MODERN WISDOM
NUMBER 302
SEPTEMBER 2023
Copyright 2023 Francis DiMenno
dimenno@gmail.com
http://www.dimenno.wordpress.com
1. AMBITION
PART TWENTY-ONE: THE MOST IMPORTANT LESSON OF ALL
Dear Bill,
“The Doctor,” Penelope told me, after I had woken from what was in essence a sixteen-hour sleep, “tells me that you will want to take steps to alleviate your arthritis….” and then she recited the usual familiar litany of all of my best-beloved comestibles which I must henceforth eschew–red meat, sweetbreads, shellfish, salted foods, fruit juice, and, of course, alcohol.
“Things” may very well go better with Coca-Cola–I’d hardly be the one to say; I never drink the ghastly stuff–but they certainly go better–a lot better–with booze. I drink to give glory to G-d, and all the fruits of His creation. Liquor is the lubricant of boon companionship, a signal aid to good fellowship, a benison to the shy and backward and a stimulant to the articulate. I can hardly imagine a long and miserable life spent without the blessings of strong drink.
Doctors truly are a bunch of joy-killers, from the Surgeon General (with his ridiculous uniform) on down. They’re not fooling me at all. I’m certain that, among themselves, they feast on brobdingnagian rashers of bacon, fried eggs, sugary pastries, and gallons of scorching coffee black as melted midnight (to quote my father’s good friend Senator “Cotton Ed” Smith), and bitter as Lucifer on his fiery throne. (Medice, cura te ipsum!) They might as well be telling me not to drive my convertible with the top down. After all, why did I spend years cultivating eclectic tastes in food and drink (lightly roasted and salted lamb tongues go quite well with a full-bodied red), only to be told at the ultimatum that I must restrict myself to the bland diet of a meek herbivore–namely, lettuce, bean sprouts, cracked wheat, chickpeas, almonds, turnip greens and abominable graham crackers. Must I live like a starving bear, an indigent sharecropper, or a toothless Arabian grandsire? As a mere invalid? “No more sauces or gravies for this one,” says Doctor Marquis de Sade. And I’m expected to fall in line like a bleating sheep. (Those lamb tongues were some toothsome morsels–gout be damned!) “No more swordfish or mackerel. Ten portions of fruits and vegetables per day.” Mein Kampf! The Doctor is also worried about something, Penelope says, called my “bone density”. So apparently I am also expected to eat like a Calabrian peasant. Plenty of olive oil and seafood. Well, Mr. M.D., I am not prepared to go gently into that nutriment night. I am not a garlicky Sicilian dock walloper who can do a full day’s labor on a plate of spaghetti and a pork chop. As I perform brain work, I require more substantial fare. It was proven in World War One, where office clerks were given extra rations of food and wine owing to the complex calculations they had to perform. What these actually might have been, I must confess that I haven’t the foggiest notion. (We had a name for those guys. We called them REMFs.)
I suppose you’re tired of hearing me whinge about how much I loathe the hospital where I am currently being held hostage as though ensorcelled. I don’t suppose anyone really likes the hospital, except perhaps a worn-out hobo. But any red-blooded normal American male soon grows tired of its beeping and blinking and flashing lights (are these truly necessary?) and its smells of plastic, disinfectant, and greasy cuts of cheap broiled hamburg, and its alternatingly hushed and frantic ambiance. I have grown to despise the nurses, all of them, with their faux-considerate but ultimately condescending demeanor, both humble and arrogant; a nest trick if you can pull it off. I also strongly dislike their crisply starched uniforms. (Outside of the fading institution of Chinese Laundries, who still puts starch on clothing?) And I have grown to dread hearing the ever-present sharp-sounding clack-clack-clacking noise of their dreary but sensible shoes.
Most of all, I keenly loathe all doctors. All of them. These high priests of human gristle. These Grand Poobahs of Take-Two-and-Call-Me-In-the-Morning. These most exalted potentates of lose-weight-and-try-to-get-more-exercise. All the future physicians I ever met in college struck me to a man as being grim, unimaginative sorts more interested in memorizing their Organic Chemistry textbooks than going out and having a good time, though I imagine that some of them, like the future lawyers, cut loose after mid-terms and final examinations were completed. Unlike lawyers, who I have often found to be convivial company once they have loosened up after a few belts, Doctors as a class have always struck me as solemn asses, tormented by the burden of their imperfect knowledge, and with no real interests outside of their self-exalted vocation, though I wouldn’t be one bit surprised if, among themselves, they have a whale of a good time whooping it up at the expense of their misfortunate patient-victims, and recounting hilarious anecdotes about all of their foibles and shortcomings.
All of the least attractive qualities of Doctors could possibly be forgiven, perhaps, if they would only talk to you as though you have half a brain. But no–when the High Holy Doctor Deus deigns to descend ex Machina, he invariably takes one of two approaches. Either he talks not to you but at you, as though you were a rather dull eight year old, or, when you ask him to knock off the bullshit and give it to you with the bark off, he drowns you with a blizzard of buzz fuzz and bafflegab, haranguing you with a litany of terminology, like “myocardial infarction,” and “adrenal insufficiency” and “abdominal aortic aneurysm.” (What does that even MEAN? He won’t really tell me.) And the Good Lord Himself only knows what other medicalese Good Old Doc is treasuring up, ready to spring it on you when you ask him to clarify his prognosis. He’ll only tell you something infuriatingly vague, like “We retrospectively analyze all postoperative prognostic factors to devise guidelines for the proper management of our patient population.” (Doc, get wise to yourself–these are actual PEOPLE you’re talking about! Actual HUMAN BEINGS!)
I shouldn’t be so down on Physicians, I suppose. A great many of them, I am sure, are dedicated professionals–or, at least, the nurses pretend to think so, or pretend to–but I would not be surprised to find, at some future time, our present-day medicos will be regarded as having been little better than Witch Doctors, waving their savage totems and performing their ceremonial dances through the suffocating stench of molten zebra flesh.
I’d just about murder somebody for a good cigar. Penelope is permitted to smoke her fool head off, and it doesn’t appear to be doing her one lick of harm. She is a very high-strung woman. “The Hostess With the Mostest,” they all called her. Back in her heyday. We have since cut back, somewhat, on our entertaining. She spent an inordinate amount of her time on her charitable boards and steering committees while I was out working and our not-so-dedicated staff ran the household, and helped to raise my small boy. Small wonder that my number one son turned out to be a silly shambolic pig. We eventually fired the French cook and hired an English fellow instead. A good Episcopalean, like Penelope used to be, before she converted to Catholicism.
They all say that Penelope must have been a Saint to put up with me, and my moods. Believe me, Bill, when I say that I was the one who was the Saint in our relationship. She had a great many sterling qualities, to be sure–she never let herself go to seed, like a lot of these so-called “society” matrons do–but she is as headstrong and vain as the day is long. And largely heedless of Eddie Jr., except when it served her purposes to use the upbringing of the boy as a weapon against me. (I am beginning to realize this now.) Otherwise, any attention she paid him seemed designed explicitly to make her look good in front of our Argus-eyed staff. Did we really employ them–or did they, in some mysterious way, employ us? Sometimes I wonder if hiring that German Nanny was such a terrific idea. For all I know, she was an East German spy. It wouldn’t surprise me a bit. She was a brash woman. I suspect that she taught Junior a few things that he would have been better off not knowing. I’ll not go into them now. It’s a highly unpleasant subject.
I’m all entirely–what’s the word?–OVERWHELMINGLY congested. Hardly the most salubrious topic, but I thought that it was important to point this out. People imagine that the so-called “idle” rich have nothing better to do all day except to attend operas and, when at home, shout to Marie the fetching French Maid that the madeleines are stale. Marie was quite the dish. A nice little twist. That plate-eyed swoony act of hers was a big hit, at least with me. Not so much Penelope. Marie didn’t last long. “Froggies are all very well and good, but have you ever made love….?” I wish now that I had asked her this. “Have you ever made love…. to a white man?” I wanted to ask her. Just so see her eyes turn as big as pool balls. Nowadays they call that “harassment”. I’m not sorry. Who makes these rules? Women, of course. Sob sisters. And fools, I’ll wager. Fools and weaklings. Must we be bound to their undesirable innovations? The Employment Contract should simply say straight up that “The Party of the First Part (THE FRENCH MAID) shall provide sexual intercourse on demand to the Party of the Second Part (THE MASTER) whenever the strong inclination is upon him. Party of the First Part (THE FRENCH MAID) shall receive a bonus equivalent to 100% (one-hundred per cent) of her daily salary of $4.25 (four dollars and twenty-five cents) an hour.”
Of course, as one grows older, the sexual urge usually becomes much diminished. Diminuendo to youth’s fortissimo. What was once a fact of life is now a mere insinuation. What was once an action is now inanition; what was once bluster and bluntness is now–what’s the word? a mere innuendo. Primitive peoples have no such compunction regarding sex. Compunctions? Hang-ups. COMPLEXES. You know who I mean. They fall to it like a child attacks a birthday cake. Simpleminded. Might be fun? No. Too many complications. Why didn’t Rachel, my first sweetheart, get pregnant? If she had, I’d have done the honorable thing, of course. And my life would no doubt be very different. We would live in New Jersey. Father would have disowned me, and I would work for a third-rate law firm turning out fourth-rate work, and with both ulcers working overtime. We’d spawn a dozen tainted whelps. “Baseball teams make money, you know.”
And maybe…just maybe…I’d be happy.
I’m guessing she used the rhythm method. Or something. Unless there’s a son I don’t know about. Every man’s secret hope, and secret fear. That the boy–now a full-grown man–would show you the door someday…or worse. He’d probably be dressed like a hayseed with bib overalls and an absurd straw hat such as is seen at the County Fair and he’d poke a shotgun in your gut and say “Pappy–I’ve waited twenty years to KILL yew.”
Well, now, that hardly ever happens. Fabian the dog broke his leg when he was hit by a car he was chasing. We had to have him put down. No sense in letting the poor beast…suffer. Eddie pleaded, but no. I had to explain the facts of life to him. What can a poor old dog like him do? Can’t you see how cruel it would be to let the unfortunate brute live in pain, just to satisfy a selfish whim? He depends on us to do the right thing for him, regardless of how you may feel about it. Someday when you’re older you’ll understand. After time has passed, perhaps we can get another dog. “I don’t want another dog. I want Fabian.” “Listen, you silly fat pig–another peep out of you and maybe I’ll break YOUR leg.”
To this day I’m betting that Junior thinks I meant it.
I can’t ask him, though. Junior stopped communicating with me a long time ago.
On board the express train to New York one time I saw a midget man smile at a midget woman, and soon they were seated next to each other and chatting excitedly, even though it was rather early in the morning and I was aching to try to get some shuteye. Nobody objected–I certainly didn’t–for who would have the heart? Like attracts like, and that’s the law of nature the world over.
I wonder what happens when Eddie Jr. gets together with all his fatty pals. I wonder if they sit around talking about the things that fatsos talk about. Desserts they have known. The perfect cheeseburger. The Best All You Can Eat Grease Traps in town. There’s money to be made here, I’m sure. A magazine that caters to the morbidly obese. I thank G-d that Penelope never plumped up. I don’t think I could have borne the shame.
The fat boys probably speak of practical matters. How hard it is to pull your socks on in the morning. How expensive bacon has gotten these days. And how their fathers did them dirt. Maybe amphetamines would have helped him. But Penelope said no. I wonder if she…? Well, if so, she certainly kept it well-hidden. But it’s all water under the bridge, now.
But still, I wonder. There were times when she seemed unnaturally…animated. And she seemed not upset at all when Eddie, in his sophomore years of college, confessed that he had used marijuana “once or twice.” (Which probably meant “several hundred times.”) Perhaps she was a dab hand at the practice herself, and didn’t see the great harm it could do. I, of course, had had my own experience with the pernicious weed, and had vowed never to repeat it. Once a philosopher: twice a pervert, as that old sinner Voltaire allegedly maintained.
The more I think about it, Bill, the more it makes sense. My own wife…a drug fiend! Not that it would be of any use to confront her with my suspicions. I know that she believes in her heart of hearts that all men are stupid, and that she could deny everything and, furthermore, that she cares not a straw if I believe her or not.
Lying prone on my bed, lungs operating at half strength at best–did the doctor mention something about Double Pneumonia?–wheezing, struggling to catch a breath, the nurse debating with the doctor whether to hook me up to oxygen–I do dislike a chatty nurse but I will say that despite how coldly I may have treated her, she did go to bat for me–much like my wife, I now realize–I always knew, I suppose, that she was my most ardent defender but never realized until now the extent of her protective instincts and just how much it may have cost her to follow them–my old English teacher would call this the run-on sentence to end them all–I want to be able to breathe normally.
I know that Penelope didn’t stay with me for all those years on the basis of my rugged good looks–though, let’s face it, I was always clean, clean-shaven, impeccably tailored, blessed with an ability to render forth the sorts of ratiocinations that girls like to hear–my pet name for her was “Pen”. Sometimes “Penny”. When I was feeling particularly amorous. A very wise old man once told me that, during the first year of marriage, if you put a penny in a jar every time you forncate with your wife, and you then take a penny out every time you fornicate with her during each successive year…the result? That jar would never be emptied.
This was certainly the case with us, though I shouldn’t admit it. But what the hell–I might be dying.
The jar was never overbrimming to begin with, if the truth be told. I had gotten more than a faint intimation that Penny’s mother regarded sex as a somewhat unpleasant and inconvenient duty rather than otherwise. For my part, as I grow older, I rather line up with Lord Chesterfield on the issue–you know, “the expense is damnable, et cetera”–although that is the least of my worries, ho ho ho; but maybe the old dancing-master (as the great Cham called him) was onto something.
Right now, although I have never (to my knowledge) murdered someone, I would cheerfully kill the chatty nurse just to have a bacon and peanut-butter sandwich. I don’t have much in common with Elvis; but there is that. Doc says ‘no’–doesn’t he realize that I’m quite possibly dying heah–as they say in New York. Whatever happened to the condemned man’s last meal–common courtesy–if we had lost the war, we would have been the ones who were charged with war crimes. Nonsense, Doctor! Give me my sandwich, you bloody quack!
Penelope won’t cooperate any more. She was caught sneaking me a cup of real coffee–the kind made strong, not like the slip-slop they sell at the cafeteria–food only fit for animals, and the poor. Flavorless, bland–no thanks. And then there’s the swill dispensed from the hospital vending machine. Drink it? I wouldn’t even rinse my mouth with it.
Ordinarily, I pride myself on writing faster than any man who can write better, and better than any man who can write faster, as my good friend A.J. Liebling once boasted. But…as of right now I’m at the end of my rope.
Is it truly my fault that I number among my very good friends a star-studded constellation of eminences in the fields of politics, religion, industry, the arts, et cetera? Did I ever tell you that on one occasion I met the Pope? I surely must have. I up and I said to him, “Il Papa, you’re the best at what you do, and me, I’m the best at what I do.” And Sonny Liston applauded. Or what it Sammy Davis Junior? Maybe it’s because he didn’t marry a white woman and join the Church of Satan.
I don’t know what medicine they just jabbed me with, but it’s some pretty powerful stuff.
I suppose I have been a very lucky man, and I have taken a lot of things for granted, including the devotion of my wife. Women and small children are a lot like dogs–loyal and dumb. You wouldn’t want a dog that was too smart, as it would want to take over and would yap at you all day. Or maybe you would endure a disloyal dog, if you were lonely and sad. Me, I’m hardly ever sad. I’m just happy, happy, happy all the time. I’m happy, just very, very happy. And I’m never lonely. I’m surrounded by friends. It must be the Draconian visiting hours that keeps them away. Or the rather inconvenient parking arrangements. Or the Doctor, who thunders from On High, “He Must Rest.” Or the Nurse, who shoos them all away. Or Penelope, working in a sinister league with Nursie.
Why would Penelope not want me to see my friends? They’re all her friends too. Or perhaps she suspects otherwise. Maybe she has always been jealous. I always thought that Elvis got a raw deal. Poor Elvis! Not the sort of fellow I would invite to the house, of course; but we could meet by the stables for cigars, and talk horses and money management. Perhaps I could have materially assisted him by connecting him with my personal accountant. He really needed to invest his money better.
“And all the world doth show it!”
No coffee, no cigars, no sandwiches–is it possible that this is hell?
“Nor am I out of it; for everywhere is hell.”
Who first discovered hell? The Jews? Certainly not. But whom? I shall have to look into it.
My philosophy is that if a man does you an injury behind your back, it is better to get him working for you rather than making him your implacable foe.
Because if a man does you an injury, it’s better to co-opt him and get him on your side. Always. “A soft answer turneth away wrath.” Though you don’t have to be a sly old hypocrite about it.
As one grows older, one does become rather more discerning, and that extends to one’s choice of friends. Mere acquaintances are a dime a dozen. True friends are more valuable than silver. And friends you can actually talk to and even confide in are more rare than precious gold.
Ah! For the love of gold!
As much as I loathe mere cant, “A happy wife, a happy life,” seems to constitute a valid algorithm. That, and the absence of a d-mned cough. Sometimes I cough so hard that I go off into what I call my special land, where everything becomes blurry and misty and, if I’m not careful, I could easily topple over and break a hip, and, Mother of Mercy, there would be an end of me.
I don’t much hold with much of what Blake wrote, but all that business of “the lineaments of gratified desire” seems to be spot on.
What I desired of Penelope, or, I suppose, any wife, I suppose, was some sort of gratified desire. Loyalty, which goes without saying. Someone who is competent to manage things on the home front, ditto. The mother of my children. The solace of my golden years.
I was born the year before The Crash. I’ve always been lucky that way.
I have never claimed to be a particularly modest person. I’m better at what I do than nearly anyone I know, or know of. World Class. That’s what I am, and that’s the kind of treatment I deserve. The same goes for you, Bill. Because I’m not like everyody else. Ho ho ho. The very thought is risible. Extraordinary, yet beloved–that’s me. In fact, it seems as though I’m good at influencing everyone except my wife and son. Who seeks to understand me pays me no compliments. But people can and do learn a lot from me. I frequently hear them say as much. They ask me why I’m not a college professor. I did briefly consider teaching as a career. But I decided that academia is not for me. Many professors have mediocre minds when compared to mine. But I would have been a great teacher. World Class. Or a salesman. I can be very persuasive, sometimes without even trying.
I am a grade or two sharper than most of the people I happen to meet. And I can usually figure out the reason behind nearly anything. (Although I wish that someone would tell me why cartoon animals wear neckties.) All Great Men, I find, have the same qualities. A need for, and scorn of the adulation of the masses. An imperial disregard to the petty rules which hold lesser men in thrall. A strong inclination to cut the Gordian knot. An instinctive instinct for leadership and authority. We live our lives on our own terms. We like to be liked, but recognize that narrow-minded men will always oppose us. We don’t get ulcers–we give them. We don’t follow fashions–we set them. (Pink pillbox hats, anyone? Really???) We have a tendency to demand the respect that we so eminently deserve. I suppose you could call it The Will to Power. (But Nietzsche was something of an oddball.)
Is that a bad thing? Dictators have it. But so do some very fine men. Men who always know what they are doing. Men who will leave their mark on the world, howsoever small that may be–in the grand scheme of things. Men who not only do not entertain doubts, but show them the door, when they try to enter unbidden, as they have a tendency to do. “Give me some men who are Stout-Hearted Men who will fight for the right they adore!” Responsible men, not dithering pretty-boys. Stern-minded men who are sometimes called unreasonable in seeing accomplished the things that need to get done. Bold men, influential men, powerful men. Lesser mortals may snipe–let them. To me, the word “overachiever” is just another name for “winner.” There is no need to gild the lily in that regard.
I am convinced that if you were to take the world’s wealth and divide it equally–say, thirty thousand for each person–within thirty days the world would be back to the same status quo ante. (This idea is not original to me; I read it in one of Junior’s Donald Duck comic books.)
Penny, I think, was well aware of what kind of man I was when she took up with me. So was her father, the Commodore, who, I later learned, was, in his youth, the Sheriff of a wild and wooly Arizona town. Quite naturally, he spoke fluent Spanish. Imagine! I had the distinct feeling, on meeting him, that despite his soft appearance, he was a man whom it would not do to trifle with. Con safos. I find many people in law enforcement to be relatively straight shooters, so to speak. They have been around and have seen it all and can generally tell if a man is lying.
But their weakness, if weakness it be, is the fragility of women. And yet, I must say that Penelope was no shrinking violet. When it came to getting what she wanted and doing anything to get it, she was downright remorseless. Much like me.
I have encountered, in my South American travels, catfish which were big enough to swallow a man whole. And, of course, you are familiar with the piranha. It is said that a school of them can strip the flesh from a full-grown Capybara in a matter of minutes. (What is never mentioned is what the hapless brute was doing in the water in the first place.) Well, Penelope and myself are much like those fish, and, in that at least, we were well-matched.
Of course, being a World Class person, one wishes to only associate with worthwhile people. The doorman at our penthouse apartment is all right to exchange witty banter with, but one can hardly expect the man to have the least idea of what you’re talking about when you tell him that on a recent trip to England, you and your wife just happen to have been granted an audience with the Queen at Buckingham Palace. The effect is spoiled when the auditor is overawed., and he is only capable of saying something like “Chee!” Better the jealous comments of the Club Bore: “Oh yes, of course–I’ve been there twice–and how is she these days?” As though he were on a first-name basis with her! This Bore is the sort of man who cannot be overawed. Ask him if he’s read, say, Edmund Burke, and he will hem and haw and say he’s read “in” him–whatever the hell that means! You cannot dazzle this sort of Bore with your erudition. Of course, to quote the Master, “Eloquence may exist without a proportionable degree of wisdom.”
You really should read Burke’s “Reflections on the Revolution in France.”
“Equal rights–but not to equal things!”
“No discoveries are to be made in morality!”
“Liberty–without which virtue cannot exist!”
“A disposition to preserve would be my measure of a Statesman!”
“Good order is the foundation of all good things!”
“Taken up with theories about the rights of man, they have totally forgotten his nature!” (Reminds me of California.)
No; like attracts like, and you can only impress the jaded Clubman with the quality of your entertainments, in which the Pynes mingle with the Ripleys, the Landenbergs and the Sherrills chat merrily; the Stuarts and the Whitneys exchange bon mots; the Wilsons and the Bakers share a merry quip; the Baylies and the Johnsons clasp hands; the Butlers and the Iselins conspire; the Millses and the Nicholses exchange cards, and the Schermerhorns and the Twombleys raise a glass together. No Tenth Avenue bounders among this bunch! And card games, if card games there be, are played for a penny a point. (As the ever-amusing Everett Dirksen once exclaimed, “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about REAL money!”)
What I find to be truly fantastic is that there are still–still!–among us men of immense wealth who have a paranoid point of view regarding liquidity. They still believe–despite every evidence to the contrary–that a big smash from which they might lose all they have is coming soon.
Among the more savvy investors, Swiss bank accounts are for amateurs. They have instead devised all manners of tax dodges which, as a charter member of the worthwhile people, I feel honor-bound to stay mum about. Suffice it to say that neither these people nor most of Wall Street will be caught flat-footed should the troubles come. Getting the money, of course, is one thing. Keeping it is quite another. The first million, it is said, is the hardest. I have known this to be the case. In any event, the majordomos of Metropolitan, Mutual, the Chase, the Guaranty Trust, the New York Trust, the Bankers Trust et al., will not be caught up in a break in the market, let alone any putative cataclysm. I wish I could say more, but, of course, I am honor bound to protect my sources. (Yes, Mr. Angell, I know that one must avoid the split infinitive!)
If there is one thing the worthwhile people do not appreciate, it is being left in the dark. Figuratively, and literally: hence the popularity of emergency generators among that set. Among the World Class people I have met–and I have met many of them, I can assure you–knowledge is power. And not the types of knowledge one gets from reading the funny pages of the newspaper. The many may pride themselves on being “up” on all the current events, but among the Big Men it is productive, and a predictive, capability which is paramount. Delivering substantive, meaningful output is important. But predicting future trends is King. It doesn’t come cheap–nothing good ever does–but when you can afford to hire and even lease the services of the best minds among us, predictive capability is by no means impossible to procure. Of course, in many cases, such knowledge of past trends and likely future trends is a self-fulfilling prophecy, is it not? But let us not deal overmuch in mere philosophical paradoxes and conundrums. Those, I find, are for the mere neophyte. A reexamination of first principles is where the “action” is. What is gravity? What is instinct? What, for that matter, is logic? Pretty fairy tales. They are merely human constructs.
Let us never wear a blindfold and call it our philosophy. Let us know our philosophy, but never let us be blinded by it when it comes time to take action.
This, I believe, is the most important lesson of all.
2. STRANGE BUT TRUE!!!
Humans and the Miami Dolphins are the only species that have sex for pleasure.
A cockroach can live several weeks with its head cut off, after which
it appears on ‘Fear Factor’ and may be eaten.
Butterflies taste great with beer!
Alvin and the Chipmunks weren’t chipmunks at all. They were cartoon characters!
The penguin is the only bird who can waddle around and look adorable
but actually reek of putrefying fish!
The Goth, for reasons of camouflage, never washes and is consequently
covered in green moss-like algae!
Nutmeg gives a nice mellow buzz if swallowed whole but is extremely
poisonous if injected intravenously!
You’re born with 300 bones, but when you get to be an adult, you only
have 206, and by the time you die, only 2 are left!
Banging your head against the wall feels better than rowing crew!
The CIA was heavily into the writings of Maeterlinck!
The most poisonous beer and movie stars both come from Australia!
Polar bears are left handed but when playing baseball, they bat right
and throw right!
The world’s termites outweigh the world’s lawyers 10,000 to 1. But at
last report, the lawyers are winning!
Yahweh has the largest eyeball ever known!
The NSA ignored 1978 predictions that the Soviet Union would collapse!
999,999.5 people in 1 billion will die before age 115!
With its 21-inch tongue, a giraffe can polish its own knob!
Leonardo Da Vinci invented Tetris!
On average, people fear Whoopi Goldberg more than death!
Over 1000 birds a year die from exposure to the singing voice of David Lee Roth!
Chewing gum while peeling onions will make you look like an idiot!
There are over 58 million cheating husbands in the U.S!
Humans blink over 10,000,000 times a year! Adulterous men blink
10,000,003 times!
More money is spent on drugs than on any other hobby!
If you ask the FBI whether they have a file on you, they will start a
file on you!
In 32 years. there are about 1 billion seconds–not one of which would
be profitably spent listening to Madonna!
Most ghosts come back to haunt you for your unconfessed sins!
It is estimated that millions of brownfields in the world are
accidentally planted by corporations who dump toxic waste and then
forget where they dumped it!
Of all the words in the English language, the word screw has the most
definitions!
Ohio is the object most often choked on by Americans!
Every 45 seconds, a crackhead catches on fire in the United States!
Elvis’ bloated corpse is 330,330 times larger than the earth!
The new Testament is MUCH MORE ENTERTAINING if you substitute the
phrase ‘Yahooie!’ for ‘Yea Verily’ and the name ‘Popeye’ for that of
Jesus!
CONTRARY TO POPULAR BELIEF, Certs is neither a breath mint NOR a candy
mint? It is actually an overpriced mixture of sugar and oil (retsyn)
with binding agents!
STRANGE BUT TRUE!!!
3. THE JAPANESE
Oh the Japanese have robot slaves
They work from 9 to 8
The Japanese have robot slaves
They’re almost never late
The Japanese have robot slaves
And that’s why they are great!
4. THE FUTURE OF THE UNITED STATES (2006)
15 years ago the learned magazines were talking about the phenomenon
known as “The third world in the first world”–islands of poverty
surrounded by oceans of affluence.
Today, the most critical problems we face are these:
Environmental degradation
Education
National, corporate, state, local, and consumer debt and huge trade imbalances
Military Industrial Complex
Outsourcing
American Theocracy
Oil-driven foreign policy adventurism
Declining reputation worldwide
Some say only a far-reaching change in the way our government is run
will create an environment which can address the changes needed to
solve these problems. As this is unlikely, the U.S. can look forward
to a period of decline.
5. UNPOPULAR OPINIONS
The band Kiss is essentially a cynical marketing gimmick, and their music is laughably monochromatic, so those fans who discuss the nuances of the band are merely making fools of themselves in a public forum.
The Star Wars “films” are essentially very slick B-movies riddled with cliches and fakelore, and any fan, die-hard or otherwise, who gains any sort of spiritual sustenance from this source is merely revealing an utter lack of assimilation into the cultural conventions of an infinitely varied civilization.
Discussing the foibles of sports figures and other celebrities is a useful conversational ice-breaker, but mulling over such matters should not be the be-all and end-all of what one has to say. Endless contemplation of the antics of the current flavor of the week do not constitute nourishing brain food.
Glorifying one’s own overindulgence in drugs and alcohol is the infallible sign of a peasant mentality.
These days, political talk shows are an exercise in futility. Parroting back received wisdom and propaganda as reasoned argument is the antithesis of discourse.
5. PLAGIARISM AND MISREPRESENTATION
Young author’s book has passages similar to other published work
Monday, April 24, 2006 – Updated: 10:58 AM EST
BOSTON – The publisher of the debut novel of a 19-year-old Harvard
University sophomore is investigating the work because it includes
several passages that are similar to a book published in 2001.
Kaavya Viswanathan’s “How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a
Life” was published in March by Little, Brown and Co., which signed
her to a hefty two-book deal when she was just 17.
On Sunday, the Harvard Crimson reported the similarities on its Web
site, citing seven passages in Viswanathan’s book that parallel the
style and language of “Sloppy Firsts,” a 2001 novel by Megan
McCafferty published by Random House. –By Associated Press
http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=136445&format=
The media has seemingly always had a major problem with
misrepresenting the facts. Particularly in the field of journalism.
For instance, there’s the case of Janet Cooke, the
Pulitzer Prize winner who in 1980 was forced to admit that the story
she had authored about a 9 year old heroin addict was a fake. More
recently, there is the case of Stephen Glass, who in 1998 was forced
to admit that 27 of the 41 articles he had published in the New
Republic had been fabricated. In 1999, columnist Mike Barnicle in 1999
was fired from the Boston Globe for a similar offense, though by 2005
the Boston Herald hired him on. Then there was New York Times-Jayson
Blair affair of 2003.
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalistic_fraud
In the case of Glass, apologies and excuses similar to those of Kaavya
Viswanathan’s were made–he was “under a lot of pressure”. His
depiction in the film Shattered Glass is actually a pretty good
summary of the personality type who resorts to this kind of
behavior–narcissistic, self-pitying, and with an expanded sense of
entitlement.
As for Frey, at first I wondered what the fuss was about. Who cares if
his ‘memoir’ was fictionalized, right?
The mock-memoir is an old old trope in fiction. Defoe’s Journal of the
Plague Year, ca. 1722, was one of the first novels, and an early
example.
SEE:
http://www.mastertexts.com/Defoe_Daniel/A_Journal_of_the_Plague_Year/Index.htm
The trouble with Frey is, the Oprah endorsement changed everything.
(By the way, if you liked what Frey did to Oprah, then you ought to
love Jonathan Franzen, author of The Corrections, who was endorsed by
Oprah and at first decided to accept her endorsement but who then had
second thoughts about it. Boy did he piss HER off!
Which probably explains why she then got so pissed off at
Frey. There’s no denying she’s effective in the role,
but, perhaps like you, I’m not quite sure exactly why someone like
Oprah ought to even be considered as any sort of a literary arbiter.
(It’s not a snobbish thing. I just plain don’t like Oprah. The
faux-ernestness. The fat-faced forced sympatico love-feasts. The
oh-so-precious bloated feel-good good-for-you sentimentality. It all
seems so dreadfully…overdone.)
Incidentally, there was a similar but much smaller mini-scandal when
the Coen brothers billed Fargo as ‘based on a true story’. It wasn’t.
So I was somewhat on Frey’s side when the scandal first broke, until I
read some the incredibly arrogant things Frey said, pre-scandal, about
his own greatness and “authenticity” relative to those
“college-educated” writers he purported to despise. And I got to
thinking–this supercilious asshole has got a LOT of nerve. His crap
is just watered-down sub-literate Hemingway, and he’s crowing as
though he had just handed Tolstoy a one-two punch.
Sad to say, there are really only three strains of American fiction.
To paraphrase the learned critic W. Walker Gibson, author of “Tough,
Sweet & Stuffy; An Essay on Modern American Prose Styles,” these are,
in fact:
TOUGH
SWEET
STUFFY
Frey’s books-those that I have read–are basically tough-guy braggadocio chopped
up into one word paragraphs that are easy to read. He is principally
an irredeemable narcissist and his book is a useful primer regarding
the mindset of an obnoxious junkie, and if you haven’t run into
obnoxious junkies in your own existence, you might get some sort of
vicarious thrill from reading his jaundiced quasi-memoirs, in which,
true to form, he continues to rely on junkie logic to con his way
through ethical lapses. Memoir and fiction both are supposed to be
about a greater truth of some kind. Frey is just a literary
opportunist. He will be forgotten in five years; his books will litter
library book sales and remainder tables for the following ten.
The fact is, Frey did people in recovery an enormous disservice. And
he is not a particularly likeable guy. Maybe that’s why people are
coming down on him so hard. I’m sure there’s also a class element
involved as well.
Of course, Frey is/was unspeakably arrogant and old enough to know better.
Furthermore, as Alan Dershhowitz once succinctly put it, “Nonfiction
must be about actual truth, not about how coincidences could lead to a
deeper truth.”
As for why Kaavya Viswanathan isn’t being raked over the coals for his
misdeeds, it’s a plain fact that we tend to be not as hard on kids and
teenaged girls as we might be on serial liars like Frey.
Here’s something funny. Circa 1975 Tom Vietch wrote a book called EAT THIS.
Turns out, though extremely interesting and entertaining in its own
right, it was just a nearly word-for-word twisted and distorted
‘translation’ of Truman Capote’s “Other Voices, Other Rooms”.
It was actually a creative and daring thing to do. It reads like an
entirely different book. And Vietch published his work with a small
press that specialized in avant-garde fiction.
Anyway, to further beat this topic into the ground, what Frey did was
to take the good faith that a memoirist, or any journalist, operates
other, and sully it with fabrications. It was unethical.
Kaavya Viswanathan’s book borders on plagiarism. Which is a
misrepresentation that involves the outright theft of another person’s
ideas. Maybe she was doing the same thing as Tom Vietch. (She says
differently, however.) Difference is, Vietch made no secret of what he
was doing, and he wasn’t writing to a mass audience and making an
enormous amount of money off of someone else’s work.
There aren’t many examples of people under twenty writing much of
anything worth remembering. Colette and Truman Capote are the
exceptions that prove the rule.
The trouble with unformed writers is that they haven’t read enough,
and so they tend to “internalize” the work of people they particularly
admire. At best, this leads to slavish imitation; at worst, to
outright plagiarism.
At the very least, the girl should be suspended from Harvard for a
year. Give her time to think over what she had done.
ALSO SEE:
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?041122fa_fact
7. LENNY BRUCE
A lot of people say to me, “Why did you kill Christ?” “I dunno… it
was one of those parties, got out of hand, you know.” “We killed him
because he didn’t want to become a doctor, that’s why we killed him.”
All my humor is based upon destruction and despair. If the whole world
were tranquil, without disease and violence, I’d be standing on the
breadline right in back of J. Edgar Hoover.
Communism is like one big phone company.
Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God.
I hate small towns because once you’ve seen the cannon in the park
there’s nothing else to do.
I won’t say ours was a tough school, but we had our own coroner. We
used to write essays like: What I’m going to be if I grow up.
If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children
would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of
crosses.
In the Halls of Justice the only justice is in the halls.
Miami Beach is where neon goes to die.
Satire is tragedy plus time. You give it enough time, the public, the
reviewers will allow you to satirize it. Which is rather ridiculous,
when you think about it.
The “what should be” never did exist, but people keep trying to live
up to it. There is no “what should be,” there is only what is.
The liberals can understand everything but people who don’t understand them.
The only honest art form is laughter, comedy. You can’t fake it… try
to fake three laughs in an hour – ha ha ha ha ha – they’ll take you
away, man. You can’t.
The role of a comedian is to make the audience laugh, at a minimum of
once every fifteen seconds.
Today’s comedian has a cross to bear that he built himself. A comedian
of the older generation did an “act” and he told the audience, “This
is my act.” Today’s comic is not doing an act. The audience assumes
he’s telling the truth. What is truth today may be a damn lie next
week.
8. MY CAREER IN COMEDY
I have always been interested in comedians and Cartoons.
I have always like Herblock, though his line seems to me to owe a lot
to –Art Young! You know– “At Last–the perfect Soldier!”
One of my favorite political cartoons is War, depicted as a
skull-faced whore, beckoning “Any European Youth” up to her crib with
the line, “Come On Up, I’ll Treat You Right–I Knew Your Daddy”. Now
that’s the kind of hard-hitting commentary you just don’t see anymore!
I like Lenny and George.
As you may know, George decided to go hippy after too many
soul-destroying Vegas gigs (and there’s an idea right there, The
history of Vegas as the history of Hell). After the hippy thang faded,
George got more into political commentary–where else was there for
him to go–but he also began to ply a cutesy strain which was
eventually to prove his ruination.
In theatre arts at Portsmouth Abbey we were assigned to memorize and
present a dramatic monologue. I chose George Carlin’s “Values” (I knew
Lenny wouldn’t go over….)
I might have told you that I did stand-up from 1985 to 2003. Very
regularly from 1988 to 1998. Then grad school, work, and marriage, and
you can guess the rest. Right now there’s nothing stopping me from
going back to it, only at this point I’d rather focus on writing. It’s
very tough to do both, especially when you’re OLD. Stand-up takes a
lot out of you. I always disliked comedy clubs–gulags for self-styled
hipsters. I always preferred performing in front of rock audiences and
even folk audiences. Though one time, circa 1986, an angry rock and
roller shouted from the audience, “It’s you people that are killing
rock and roll!”
I’ve got tons of my 1991-2003 stuff on videotape. Probably 200 hours
all told. I used to broadcast 4 hours of it every week on Cambridge Cable
Television. All of it is now on Youtube, thanks to Greg Dalton-Kay.
The closest I came to success as a stand up was when the local
pay-cable-access people gave me an hour show on Fridays. That lasted
about nine months. I had them pay me in dubbed tapes. The other time
was when MTV and Letterman gave me a nibble circa 1994.
That never quite panned out….
I can honestly say that Don Rickles was probably my earliest stand-up
influence, but Lenny and George (sayy…of Mice and Men starring Lenny
Bruce and George Carlin!) really fired me up. I was also fond of
Robert Klein–in the 70s, he passed for what was considered
‘cerebral’. Of course, when I discovered Mort Sahl and Shelley
Berman….
9. ZEN KOANS
When I graduated from college, I ran across a 1957 book called Zen
Flesh, Zen Bones. One koan in particular, #32, has stuck with me:
Inch Time Foot Gem
A lord asked Takuan, a Zen teacher, to suggest how he might pass the
time. He felt his days very long attending his office and sitting
stiffly to receive the homage of others.
Takuan wrote eight Chinese characters and gave them to the man:
Not twice this day
Inch time foot gem.
This day will not come again.
Each minute is worth a priceless gem.
http://www.101zenstories.com/index.php?story=32
http://www.101zenstories.com/index.php?story=toc
dimenno 