On Dylan’s Birthday, Appliance Dealers Ask “What If?”

HIBBING, Minnesota.  As tributes marking Bob Dylan’s 82nd birthday appeared in the national news last Wednesday, word spread around this town of 17,000 in northeastern Minnesota that its most famous local musician was being celebrated for his longevity and not, for once, his creativity.  What did he think of the milestone, this reporter asks Al Sklarski, a shift supervisor at a local iron mine.  “You mean Gary Puckett?  I used to love that song of his, what was it–‘Lady Willpower’?”

When informed that the subject of the profiles was Bob Dylan, the world-renowned singer-songwriter, Sklarski drew a blank.  “Never heard of him,” he said as he took off in his pick-up truck.

The confusion stems from the fact that when Dylan left Hibbing at the age of 18 he was known as Bobby Zimmerman, son of a local appliance store owner.  Dylan changed his name after moving to New York City, and skyrocketed to fame when the folk themes and styles he revived found a new audience among college protestors in the 1960’s.

Dylan, ne Zimmerman

But others in this town recall Zimmerman/Dylan with a mixture of pride and regret.  “He could have been one of the great ones,” says Mike O’Dwyer, owner of O’Dwyer Appliances.  “He could’ve become manager of his dad’s appliance store and done real well for himself.  Instead, he took the easy way out and became a Nobel Prize winner.”

Dylan got his start singing at “Sidewalk Days” promotions for his father’s store, which handled several major “white goods” brands including Maytag and Frigidaire.  An early attempt to capture the discontent of the fifties was his “Dryin’ in the Wind,” about the superior quality of a stackable, front-loading Amana washer/dryer:

How may loads can one dryer dry
Before its motor conks out?
Where do you get the best appliance deals–
At Zimmerman’s, there’s no doubt.

Competition was intense among aspiring folk singers in the late 50s and early 60s, but Dylan outpaced others with his gift for wrapping political commentary in powerful lyrical images.  “A lot of people thought Phil Ochs would emerge as the voice of that generation,” says Arnie Welstead, former editor of Folksong! magazine.  “Where Phil went wrong was he was tough on warranty claims if your ‘big ticket’ item broke.”

Phil Ochs:  “If only I’d had Dylan’s background in gas and electric ranges.”

In addition to Dylan and Puckett, Hibbing was home to Kevin McHale, forward for the Boston Celtics and later coach of the Minnesota Timberwolves, the professional basketball team, not the carnivorous predators.  The local Chamber of Commerce here has invited the three famous sons to a “Celebration of Hibbing” tentatively scheduled for October of this year when Puckett will turn 81.  When asked if he would attend, Dylan, a reclusive artist known for his obscure lyrics, replied in a cryptic email “What time is the Early Bird Special at Applebee’s?”

Among the Drunken Lab Mice

The National Institutes of Health spent over $1 million for mice to binge drink. 

                                                                                    News item.

We were sitting around, me and Mikey and Ike, nursing a pitcher of Bud Light at Bill’s Bar, voted Boston’s Worst Ambiance for three years running.  We’d scraped together the five bucks to pay for the beer at two dollars a head for a study on mouse phylogenies, whatever the hell they are.   That’s the only work any of us has had for months, and let me tell you it felt good to have some walkin’ around money for a change.

“It’s not like the old days, is it,” Mikey said, and he was right.  It used to be lab mice like us were busy as hell, shuttling between Harvard and MIT, running mazes, climbing little ladders, responding to stimuli all day long.

“Nope, it sure ain’t,” I said.  “We was rolling in it there for a while.”

“I miss the Charles River Rat Food,” Ike said.

“Yeah, them little brown pellets,” Mike recalled.  “The liver and onion flavor was the best.”

I picked up the pitcher and topped off everybody’s glass, trying to be as fair as I could.

“That does it,” I said when I was done.  “We got a dollar left–not even enough for a bag of Andy Capp Hot Fries.”

“See if Paddy will let us run a tab,” Ike suggested.

“I heard that,” the proprietor said, “and I got two words for you: N-O.”

“Cheez, you don’t have to get all shirty about it,” I said.  I picked up the copy of the Directory of Federal Grants we’d been looking at, trying to find some work in the shrinking world of funded scientific research.

“Anything at the Health, Education and Welfare Department?” Mike asked hopefully.

“Nothin’ doin’,” I said as I scanned the “H” pages.

“How about the Defense Department,” Ike suggested.  “They’re always comin’ up with some cockamamie scheme.”

“Like giving LSD to unsuspecting housewives in the 50’s?” I said.

“That would explain avocado green appliances,” Mikey said.

“How about . . .” I began, but Ike cut me off.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said.  “Don’t go there.”

“What?” Mikey asked.  “Let him finish.  Any port in a storm.”

“He’s gonna bring up cancer research again,” Ike said bitterly.

“Actually, I could go for a cigarette right about now,” Mike said.

“Look–we’ve had a great run, and we never had to stoop to Red Dye #2 or cigarettes,” Ike reminded him.  “I’ve got a couple of good years left in me, then I’m gonna retire to a nice triple-decker in the North End and eat mozzarella for the rest of my days.”

The guy at the next table got up and left his copy of The Boston Globe behind.  I sauntered over to check the lottery and the comics.  Laughter is always free.

“How’d the Sox do?” Ike asked.

“They won,” I said.  “We’re not mathematically eliminated yet.”

“It’s only May,” Ike said.

I gave him the sports pages–I can’t stomach the stories of millionaire ballplayers anymore.

“Let me see the front section,” Mikey said as he grabbed it from my hand.

“Since when did you turn into Mr. Current Events?” I asked.

He straightened himself up in a fit of umbrage.  “I like to know what’s going on in the world around me,” he said defensively.  “I may be just a mouse, but I’ve spent my whole professional life in the freakin’ Athens of America.”

“Suit yourself,” I said as scanned down the comics.  “Can someone explain Zippy the Pinhead to me?  I never get it.”

“You’re not supposed to ‘get it’–it’s absurdist humor,” Mikey said.  “Speakin’ of absurd, listen to this headline: ‘NIH to spend $1 million on binge-drinking mice.'”

“Ha,” Ikey laughed as he downed the last of his beer.  “What’s the Mark Twain line again?”

“There is no distinctly native American criminal class–except Congress,” Mike quoted.

“Wait a minute,” I said.  “Let me see that.”

I grabbed the paper and scanned the article.  “Don’t you guys realize what this means?” I asked, stumbling over the words in excitement.  “We’re back in business!  Paddy,” I called to the bartender.  “Drinks are on me!”

Available in Kindle format on amazon.com as part of the collection “Wild Animals of Nature!”

Notarizing the World’s Largest Malted Milk Ball

In 1977, the creator of the world’s largest malted milk ball had it notarized.

The Boston Globe

 

I have to admit, many years after the fact, my mom was wrong.

“Get your notary license, it’s a good sideline,” she said.  “You’ll never be out of work.  There’s too many dishonest people in the world, you can’t trust anybody anymore.  That’s why notaries will never go out of style.”

Ha–fat chance.  Last time I proposed to my long-time, on and off girlfriend Cynthia DeMasio, she said no way.  “Not until you get a real job,” she said.  “Being a notary public you just have delusions of grandeur.”

But what delusions they are!  Maybe I can’t officiate at wedding ceremonies, like snooty justices of the peace, but taking acknowledgments on real estate documents?  Authenticating signatures on affidavits?  Notaries are still your best bet, and at $2 a signature, you can’t beat our everyday low prices!

“Look out!  They’re gaining on us!”

 

What my mom had no way of foreseeing was the revolution in technology that now permits people to sign documents electronically!  No need for the face-to-face, “sit-down” closing.  Your mark–whether it’s a simple “X” or a roccoco “John Hancock” is good even though signed miles away.

At the same time, there has been a precipitious decline in notarial ethics; notaries who take acknowledgments over the phone with a wink that no one at the other end of the line can see.  Notaries who “witness” signatures they’ve never seen, but have merely heard about, depending on the so-called “hearsay” exception.  Talk about bending the rules to the breaking point!

“Can’t stay . . . awake.  Blog post . . . boring.”

 

I decide I might as well take a nap since the notary profession seems to be in such a deep depression, when my cellphone buzzes.  I look at the screen, see a number I don’t recognize, but decide to answer it any way.  In the immortal words of Roy Cohn, closeted gay Republican lawyer and assistant to Senator Joseph McCarthy, “Pick up the phone–it might be business.”

Roy Cohn

 

“Hullo,” I answer drearily.  How would you answer if your last notarial assignment was a retail installment sales contract–three months ago?

“Hello, I’m looking for a notary public–are you available?”

Thank God my phone is a cordless model, otherwise I might have choked myself lunging with excitement.  “Twenty-five hours a day, eight days a week!” I say breathlessly.  “What kind of job is it?”

“A record-breaking piece of candy.”

I review in my mind all the phone gags of my youth: Is your refrigerator running?  Do you have Sir Walter Raleigh in a can?  Nope–nothing registers.

“Well, why don’t you let him out?”

 

“I . . . uh . . . might have to charge a premium for such an unusual request.”

“That’s okay–this is my only shot at getting in the Guiness Book of World Records.”

“Where are you?”

“Over at the Whoppers plant, in Canton.”

“I know it well.”  Only too well, as I have been known to ingest an entire Whoppers theatre-size box of the the flavorful treats before the previews are over at the Framingham 14 Megaplex, thereby bringing on a near-fatal case of the hiccups.  “I’ll be there in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

I grab Dulcie, my pet lamb, and put her in the front seat of my 2006 Pontiac Torrent.  “You can shake it once on the drive, but save the second one for when we pull in the driveway.”

“Bah,” she says.  “I was hoping to catch Antique Roadshow this afternoon.”  She’s so wooly-headed–she watches PBS all the time.

I head out to Route 128, America’s Technology Highway, then south to Canton, hoping to make it before this plum assignment gets scarfed up by somebody else in the high-powered stamp-eat-stamp world of notarization.  Because my notarial income has been flat for the past two decades, I don’t have access to GPS and must find my way by sight to the job, with Dulcie riding “shotgun” as she navigates.

“Would you hurry the fuck up?”

 

“Turn off here,” she says sharply as we reach Route 138.

“Are you sure?”

“You’re asking me?” she asks, rhetorically and incredulous.  “You couldn’t find your way out of a Barnes & Noble bag if there were instructions on the sales slip.”

“Okay, maybe I am a little introverted,” I say.

“Now a left,” Dulcie says, and I see what has to be the world’s largest malted milk ball, sitting in the driveway of a modest split-level.  Not my tastes, but . . .

“The guy’s waiting,” Dulcie snaps.  “You can’t sit there woolgathering with an interior monologue!”

I get out, grab my notary bag, and approach a man who is throwing sandbags around the base of the giant confection in the apparent hope of stabilizing it.

“Glad you could make it,” he says.  “All the other notaries were busy.”

“It’s student loan application season,” I say, removing my stamp and seal.

“What’s with the sheep?” he asks.

“I need two witnesses, at least one of whom must be disinterested.”

“And believe me,” Dulcie says, “nobody could be less interested in your bloated malted milk ball than me.”

“You’re thinking of ‘uninterested,'” I say, parsing a fine point of notarial jurisprudence for her.  “‘Disinterested’ means you have no prospect of financial gain from your service, ‘uninterested’ means . . .”

“Would you cut the palaver?” the man says.  “There could be malted milk ball makers in parts unknown who are gaining on me.”

“Fine,” I say, and ask him to raise his right hand.  “Do you solemnly swear that this giant malted milk ball is solely the product of your efforts?”

“I do.”

“That it was made entirely of fresh, natural ingredients like sugar, corn syrup, malted milk, whey . . .”

“Like Little Miss Muffet, who sat on a tuffet, eating her curds and whey?” Dulcie interjects.

“On the nosey,” I reply, and return to the grave and solemn act of authentication.  “Along with 2% or less of really weird-sounding stuff like tapioca dextrin, resinous glaze, sorbitan tristearate and soy lecithin.”

“Soy isn’t so bad.”  It’s Dulcie again.

“Nothing in there I wouldn’t eat myself,” the man says.

“And is this your free act and deed?” I ask.

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” the man asks.

“That nobody’s making you do this,” Dulcie says.  “It’s part of the routine.”

“Of course not,” the man replies.  “Is it official now?”

“You didn’t say ‘yes’ yet,” I remind him.

“Freaking Mother-May-I . . . YES!” he nearly screams.  “I’m gonna be in the Guiness Book!”  The guy’s ecstatic, and as I look around at the pathetic life he’s living–aluminum siding on the house, cracking driveway, kid’s “Big Wheels” car in the yard–I can understand why.

“How much do I owe you?” he asks.

“Let’s see,” I say, taking out my price chart. “There’s usually 18 pieces in a 1.75 ounce package.  That’s, uh, 162 pieces in a pound, that thing’s got to weigh 500 pounds . . .”

“Easy,” says Dulcie.

“So, it would be $2 for a regular malted milk ball, 2 times 500 times 162 equals–$162,000.

“What?  That’s highway robbery!”

“Hey–you want your place in history or not?”

The guy stops and thinks a moment.  “I got a better idea,” he says.

“What?” I ask.  You learn to be skeptical as a person whose job it is to take sworn statements that can literally mean the difference between recording a condominium smoke detector certificate–or not.

“I’ll give you $3 and a free box of malted milk balls.”

“Deal!”

Learning to Live With Radical Presbyterians

Despite the havoc they have wreaked and the flight delays they have caused, there is a new, more nuanced attitude these days towards those pejoratively referred to as “Islamofascists” in the West.  Yes, you can still find scary videos of Muslim men chanting “Jesus Wasn’t a Jew!” on the internet, and yes the U.S. is deploying A-10 Warthog attack planes equipped with GBU-39/B (not available in women’s sizes) “bunker-buster” bombs to the Mideast to “send a message” to Iran, but here in the good ol’ U.S. of A. the rough surface of fanaticism have been smoothed down by the belt-sander of religious tolerance.

Proponents of pragmatic thinking say a more tolerant approach can succeed internationally where force has failed to persuade terrorists to drop the craziness and join the community of civilized nations.  It’s certainly worth a try.  After all, it seems to have worked with Presbyterians.

John Calvin:  “Snnf–do I smell popcorn?”

 

Presbyterianism, founded on the theological teachings of John Calvin in Scotland, is a mainline Protestant denomination in America, but in its formative years it raised the hackles of Anglicans, Catholics and just about every other religion it came into contact with.  Its adherents were stereotyped as humorless, sexless enemies of free thought and inquiry.  In an 1822 letter Thomas Jefferson reported that in his village of Charlottesville, where Presbyterians were one of many denominations, “all mix in society with perfect harmony.”  Where Presbyterianism prevailed “undividedly” he noted, their “ambition and tyranny would tolerate no rival” and they succumbed to a “fever of fanaticism.” Sounds familiar.

Jefferson:  “Sorry–I don’t date Presbyterian chicks.”

 

Don’t get me wrong.  I know some very nice Scots Presbyterians—in fact I married one.  Humorlessness was part of the attraction, the way stand-up comics like the challenge of a tough audience.  But I truly believe that Islamofascists can be persuaded to temper their dogmatic tendencies, just as the Presbyterians were.

Take beheadings, a barbaric form of execution that is applied without trial by Islamic radicals.  Before they switched to the more enlightened approach of hanging, beheading was the preferred method of capital punishment among Edinburgh’s Presbyterians.  The resulting portable body part was then used as a decoration on the gates of the city.   Click on “Outdoor Accessories and Pillows” at the Pottery Barn website for a current selection of Presbyterian patio headware.

“Honey, could you light the Dissenters Head Lamps, please?”

 

As standards of Presbyterian decency rose over time, a more humane technique was adopted; the decedent was beheaded after being hanged.

The monolithic outlook of Islamofascists, which drives them to seek a world-wide caliphate founded on Shari’a law, finds echoes in Scottish history as well.  In 1564, two men who had merely toasted the King of England’s health were whipped, nailed to gallows and cut to the bone with razors.  To make the punishment fit the crime, their tongues were drawn out to full length and bound with sticks and thread.

Turning on its head the notion that, if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.

Presbyterian Pool Party:  “Hey you kids–no dunking!”

Consider the punishments handed out to those who violate restrictions on sexual activity in Islamic countries—the public stonings and floggings for adultery and fornication.  Now compare and contrast, if you will, Sir John Herring, who at the dawn of the 14^th century in Scotland burned his daughter and her lover alive, while they were still in the house.  So much for Scottish thrift.

Over time, Presbyterians moderated their views on the proper punishment for what we today consider “victimless” crimes.  By the end of the 16^th century the laws of Scotland reflected a three-tiered sentencing guideline for fornication: a forty-pound fine for the first offense, eight days in prison for the second, and three duckings in the “foulest pool in town” for subsequent violations.

No wonder Scottish birth rates are low.

This is not to suggest that Presbyterians are a perfect model for imitation by other sects and creeds.  The coffee at their social hours after services is terrible–but nowadays you can bring your own from Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts.  If you buy Munchkins at the latter, remember the Rule of Kindergarten: Bring enough for everybody!

So it is possible that over time the radical Islamofascists of today and their descendants will become just as pacific as Presbyterians, who nowadays allow infidels to attend their church basement sock-hops.

      Sock hop!

This is not to say that all of the violence has been bred out of the Scots Presbyterians, however.

When my wife reads this, she’s going to kill me.

Available in Kindle format on amazon.com as part of the collection “Oh . . . My . . . God.”

The Poetry Kings

A grey day in the offices of plangent voices, the poetry quarterly I helped found nearly three decades ago, and from which I was summarily ousted in a hostile takeover in the early 80′s by Elena Gotchko, the Emily Dickinson-wannabe whom I had taken under my wing when she was still a naif young ingenue, cutting her own hair and not doing a very good job of it.

“You like . . . trochees?”

Elena had marched in to announce that she’d become “elena gotchko,” and with her new boyfriend, daniel de la sota, a hulking Frankenstein’s monster of a poetaster, had commandeered the only electric typewriter in the joint and proclaimed that a new era of poetry was about to begin. I was out and she and her lumbering companion were in.

So I suppose I should have felt a little frisson of satisfaction at her call, late last night, to say that she needed my help getting the summer edition out. Her body’s immune system had apparently rejected the lower case “g” she’d added to her last name, and she was groggy from the antibiotics. The doctors were fairly sure she’d recover, but the botched transplant meant that she might have to live out the rest of her days as elena Gotchko.

Back in the saddle!

An ordinary editor would have cringed at the submissions stacked high on the desks, tables, floor, air conditioner and kitty box for the magazine’s mascot, Neruda, a male tuxedo cat who’d started as an unpaid intern five years ago, and had since been promoted to the position of reader. We’d sit him down on a manuscript and if he . . . uh . . . relieved himself, it was returned to the author with our form rejection letter saying it did not fit our needs at this time.

“Your sonnet sucks!”

As I say, the slush piles heaped around me were daunting, but I was undeterred. I was just glad to be back in the game again, shaping the course of American literature. Maybe it wouldn’t mean much to somebody like Archibald MacLeish, who said poems shouldn’t mean but be, but I was happy just to be where I was.

MacLeish: “What I mean is, a poem should not mean . . . anything. I think.”

Until I looked up and saw Sound E-Fex and Back Wurdz, two rappers who struck fear in the hearts of poetry editors everywhere. The modern branch of their posse was known as The Poetry Kings; the classical branch was called The Latin Poetry Kings. In either manifestation, they were a poetry quarterly’s worst nightmare; men who were determined to git published or die tryin’. When they submitted a hard-hitting, slice-of-life, straight-outta-Bloomsbury tranche-de-vie, somebody usually went down ’cause of all the hyphens flyin’ around.

“You gonna publish our stuff, or we gonna have to go crazy on you?”

”Yo,” Wurdz said. I recognized the two from the picture that appears above ”Pimp Yo Poem,” their monthly verse column in The Source, The Bible of Hip-Hop.

“Hi there,” I said, playing dumb, a game I’d perfected in grade school when I’d hide behind my hardbound copy of “Our American Government” and crank out crude couplets. “The submission deadline for the winter issue is past, if that’s what . . .”

“We got our stuff in before yo deadline,” Sound said. “We wanna know whether you gonna publish it, or we gonna have to go crazy on you?”

elena Gotchko: Nice job on the bangs!

“We have a fairly rigorous review process here,” I began. “After initial consideration by a reader, a poem must be approved by two editors, at least one (1) of whom shall not have slept with the poet, then it goes to our board of–”

“I don’t wanna hear ’bout yo board of academic advisors,” Wurdz said. “Eggheads ain’t never done nuthin’ good for poetry.”

I nodded my head reluctantly–I had to agree with him on that one. Rappers may not be everybody’s glass of sherry, but they’ve added more life to the world of poetry than a thousand professors. They’re the 21st century’s version of Arthur Rimbaud, who produced his best work while still in his teens, and gave up creative writing before he turned 21 to work in his dad’s business.

Rimbaud: “Spackle?  Aisle 3.”

“Okay, well, I guess since you’ve made a personal visit to the office, I could take another look at what you’ve written,” I said. I knew this would be unfair to the hundreds of other versifiers who’d submitted the products of their late-night waking dreams, who’d torn their tortured lines from their hearts, their souls, and in some cases their spleens; but the men standing before me were bearing Glocks.

“Let me see, what was the title of your work?” I asked.

“The Land of Counterpane,” Wurdz said.

I gave him a look that expressed volumes, or at least an epic poem. “You realize, don’t you, that Robert Louis Stevenson has already used that title?”

An angry Stevenson: “Don’t you go infringin’ my s**t, you waffle puffin’ punk!”

“So what if he did?” E-Fex asked. “Copyright done run out.  We sampled it.”

He was right, but that was hardly the point. A reputable–or semi-reputable–poetry quarterly could hardly publish a known plagiarism. Unless The Poetry Kings were going to make a substantial tax-deductible contribution, I allowed myself to think in a moment of mercenary madness.

I flipped through the reject pile and found what I was looking for. “All right, let me give it a second read,” I said. “But I can’t promise you anything.”

I leaned back in my chair, turned on my hand-held scansion device, and started reading.

Hand-held scansion device: Don’t start reading without it.

 

When I was sick and lay a-bed,
With several bullets in my head,
Around me all my firearms lay,
To keep me happy all the day.

“You’re off to a good start,” I said. They smiled at me, showing their grillz, the hip-hop orthodontic devices that are purely cosmetic in nature. I read on.

And sometimes for an hour or so
I’d watch my leaden homies go,
Tricked out sick and lookin’ good,
Among the bed-clothes through the hood;

“You’ve spun a rather elaborate conceit,” I said, hoping to manage their expectations. “It will be interesting to see whether you can conclude in a manner that makes the work into a literary whole.”

“Wus he talkin’ ’bout?” Wurdz asked Sound.

“He wants to see whether we game or lame.”

“Testing–a-b-b-a, c-d-e, c-d-e.”

I nodded. He had divined the essence of my task. I picked up the paper–I noticed it was scented with Courvoisier–and continued:

I’d sometimes send my Escalade
‘Neath knees bent upwards, spreading shade;
A sound–a shot?–bestilled my heart,
‘Twas but an under-blanket fart.

“Nice touch, that,” I said with admiration. “And now,” I announced with upraised eyebrow, “let’s see if you can nail the dismount.”

“Wus he talkin’ bout?” Sound asked.

“Like Mary Lou Retton,” Wurdz replied. “Anybody can git up on da pommel horse, only a champ can git down off it clean.”

“On the nosey,” I said, then looked over the top of my glasses and continued.

I was the gangsta great and still
That sits upon the pillow-hill,
And sees before him, dale and plain,
Yaddida, shaboopalaboopy pain.

It was, to say the least, a letdown. “What happened with the last line?” I asked. “You just trailed off without completing either the sense or the form of the poem.”

The two co-poets seemed embarrassed. “I’ll be the first to admit,” said Wurdz, “that it needs more work.”

“What the hell is a ‘shaboopalaboopy’ anyway?” I asked.

“It’s a neologism,” Sound said. “It originated with Bay Area rappers, the hyphy movement. They used it to . . . make their raps better by”–he hesitated, apparently chagrined–”filling in spaces.”

“So basically, it’s the hip hop equivalent of ‘Yadda yadda yadda’,” I said, a bit scornfully.

“We thought we’d have a better chance if we submitted something on our forearms.”

“Thass right,” a woman’s voice said from the doorway. It was Pho’Netique, a stone fox who was known to contribute to Pimp Yo Poem when the guys couldn’t get their copy in on time.

“I’m afraid we’re going to have to pass on this,” I said to the 2 Jive Crew in front of me. “Take another crack at that last stanza. You’ve got something there, but it needs a little work.”

They were crestfallen, having been shown up for what they were–poetic wankstas–in front of a woman. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a lot of manuscripts . . .”

“Wait!” It was Pho-Netique’s turn to whine. “I submitted some confessional poems a while back and I was wondering if you’d had a chance to read them.”

“Uh, I don’t recall,” I said. “What was the title?”

“The Bell Jar.”

Available in print and Kindle format on amazon.com as part of the collection “poetry is kind of important.”

Study Shows 9 Out of 7 Americans Lack Basic Math Skills

WASHINGTON, D.C.  A new report issued today by the American Society of Arithmetic Instructors reveals that innumeracy–mathematical illiteracy–has remained stubbornly resistant to efforts to improve Americans’ math skills.

“Copying from each other isn’t going to help–you’re both idiots.”

“Many Americans lack the basic skills to understand NFL point spreads or to subtract cents-off coupons in checkout lines,” said Wilson Rath, a fourth-grade math instructor at Bernie Carbo Elementary School in Seekonk, Massachusetts.  “Our productivity suffers because of toll takers who can’t make change.”

Bernie Carbo:  “Is 2 an even number after Daylight Savings Time, or does it go up?”

The study was based on a survey that asked adults basic math questions posed to contestants on the Fox Network’s “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?”  “We asked people how many places they could carry pi out to,” says Norman Salkic, who co-authored the study.  “Eleven percent said 3.14 was as far as they could go, 21% said they didn’t serve pie, 47% said they didn’t offer take-out, and the rest claimed we had the wrong number.”

         Pi are square, but pie is round.

Educators such as Rath blamed the tendency of local politicians to name schools after sports heroes rather than scientists and mathematicians.  “Bernie Carbo once blew a sign because he didn’t know whether 2 was an even or an odd number,” he notes of the former Boston Red Sox outfielder for whom his school is named.  “Our youth baseball programs are at risk of falling further behind the Japanese, who win the Little League World Series every year anyway.”

While the final numbers have not yet been tabulated because researchers used solar-powered calculators indoors, Salkic says it appears that nine out of every seven Americans may need remedial help in computing numbers.  “That’s 1.2857%,” he observes, “which is a lot.”

Cal Tech Supercomputer Helps Stars Pick Weird Baby Names

PASADENA, California.  Amid growing concern that the world’s store of words has nearly been depleted by entertainment industry parents, the California Institute of Technology today announced the development of a supercomputer that will assist Hollywood stars in coming up with unique names for their children.

“It has become not just socially acceptable but downright fashionable to saddle your kid with a weird name like ‘Pilot Inspektor’,” said Dr. Philip Walker of Cal Tech’s Center for Advanced Computing Research, referring to the name chosen by actor Jason Lee and his wife Beth Riesgraf for their son.  “It’s like giving your child a tattoo while he’s still in diapers, with none of the commotion you’d get if you poked him with a needle.”

Baby Keanu Reeves:  “It’s an anagram for ‘a nuke’.”

The new computer will be dubbed “BABYNAMER,” an acronym that stands for “baby name” with an “r” at the end.  Funding will be provided by a coterie of Hollywood’s biggest stars including Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt.  Pitt and his wife Angelina Jolie have a daughter named “Shiloh Nouvel,” which means “No Checks Accepted” in Nama, the language of Namibia, the African nation where the child was born.

Shiloh Nouvel:  “Why’d you give me such a stupid name!”

“People think of actors and actresses as self-centered people who don’t care about anything but money and fame,” said Cal Tech’s Walker.  “But many were concerned that there wouldn’t be any names left when they had a child, and that made them open up their hearts and their wallets to us.”

The weird name movement is believed to have begun with Frank Zappa, the eccentric rock musician who named his children “Dweezil” and “Moonunit.”  Zappa’s flights of fancy have since been topped by comedian Penn Jillette, who has inflicted the names “Zolten” and “Moxie Crimefighter” on his offspring.

Cute widdle Moxie Crimefighter!

Cal Tech says BABYNAMER will be up and running in the summer of 2023 after it passes through “beta” testing, the tech world’s term for the process by which bugs in software are exterminated.  “We did a dry run the other day that assumed a B-list actor with a background in daytime soaps, and a loopy wife who campaigns for mandatory condom use by coyotes,” Professor Walker explained.  “The computer spit out ‘Larry’ and ‘Julie,’ so we’ve got some work to do.”

The Logical Positivist Boxing Team

A.J. Ayer, a 77-year-old philosopher, confronted Mike Tyson who was forcing himself upon then little-known model Naomi Campbell at a party. When Ayer demanded that Tyson stop, the boxer said: “Do you know who the fuck I am? I’m the heavyweight champion of the world,” to which Ayer replied: “And I am the former Wykeham Professor of Logic. We are both pre-eminent in our field. I suggest that we talk about this like rational men.”

                               Ben Rogers, “A.J. Ayer: A Life”

Ayer:  “Are you talkin’ to me?”

 

I dunno as I got the guys I need.  I mean, I got Rudolf Carnap at lightweight, he’s comin’ along okay.  We call him “Carnap the Magnificent,” trying to get him some Friday Night Fights on ESPN2 with Teddy Atlas.  Ring Magazine rates him #4 contender in the Logical Positivist division, but he needs to learn how to grab and hold, you know what I’m sayin’?  You can punch yourself out against a phenomenologist if you don’t know how to clinch, that’s all I’m sayin’.

Rudolf Carnap:  Needs to develop a jab.

 

I dunno as I’d match Carnap against Karl Popper.  Popper, he’s a big critic of logical positivism, always running his mouth.  What the fuck does he know?  So I says to the guy I says, “You and your freakin’ ‘falsifiability.’  You think that’s better than verifiability?  Shut your trap, you stupid mook!”

ESPN2′s Teddy Atlas, showing scars received in Oxford University philosophical debates.

 

I wish I still had Lou Wittgenstein, but he turned pro.  I can’t blame him.  You can’t make no money bein’ an amateur.  If he hadn’t turned pro I coulda taken him to the Olympics, but that’s water over the bridge, what can I say.  Lou had the right idea; make money and give it to the rich.  You give it to the poor, they’re just gonna blow it on booze and drugs and dames and horses.  ‘Course he coulda give some to me–I woulda known what to dood with it.

Karl Popper:  What a mook.

 

People say I oughta give Bertrand Russell another chance.  I say no freakin’ way–too many shots to the head writin’ Principia Mathematica, he’s off doin’ peace marches and nookular dismemberment–he’s lost his marbles.

Wittgenstein:  “Lou–you okay?  How many fingers am I holdin’ up?”

 

No, I gotta go wit da guys I got for the Golden Gloves Tournament.  We’re up against some real heavyweights like Thomas Kuhn, Mr. Structure of Scientific Revolutions and all dat crap.  Good ting I got A.J. Ayer in that weight class.

Thomas Kuhn, Willard Van Orman Quine

 

And cruiserweights like Willard Van Orman Quine–I could knock his freakin’ beret offa him!

Me–what am I sayin’!  I mean one of my guys, like Hans Hahn, or Otto Neurath.

That’s a problem fight managers have, we’s always confusin’ ourselves with our fighters.  It’s a problem of identity.

Good thing I gotta lotta philosophers around to help me with it.

 

Available in Kindle format on amazon.com as part of the collection “Let’s Get Philosophical.”

At the James Joyce Piggly-Wiggly

VERSAILLES, Mo. Lemoyne Green’s family has been in the grocery business in this town in south central Missouri, pronounced “ver-SALES,” going back four generations. “I guess you could say food is in our blood,” Lemoyne says with a barely-detectible trace of irony. “I know when I give blood they always give me a couple of fig newtons to eat, and that’s something we sell over in Aisle 6, Cookies, Snacks and Syrups.”

Green’s Piggly Wiggly

 

Lemoyne had hoped to break away from his small town roots, earning bachelors and masters degrees in English at the University of Iowa before “hitting a wall” when it came time to write the required dissertation for his Ph. D. “You go into the library every morning and look at all the little 3 by 5 note cards you’ve filled out, and you just get a pit in your stomach,” he recalls with apparent anxiety.

Storm clouds a brewin’

 

So Lemoyne returned to his home town with more education than he needed to run a grocery store, but less time to ponder the deep subject he’d specialized in: the difficult “stream-of-consciousness” prose of James Joyce, author of “Finnegans Wake,” the work ranked #1 on the Modern Language Association’s list of “Books People Lie About Having Read.”

Royal Theatre, downtown Versailles

 

“It wasn’t easy making the adjustment at first,” Lemoyne says, “then I decided to incorporate what I’d learned into our customer’s shopping experience.” His first step in splicing the two strands of his existence was to change the motto of the business–”Quality, Value, Selection”–which had been printed on the store’s bags since the 1880′s. “That’s fine, but very superficial and not at all subversive, which is the hallmark of Joyce’s writing,” Green notes. He changed the logo to read “Silence, Exile and Cunning,” the tools used by Stephen Dedalus in “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” to express himself as wholly and freely as he can.

James Joyce: “In Aisle 3 would you brighthearted find Count the Chocula.”

 

Customers didn’t complain about the change, emboldening Green to go further. Promotional announcements over the store’s public address system began to take on a meandering, modernist aspect reminiscent of Joyce’s “Ulysses”:

“In Aisle 4 the hungry come that man eft seeking yogurt fruit with on bottom, ywimpled to Delores the express lane clerk that her have a nice day levin leaping lightens his load.”

Townspeople slowly detected the shift from the mundane to the highbrow, and began to ask about it at the store’s checkout lanes. “It’s about James Joyce,” Mona Morton, a gum-chewing twenty-something with a Harley Davidson tattoo on her bicep says in reply to a question from Bob Visbeck, a farm implements dealer.

Jim Joyce, umpire: “A way a lone at last to the showers you commodius vicus bum!”

 

“Jim Joyce, the former major league baseball umpire?” Visbeck asks.

“Naw, he wrote a book or sumpin’. Do you have any coupons to redeem?”

“Bleep it says if food she scans blonk it honks if need to price check Aisle 5.”

 

By the end of March Green hopes to have his entire workforce trained in the nuances of Joyce’s peculiar tongue, even down to his teenaged baggers. “I’ve been workin’ overtime with Duane Merken here,” Green says to this reporter. “Go ahead and show him your stuff,” he says to the boy, who takes a deep breath before speaking to a woman whose purchases crowd the conveyor belt and are held back by only a slim, plastic baton.

“Paper plastic plastic paper,” the boy begins. “By minivan along State Fair Road or on South Limit is it parked. You have chicken livers, Wet Ones and a pack of fags, good no good for you remember no tip no tipping yes I have girlfriend yes know your daughter not in Old Testament way she has eczema right?”

 

Available in Kindle format on amazon.com as part of the collection “Dead Writers Make More Money.”

My Dark Horse Run for Anti-Pope

It was one of the darkest periods of my life: my girlfriend had dumped me,  the firm where I worked had broken up in a fight between two factions, neither  of which *sniff* wanted me to join them in their new ventures.  I was at loose  ends, with no one who’d listen to my troubles but my old buddy, Bates.

“I’m  running because I believe I can make a difference.  To me.”

“So you’ve got nothing lined-up, job-wise,” he said as he tipped back a  longneck Narragansett beer.

“I’ve got a few resumes out,” I said.  “Nobody’s calling me back.”

“Hmm,” he hummed.  “There always the comfy, cozy public sector.  Indoor work  and no heavy lifting, as we say in Boston.”

“You brought Cool Ranch Doritos?  Awesome!”

“I don’t know any politicians,” I said.  “That’s kind of essential, isn’t  it?”

“It’s the essence of essential,” he replied, staring out the window at a  breathtaking view of the Massachusetts Turnpike.  “How about saving men’s  souls?”

“You mean life insurance?  No, I’ve never been a salesman.”

“Not that, dingleberry.  I meant the Holy Roman Catholic Church.”

“Are they hiring?”

“For entry-level jobs–sure, all the time.”  He paused for effect.  “You take  a vow of poverty, and they make sure you keep it.”

“So why would I want to apply there?”

He snorted with contempt.  “You don’t answer the Help Wanted ads, stunod.   You aim high.”

“How high?”

“Il Papa,” he said triumphantly.

It was my turn to laugh.  “Dude–I don’t think you’ve been paying attention.   The Pope is elected according to canon law.  He stays in office until he  dies.”

“Go to the head of the class–loser!” he snapped, and I felt the same hot  breath of scorn that had blown my hair dry in fifth grade as I rattled off one  correct answer after another in a lightning round session in the tenets of the  Baltimore Catechism, only to be pounded to a pulp at recess by boys apparently envious of my knowledge of the Communion of Saints.

“If you’re going to play by the rules, you’ll never get anywhere,” he said.   “If you want to BE somebody–run for Antipope.”

Pope  Peyton I, three-time RCC Player of the Year

It was a daring suggestion, fraught with risk–but it promised great  rewards.  The Vatican is the world’s second-largest private landowner, after  Starbucks.  They’ve got diamonds, jewels and great works of art.  I’d be ex officio Commissioner of CYO basketball leagues around the  world!

“How, exactly,” I began hesitantly, “does one go about . . . running for  antipope?” I asked him.

“It’s not as hard as you’d think.  Antipopes go almost as far back as Popes,”  Bates said, reaching for a handful of Cool Ranch Doritos, the unique combination  of great taste and good fun rolled into one great snack.  “The first–as every  good Catholic smart-aleck ought to know–was St. Hippolytus in 217  A.D.”

I cringed a bit.  I hate it when people throw Catholic lore or liturgy that I don’t know back in my face.  Like my Jewish friends who caught me leaning the  wrong way one night, confusing the Immaculate Conception with virgin birth.   Ouch!

“So,” I said.  “What’s involved?”

“You gotta ‘go into schism,’ like Pope Novatian did in 251 A.D.”

“What’s that mean?”

He turned and looked at me with a cold glare.  I sensed that he was trying to  figure out if I had the fire in my belly.

“You don’t mess around,” he said and there was a strange, hard element–like  carbon or titanium–in his tone.  “When everybody in the world is saying the guy in St. Peter’s is the Pope, you simply say–”

“What?”

H.L.  Mencken

“Ding dong, you’re wrong.”

The elegance of his solution struck me as bogus.  I’m a Menckenian, and  believe as he did that for every complex problem there is an answer that is  clear, simple and wrong.  “You can’t just announce that you’re Pope and  expect people to follow you,” I said.

Bates shook his head, as if in wonder at how hopelessly naive I was.   “Listen, you dingbat” he said as he got up to play Willie Ruff’s Gregorian  Chant, Plain Chant and Spirituals.  “Might makes right, and votes make  Popes.”

“What’s that mean?”

“The Pope was elected by the College of Cardinals.  You go out, get  yourself some disgruntled bishops, guys who lost a few parishes in the last  round of church closures, and get them to vote for you!”

“Can you really do that?”

“Can you really do that?” he repeated in a mincing tone, mocking my  diffidence.  “Do you think Novatian asked anybody if he could ‘do that’ before  he did it?  No!  He just went out, rounded up three disaffected bishops from  southern Italy and–voila!  He’s just as much the Pope as your namesake,  Cornelius.”

Antipope Novatian, as drawn by my buddy Bates, making fun of Pope Cornelius

Bates was persuasive but still, there was something that didn’t seem  quite right about the whole scheme.  “If it’s that easy,” I said after taking a  moment to mull his plan over, “why don’t you become the antipope?”

Usually so confident, almost cocky in his approach to life, Bates flinched  like St. Sebastian getting hit in the armpit with an arrow.

“You think I don’t want to?” he said, a cloud of regret passing over his  usually-blase countenance.  “If I thought I had a chance, I’d be out on  the campaign trail in the batting of a gnat’s eyelash.”

“Is that shorter or longer than two shakes of a lamb’s tail?”

“Way shorter,” he said.  “C’mere.”

He led me into his room, to his closet, and reached up on the shelf above the  clothes rod.  He pulled down a stack of notebooks and sat down on his bed.   “Take a look at these,” he said.

Theresa  of Avila vs. Catherine of Siena: Cast your vote on-line–now!

We flipped through the pages, filled with drawings Bates had done of himself  in full papal regalia; mitre, crozier, the works.  Beneath them he’d practiced  signing autographs as “Pope Bates I.”

“I . . . had no idea,” I said as I patted him on the back to console him.   “So why did you give up . . . on your dream?”

“I’m a marked man,” he said, his voice catching on the lump in his throat.   “I took on the Pope over heretical baptism.”

“Ah,” I exclaimed, understanding immediately.  The question whether former  heretics need to be re-baptized in order to be reconciled to the Church has  started more bar fights in the neighborhood around St. Peters than who’s cuter,  St. Theresa of Avila or St. Catherine of Siena.  “Funny, isn’t it,” I said to my  old University of Chicago roommate.

“What?”

Leopold  and Loeb

“That the same dorm that produced thrill killers Leopold and Loeb produced  two Pope wanna-be’s.”

He laughed, more at himself than at my lame attempt at a joke.  “You go  ahead,” he said.  “I’ve got no chance.  The Pope and his cordon of nefarious  henchmen . . .”

“Like on Rocky and Bullwinkle?”

“Right.  They follow me everywhere–I wouldn’t live past the first  primary.”

“They aren’t monitoring your brain waves, are they?”

“How did you know?” he screamed in mock paranoia.  We both knew that, as  powerful as the Vatican might be, they couldn’t read our minds from afar.  As  long as we didn’t drink fluoridated water.

“Have you ever run for office?” he said as he put his notebooks back into the  closet of his broken dreams.

“Three times.”

“And what’s your record?”

“Two wins and one loss.”

“Pretty good,” he said.  “What were your wins?”

“Fifth grade class president, and trustee of the 337 Marlborough Street  Condominium Trust.”

“And the loss?”

“Junior High Student Council President.”

“What was the margin of victory?”

“I lost in a landslide,” I replied, and not without a trace of  bitterness.

“What was the problem?”

“I knew nothing about retail politics,” I said.  “I hadn’t heard Tip  O’Neill’s famous line.”

“All politics is local?”

“No–if you want people’s votes you’ve got to ask for them.”

“Right,” he said.  “Well–do you know any renegade priests who could use a  little–‘walking around money’ to vote for you instead of Pope Francis?”

I thought for a moment.  “There’s that guy with the clerical collar and the  tambourine who patrols lower Washington Street.”

“Okay, well–that’s a start.  Does he control any swing voters?”

“Sure.”

“Who?”

“An all-important demographic.  The winos on the bench outside South  Station.”

Available in Kindle format on amazon.com as part of the collection “Here’s to His Holiness: Fake Stories About Real Popes.”