I received an E-mail from one M. Sanjayan who describes himself or herself as lead scientist with The Nature Conservancy, an environmental organization to which I contribute a few bucks each year.
The purpose of Mr., Miss, Mrs., or Ms. Sanjayan’s communiqué was to supply me and, I assume, the Conservancy’s million-plus members with a link to my "Very Own Sneak Preview" of how the group has been rescuing American forests and flood plains from commercial exploitation and the proliferation of the human species in places it doesn’t belong.
In any event, the word "Sneak" combined with the word "Preview" kicked off a long-repressed train (or cargo ship) of thought in my few remaining gray cells:
What the hell is Sneaky about an event that is being broadcast far and wide to anybody and everybody?
Answer me that, will you?
You say you don’t give a shit?
Well that’s just the kind of head-in-the-sand ostrich attitude that results in the proliferation of feral hogs in Florida and the election of Nancy Pelosi to Congress.
* * *
Although the origins of the phrase "Sneak Preview" are lost in the mists and three-martini lunches of Madison Avenues past. I believe (correct me if I’m mistaken) that its first usage emerged from the primordial slime of some unknown marketer’s tiny brain back in the 1960s.
I’m sure you all remember the ‘60s ─ Elvis and the Beatles were ascendant, sex was being invented by teenage mutants at a three-day pot-fest at Max Yasgur's farm near Woodstock, New York; the nation was being Greened with LSD by Timothy Leary and kindred assholes, and mass nonconformity via advanced hair styling was sweeping the world.
Since I am congenitally not with it, I was puzzled at the time ─ as, indeed, I still am ─ over why events that are massively advertised on radio, television, the internet, and the print media are billed as "Sneak."
Used as an adjective, thesauruses (thesauri?) list "Sneak" as synonymous with "Secret," "Clandestine," "Furtive," and "Stealthy." Dictionaries define the word as "Perpetrated without warning" and "Marked by quiet and caution and secrecy."
Examples of usage include Sneak Thief, Sneak Attack, and Sneak Affair. In other words, the exact opposite of its usage in the phrase "Sneak Preview."
Like, suppose Al Qaeda had followed the Hollywood Sneak Preview formula prior to September 11, 2001: Here are some of the headlines and TV announcements we could have expected in the months preceding:
● Sneak Atrocity Preview to be broadcast to the Muslim world September 11 via Al Jazeera cable channel 666! Observe with ecstasy as Islamic fanatics crash airliners into Twin Towers for no reason! Thrill to the sights and sounds of Holy Warriors killing themselves and thousands of unbelievers! Rejoice as infidels die in agony. Catch the action live in flaming color and surround sound! Allahu Akbar!
● Sneak Jihad coming to you next month courtesy of Taliban TV! Giggle as Muslim lunatics destroy Twin Towers...delight as Islam heroes crash into Pentagon...See Arab martyrs ascend to heaven and have sex with Virgins!
● Exclusive Sneak Preview of terrorist attack to be aired 9/11 on CBS: Be amazed at collapsing skyscrapers! Listen to innocent victims scream as they die in flames! Be horrified as Dan Rather "Speaks Truth to Power" while he explains how President Bush is murdering American office workers!
Or what if the Japs had advertised their coming Sneak Attack on Pearl Harbor with a massive media Sneak Preview blitz in the months leading up to December 7, 1941:
● Sneak Attack Preview Coming to your Rocal Theater December 7: Raugh and Cheer as Imperial Air Force Annihirate America Freet, Eriminate many Roundeyes!
● Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere to Raunch Pearl Harbor Sneak Attack December 7! Do Not Miss once in rifetime surprise event!
● Be sure to tune to Radio Nippon next Sunday! Risten to Sneak Japan Sordiers Sink Batterships, Destroy Airpranes, Brow up Civirians!
Or the Navy Seals offing of Osama Bin Laden:
● President Obama went on national television today to announce a Sneak Preview of the assassination of terrorist Osama Bin Laden next Wednesday at his home in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Sneak live television coverage will begin 1 p.m. Eastern Standard Time with the boarding of Secret Black Hawk helicopters by an elite Sneak Force of Navy hitmen.
● The New York Times has learned that Muslim activist, Osama Bin Laden, will be featured in a Sneak Assassination Preview May 2 when a Sneak Team of Special Sneak Forces will kill him. Unidentified sources say Mr. Bin Laden’s bullet-riddled corpse will be dumped at sea in traditional Mohammedan fashion after he has been gunned down like a dog.
Or Israel’s raid on Entebbe:
● In late-breaking news, Al Jazeera has been informed by Israeli Defense Forces that a Sneak Preview of a clandestine Jew operation will take place next week (July 4, 1976) to transport a hundred or so Sneak Zionist pig tourists from Entebbe airport in Uganda to the Zionist entity in contravention of international law.
● Speaking at a Texas-style roast pregnant woman barbecue June 28, beloved Ugandan President-for-Life Idi Amin invited his remaining countrymn to visit Entebbe next week to enjoy a Sneak Preview of a secret commando raid by Israeli Special Forces. After the scheduled Sneak Fiasco has engulfed the Ugandan army His Majesty will stage a Sneak Massacre of Ugandan civilians. Bring your own mashed plantain and banana wine! Don’t miss the fun!
Norm Mack, Sneak Blogger, Peterborough, dog@myfairpoint.net
On November 11, 2011 (one of the few dates in the 21st Century during which nobody predicted that the World would end) an article datelined Montclair, NJ, appeared in the Manchester Union Leader and web sites and newspapers across this great land.
Teacher could be fired for Comments on Facebook
As the story goes, New Jersey Administrative Judge Ellen Bass scathingly denounced one Jennifer O’Brien, a first grade teacher in the Paterson, NJ, school system, for demonstrating "a complete lack of sensitivity to the world in which her students live."
Her Honor (I’ve never understood why judges are endowed with the title "Honor" considering that most of them are arrogant, overpaid, gutless, doctrinaire drones) was outraged by a critique of her budding young scholars that Ms. O’Brien posted on her Facebook page last March.. "I’m not a teacher," she had written to her Facebook friends, "I’m a warden for future criminals."
The news article went on to suggest that Jennifer’s pique may have been occasioned by some past pranks played on her by her youthful charges that included assault and theft.
Extenuating circumstances or no, and despite her 13 years in the instruction business, the authorities (none of whom, I venture to hazard, had ever brushed shoulders with inner city denizens) determined that Ms. O’Brien was insufficiently sensitive to realize that inner city boys will be inner city boys and inner city girls will be inner city girls.
Judge Bass (who is no relation to the fish) went on to recommend that Ms. O’Brien be booted from her tenured position for her extreme lack of sensitivity as well as for the high crime of telling the truth. Moreover, since Patterson is a "poor, urban New Jersey community with a high rate of violent crime" school officials, and, no doubt, the Honorable Bass, interpreted O’Brien’s quasi tweet as racially tinged.
Oh My Goodness Gracious! How dreadfully insightful of these educators to realize that if someone refers to "future criminals" in a poor, urban New Jersey community with a high rate of violent crime she is actually employing code for (dare I utter the dread words) the African-American Community?
How dare she!
As though African-Americans are the ones clogging the courts and jails of America in numbers completely out of proportion to their share of the population when everyone knows it’s those lawless Buddhists and Hindus and Wall street bankers that are responsible for all that mugging and drug dealing and murder.
Like how non-PC can a grade school teacher get!
Oh gosh, I’m so shaken by Ms. O’Brien’s insensitivity and inappropriateness that I’m gonna have to load up on some beer and chill out for a few hours with the Giants-49ers and Pats-Jets games
* * *
Well the fucking Giants once again managed to blow a game they should have won.
Fortunately, Brady and the Pats mashed the Jets and their obese loudmouth of a coach, Rex Ryan, in the evening. So I guess it was a wash.
Anyhow...back to New Jersey and such trivia as the erosion of the cerebral cortices of American men, women, and children by the brain-eating parasites of mainstream Liberalism and their judicial and media henchmen.
* * *
In "1984," the book that broke the back of the Soviet Union, George Orwell described three Commandments that were emblazoned on the exterior of the Ministry of Truth:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
These Commandments were the central slogans of the tyranny envisioned by Orwell, a dark world in which humanity was crushed beneath the suffocating weight of an all-powerful state led by the omnipotent, godlike dictator Big Brother.
Paterson New Jersey’s hapless Jennifer O’Brien, like Orwell’s doomed hero Winston Smith, is in a 1984 of her own, as she is slowly crushed by the judicio-academic establishment that holds sway in this country.
Her crime?
She violated Liberalism’s most sacred Commandment:
TRUTH IS BIGOTRY
If you are a teacher, a media figure, a politician, a preacher, or just an average nerd in a high-profile position you risk your career, your livelihood, your family’s well-being, and your physical safety should you dare speak Truth about an ever-growing catalogue of verboten subjects, among them race, sexuality, religion, and gender.
It’s perfectly okay, according to the PC police, for a black man to smear an entire race as Jesse Jackson did...or for another Black, Al Sharpton, to foment a murderous race riot in Harlem or commit anti-white perjury concerning a lying slut named Tawana Brawley...or for a simpering faggot like Perez Hilton to blackball a naive Miss USA contestant because she was against gay marriage...or for a bigot like Obama’s beloved minister of hate, Jeremiah Wright, to preach "God damn America...or for a murderous lunatic like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to be an honored guest of Columbia University, lecture the student body, and enjoy dinner with a select few privileged undergraduates.
But let the President of Harvard University {Lawrence Summers) ask whether genetic differences might play a role in the preponderance of men over women in science, and a mass case of the vapors immediately afflicts the entire female faculty, followed by Summers’ forced resignation.
Or let poor Jimmy the Greek muse that the preponderance of great black running backs in the NFL might be traceable to genetic selection dating back to slavery, and he is tarred, feathered, drummed out of the media, and; banished to the outer darkness for the rest of eternity.
Or invite a conservative like Ann Coulter or a wishy-washy Republican like George Bush to speak at a college, and the university bureaucracy immediately morphs into tizzy mode followed either by a disinvite "based on security considerations" or else a paternalistic "naughty naughty" if a left-wing student sheep-mob riots on the orders of its sheepdog masters.
* * *
In an article I posted several weeks ago, Tom Sowell wrote "Our schools are already too lacking in the basics of education to squander even more time on propaganda for politically correct causes that are in vogue."
Tom, I love you. You’re one of the few islands of decency and sanity remaining in the world of intellect. But you’re wasting your breath with such advice.
That ship has sailed.
The Fascists are in control.
The sad truth is that the population, the great mass of Americans if you will, does not understand that Fascism is not a matter of Left Wing or Right Wing, of Democrat or Republican.
Mussolini and Stalin and Hitler and Castro and Peron and Mao were all cut from the same cloth.
Fascism is a state of mind.
Fascism has nothing to do with politics ─ with socialism, with conservatism, with communism, with anarchism, with nazism.
The common denominator of all Fascists is their craving for control
And, today, in my beautiful country, the country in which I was so fortunate to be born, the Fascist Spirit, the spirit of subjugation and repression, grows ever stronger; the spirit of free thought ─ and of Truth itself ─ weaker and weaker.
Norm Mack, Peterborough, dog@myfairpoint.net
Envy, and its green-eyed conjoined twin Jealousy, are prominent among the Seven Deadly Sins presented so eloquently by Dante Alighieri in The Divine Comedy.
Envy is the itch to grab for oneself something of value that somebody else possesses (like a boyfriend, a lobster-salad sandwich, or an iPad).
Jealousy, is the desire to strip from another something of value regardless of whether you want it for yourself or not (like a boyfriend, a lobster-salad sandwich, or an iPad).
Many of the world’s woes, especially the internecine warfare waged by Out-Groups against In-Groups, can be laid at the feet of these human but reprehensible sins.
Let’s spell out the characteristics and nature of Out-Groups and In-Groups so that we’ll know what we’re talking about.
● An Out-Group is a subset of humanity that either Envies certain perceived Assets that an opposing subset, the In-Group, is believed to have or else works to strip the opposing subset of certain perceived Assets of which the Out-Group is Jealous.
● Out-Groups need not be Minorities nor do In-Groups need to be Majorities. For example Females (an Out-Group majority) vs. males (an In-Group Minority). Similarly, the so-called Underdeveloped World (an Out-Group majority) vs. the Developed World (an In-Group Minority).
● A significant factor is that whether or not the perceived Assets that an Out-Group craves are genuinely valuable has little to do with the intensity of the Out-Group’s passion to possess them.
● To sum up, the one constant in the whole affair is that Out-Groups, like children, want whatever they don’t have regardless of the importance, merit, or objective worth of the objects of their desire.
Here are some current examples of the Out-Group/In-Group dichotomy.
Gay Marriage (Homosexual Out-Group Vs. Heterosexual In-Group)
As all but the comatose know, the gay community has been hissy fitting for a decade or more over the non-burning issue of same-sex marriage.
For reasons that neither gays nor straights nor any sane human being can comprehend, homosexual men and women are demanding the right to parade down the aisle in white chiffon and/or lavender tux, swear ever-lasting fealty to their sex partner of the moment, and immediately become entangled in the hellish legal web that has been plaguing the heterosexual community (or as New Yorker magazine would say, the heterosexual "institution") for centuries.
Are starry-eyed gay couples aware that the right to marriage comes hand in glove (or foot in mouth) with the right to divorce?
I mean it’s wrenching enough to split with someone you’ve been screwing for a month or a year or ten years without having to cough up a hefty tithe to the courts and the lawyers when one or both of you get tired of the same old same old.
But what the hell.
None of that matters. The Out-Group wants what the In-Group has, no matter how pointless or disastrous. That’s what she wrote and that’s all she wrote.
Hurricane Names (Female and African-American Out-Groups Vs. White Male In-Group)
Once upon a time hurricanes were named after girls ─ Suzie and JoAnn and Beatrice and so forth. The supply was endless what with all the different possible spellings. I mean, like, Caitlin alone could supply several hurricane seasons with Kaitlyn, Kaitlin, Katelin, Katelyn, Catelyn, Caitlyn, Kaytlin, Kaytlin, and Caytlyn.
Alas, the activist class ─ led by such stalwart harridans as Betty Frieden (who is still alive). Bella Abzug (who is dead, but is expected to rise from the grave at any moment), Erica Jong (who is currently in a clinic for the terminally asinine), and Gloria Steinem (who graduated from ignoble bunnyhood into radical bitchhood) ─ marched on Washington shortly after the bra-burning epidemic of the ‘60s and forced the weather bureau to include boy names such as Bruce and Hugo.
Apparently this coup did so much to advance the cause of woman’s lib and world peace (as well as draw attention to the fact that topnotch female editorial assistants were paid far less than mediocre major league outfielders), that leaders of the African-American Out-Group are demanding that Black names be included in the hurricane roster.
So all you white bigots out there, better brace yourself for the next hurricane season. Duwayne, Tyrone, Tonisha, Plaxico, Woopie, Shaquandra, and Tawana are on the way.
Uh-Oh...I just got word that the Arabs want Anwar and Osama added, the Jews want Moshe and Hyman, the illegal- aliens are demanding Diego, Jose, Encarnacion, and Manuela, and the Thais threaten a boycott of American goods if Sukhon, Ngam-Chit, Phassakorn, and Khemkhaeng aren’t included.
Y’know, I just thought of something. The female Out-Group wanted male names included because using female-only names was insulting to women. But Blacks want African-American names included because not using Black names is insulting to Blacks.
See what I mean? It’s all such crap. The fact is that Out-Groups don’t give a shit whether what they want makes any sense. They merely want whatever they think the supposed In-Group has.
Miss, Mrs, and Ms (Female Out-Group Vs. Male In-Group)
On or about the time that activist women were demanding non-equal representation in the nomenclature of tropical storms, other activist ladies were focusing on gender discrimination implicit in the area of titles.
Why, they asked, should the marital status of females be identified by the labels Miss and Mrs. while males got off scot free with a universal "Mr."
Why, indeed? The solution was clear to the avant garde. A third modifier must be created that could proudly stand alongside "Mr." on the podium of life leaving everyone unsure of the marital status of double-X homo sapiens sharing the dais.
Thus "Ms." (pronounced "Miz" for some reason) made its appearance on the world stage forcing 90 percent of the male population as well as Rosie O'Donnell and Ellen DeGeneres to glance at a chick’s ring finger before hitting on her.
And so today’s liberated woman is now blessed with three titles to choose from rather than two. However, outside of spicing things up (rather like having a choice of dress-style, shoes, lingerie, hand bags, and hair-dos), it is hard to see just how the introduction of "Ms." improved the lot of the average housewife, career girl, or unwed welfare mother.
Moreover, if by some historical quirk men had happened to be identified as, say, Mouster for single men and Munsteroo for married men and women had been identified simply by Mosh, you can be sure that female activists would have demanded equivalent sobriquets for themselves, say Moshamoiselle and Muasha.
Equal Opportunity Grammar (Female Out-Group Vs. Male In-Group)
My friend from Reader’s Digest, Sally French (I hope she’ll still be my friend after this post), introduced what I call equal opportunity grammar to the Digest when she was editor of such massive best sellers as How to Do Just About Anything, Practical Problem Solver, and Household Hints and Handy Tips. (Our redoubtable art director, David Trooper, liked to call the last of these volumes, "Household Hints and Handy Tits.")
At the time, I was in charge of the company’s line of instructional books (Law, Cooking, How-to, Gardening) and stirred myself sufficiently to review the progress of one of the books Sally was putting together. What I discovered was that she was employing the pronouns "he" and "she" randomly throughout the text. Thus on one page the reader might be advised to "See your plumber, he will solve the problem," and several pages later the reader might be advised to "See your plumber, she will solve the problem."
I don’t know what to say about this sort of thing except to note that these dancing pronouns make me vaguely uncomfortable ─ not so much because they violate hoary grammatical convention, but rather because I found I was continually having to re-image the book’s anonymous plumbers and other characters to suit the shifting whim of the editor
I should point out that the reinvention of conventions is seldom a good idea. I also wonder if traditionally female objects ─ like ships and cars and cats ─ are positives or negatives in the view of the weaker, I mean stronger, sex.
In conclusion, let me ask if it really improved the lot of the world’s majority type of human being when the poetic meter of the somewhat ungrammatical Star Trek intro was ruined by changing "To boldly go where no man has gone before" to the insipid "To boldly go where no one has gone before?"
Gimme Your Money (Third World Out-Group Vs. Developed World In-Group)
Unlike the other cases I’ve listed, there is a modicum of logic to the demands by the poorer nations of the world to get their hands on as much of the wealthier nation’s money as they can.
Rather than calling this Thievery, the process is usually referred to as "Reparations" since it is accepted Liberal doctrine that America, Australia, Canada, and most of Western Europe are wealthy only because they stole the resources of the other nations of the world and enslaved their populations. (For reasons I do not understand, Japan, Finland, Sweden, and Monaco are exempt from these charges.)
Now, I certainly agree that the average Ugandan and Zimbabwean man or woman in the bush is entitled to live as well as, say, Yoko Ono and Susan Sarandon.
But what about me?
I mean, hell, I’m kinda like a small underdeveloped nation myself and I want, in fact I DEMAND, that Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, George Soros, Sean Penn, Barbra Streisand, Michael Moore and all the rest of them there fat cats cough over a few million bucks of their loot to me without delay.
What’s more, I don’t give a shit if they claim they worked for it, inherited it, stole it, or won it in the lottery.
I want half!
And if they won’t give it to me nice-like, I’ll picket their damn homes and piss on their damn lawns and crap on their damn BMWs and then I’ll get on the horn and hire goddamn Barney Frank and have him legislate it away from them.
So there!
Norm Mack, Peterborough, dog@myfairpoint.net
Americans seem fascinated by the question of whether there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. Putting aside the dubious assumption that there is intelligent life on earth, the question must be split in two:
1. Are there other lifeforms out there as brilliant as we humans?
2. If there are such lifeforms, what are the chances that we’ll hear from them?
The answer to the first question can be anything you choose ─ "Yes," "No," "Maybe," "Probably," "Definitely, "Whatever," "I don’t give a shit" ─ depending on what religion you subscribe to or how much grass you’ve smoked.
As for the second question, "What are the chances that we’ll hear from them?" the answer is more straightforward: "Absolutely none."
Granted, the universe (which as you may be aware is a very large place indeed) could easily be teeming with millions upon millions of high IQ alien civilizations sprinkled hither and yon amongst the few hundred trillion galaxies visible to the naked Hubble, each galaxy containing a few hundred trillion stars like our sun many of which are surrounded by cozy little solar systems like our own with small blue planets circling them on which Allah or Jehovah or Krishna or Dennis Kucinich or some other omnipotent being has ordained a cornucopia of life forms and put them under the supervision of ape-like mammals whose males wear Levi’s and whose females have a passion for designer handbags.
The problem, however, isn’t whether superior carbon-based entities such as editors of the New York Times inhabit the far reaches of the cosmos ─ it’s whether we can expect to be texting with them on our iPads or iPhones or iPods one of these millennia.
And that’s where that annoying son-of-a-bitch Einstein comes along to gum up the works and spoil the fun with that stupid dogma of his about nothing being able to travel faster than the speed of light.
Albert is dead and not about to debate all you fans of Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Scottie, and Sulu, who know that all we need to do to speed up our phone calls is to switch into Warp Drive, point our Priuses toward the nearest Worm Hole, and jump into Hyperspace, so I’ll just content myself with pointing out that all of you trekkies are full of shit.
● There ain’t no such things as Worm Holes.
● There ain’t no such thing as Hyperspace.
● Warp Drive is a total crock.
● The velocity of light is 186,000 miles per second and nothing, not even Barney Frank’s tongue, can transmit information or saliva faster than that.
● Scottie's dead, Sulu’s doing commercials, Nimoy is writing bad poetry, and Shatner has abandoned his starship captaincy in favor of transforming himself into a human blimp.

● What in God’s name possessed a clique of European bureaucrats to come up with the foolhardy idea of a single European currency?
● What possessed the member states of the European Community to buy into the madness?
● What kind of grass were they smoking when they imagined that 20 sovereign nations representing a bewildering mix of ethnic, sectarian, and racial groups, each with histories of warfare and conquest; subjugation and victory; bigotry, savagery, and hatred going back 5,000 years, could be welded into a unified superstate?
There would be no Greek Crisis, Spanish Crisis, Irish Crisis, Portuguese Crisis, Italian Crisis, (and lord knows how many future crises) if those nations had their own free-floating currencies.
If the citizens of Greece want to live in a welfare state consisting of two or three productive workers for every seven or eight government slugs ─ fine. Without the shackles of the euro, the Greek drachma could float downward to its proper level on the currency exchanges of the world and, should the population so desire, go the way of the Zimbabwe dollar which, when last heard from, was being issued in Z$100 trillion denominations.
The virtue of this scenario is that the economic well-being of other nations (including Germany, France, and the U. S.) wouldn’t be hostage to the vagaries of Greek street mobs....
One can’t but wonder if the notoriously hard-working and thrifty citizens of Germany, having already donated a few hundred billion dollars to their Greek non-brethren, are going to continue to cough up their hard-earned bank deposits to bail out other profligate neighbors to the south.
Throw Spain, Italy, and Portugal into the pot, sprinkle in a dash of Ireland, season with a few hundred billion euros for contingency, and voilà! ─ the Royal Bank of Scotland estimates that a mere €3.5 trillion ($5 trillion U. S.) slush fund would prevent the collapse of the euro for at least a year, maybe two.
Norm Mack, Peterborough, dog@myfairpoint.net
Columnist George Will pointed out that Liberals, having damaged liberalism’s reputation, are now calling themselves Progressives. Well...not to contradict the erudite Mr. Will (nor defend Liberals), I consider the term "Progressive" to be even less appealing than the term "Liberal."
Progressive, I assume, means in favor of progress. Progress, I assume, means change. It’s fair to say that the country’s had almost three years of supposed Change (though not much Hope) under the Progressive leadership of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barack (Hope and Change) Obama. And if you think things have been getting better and better I suggest you trot down to Zuccotti Park and tell all the youthful idealists there that they’re barking up the wrong trees and urinating on the wrong sidewalks.
The plain truth is that Progress is almost always bad.
· Are our lives really better now that we drive ten miles to pick up our groceries at Walmart or Shaw’s rather than walk half a block to the corner grocery store?
· Does milk taste sweeter now that it’s in post-dated cardboard cartons or plastic jugs instead of bottles delivered fresh each morning to your doorstep?
· Is a weeks-old Saran-wrapped cylinder of amorphous dough really a healthier, tastier alternative to a warm, fresh-out-of-the-oven, preservative-free loaf of rye from the local baker?
· Are we more fulfilled now that the roses we buy on Mother’s Day are imported from Colombia and have no scent?
· Are our children’s lives richer now that they wear armor when they’re riding their bikes and are taken to playgrounds devoid of Jungle Gyms and Monkey Bars under the watchful eyes of helicopter parents?
Cartoonist Roz Chast, that lone shining diamond in the fag-ridden fever swamp of New Yorker magazine, summons up remembrance of things past:

I put together a table, strictly off the top of my head, of some of the things and activities that have vanished or are in the process of vanishing from our lives. A few, perhaps, such as fur coats, fedoras, and the typographers union that was so instrumental in decimating the newspaper business, are just as well dead and buried. The majority, however, represent incremental losses to the grace and richness and variety of daily existence. Here's my list. I'm sure you can think of items to add:
Going...Going...Going...Gone......
|
BUSINESSES |
THINGS |
ACTIVITIES, JOBS, AND SERVICES |
|
Travel agencies |
Songs that are singable |
Group singing at parties around the piano |
|
Cigar stores |
Egg creams |
Schoolyard handball |
|
Corner Grocers |
Fresh butter |
Washroom attendants |
|
Shoe shine parlors |
Home permanent kits |
Soda jerks |
|
Stationery stores |
Fresh bread |
Milk delivery* |
|
Corner Bakeries |
Dill pickles from the barrel |
Brick layers* |
|
Five and dime stores |
Tricycles |
Linotype operators* |
|
Automats |
Fur coats |
Elevator operators* |
|
Ice cream parlors |
Fedoras, Homburgs, Straw Hats |
Kids street and sidewalk games (Hopscotch, Red Rover, Stickball, Chinese handball, Ring-a-levio) |
|
Photo developers |
Bathing caps |
Ad sections in newspapers and magazines for men and women seeking partners |
|
Butcher shops |
Rubbers and galoshes |
Employees of the Tongue River Clinic cat house in Miles City, Montana |
|
Fish markets |
Great old autos like Packard and Hudson and Studebaker |
Listening to Jack Benny and Fred Allen and all the rest on a Sunday evening |
|
Video rental stores |
Slide rules |
Hitchhiking across America with one valise and almost no money |
|
Real hardware stores |
Fountain pens |
Staying in two-dollar-a-night hotel rooms |
|
Newspaper kiosks |
Slate blackboards |
Dressing up for dinner in a good restaurant |
|
Dry cleaners |
Stephen Foster songs |
Kids going barefoot in the summer |
|
Full service gas stations |
Fresh ripe peaches |
|
|
Haberdasheries |
Fresh ripe tomatoes |
|
|
Print shops |
Boys in shorts and knickers |
|
|
Book stores |
Most newspapers* |
I wandered today to the hill, Maggie,
To watch the scene below -
The creek and the creaking old mill, Maggie,
As we used to, long ago.
The green grove is gone from the hill, Maggie,
Where first the daisies sprung;
The creaking old mill is still, Maggie,
Since you and I were young.
Norm Mack, Peterborough, dog@myfairpoint.net
In my post, The God Gene, I wrote that there is a specific gene, a Darwinian adaptation, that predisposes members of our species to believe in non-existent entities called Gods. I also ventured that the God Gene was a key factor in mankind’s penchant for banding into competing packs under the banner of one religion or another. Suppose it’s St Patrick’s Day and you run into a rolling mob of drunken Irishmen. You have two options ─ get out of the way or get shoved into the gutter. There ain’t nothing else in the refrigerator, friends. Norm Mack, Peterborough, dog@myfairpoint.net
Over the ages, the implications of the God Gene have been a mixed bag. Clearly, it has played a vital role in man’s domination of the natural world. Unfortunately, it has also had the side effect of inspiring devotees of one imaginary being to spend their lives working to convert or dominate devotees of differing imaginary beings through such time-honored stratagems as pillage, rape, war, starvation, enslavement, and mass murder.
I also noted that I was one of a small number of mutants who lacked the God Gene.
* * *
Lately, I’ve discovered another serious chromosomal deficit in my makeup...Apparently I not only lack a God Gene, but I do not have a Mob Gene either.
The Mob Gene, for those who may not be hip to its existence, is the DNA unit responsible for so much good-natured group fun over the centuries ─ from ancient Rome’s Fickle Crowd (Mobile Vulgus from which the word Mob derives) and Genghis Khan’s Golden Horde to the street mobs of the French Revolution to our own Salem Witch Trials to the Nuremberg rallies of Nazi Germany to the mud fields of Woodstock to the siege of the U.S. embassy in Teheran to the television-deprived blacks of Watts-riot fame to Britain’s recent redistribution of electronic goods via smashed store windows.
But, as is so often the case in this exciting, facebook-enhanced, iPhone-driven, twitterized world of ours, it is the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA that has proudly pioneered the way to a dramatic new form of Mob ─ The Mob Without a Cause!
Participants in the Occupy Whatever The Fuck You Happen To Think Of movement that are currently rooting like swine in their self-created filth in urban centers throughout the planet point out that they are both VERY ANGRY and VERY IDEALISTIC.
Well shit, I’m VERY ANGRY too. I was born angry and the older I get the angrier I get. In fact I think I’m angrier than any of them there Occupy Whatever fuckers. And what’s more I’m so god-awful idealistic I can barely spit. But you don’t see me camping out in front of Peterborough Town Hall with a bunch of fellow geriatric cases, smoking crack cocaine, chanting slogans about Hitler and Mao, and crapping into the marigold containers.
Hell No!
When I’m pissed off (which is always), I just barge into my wife’s room after dinner and start venting some of my pent-up hatred. And when she kicks me out (as she will) because she’s engrossed in a 550-pound tumor or Rosie O’Donnell flapping her sagging tits on OWN and is sick of my bitching anyway, I just go outside and run in circles around the big white pine tree until I turn into a pool of butter.
One thing about the Mob Gene, however, distinguishes it from the God Gene...unlike the God Gene, other members of the animal kingdom also possess the Mob Gene, most famously lemmings, sheep, and cows.
All it takes is one activist Border Collie to get the herd moving from its lush pastureland (or parents’ basement) to the slaughterhouse (or New York City financial district). A few nips on a few leg tendons, some strategic barks of command (with or without loudspeaker), and the flock gallops off to its appointed destination, there to bleat and defecate until the authorities arrive with hoses, pepper spray, and a New York Times reporter.
All-in-all a well-wrought mob makes a beautiful spectacle...and even more beautiful is the exultation stirred in the breasts and testicles of its participants.
In what other venue than a mob can a human being so completely shed the onerous shackles of civilization and enjoy the red hot freedom of anonymity? Where else can one’s every action, no matter how destructive, unsanitary, or mindless, be legitimatized by simply immersing oneself in an all-concealing mass of fellow ovines, bovines, and assholes?
A mob confers invisibility, you see, which is the greatest freedom of all. And along with invisibility comes liberation ─ liberation from responsibility... liberation from accountability... liberation from rational thought.
Embedded in the bosom of the mob, encouraged by its roars and chants, obedient only to the will of its sheepdog master, the mob member can at long last indulge in all those long-denied, wonderful, half-forgotten animal pleasures of childhood ─ hatred, vandalism, theft, taunting, arson, rock-throwing, bigotry, tantrums, threats, irrational whining, pointless demands.
What then is the hapless non-mob participant to do as the mob luxuriates in its primeval joys of intellectual atavism, physical filth, legal immunity, and the right to commit random violence?
Here’s my take on it for what it’s worth:
Those stalwart guardians of the public weal and our freedom ─ the New York Times, the Washington Post, the families of dead terrorists, Texas Representative Ron Paul, and law-abiding mass-murder clubs like Al-Qaeda ─ are Shocked!...Shocked! that a gentle AMERICAN CITIZEN named Anwar al-Awlaki and his even-gentler AMERICAN CITIZEN comrade in peace, Samir Khan, were recently incinerated by an American drone. (After which they were transported by a covey of angels to Muslim Heaven, there to dwell in everlasting sexual intercourse with a boundless supply of cute little virgins.)

Anwar Al Awlaki (L) and Samir Khan, murdered Sept. 30 by an unconstitutional drone
What savage outlaws we Americans have become, obliterating two AMERICAN CITIZENS as they were happily driving around the lush Yemeni countryside enjoying their hard-earned vacations abroad (seven years for Anwar, three years for Samir). Can you believe the phony, trumped up pretexts for killing these two dedicated citizens? Waging war against the United States? Arranging for the murder of random American citizens? Working with terrorists to turn the world clock backward a thousand years so that humanity could again wallow in the bliss of a Muslim caliphate under the benevolent protection of all-knowing Imams like Anwar himself? It is to laugh.
What is wrong with us as a people?
How have we fallen so low as to equate the trivial lives of a few hundred, or a few thousand, or a few hundred thousand Americans with the beauty of living in a brave new world of Sharia where women, as in times of old, will once again enjoy the heartwarming luxury of slavery and where men will experience the soul-cleansing thrill of prostrating themselves ten or twenty times a day with their assholes aimed toward Mecca?
By what right does our government see fit to ignore our constitution as interpreted by learned academicians, brave legislative weirdoes, and magisterial media conglomerates that have devoted their lives to subverting that very constitution and to destroying the fabric of the country where they live and work?
I for one (or two or three) am absolutely outraged at such high-handed flouting of legal precedent. American citizens (if not foreigners) have every right to be exonerated before a jury of their peers no matter how vile the crimes they have committed. And if they don’t want to come home to face trial, why...why...why...it’s...it's...just not nice!
Ron Paul, that great legal mind and exemplar of tolerance, patience, morality, and constitutionality, has called for impeachment of the President or the attorney general or their lawyers or whomever he can think of. How dare we defend ourselves against our enemies, he muses, against traitors, against mass murderers, against psychopathic religious fanatics when they are AMERICAN CITIZENS? If they were British or Chinese or German or Maori it would be okay he seems to suggest. But AMERICANS? Outrageous!
My Gawd! this entire affair reeks of horrid memories of lawless Israelis violating Argentine sovereignty by kidnapping Adolf Eichmann or brazenly interfering in the internal affairs of Uganda to transport a few useless Kikes back to their homeland.
As Congressman Paul and many other outstanding American thinkers and constitutional experts so aptly point out, the entire matter could have been solved with a simple, polite iPhone text message to Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh (now that he’s back from his three-month holiday in a Saudi Arabian hospital) humbly requesting the return of the vacationing pair of gentle American Muslims to the United States on misdemeanor charges of inappropriate behavior and failing to register their motor scooters.
Such a civilized, commonsense action would have solved the entire matter in a trice in accord with any number of constitutional amendments and international protocols. And if there was any subsequent difficulty, we could have brought the matter to the attention of the United Nations. No doubt Russia, China, the Arabs, and our friends throughout the Muslim World would have leapt at the chance to support us.
As a further gesture of good will, if the peace-loving Yemenis had any qualms about our motives, it would have been an easy matter to assure them that the trial would take place in California before the same judge and jury that handled the O. J. Simpson case so brilliantly.
All right. Enough heavy-handed sarcasm.
1. It’s glaringly obvious that the New York Times is pulling out all the stops in hopes of somebody or other leaking a memo that will claim our government is evil, thereby securing yet another Pulitzer for the Newspaper of Record and its staff of traitors.
2. Ron Paul is not only a bigot, but a fucking idiot as well.
3. If a man chooses to dress up like a bit character from one of Woody Allen’s lesser comedies and spend his time on earth plotting to murder his fellow human beings, he should be wiped off the face of planet.
4. If some brainless, hate-filled young jackass worships such an insane creep and spends his time on earth doing the madman’s bidding, then he too should be executed like the savage beast he is.
What it boils down to is this: If someone attempts to kill one of my children, I’ll blow his fuckin’ brains out if I can get the drop on him.
And the New York Times can go straight plumb to hell.
Norm Mack, Peterborough, dog@myfairpoint.net
Undeterred by the world-wide economic meltdown, several wars, a precipitous decline in fertility rates among white, non-illegal aliens, and a devastating pandemic of "But Waits!" and "Much, Much, Mores" in television commercials, American entrepreneurs are still managing to ejaculate a torrent of useless new products.
Here is the crème de la crème of crap that will be arriving in time for the holiday season on the shelves of your local Walmart..
INTRODUCING CRUST. This semi-amazing new 100% organic cheese-flavored dental gel will bleach your teeth to dazzling whiteness within seconds of its very first application thanks to its secret ingredients, Clorox, OxiClean, and White Lead. BUT WAIT! There’s much, much more! Not only will your gleaming teeth blind your various sex-partners’ eyes like the HIDs of an oncoming Mercedes, but your gums, tongue, mouth lining, lips, and the upper six inches of your esophagus will shine in the dark like radioactive pearl. And best of all Proctor and Gamble, the immense conglomerate behind this ground-breaking new piece of crap, guarantees CRUST’s efficacy for two years or until your teeth corrode.
INTRODUCING STOPPA-DA-MADNESS. At last, a weight-loss product that Works Real Good! Does your life revolve around Kentucky Fried Chicken, Big Macs, Cheesy Gordita Crunches, Burger King Triple Stackers, fried dough, smoked beef suet, chicken fat sandwiches, lard soup, and sautéed hog giblets? Did you squander your month’s supply of food stamps on Yankee Doodles, Yodels, Devil Dogs, Doubled-Stuffed Oreos, Frito-Lays, Pop-Tarts, Snickers Bars, DiGiorno Frozen Pizza, and Goldfish Crackers? Not to worry! You can stuff yourself till you puke and still lose weight with Stoppa-Da-Madness, General Mills’ 100% Organic tapeworm salt. Just sprinkle lightly on your daily mush. No matter how much vile swill you ingest thousands of Stoppa-Da-Madness’s slimy little parasitic grubs will get right to work in your intestinal tract gobbling up every particle of crap you consume along with whatever other body parts they can sink their teeth into! BUT WAIT!. There’s more! Order now and you’ll receive a free baseball card (shipping and handling extra) showing liberal icon Michael Moore before-and-after he slimmed down from a 450-pound mound of blubber to a 445-pound sack of suet..
INTRODUCING CAT-BE-GONE: Tired of scooping dried turds out of a stinking cat box? Fed up with stepping barefoot on phlegm-sodden hairballs that your pet hacks up on your wall-to-wall carpeting? Appalled at seeing your sofa clawed to shreds? Disgusted at finding decapitated mice on your pillow? Saddened when you discover that your prized bonsai has been stripped of foliage and reeks of cat urine? Weep no more my lady! Salvation is at hand! Heavily impregnated with 100% Organic Zyklon-B imported direct from Auschwitz, Cat-Be-Gone kitty litter solves all your feline problems in one lethal stroke. BUT WAIT! There’s much, much more! With each vat of Cat-Be-Gone you’ll receive a second vat FREE! And if that isn’t enough you’ll also get a FREE one-year subscription to the New York Times web site, a genuine Ginza knife, and two Get Out of Jail cards. Hurry! Call now! Don’t delay! When this offer ends it ends!
INTRODUCING I-KNIFE. Move over Swiss Army, Apple’s done it again!. Who needs a heavy, ugly, fat reddish-brownish-orangy thing that weighs down your trouser pocket when you can have a sleek, wireless, 100% Organic whatsis that’ll do just about anything you can think of. It peels, it shaves, it takes pictures, it tells time, it shoots poison darts, it kisses your boss’s ass, it fries eggs, it tells ethnic jokes, it breaths underwater, it swats flies. BUT WAIT! There’s much, much more! Girlfriend frigid? Take your i-Knife into bed with you (make sure your girlfriend’s there, too), press the little pink button on your i-Knife, gently insert the appliance into your loved one as directed on the pop-up touch screen, then lie or lay back and listen to her shriek in agony. You say you don’t have a girlfriend? No problem! Just whisper the words, "Shit outta luck" into your i-Knife and voilà! this remarkable little tool will morph into a really fun jerk-off machine. Available at Ocean State Job Lot, Walmart, Hammacher Schlemmer, Amazon.com, and fine outlets everywhere. Not
$10,002, Not$10,001, Not$10,000, but only $9,999.99!!!INTRODUCING HIPPO-COAT: Does your house require painting every 50 years? Does the roof leak like a sieve during hurricanes, nor’easters, tornadoes, heavy rains, light drizzles, mists, and morning dews? Does the siding resemble Nick Nolte’s face after a night out with Charlie Sheen? Have your Alaskan huskies run away because you can’t keep your home warm in the winter? Well...your suffering is over! Call 1-800-MYHIPPO and have all your problems solved in one fell swoop! HIPPO-COAT, LLC will air-drop several tons of 100% Organic muck (made from recycled 1960’s polyester bell-bottom pants) onto your home. Once the stuff solidifies (six weeks or less) your domicile will be hermetically sealed forever. No more leaks, no more fuel bills, no more drafts, no more oxygen! NOTHING will be able to get in or out. BUT WAIT! There’s much, much more1 Have a bedbug problem?...HIPPO-COAT asphyxiates the little bastards. Sick of your in-laws dropping in unexpectedly?...You’ll die laughing as they try to break through HIPPO-COAT ‘s rock-hard shell. Bothered by sunshine streaming through the bedroom window in the mornings?... HIPPO-COAT will keep your home’s interior in perpetual darkness!
INTRODUCING DYNOGLU: What active young sadist wouldn’t be overjoyed to find this wondrous new 100% organic toylike product under his Christmas tree or in his gun cabinet for Kwanzaa season. Secretly spirited out of the biological warfare vaults of the KGB and Planned Parenthood, this amazing new adhesive forms an unbreakable bond between skin and anything you can think of ─ wood, plastic; metal; animal, vegetable, mineral. Imagine what fun you’ll have watching your pet Chihuahua run in circles after you apply a few drops of Dynoglu to its eyelids! Or how about Dynogluing rubber stoppers into your sister’s nostrils while she’s sleeping? What a hoot! Or maybe you’ll want to coat your dad’s toilet seat with Dynoglu. Just imagine what will happen when the old fart does his morning business! BUT WAIT! There’s much, much more! Order a 24-pack of Dynoglu within the next five minutes and we’ll send you a 100% organic stinkbomb and a pint of 100% organic nitroglycerine. Carefully (very carefully) pour the nitro into your neighbor’s mailbox, add the stinkbomb, Dynoglu the box shut, and wait for the hilarity to begin!
Norm Mack, Peterborough, dog@myfairpoint.net
With another television season about to descend mercilessly upon a helpless public, Dome of Glass has managed to obtain double secret previews of the worst of the new programs to help you defend against the onslaught.
•Stubble. Based extremely loosely on the non-blockbuster non-prime-time series Whisker Wars and featuring endless interviews with famous people you never heard of and don’t like, Stubble let’s you in on the secrets, arcane rituals, specialized shaving instruments, and expensive hair salons that allow such celebrities as Brad Pitt, Hugh Jackman, Hugh Laurie, Russell Crowe, Homer Simpson, and hundreds of other male sex objects to maintain perpetual ten-day growths of facial hair. Conceived by Isaac Mizrahi and a cabal of fellow fashion industry queers, Stubble is expected to appeal to prepubescent girls, post-menopausal women, the nation’s burgeoning gay population, and a few male nerds hoping to attract members of the opposite sex by attempting to grow scraggly veneers of chin whiskers. (Filmed before a live audience.)
•You’ve Come a Long Way Baby. A heavily botoxed Rosie O'Donnell stars in this British action/adventure/mystery/comedy/sci-fi/drama as a mysterious Liverpudlian fag hag endowed with a wide array of superpowers including the ability to feign attacks of Tourette’s syndrome, speak in tongues, sneer threateningly, and mount young girls in a single bound. Ms. O'Donnell is slightly supported in her unsuccessful attempts to fight crime by a cast featuring Lady Gaga as Madonna, Madonna as Whoopie Goldberg, Mel Gibson as Shylock the Usurer, and the late Marlon Brando as Pierre the Pillsbury Dough Man. (Filmed before a dead audience.)
•Degenerate Housewives of Jaffrey, New Hampshire. Aimed at the same estrogen-soaked demographic that watches Desperate Housewives and Real Housewives of This, That, and the Other Place, this new reality show, womanned by a select group of really ugly New Hampshire wives, follows the girls as they engage in a different perversion each week. The pilot episode is set in the Rindge Walmart were two of the group (Smile Train survivor Ariadne Pelletier of Antrim and wealthy Rosamon Duckworth of the Peterborough Duckworths) are remanded to the notorious Cheshire County lockup in Keene after a contretemps with an immense Walmart customer who was clogging the Beauty aisle in the store’s pharmacy section. While in jail, both housewives are subjected to acts of inappropriate behavior (shown in graphic detail) until rescued by Oprah Winfrey. In ensuing episodes, the wives confront such contemporary topics as husband poisoning, shoplifting, infanticide, marital sex, pre-marital sex, post-marital sex, cougarism, and carb-loading before adultery.
•Cardboard Caravan. In an all-out effort to improve its sagging ratings, PBS is initiating this exciting spin-off of its hugely unsuccessful Antiques Roadshow franchise. Cardboard Caravan, as the name vaguely implies, deals with all aspects and ramifications of the popular pastime of paper goods collecting, from the simple garnering of roadside litter to the joy of treasure-hunting in the newsprint, magazine, corrugated cardboard, and scrap-paper bins of the Peterborough Recycling Center to the thrill of stealing rare manuscripts and first editions from museums and public libraries. Each program will take place in a different exotic locale. Shows already "in the can" include episodes in Berlin (New Hampshire), Lebanon (New Hampshire), Dublin (New Hampshire), Rome (New York), and Paris (Maine). The series will be shown on all PBS stations provided air-time is available between fundraisers.
•Seven and a Half Men. If Two and a Half Men was a blockbuster, how can three times as many men go wrong? This naughtily daring sitcom marks the return of Charlie Sheen in the role of a middle-aged, delusional, megalomaniacal drug addict named Charlie Sheen. Set in the Psychiatric ward of Dannemora State Prison, the initial episode sees Sheen wallowing luxuriously in a private cell and having imaginary sex with an imaginary hooker. Sheen’s idyllic life is interrupted when his bisexual fraternal twin and fellow nut-case Alec (Alec Baldwin) is unceremoniously dumped on him as cellmate. Not knowing that Charlie believes himself to be the reincarnation of Malcolm X, Alec (who believes himself to be Keith Olbermann in drag) begins arguing politics whereupon Charlie kicks him in the balls. As you can well imagine, this leads to much hilarity, many fart jokes, and a lot of witty bathroom humor. I won’t give away the rest of the show’s boisterous mirth. Watch it yourself if you have the stomach. (By the way, the "half-man" of the title is a rapist dwarf, thus eliminating any problem for the show's producers of having him grow up.)
•Buried in Crap While Whispering. M. Night Shyamalan is said to have conceived this docu-drama while in a 48-hour-long drug-induced coma during which he was exposed to non-stop reruns of 1,000 Ways to Die, Dog Whisperer, Hoarders, Snapped, and Jeopardy. Using an artful amalgam of archival footage, studio re-creations, and outright lies, Shyamalan projects the miseries, joys, successes, failures, disgusting diseases, and lurid deaths of overweight men and women who crack under the pressure of spousal abuse and expire agonizingly beneath mounds of self-accumulated trash while attempting to housebreak their pet Chihuahuas. All dialogue must be in the form of a question ─ "Who bit my armpit?" "Whose stump is that?" "Why am I dying horribly?" "May I leave the room?" "Is beheading your father a felony or a misdemeanor?" "Does neatness count?" "What is Alex Trebeck?"
Norm Mack, Peterborough, dog@myfairpoint.net
Last December in The Jewish Vote: Stuck on Stupid I visited the bizarre phenomenon wherein Jews ─ year-in and year-out, decade-in and decade-out ─ vote for left-liberal politicians who pursue policies that are antithetical to Jewish self-interest and who, at best, find Jews distasteful and, at worst, are crypto-antisemites.
In a sign that The Chosen People are beginning to use their brains rather than their behinds, constituents in the strongly Jewish Ninth Congressional District in New York voted to fill the seat (if not the Jockey shorts) of disgraced Democrat Anthony Weiner (he of the Twittered dong) with Republican Robert Turner who is not only a conservative, but a Roman Catholic to boot.
A noteworthy aspect of the September 6 special election was that Turner’s defeated opponent, David Werner, is an Orthodox Jew who fits every clichéd criterion of liberaldom ─ pro abortion, pro gay marriage, jake on building the ground-zero Mosque, pro high taxes.
Despite the spin that the New York Times and other organs of the fabrication industry attempted to put on the election, the key determining factors were Not the economy, Not race-based anti-Obama prejudice, Not endorsements by former NYC mayors Rudolph Giuliani and Ed Koch.
Turner’s victory and Werner’s defeat were out-and-out repudiations of the Obama administration’s anti-Israel policies, the Obama tax-the-rich bullslhit that everyone with half a brain knows is thinly disguised Newspeak for "Take the money from the greedy Yids and give it to the poor oppressed African-Americans," and the ever-growing undercurrent of Jew-hatred that infects the Democrat party, the media, and the entire liberal establishment.
Norm Mack, Peterborough, dog@myfairpoint.net
I posted the following notice a couple of weeks ago:
Bloggers who don't like Paul Krugman (almost everybody) have taken to calling him "Krugabe" rather than "Krugman."
Can anyone tell me what "abe" is supposed to mean?
Best I can figure, it's a reference to a creature known as a Mudokon in the video game Oddworld.
Y'know, I really hate it when people use in-group words without defining them. It's like using an abbreviation without saying what the abbreviation stands for.
Although stats show that quite few people read my request, nobody could or would enlighten me as to what "abe" means in the context of "krug." I remain, unhappily and frustratedly, in the dark.
Since I’m not a man who gives up easily ─ pointless persistence and obsession with trivia are among my many failings ─ I have continued to invest intellectual effort and Google-time in the matter. Here are some notes I’ve made on the subject:
● Should one pronounce the name Krugabe as "Krugabee" as in Huckabee? If so, what the fuck does that have to do with the price of tea in China?
● Should I be searching for the meaning of "gabe" rather than "abe?" Wikipedia informs that Gabe is a diminutive of Gabriel as in Gabe Kaplan. It is also a tune from Motor Motel Love Songs, whatever the hell that is, as well as the surname of a Bulgarian poetess and a former Welsh rugby union player, whoever the hell they are.
● Could the word "Abe" be a sarcastic reference to Abraham Lincoln? Geez, I hope not. That would not only be pretty lame, but an insult to Honest Abe as well.
● Is ABE one of those stupid acronyms, like LOL, and IMHO and OTOH that e-mailers, bloggers, twitterers, facebookers, and related nitwits use? If so, might it stand for something like "Asinine Bearded Egomaniac" or "Aggressive Bullshit Ejector" or "Absurd Bloviating Emobitch."
The richest trove of abes that I unearthed in my studies came from the Urban Dictionary Here, for your non-edification, are the dregs of the lot in inverse order of unimportance:


Krug-Abe Pubic Hair-Abe Mukodon-Abe
Perhaps Mr. Krugman himself would care to clean up this whole kettle of fish. I and three or four people around the blogosphere would be slightly grateful.
In the nonce, my request for information (and ideas, guesses, stupid suggestions, and outright fabrications) remains open.
Norm Mack, Peterborough, dog@myfairpoint.net
BULLETIN: During a disjointed conversation with my beautiful, brilliant daughter Lale this morning (it's my birthday) I told her about my Krugabe problem. After a moment's consideration she hazarded the guess that "Krugabe" should be pronounced Kroo-Gah-Bay as in Moo-Gah-Bay, a reference to the insane and murderous African dictator Robert Mugabe. I suspect this is the answer to the mystery.

Resemblance? Perhaps if Mr. Mugabe grew a beard and Mr. Krugman started
wearing hornrims and his old SS uniform the similarity would be more obvious.
I love words and I respect words.
I believe that of all the attributes that make human beings unique on earth and perhaps in the universe, it is the melding of words with our consciousnesses, our intellects, our core beings, and our very souls.
I also believe that one’s native language determines to a large extent one’s outlook on reality. Would the madness and fanaticism of so many Muslims exist were it not for the wild extremes of imagery endemic to Arabic?
Of all mankind’s thousands of languages, some living, many dead, I feel that the most beautiful and richest is English with its immense vocabulary accumulated over the millennia through conquest and defeat, through empire and ancient tribes and the armies of long-vanished Caesars, through the daring of men, who, as Churchill said, "journeyed across the centuries, across the oceans, across the mountains, across the prairies."
It is no accident that English has become a universal tongue, for it incorporates within its vastness most of the world’s other languages.
I treasure my native language and I thank God for being born into it and for the freedom of thought that is intertwined in its very nature,
* * *
I’ve always been a man of The Word (though I’ve never claimed to be God, at least when sober, and though I do own to excursions into the realms of mathematics and engineering at times in my life when it was more expedient to eat rather than write unpublished novels.)
My love affair with words is traceable to my mother, a Lady Macbeth-like figure who may have been disastrous at motherhood, but who was excellent at English ─ she was a legend in her own time during her many years in the English Department at William Cullen Bryant High School in Queens. It was she, through repetition, through example, and by whacking my ass, who instilled in me the difference between "good" and "well," "bad" and "badly," and the transitive verb "to lay" and the intransitive verb "to lie."
I have no doubt that her training in vocabulary and grammar, which I in turn infused in my own children with unremitting brutality, is the reason none of the seven is in jail at the moment. (Although I must confess that my second eldest daughter is a corporate lawyer which is almost as bad.)
* * *
All this brings me to liberalism and the root cause of why I despise it ─ its unremitting assault on the English language through distortion, bowdlerization, and unctuous sycophancy.
Liberals view English, My English, as cheap, malleable potter’s clay to be twisted and debased according to the shifting whims of their vapid religion.
It is the belief of all liberals that by manipulation of language enforced by threats of public opprobrium (i.e., Political Correctness) they can alter reality. Let's look at some of the cornerstones of the liberal vocabulary.
Liberal
In politics, the very term "liberal" has come to mean the exact opposite of it’s dictionary definition which is Generous, Open-Handed, Broad-Minded, Unorthodox, and Tolerant Of Others’ Ideas. Today, the acolytes of liberalism have transmuted the word into a synonym for bigoted, doctrinaire, close-minded, intolerant, and vengefully vicious.
The New York Times’ Fascist-in-chief, Paul Krugman, for example, calls his excretions "The Conscience of a Liberal." This from a conscienceless intellectual dwarf who struggles to exorcise the traumas of his friendless childhood by projecting his juvenile resentments and humiliations onto people he does not know via invective, slander, and fabrication.
African-American
Card-carrying liberals have ordained that any man or woman with the slightest smattering of African ancestry must be referred to as "African-American." In past years, of course, it was equally vital to use the word "Black." Before that the preferred adjective was "Colored." Before that it was "Negro" I also remember that calling someone an "Afro-American" was once considered racist (since all of us were Americans, not "hyphenated Americans.")
It is not clear just how a kaleidoscope of changing appellations helped or harmed the status of the individuals involved, but it certainly gave the liberal thought police a constantly updated arsenal of weaponry with which to attack targets of their distaste and, abetted by a compliant liberal media, force them into contrite apologies and, frequently, loss of jobs.
I recall listening to a callow, liberal asshole on PBS describe the well-known 18th century Negro French composer and violinist Boulogne de Saint-George as "A French African-American." Such nonsense would be hilarious if it weren’t so pitiful and yet I doubt if a single liberal having heard that broadcast or reading this post would consider it to be as puling and disgusting as it actually is.
Affirmative Action
This ridiculous euphemism has now been enshrined in our universities, courts of law, governmental institutions, and media alongside War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength as a keystone of political Newspeak.
I don’t give a fuck whether anyone likes it or not. "Affirmative Action" means "Quota." "Quota" means "Affirmative Action." Reality is not altered by the application of smarmy weasel words.
It is indifferently inconsequential what kind of twisted sophistry Ruth Bader Ginsberg indulges in or what kind of nonsense Humpty Dumpty voices: If there are 1,000 openings in an Ivy League freshmen class and 20 percent are affirmative-actioned for blacks and another 15 percent for Hispanics and another five percent for American Indians (oh, sorry, Native Americans) that means that there is a quota of 200 blacks, 150 Hispanics, 50 Indians, and 600 for the dregs (Jews, Orientals, Whites, Catholics, and other lesser breeds without the law).
Perhaps, in some golden future, Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama and Henry Reid will succeed in amending the Constitution for the benefit of the Democrat Party by outlawing mathematics and common sense.
Until that happens a quota is a quota is a quota.
Diversity
"Diversity" is the incestuous offspring of the rape of "Miss Affirmative Action" by her brother, "Mr. African-American." The chief function of the word is to defuse any attempt to point out that the virginal Miss Affirmative Action is actually that pseudonymous old bitch Mrs. Quota The point being that if a College adds a sufficient quantity of black to a white student body and runs the mix through the Blend Cycle of an Osterizer, the resultant grayish mass is a benefit to all.
So if you’re a white boy denied admission to Harvard because your slot has been taken by a black boy with half your credentials and a special race-based scholarship, stop your goddamn whining and be thankful you live in such a great liberal society as America.
David Skorton, the President and Suckup-in-Chief of my alma mater, Cornell University (to take a case close to my heart), cannot seem to issue a statement without swearing allegiance to the flag of the United States of Diversity and to the University for which it stands, one college under Diversity, with scholarships and quotas for all designated minorities.
Special Needs Children
I’m too lazy, too busy, too old, and too ignorant to trace the history of the many words that have been applied and discarded in connection with those among us ─ how shall I put it ─ who are a deal below the break-even point on the IQ scale.
I remember a group of 20 or 30 kids in P.S. 150 in Queens who were segregated in a special classroom with a special teacher. The term then in use was "Retarded" a clinical-sounding expression that (liberal) pedagogues introduced to replace such familiar nouns as idiot, moron, and cretin. Almost immediately, in the cruel, innocent way of children, "Retard" became the put-down of choice among the classroom set.
Result? "Retarded" (itself a euphemism matured into an insult) was replaced by a string of other euphemisms ─ intellectually challenged, special education, learning disability, special needs. Yet, strangely, not one of these shifting, "sensitivity" definitions helped to improve the lot of those to whom they were applied.
Back in my days in Westchester County I recall the much-heralded advent of the Board of Cooperative Educational Services. BOCES was (an may still be) an umbrella bureaucracy embracing special education, remedial education, special needs, and every other variety of crap disability the teachers' union could come up with. Surely, the grammar Mafia insisted, this single masterstroke would eliminate centuries of prejudice applied to those of below average intellect.
Result? Within the blink of an eye, the entire student population had a new pejorative at its disposal.
Somebody you don’t like? ─ "He’s a F...ing Bocee."
Your brother introduces a snake into your bed? ─ "I'll kill you, you little Bocee."
A teacher you hate? ─ "What a Bocee."
* * *
"What's in a name?" Juliet asked. "That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."
Alas, according to liberals, everything is in a name, and nothing is in reality.
Should we decide to call a rose a turd, why then it will stink.
And should we call a turd a rose, why then it will acquire a most delightful fragrance.
Thus, if we pay lip service to goodness, we are therefore good.
If we call ourselves liberals, we are therefore generous and temperate.
If we call our enemies bigots, they therefore become bigots.
If we call censorship the "Fairness Doctrine," we are therefore advocates of fairness.
If we call terrorism "militancy," there is no longer such a thing as terrorism.
But why bother to go on.
If one chooses to live lies and to persecute those who prefer truth, so be it. It’s the way of the world. After all, we live in a democracy where the majority rule. And the majority can never be wrong.
Norm Mack, Peterborough, nbmack@myfairpoint.net