MY ATTEMPT AT A DOROTHY PARKER

For people who are against drilling, they are certainly boring.

H.L. Van Brunt: A Missing Poet

In about 1973 a poet named HL Van Brunt came to Stroudsburg High School in NE Pennsylvania where I was a junior. He read a poem about Roadkill and a few other poems and then asked us to write a poem. I did, but don't remember what it was about, just that it was written on a lunch bag. He had asked us to write on white plain paper, and was glad I had broken his one rule. Does anybody know this poet's work? He came from rural Oklahoma but worked in the New York and Pennsylvania school system. His last name indicates a Dutch ancestry but he also writes extensively about Native Americans in the one volume I possess: For Luck (Carnegie Mellon, 1976). He was once famous and had books not only at Carnegie Mellon Press but also at the Smith, and taught in high schools as a peripatetic poet for several decades. He was born in 1936, and his initials stand for Harold Lloyd, indicating he might have been named for the once famous comedian. However, his poems are generally somewhat morbid, and often about animals killing each other, or having something to do with death. He wore a goatee, had a relatively flat face, had a nice suit but appeared disheveled, he was older but somehow looked like an innocent boy. It was summer, but he looked and felt like winter.

LUTHERAN SURREALISM POETRY CONTEST!

The Walls of the City Shake

Red figures dance on a surrealist vase
Dubiously reciting Lutheran verse.

NB: This contest requires at least two lines, and no more than ten, in which the words "Lutheran" and "surrealist" are each used at least once.

Contest closes at midnight on Groundhog Day (February 2nd). Voting is on February 3 with long-term contributors and commenters each allowed one vote which must be for someone else.

UNDERWORLD AWAKENING

I went to see Underworld Awakening last night. It's a stylish horror film with vampires and werewolves fighting it out for survival as humans tried to obliterate them. The vampires were Republicans. They vanted to suck your blood and they had good postures. The werewolves were Democrats. They wanted to use muscle to get what they wanted and they had bad posture and were hidden among the working class. The vampires didn't work. They lived off of ancient trust funds in gloomy subterranean castles. I preferred the vampires. Some kid was the result of a Romeo and Juliet tryst between the werewolves and the vamps. The kid looked a bit like Newt Romney when she got mad.

THE INQUISITION

It is difficult to maintain standards without an Inquisition. However, with an Inquisition, it is impossible to maintain standards. We are damned if we do, damned if we don't.

Without someone setting standards, the members of churches are free to rewrite the canonical texts or blot out those they dislike (as Luther blotted out James).

By now, probably half of the denominations in America have sidelined Leviticus, or subjected it to such endless ridicule that it is no longer taken seriously.

When people say they are Christian now, I almost invariably think: just tell me the denomination.

The Catholic church held on for a long time to the notion of universal standards. Now, even within that denomination there are massive schisms.

What can hold the whole thing together? Some say it's reason, but Luther said that "reason is the devil's whore."

Some say it's faith: but faith in what: God, the Bible, in people, in evolution, or what?

WHAT DO THE PARTIES STAND FOR?

It seems increasingly clear to me that the Democratic Party is a communist party and that its agenda is redistribution without regard to merit. Race, gender and class are their paradigm, with Marxist visions of class as underwriting their vision for the future. Redistribution from white Protestant males to all the others throughout the world is their rallying cry, whether they say so openly or not.

My problem with this is not that the others don't deserve it. Not that some should live in squalor while others live in comparative plenty, but simply that WASP work ethic worked, and without it, we will have no economy, and the whole thing will collapse.

What do the Republicans on the other hand stand for? We have had one surge after another from "conservative" rivals to Mitt Romney. Herman Cain fell apart because of his egregious attempts to force women to "date" him in exchange for a job. "Give me a blow job and I will give you a real job," seemed to be his MO. Santorum seems to want to go to war with Iran for a reason I can't understand. Plus he doesn't want three men to be able to get married. Ron Paul wants open borders. As an Austrian economist (have you read Von Mises?) that's exactly what he stands for. He avoids the issue, but that's where he's at. Huntsman and Perry are now out, as is Bachman. So let's not bother to discuss them. What's left is Newt, with his shameless attempts to force his second wife into an open marriage (he had the upper hand, and tried to force hers). To her credit, she didn't buckle. This strong arming of one's own spouse indicates to me a bully that would use bullying in many other arenas, and lead to massive resentment. Still, he's won South Carolina now and this may give him credible power that will translate into a win in Florida, and other states, and force Romney out.

But what does Newt stand for? He mentioned that he wanted inner city kids to take the jobs of union janitors so that they could then have those jobs and the work ethic that comes with it themselves. But wouldn't they in turn be replaced by other free labor from high schools rather than actually get union jobs themselves as janitors?

While I despise the Democrats and their race, gender, class mantra and the notion of multiculturalism (all cultures are equal, which they obviously are not, even if you think of the Islamic and communist countries around the globe, as well as the Catholic, it becomes immediately obvious that they are not equal and that some cultures simply don't work as well as the WASP one that has been elaborated upon over the last five centuries since Luther and which is now under attack by the redistributionists). The only candidate who might have understood this is Michelle Bachmann, but she did not understand the enormous difficulty of the fight with the communist media who have set so many traps for those outside their paradigm that it will be incredibly difficult for anyone who is not of their ilk to get through.

What we need is someone who is an apologist for capitalism (especially corporate capitalism), and who understands the role of banks, and Wall St., in a robust economy. Ron Paul may be what is needed for that, but he's also too old (he's 78 and his hands shake and his voice whines). We also need someone who can be an apologist for America itself: someone who can articulate the WASP mentality that built the country, and yet do it in such a way that it doesn't antagonize those who want in, and who do want to come with a work ethic & personal discipline.

Romney is almost completely inarticulate. I have no idea what he stands for or wants. His dad was equally vague, and lost out to Goldwater as a result. Goldwater was a maniac, but could come up with terrific phrases ("the defense of extremism in the pursuit of a virtue is no vice"). Unfortunately Goldwater also wanted to use atomic weapons against Vietnam, which is just plain extremism in the pursuit of viciousness.

It looks as if we're going to be stuck with Newt, who is a slimeball, if you ask me. He's a well-named little reptile.

Whether or not he can slither past the media and past the Goliath of the left with its endless gauntlet of crypto-Marxists is unlikely. He may at least slime as many as slime him. He's one fierce SOB. And he is completely unafraid of a fight. He is what he is, and isn't ashamed of it, or at least not too ashamed. Plus I think he will hold Obama down in a playground fight and beat him half to death intellectually. But standing around the fight will be the media who will get in many licks on Obama's side.

What Newt will do in the White House should he survive the shellacking is more of the same. He will pick fights and create resentments. Oy vey. I suppose this is just the situation we're in.

I had wanted a Protestant. I had wanted a Lutheran Surrealist.

But there's no way I could survive the left gauntlet, nor would I wish to even attempt such a run. If Newt does win the thing, at least we will have two different philosophies on offer. I still don't really know what Newt stands for, but it's not race, gender, class. That's enough to make me crank the lever for him. Nothing could be worse than rgc and redistribution toward equality without any reference to merit. Newt does at least believe in his own merit. So he might be able to articulate the rationale for a meritocracy for all. I hope to God he can, and I hope he can tone down his truculence. When the man gets mad he's out of his mind.

I HAVE A DREAM

I have a dream that one day S&P will give America back its AAA credit rating.

Finnish Sauna Elves

One of the things I miss about Finland on cold winter days is the sauna. Finland has six million people and about 2 million saunas. On Saturday nights Finnish electricity rates rise above that of the entire Soviet Union.

Associated with the sauna is the sauna elf. I never saw one. I wanted to meet one when I was there, but never did. They used to be more prevalent. Like American bees, sauna elves are dying off. No one knows why. Some say it's the use of electricity in the sauna. They preferred wood stove saunas. Whatever it is, I would really like to have met one to have as a friend.

Friends are hard to find, and real ones are quite rare. People are friendly in order to get something, or friendly as long as you have something to give. But a real friend is probably rarer than a sauna elf.

EQUALITY OR QUALITY IN THE CLASSROOM?

Let's think about quality versus equality in terms of a classroom. Imagine for a moment a classroom in which the students received Cs no matter what they did. If they turned in brilliant essays they would get a C. If they turned in nothing they would get a C. This would create equality.

In a purely capitalist classroom there is no true fairness. Brilliant and talented writers can get As while barely doing any work while people who can't spell or who can't put ideas together easily (let's just say the student is not academically gifted rather than to use harsh words like to posit the notion of a dumbkopf or to use the now-banned word that begins with an r) might instead receive an F even if they work very hard. In addition, some students might come from homes in which ideas are discussed, and in which there are many books and there is more than enough food. One parent might be a writer and help their kids with beginnings and endings. Other students might come from homes in which the parent or parents are drug addicts and beat the children up for every nickle to go and buy more drugs while they lounge in front of the TV watching professional wrestling and getting each other in headlocks. They've sold the encyclopedia set for drugs and for more cheap grits. The kids don't have computers at home, and if they sit down to write, they are afraid their parents will beat them in an alcoholic rage while yelling something about how they are John Cena (professional wrestler), so the kids stay outside all night until the parent falls asleep in a drunken stupor and by the time they get home they are too tired to do their homework. Should the teacher yell at them for failure to do homework, and then hold them back a grade?

Another student with a tremendously gifted mind might have tutors and wonderful trips with the parents to museums. Her parents might help their kid with her homework between spooning caviar into her little golden face.

Should a teacher attempt to take this discrepancy into account? Should a teacher allot good grades only on the basis of quality of outcome, or should they try to equalize and redistribute grades according to the background of a student, and take into account what kinds of disadvantages they might face?

Should only quality matter, or should only equality matter? What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of each system? Which one do you ultimately think is better for the society as a whole? Which one would you personally prefer as a teacher or as a student? Is there any way to blend the two? If so, which way would you lean, and to what precise percentage would you lean and why?

GM PALMER WINS LS REVELATION POETRY CONTEST

Here is the winning poem:

Lost Revelation

Our tongues are swords
pointed inward
hilts left to those
whose snatching hands
scar our mouths split
between the ears
where no thoughts lie.

Revelation!
We are having
none of that stuff,
headpiece emptied
straw burnt, rocks strewn,
we have become
product zero.

Zeroed into
what we've become
we burn remains
of empty heads
and try to stuff
what we've got to
revelations

that will not lie.
Between our ears
our mouths are split
by jealous hands
who bear the hilts
of bladed words
forged by our tongues.

Toward a New Definition of Man

Man isn't the only animal that wears clothes.