Poll-lite conversation

Stop it with the polls already. I'm talking to you, AP, Fox, MSNBC, ABC, M-O-U-S-E. We just don't believe them. And you're starting to sound pathetic.

Don't you understand that all of us, every single one of us, have already made up our minds? There isn't going to be any real movement, up or down or sideways, for Romney or Obama or Virgil Goode or whoever, at all, of any kind, between now and the election. The election is set. Romney is going to clean Obama's clock.

Pish posh, you snort, our polls say...your polls are wrong. Dead. Wrong. You're simply not talking to the right people. The ones you are talking to are lying. And you are lying to yourselves. And to us.

Need proof? Okay. How many of you predicted Chik-Fil-A Tuesday?

We're done here.

Letter

Dear President Hopeychange,

Ah, so much going on, I don't even know where to start. But here's a good place: you saying on Letterman that you represent the entire country.

 

Dude, you don't. You don't represent me, or any other American, at all.  

There is, as you well know, a big difference between a US citizen and an American. I mean, you're a US citizen, odd birth certificate notwithstanding, but you're definitely not an American. An American believes the individual is more important than the mass, everyone is responsible for his own behavior, all rights are inherent, and the government is, at best, a necessary evil with very restricted powers.

Tell me what, if any of that, do you actually believe?

Seems to me you pretty much hold a completely opposite view on all those points. You are willing to impoverish Joe the Plumber just to give the people behind him a "fair shot." You blame Wall Street and banks for your own party's destruction of the housing market. You want to regulate free speech. And if there's one thing you are definitely into, it's expanding the power and reach of the US government so that it can tell us what to eat, what to think, what to read, and what to say.

From where does such hubris arise?

Well, that's easy to figure out— your Dad and Mom and Frank Davis Marshall filling your young skull with all the tripe of Marxism and collectivism, your drug-addled high school days making everything about you, and your extreme self-righteous college and post-college activism. What truly puzzles me, though, is, in the face of all the evidence, you still believe that crap.

I mean, you have more than enough historical proof that the entire collectivist/centralized approach to societal governance simply doesn't work. It impoverishes, enervates, coarsens, everyone. Heck, the  last three years alone show that all of your policy concepts simply don't work; yet, you remain committed to them.

So, you are either an oblivious moronic pseudo-intellectual masquerading as an open-minded sophisticate, like most Democrats, or...

A hate-filled, arrogant, contemptuous demagouge intent on destroying the Constitution.

Which is it?

Your friend,

Schlub

All's Sort of Well

Schlub had taken a bit of a theatrical hiatus this past year, but went back to it last weekend. I attended Shakespeare Theater's Free For All performance of All's Well That Ends Well.

Not being overly familiar with the play, I didn't have big expectations. There's no memorable soliloquies in it like "St. Crispin's Day" or "All the World's a Stage," at least, not one your average Schlub knows. So, I wasn't prepared to be wowed.

And I wasn't. "Workmanlike" would be a good one-word description. Everyone hit their lines and did their steps and there was even some singing and it was all pretty good. I was laughing throughout the entire thing because there's some funny stuff in there, especially Parolle's attempt to convince Helena that virginity is wrong. But, overall...eh.

Marsha Mason played the Countess of Rossillion. Yes, that Marsha Mason, and, ever since The Goodbye Girl, Schlub is somewhat of a fan. But she played the role like Marsha Mason playing a role: once you've seen her in something, you've seen her in everything. Cameron Folmar played Parolles in a distressingly flamboyant manner that was one mincing step too many. And poor Tony Roach. He was absolutely outstanding in The Liar, but, in Bertram, he's got a character so friggin' nasty there's no saving the guy.

There were some outstanding performances, of course. Miriam Silverman, who I just love, and who was equally outstanding as Lucrece in The Liar, did a great job with Helena. Adam Green, another Liar alumnus (and Miriam Silverman's husband), was hilarious as Lavatch, but had a tendency to overdo it a bit. The best performance, though, was Paxton Whitehead as Lafew. Oh man, he killed it, especially when he and Parolles were going at each other.

So, overall...eh. But a good eh.

  

 

RIP, Neil Armstrong

I saw you that night. Well, at least your leg, shadowy and ill-defined, tentative, feeling your way, and I knew you had actually placed your foot on the moon a couple of times before you actually stepped down and said that phrase. I, and practically everyone else in the world, heard this: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." And, even at fourteen years old, I knew there was something wrong with that- was it a small step, or a giant leap?

Of course, we now all know the signal was cut out and you actually said..."for a man." Which was poetry, pure poetry. And, if I had heard it correctly, I probably would have swooned. And I'm not given to swooning.

Because the world changed, Neil, right then. It felt like the culmination of history. Even my fourteen year old soul knew it, and I leaped up and ran outside and grabbed my stupid little 60x Sears telescope and swore, SWORE, I saw you and Buzz and the flag right there, on the Sea. We, mankind (a word now despised, Neil), had loosed bonds. Magics had taken over, and it was 1492 and 1621 and 1776 and 1865, all over again. There was no limit. There was no end.

Since then...well.

But it doesn't take anything away from that night. Your night. And yes, yes, thousands got you there but, Neil, you're the one. You're the one who delivered it.

So, on your way to wherever, stop by. Give the flag a shake. Send a little note back to us that, even in the grips of mediocrity, there's still loosed bonds. Still magics.

For all mankind.

Curiosity, with no dead cats

Look at this: we dropped a VW camper bus on the surface of Mars in an extraordinary choreograph of orbit and angle and thrust and parachute.

Still got it.

But Schlub, Schlub, what a waste of time and money! And aren't you the guy who thinks the government should stay out of everything?

Well, the government should stay out of people's lives and ways, of course, but we come together and form a government to take care of certain functions. Like defense. Like commerce.

Like exploration.

How else do we marshal resources and send the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria where no man has gone before? Well, white men, anyway. Where else do you think you're going to find those exotic minerals, previously unknown resources, miracle cures and astounding technology, unless you head out there?

And, besides, contractors put the Curiosity together, not the government; they just asked somebody to do it.  

See what you can do when you dream?

Mazeltov, NASA.

Eat More Chikin'

We Americans sort of listen to your cant while going about our business. Most of what you say is harmless, so you're pretty easy to ignore. But, every once in awhile, you go too far, like threatening a business. And what do we do? Smash shop windows, camp in parks and defecate all over them, scream at your children while blocking your front yard? Burn things?

No. We just show up.

In droves. In legions.

Just like we're going to do in November.

You'll be stunned for weeks.

Fairy Tale

Once upon a time, in the beginning, which wasn't a beginning (okay, about four years ago), the King of Everything was golf-carting across the land, blessing the peasants and children with his beneficence, allowing them to bask in the brilliance that was him, when he chanced upon a sad little peasant. "My son," the King said gently, "why the downcast expression when I, your Lord Leige and Illuminator, am among you?"

"Oh, great King!" the peasant wailed, "I am without direction and interest, finding myself here, in the middle of this mud field, without any idea of what to do."

"Ah," the Wise King said, "a man of no productivity. Let me fix that." And the King stretched forth his mighty hand and, invoking the magic words, "StalLenin!", cast a spell. Suddenly, a blinding light issued forth from the earth, a choir of heavenly angels sang a single note of "Aaah!" and erupting from the raw materials of the world there sprang forth interstates and sewers and street lights and municipal waste management and electrical power and wires (no solar or wind power yet. Even magic has its limits) and policemen and trucks and DMVs and City Councils and zoning and industrial might. And the King saw that it was good.

The peasant, though, remained sad faced and wailing. "My child," the King said gently, "I have given you great gifts of infrastructure. Why do you remain downcast?"

"Oh, Great King," the peasant wailed, "I am most astonished by your wondrous gifts to me and the rest of the undeserving, but I still do not know what to DO with such bounty."

"Ah," the Great King nodded wisely and stretched forth his hand and uttered, "All Linsky!" and there arose among the magnificence of the infrastructure schools of the elementary, with comely golden-haired teachers to impart knowledge of the King's Wisdom, buildings of great high schools to teach the wonder that is government, and universities of sage wizards where is imparted the truth for the moment. And the peasant was whisked away on the backs of the Dispossessed and was bathed in the Sense of the Court and whirled back to stand before his Lord and Leader. "Oh, Great King!" he cried, "I now know what to do! I shall...become a plumber!"

"And I!" said his wife, "shall drive large trucks across the roads you have built and give you tithes through my union membership!"

"And I," said the peasant's brilliant son, "will invent the internet and give everyone Facebook and porn."

"And I," said the equally brilliant peasant daughter, "shall build hospitals where only those less than 55 years old may be treated." And there was much dancing and rejoicing.

But then a dark cloud covered the sun and a wind of terrible reaction blew and lo! there appeared the evil Witch of the Right, Sarappalin. And the peasants were sore afraid. "Now, hold on here just a minute, bub," she spoke with great disrespect at the Lord King, "we've actually had these things for a lot longer than you've..."

"MSENBEESEE!" roared the Great King in his terrible wrath, and a hurricane of Correctness picked up the horrible witch and blew her to the land of Bitter Clingers. And she was never heard from again.

And there was much dancing and rejoicing.