Board of Aldermen

Well, not really.

I just wanted to tell y'all that I'm starting a new blog about regulation and consolidation of media ownership, so if you get a chance, check it out, maybe leave a comment:

Nobles Weekly

Thanks, crew.

Aye, it has been quite a while since the Aldermen have been invoked. I feel a bit silly calling out on such a trivial matter. But shake off the e-dust, fellow Aldermen, one of your own calls you back to the intellectual battlefield, if only for an opening volley.

I can no longer live with the shame of my false e-dentity, for the "LH" of LHP is all lies now. I need a new moniker. I could go with the obvious avatar or try to spice it up a bit. Just looking for suggestions, notions, and opening up the door to possible humor at my expense.

What's my name? That is all.

Dramatis Personae
Sergeant Shackelzov: commanding officer
Das Rek: sniper, Company E 501st Division, His Holiness's army
Das Garmo: soldier, Company E 501st Division, His Holiness's army
Kommandant Miller: administrative courier

Act I. Scene I.

Setting
A trench below the Western Wall

KM: Comrades, you have received my summons so we might achieve resolution. Our war has reached an impasse. The current offensive against the enemy forces of the Fifth brigade - the 'Five for Fighting' - is now a hopeless endeavor. No longer can we lambaste their performance and pepper them with insult while simultaneously maintaining our supply lines to the soldiers of Antony, Joanna, and even Colin Meloy. It is imperative, therefore, we forfeit our imperialist desires for the sake of national consistency and security.

DR: Your strategy, good sir, fails due to an unfortunate implication, wherein resides an equivocation. The men of the Fifth are of different cloth than our allies in Johnson & Co. The latter's cries and chants are precise and adept and admirable. In this case, 'weird singing' is not the same as 'weird singing.'

DG: My assent goes to private Rek. Our allies manifest a technical superiority in both organization and composition. We should not sacrifice our allegience to them merely because the street-alley rabble of the Fifth employ similar weapons. Those cowards exhibit an inferiority in this war which has become our duty to exorcise.

KM: These remarks stand true. Nonetheless, would I be out of place to ask for an exhaustive synopsis of your beliefs?

SS: That may not be prudent Kommandant. If you will allow me...
We eat what we like. We hear what we hear. It is not our fault, nor our nation's, that our allies are blessed with voices playful and divine. An objective exposition of 5-4-Fighting's abyssmal army shall win no good. Through our will and commitments we understand this. It is a matter of passion and the sensitive eye, not technocratic intelligence. The war must rightfully continue.

KM: Your sentiments are thankfully noted. With this report I go to inform the Boss. In the morning he shall decide what course of action we will take in regard to the Fifth. However, in our best interest, do you have anything left to say before I depart?

(See, that last part is where you guys actually get to speak for yourselves. Is there anyway we can dig ourselves out of this apparent contradiction?)

A group of guys cluster in a bright corner of a bar—as bright as corners of bars ever are. Besides them the bar is filled with blazer wearing hipsters wishing they could smoke their Pall Malls, Lucky Strikes, and Marlboro Lights (in a box). Tanned girls whose makeup makes them look like the victims of fresh skin grafts stare limply at a drunk 45 year old who has just put eight dollars in the jukebox and is now belting out the first track from Houses of the Holy.
Our gentlemen ignore this the way you ignore the pain in your foot while walking around campus or to work. Four of them discuss a film they just saw, the good action scenes, the holes in the logic, the holes in the plot. Most of them cautiously flirt with their beverages, giving them sidelong glances; for most of them this is the first visit to a bar in many months. One of them scribbles on a napkin, or makes flourishes on a notepad, or his fingers stab at a laptop. The one with the ponytail says something loud, accompanied with a vaguely relevant, vaguely deranged pantomime, and this gets a laugh. He lifts his stout and takes a stout drink in chorus with the writer, who then slams down his drink, a black Russian, on the table and says, “ready.” The drinkers become a crescent of silence around the writer—although they fail to keep the clamor of the bar out of their space, the ritual is enough.
“A malapropism is a ludicrous misuse of a word, often based on its sounding similar to another word. I’ve heard transaction substituted for transition—the relation of ideas here is noticeable, if not attractive. If one chooses to take what we might call a poetical approach, the two aren’t that different. They both carry commercial connotations. One can imagine a fist of cash paired with an offered item—the yin yang of exchange—as a literal transaction or a literal transition. Property is in transit, identity is in transit. We call this an interesting mistake.
“I’ve also heard amethyst substituted for atheist. Where the logic behind the previous slip seems reasonable (at least for some), this one deserves a snicker and a snort at the least. Our previous example has meaning to back it up; this one only has bad hearing and a foggy awareness. This syllabic metonymy, this, the worst of possible malapropisms, signified, implied, suggested, and demanded that I end a relationship with a girl who was, otherwise, not that great looking and from a place called “Mounds.” I doubt we could here tonight exhaust the deliberate malapropisms we could spawn from this charming fact.”
The young men sit in silence for a bit. The writer, now speaker, a little flushed, sets his teeth and grits, “so?”. He gives them sidelong glances, the blonde guy fidgets, and the boisterous chap with the ponytail opens his mouth.

Loose Change.

1) If you haven't seen it, watch it...right now. It's streaming on the web at several locations. Just search Google Videos for 'loose change' and watch it.

2) If you have seen it, what do you think? I'll be honest, I damn near shat myself the first time I watched it, but I still had/have my doubts. After watching it a second time, I'm still not sure.

Alright, Aldermen. Let's discuss it.

Life in the 1950s must have been simple. With the Aldermen some thirty years from existence, the world didn't yet have a truly powerful force of sarcasm and social commentary. This isn't a full on, OG post, but it is a topic for consideration and discourse, or at least lots of crass, insensitive humor.

The Good Wife's Guide (Housekeeping Monthly 13 May 1955)

1 - Have dinner ready. Plan ahead, even the night before, to have a delicious meal ready, on time for his return. This is a way of letting him know that you have been thinking about him and are concerned about his needs. Most men are hungry when they come home and the prospect of a good meal (especially his favorite dish) is part of the warm welcome needed.

2 - Prepare yourself. Take 15 minutes to rest so you'll be refreshed when he arrives. Touch up your make-up, put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh looking. He has just been with a lot of work-weary people.

3 - Be a little gay and a little more interesting for him. His boring day may need a lift and one of your duties is to provide it.

4 - Clear away the clutter. Make one last trip through the main part of the house just before your husband arrives.

5 - Gather up schoolbooks, toys, paper, etc and then run a dustcloth over the tables.

6 - Over the cooler months of the year you should prepare and light a fire for him to unwind by. Your husband will feel he has reached a haven of rest and order, and it will give you a lift too. After all, catering for his comfort will provide you with immense personal satisfaction.

7 - Prepare the children. Take a few minutes to wash the children's hands and faces (if they are small), comb their hair and, if necessary, change their clothes. They are little treasures and he would like to see them playing the part. Minimize all noise. At the time of his arrival, eliminate all noise of the washer, dryer or vaccum. Try to encourage the children to be quiet.

8 - Be happy to see him.

9 - Greet him with a warm smile and show sincerity in your desire to please him.

10 - Listen to him. You may have a dozen important things to tell him, but the moment he arrives is not the time. Let him talk first--remember, his topics of conversation are more important than yours.

11 - Make the even his. Never complain if he comes home late or goes out to dinner, or other places of entertainment without you. Instead, try to understand his world of strain and pressure and his very real need to be at home and relax.

12 - Your goal: Try to make sure your home is a place of peace, order and tranquility where your husband can renew himself in body and spirit.

13 - Don't greet him with complaints or problems.

14 - Don't complain if he's late home for dinner or even if he stays out all night. Count this as minor compared to what he might have gone through that day.

15 - Make him comfortable. Have him lean back in a comfortable chair or have him lie down in the bedroom. Have a cool or warm drink ready for him.

16 - Arrange his pillow and offer to take off his shoes. Speak in a low, soothing and pleasant voice.

17 - Don't ask him questions about his actions or question his judgement or integrity. Remember, he is the master of the house and as such will always exercise his will in fairness and truthfulness. You have no right to question him.

18 - A good wife always knows her place.


This is not an LHP fabrication, this is from a real publication. Was life ever really like this? Let the comments on social progress and the more likely comments setting back social progress spew forth, good Aldermen. The time for good-natured, pseudo-ironic mysogyny is at hand.

Jesus, guys, sorry about killing the blog. I swear I had good intentions, or maybe just not-bad intentions, or at least good-bad intentions. I'd like to man up and give the board something to talk about, but I have absolutely no idea about current affairs; not watching TV is easier than you'd think when the only one with cable is across campus, and everyone knows newspapers are for losers (I mean, who needs newspapers when you have an endless supply of blogs, right?).

But, I am vaguely aware that most of us will soon be off for spring break, so I'll throw out the general topic of "spring break and you." It could simply be a bulletin of your location, amount of time and plans for the break; it could be an introspective mantage (we are all men here, aren't we?) of this semester's important moments; it could be a hateful letter you wish you could send to your professor about how unfair finals are and how much you'd love to jam your number-two pencil up his/her nose, and then patiently hammer it through his/her sinuses into his/her brain for the next 72 hours instead of spending that time cramming for tests whose questions and answers you'll probably forget a week after the test anyway. Regardless, it should in some way involve spring, spring break and/or you, and must be at least 250 words (I'm looking at you, leto). Essays are due Sunday, by noon, and no late papers will be accepted. Shanks out.

So I was searching on my Google Favorites for god knows what... probably something porn or Magic related. Maybe both. Anyway, I noticed the Blogger Dashboard link and thought to myself, "I wonder if anyone still posts on there?" And, you guys do. So, as a way to integrate myself back into the community of Aldermen, I've made a top 5 list of the things that made me laugh the hardest as I scanned some of the posts to get up to date. It's sort of a post-modern (am I using the term correctly, leto?) VH1 "I love the" series type-thing where I try to historicize and analyze events that just happened even though I have absolutely no business imagining that I have enough distance from the events to be unbiased. God I hate VH1... and myself.

In no particular order:

5. "does anyone besides me get a little excited when that wendy's commercial comes on with the 10-patty burger and tempts you with it's heart-wrenching goodness?'--The comedy is really in imagining daniel saying it after he has just ignored paul's tirade.

4. "Force of Nature + Verdant Force + Child of Gaea = BOMBO"--Self-obvious.

3. "It's not cool when Nature uses tornadoes to throw cows at Bill Paxton, inadvertently endangering Helen Hunt's life."--Completely unexpected yet surprisingly on topic.

2. "Fall 2000 AD. During a moment of prolonged silence, Cole Murdock mutters, perhaps a little too loudly, 'balls deep' during a Charles Page Academic Team match."--Funny because it's true (and he's dead).

1." However, the habit of misusing large, obscure words, of mispronouncing them, of misapplying them, demonstrates a great deal about the insecurity of your character and the looseness of your intelligence."--Not really funny, but it was definitely an "Arsenio Hall" moment; I "whoo whoo whoo"ed.

0."Don’t worry about your permission slips, Rorix is driving, and he doesn’t care what your parents think!"--If you can't find humor in Rorix pasted on a schoolbus, I don't know what to say, other than, "This actually wasn't on any post... but it should have been."

So there you have it... a completely arbitrary value system that I based on five minutes of lazy research. God I hate VH1.

I do have a couple funny classroom moments so I might as well list them too:

1. Setup: lab class, we're talking about shooting electrons at atoms. The tutor is extremely old and condescending, making the class very dull for me and my friend.

Tutor: "So, when the electron enters the atom, what kind of a penetration is it? Is it a shallow penetration, or is it a... a... a... DEEP penetration?"
Student A: "I dunno, I don't think the penetration would be that deep."
Student B: "Well, the electron is supposed to be a lot smaller than the atom, so it seems like it would be a pretty deep penetration."
[The term "deep penetration" is probably used two dozen more times in the discussion without anyone noticing the absurdity of it except for my friend and I.]

2. Setup: math class, we're trying to explain some aspect of space-time contracting according to the theory of relativity. Ms. McCabe, a student, posits some explanation that makes no sense in the context of our discussion and only confuses the issue further.

Student A: "I don't think that's actually the case, Ms. McCabe."
Ms. McCabe: "Oh, I know it can't work in mathematics, but it's fun in my brain [giggles]."

All right. That's all I've got. Shanks out.