Saturday, November 6, 2010
The Things That Should Be Done to It
My bike seat was stolen today.
I had locked my bike to a fence on Carroll Street, west of Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn, because of the snow, and taken the subway into town. A hose clamp reinforced the quick-release bolt, which in turn held my bike seat in place. The thief pried the hose clamp loose to release the bolt. When I got back that evening, the hose clamp lay twisted and useless around the stump where my seat had once stood.
What can be said for the thief’s soul? Its soul is rotten like infectious bile in the colon of a pig ten weeks dead. It is decayed like the the pedals of a corpse flower buried in offal. Its mind is infected with evil like a gangrenous sore oozing puss and churning with maggots. Its psyche twists around a monolith of depravity like a choking vine. Its body pulses with a life so gross that to kill it would desecrate the executioner by his proximity.
Many things should be done to the organism that stole my bike seat. Horrors inconceivable to the collective mind of humanity should happen to it. Punishment should rain mercilessly down on every entity culpable for this cosmic moral failure. Blood should flow like a galactic gas cloud at high tide.
All the resources in the world should immediately be redirected to righting the grievance. Martial law should be declared. Uniformed paramilitary groups should fan out through the world’s metropolitan and rural areas, kicking in doors, dragging the people out, sorting through all the bike seats everywhere, finding mine, and finding and identifying the thing that perpetrated this act of evil on me.
The wisest people in every country should be brought together to ponder the most humiliating and torturous punishment in all history for the depraved thing that stole my bike seat and every tangible or intangible thing that has ever been causally or materially related to the bike seat thief. Rats should be induced to burrow through its eyes. It should be garroted like a medieval heretic. It should be impaled on a red hot Judas cradle. It’s abdomen should be sawed through lengthwise.
Anything that has ever interacted economically or biologically with the thief, ad infinitum, should be strapped to Catherine wheels and cudgelled. Its tribe should be marched across the Great Plains. Its friends and associates and classmates and customers and clients and cousins and second-cousins and third-cousins and cousins once removed and twice removed, et cetera, should be strapped to racks and stretched until their bones dislocate. Then they should be stretched until they come apart. Then their flesh should be eaten by flies, then the flies should be burned in gas ovens. Then the ovens should be smashed into ruins and forgotten.
Those who speak the language and share the cultural affiliations of the thief should be found and concentrated and bombed with nerve gas. Everyone who’s ever come into accordance with the bike seat thief on any judgement or assertion should be identified and dragged out and stomped in public, forced to take enemas of lye, baptised in microwaves, and then their families should be cut apart with dull reciprocating saws while they watched strapped in a head crusher. The whole national power grid should be devoted to running the reciprocating saws.
And then all the resources should be put towards developing a time machine, and the machine should be brought back through the thief’s ancestry one generation at at time, and each of it’s ancestors should be pilloried, forced to drink Clorox, burned at the stake, stabbed with rusty spikes, and quartered by draft horses again and again, forever. Pet animals in the vicinity and the organisms in symbiotic relationships with all the thief’s ancestor’s bodies should be inoculated with botulism and rabies and dragged out to desert plains to die of thirst. Multiple time machines should be deployed to make sure all the thief’s ancestors all through time since the dawn of the universe are constantly being violently abused.
They are all culpable.
The crack teams should root out to the last every soul that still harbors the slightest modicum of empathy for the bike-seat-stealing thing. All through time and space the gangs should roam, beating and stomping and boiling the blood of everything that ever had any connection whatsoever to the thing that stole my bike seat. Sympathizers should be dragged into the nighttime streets and shot like mangy dogs. Then the fleas on the dogs should be picked out and crushed. Then the crushed fleas should be cast into a lake of urine.
Then those who sympathise with the sympathizers should be pulled out and forced to swallow feces and then shot, and then their limp bodies should be shot again a few times for good measure, and then run through wood chippers and mixed with the vomit of a billion bed bugs and simmered in septic sludge. Everyone who dies should be marched to the lowest echelon of hell and forced to dig a lower echelon. Then anyone whose mind has ever entertained the slightest sense of forgiveness for any part of humanity or the animal or floral or fungal kingdoms related to the bike thief should be hunted down like serfs by a pack of hounds, made to run over open fields and shot down for marksmanship practice. Then their families should be charged for the ammunition.
Then the crack teams shall all commit Seppuku in unison because they will have been befouled by their very existence in the same world as the thief of my bike seat.
Members of all the organizations on whose watch this happened, including the United States government, the United Nations, the World Health Organization, INTERPOL, NATO, the AARP, and the Chamber of Commerce, should be shut up in their buildings while the buildings are soaked in gasoline and packed with Tovex and imploded upon them. Then the workers who built the buildings should be tried in a tribunal and hanged by their necks. Then the rope that hanged them should be unravelled and chewed up by dust mites. Then the farms of the farmers who fed the people who worked in the agencies on whose watch this crime was committed should be gassed until they whither and cobalt bombs should be detonated over them to spread radiation on them so they will remain dead forever.
The nations that gave birth to the thief should be attacked with hundred-megaton hydrogen bombs and neuron bombs and q-fever and Marburg virus and VX gas. Hydrogen cyanide clouds should be unleashed over the fleeing masses. Volcanoes should be drilled with MOABs and nuked until the crust of the earth shatters open and magma boils the oceans. The moon should be pulled from its orbit so that it smashes into Earth and splits the planet apart. Then the sun should be blown up in a supernova, consuming the solar system. Then the galaxy should be crashed into another galaxy, again and again until every solar system is pulverized. Then God should be torn apart by a swarm of possums. Then God’s body should be vomited back up and mixed with pubic hair and boiled in stellar plasma and vaporized. Then the fabric of space and time should be sucked into a supermassive black hole and crushed into nothingness forever.
After all that has been done, I want my bike seat back.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
They Say
Social security
Is doomed, they say
The dollar
Will take years to rebound
The Western World
Is old hat
Germany
Has been surpassed by China
They say
That the Chinese
Will inherit the earth
Our industrial base
Has been looted, they say
Our scientists
Have fallen behind
Democracy
Is in peril
Indians
Can do everything we can and more
They say
That the icecaps
Are disappearing
Have a beer.
Is doomed, they say
The dollar
Will take years to rebound
The Western World
Is old hat
Germany
Has been surpassed by China
They say
That the Chinese
Will inherit the earth
Our industrial base
Has been looted, they say
Our scientists
Have fallen behind
Democracy
Is in peril
Indians
Can do everything we can and more
They say
That the icecaps
Are disappearing
Have a beer.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Leptoptilos crumeniferus. Pleased to meet you.
I am a frequent scavenger, and my naked head and neck are adaptations to this, as it is with the vultures that I often feed. In both cases, a feathered head would become rapidly clotted with blood and other substances when my head was inside a large corpse, and the bare head is easier to keep clean.I am large and powerful and will eat different kinds of animals, either alive or as carrion, including small mammals, reptiles, and similar prey. My living prey includes termites, fish, locusts, grasshoppers, caterpillars, frogs, rodents, crocodile eggs and hatchlings, quelea nestlings, doves, young and adult flamingos, cormorant nestlings, and pelican chicks.
Pelican chicks are especially tasty.
I was featured prominently in Irvine Welsh's novel "Marabou Stork Nightmares."
Friday, September 17, 2010
Things I Hate About Pigeons
The way they bob their heads.
The way they look up at you with a terrified, wood-stupid expression as you approach.
The way they coo.
The way that the male pigeon circles around the female with his plumage expanded, cooing.
The way that the female invariably rejects him.
The way that he always becomes persistent thereafter, and continues circling.
The way that the baby pigeons grow to the size of their mothers, yet still hang around trying to get a free bite to eat.
The way that you can never kick one. They always launch themselves slightly outside the orbit of your boot at the last possible second.
The way that they hobble on their nubs.
The way that they perch on something above you, and then look down with the terrified, wood-stupid expression.
The way that they always take off in unison in a sudden frenzy of flapping.
The way that they share food by vomiting into each others' beaks.
The way that they pick on the least popular pigeon by standing on his back.
The way that they all descend on a single crumb at once.
The way that the crumb then makes its rounds through the whole group.
The way that they can't figure out how to break apart a piece of food too big to swallow, so they try to shake it into pieces. They look ridiculous doing it.
The way that they occasionally shit on me as I stand under the electrical wires.
The way that they all go for too few perches, and then battle over them, flapping around incessantly and letting loose a shower of feathers.
The way that they circle around on the sidewalk all day, looking for crumbs.
The way that they spend so much time not flying and being on the ground, when they're birds.
The way that they cautiously approach where you sit, circling back uncertainly.
The way that they refuse to eat my perfectly good grape.
The way they look up at you with a terrified, wood-stupid expression as you approach.
The way they coo.
The way that the male pigeon circles around the female with his plumage expanded, cooing.
The way that the female invariably rejects him.
The way that he always becomes persistent thereafter, and continues circling.
The way that the baby pigeons grow to the size of their mothers, yet still hang around trying to get a free bite to eat.
The way that you can never kick one. They always launch themselves slightly outside the orbit of your boot at the last possible second.
The way that they hobble on their nubs.
The way that they perch on something above you, and then look down with the terrified, wood-stupid expression.
The way that they always take off in unison in a sudden frenzy of flapping.
The way that they share food by vomiting into each others' beaks.
The way that they pick on the least popular pigeon by standing on his back.
The way that they all descend on a single crumb at once.
The way that the crumb then makes its rounds through the whole group.
The way that they can't figure out how to break apart a piece of food too big to swallow, so they try to shake it into pieces. They look ridiculous doing it.
The way that they occasionally shit on me as I stand under the electrical wires.
The way that they all go for too few perches, and then battle over them, flapping around incessantly and letting loose a shower of feathers.
The way that they circle around on the sidewalk all day, looking for crumbs.
The way that they spend so much time not flying and being on the ground, when they're birds.
The way that they cautiously approach where you sit, circling back uncertainly.
The way that they refuse to eat my perfectly good grape.
15 Quick and Easy Ways to Save Money in the Recession
The slow economy got you in the financial doldrums? Fear not. There are myriad simple ways to cut every day expenses and increase your income. Consider the following.
1. Cut out the tips. They’re not really mandatory. You’ll save over 10% on everything that you used to tip for. If you are given a hard time for this habit, claim that you are of the Jewish faith. The Torah forbids tipping.
2. If you’ve got kids in college, you how hard it can be to make ends meet. But if they’re in college, they’re over 18, and you have no legal obligation to them. Cut them off and make them pull their own weight. Most likely, they'll drop out, because studies show that college graduates scarcely make any more money than dropouts anymore. One way or another, the experience will build character.
3. Rein in the food budget by eating cheaper foods like Spam, Chef Boyardee, Ramen, and Spaghetti-Os. Cup O’ Noodles is a nutritious alternative to the homemade alternative. Try Cheez-Whiz in place of real cheese. Garnish with French’s yellow instead of Dijon, etc. You can also save on beer and liquor by buying brands like Shlitz, Miller, and Winer’s Cup.
3a. Not eating is an attractive alternative to eating, given the great cost savings. Prisoners at Aushwitz-Berkenau were known to eat little more than bread crusts and water, and some of them survived for several years.
4. If your house has a garage, consider renting it to an illegal immigrant and parking the car outside. Even the average broom closet is big enough to sleep one illegal immigrant, due to their short stature and modest requirements. Check your floorplan; you might be able to stick three or four immigrants in your house. Also consider parking a travel trailer in the front and back yards, connecting them to household utilities with a combination of extension cords and garden hoses. Dispose of black water from the trailers in a lawn sump.
5. Whenever you joint casual acquaintances to a bar or restaurant and accrue a common bill, pretend to have “forgotten your wallet.” The others will cover you. Avoid them thereafter and they will eventually forget. Be sure to maximize the potential of this money-saver by gorging yourself on a series of the most expensive dishes available every time you forget your wallet.
6. Hire illegal immigrants to do your work. You can gouge them in whatever way you'd like because they have no legal recourse.
7. Whenever dining at a pizza parlor or similar establishment, ask for a “water” cup instead of ordering a drink. Then fill it with whatever beverage you really want at the soda fountain. Great way to save a few bucks here and there!
7a. Take a crate of empty Latin American Coca-Cola bottles and a capping machine to the pizza parlor with you. Order a drink, and then fill and cap all the bottles at the soda fountain. Sell them for cash to illegal immigrants at Home Depot.
7a.1. Don't report your extra income from selling Coke on your taxes. Use it to pay for Spam and Chef Boyardee, then tell the auditor that you starved all year.
8. Airfare is notoriously expensive. Overnight parcel delivery is much cheaper. Next time you really need to go somewhere, try a large FedEx box instead of coach class. Even cheaper is Greyhound’s courier service. The extra bucks just may justify the extra few days in the bus cargo bay. Be sure to also pack Spam, Gatorade, and poop bags.
9. Ailing relatives may request a certain type of memorial service or method of disposing their body. What they don’t mention is that they actually have no sway over you once they’re dead! The cheapest way to dispose of a body is to push it over a hillside. Skipping the funeral entirely can save thousands.
9a. If you choose to hold a funeral, extract the embalming fluid from the corpse of your relative during a viewing. Then change into a salesman's outfit, circle around the building, and knock on the door to the mortuary office. Develop and practice an irresistible pitch, and sell the fluid back to them. Great way to save a few bucks on funeral expenses.
9b. Start making a circuit of all the funerals in all the mortuaries in your city, and repeat the above set of actions.
10. If you’re a person of faith, you’ve probably put a few dollars in the collection basket every week. But the church accepts all worshipers regardless of whether they actually give them any money. Next time the basket comes around, casually pass it to the next person. Smile and suggest that they make up for your lack of a donation.
11. In major metropolitan areas, parking can be a real pain in the arm, and cost one too. If parking costs are really driving you up a wall (ha!), consider moving to the Kenyan island of Lamu, an auto-free society. The per capita income on Lamu is only $6 a year, but the extra time and savings on automobile expenses may just justify your diminished earning potential.
12. Use a Xerox machine to maximize the potential of your existing cash. Such duplicates are sometimes convincing enough to be used in dark restaurants and bars. Wear a fake mustache and a snowmobile suit over jogging attire when you try to spend your Xeroxed bills. If you are detected, quickly exit the establishment, dispose of your mustache and slip out of the snowmobile suit, hail a taxi, ride to the outskirts of town, skip on the fare and jog into the forest.
13. Establish a cache of high-limit credit cards buried in a special place at the outskirts of town. Find your cache, jog back out of the forest, pay your cab fare with a credit card, and order the driver to the airport. Buy a one-way ticket on the next flight to Harare, Zimbabwe. Then buy the entire contents of all the non-commission shops in the international terminal. Then pay to have everything loaded onto your flight as additional luggage. When you arrive in Harare, you will have sufficient capital to start a department store.
14. Once you get on your feet in Harare, seduce a local, marry him or her, obtain a Zimbabwean passport, and never return to the United States.
15. Take out a huge life insurance policy on your new spouse, then chain him or her to a bedpost and force him or her to eat a box of rat poison.
1. Cut out the tips. They’re not really mandatory. You’ll save over 10% on everything that you used to tip for. If you are given a hard time for this habit, claim that you are of the Jewish faith. The Torah forbids tipping.
2. If you’ve got kids in college, you how hard it can be to make ends meet. But if they’re in college, they’re over 18, and you have no legal obligation to them. Cut them off and make them pull their own weight. Most likely, they'll drop out, because studies show that college graduates scarcely make any more money than dropouts anymore. One way or another, the experience will build character.
3. Rein in the food budget by eating cheaper foods like Spam, Chef Boyardee, Ramen, and Spaghetti-Os. Cup O’ Noodles is a nutritious alternative to the homemade alternative. Try Cheez-Whiz in place of real cheese. Garnish with French’s yellow instead of Dijon, etc. You can also save on beer and liquor by buying brands like Shlitz, Miller, and Winer’s Cup.
3a. Not eating is an attractive alternative to eating, given the great cost savings. Prisoners at Aushwitz-Berkenau were known to eat little more than bread crusts and water, and some of them survived for several years.
4. If your house has a garage, consider renting it to an illegal immigrant and parking the car outside. Even the average broom closet is big enough to sleep one illegal immigrant, due to their short stature and modest requirements. Check your floorplan; you might be able to stick three or four immigrants in your house. Also consider parking a travel trailer in the front and back yards, connecting them to household utilities with a combination of extension cords and garden hoses. Dispose of black water from the trailers in a lawn sump.
5. Whenever you joint casual acquaintances to a bar or restaurant and accrue a common bill, pretend to have “forgotten your wallet.” The others will cover you. Avoid them thereafter and they will eventually forget. Be sure to maximize the potential of this money-saver by gorging yourself on a series of the most expensive dishes available every time you forget your wallet.
6. Hire illegal immigrants to do your work. You can gouge them in whatever way you'd like because they have no legal recourse.
7. Whenever dining at a pizza parlor or similar establishment, ask for a “water” cup instead of ordering a drink. Then fill it with whatever beverage you really want at the soda fountain. Great way to save a few bucks here and there!
7a. Take a crate of empty Latin American Coca-Cola bottles and a capping machine to the pizza parlor with you. Order a drink, and then fill and cap all the bottles at the soda fountain. Sell them for cash to illegal immigrants at Home Depot.
7a.1. Don't report your extra income from selling Coke on your taxes. Use it to pay for Spam and Chef Boyardee, then tell the auditor that you starved all year.
8. Airfare is notoriously expensive. Overnight parcel delivery is much cheaper. Next time you really need to go somewhere, try a large FedEx box instead of coach class. Even cheaper is Greyhound’s courier service. The extra bucks just may justify the extra few days in the bus cargo bay. Be sure to also pack Spam, Gatorade, and poop bags.
9. Ailing relatives may request a certain type of memorial service or method of disposing their body. What they don’t mention is that they actually have no sway over you once they’re dead! The cheapest way to dispose of a body is to push it over a hillside. Skipping the funeral entirely can save thousands.
9a. If you choose to hold a funeral, extract the embalming fluid from the corpse of your relative during a viewing. Then change into a salesman's outfit, circle around the building, and knock on the door to the mortuary office. Develop and practice an irresistible pitch, and sell the fluid back to them. Great way to save a few bucks on funeral expenses.
9b. Start making a circuit of all the funerals in all the mortuaries in your city, and repeat the above set of actions.
10. If you’re a person of faith, you’ve probably put a few dollars in the collection basket every week. But the church accepts all worshipers regardless of whether they actually give them any money. Next time the basket comes around, casually pass it to the next person. Smile and suggest that they make up for your lack of a donation.
11. In major metropolitan areas, parking can be a real pain in the arm, and cost one too. If parking costs are really driving you up a wall (ha!), consider moving to the Kenyan island of Lamu, an auto-free society. The per capita income on Lamu is only $6 a year, but the extra time and savings on automobile expenses may just justify your diminished earning potential.
12. Use a Xerox machine to maximize the potential of your existing cash. Such duplicates are sometimes convincing enough to be used in dark restaurants and bars. Wear a fake mustache and a snowmobile suit over jogging attire when you try to spend your Xeroxed bills. If you are detected, quickly exit the establishment, dispose of your mustache and slip out of the snowmobile suit, hail a taxi, ride to the outskirts of town, skip on the fare and jog into the forest.
13. Establish a cache of high-limit credit cards buried in a special place at the outskirts of town. Find your cache, jog back out of the forest, pay your cab fare with a credit card, and order the driver to the airport. Buy a one-way ticket on the next flight to Harare, Zimbabwe. Then buy the entire contents of all the non-commission shops in the international terminal. Then pay to have everything loaded onto your flight as additional luggage. When you arrive in Harare, you will have sufficient capital to start a department store.
14. Once you get on your feet in Harare, seduce a local, marry him or her, obtain a Zimbabwean passport, and never return to the United States.
15. Take out a huge life insurance policy on your new spouse, then chain him or her to a bedpost and force him or her to eat a box of rat poison.
How Several Magazines Would Handle the Topic of Climate Change
The Economist article would be mostly exposition presented with a sense of humour meant to appeal to a conservative British bureaucrat. It would focus on the financial impacts to international corporations of various climate change scenarios. It would be full of wonky policy language and numerical figures, presented skillfully enough to slide it over the threshold of readability. The tone would be that of an Oxford textbook combined with one of Ross Douthat's more recent columns, insofar as it would ooze disgust for the common rabble and their inaccurate concerns about the issue. Alongside the article they'd place a photo of a coal plant belching black smoke into the atmosphere, under which would be a dryly ironic caption, probably a non-sequitur, such as “Coal is expected to deliver up to 86% of global energy demand by 2020.” The headline would also be ironic. The subhead might be a pun. Quotes would be fragmented and presented out of context. Readers would have no idea who wrote the piece, but it would sound the same as all the rest of the articles.
O magazine: even if the lead story was about global warming, the cover would still feature nothing but a portrait of Oprah. The story would be titled something like “Oprah Tackles Climate Change: Are We Doing Enough?” The story would revolve entirely around Oprah's token gestures to reduce flight time in her Leer jet, and her initiative to accomplish something ambitious represented by a tall number. The assumptions regarding climate change would all conform to those that the mainstream press bandies about and upon which everyone already agrees. The article would transparently advocate several unoriginal solutions to global warming, and appeal to sentiments about “the future of our children.” There would be a box about “What You Can Do.” The tips would be things like “Carpool” and “Use Less Styrofoam.” The article's vocabulary would not exceed Flesch–Kincaid grade level 6. Its tone would be chatty and optimistic.
The Nation would feature a lengthy reported essay in which the author would lay out a reasoned critique of everything the US government and America as a whole has ever done in regards to climate change. It would sound like a policy paper combined with Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States. Somehow, the author would tie in a social-justice angle. Over and over he would coolly describe the ways in which greedy capitalists, our obtuse citizenry and compromised politicians have led us to the brink of global doom. He would describe how the marginalized elements of society would be even more vulnerable to the destruction climate change is poised to wrought, and how the rich have insulated themselves from such problems. The rich would come out looking like a cabal of bloodthirsty crooks. All of our attempts to address the problem would be similarly demolished. Many of the sources would be bitter academics left over from the 70s. They would use anachronistic ideological terms like “Trotskyism.” They would blame right-wing administrations of the distant past. The author would present no realistic solutions to the problem, but would suggest that the government spend large amounts of money rectifying it.
Mother Jones would have a strongly-researched expose of wholesale corruption written in an accessible narrative style. The article would be in first-person perspective and start out with an anecdote, and then go on to deliver a blistering volley of indicting facts. The author would illustrate at least ten instances of mind-boggling hypocrisy and bold-faced lying. He would identify specific villains. They would be obscure, influential people, probably business executives. There would be pictures of these people in their natural habitats. The author would indict at least one prominent person that the readers had assumed was alright. The editorial tone would appeal to intelligent, informed, white bourgeois liberals. The layout would be aesthetically pleasing and would include infographics.
The National Review article would be about the dangerous steps liberals are taking in response to global warming. The title would be “Global Warming: The Hidden Agenda.” There would be an obscene cartoon of Al Gore dancing around on the cover. The article would focus entirely on the risks of doing anything to try to curtail global warming. The author would demolish the liberals' suggested approaches to climate change. The tone would be pushy, loud, and full of fear. Money would be the dominant theme. The author would confidently claim that the liberals had already sowed the seeds of their own destruction, and that their downfall was imminent. Most claims would be hyperbolic. The author would be a coal industry lobbyist.
FINIS.
O magazine: even if the lead story was about global warming, the cover would still feature nothing but a portrait of Oprah. The story would be titled something like “Oprah Tackles Climate Change: Are We Doing Enough?” The story would revolve entirely around Oprah's token gestures to reduce flight time in her Leer jet, and her initiative to accomplish something ambitious represented by a tall number. The assumptions regarding climate change would all conform to those that the mainstream press bandies about and upon which everyone already agrees. The article would transparently advocate several unoriginal solutions to global warming, and appeal to sentiments about “the future of our children.” There would be a box about “What You Can Do.” The tips would be things like “Carpool” and “Use Less Styrofoam.” The article's vocabulary would not exceed Flesch–Kincaid grade level 6. Its tone would be chatty and optimistic.
The Nation would feature a lengthy reported essay in which the author would lay out a reasoned critique of everything the US government and America as a whole has ever done in regards to climate change. It would sound like a policy paper combined with Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States. Somehow, the author would tie in a social-justice angle. Over and over he would coolly describe the ways in which greedy capitalists, our obtuse citizenry and compromised politicians have led us to the brink of global doom. He would describe how the marginalized elements of society would be even more vulnerable to the destruction climate change is poised to wrought, and how the rich have insulated themselves from such problems. The rich would come out looking like a cabal of bloodthirsty crooks. All of our attempts to address the problem would be similarly demolished. Many of the sources would be bitter academics left over from the 70s. They would use anachronistic ideological terms like “Trotskyism.” They would blame right-wing administrations of the distant past. The author would present no realistic solutions to the problem, but would suggest that the government spend large amounts of money rectifying it.
Mother Jones would have a strongly-researched expose of wholesale corruption written in an accessible narrative style. The article would be in first-person perspective and start out with an anecdote, and then go on to deliver a blistering volley of indicting facts. The author would illustrate at least ten instances of mind-boggling hypocrisy and bold-faced lying. He would identify specific villains. They would be obscure, influential people, probably business executives. There would be pictures of these people in their natural habitats. The author would indict at least one prominent person that the readers had assumed was alright. The editorial tone would appeal to intelligent, informed, white bourgeois liberals. The layout would be aesthetically pleasing and would include infographics.
The National Review article would be about the dangerous steps liberals are taking in response to global warming. The title would be “Global Warming: The Hidden Agenda.” There would be an obscene cartoon of Al Gore dancing around on the cover. The article would focus entirely on the risks of doing anything to try to curtail global warming. The author would demolish the liberals' suggested approaches to climate change. The tone would be pushy, loud, and full of fear. Money would be the dominant theme. The author would confidently claim that the liberals had already sowed the seeds of their own destruction, and that their downfall was imminent. Most claims would be hyperbolic. The author would be a coal industry lobbyist.
FINIS.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Arcata Quote of the Day
In the Arcata Library. The librarian is looking at the list of people waiting to use the computers.
Librarian: “Is Eagle here? Eagle?”
No answer.
Librarian: “How about 'Mystery?'”
A crazy indigent stumbles up.
Mystery: “I'm here.”
Librarian: “Okay, you can use number two.”
Librarian: “Eagle? Is Eagle here?”
Librarian: “Is Eagle here? Eagle?”
No answer.
Librarian: “How about 'Mystery?'”
A crazy indigent stumbles up.
Mystery: “I'm here.”
Librarian: “Okay, you can use number two.”
Librarian: “Eagle? Is Eagle here?”
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Bloviating for the Humanities
Dear Student,
Fourteen more weeks of academic writing are upon you. For those of you in the Humanities, you will be asked to write a number of windy essays before the term is out.
But academic writing is not for those of us who entertain imaginations. There are rules. The following are some of the writing techniques I learned as a humanities student at a prestigious academic institution.
1. Learn the Professor's Political Sentiments and Pander to Them
The most important thing to do in the first weeks of this quarter is to peg your professor's political sentiments. In every essay you write for that professor, your arguments must pander to those sentiments.
Professors fall into a variety of different political groups. There are Marxist theorists, radical feminists, black nationalists, Chicano revolutionaries, post-realists and experimental jazz musicians.
Those of each group are highly sensitive about the plight of one attendant identity group, a group you and I may hardly ever think about. These include transsexuals, people from Latin America, Kurds, Whey, and Harvey Milk.
You can usually peg the professor in one glance. Poor dress and hygiene indicates a Marxist theorist and a jazz musician. Women who look similar to men are feminists. African Americans who dress like Nazis are black nationalists. Bearded Latin Americans who speak good English are Chicano revolutionaries. Post-realists occupy a separate plane of existence, and are not always visible.
2. Write the Thesis
Your thesis is going to pander to your professor's political sentiments, completely reiterating and re-validating them. But you must never advance an original argument. You are not yet fully steeped in the internal politics of the field you are studying. Even though you've identified your professor's general political bend, you have no idea where he stands in relation to his colleagues.
For instance, say your Professor of Sexual Identities in Pre-Columbian Hispaniola dresses in mauve, pill-covered wool sweater vests and smells of tuna. You've identified him as a Marxist theorist/jazz musician. You plan to argue in your paper that the United States systematically disenfranchised proletariat saxophonists during the Conquest of Azatlan.
You have become over-confident! You are crossing into uncharted territory! What you don't know is that your professor has been locked in a conflict of speculation with Marcus Hornsby, a post-realist at Wayne State University, for the last two decades. Professor Hornsby has the audacity to question the proletariat saxophonists' contribution to the development of acid jazz in pre-Columbian Hispaniola. This is poisonous territory.
Now that you're ready to write an unoriginal argument, follow this formula for a winning thesis:
The professor's cherished identity group x was originally antagonized within or by the United States. The identity group bravely marched on y. They have found solidarity with z, a similarly deprived identity group in an exotic, impoverished land.
For example:
The Suffi Proletariat Feminists in the Hapsburg's Austro-Hungarian Empire were disenfranchised. The right-wing demagogues who controlled the American regime refused to recognize their contributions to post-Cubist art jazz. When the Suffi Proletariat Feminists marched on Vienna, the American regime admitted that the Suffi Proletariat Feminists were instrumental in developing Viennese art jazz in the early 16th century, and granted them their due reparations and civil rights. Since then, the Suffi Proletariat Feminists have found solidarity with the Zumaboho of the Vietnamese highlands, a tribe of transsexuals who worship parrots.
The library is full of material that will back up your claims.
3. The Title
Now that you've written your thesis, you can write the title.
The title is the most important part of your essay. While the graduate student assigned to reading your essay will not actually do so, he will certainly read the title. His initial judgment of it determines your grade.
The title of an academic work conforms to the following formula:
intellectual identity group + professor's cherished identity group + academic power word + connector + historical conflict + colon + redundant illustrative passage
For instance,
Islamic Transsexual Identities in the Crimean War: Suffi Cross-Dressers in Napoleon's Ukraine
The author goes on to argue that the United States failed to do enough to protect Islamic Trassexuals displaced from their ancestral homes in the Ukraine by the Crimean War.
Or
Dadaist Chicano Resistance during the Russian Revolution: Anarcho-Mexican Voices in Tsarist Moscow
The author here argues that Dadaist Mexicans in Tsar Nicolas' Moscow struggled to find a voice, and that the United States did not do enough to support them during this devastating crisis, which led to their eventual debasement, until they marched on the Kremlin, and then found solidarity with the Zumaboho tribe.
The title should never include fewer than thirteen words.
4. Voice
Never use the active voice. Always use passive voice.
This rule goes against what you might learn in most English courses. But passive voice is a crucial element of academic writing. It allows the writer to avoid making any strong commitments.
Remember, academic writing is a delicate exercise in vacillation.
Say you need to argue that Suffi Feminists are disenfranchised, but you're not clear on who is disenfranchising them.
You could say, “Someone is disenfranchising the Suffi Feminists.”
Or you could say, “The Suffi Feminists are disenfranchised.”
Which do you think sounds more authoritative?
On the other hand, if you need a subject for a sentence like the above one, in which a cherished identity group is being disenfranchised, the American regime will always suffice.
5. Academic Power Words for the Humanities
You must sprinkle powerful, vague affirmations throughout your essay. Furthermore, each title needs one academic power word. Use one of the following:
Identity, voice, solidarity, struggle, parity, empowerment, elemental, radical, inherent, dispossessed, disenfranchised, integration, patriarchal, stratified, interpretations, theories, discussion, aspect, role, progressive, contrast, representation, misrepresentation, cohesion, counterpart, perspective, dualism, distinctions, correlation, implication, predominant, ideology, influence, symbolic, doctrine, status, gendered, complexity, analysis, bias.
6. Bloviate to Meet the Page Count
Your professor will require that you fill a certain number of pages with words. He will say nothing about writing concisely. It therefore follows that you must show your concise statements to the door and replace them with bloated, byzantine descriptions. Otherwise, you will not be able to reach the required number of pages. It will not be possible. Length requirements are meant to encourage you to write in the proper academic style.
There are countless techniques at your disposal to accomplish windiness.
For example, say you need to say something along the lines of the following:
Muslims hold different views on transsexuality. (47 characters)
With a little tinkering, one can reorganize the above into:
A great diversity of interpretations in regards to transsexuality have been held by individuals of the Islamic faith. (116 characters)
The second sentence says the same thing as the first but is almost two and a half times as long. That's the difference between 10 pages and 24 pages! Also, the second sentence uses the superior passive construction.
Always digress by stating flatly what you propose to illustrate, and provide a series of redundant examples. For instance:
The Suffi feminists were claimed to be collectivist deceivers by the corrupt American regime. “The Suffi feminists are communist imposters,” wrote Ambassador Anchovy (6974). “The communist Suffi feminists are charlatans,” said Secretary Sardine (qtd. in Anchovy, 11458).
Three statements take up three times as much space as would only one. Use a thesaurus to say the same thing multiple times.
Also, eliminate all contractions.
When you extrapolate these techniques across your vast gulfs of drivel, they may be just enough to push you over the top.
7. Conclusion
The conclusion of your essay is a reiteration of you thesis with the addition of a little “Selah” moment that strives to validate all your professor's preconceived notions. Your essay must include a suitable moral! Here, unlike in other areas, you may include an anecdotal passage.
For example, for the essay regarding the art jazz of the Suffi Proletariat Feminists, the conclusion might resemble the following:
Every child born after 1853 owes a debt of gratitude to the Suffi Proletariat Feminists. With their brave public art jazz jams, they stood against the forces of anti-Dadaist injustice to expose the crimes of the United State's disastrous policy of imperialism, and empowered women to find their own sex role voices in postcolonial Crimea.
My mother was born a man in post-Cubist America. If it were not for Suffi Proletariat Feminists, she would never have stood a chance of finding her true sex identity. I would not have been born.
If not for the Suffi Proletariat Feminists, the crimes of the United States would continue to this day.
Fourteen more weeks of academic writing are upon you. For those of you in the Humanities, you will be asked to write a number of windy essays before the term is out.
But academic writing is not for those of us who entertain imaginations. There are rules. The following are some of the writing techniques I learned as a humanities student at a prestigious academic institution.
1. Learn the Professor's Political Sentiments and Pander to Them
The most important thing to do in the first weeks of this quarter is to peg your professor's political sentiments. In every essay you write for that professor, your arguments must pander to those sentiments.
Professors fall into a variety of different political groups. There are Marxist theorists, radical feminists, black nationalists, Chicano revolutionaries, post-realists and experimental jazz musicians.
Those of each group are highly sensitive about the plight of one attendant identity group, a group you and I may hardly ever think about. These include transsexuals, people from Latin America, Kurds, Whey, and Harvey Milk.
You can usually peg the professor in one glance. Poor dress and hygiene indicates a Marxist theorist and a jazz musician. Women who look similar to men are feminists. African Americans who dress like Nazis are black nationalists. Bearded Latin Americans who speak good English are Chicano revolutionaries. Post-realists occupy a separate plane of existence, and are not always visible.
2. Write the Thesis
Your thesis is going to pander to your professor's political sentiments, completely reiterating and re-validating them. But you must never advance an original argument. You are not yet fully steeped in the internal politics of the field you are studying. Even though you've identified your professor's general political bend, you have no idea where he stands in relation to his colleagues.
For instance, say your Professor of Sexual Identities in Pre-Columbian Hispaniola dresses in mauve, pill-covered wool sweater vests and smells of tuna. You've identified him as a Marxist theorist/jazz musician. You plan to argue in your paper that the United States systematically disenfranchised proletariat saxophonists during the Conquest of Azatlan.
You have become over-confident! You are crossing into uncharted territory! What you don't know is that your professor has been locked in a conflict of speculation with Marcus Hornsby, a post-realist at Wayne State University, for the last two decades. Professor Hornsby has the audacity to question the proletariat saxophonists' contribution to the development of acid jazz in pre-Columbian Hispaniola. This is poisonous territory.
Now that you're ready to write an unoriginal argument, follow this formula for a winning thesis:
The professor's cherished identity group x was originally antagonized within or by the United States. The identity group bravely marched on y. They have found solidarity with z, a similarly deprived identity group in an exotic, impoverished land.
For example:
The Suffi Proletariat Feminists in the Hapsburg's Austro-Hungarian Empire were disenfranchised. The right-wing demagogues who controlled the American regime refused to recognize their contributions to post-Cubist art jazz. When the Suffi Proletariat Feminists marched on Vienna, the American regime admitted that the Suffi Proletariat Feminists were instrumental in developing Viennese art jazz in the early 16th century, and granted them their due reparations and civil rights. Since then, the Suffi Proletariat Feminists have found solidarity with the Zumaboho of the Vietnamese highlands, a tribe of transsexuals who worship parrots.
The library is full of material that will back up your claims.
3. The Title
Now that you've written your thesis, you can write the title.
The title is the most important part of your essay. While the graduate student assigned to reading your essay will not actually do so, he will certainly read the title. His initial judgment of it determines your grade.
The title of an academic work conforms to the following formula:
intellectual identity group + professor's cherished identity group + academic power word + connector + historical conflict + colon + redundant illustrative passage
For instance,
Islamic Transsexual Identities in the Crimean War: Suffi Cross-Dressers in Napoleon's Ukraine
The author goes on to argue that the United States failed to do enough to protect Islamic Trassexuals displaced from their ancestral homes in the Ukraine by the Crimean War.
Or
Dadaist Chicano Resistance during the Russian Revolution: Anarcho-Mexican Voices in Tsarist Moscow
The author here argues that Dadaist Mexicans in Tsar Nicolas' Moscow struggled to find a voice, and that the United States did not do enough to support them during this devastating crisis, which led to their eventual debasement, until they marched on the Kremlin, and then found solidarity with the Zumaboho tribe.
The title should never include fewer than thirteen words.
4. Voice
Never use the active voice. Always use passive voice.
This rule goes against what you might learn in most English courses. But passive voice is a crucial element of academic writing. It allows the writer to avoid making any strong commitments.
Remember, academic writing is a delicate exercise in vacillation.
Say you need to argue that Suffi Feminists are disenfranchised, but you're not clear on who is disenfranchising them.
You could say, “Someone is disenfranchising the Suffi Feminists.”
Or you could say, “The Suffi Feminists are disenfranchised.”
Which do you think sounds more authoritative?
On the other hand, if you need a subject for a sentence like the above one, in which a cherished identity group is being disenfranchised, the American regime will always suffice.
5. Academic Power Words for the Humanities
You must sprinkle powerful, vague affirmations throughout your essay. Furthermore, each title needs one academic power word. Use one of the following:
Identity, voice, solidarity, struggle, parity, empowerment, elemental, radical, inherent, dispossessed, disenfranchised, integration, patriarchal, stratified, interpretations, theories, discussion, aspect, role, progressive, contrast, representation, misrepresentation, cohesion, counterpart, perspective, dualism, distinctions, correlation, implication, predominant, ideology, influence, symbolic, doctrine, status, gendered, complexity, analysis, bias.
6. Bloviate to Meet the Page Count
Your professor will require that you fill a certain number of pages with words. He will say nothing about writing concisely. It therefore follows that you must show your concise statements to the door and replace them with bloated, byzantine descriptions. Otherwise, you will not be able to reach the required number of pages. It will not be possible. Length requirements are meant to encourage you to write in the proper academic style.
There are countless techniques at your disposal to accomplish windiness.
For example, say you need to say something along the lines of the following:
Muslims hold different views on transsexuality. (47 characters)
With a little tinkering, one can reorganize the above into:
A great diversity of interpretations in regards to transsexuality have been held by individuals of the Islamic faith. (116 characters)
The second sentence says the same thing as the first but is almost two and a half times as long. That's the difference between 10 pages and 24 pages! Also, the second sentence uses the superior passive construction.
Always digress by stating flatly what you propose to illustrate, and provide a series of redundant examples. For instance:
The Suffi feminists were claimed to be collectivist deceivers by the corrupt American regime. “The Suffi feminists are communist imposters,” wrote Ambassador Anchovy (6974). “The communist Suffi feminists are charlatans,” said Secretary Sardine (qtd. in Anchovy, 11458).
Three statements take up three times as much space as would only one. Use a thesaurus to say the same thing multiple times.
Also, eliminate all contractions.
When you extrapolate these techniques across your vast gulfs of drivel, they may be just enough to push you over the top.
7. Conclusion
The conclusion of your essay is a reiteration of you thesis with the addition of a little “Selah” moment that strives to validate all your professor's preconceived notions. Your essay must include a suitable moral! Here, unlike in other areas, you may include an anecdotal passage.
For example, for the essay regarding the art jazz of the Suffi Proletariat Feminists, the conclusion might resemble the following:
Every child born after 1853 owes a debt of gratitude to the Suffi Proletariat Feminists. With their brave public art jazz jams, they stood against the forces of anti-Dadaist injustice to expose the crimes of the United State's disastrous policy of imperialism, and empowered women to find their own sex role voices in postcolonial Crimea.
My mother was born a man in post-Cubist America. If it were not for Suffi Proletariat Feminists, she would never have stood a chance of finding her true sex identity. I would not have been born.
If not for the Suffi Proletariat Feminists, the crimes of the United States would continue to this day.
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