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I remember hearing the argument of a scientist regarding endangered species that it was useless to protect them, since extinction was nature's way of telling them that they just didn't make it. Suppose sometime in the future, human beings eventually became extinct and were replaced by some tougher and more civilized animal. These species would relegate us to museums where dioramas depicted the once teaming populations of biped that roamed the earth in four-wheel machines and flew over it in giant flying contraptions. Their specialty was the production of toxic waste and the consumption of the top of the food chain (like hamburgers); and, they spent their time writing about trivial but shocking events on something called papers. These papers were sold everywhere and kept the creatures informed of the trivialities. Later, electronic means replaced the papers, feeding the species' voracious appetites for sensationalism. They also constructed huge and cavernous outdoor places where they convened to watch others of their kind bat, kick, and throw air-filled bladders. Then, one day a cataclysm wiped out the animal, leaving meager traces of their living quarters and machines. Who knows, maybe the new animal will produce entertainments which speculate on the fate of the unfortunate and extinct humans and their destructive ways (like Spielberg's Jurassic Park). You might say: this is impossible; we have covered the earth with our (dubious) achievements. Technology will take care of us: probably, but not in the way that we think. Tell all of this to the dinosaurs that certainly looked like winners 65,000,000 years ago. The modern kitchen is certainly a storehouse of complex gizmos that do everything from compressing the trash to making bagels. There seems to be a ludicrous history of kitchen aids that no one would ever need (I am sure that everyone remembers the "Hot Dogger" that impaled the wieners and zapped them with high voltage). Some combo machines, like any food processor, have attachments that probably would only be used in times of national emergency, since I have noticed that I never used them and don't know what they do. I was thinking back to the days when the ice box had to receive a big block of real ice, surreptitiously deposited by the iceman in a convenient outside door. Freezers, of course were unknown, even on the first electric boxes. They also had locks that seemed best at trapping small children (these locks were later adapted to those big bank safe doors). It was a special day when the electric fridge and automatic washing machine were both delivered to my house. My mother had dutifully filled the box with the usual dairy products and produce, and we all anticipated trying the new washer (an experimental model). This device, made by a company called Bendix had to be mounted on springs and bolted to the floor, or it would walk out of the kitchen during the spin cycle. Configured in this way, it had the frightening appearance of those robots in 50's movies. Little did we know that tragedy awaited us in the very first trial of the very first washload. The machine was so vigorous in the wash cycle that it stuck in that position for an hour. During that time my brother decided to go to the new fridge for some chocolate milk. Not noticing that the entire floor was quaking from the cumulative thrusts of the Bendix, he opened the fridge door and received a flurry of salvos: heads of lettuce, bottles, apples and pork chops bombed him, producing a fright and flight reaction (he was only three years old). We all gazed at the impromptu salad and instantly became leery of technology. We had to unplug the washer and throw out the clothes, which had become rags. Essentially, we had invented the concept of beta testing. The lesson learned has served me well: new gizmos may both create and destroy; and,
they may do things not envisioned by their inventors, turning the hapless consumer in a
"sorcerer's apprentice."
8/29/97: Lying Panda Sweatshirts.
The curse of Disney pervades. We believe the cuddley and fuzzy version of nature. At a recent visit to the San Diego Zoo, I decided to take in the pandas, on loan from China. Braving the long lines, I wandered into the panda gift shop and purchased a politically correct panda sweatshirt, depicting two pandas, tête á tête sharing a piece of bamboo. Sucked in by this fuzzy/warm paradigm, I prepared for the real pandas, who appeared to be sullen, solitary creatures who were wolfing down hot dogs (or some facsimile). They weren't even CUTE. They had the kind of black&white foulness of the homeless or hoboes and a lumbering gait that
reminded me of the possums (see Possum Airlines) I trapped in my
backyard. How often are we the victims of propaganda, false advertising, and just plain phoney
baloney. Having just recovered from the sartorial prevarication of the sweatshirt, I happened on
a whole outdoor stand of endangered animal tee shirts. Most of the animals depicted seemed to be
enjoying themselves, blissfully unaware that they faced extinction and that the only memory of
them would be on a dumb tee shirt.
In the very first Misfit column, The Faculty Meeting, I made the observation the people's faces look like bowls of fruit. It seems that, looing at piles of melons and pineapples at fruit stands, the opposite is also true: a given cantaloupe might look like someone you know. Whole bins of watermelons remind me of the powerful sitting bodies, like the Supreme Court or the Regents of the University of California. It seems that I have seen bunches of bananas in the secretarial pool and a row of pineapples in the beauty salon. It may merely be a mordent disdain or a real association between life forms that generates this observation. Strolling in the park certainly may reward the casual observer with families of melon heads or bunches of grapes. Expanding the concept to include vegetables like cauliflower or lettuce provides an even broader palette for the categorization of human nature. I feel that I have had many an argument with cabbage heads and have been terrorized by kohlrabi heads. We get our reality from the internalization of what comes through our senses. It does seem like on the
way to the brain those notions take a few wrong turns.
8/27/97: Dogs....and More Dogs.
Shakespeare really began it when he wrote:"Let sleeping dogs lie." Then we got the dogs of war, dog tired, working like a dog, a dull dog, a dog's life, a lucky dog, in the doghouse, a dirty dog, shaggy dog stories, and, a dog in the manger or, perhaps, the ever popular clean expletive, doggone. This pig latin production replaces "goddamn" but implies the sudden departure of a dog which generates anger. Think of all the movie titles: Dog Day Afternoon, Straw Dogs, Reservoir Dogs, My Life as A Dog, All Dogs Go to Heaven, Deputy Dog, The Truth about Cats and Dogs, and Un Chien Andalou. They all suck human nature into semi-civilized bestial behaviour; and, if you recall any of the plots, that observation is confirmed. The opposite is also possible: dogs are raised to the level of people in their manner (like the Disney character, Goofy who is a dog, I assume). Perhaps the quasi parasitical relationship between dog and man spurs these epithets and
titles. The dog is either over or under priviledged, but somehow it is acted upon by forces
beyond its control. The word is used in even stranger contexts: how about a HOT DOG?
What horror is evoked by the idea that the dog is ground up, spiced and put into a sausage case. Why
was the pink mystery meat not called a hot cat? Hot pig would make more sense
(how about snake sausage?). I will not "dog" with any more of this doggerel; but, anyone
wishing to add to the list is welcome.
I was looking at an old movie from the 40's and couldn't help to notice how few gizmos were on office desks. A telephone and typewriter seemed to comprise the full complement of business tools. Occasionally, you might see a Rube Goldberg dictaphone, hulking snakelike in the corner. Today, even the telephone has dozens of peripherals, from fax machines to video conferencing. Electric staplers, erasers, answering machines (new dubbed "voice mail"), copiers, scanners, not to mention all the computer-related stuff, fill up the desk so that often it is impossible to find a simple pencil. My question is: has all this stuff really improved human communication or has
it just enriched the likes of Staplestm, Office Max One of the more mind challenging discoveries of my recent trip to Russia was
some of the quick-fix solutions that came out of the new social and economic order.
Workers, no longer on the dole, expected to be paid regularly; however, the fragile
neo-capitalist merry-go-round seemed more stuck in reverse, with most citizens owed months of
back wages. A new bartering scheme ensued, with people being paid in products (e.g. workers at the
rubber duck factory would be paid in rubber ducks). Although few complaints were heard at Smirnoff,
sometimes the absurdity of the remuneration had ludricrous philosophical implications.
"Life is sweet!" crooned many Moscovites working at a sugar plant and paid in tons
of the stuff. "These boots were made for..." quipped others from the shoe factory: after
all, you could never wear out 200 pairs in your whole life. This week the kinkiest of all occurred
in a factory ouside of Smolensk where the workers were offered caskets as a substitute for back pay.
Regular readers know that the subject of casket purchase has been discussed (see
Mail Order Caskets or Mail Order Caskets Again) in light of
implications of death and life.
In a vigorous reaction to the offer, the Russian workers balked and claimed that the company was
morbid and perverse to offer them something they could use only in death (of course, there were probably
a few vampires who were delighted, as long as the offer included a little home soil). Where would the
disgruntled workers store the caskets? I could imagine lower middle class housing developments in rows of
the depressing boxes out on the porch. This is one time where is joke is self evident: like one of my
former colleagues once said about our university, "this place is a joke, and YOU are the punchline!"
8/24/97: The Horrors of Third Grade.
Since I stubbornly cling to the use of the classic India ink to write music on vellum, I
have developed a healthy respect for the ability of the substance to inhabit almost any surface:
from clothing to rugs. Real ink has a perverse opacity and seems to spread by a mysterious energy.
My first encounter with ink was in the third grade classroom of St. Bernard's School, a
Dickensian monstrosity with rows of those dark little desks with real submerged inkwells. We were
issued primitive straight pens and told to write about our previous summer (this was the first
day of school). Since I had never used pen and ink before, being a master of crayons, a real
challenge awaited me. After dipping the pen in the inkwell too far, so that the cork holder was
soaked a large blob formed between my thumb and forefinger. When I started to write on the paper,
the pen skipped and a blot of ink flew into the hair of the girl in front of me. I tried to
remove it, but I used the inkblot hand to do so and put two blobs on the girl's neck. She stood
up and began to scream, but since all the desks in the same row were attached, the sudden motion
of the unfortunate girl created a tsunami in my inkwell; and, an insidious wave of ink began to
travel down the surface of my desk, soaking the paper. I didn't notice it and put my other hand
on the paper, soaking the palm and three fingers. The girl backed into my hand, and an unintentional
obscene inkstamp was transferred to her posterior: a big blue hand shape with extended third
finger. Doomed to this ink maelstrom, I sealed my fate when I reached for a handkerchief in my
shirt pocket, replicating the obscene logo.
At that point the teacher, Mrs. McKinney, a gawky and angular Big Bird type, stormed down
the aisle and commanded both of us to stand absolutely still. She tripped slightly and rubbed
her posterior on the edge of my desk, giving her a stange ink line that seemed to point at her hips.
We all left the classroom amid the vocal rumblings and laughter of the other students. Not since
Brian Kelly had broken wind during recess last Spring had such a breach of the social order taken
place.
8/23/97: The Rabbit's Funeral.
Sometimes a news story traverses the limits of credibility and rises into the realm of
absurd fantasy all by itself with no embroidery. A few days ago a neighbor's pet dog killed
(and partially ate) a pet rabbit owned by the family of the adjoining property (this
accusation of the dog is alleged). The dog owner felt responsible and took the following
steps: 1)gave the dog away, and 2) offered to pay for a pet funeral for the rabbit. The rabbit's
owners devised a solemn affair with a procession to the pet cemetery and ritual burial.
Afterwards, the family demanded that the dog owner go even farther in retribution and
provide a marble mausoleum to be placed to mark the rabbit's grave. Naturally, the members
of the dog's family balked, and the whole thing will probably wind up in court. I say: why
not take it to the next level and demand a high mass, flowers, obituary in the newpaper,
even more tv and radio coverage, and perhaps criminal proceedings against the dog (extradite
him from wherever he was banished).
There is a famous trial from eighteenth-century England in which a pig was put on trial and
sentenced to death (recently, a movie was made of that trial).
Given our modern court system today, the dog could live out a normal
life, just angling for an appeal, if convicted. My question is: would prominent attorneys
like Johnny Cochran and F. Lee Bailey take the case? Jury selection would have to eliminate
the built in prejudice of dog lovers (and rabbit lovers). The entire world could hang on the
precipice of suspense as the verdict on the dog is read; and, of course a wrongful death
civil trial would ensue, with the dog plantiffs trying to extract material recompense.
Hollywood could then come into the picture with a bidding war for the movie rights to
the case, with various competing offers to those individuals whose dog-rabbit trial books were
published. Maybe the whole thing would wind up with a release of the movie, Canine Fugitive
or, perhaps the weekly tv crime drama, Killer Dog. I say that the really fortunate
people here are the cat owners...unless some bird owners are given litigious ideas.
As I prepare to take the ultimate plunge and buy my own copy machine, I look over
the compelling circumstances which prompted this extreme move. Going into Kinkostm
to make copies of any kind of documents or music has always made me feel like a Nazi
war criminal, as I am subjected to Nuremburg Trial style questions about my original
sources. Most suspect are my own compositions, which are looked at as though they were
sets of secret submarine plans. In many ways, the copyright laws have gone bad in the
can, when I am unable to make a copy of my own unpublished work (the only positive byproduct
is that I am made to feel that this stuff may be of worth, with the valiant Xeroxerstm
disallowing reproduction).
I was taken back to thirty years ago when there was no xerographic process, all
copies were made from mimeograph machines, which had waxy master coated with a kind of
sticky tar that always jumped to your clothes, or something called Thermofaxtm.
This evil monster generated copies on a sort of rubbery pink skin with fuzzy brown lettering.
A combination of heat and water was needed to produce the copy, which usually faded,
producing copies that looked like seventeenth-century parchment. Photos reproduced by this process
would turn a picture Mother Theresa into someone on a Ten Most Wanted poster.
Today we have become obsessed with saving and reproducing every tiny event of our lives. Not only
are the most trivial documents preserved in multiples as though they were The Declaration
of Independence, but events are videotaped (weddings, funerals, even street crimes), or at
least audiotaped (how many dreadful kids' clarinet recitals reside in the vaults of
people's homes, never to be played except by the heirs in some distant time in the future).
We appear to be documenting everything, as though in the process we endow it with
surpassing significance.
I started to recount all the fake words used in the comic strips to provide secondary
sound effect, like oof! and splat! and realized that they could be organized
by phonemic roots (like the Arabic language):
1)Ooey words Of course, this could be a life's work (like the Samuel Johnson Dictionary). There could
even be a specialized volume to cover X-rated materials (like the works of R. Crumb). I have
just given a modest sample from the O's. Maybe these words will find important usage in normal
speech or official government documents (like:" Blooey! The Government of Cuba has decided
to scuttle the Portaga Visible Immensas Cigar Factory.") The comic language could displace French
as the official diplomatic language, and treaties could feature this colorful vocabulary.
My present home town was recently in the news because a local pet python had escaped
and had swallowed a chihuahua. The old lady who owned the dog evidently recorded the
incident on videotape (like the now famous Rodney King tape), and she is now a crusader for pet reform ("no more exotic
pets: no tigers, elephants, snakes, or monkeys"). The snake's forbidden meal has given
this woman a mission in life.
This kind of story is typical of the news in loser home towns. I grew up in Plainfield,
New Jersey, a similar kind of suburban Siberia where its most famous export was Birely's Orange
soda pop, the sweetest and worst on the east coast. There was a large glass window in the
facade of the factory where you could watch the stuff being bottled. Plainfield suddenly became
prominent when the movie, Born Yesterday was released, because the grouchy and abusive
junkman (played by Broderick Crawford) came from there.
For a while I lived in Collingswood, a suburb of Philadelphia which was a classic tight ass
dry town, the most exciting thing was when motorcyclsts would taunt the local police (who looked
like the cast of Mayberry, RFD) by racing up the main street at midnight. This place just
missed entering paleontological history by 100 feet where the first American dinosaur was
discovered on the border of Haddonfield.
The sum total of these dingy memories indicates that I have always lived in loser home towns:
perhaps it is better to risk being rolled in New York that being bored to death in Podunk.
8/19/97: Mail Order Caskets, Again!
Riding on the giddy crest of entrepreneurial success, DIRECTCasket is running
their big August Sale. In Mail Order Caskets, I
outlined the bargain available at this casket supermarket, where "buying
retail" means doing business with the undertaker. For August the 50% concept
is renewed: buy one csket at full price, and ANY number of other boxes go for half
price. Bring the whole family to shop and select a final resting place for each
taste and budget. My own feeling is that attending funerals
is bad enough, but shopping in advance of need...?
I imagine a vast warehouse where vampires, very conservative people, cheapskates,
and other thrill seekers wheel their shopping carts along aisles of the boxes. You
might have the pauper-type pine box, featured in shoot-'em-up movie westerns, of
the Dracula model with extra comfortable velvet and replaceable trappings.
I remember that my physician uncle had a small platinum stethoscope to hold: maybe you
could have a table of occupational accessories. Plumbers would sport a gold toilet plunger,
and drug freaks might have miniature crystal and silver bhang pipes. There is no limit to
gravesite peripherals that could be made available.
One last observation on DIRECTCasket: they will ship to any destination, saving that
embarrassing trip home with the box sticking out the trunk of the car, or store it for
you until that time when you occupy it (what a reassuring thought).
One of the most insidious traits of human nature is the instantaneous reaction
to other people that each one of us has on first meeting. There seem to be people
that we like or hate immediately, even though the facts may contradict our judgment.
Since the mechanism is so variable, we have all had the experience of instant like
and dislike. I remember going into an antique store and being refused service:
the woman at the counter said " I just don't like your face." I was quite
shocked (looking to see if my fly was undone or perhaps there was some horrible
spot on my clothes) and was tempted to summon up an expletive as a retaliating salvo.
I start to think that anyone in a public position may have to possess these
mysterious gifts of instant likeability or face obscurity. It is possible
that archetypes from the movies have crystallized our evaluative abilities: good
guys in the westerns have good skin, white hats, and never scowl. Bad guys have
bad skin or some other foul appearance, black hats, and bark: "put the
bottle on the bar!" Mafia types, and well as corporate larcenists and
sadistic military lunatics are always completely obvious, even before they utter
a single line.
If our character assessment of others is truly tempered by a first-sight
appearances, then it is no mystery why so many close relationships break up,
dissolved in the mists of delusion. We may always be in the business of making
up the identities of all the people in our lives that we choose to associate with.
If so, then it is no surprise that wisdom is scarce and folly proliferates.
As I ponder my photograph on my new driver's license, recognizing that it
looks like some of those Serbian war criminals, I turn attention to the license itself.
The first driver's licenses were issued in Paris in 1893, which means that many
incompetent clowns were driving around for at least twenty years unsupervised. The
interesting thing about these licenses was that the driver was required to know how to repair his
own car as well as drive it. Imagine most of the people you know, underneath the
family bus replacing the clutch or water pump. Corporate executives, housewives,
heads of state all become grease monkeys along with the usual teenagers and
do-it-yourself tyros. I was imagining the members of the Supreme Court working
on their cars, as they prepare to leave for work.
This system would certainly keep us all honest and flush out all the truly
prevaricating professionals who fleece the unsuspecting car owner. The cars themselves
would probably have remained much simpler with fewer doodads to go haywire. I
can remember that the earliest luxury feature appeared on the Ford Thunderbirds
(when they were real sports cars) was a sensor that increased the volume of the
car radio as the car increased in speed. The imprudent misapplication of this
"refinement": may be the cause of all pedestrians (and bicyclists)
being held auditory hostage by Dr. Dre and Coolio.
We are all aware how tha communication revolution has freed us to get in touch
with other people. First we could send telegrams (wireless), then talk on the
telephone (later, conference and cell phones), and now video conferencing and e mail.
An unpleasant ramification is the new found bravery that we all feel when confronting
anyone, let's say, on the telephone. We will rudely interrupt, hang up, use foul
language (maybe only when addressing an automatic voice), and behave as though
no real person were at the end of the line. This primitivism has accelerated through
the widespread use of the automatic router (if you want to talk to your mother, press 1,
your plumber, press 2, etc.). Once again, technology, the symbol of ultimate
civilization, is actually bringing us closer to those simians swinging in the trees.
I would liken outrageous telephone behaviour to those sudden fits that chimps
get in which they have to run amok and bite somebody (I still remember when J. Fred
Muggs went wild on the Dave Garroway TV show and bit the host). Maybe the host's
subsequent suicide was triggered by a subconscious reaction to the incident).
E mail has pushed the rudeness disease to new heights. I get worse e mail than
the most disgusting graffiti scrawled in the worst slum. I have received offers
of unmentionable sex, wealth through crime, illegal weapons, strange religions, etc.
My reaction has usually been controlled, but every once in a while I let loose with
invective that I could never use person to person. Who knows: in a 100 years
we will be swinging through the trees with laptops on our belts.
A local church recently put up the following sign: I guess that such retrograde advertising fits well into the Zeitgeist
of the 90's; but, somehow the idea that a sermon would put you to sleep and
that might be its primary goal undercuts the nature of sermons themselves. I think
of the philosophically challenging sermons by John Donne
or the hellfire ("Jeezus!") Bible thumpers of the recent past and wonder
what those ministers might think. Of course, the prevailing modus operandi today
is that the minister is "one of the gang", sporting a kind of folksy
familiarity: it's not nice to scare people with hellfire and damnation. Of course,
that kind of rhetoric keeps people awake. Although, as a child I remember being
attracted to Satan (and his "works and pomps", whatever that means). It
also seemed to me that people all on their own were capable of being pretty bad without
any devilish intervention.
The emblematic memory of sermons in my past was of my old college friend, Dave Nye, one of those
mesomorphic weightlifter types who happened to be the son of a minister. Slumping in
the front pew, he fell asleep while his father was laying on one of those George Gobel
"aw shucks" homilies. Suddenly, the snoozing Dave let loose with an apocalyptically powerful expulsion of
wind, which awakened him with a start. There he sat in a cloud (literally) of his own
embarrassment, accompanied by disapproving murmurings of stiff and humorless old ladies. To me this flatulence
was an editorial comment on all sermons.
8/14/97: Minding your own Business.
Americans seem to value their privacy, particularly in big cities. If anything,
a person living in a big city can move about unnoticed and virtually invisible. A
polite request for directions may be interpreted as a potential mugging or other
attack. As a result, peole usually mind their own business in American cities. In
India the opposite is true. I was in Trivandrum, which is a kind of giant dust bowl in the south
of Kerala, and got into one of those motorcycle cabs, hoping to get to my hotel.
The driver decided to go to any hotel, thinking that he could substitute any one
he liked. When I suggested that this alternative was not acceptable, the driver
asked another where this hotel was. A big discussion ensued in the middle of the street,
and two passing cabs full of passengers entered the discussion. FInally, after about
twenty minutes one of the passengers had a vague recollection of seeing the hotel about two
blocks away, within walking distance.
On another occasion I tried to take an Indian bus. The "terminal" was like
a large dirt meadow with the buses splayed out in no particular order. Since none of them
had been painted since 1946, it was impossible to tell which bus went where. When I finally
found the correct bus (although it never got to its destination but broke down in the middle
of the jungle) and sat down, a few minutes later someone tried to sit in my lap. They say that
travel is a broadening experience: sometimes it can be a flattening one.
I was just thinking of the time my wife super-glued her thumbs to the lid of
the harpsichord. You may wonder how this unlikely series of events could occur. Interestingly
enough, I saw it and could not reconstruct the series of event leading to that
outcome. Years later I wondered, as I looked at the 35 different kinds of gooey
stuff to glue things together.
Each glue had its particular limitation, but all accomplished the same thing:
stick Part A to Part B. The ancient caveman, collecting tree sap was not that different
from modern man, mixing up epoxy or white paste (or, I remember some kind of evil looking
brown stuff called Franklin Hide Glue, a caramel lookalike that always made me think
of poor old horses being led into steaming vats at the glue factory). I was thinking how this white stuff (why is it
called "library paste"?) formed
a subsidiary diet item for many school children. These paste eaters were notorious in my grade
school. What I wonder is whether the prepubescent paste gourmets of kindergarten turned into the
glue sniffers of high school. I have to admit being so old that it never occurred to the
kids of my generation to do anything with airplane glue other than make airplanes.
At this point I could become exceedingly restricted in this discussion and talk only about
the glue on envelopes. We know that that clear stuff you lick (which is probably the same as on traditional
stamps) replaced the blob of wax seal, and now we have self-stick envelopes (and self-stick)
stamps. Maybe these miniscule improvements are the greatest indicators of a technology driven
culture. We will become famous for all the sticky stuff we have made, as the Egyptians of
old were famous for papyrus.
8/12/97: Outrageous Young Girl.
Even with my jaded sense of the world and decades of living in New York City and Los Angeles,
I saw something that really scalds my eyeballs. I was bicycling into Topanga Canyon when I spied
a young girl attired in such an extreme combination of clothing that I almost crashed. She was wearing skin tight
camouflage combat fatigue pants, rolled up to the knee above net stockings, each a different color,
leading to pumps, one red, one blue. Her hair was in pigtails, and she was wearing a NY Yankees
baseball shirt with a bolero vest covered in silver sequins. Add some tomato red lipstick,
a string of real pearls, and a Mickey Mouse wrist watch (a lot like Daisy Mae on acid). After recovering from initial culture
shock, I realized that this ingenue had given a whole new meaning to the word eclectic.
What was so intriguing was that it all worked. She looked marvelous: sexy, ravishing, and
totally integrated into the LA Circus.
She was so close to being a clown, yet far removed from the usual Los Angeles parvenu
fashion dinosaur, that she was a perfectly poised and totally original sartorial statement.
Suddenly, I felt as though the 21st century would really occur in three years, and this
apparition was a preview of a life to come. I think that I would like to live a hundred years.
As I am about to throw out (see Throw it Out and
Throw Them Away) that Bart Simpson Ciao Bella Roma tee shirt
I picked up in Italy four years ago, because there is a spot on it that looks
like I was bombed by a bird, I started to wonder why I bought the ugly thing in
the first place. I notice one of those stupid umbrella hats in the closet and
repeat my question: then it comes to me. We are defined as much by the bad taste
we have as by the good. In fact, in a modern age frought with stultifying sameness (think
of all those McDonald burgers all lined up in a row), sometimes the only way to be an
individual is to exercise some horrifying breach of decorum.
Bad taste is a kind of emblem of individuality, and bad taste may become good, if it
endows its author with immortality. Like the Worthless Collections,
which make no sense other than to define us, that indecent light-up-nude tie with flashing
nipples gives you a place in the world (even if the X-rated tie is never worn). So, next time you
get the urge to buy that hat that automatically lowers your IQ 50 points when it is on your
head, go bravely forth and get it: one piece in the existentialist self-definition puzzle.
8/10/97: Resolve All Conflicts!
I just heard a radio commercial which touted something called the Conflict Resolution Service. Trouble with your boss?
Worried about being gay? Too fat? We will help you at the Conflict Resolution Service. This sounds almost too
good to be true. We all have been taken in by the scams of organized religions, but at least they give a little pageant,
myth, excuse for your racism, and a place to deposit our money to expiate our guilt (we also get to spend time with
people of similar delusions).
It sounds like a hyper-civilized method of having someone else fight your duels for you. I started imagining disgruntled
students of means calling up this service to bug me about their grades (kind of like hiring a Mafia protection
racket, except that it is voluntary). There is almost no limit to the potential
battles this service would fight. The way the commercial goes, even a fight with the boss can be shuttled on to the
service: you see a conflict coming on, call these people, and some smooth talking character in a cheap suit goes in
and does your arguing for you, getting you a raise in pay, a better office, a company car, an
expense account. My question is: do you get to watch? If so, then you become a spectator in your own
life, a minor charcter to your own conflicts (the opposite of the protagonist in David Copperfield).
Maybe we're becoming too civilized. Conflict generates choice, and choice focuses our goals. Perhaps such
mechanisms sould not be farmed out to meddling negotiators.
In the interests of public good taste, the following Warning
Message (Click on to see it) is being published here: Not only a child will
choke on this stuff, but the music alone would probably prove lethal.
I have always suspected Santa Claus (see Santa is
Mean and murderously hated all clowns (see I Hate Clowns),
but the combination of these images with music is too revolting to ponder.
Any music that comes out of a stuffed toy is guaranteed to affect the lower bowel. That's why the
designers of kids toys developed such things. They produce a natural regularity which aids the
child in toilet training. These toys may strangle you or block you up. We can all be thankful to J.C. Penney's
for their responsible management.
Sometimes it is significant to deal with major literary motifs. The previous verse
is recited by adults and children alike, oblivious to its inner meaning. We can
assume that the carpenter is either unemployed or resting, because he is not working at
his bench. The conclusion is that the workplace is unattended and, therefore
quite dangerous. The presence of two animals, not usually thought of as pets in the
workplace, is extremely curious. Many questions present themselves: why is the monkey
chasing the weasel? Perhaps animal rights activists might understand the scenario.
The last line, which is probably the key to the meaning of the verse may imply
some violence done to the weasel, or perhaps some major health defect. "Pop"
sounds like something fun; however, it may suggest cardiac arrest, stroke, or one
of those spontaneous combustion events often referred to at the end of the last century.
What if "pop" were a popping sound, indicating some sort of respiratory
distress? The obvious conclusion is that the children's rhyme is about a violent medical
emergency at the workplace, unprevented through carelessness. As in the case of
Camptown Ladies I felt it necessary to warn everyone of possible nefarious implications.
The image of the absent minded, preoccupied professor is almost a cliche
in popular literature and in the movies: from that flubberized "scientist"
to Mr. Chips, the bumbling parade of educators has stumbled before us. I had a high school
chemistry teacher who regularly put sulphur in his coffee and a math teacher who
never changed his tie, but literally wore them out.
At Columbia, Prof. Zigmund-Cerbu was famous for being able to speak 43 languages; the
trouble is that he could not keep track of WHICH one he was using in class. We had a Prof.
Harish-Chandra for calculus who was incomprehensible in that his English sounded like some
sort of dialect which would be used by a bad actor playing General Tojo, and his writing on the board looked like a note written by kidnappers.
Like all students, I had a good many laughs overs these pathetic misfits... until I qualified
for the title myself. I was teaching a complicated analysis of a Late Beethoven Quartet and had
filled all the blackboards. The students were reaching that point of critical mass where the
forbidden sleep beckoned; so, I called a ten-minute break which sent them to the vending machines.
When I returned to the class, I picked up practically in the middle of an adverb and proceeded at
high speed. The trouble was that I did not look out at the class, but went straight for the
blackboard. Turning around I was greeted by toddler chuckles: the class had been replaced by a
bunch of touring six year olds who willingly took part in the joke.
Now I have a more generous outlook on the eccentricities of the pedagogues.
8/6/97: Who is Joe Gargulo? II
Readers may wonder if I ever figured out the Gargulo mystery: well, since the note could
have been as much as 15 years old, real detective work would have to come into play. Naturally,
I called the phone number on the paper, only to find that it was an establishment called The
Enchanted Nose, one of those little touristy stores specializing in potpouri, oils, and other
stinky stuff that you are supposed to leave around in open bowls. The people there never heard of Gargulo, but they
wanted to send me a free illustrated catalog.
I started to imagine what a real enchanted nose might be: perhaps it would grow in length like Pinocchio
or maybe it could smell out good food miles away; if you blew it, you would get your wish. Tiring of the nose game, I looked up Gargulo in the
415 phone book and began calling. Gargulo #1 was extremely grouchy and threatened me with multiple
fractures (he never heard of me). Gargulo #2 was the owner of a pet boarding service, and I was referred to
one of those automated phone routers (For boarding a dog press 1, for a cat press 2, etc.; we do not
board snakes or any endangered species.). After reaching what was Gargulo's TV Repair, I decided that
the mystery would remain; after all, whatever emergency prompted the "important" message had long
passed.
Now if I could only make out that word on my grocery list; I also had to figure out what that message for
"Raoul" was doing on my phone machine.
This is the question I kept pondering as I squinted at the crumpled wad of paper
which I had just extracted from my wallet. Call Joe Gargulo, IMPORTANT
the message intoned, along with a phone number from the 415 area code. Nothing about the
message- the handwriting, name, or number- had any ring of familiarity. Then I noticed my
expired Los Angeles Public Library card with the terminal date of August 1, 1978 and
realized that there was stuff in my wallet from my own prehistory. We always tend to think of
messages in the present; when they cross over into the timelessness of cancelled checks,
business cards from defunct companies (I also found a card from one of those Pie-In-The-Face
contract outfits that you could hire about 15 years ago), and movie ticket stubs.
Suddenly, I had become a wallet archaeologist. I still had my Social Security card from
1955: the pathetic look of the signature betrayed my own callowness of the time. It was as
though I had not signed my name very many times: not filled out many forms or paid many bills.
While the Gargulo mystery continued to plague my memory, I went on to discover a discount
punchcard from Bookstar (expired in 1987) and a campaign souvenir from the Geraldine Ferraro
campaign (1984). It seemed that nothing in my wallet had anything to do with the NOW. For a
second I fantasized a Rip Van Winkle scenario in whch I had been asleep for the last 10 years and
was suddenly plunged into the world of Beavis and Butthead, along with Tiger Woods and other
"famous" strangers. Then the phone rang and I was being offered a $200,000 loan on
my house by some kind of electronic voice. Of course, I had to act NOW: I questioned what that
word actually meant. Maybe I should clean out my wallet more often.
Ambling into the modern world we certainly lost a powerful weapon for good with the demise of
La Bocca della Verita in Rome (If you don't know what this is, see
The composer challenges the Mouth of Truth). Imagine if we could force Bill Cosby to put his hand into that demon's
mouth and ask him if Autumn is REALLY his daughter. Ask OJ about the murders, ask Jesse Helms why
he hates grass (has he ever tried it?). The mouth of truth predates sophisticated electronic detection
systems and is certainly decisive. Lie and you lose it.
The real beauty of the system is that if you BELIEVE in it, the fear of retribution will
compel you to tell the truth. That is probably the point in the first place. Of course the concept
could be extended for minor lies: L'Ano della Verita. Stick your finger in and the worst that could happen
is that you will be soiled (I leave all the other ramifications to your imagination).
8/3/97: Lesbian Pedophile Nuns.
I got this title from one of the more prurient entries in a usenet news group and started to wonder: Does
anyone really believe this? Like " teenage sluts will do whatever you ask." This stuff is a
bit of puerile fantasy and nothing more. After the flatulent cloud of pseudo-moral outrage clears what
is really left? I think about the nuns I knew as a kid (see Nuns Exposed or
Pizza Nut); and, although I thought they were red baiters, racists and nutballs
in general, they were morally decent and certainly not pedophiles.
Everyone is so worried that some sexually oriented or pornographic source will corrupt the precious innocence
of a child. Well, I have news for these naive parents: the Wall St. Journal will corrupt anyone sooner; and,
growing up is all about dealing with the imperfection of human desires and human fantasies.
I say: lighten up, you self righteous party poopers. The bad people become bad through a mysterious
process that probably involves genetic encoding, and the good people are probably in the majority. Don't
confuse innocent fantasy with real life. Think about some of your OWN dreams.
Nobody thinks about the poor dinosaurs and trees which turned into fuel
oil to heat our homes and run our vehicles, because so much time elapsed between
their demise and our appearance. However, in a town in Sweden there is a tempest
of moral outrage brewing over the efficient use of heat from the local crematorium
to heat hot water pipes for homes. Somehow this operation put us a little too close
to the dead, and there are unwholesome reminders of Soylent Green. Some of the citizens argue that the practice is ecologically sound, while others
are merely creeped out. Just think: Aunt Hattie's corpse is heating your bath water.
It all illustrates one end of a very broad spectrum of how the dead are treated- from
two storey mausoleums that can accomodate overnight guests in the Philipines and elaborate
pet cemeteries to the crematorium power plant in Sweden- and how we, the living make our
peace with it. If human beings are truly spiritual and leave their bodies behind, who cares; but,
if body and soul are the same thing, then the use or non use of dead bodies has devastating
consequences on the living.
If the whole earth operates on the recycling of resources, perhaps our philosophies should be
compatible with reality. Maybe we float above our existence like so many would-be angels.
Do you remember Jerry Lester (and Dagmar?), The Magic Clown, Pinky Lee, Joan Davis, Soupy
Sales, Zacherly? What happened to them? One hint: they are not Supreme Court Justices or
elected politicians; they are the flotsam of old time TV, people who had a
fleeting moment of fame and then moved on (maybe to ambassadorial posts under
Ronald Reagan). Television is proved to be almost a complete failure as a serious
artistic medium (please don't lay Playhouse 90 or Studio One on me), but it beats the telephone, and even the internet as a communications
conduit. Unfortunately, the flow is so swift that only the I Love Lucy program
from the 50's and 60's remains in reruns like some prehistoric fossil or faux-Rosetta
Stone.
The question of enduring wisdom as embodied in archaeological remnants may
transfer to surviving television shows. The old shows (and such unfunny characters
as Jack Lescoulie and Gale Storm) disappear, because they were full of crap to
begin with. Think about that the next time you are looking at The Simpsons.
Their images are like logos (see Logo-Mania) on
everything from trash containers at the beach to corn chips. Will your
grandchildren have the slightest idea who they are [were]? Maybe even Roseanne will
disappear: one can only hope.
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