Thursday, November 25, 2010

Let Me Know of Any Recent Attempts on Your Part to Save Our Fellow-Citizens from Themselves

Thanksgiving.

Sarah Palin Clubs to Death a Fish on Reality Show Labelled 'A Snuff' Video by Animal Rights Group

There's so much more material if you've no rooting interest (which I still do; it ebbs slow), if, beyond kneejerk acknowledging yesyesyes Sarah Palin is indeed a dumbfuck with grifter-smarts, you look at the dishonest dumbfuckery of the attacks on her dumbfuckness - um, braining fish is the humane way to kill them; people misspeak - these next two years could be megaggigles rather than impotent rage.

Sarah Palin: "We Gotta Stand with Our North Korean Allies."

Also, "Labelled." Fucking Brits.






THANKSGIVING LETTER FROM HARRY

Carl Dennis

I guess I have to begin by admitting
I'm thankful today I don't reside in a country
My country has chosen to liberate,
That Bridgeport's my home, not Baghdad.
Thankful my chances are good, when I leave
For the Super Duper, that I'll be returning.
And I'm thankful my TV set is still broken.
No point in wasting energy feeling shame
For the havoc inflicted on others in my name
When I need all the strength I can muster
To teach my eighth-grade class in the low-rent district.
There, at least, I don't feel powerless.
There my choices can make some difference.

This month I'd like to believe I've widened
My students' choice of vocation, though the odds
My history lessons on working the land
Will inspire any of them to farm
Are almost as small as the odds
One will become a monk or nun
Trained in the Buddhist practice
We studied last month in the unit on India.
The point is to get them suspecting the world
They know first hand isn't the only world.

As for the calling of soldier, if it comes up in class,
It's not because I feel obliged to include it,
As you, as a writer, may feel obliged.
A student may happen to introduce it,
As a girl did yesterday when she read her essay
About her older brother, Ramon,
Listed as "missing in action" three years ago,
And about her dad, who won't agree with her mom
And the social worker on how small the odds are
That Ramon's alive, a prisoner in the mountains.

I didn't allow the discussion that followed
More time than I allowed for the other essays.
And I wouldn't take sides: not with the group
That thought the father, having grieved enough,
Ought to move on to the life still left him;
Not with the group that was glad he hadn't made do
With the next-to-nothing the world's provided,
That instead he's invested his trust in a story
That saves the world from shameful failure.

Let me know of any recent attempts on your part
To save our fellow-citizens from themselves.
In the meantime, if you want to borrow Ramon
For a narrative of your own, remember that any scene
Where he appears under guard in a mountain village
Should be confined to the realm of longing. There
His captors may leave him when they move on.
There his wounds may be healed,
His health restored. A total recovery
Except for a lingering fog of forgetfulness
A father dreams he can burn away.

5 comments:

  1. I just read this Robertson Davies quote from your link...

    "I find this exemplified, for instance, in many stories in The New Yorker where whether the family will have pumpkin pie or something else on Thanksgiving Day is a decision with infinite psychological and sexual repercussions."

    ...right after reading the Slashdot link about the scent of pumpkin pie increasing penile blood flow by 40%!

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  2. The ironies continue to multiply: Salon doing a "hack list"? Isn't that a bit like talking to your image in the mirror, as if he were a separate person? Salon = hack central, all fluff, no substance. Joan Walsh really thinks highly of herself, and according to her, she's justified in so doing!

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  3. Z - I hate pumpkin pie more than I like sex, and I like sex a lot. Let me know how your research goes.


    CFO - As soon as I saw the Hack List I thought of you.

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  4. I'm a big fan of the custard pie, in all its incarnations, but the results will need to be replicated in additional testing.

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  5. I assure you you can cum re-enacting fantasies of Tom Delay's conviction if you play suitable white noise in the back ground. Christine O'Donnell's condemnations of masturbation are my favorite, but Rush's hate speech or Sarah's three-way proposition to father and son North Korean dictators will do in a pinch.

    I would say I always need to be reminded of the virtues of not being a corporate hack, but I am so poorly skilled in that way, there never was hope for me there anyway.

    So, I'm poor as fuck.

    I only bought a Kombucha on Black Friday, but I did fly on a plane ticket my mom bought weeks before, so I hardly think I didn't feed the machine. Oh yeah, I bought a sub sandwich in the airport. Crap.

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