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February 5, 2004 #
 The Roasted Peanut Gallery - Anonymity Bites the Dust Excerpt from "Shaman Noodles" #1 - The Midwestern Speak 'N Spell Bible 1. Hammer blows to the apartment pipes whacked the morning lull with the rhythm of thunder claps over Nebraskan plains. It was a fantastic sound he thought - the type of banging and clanging you might have heard during a typical day in the 1860's when thousands of Chinese workers helped link the Central and Union Pacific Railroads. A time when a bookkeeper's monthly salary could buy a ride in a luxurious sleeping car on a groundbreaking trip from Omaha to San Francisco. A comfort no doubt greater than the futon he now awakes and daydreams on. If today could start this way he thought, without the use of discretionary dollars or a higher court's overruling, there's no reason to believe something big wasn't in store for him or to prematurely deny the significance of this date, March 21. He doesn't adhere to astrological assumptions, though he might humor himself with a magazine horoscope if trapped in a waiting room longer than ten minutes. But even if he did buy into the program, the previous night's local news show reported that the true vernal equinox happened the day before on the 20th. Any virgin deaths due to the violent dance celebrating the rites of spring would have lost their symbolic signal strength by now. This did not cross his mind, the movement of suns and moons were not factors in the events to come. He thought most of that stuff was just government planted propaganda designed to keep the public looking the other way, much like daytime television. Playing on people's emotions and fears to manipulate their behavior is as old as the concept of God and then later perfected by the NRA and Walt Disney. No, one could only conclude that anything transpiring here forth had to be a curveball thrown by John Calvin himself. (Career totals: W 417 L 279 ERA 2.17 G 802 GS 666 CG 531) 2. The Judeo-Christian translation of the above passage is provided below by TMFTML's mother organization, Al-Anon: I'm beginning to believe Kid Sacto about the CIA and the moxygen-enriched blogosphere. They're at it again, fuckers! This is just like the '60s when they used thugs, drugs, the hippie movement, San Francisco treats, and some dude named Shankar to make the nation's youth all horny and dumb (well, more than the usual) to ignore the very real problems of the day. Like clubbing Jews and Blacks. So it should now come as no surprise that a creation of the Dept of Defense has once again created a self-absorbed world for people to hide in and write about assholes in Starbucks and the woman with a hideous scar on the subway as if they're lesser characters in the writer's grand hoo-ha stories, forgetting that there's a very real war in...I mean, war on...shit, is something big happening I don't know about and more importantly, does it involve me waking up before 10? The dream...I'm falling...holding onto life by an ankle...I let go go go and land in a Weezer video...so I'm in that Happy Days episode where Richie goes backstage of the Howdy Doody show to get a huge scoop - Clarabell the Clown without make-up!! Richie had the kind of ethical dilemma you only read about in journalism textbooks and maybe encounter once in a Wisconsin lifetime. Or once a week covering a political campaign. Or everyday working for the New York Times. The Big Decision: whether to print the exposing photo and prove to his school newspaper editor he can get the big story, or preserve Clarabell's anonymity. (For those fortunate to have missed the Eisenhower years, you have no idea what privacy meant to a clown's career in the 1950's.) Well, we all know how this ends, a tale told many times by Ben Bradlee just to get an erection at the holiday gala. Richie. Did. The. Right. Thing. He threw a fuckin' trashcan through a window at Arnold's, torched the joint to the ground, and finally boned Lori Beth for 14 hours in an attempt to get into the Guinness Book of World Records. And the photo? Sold to Life magazine for $300. Big shit in those days. That's right, this cautionary whisper-kiss in the ear goes out to all those anonymous bloggers trying to make the grade and grade the makers. You are a national treasure and I for one pledge to fight in your honor. You really are our Clarabells. Archives "The Other Page" powered by Removable Hype. RSS. Copyright © 2003 La Otra Página, Inc. All nights observed. Feel free to email "info(at)krucoff.com" for questions, comments, stock tips, and family gossip. |
