Pith and Wit
Archive for the ‘satire’ Category.
Madness as Sanity, Reality as Madness: These were popular terms in the nineteen-seventies, a time when the twinning of opposites seemed profoundly philosophical and concepts such as these were intensely meaningful to someone with an armful of horse.
Egos today are like those huge balloons floating bland-faced and with absurd solemnity above the crowds in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, except the balloons are tethered to the reality of tow-trucks navigating a complex course through congested streets.
Perhaps the multiculturalists have a point. What entitles us to the arrogant belief that Western Civilization is the way to go? We ought always to seek to better our condition by learning how other cultures do things. Let’s adopt the educational standards of the Ivory Coast, the culinary hygiene of New Guinea, the judicial-system fairness of Saudi Arabia, the religious tolerance of Sri Lanka, the imaginative television programming of Mongolia, the political liberties of Myanmar, the urban sciences of India, the high-tech infrastructure of Tajikistan, the after-school programs in Brazil, the foreign affairs genius of North Korea, the child-labor policies of Bangladesh, the social justice of Zimbabwe, the common-ground ethnic togetherness of Cyprus, the engineering ingenuity of Samoa, the freedom of dissent of Iran, the sell-your-daughter-into-prostitution ethos of Thailand, the marital relations of Pakistan, the pollution-control zeal of Mexico, the table manners of Micronesia, the philosophy of the Eskimos, the University-studies rationale of Azerbaijan, the cinema of Malaysia, the musical sophistication of Easter Island, the anti-corruption policies of the Philippines, the comedy sketches of Somalia, the legislative shrewdness of Rarotonga, the contemplative politics of South Korea and Taiwan, the relaxed code of leisure of Japan, the public defecation facilities of China, the rationalized traffic control of Ecuador, the fine art of Borneo, the literary distinctions of Tierra del Fuego, the prisoner-rehabilitation policies of Turkey, the pluralistic harmony of Rwanda, plus clitorectomy, and we’ll see how it goes.
Public schools allow silent prayers. Here’s a prayer I recommend to educators: Thank you Lord for giving me these innocent young minds to program, manipulate and otherwise render inoperable.
Political correctness is not about acceptance of the other, tolerance, affirmative action, doing the right thing or any other cultural or social issue. It’s a moral salve for the consciences of people who refuse to endure the strictures on behavior of a personal moral code. Imagine a woman who breaks her arm and goes to work as a municipal plasterer instead of seeing a doctor, on the grounds that “confining my limb to a plaster cast infringes on my individual freedom.” The more unbearable her pain becomes, the more civic wall-space she slathers with her featureless goo, crippled but convinced that she is beautifying the city.
Despite appearances, most people’s behavior is not irrational; it’s neurotic, i.e., dysfunctional in rational ways. But because we imagine that certain people—most of them, in fact–are irrational, we solicitously counter their bizarreness with our light-wand of rationality, to no avail, because their maladjustment is spawned not in the intellectual faculty but in the awful chaotic swirl of modern life. I think we ought to reverse the terms of the process and purposely act irrationally in order to snap such people out of their neuroses. The next time you run into that smarmy little self-deprecator who works down the hall, ask, “Why did you dye your hair blue?” and instantly leave the room. The baffled neurotic, imploding with uncertainty and doubt, will then take a couple of baby steps along the path to eventual normalcy by hastening to find a mirror so he can verify his hair color, then wondering why you might have spoken so strangely. (Point #1: Your insanity acts like a cattle prod, shocking his malady into the open.) The second time you see the patient, offer this assurance: “I don’t blame you for killing your wife. Your secret is safe with me”; and then go away again. After this encounter, the subject will begin to objectify his thinking as he tries to figure out what in the hell your problem is. (Point #2: Objectification is the sine qua non of emotional salubrity.) Keep this going, and the day will come when you two collide at the water cooler and the former human ant colony says, “You don’t play badminton, do you? I just took it up and it looks like I’ve got a real talent for it!”
Today the “ideal neighbor” is one you never have to see or hear, whose vehicles cost less than yours but are presentable and in good condition, whom the police don’t visit periodically, who keeps his lawn up to neighborhood standards, and who doesn’t have teenage boys practicing basketball in the driveway for five hours straight every night.
Based on current trends, the following await us in the future:
Sports
Blowball (an antipersonnel device implanted in the ball is timed to explode randomly during play; object: not to have the ball when this occurs)
Movies
Nailing Your Sweet Booty (date flick; “a real hand-holder”)
Lord Rocky Potter and the Star Wars Spidermen in Black
Untitled (affecting band of aging and career-challenged actresses dispense wisdom of the womb; Alan Arkin plays the caustic handyman)
TV
America’s Funniest Videos of Making People Die Sadistically
Now It Can Be Revealed: Al Gore is the very first animatronic replica of a human being to have been publicly circulated as an autonomous personage. We may from this vantage point detect that the genius of the experiment lay in releasing it/ him into the realm of politics during the Age of Media.
Let’s form a Society for the Prevention of Slandering Propaganda (or SPSP). Propaganda is arguably the most maligned, misunderstood and undervalued communications tool in the media workshop. The art consists merely in presenting an idea (in politics, public relations, indoctrination) or commercial product (in advertising and sales) so beguilingly that the beholder wants to have it for his own. When bad people propagandize, the consequences are evil; but when good people propagandize, everybody gains something of value. Now after this corrective nudge, do you still turn your nose up at the idea of suasion? Well ask yourself this: The last time you met a beautiful woman you wanted to see again, did you tell her the absolute truth about how far you went in school, the grades you made therein, how much salary you earn, your exploits backpacking in the Andes, your bungee-jump record, and your marital status? And if she gave you a date, did you choose your clothing with extra special care and get the car washed before you picked her up? Did you try to make a better impression than you ordinarily make? You were practicing propaganda, weren’t you, you little devil?
Hollywood, Cradle of the Gold-Plated Castrato: A semi-tropical desert become a verdant fantasy park despite the absence of actual weather through the beguiling sorcery of agricultural irrigation. The altar of tasteless excess on which the carcass of Integrity has long since blanched in the sun. A hyperbolic monument of strident vibrating neon to all the cheap souls exterminated by the treacheries of art commerce. Accurate to the smallest detail, faithful only to the spirit of rapine. The town where no means, “Offer me some more money,” and yes means, “But I get to fuck you first.” Where people walk backwards in order to see the knives coming. Where egos drift serenely across the empyrean like dirigibles. Where slack-jawed women enthrall themselves from the looking-glass above the bed while their hairy-backed producers seek to elude their own perfidy by stuffing their entire bodies into the crevice of the Rotting Goddess. Where chicken-liver shakes its booty at Giorgio, and Rolls takes a dump on Mercedes. Where “opportunity missed” means a body is still on its feet. Where the values in the screenplays are guessed at by the self-mutilated eunuchs who not only can’t get their values up anymore, but can’t remember how it ever felt to have values. Where minimal self-respect requires the bloody abolition of all the other sleazoids doing business in this town. And where the Nine Muses alighted from the train in 1939 to get a feel for the place, but within the hour reentered the train and departed, never to grace these inhospitable precincts again.
The Idea of Phart: An amalgam of “phony” plus “art”, this term designates the exhibitions of the little nothing self-promoting charlatans who lack even the minimal artistry necessary to make it in the art-is-a-major-investment sweepstakes. Their “work” may also be described as “tabloid art” because the little preening suck-ass nothings vie for the public’s attention on the basis of sensationalism. Artistically, on the other hand, they operate on the basis of anti-imagination: 42-miles of fuchsia-tinted Saran Wrap unspooling across the highlands of Bulgaria; Jesus in a bottle of piss together with the Virgin Mary sculpted out of dogshit; 36 amputated titties in eleven rows of three plus another three on the ceiling; the actual corpse of an obese grandmother asphyxiated by the action of her support-hose cutting off her circulation; six little boys dressed as nuns throwing darts at The Artist Himself while the latter creates profane tattoos out of his flesh wounds; a python in a maze wriggling its way towards a day-old puppy at the terminus. Speaking qualitatively, what is the difference between this bathetic junk and a freak show at the local fairground or, for that matter, Ripley’s Believe It or Not? In our great land it’s not what you do that counts, it’s what you call what you do.
Raw Data Submitted to the Personal Characteristics of the Politician Institute: Staffer: “Senator Blake, excuse me but I don’t think they like it when you kiss the babies on the mouth.” Senator: “Hell, son, if they’ll re-elect me I’ll swap spit with their cats and dogs!” Staffer: “I don’t think you quite catch my meaning, sir.” Senator: “Go over there by the rope and get that majorette’s home phone number, boy. That one with the bangs. Damnation!”
Transcript of Hollywood Story Conference: Armani Suit: “Has anybody read this thing?” T-Shirt Saying “Burritoville: “Bad third act.” Levis and $1000 Sports Jacket: “Weak arc.” Armani Suit: “Fix it.” Levis and $1,000 Sports Jacket: “I’ll have tuna fish on rye.”
I am an oppressive male barbarian god with my boot planted squarely on the neck of feminism, yet I’m not wholly insensitive to women’s “issues”. Many of the bitches are academics and invest their energy in reinforcing wombanity syntactically and philologically. This sparks my own desire (wholly unacted on heretofore) to intellectualize, and in doing so I have made a breakthrough in the protocols of blatherbloat all on my own. I now use “woperson” and “wopeople” instead of the gender-demeaning, essence-stealing traditional forms of the generic noun, reserving the complete versions of the term for only very special and very sisterly occasions, such as Taking Back the Night campus demonstrations: “wombperson”, “wombpeople.”
I played the corporate game as well as most, but I never saw the benefit of it, especially after learning—during my final stint with a corporation—that the stock shares we’d been “allowed” to purchase at a discount had never been registered with the SEC. Hence the origin of:
Mission Statement
Screw the competition.
If you can’t screw the competition, screw the customers.
If you can’t screw the customers, screw the stockholders.
If you can’t screw the stockholders, screw the employees.
If we’re not screwing somebody the company’s charter will lapse. If that occurs we’ll have to screw each other. A lot of us are already doing it.
Newsletter Item: “Harmon Jerquey has been responsible for some of the most affirmative changes in the district: the replacement of the letter-grade system with “fabulous” and “really great”; zero tolerance for the positive mention of one or both parents; the highly effective Berate the Boys program; and the cleansing from the curriculum of long-division and multiplication. He is co-founder of the Gramsci Society for the Prevention of Learning, and a contributing editor of Reverse the Meaning of Self-Esteem! His present campaign demands the cancellation of our contracts with the district’s provider of televised current events in the classroom due to the “three commercials a day” clause, a clear menace to educational sanctity. Jump on the bandwagon now. Call this number to arrange for Mr. Jerquey to address your chapter.”
Statistics We Seem to Have Difficulty Locating: Percentage of Americans financially benefiting directly or indirectly from the drug trade, and the total amount of money involved. Percentage of public-sector bureaucrats collecting “personal emoluments.” Percentage of radical-feminist spokespersons whose ideas have prompted even them to vomit during speaking engagements. Amount of money contributed to the re-election campaigns of politicians by the corporations that own the news media, and the names of the recipients. Number of elected officials who have arranged to cover the costs of non-familial abortions. And the number of news directors certifiably able to find their asses with both hands.
Responsible Discussion:
Government Bureaucrat: “Sir, what are we going to do about the aircraft carrier that appeared in the lobby this morning?”
Department Head: “Nothing, Forbush. We elect not to draw attention to it.”
Christmas Carols for Schoolteachers:
“Do you hear what I say?”
“Deck the halls with geometric shapes of no particular significance.”
“Frosty the Snowman has been banned because we have no black or brown or red or yellow snow.”
“We three Queens of orientation in indoctrination are.”