceremony that has graced thiscommunity each year for some four decades.

Overforty years ago a number of Jasper visionaries considered the needs andpossibilities of health care in East Texas, and persuaded the people to votethe creation of a hospital district.

Amongthe first fruits of this dream were Jasper Memorial Hospital and, shortlyafter, JMH’s state-sanctioned LVN school taught by my aunt, Rhoda Holmes, RNand definitely old-school.

Manypeople agree that the only thing Rhoda, of happy memory, got wrong was thedesign of the school’s first nursing cap, which looked like a misshapedcold-drink cup with some blue fringe.

Morerecently, other far-seeing Jasper folks helped facilitate a satellite campus ofAngelina College, to which the Jasper LVN program has since been transferred. The hospital practicum is as intense as ever,but vocational nursing students now join students from other disciplines incollege English, math, and science courses. Thesuccess is demonstrable – Jasper LVN candidates are among Texas’ best in thestate board exams.

Upongraduate, Jasper LVN candidates join for one last lesson, and that lesson is infaith and ethics in a traditional pinning and capping ceremony which originatedwith Florence Nightingale over 150 years ago.

Forthis dignified ceremony Jasper nursing graduates wear traditional whiteuniforms and traditional white caps.

Andat this point your humble scrivener digresses: what is with the moldy-looking scrubsuitsthat now infect hospitals? When, onceupon a time, a suffering patient saw the white uniform of an RN or LVNapproaching, he knew for a certainty that the (metaphorical) cavalry hadarrived, and that all was going to be better. Nowadays the patient cannot tell whether the slovenly-dressed individualwalking the ward is one of the health care professionals -- the nice lady whotidies up, a surgeon, an imaging technician, the charge nurse -- or some Occupythug who wandered in to relieve himself on the floor.

Endof grouchy aside.

Daisdignitaries for the occasion were: Nadia Martindale, MSN, RN, ACNS-BC; MelvinJohnson, MA-English, MA-History; Whitney Craven-Larkin, LVN; Sharon Buffalo,MSN, RN; Charlet Blades, MSN, RN; Amber Murphy, BSN, RN; Elizabeth Powell,M.Ed, RN; Donald R. Samuel, M.D., M. Gilliland, M.D.; Lynn Pearson,M.D.; P.Bidwell, M.D.; Rodney Pearson, Jasper Chief of Police; and Honore Bailey, RNand some other letters after her name, Angelina College nursing instructor,role model, ministering angel, and, yes, of the old school.

Thisyear’s graduates were: Pamela Smith Davis, Rokeshia Nicole Elam, JanaWise-Horton, Chelsea Nichol Livingston, Candace Cheri Locke, Amanda MichelleLundquist, Kari Michelle Martin, Denise Lynn O’Neal, and Christie CrawfordWilliams.

Thefounders of Jasper’s growing medical community are mostly gone now, but theyleft a wonderful legacy. Jasper MemorialHospital serves more people than ever, health care providers find the area apositive place for establishing their professional practices, Angelina Collegecontinues the excellence of the Jasper LVN program, and the Mary Dickerson willperhaps soon enjoy a renaissance in providing medical service.

TheLady with the Lamp (who is just as likely to be the Gentleman) now carries ahigh-tech pocket flashlight and a palm computer on her night rounds, and thewhite uniform has been sacrificed temporarily for (gag) scrubs, but theprofessionalism, the skill, and the care remain forever.

Thosesqueaky shoes a wakeful patient might hear walking the quiet hospital corridorsat 0-dark-thirty – those aren’t really shoes, those are the wings of an angel.

-30-

Christopher Hitchens -- Maybe Not So Bad

2011-12-17T19:32:00.000-06:00

Any one who laughs at the Dalai Lama and Princess Diana must contain some divine spark.

War Does Not Feature a Soundtrack

2011-12-07T06:03:00.001-06:00

Horse - It's what's for Dinner

2011-12-04T17:14:00.000-06:00

Mack Hall, HSG Mhall46184@aol.com

Horse – It’s what’s for Dinner

It hath behooved – hooved, get it? -- our current government to auto-pen an edict permitting once again the sale of horse meat for human consumption. For all of us who have been whinnying about Washington compromising the economy through oppressive regulations, let us at least be grateful that we will have more to eat this Christmas.

Horse – well, it’s probably tastier than a baked Alaskan.

Will menus soon offer palomino ‘n’ potatoes, or maybe chipped mare on toast? Pinto beans and real pinto – yum! But the FDA will have to determine if horsemeat is a staple diet or a stable diet.

Whoever thought that Dale Evans’ mare Buttermilk would someday be served with buttermilk, or that Seabiscuit would appear on a plate next to a biscuit! Trigger is now part of that famous complete, nutritious breakfast, and Gene Autry’s Champion is the breakfast of champions.

With our government’s decision that Tonka may be served as a main course – or mane course -- the remakes of classic horse movies and television shows may not be to our (ahem) taste:

Justin Morgan had a Horse for Lunch.

The Horse Cookerer

The Miracle Whip of the White Stallions

Blackened Beauty

Smoky the Smoked Cowhorse

Fury – the Story of an Horse D’oeuvre, and the Boy Who Ate Him

Hidalgo to Go

The Pony Expresso

My Meal Trigger

Lunchy of Chincoteague

My Food Flicka

The Blackened Stallion

National Velvet Cake

Mr. Ed a la Milanaise

They Died With Their Horseshoes On

The Appaloosa Appetizer

My Little Petit Fours Pony

Brighty of the Grand Cutlet

The Saddle Club Sandwich

The Flame-Broiled of Araby

The Horsemaster Chefs

Fried of Kentucky

No, it just won’t do. We Americans bond as strongly with our horses we do with our dogs and cats, and we do not bake our beagles or cook our kitties.

The horse is a noble animal, brave and strong and fiercely loyal, not unlike a dachshund, only much larger. Since we eat cows and birds and sheep, balking at dining on Dobbin might appear to be somewhat illogical. Even so, to kill and cook an animal who for thousands of years has served humanity in war and peace, in fields and streets, carrying us and our dreams, seems to be a degradation of civilization. Our ideals are the Crusader knight and the American cowboy, brave and good, each on his great horse. We do not admire cannibals, not even the ideological ones.

-30-

"One of the Only"

2011-12-04T13:08:00.000-06:00

This unfortunate phrase is quite common now, but so are houseflies. "Only" means one; thus, to say "one of the only" is to say "one of the one" or "only of the only." Presumably the writer, in a hurry, was trying to say "one of the few."

Amazon.com Gets Defensive (and their feedback site is always down)

2011-12-03T10:34:00.010-06:00

Dear L. Mack Hall,
Thanks for submitting a customer review on Amazon. Your review could not be posted to the website in its current form. While we appreciate your time and comments, reviews must adhere to the following guidelines: http://www.amazon.com/review-guidelines We encourage you to revise your review and submit it again. A few common issues to keep in mind:

Written reviews must be at least 20 words long.
The ideal length is 75 to 500 words.
Your review should focus on specific features of
the product and your experience with it. Feedback
on the seller or your shipment experience should
be provided at www.amazon.com/feedback.
We do not allow profane or obscene content. This
applies to adult products too.
Advertisements, promotional material or repeated
posts that make the same point excessively are
considered spam.
Please do not include URLs external to Amazon or
personally identifiable content in your review.

We welcome your honest opinion about products -
positive or negative. We do not remove reviews because
they are critical. We believe all helpful information can
inform our customers buying decisions. If you have
questions about the product or opinions that do not fit
the review format, please feel free to use the Customer
Discussions feature on the product page.

Review it? I'm not sure it's even being
shipped., November 23, 2011

By L. Mack Hall (Kirbyville, Texas USA)

Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)

This review is from: Cts New Sunday Missal Standard
Edition (Missal Sunday) (Latin and English Edition)
(Hardcover)

I ordered five copies last week, but DHL advises
me that the order was shipped via Israel, New Jersey,
and Finland, and was signed for by someone named
Gustaffson in October!

I recommend holding off on ordering until somebody
somewhere knows something.

Shopping for a Gun on a Snowy Evening

2011-11-27T16:49:00.000-06:00

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

2011-11-27T16:47:00.000-06:00

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.

-30-

The Crusader Birdwatcher

2011-11-24T08:15:00.000-06:00

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

2011-11-22T16:21:00.001-06:00

Titles seen at Barnes & Noble:

Chocolate Advent Calendar with Poem
Peanuts Christmas Advent Calendar

What, really, is a jackboot?

2011-11-22T16:18:00.001-06:00

Just asking.

In Europe, Water is Not Water

2011-11-20T18:29:00.000-06:00

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.

-30-

Have Yourself a Misplaced Prepositional Christmas

2011-11-19T08:13:00.000-06:00

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

2011-11-18T11:09:00.000-06:00

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?

2011-11-13T17:00:00.000-06:00

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.

-30-

John Steinbeck - "We have only one story"

2011-11-09T15:25:00.002-06:00

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

2011-11-06T17:45:00.000-06:00

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

2011-11-03T14:40:00.001-05:00

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

2011-10-25T11:03:00.004-05:00

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!

2011-10-23T09:00:00.003-05:00

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?

2011-10-16T16:02:00.001-05:00

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-

Kitsch, Kitsch, Kitsch

2011-10-13T05:52:00.000-05:00

Perhaps the least artistic and most sentimental kitsch is an obsession with seeing kitsch in others.

Reference: the current number of Catholic Phoenix

A Prisoner of Triskelion. Chapter 1: Intake

2011-10-10T21:07:00.000-05:00

Spy yarns and escape stories fascinate me: The Great Escape, The Prisoner, Doctor No, and others. I considered how an ordinary man, most unlike John Drake / Number 6 or James Bond, might keep his sense of self if he were imprisoned, and how he would attempt escape.

Mack Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

A Prisoner of Triskelion

Chapter 1. Intake

A man sat on a bench in a fluorescent-lit corridor of green-painted cinder blocks in the institutional night. He did not know that he was in the night; existence only felt of night, and there were no windows to hint the drifting hours through shifting natural light, only painted steel doors here and there, the hum of the fluorescents, and the slight movement of mechanical air.

The man could not remember a time before sitting on the bench. But yes, he could. Images of airport waiting-areas flickered across his synapses. Corridors. A book stall where he rejected first vampires then spies then bosomy maidens on the covers of fat paperbacks. A foam cup of coffee and a newspaper. An airplane below and beyond, through a window. Baggage handlers driving little trolleys. He remembered. A foam cup of coffee. Was there something else? Name. His name would come.

These were not his clothes. Some sort of scrub suit thing, and cloth sandals.

A man in a black uniform came along and wordlessly helped him to his feet. Black uniform – with dandruff. Black is not a good color because it shows dirt and stains and dandruff. A room, a table, a chair, a plastic tray of plastic food.

“Try to eat something; you need it.” A voice neither cruel nor comforting, rather, a mechanical one.

The prisoner’s hands – for by now he realized he was a prisoner – moved clumsily. Toast – he knew what toast was. It tasted of nothing. A foam cup of something. Not hungry.

Walking slowly along a corridor. Someone held his arm so he wouldn’t fall or get lost. The cloth sandals slipped off. The man in the black uniform picked up the sandals and smiled. “The floor’s clean anyway. I don’t know why they have these things.” Corridors. Fluorescents. A lift.

“Brush your teeth.” He had been on a toilet. Why were they watching him?

A door. A key turning a lock. A box of white fluorescent light. A bed. In bed. A white cotton blanket pulled over him. Silence. White fluorescent light. Sleep.

At some point without time he awoke with a slight headache, but he knew who he was. He remembered his childhood in Newfoundland, how much he didn’t like his French teacher in school, his time in the Navy, his job. He remembered everything up until the hour he was sitting in an airport lounge in Copenhagen drinking a foam cup of coffee and reading an English-language newspaper.

The room was a box indeed, a high-security cell – he had seen pictures of them – associated with something called a supermax prison. But what had that to do with him?

The cell was slightly wedge-shaped, maybe ten feet long and as high, with a toilet half concealed, and thus not concealed at all, at the back. He was sitting on a mattress on a bed of smooth concrete, and facing a ledge of smooth concrete with a sink of smooth concrete and a water tap of smooth steel operated by a button of smooth steel. The bulkheads were smooth concrete and the deck was smooth concrete.

Why did he think in terms of bulkheads and decks and hatches? His youthful service in the Navy years ago hadn’t influenced him all that much. Maybe it was the fluorescent lights and painted walls and the smell of chemical disinfectant. The milieu was like some office block in the bureaucratic wilderness of Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, often known to recruits as Saint-Jean-sur-Bitch-ilieu.

A vague click. The small square of glass set in the hatch was opaque, so he couldn’t see if someone were watching him. A double knock, and the door opened. A man in a black uniform brought in a plastic tray of plastic and foam dishes. Behind in the corridor was a cart with other trays, and another woman, a watchful woman, in a black uniform.

“Brekker, old man. Enjoy it. You’ll be wanted for an interview in an hour or so. Oh – and there’s some aspirins next to yer coffee. That stuff they use on ya gives you a header. You’ll be wanted in an hour or so.” The accent was vaguely Yorkshire with a hint of a failed Oxbridge fresher term in it.

The warder set the tray and a fresh set of scrubs next to the prisoner’s own shaving kit and left.

His own shaving kit. The prisoner searched it carefully. His shaver, toothbrush, comb, a few coins, and other untidy odds-and-ends were still there, as well as the large-denomination notes secreted in the probably not-so-secret pockets.

Breakfast was bacon and eggs and potatoes, the bacon somewhat limp in the tradition of roadside cafes where the cookery is indifferent. The toast was buttered with real butter, not yellow-stained grease, and the coffee was quite good. Eating with a very soft plastic spoon was something of a challenge, but then, he wasn’t dining in the ambassadors’ room at the United Nations.

After a wash and a cat-bath from the sink he changed into the fresh scrubs, feeling quite vulnerable without any underwear, and was ready for the new day, whatever that might mean.

The prisoner straightened his bedding, not out of any sort of neatness compulsion but because, after examining everything in the white-lit space, there was nothing else to do. He wished he’d tucked a paperback into his shaving kit.

After a time which the prisoner had no way of measuring, another double-knock signaled a change and some time out of the white concrete box.

“You’re up for your intake interview,” said the black-clad warder. A curious little three-armed device in brass adorned his collar.

After a few metres the cloth slippers had made their own break for freedom. The prisoner paused to pick them up and carry them. The floor was very clean. “I dunno what they even bother with them things,” observed the warder.

The prisoner tried to estimate distances and count doors and, on the lift, count floors, but he was unaccountably weak and mentally vague. He was brought to a white-painted metal door free of names or numbers. The warder knocked and entered.

The office was clearly an outer one, an interview room with little more than a desk with two chairs facing each other. The walls were paneled wood, though, and an incandescent lamp on an etagere somewhat humanized the room.

Behind the desk sat a man with the sturdy, no-foolishness-now look of a chief petty officer or sergeant-major. On the table before him was a file folder with a few typed papers.

“Have a seat, me lad,” said the man, who nodded a dismissal to the warder.

Was the accent Irish, perhaps, modified by military service in England or America?

“Let me begin this unpleasant interview by giving you the worst possible news in the worst possible way: you have been sentenced to death…easy, now.”

Existence seemed to fade out of the prisoner in a nothingness of white light. Voices. Hands holding him up, firmly but without cruelty. Had he fainted?

“Don’t be embarrassed; if I was to get that news I’d probably turn a little green meself. Here drink this…”

Brandy? The prisoner drank whatever it was. From a foam cup. He was alive. The drink had stung his throat and made him gasp for two breaths.

The interviewer’s eyes were very, very blue, the blue of a Norse captain considering whether to let his prisoner live was in his best interest.

“Now, then, back to business. No one you’ve ever known will ever learn what happened to you. Your death will be very quick and probably painless – clearly I haven’t taken that trip meself – and your body will be ground almost into powder and disposed of quietly in the ocean. Your future, lad, is fish sticks.

“Now, then, it gets better. Your death sentence’s not to be carried out unless you make it happen. It’s your choice.”

“But…but there must be some mistake…”

“Oh, Brendan, me lad…”

Brendan. His name was Brendan. Brendan O’Cannan. Right.

“Oh, Brendan, me lad, and you a readin’ man – Agatha Christie, Wodehouse, the Romantic poets, all them flamin’ English writers – I was expectin’ you of all people to come up with something more original.” The interviewer almost smiled.

“I’m not trying to be original; I’m trying to stay alive and figure all this out, eh.”

“Now, then, you’ll stay alive, probably for a good long time, but you’ll never know why you’re here. Neither will I. It’s not important.”

“Well it’s important to me.”

“Yes, but you’re not important at all.”

“I’m important to me, eh.”

“Then you’ll want to stay alive. Now back to business. You now belong to Triskelion. I’m Triskelion. This little rock of an island is Triskelion. Your world is Triskelion.

“You’re important only as a source of income for Triskelion. We deal in humans. We keep humans. We’re paid to do that. Some government, some institution, maybe your employer, maybe some very rich individual has found your continued existence inconvenient. They’re paying us to keep you, well, convenient. The world’s a little kinder this century; a few decades ago and you’d have been shot or hanged or starved for being unfashionable. Tyrants are a little softer these days; they let people like you live. At least for a while.”

“But I haven’t done anything.”

“I don’t know why you’re here, only that you’re here. I signed a receipt for you, and that’s it. I accept that you don’t know why you’re here; I certainly don’t know, don’t need to know, and will never know.”

“There’s nothing I can tell you.”

"Oh, I’m not asking. All I need to know about you is here in your file. This little morning exercise is to tell you about this island and the rules of our little family. Quite a few of you inconvenients here. You’ll find no Russians or Chinese, though. Their governments play by the rules of the 20^th century.”

“Where am I, then?”

“You’re in an island. I won’t tell you where, but you can probably work it out by checking out a book on basic astronomy and looking at the sky. But it’ll do you no good; you’re not leaving.

“Bet me.”

“Don’t think about it, me lad. Triskelion is pretty patient with his children in most ways, but like Kronos he’ll eat you if you try to escape.

“Here’s the plan to begin with: you’ll spend three days in that little closet, and we’ll be lookin’ at you. Like this morning when you were checking the sheets for labels, and the plumbing, looking to see if there were manufacturers’ names, and in what languages. Maybe that would give you a clue as to where you are. But we’re careful about that sort of thing. And we’ll be looking at you, seeing how crazy you might or might not be.

“If you’re stable, we’ll move you to a ward, a dormitory, like, to see how you get on with folks. That’s maybe a week. Then we’ll find you a nice room of your own, unless you want a roommate, and your file indicates you prefer solitude. When you’re all settled in, you’ll pretty much have the run of the island – but you won’t escape. If you try, we’ll probably have to go ahead and give you the death.

“And if I’m not stable – by Triskelion’s norms?”

“Then you’ll stay in that little room and you can babble to the ceiling for the rest of your life; I don’t care.

“But I reckon you ought to settle in and enjoy life. It’s not so bad here – library, movies once in a while. You’ll find no books and see no movies more recent than fifty years ago. Newspapers, the wireless, the telly, the ‘net – no longer a part of your life. You don’t need to know what’s happening out there now and Triskelion doesn’t want you knowing. And it’ll do you no good to know.”

“But I don’t know anything. I have no secrets. I can’t tell you anything.”

“We don’t need anything from you. I’m here to tell you things, things that will keep you alive, if you want to be alive, and maybe you don’t, and that’s okay too. But I’d rather you be alive, because we’re reimbursed for each team member on a monthly basis. You know, lad, if we have to fulfill your death sentence, we’d wait until the second or third day of the next month. It’s a month’s more income, you see. So, hey, choose life.

“Notice the file folders, the typewriter, the old rotary telephone. Minimal technology, barely out of the 19^th century inside the island. But outside, this community is enveloped in an electronic cloud of unknowing – you’re a Catholic; thought you’d like the allusion. I can’t hear it myself, but some people say there’s a perpetual hum from the Cloud. Radios, the telly, computers – nothing like that’ll work here. No information comes in except on paper, and no information goes out except on paper, and that’s kept to a coded minimum written in rapidly-deteriorating gel ink on flimsy paper that crumples into powder if someone even gives it a dirty look.

“We once had a fellow who built a radio receiver mostly from an electric shaver. Remarkable what’s goes into an electric shaver. Anyway, when he gave it a go the thing blew up in his hands. He still has his hands, by the effin’ way, but they’re not pretty. The Cloud picked up the first little signal and immediately fed it back, amplified, into the batteries, and, well, POOF!”

“Sounds like incarceration got him into a lather.”

“Oh, well put, lad! You’re fitting in already. But go ahead and use your electric shaver; you’ll come to no harm unless you try to rebuild it as a boat or an aeroplane.

“Now back to business. Triskelion have plenty of inexpensive amusements for you – a nice library, movies one night a week, fishing tackle, a little gardening on the few bits of arable ground, musical instruments, records and record players – the Cloud won’t let anything magnetic or digital work. We even have our own little newspaper.”

“Printed in disappearing ink on disappearing paper?”

“Certainly. But don’t disapprove; after all, isn’t the ephemeral the very core of everything Steve Jobs ever did?

“We unlock the door to your room at 0600, and breakfast is in the mess hall at 0700. You are free to roam around the buildings and anywhere on the island except for restricted areas, and those are posted and locked. We won’t watch you much once you’re out of isolation because, after all, except as a warm-body source of income, you’re just not important. And, really, you’re not all that capable. If you were a super spy or something like that, dangerous and skilled, you wouldn’t be here. We tuck you in all nighty-night and cosy at 2100 hours.

“No signaling with flashlights or mirrors or handkerchiefs, please; we’ll break your hands for that sort of thing and then lock you down in a hole…I mean, therapy…so dark and so deep you’ll think you’re in Hell. We’ll keep you there until what’s left of you promises to play nice. And don’t look for rescue; this island is not some sort of Doctor No experience; it is a homeland territory of – well, you’ll figure it out. Our host nation lists this island as a military no-go zone, so while the Russians and the Yanks occasionally snoop from trawlers and submarines because Russians and Yanks are preternaturally nosy, all they can do is look at you from a distance. The Cloud and our own careful avoidance of technology mean they can’t pick up any signals because there are no signals. The antennae on the roof are dummies there to give the snoops the fits about some sort of superior technology. But mostly the nations think this island is a military prison and don’t bother with it.

“We have men and women, both as clients and as minders, and we’re very progressive about romance. We also have some troublesome priests on the rock so you can go to Mass like a good, obedient Catholic and pray for the effin’ soul of Triskelion.”

“Triskelion needs praying for.”

“No doubt, me lad, no doubt.

“You patients have names; we, oh, client specialists have numbers. You may address a caregiver by his or her number if you know it; otherwise 'sir' and 'ma’am' are fine. No doubt your mother – let’s see – died four years ago – thought you special. That doesn’t mean anything, so did mine. You get to keep your specialness; Triskelion keeps itself to itself behind another Cloud, the Cloud of numbers. Useful things, numbers.

“And now you’re going back to your cozy little room for the next few days. Any questions?”

“Lots, but I don’t suppose you’d tell, eh.”

“Oh, yes, I would. We’ve got all the time in the world. Eh.”

O’Cannan smiled and rose. “Maybe another time.”

A warder escorted him back along the corridor. They paused briefly so that O’Cannan could take off the cloth slippers and carry them as he barefooted along. The slippers really were useless.

Back in his white-lit, white-painted hole, O’Cannan saw that Wodehouse’s Carry On, Jeeves was on the shelf-table. He picked it up – it was his own worn and much-marked copy from his own flat.

“Lunch in an hour or so,” said the warder as she locked the door.

Death of an Ikonic Visionary (or is that Visionary Ikon?)

2011-10-07T06:26:00.000-05:00

Mack Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Death of a Visionary

The death of a visionary is often an occasion for labeling the man an ikon, as if he were a religious image painted on a board. One longs for accuracy in eulogies. But how can one speak of such a visionary ikon (or is that an ikonic visionary?) without resorting to florid language. Let us gush veritable gallons of effusion in celebrating how he touched our lives and changed our world forever.

With hagiographic hyperbole and muddled metaphors let us remember a truly visionary man, a man on the cutting edge of technology, a man ahead of his time, a man who transformed communications forever, a man whose invention made a cosmic leap (“cosmic leap” combines hyperbole and a tired metaphor in a two-fer) in how people saw the world around them, and how they wrote about it.

This man’s invention spawned new industries, and not only made easier the transmission of traditional cultures from one generation to the next, but in a sense created its own cultures.

This man, before he was thirty years old, created a technology that launched a reformation in the economy and even in literature and art. His new way of manipulating language and culture through the production of useful objects became in itself its own object of near-adoration, making technology and its physical manifestations as aesthetically pleasing as they are utilitarian.

Generations of tinkerers will surely display the great man’s image as a sort of technology ikon in their garage laboratories, and classroom posters of him will inspire generations of children to work hard so they can be just like him.

Before this man, all was darkness and superstition; after him, a new enlightenment.

Yes, gentlepersons all, let us hold in our hearts forever the memory of Henry Mill, who patented the typewriter in 1714.

-30-

"A Barrow Piled With Books"

2011-10-03T13:01:00.000-05:00

Over the way is a barrow piled with books. A lean young man picks them over eagerly. A working lad: a hungry-looking young man. He counts out six pennies and buys a book. I am curious. I edge up and look. Milton's Paradise Lost! And he so hungry; and lucky, too, in the long run! A thing you always remember happily is the way you starved yourself for books.

- A Manchester street scene in H. V. Morton's The Call of England, 1936