The Marowitz Shamlet

On Wednesday I had the utterly dubious pleasure to preview a performance of a treatment of that play about that Danish guy that for the life of Abe Vigoda would have done the anonymous pirate arranger of Hamlet’s unauthorized quarto (Q1, or, the “Bad Quarto,” with such immortal lines as “O what a dunghill idiot slaue am I?” and “To be or not to be, I, there’s the point”) extremely proud. The culprit was one Charles Marowitz, a very fantastical mountebank imported from the normally artistically competent Royal Shakespeare Company in England.

The practice of adapting, changing, or just plain shitting all over Shakespeare’s work to fit an artistic or ideological agenda (and expecting to be recognized for one’s cleverness) has a long and undistinguished history. In the Restoration era, dramatists such as John Dryden thought fit to “improve” the plays by adding new characters, changing the endings of tragedies to happy ones, and even rechristening them with new titles (Antony and Cleopatra becomes All for Love), etcetera. If you, figment reader, think to yourself, “John Dryden… but wasn’t he a poet?” you are absolutely correct! The be-wigged powder-puff is almost never remembered for his dramatick works, which I think says more than enough. Likewise the venerable libromancer Thomas Bowdler of the early 19^th century conspired to expurgate the wiggly bits of diction in the Bard’s works that would not do to be heard by “families” and lo – this Shakespeare was now approved for ALL AUDIENCES.

The context in which we must place Marowitz’s abortion is apparently the late 1960s. In an excerpt from the original 1968 introduction, Charlie sagely intones: “Among the classics, Hamlet is a very special case. It is the most often performed, the most widely read, the most thoroughly studied of Shakespeare’s plays. It has – quite literally – been done to death.” A more self-important cloud of narcissus anal wind has – quite literally – never befouled a theatre program. Marowitz runs on at length to repeat (without evidence) that Hamlet’s familiarity to the public and conspicuous status atop the Western canon is precisely what renders it incomprehensible. At least to some hipster-critic-academic at a mahogany desk somewhere. To inflict more intestinal gas on the reader, Hamlet is “a myth, compounded of misunderstandings, distortions, and contradictions.” The play is not only just too complicated for you to understand, it is “imprisoned in its narrative.” In order to really free the story from its unfortunate constrictions of being a story, the “relentless narrativeness” must be abandoned in favor of “(ripping) open the golden lid of the treasure chest to find other riches within.” For Marowitz, then, Hamlet as Shakespeare intended it is simply not good enough.

But perhaps this is all smoke and chin-spinach. Maybe this Mar-no-wits has a legitimate artistic program to render the Bard’s work more interesting to the over-exposed. As I watched the lights rise to reveal the crumpled form of my friend L onstage (in the title role) I thought hey, anything’s possible. A few minutes into the performance, however, I knew I’d had no such luck.

The abomination was constructed from a newspaper-clipping-like selection of material in the original. With the careless aplomb of a hedonistic two-year-old, Mr. Marowitz (who in his bio modestly proclaims himself “one of the few people to successfully combine drama-criticism, acclaimed playwriting, and a career in stage direction”) glued together a popsicle-stick version of Shakespeare’s original with all the obscurity (and more for good measure) and none of the literary and dramatic power. A four-hour play was reduced to seventy-five minutes (with no intermission, or I would have left); lines were not only slashed and burned away, but given to the wrong characters, while scenes were mangled, chopped up, and staged out of sequence or knitted together in grotesque combinations. Indeed this was the Bard in the blender, and the result was an unwholesome, ego-filled MilkShakespeare.

The characters that weren’t written out entirely (Polonius) were reduced to a juvenile hodge-podge of babbling poltroons. We were supposedly being treated to a tour of the inner walls of “Hamlet’s” cerebrum, and it weren’t pretty. In a dyspeptic wash of semi-scenes, characters filed onstage dressed in execrably cheesy, inauthentic costumes meant to evoke the Dane’s confused sense of reality, but in effect just looking stupid. They approached Hamlet and said things to him, danced, sang songs, made out with each other, and generally created a shambles of foolishness out of the text. The set was equally emblematic of the slapdash, context-deprived void characteristic of this treatment. It was now unrecognizable as an English masterpiece – a popped zit of a play, dramaturgically theorized and de-constructed into oblivion. The total effect was the most dried-out, overanalyzed, academically obscure, cynical and self-serving adaptation one could ever hope or dread for. One can only congratulate the man for hoodwinking so many people into finding his utterly dated, turgid thesis of a play worth spending money to stage.

For myself, I was thoroughly glad my ticket was complimentary.

 

The Internet Thinks I’m Indian, or Why I Left FaesBuuk

Somewhere along my way, since I started using the internets autonomously in around Anno Domini 2000 (I remember the “BUSH vs. GORE!” popups on Netzero), I like most everyone else on here have accumulated a figuratively stinking, fragmentary, Pigpen-from-Peanuts-like trail of personal debris as I browsed through the jungles of information on search engines, news sites, fake-pet MMOGs, email sites, social media sites, blogs, video sites, you get the idea. Truly, we of internetistan are like unto the wild rhinoceros of the farthest Orient and Africk, who carves trails amid the winding vines and deposits frequent fecal lumps to mark boundaries and assert its ineffable existence. (No one is endeavoring to make the tips of internet-users’ noses into traditional Asian folk medicine, but I congratulate myself on the simile nonetheless.)

To further extend the oddly titillating comparison, advertisers on the internet are like dung beetles and flies. Upon discovery of our precious rhinocerific coprolite dumplings, these insects busy themselves with rolling, sifting, munching, dissecting, targeting, and categorizing them, the better to nourish their insatiate hunger for such stuff.

In this manner, advertisers hope to co-opt my every search, email, FB message (more on that later), blog post, or YT video viewing to their benefit. Their benefit is of course to make the “content” of their offerings more palatable and “relevant” to my tastes. The apparently sound thinking behind this logic erodes once a netizen has explored domains and interests beyond their societally-expected, stereotyped, focus-grouped, demographically-predicted loci. My interests tending in the Indophilic direction, I have of course become bombarded by missives from Indian marriage sites, Hindi film-streaming sites, immigration services, “Call Home to India” phone plans at competitive rates, and many options for sending money to my non-existent indigent relatives in Bharat Mata.

I find this turn of events amusing. But there are certainly more disturbing implications in this data-collection/supervision/stalking/surveillance on their part. Many have gone into these implications and I won’t here, but I will say that recent events regarding that great blue-and-white Beast of social dis-connection have convinced me to once and for all forgo its wretched, time-wasting use. I refer to the IPO filing by Zukerbugz and co., as well as the forced-march, Stalinesque voluntelling of users to switch to the “timeline” profile format. And indeed, though I once posted these blogbarfs to my own profile, I must now cut off that vestige of relevance (or badgering narcissism) to my acquaintances and forge a much less-read path for this blog, which is truer to its original intent anyway. The real, figurative meat of the matter is that I wish as little of my rhinoceros dung to be examined by the relevant parties as possible. This is the pig-headed result of being an autonomous human being and not merely a consumer of useless sidebar-peddled widgets to the enrichment of faceless others. FaesBuuk is dead. Long live You and Me.

 

Fart Bandits Strike Wal-Mart

In the waning hours of yester-evening, five obnoxious hobbledehoys including me piled into a clown car-ish Honda Civic and made straight for the local Wal-Market. The plan was simple: to employ my ten-year-old brother’s Christmas present (from me) to raise the maximum harmless-if-uproarious consternation among members of the unsuspecting public.

What was this glorious, misappropriated gift you may gurgle? It was in truth a Lordly hybridization of Civilization’s dazzling technological progress with the eternally dignified mysteries of the human body. Namely, a remote-control fart machine.

Despite the initial misgivings of my senior brother and three friends, I was able by diffuse words of wisdom and encouragement to eventually win them to the mischief. We emerged from the parking-cavern of the beastly Big Box Bazaar and slid through its doors. Inside I volunteered, Frodo-like, to be the first bearer of the miraculous device in the seat of my trousers. The one caveat I insisted upon was that any wumpling who asserted to control the wind-break remote button must at some time offer up his own buttock-pocket for the carrying of it, and vice versa.

Thus we began what would be universally recognized as a Damn Fun Time. The operating procedure was straightforward: the carrier of the prestidigitationary gizmo would wander the aisles of the supermart and innocently examine products off the shelves. When any decent, legitimate shoppers strayed near enough, the one in charge of Remote Fart Detonation (several feet away, trying to look equally non-suspicious) would give several quick pushes to the controls and voila: the human condition.

Flatulence or the mere suspectation of it is enough to send much of the public into paroxysms of terror. That is at least what we concluded upon viewage of the baker’s dozen wide-eyed, incredulous, and invariably disgusted victims of our fart-fraud. A black-clad manager sorting socks took a step back, his face taut in horror. A young woman walked three paces and turned to give the most withering stare of opprobrium imaginable (a stink-eye, if you will). And a motley assortment of largely decent and undeserving folk did takes, double-takes, sometimes giggled, and were occasionally just so stubbornly polite enough to do nothing at all (though it was impossible not to hear).

Needless to say, this diversion was boundless in entertainment-value and we quickly adapted our techniques to surveill without detection from above, and so on and so farth. It was an evening to be remembered by all and emulated I hope in the nearest of futures.

 

The Implications to Stagecraft of Nicholas CoppoCagela

Cast your minds back to January 19th of Two Thousand Ten: the Earth had just seen fit to expose the disadvantages of lax building codes and make the lot of Haitians even more beautificent; that slightly more populous area to the northeast of me was daubing its hideous six-ringed makeup to celebrate the death of Nodar Kumaritashvili; and Yours True-or-Falsely was sitting in a lecture on the mysteries of Front of House in the Phoenix Building. This is what I wrote.

Front of House

Nicky Cage invented the Front of House in 1895 when he drilled a hole in the Drury Lane Theatre with a jackhammer. When asked about his reasons for doing this he chortled and dulcetly intoned, “I just thought the place needed a little Spooge finish”

Nicholas Cage heads the organization of most theatres in north America; He invents everything that could possibly go wrong, and the policies to try and solve that issue; He also communicates with his patrons, ushers, and production staff with witty phrases like, ‘Jello soup!’ and “ahoy hoy!”

Safety and comfort are important to Nic Cage; every night, 200 variables test Cage’s unutterable skills of personal conflict and environmental diffusement;

VIPs should be kept to Nicholas Cage’s private apartments, especially if they are bears. They can replenish his wardrobe of pelts and conceptual machinery; Atom Egoyan pays visits to Nicholas Cage in a wheelchair to give him a heads up

Sometimes people put their walkers in the way of Nic Cage’s wheelchair areas; He cleans these problems out by hiring the local Chicago Bears to use firehoses and water pressure techniques

A group of private school children once tried to buy chocolate bars from Nicholas Cage. He responded by tousling their bowl cuts and hiding them in different aisles of Safeway;

Latecomers distract Nicolas Cage from the show; sometimes he doesn’t care, if it’s in a noisy musical for example; but in previews and opening night and quieter shows it is a big no-no

What’s even worse is seating people when Nicholas Cage is going out! He routinely bowls over several nonagenarians on his way to Norway House for an ice cream socialist

Nicholas Cage once broke one of the Phoenix’s sets; he jumped on the swing and the cable broke and almost knocked off everybody’s feet.

The lobby’s aesthetic layout is largely due to Nicholas Cage; Cage also vastly encourages environmental waste as a way of life, and thinks that theatres have gone a long way to promoting these practices

Nicholas Cage’s audience is the raw material for a show; he’s in a really terrible movie, has failed all his classes, has missed the bus and to top it all off Nicholas Cage messed up his ticket price!

Nicholas Cage tells horror stories to children in the front of house area. He makes it the front of Haunted House. Usually people are throwing up or tripping on their drunkenness, has given patrons the wrong tickets, engineered spectacular technical difficulties, and crafted interpersonal farces of terrifying emotional traumatization

Cage’s personal style and managerial integrity is better than Sandra or Bindon, who are both different in their approach; the policies of Nicky Cage’s organization consist of kicking babies across varying distances and asking them for ID

Nicholas Cage types 2000 words when he takes notes on Front of House and Box Office

Nicky Cage is watching the show.

Fire, illness, injury, drunkenness, are four essential parts of Nicky Cage’s daily routine

In Star Trek William Shatner sez: CAAAAAAAAAAAAGE

When does Nicholas Cage ever ask to see somebody’s notes? Well, it is a creative educational pedagogical methadone of mine

Tartarsauce tartartartartartarsauce tartarsauce I wish I had two Nicholas Cages tartarsauce

C U Next Tuesday

 

Vancouver Hockey Fans Shock the Country by Acting Like Hockey Fans.

I’m sorry. You ramp up for several months a certain tenor of unreasonable elation around a franchise – a franchise over forty years old in a small market city with only one major league team. You put this franchise in Canada, where the viking/indigenous-invented sport of ice-Foosball is hallowed to a skunk-munchingly sickening degree, and build the team into the no. 1 seed, all-season-long clear favorites to Win It All.

During the playoff run you plaster the entire polis with banners, stickers, fridge magnets, flags, signs, stuffed animals, jerseys, foam fingers, and limited-edition (collectable) marital aids that all proclaim in the same loud typeset that “They Believe” said ice-Foosball team will “Go!”

Then you invite one hundred thousand people from every Podunk-with-beautiful-views-and-rattlesnakes town in the province to swarm the downtown core of your quaint little city-of-nice-views-but-too-much-rain, enticing them with gigantic screens floating outside the Cornbob Broadcasting Caboodle building.

The game these Podunkers/No-Fun-Cityites have come from everywhere to stand in the ultraviolet rays and gander at is the seventh in the series – the last in the series – the Must Win (but of course we’ll win; we were the favorites all season long!). To make it short (not really my thing), the team loses. They lose big. They don’t even threaten a comeback, gliding serenely if tearily to a stun-inducing blowout four-to-nothing finish.

Then this happens:

And through the news broadcast all I could hear was the self-serving commentary of some old man berating the mostly young (though not exclusively, as most major media seemed to want us to believe) rioters for being irresponsible in their shaming of the city, country, and national sport.

To him, and the public/private media elephantiasis-machine spewing chewed-up wisdom chunks from its knobbly diseased proboscis that he represents I say this: you can’t have it both ways. You can’t profit from a Russian-Mafia-dominated professional league of skating puckmen to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars every year, pushing the downer drug of sports affiliation on a people with no interests, aspirations or stake in the world, teaching them to knit their emotions into a tightly-wound sweater of unimaginably arbitrary and meaningless “loyalty” and then DENY THEM THE CUP. Bad things, I say, are likely to happen.

This is no endorsement of the behavior of the rioters. On the contrary, their proclivities are at least as disingenuous to me as anything the media has said. Very rightly many are noting that while the common people of oppressed societies around the Arab world this year took to the streets to demand democracy and rights, the people of Vancouver have taken to the streets (a great deal more violently) because their favored group of pajama-clad stick-wielders failed to poke a piece of plastic into a net.

The entire episode, it seems, is the perfect indictment of this Narcissus country in its delirium of faux-diversity, pseudo-rationalism, blind agnosticism and state/corporate-encouraged banality. What a disaster.

 

X-Men or, Return or the Formerly-Apropos Skit

I just attended a screening (sounds gentile, don’t it?) of the recent prequel of the Marvel Comics Saga of the Envy-Inducingly Deformed Teenagers and Slightly-Less-Young German/British-Accented Men (X-Men). Truly I thought it was the best superhero film I’ve ever seen. That’s like saying that Mosiah is the best part of the Book of Mormon, or that Hermann Goering was the least unfriendly of the Nazis. But stick with me, folks. I would encourage anyone to see it who is dissatisfied with the unending bumper crop of comic-book-based movies that have rolled into theaters for the last decade or so. This one, with its subtle nods to early 60s fashion, historico-politico-cultural events, and general grooviness, is a breath of air (as opposed to the choking most other films in this class reduce one to). McAvoy is debonair in his not-yet-bald/not-yet-crippled role, as is the German guy in his. And with that I will stop shilling for a movie that already has millions spent on professional publicity.

Seeing that another X-Men film has manifested, I was reminded of a short skit I wrote around the time the third of the original trilogy appeared (2006). Here it is, copyright me (if you please).

*

(A small, middle-class, suburban living room. A middle-aged woman sits nervously in a chair slightly left of centerstage. Enter a completely bald, older-looking man in a wheelchair. He wheels in, stopping when he comes to a point slightly right of centerstage.)

PROF. J

Good afternoon Mrs. Donahue. I am professor Charlton Javier. I want to thank you for letting me into your home, for I believe the issue at hand to be one of the utmost importance.

WOMAN

But what is the issue at hand?

PROF. J

For most of his life, your son Michael has exhibited… unusual behavior, has he not?

WOMAN

Well, Michael can sometimes be… challenging, but studies have shown that most little boys are difficult at his age.

PROF. J

Quite. And am I correct in assuming that young Michael’s behavior is frequently dangerous and destructive?

WOMAN

Well… yes.

PROF. J

More so than other children?

WOMAN

I… no…

PROF. J

It’s all right Mrs. Donahue; you can be honest with me.

WOMAN

Yes… He can be very destructive.

PROF. J

I see. Now, I do not wish to upset you, but I have reason to believe that your son possesses certain abilities that are far beyond his knowledge or control.

WOMAN

What? What are you talking about?

PROF. J

Mrs. Donahue, your son is a mutant.

WOMAN

No! Michael is fine! There’s nothing wrong my baby!

PROF. J

Mutation is not a disease or imperfection of any kind. It is a gift – a gift that may be employed for the betterment of mankind. I tell you this because I wish educate Michael in the use and control of his powers at my school – Javier’s School for Special Children.

WOMAN

But then your school is…?

PROF. J

No it is not a school for the mentally challenged! Please, try to understand what I’m saying. Your son, if left to his own devices, will pose a grave threat to himself and everyone around him. That is why I must take him to my school immediately.

WOMAN

But… This is all happening so fast…

PROF. J

Perhaps it would be best if I spoke directly to Michael about this.

WOMAN

Oh… All right. (Calling offstage) Mikey! Come here; there’s someone who wants to talk to you!

Both pause for a few moments. Enter a shy, thin child of about ten to twelve years. He sits down, staring at the floor.

Honey, this is Professor Javier. He wonders if you would like to visit his school for special children.

Michael looks up at her questioningly.

No it’s… not that kind of school.

Professor J exhales irascibly.

PROF. J

Mrs. Donahue, would it be possible for me to talk with Michael alone?

WOMAN

Oh, sure.

She leaves. A bit of a silence.

PROF. J

Now Michael, you are a very powerful young man. I want to help you control your power, without letting it control you.

BOY

What do you mean?

PROF. J

(In a strange accent) Did you ever make anything happen? Anything you couldn’t explain? You’re a mutant Harry, and a thumpin’ good’n I’d wager, once you train up a little.

BOY

My name’s not Harry…

PROF. J

Oh right, sorry…

BOY

But – Mutant? What’s a mutant?

PROF. J

Mutation arises from a particular combination of cellular and chromosomal irregularities that you probably wouldn’t be interested in. However, mutants, while often different and more powerful than ordinary humans, have all the regular faculties of human anatomy and more. They – we, I should say, for I am also a mutant – are people, with thoughts and emotions just like anyone else.

BOY

So… I’m a mutant?

PROF. J

From the evidence I think it is extremely likely, yes.

BOY

Wow! It all makes sense now! I have like, special powers and stuff! ‘Cause I can do soooo much stuff, you know? Like look what I can do¾ I can run around really super fast!

He runs around the room at a perfectly human speed, tipping over furniture and breaking a few things, then sits back down.

PROF. J

Hmm…

BOY

And this one time, before my dad left, we were having this barbecue, and I pushed the grill over onto the grass, and like, all this grease and fat and stuff came out, and all the food got ruined! It was freakin’ hilarious!

PROF. J

So your father left you and your mother?

BOY

Yeah, he was weird. I never see him much anymore, ‘cause the judge offered to let him see me on weekends and stuff, but he didn’t want to.

PROF. J

I’m afraid rejection does, sadly, play a prominent role in the life of most mutants. But go on – were there any other occasions on which you saw signs of your powers?

BOY

Oh yeah, lots. I invented this game one time. It’s called “try to hit the person,” but nobody ever wants to play it with me, ‘cause they say I hit too hard, so I think I must be really strong or something.

PROF. J

Indeed. And what does one do in this… game of yours?

BOY

You play it like this!

He gets up quickly and starts slapping the professor all over his head and body.

PROF. J

(Flabbergasted) Enough!

He raises his hand to his head, closing his eyes. Mikey’s hands swing away from the professor’s face and Mikey sits down as if propelled by an invisible force.

BOY

Whoa! What was that?

PROF. J

As I said before, I am also a mutant. My powers are telepathic¾ grounded in the mind.

BOY

So like you can read peoples’ minds?

PROF. J

Sometimes, yes.

BOY

Epic! Like, I can do that too. I think I know what you’re thinking right now.

PROF. J

And what am I thinking?

BOY

You’re thinking, “He doesn’t know what I’m thinking; that’s impossible!”

PROF. J

I see. Well I think -

BOY

I can do tons of other stuff too, like when my grandpa was making this house of cards, and it was really big, and I punched through it.

PROF. J

And what happened?

BOY

It fell over!

A silence.

PROF. J

Indeed.

BOY

And this one time, at computer camp -

PROF. J

Just a minute Michael.

He puts his hand on Mikey’s forehead and concentrates with his eyes closed for a few seconds, and then sits back in his chair.

BOY

What was that for?

PROF. J

Nothing, nothing at all… (Calls offstage) Mrs. Donahue, could you come in here please?

WOMAN

(From offstage) You betcha!

She enters and sits down.

So kiddo, do ya wanna go to Professor Javier’s school?

PROF. J

Yes, I have something to say about that. (beat) Mrs. Donahue, I have never interviewed a child quite like… Mikey before.

WOMAN

Oh, I’ve always known he’s a talented little guy.

PROF. J

It is not a question of talent, Mrs. Donahue. I have found Michael to be, as suspected, a remorselessly destructive and hazardous little boy. However, I have also found, to my surprise, that he is nothing more than that. Your son, briefly, is not a mutant. He is simply one of the most obnoxious, idiotic, violent, and ridiculous children I have ever met. He will not enter my school while I draw breath.

He starts to leave. Mikey starts crying and whining.

WOMAN

Well! I’m not so sure my little Mikey wants to go to a school for retarded children!

PROF. J

ARRRRGH! And people wonder why Magneto wants to kill you all!

Curtain as he exits.

 

Gil Scott-Heron (1949-2011)

So this just happened:

I turned on “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” by jazz poet Gil Scott-Heron. In the song he says “There will be no slow-motion or still lifes of Roy Wilkins strolling through Watts in a red-black-and-green Liberation Jumpsuit that he has been saving for just the proper occasion.”

I looked up Wilkins on Wikipedia and found out he was head of the NAACP in the 60s and 70s. On the main page: “American poet and musician Gil Scott-Heron dies at the age of 62.”

Thanks for everything, Gil. Keep on raising hell in heaven.

After that my ipod put on the Beach Boys.

 

Warburton! (factorial that is)

A little while ago I came up with a game to play with the name of TV/film actor Patrick Warburton. He is best known for playing David Puddy on Seinfeld and as the voice of Kronk in the Emperor’s New Groove and the title character in Buzz Lightyear of Star Command.

The genesis of this brainwave is now as lost to the world as the comedies of Cratinus and Eupolis. However the game itself remains, and is somewhat similar to the improvisational technique of creating a palta (variation) in a tabla composition.

Take the syllables in Patrick Warburton (with a more aural/phonetic as opposed to textual emphasis):

Pat – Trick – War – Burt – Ton

Now order them however you wish in two groups, the first of two syllables, the second of three, i.e.:

Burtpat Tricktonwar, or

Trickburt Pattonwar (almost has some vague historical meaning, that one)

You will find that without repetition of syllables the possibilities number 120 (5! or 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1)

Find out which orderings you deem most aesthetically pleasing, then report back to me.

This game lends itself to the obvious (but nonetheless insufferably brilliant) haiku:

Wartrick Patburton

Only the boring are bored

Tonwar Burttrickpat

 

Literally Random Epic Awesomeness

Ever notice how the kids literally use this random assortment of words and phrases for almost every awesome, epic, or badass occasion?

I think it speaks to the creativity, imagination, and well-readness of the Youth that they have found such epic ways to express their awesome selves. Who would have thought they would employ literally half a dozen badasseries to communicate their epic amount of concerns and aspirations as Young People? It feels, to quote a scintillatingly original expression, So Random!

Some R-tard naysayers – Haters, if you will – might have the unmitigated audacity to jump up from behind my igloo and yell “Bullshit!” at the preceding statements, citing a weary and hackneyed criticism that using the same half dozen words and phrases, however random, epic, or awesome they are, reduces the same even to weary and hackneyed cliches themselves with literally no meaning whatsoever.

However the burthen of proof, I say, is on the disapprobator. For verily, a goodly number of plainfolk have a similar if not so limited yen to play Lazarus with the archaic bird droppings of oure Olde Motherr Engelish Tonge. These divers squires and dames have forsooth taken upon themselves to spew the fetid remains of the language from their maws at unsuspecting passing hobbledehoys, hoping that their decaying appropriations will render the whelps more gruntled, combobulated, and altogether serene exponents who might be willing to utter the phrase “A Whitsun Morris Dance” with nary a mite of chagrin.

To these people I say, S’foot!

A linear-minded reader (as if those exist here!) might prise from this entry that the author is proclaiming loudly, effusively, and at far too much length as is his wont, that language, being the arbitrary Alot that it is, should not be shackled to a preconceived rocky outcropping of unnecessarily stringent dos and don’ts. Disregarding the fact that this is indeed the author’s Arrogant Opinion, it should be stressed should be stressed that repetition repetition repetition is a flukey rhetorical sphinx that should be coaxed out of its Middle Kingdom-period tomb with the utmost linguistical caution. Younglings take note. If you still know how to, that is.

 

Obligatory End-of-the-World Post (that won’t seem so ridicule-able when it’s all over!)

So for those of you that have your heads in far more interesting places than the internet, the world is supposed to call it a world on the fair day of tomorrow. Disregarding the manifold eccentricities of the people who are predicting this immediate eventuality, disregarding the utterly bogus beliefs (4990 BC + Seven God Days [7001 years] = May 21st, Anno Domini 2011) of the same, in addition to the trifling few pieces of evidence that present contradictions to these same beliefs… let us consider.

If the world were to truly End, tomorrow, would it all have been worth it? I expect it would be somewhat presumptuous of me to speak for all of humanity, indeed, all life on the planet, but those objections aside I will say this: yes.

In the space of a few minutes in which I paused to reflect on the possible reasons I could have for this entirely non-absurd conclusion, two slightly unrelated aspects of the world popped into my mind that I will here reveal with absolutely zero justification or explanation: perogies, and Lata Mangeshkar.

As far as I am concerned for my own legacy (and I can assure you I am), if the Ragnarok presents itself tomorrow I will undoubtedly be slightly disappointed that I was not able to recognized by the world as the worst of its greatest writers. But to this point the muse has inspired no small amount of creative activity from my figurative (and sometimes literal) pen, at least for someone my age, and for this I am thankful and have largely no regrets. My experiences have been varied, the locales I have visited diverse, and the people I have known… people.

Indeed, the people whom I would truly regret to have known so little of hail from, unsurprisingly, that little huge former island that has been colliding with the Asian mainland this many a million year. “Known little of??” an astonished phantom-reader might exclaim, “But I thought a significant-bordering-on-majority-resembling portion of your artistic, spiritual and imaginative existence was predicated upon this very same former island and its people!” To that rhetorical figment I would answer yes, it is. The fact cannot be overlooked, however, that I have yet to either travel to or even know very many people at all from (or descended from) this varsha. I am certainly thankful for the few I have.

To this most obvious place I will visit if indeed the world does NOT come to an end mañana, I will add: Jamaica, Harlem, Venezuela, Spain, Lithuania, Peru, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, and New Orleans.

Here’s to another billion years! (after which we can either escape to a newly-habitable Mars, or play high-stakes galactic pool with asteroids)