Kazakhs - A Found Poem

Contributed by an anonymous tipster-type individual:

1: [1:32 am] "I can see Jesus in the cunt of a he fucker. God hownh e bleeds like N arse."
2: [1:36 am] "Karla here ... carlsbad is very drink from trying to keep up with the Kazakstan Ivan's.He may be ok tomorrow...maybe. Currently swimming towards the bed along the floor." 
3: [1:37 am] "Never drink with Kazaks on a school night!"
4: [at 9:01 am] "Holy shi I'm still drunk. how did I end up at work? I think I drunxted you last night."
5: [9:07 am] "Oh man, trying so hard not to fall asleep on the shitter right now..."
6: [9:ll am] "Man, kazaks like thier Jager!"
7: [9:32 am] "Focusing hard on not drunking around. Must.not hug Jacques and show him how to play games on his comp. Badcarlsbad."

New Rockets for Old!

Translated From the Arabo-Perso-Turkic Collection of Fantasy Stories, Alf Layla Wallahi By Sir Richard Wannabe Bottom-Pincher, on his secret tour of Mecca, wherein he disguised himself as a Circassian axe-thrower, and managed to get on the VIP list for the Hajj, and uses that to pick up all the smarmy British women at hostels in all four corners.

In the Name of Allah, the Compassionating, the Compassionate, the Compassionizer, the Compassionzee!

Verily verily, the works and words of those gone before us have become instances and examples to men of our modern day, that folk may peruse the annals of antique peoples and all that hath betided them, and may thereby, you know, betide themselves with good betidings and all that that entails. Praise, therefore, be to Him who hath made the histories of the past an admonition unto the present! Now of such instances is a tale called "New Rockets for Old!" together with its far-famed legends and wonders.

But first, a frame tale, y'all:

In the city of Baghdad (pre- "Shock and Awe"), a man named Jabbar the Juggler once owed a pitcher of Date Wine to a one-eyed man with a chic beard and cloak ensemble. This man had purchased a pitcher for Jabbar the night before, as the sand-people tell it. Well, as it happens, this night, Ras as-Sanah al-Hijriyah, the night of Hijri new year, Jabbar had had no luck with his “monkey and yak-testicle” routine, and so was strapped for coin.

“Alas the day of my birth! Know, oh stranger, that this miserable tribesman of the Banu-Sasan cannot afford to pay you, in wine or dates or the fine olives of the Seven Snake Valley. I forfeit to you now my head, and rely solely on your mercy not to make with the choppy-choppy.”

The stranger merely smiled – for he was no ordinary vagabond, but the royal Abbasid princeling, potentate, and general fuck-up Haroun Al-Rashid.

“Oh stranger, do you not realize that this is the very position in which I had hoped to find you? For now I may demand, instead of your head, a rip-roaring good story, of which a man in your station must know many a good’un.”

“Indeed, Oh weird dude, I knoweth my fair amount. But allow me to kick us out of this annoying frame tale with this apolitical and inapplicable story, entitled:"

New Rockets for Old!

Once, in Gaza, land of Ibrahim and the Philistines, there lived two brothers, lovers of peace, an elder, and a younger. This elder brother was also a lover of the sea, and left in his youth for far distant lands in order to trade the delicious screaming pickle pears of his homeland for the doubtful but fashionable hat and glove combinations of the Occident. The younger, a lover of books, Aristotle, and husbandry, remained at home and tended to the family lands with all the due diligence and sweat that comes with whipping a century of slaves.

One day the elder brother returned from his travels. The younger brother fell to his knees and said, “by Allah, my father’s own son, my grandfather’s own grandson, my aunt’s nephew, my poodle's favourite masseuse, my very eldest of an elder brother is returned from the West!” and crying the tears of the powdered Chinaman, he embraced his brother and welcomed him to the family plot.

The very next day the brothers divided their lands according to the law of the land, namely one beardless ape-goat per square Jihad-sector, and thereby lived by the land of the law. But the very very next day, while the younger brother, whose name was Abu Dammit, was out purchasing a new foot-stool (whose name was Bilal the Comfortable), the elder brother, whose name was Ben Gonzalez, told his men to casually waltz over to the screaming pickle pear orchards of his brother, and, you know, to occupy them, the name for which move was a bitch.

On returning, Abu Dammit was very upset to see his lands had been agrope-priated. Furiously he harangued his brother:

“D’ouble-you-tee-eff! Is this how a brother, brother of his brother, treats his brother? Stealing his lands and his screaming pickle pears?”

“Brother of your brother!” said Ben Gonzalez, “I am a man of peace, as you are! Well, in the West, they teach that peace is unity, unity is safety, and safety is a pin that holds the bullets back from the head of prying siblings.” And saying this, he saw his brother to the door with a friendly gesture and an uzi.

Abu Dammit was less than convinced, but more than pissed. Tearing his hair, he made his way into the desert, where he found a genie, son of fire, demon of the sandy whirlwind whose mighty capacity for fury and mischief knows no bounds in heaven, earth, or sea, casually lounging, like you do, by an oasis.

“Son of Adam!” the Genie bellowed, “willst a pint? Verily, thou seemst as thou couldst useth one. Why doth look so down, al-chumly?”

“Alack and alas, by Allah and all that! Can you imagine a man is betrayed by his own brother? And what’s worse, a lover of peace like me. But this newfangled western peace is something I do not understand. If only I had an uzi like my brother!”

“Uzi!?” laughed the Genie, “why, man, take thee a rocket! With this wonderful machine, thou canst negotiate peace with thy brother from two cities away!”

The very very very next day, Abu Dammit began negotiations with his brother by firing his prized rocket at Ben Gonzalez’s orchards.

That same hour, Ben Gonzalez replied with a peace offering aimed squarely at the King Goat of Abu Dammit's flock. He then summoned his magic messenger pigeon, and told him to proclaim to all the animals, men, and Djinn of the land:

“See how a brother loves his brother! Peace be upon him. #Shalom”

With the next rocket, Abu Dammit replied to the magic pigeon:

“See how a brother sends a gift! #Salaam”

And so again:

“My brother sends me an old rocket as a gift – I send him a new one! #KaBoom”

And so once more:

“Peace be upon him! And this. #TheBestPillarOfDefenseIsAGoodPillarOfOffense”

And lastly:

“Enjoying the lovely music coming from your warning sirens! #FallOutFriday”

And so, after much exchanging of love, gifts, negotiations, and genie supplied peace offerings, the Western style peace finally settled upon the brothers of Gaza. Extended peace is said to be the happiest of human states - and such a stable and uncompromising one was Allah's blessing upon these two siblings! Think how much they will come to profit from the posturing of each other, how many friends and enemies they will enlist, how much sponsorship and funding they can purloin, how joyful the sweet game of power can be played with the cheaply carved pieces of tenant farmers and naive locals. A wellspring of hope, this perpetual peace between two loving and democratic brothers! A filial lesson for all of humanity.

“But, as this peace raged, it happened that one of Ben Gonzalez’s camels was engaged in a fierce debate with one of the goats of Abu Dammit. They had, from a debate about the Aristotelian categories as presented by Averroes, fallen into a quandary about which of the two species had the longest and most pleasing member. The story of this debate goes something like this…"

The Tale of the Master Debater...

Brecht and the Thatched Roof

Homer had no home

And Dante had to leave his behind.

Li Po and Tu Fu wandered through civil wars

That did in 30 million men.

They threatened Euripides with lawsuits

And one keeps silent about

The dying Shakespeare;

Wasn't only the muse who sought Francois Villon

The police also

(nicknamed "the beloved")

Lucretius went into exile

And Heine, and so fled

Brecht underneath the Danish straw-roof.

-Bertolt Brecht

Homo Contra Cenam

XL Letter of the Front Porch Philosopher, Marcus Porpoise Strabo Gingivitis,

 to his Protégé Lucius Goonius.

How trying are the trials of fortune! Indeed, I had just come to tell you in my last letter about the invitation to the dinner with a certain mutual friend of ours, lover of orgies, and how I was determined to refuse, no matter what methods he used to persuade me. 

And yet, strange to say, Goonius, I accepted. Do not think me growing licentious in my old age – I had no choice in the matter. I would much rather have spent the evening as I am wont, at home in my “poverty room” (you know the one with the dirt floor, the oily breadpile, and the vulgar dwarf) reading the classics and picking out little presents to send you from my stockpile of philosophy. Well, the will of the gods cannot be gainsaid. It turns out I had lent our friend my only copy of The Goonmenides, and it was from that exact text that I was looking to send you your little nugget of philosophy for the week.

The human will is very odd – very often it will choose a present evil for an unsure future good. Nevertheless, I took this strange opportunity (for surely you must know that I am only a casual frequenter of feasts, and have in no away allowed my spirit to grow accustomed to them, however often I attend) I say, an opportunity to test the impatientia of my spirit. There it all was! Delicious sweetmeats, sweetlicious meatdishes, and other delectables as well, sprinkled with both salt and pepper, and some few even garnished with mouth watering lead, silver, quicksilver, gold, and iron.

I could see the other guests were well enjoying themselves, stuffing their orifices with one hand, disembowelling slaves with the other. Many were kicking kittens all the while. I could never abide the past-time of kitten kicking – I know you may think me a bit of a queer fish, but sometimes I find it positively mean, even cruel! “But they are merely fluffy, big eyed, mewing little darlings,” I hear you object, “if they can’t be crushed beneath my toes for pleasure, what can?” Here we must cease to be slaves to pleasure, and cling to the only master we ought to truly serve (I mean of course philosophy. What else could I mean? Checkers?). Why crush kittens? Let us crush our excessive desires instead.

But to the feast.  Surely you have attended some few in your younger years. You know how noisy they get, and how an old man like me cannot abide noise! The smacking of lips and the gobbing of wine, the hearty reverberating jiggle of a slave well elbowed...They are like to drive a sensitive man to distraction from the Good. I accordingly stuffed my ears with grape leaves, and looked out at the spread before me. Now, what should a true philosopher do? A Pythaogrean might leave the room; a Cynic would knock over the table. An Epicurean would munch a little bread and be content. A Platonist would look to the wine for divine revelation, and an Aristotelian might eat all his greens first, and then his meats, his desserts, insofar as he could determine the proper order of the “six digestions”. 

Yet herein lies the difference between our school and theirs! They must needs avoid the pleasure of eating, in order not to feel it. I say that we, as Front Porchers, can just as well devour as much as we can, and yet still be unmoved in our inner selves. This is the true meaning of ataraxia! I thus knit my brows, frowned, pinched my nose, made a small moaning noise, and, with the greatest hesitancy began to stockpile my plate from the buffet. How I was tested then, Goonius. I can assure you, however, that I never had a meal that tasted worse – it was that good.

I’ve half a mind to tell you how I endured the drinking that came after the meal, and more than half a mind not to tell you about the courtesans, the flute girls, and the rest that I didn’t even come to not enjoy entirely. “But enough of this food talk”, I hear you grumble. You want your little gifty wifty eh? Need a little boost of philosophy to get you through your week? Well, I’m glad this old man is useful for something, and I really ought to repay you for reading through this trite letter of mine. Here then is the promised line from The Goonmenides:

It is not that am man is driven to excess by his deeds, but rather his deeds that are driven to excess by his own character. Therefore, see that your character is steady, and even in the midst of a Bacchic orgy you will find yourself capable of philosophical pleasure.

The Kall of Kijiji

The following review was found in its present state on the writing desk of Eric Salomon Victim, the great New York art critic, who was in turn found in HIS present state scattered, as the police report said, "lovingly" over a fair stretch of backwater New England dirt road. The present editor is pleased to present the last work of a fine art critic on the last works of a fine folk artist, both of whom came to a mysterious, eldritch-type end. The present editor will be excused for remaining anonymous. One might ask why a present editor would be so eager to publish something so obviously unnatural; and this editor would respond, anonymously of course, that he does not believe in superstition, and that the art world must be freed from the base sort of mysticism, this Yog Soggothic nonsense...*

*The preceding text trails off suggestively. Please proceed to the rest of the article. - The Anonymous Editor's "wife".

Anybody who knew Nathaniel Irehart as I did - barely at all - suspected, I think, that his inspiration was not altogether free of, oh how shall we say it with delicacy... A slight babbling, gibbous caco-demoniacal insanity? Slight. To the eyes of the world he was a darling sculptor, sometimes the writer of an occasional verse, and sometimes the groper of an occasional nurse. His mysterious disappearance has been a shock to the art world, seen as he was last in the area of a shady semi-glowing crypt in the primeval forests of Maine. Believe it or not, there are some who suggest his end was not altogether natural.

He was loved dearly by all in his hometown of Sidon, Massachussets, New England, America, North America, Map, Hillard and Bimbsly 1957 All Rights Reserved. They fawned upon this tittering little goblin who frolicked from saloon to bar, cheering up the downcast and casting down the beer-cask with equanimity and vomiting. Yet I think they all felt in their innards that there was something not quite Euclidean about Irehart -- his physiognomy bespoke an atavism to some semi-reptilian half-mammal, licking its cold green chops as it crawls its way from the fathomless depths of the dark green sea. The same was often said of his limericks, the hue of which was often a shade darker than bleu.

I provide a sample of his mad verse to display the unique blend of occult and ribald influences which made up Irehart's aesthetic, an odd conglomeration which I term "esoteroticism":

There once was a fellow of Arkham

Whose ballsack was named Yog-Soggarkam

Whenever it'd itch

He'd go see his old witch

Who'd hermetically spark'em and lark'em.

I first encountered this wonder child at a folk-art festival in Connecticut  Among the wood carven knick-knacks and candle sets, his 10 foot totem-poll stood out prominently. I took it to be a bit of west-coast inspiration, until I realized that it depicted, not the traditional Raven or Fisherman of the Haida, but a howling half-moose, half-man, half-wolf (I have since learned its name to be a were-moosetaur) devouring a half-turtle, half-jellyfish along a weird trajectory of a mixed-forest treescape at midnight. 

"Pretty piece of crazy, this." I said under my breath to a fellow next to me. "Thanks! The Old Ones have truly spoken to me through this one" he said. It was Irehart. A debonair 20-something year old sporting a tri-corn and britches, leaning on a gruesome cane made out of Whalesbone and hot-glue rhinestones. 

"Old ones?" I inquired. "Oh you know" he mumbled, with a tittering giggle. "Relations. Old Grandma Irehart. Uncle Pyncheon. Aunt Derleth..." I nodded cautiously with the half-moon grin of the condescending. I may have looked askance, but he looked insane.

Upon learning that I was a noted critic, he invited me to visit him at his cottage in Sidon for an exclusive peak at some "works in progress". "Fat chance!" I thought, "I'd sooner play fetch with moosejaw up there than visit this loony in his loony-bin." Meanwhile I smiled a smile of agreement. "Oh please, do come" he implored with a titter, "If you like animals, can play fetch with rover. And my wife, Luna Bin, just adores company..." It struck me that all was not altogether orthodox with this young artist. Still, an exclusive was nothing to chortle at in those days of vagrant art criticism. Two weeks later I was driving down the rural dirt roads of central-northwest-eastern New England. I was looking for an Outlet antique store, as the missus had her eye out for a credenza.

A week after that I took the greyhound to Irehart's seven-gabled chalet. As I approached the devilish looking house au pied, I felt a shudder in my left pocket, and since my cell-phone was in my right, I knew something curious was afoot. The house was, as I said, devilish looking. Its architecture was one of your standard puritan semi-colonials, but with a strange undulation of gable that crept up behind you and whispered "Hassenpfeffer!" in your ear when you weren't paying attention. Also, it was painted blood red. 

I knocked on the old door with the skeleton demon-claw door-knocker, de rigeur of course, but receiving no answer, I rung the hellish door bell. The tune that I heard reverberate through the old stead is terrifying to re-call, and all but impossible to describe; imagine "Old MacDonald" if it were played slowly through on an old 78 made out of human flesh, the speaker-horn of which was the jaw of a ravening extinct sabre-tooth tiger, and you might have an idea of the terror I felt as I listened to the eerie melody.

Irehart came to the door wearing a smile and an 17th century puritan smock on which was the embroidered phrase Kisse ye the Cheffe -- Stake's On! "Welcome welcome" he beamed at me with a toothsome titter "Dinner's almost ready". From the front door to the parlor the house seemed to be an all corridor-and-cobweb sort of affair. I met Luna Bin surely enough sitting on the rug laughing derisively at an antique portrait above the mantelpiece. Not wanting to pry, I refrained from asking. Fido could be heard breathing fire in the back yard. Well wasn't this lovely. Dinner consisted of a special Innsmouth dish of our host's own ancestors called Lobster Inferno. The gills were the tastiest part, I remarked with a ghost-white countenance and a smile worth a thousand tears.

It was after our brandy and shrunken-heads that the host finally offered to show me his studio. Going down to the basement, we came to a sealed, dungeon like door that, once pried open via an old brass key, led to a further staircase smelling of the usual corpse-and-old-spice required of such classic ossuaries. Down, down to the catacombs we went, my host babbling the while of his latest inspiration, of the Old Ones, of old "Grandma Soggoth" and the like. I was beginning to feel slightly uneasy. Well, here we were. The old studio. I was surrounded by a thousand, well... I suppose you could call them sculptures, but I'd be more inclined to call them semi-rotting alien corpses stapled to life-sized cut-outs of Big Bird.

Actually, I was inclined very much to the left at that moment, and was just about to take a welcome leave of my pesky consciousness, which in this whole affair had been nothing but trouble, when I was suddenly aware of a dark voice coming up from a sewer grate in the floor. Perhaps it was saying something in an eldritch, inhuman tongue? Or perhaps it was asking for peanuts. I didn't care to find out. My host had fallen to the floor in a sudden urge to bow, or perhaps he had lost a contact lense to the Dark Lord Uldoroch. I, in any case, had had enough. Gripping my mind with my hands I reeled about for a bit and collapsed in a fit of Scrooge McDuck impressions, as is my wont during stressful situations.

I awoke innumerable hours later in my bedroom back home. Quickly, I am writing all of this down so as to have something that I can trail off to, before I am inevitably driven out of my mind by various extra-universal horrors who will be coming to visit -- ah, I hear the door-bell. Now's as good a place as any to trail off, methinks...

Day of the Shock Worker

The following essay was re-engineered for the use of you frustrated office workers on those gloomy Dogbert days when you "just feel", as you claim, pooped, frustrated, or on the verge of "burn out". This is not a piece to excuse or palliate such feelings - it has been specifically designed to crush them. We firmly believe that the power of a strong social ethic can shame even the laziest cubicle-bound fatalist into productivity.

Any red lines represent the excision of formalist or capitalistic subversion that found its way into the original essay. 

Comrade, have you ever confronted your own productivity? Looking back over a long stretch of "everyday activities" (whatever they may be), have you ever asked yourself, "exactly what kind of worker am I?" Some of you might know quite well. When one thinks of the different "types" of worker, many common expressions come to mind, for instance:

• Easy-going
• "Hard" worker
• Perfectionist
• Enthusiastic
• Back-room worker
• Lazy
• Group thinker etc.

You might have never been quite able to fit yourself into these categories. Perhaps, like so many over-educated people, you are a little bit of hard worker. Perhaps you are even a self-designated  "perfectionist" - which implies you have a reluctance to finish something until it is polished as a work of art - a rather bourgeois and egotistical style of working!

But is there not something subtle to be gained from this critical and cynical style of the modern office worker, who hates what she does but does it anyway with a sardonic smile? Perhaps  there are some advantages to the egotistical capitalistic style of working - personal pleasure, emotional persuasion, the joy of exploiting an intern. But  no amount of cynical pleasure can fill up the entirety of our complex human existence. , We must push aside all such positive feelings, despite how wonderful and easy to grasp they might be. On this subtle point we must not at all be too dogmatic. And we should always bear in mind the excellent lessons pointed out to us by Comrade Trotsky MindApe, so long as we do not do so uncritically and without well-considered qualification.

One thing you rarely hear mention of in the 21st century office-and-mousepad world is classical "productivity" - getting something done as fast and near-standard as possible. You are often seduced by the idea of adding a personal touch, of mulling it over, of not trusting the plain model even when it is the best solution.

But today we proclaim: bitchy office workers of the world, you have nothing to lose but your back-pains!

In the battle for a victorious completion of the Bolshevik Five-Year Plan. Be in the front ranks of the shock workers of the brigade, the workshop and the factory!

Don't be fooled - customization is decadence. Shake yourself out of classificatory torpor! Forget the need to tickle your own ego with opiates like "self-satisfaction" and "loving your work". Douse your face in some cold water, have some raw beets and carrots, and remind yourself of the great Soviet "Shock Worker" movement of the 20's and 30's.

"Shock worker!" What a term! It must sent shivers of proletarian awe down your spine as soon as you read it. Derived from the Prussian "Shock Trooper" , it was adapted to the cause of worker productivity, enrolling a huge swathe of Soviet workers into "shock worker brigades", whose mass achievement was the hyper-production of quotas, sometimes earning the rank of "500" or "1000 percenters".

The marrow of this upbeat ideology can be found in Lenin's own article "How to Organize Competition". Lenin thinks the working class are too "timid" compared to the military and bourgeoisie - that workers need a new competitive and militarized ethic, a heroical persona to give them self-confidence.

Could not the following paragraph suit any modern business setting?

Competition creates the opportunity for employing it on a really wide and on a really mass scale, for actually drawing the majority of toilers into an arena of such labor in which they can display their abilities, develop their capacities, reveal their talents, of which there is an untapped spring among the people...

So long as we tart up, perhaps, the final sentence:

...and in which capitalism is crushed, suppressed and strangled in thousands and millions.

Are we to take Lenin at face value?  Absolutely not, without a critical outlook. Certainly his policies, and the policies that derived from them by Stalinists resulted in the actual over-working of thousands of already taxed soviet workers. Yes, it is a powerful rhetoric and the symbolism and propaganda which grew out of his teachings are an excellent stock-set of cultural motifs, indeed some of the most interesting history has heretofore produced - but we must not be overly seduced by a nostalgia for a false set of fairy communistic ideals that never really existed in real life.

Do you want to? Join! Hurry and join the shock group of model labor. Do you want to fight against the cold? Do you want to defeat hunger? Do you want to eat? Do you want to drink?

1000 percenters! Are you not shamed by such numbers, you kulak dog? You sweat butter and laziness - the shock worker sweats oil and blood! You yawn the yawn of a thousand bloated yaks - the shock worker breathes necessary amounts at the efficient interval! He would replace his heart with a engine, his legs with wheels, his arms with a general sort of swiss-army knife contraption, apt for screwing in bolts and cutting pizzas alike.

For the modern office drone, there is no more salutary outlook than this of the shock worker. Consider: since you have been misled by the mythology of an ergonomic, parasitic existence, you have noticed silly things, un-productive things, like back pains, eye strain, boredom, frustration, loss of libido etc. You feel these things because you are resisting the march of dialectical materialism.

Now let us look at the modern office shock worker. What does he know of these petty complaints? His back is like a rod of iron, his ass hard like the steel of the railroad. He sits in his cubicle like a perfectly machine-built cog - there is no clutter, there is no single unnecessary item. As soon as his hand touches the mouse and keyboard, he is at once a part of the machine - his deepest viscera vibrate in sympathy with the glowing spreadsheets and the dance of PowerPoint graphs.

Look him in the eyes, just try to make small talk with him! You will hear only calculated and glorious grunts of triumph as he flies through the work of ten kulaks such as yourself while you dally away your lunch hour with caviar and Tsarist champagne breaks. You who grasp so hard at the threads of your own "personal growth", and all the while decay in the muck - ask the shock worker how he grows!

"I? I? I is the letter of the reactionary. It is IT that grows, comrade, and it alone with the productivity of the organization!"

And you asked him what he does on the weekend!

Anybody with work today and a social and incorruptible mindset must immediately identified himself with the title of "shock worker". It is exactly this kind of militarized courage in the work place that you should depend upon everyday. A pride in completing something, or having the ability to complete it, with a powerful, even intimidating efficacy.

Maybe there is room for humanity, humour, and urbane cynicism in your off hours. Maybe there are days when you do indeed need to step back from the black hole of labour and ask yourself on an existential level what it is all about. Your ego should not be entirely ignored. But remember that collective, futuristic identification with machine-like efficacy is a powerful and fun way to get yourself through some rather bland days.

No pat on the back or "great job!" for you! You must want your work to be so highly charged as to "terrorize" with its quantity, and the fierce speed with which it was accomplished. But it is not yet enough! Faster comrade, and faster still! Before the inevitable screensaver of history blacks us all out.

October 1 - the All-Union Day of the Shockworker. We have a report! We are completing construction of the foundation of the socialist economy!

Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief Post-Secondary World Systems

Chief Interlocutors:

CUSANUS, University student and president of the Student's Association

TESSOUAT, College student and partisan

SIMPLICIO, A buffoon with only a High School education

---

Audience Member: Hello, I've come for the dialogue?

Usher: Of course sir, we have an excellent pair of seats in front. Right this way Madam.

Audience Member: I hear it's a good one, eh? Might even get Platonic?

Mrs Audience Member: Oh dear, I hope it doesn't come to that.

Usher: Not to worry madam, we provide all of our customers with specialty goggles in case of unexpected hypostasis. Now here we are.

Audience Member: Bless you, lad.

Mrs Audience Member: La! She starts!

---

A DIALOGUE CONCERNING THE TWO CHIEF POST-SECONDARY WORLD SYSTEMS, or, The Story of the Double Edged Swordfish. This dialogue is presented WITHOUT FRENCH SUBTITLES for de 'earing h'impaired.

CUSA. Yesterday we agreed to come together to split a pitcher -

SIMP. To splitcher?

CUSA. Yes, splitcher, we agreed to splitcher, and moreover so did she, but it's been so many years since she took gymnastics that we might as well continue what we were doing until she's done stretching. Now if you remember, mongomaniacs, we agreed to get together in this dialogue in order to discuss the merits and faults of the two chief systems of post-secondary education, those of the University (or "College" in America) and the College (or "Farmyard" in America), thereby to determine the which of which is the superior..Er, with which the superior...Er, carry the one and...

TESS. Which's better?

CUSA. Concisely put, browbeater. Now, it has long been agreed upon that these bodies, while dedicated to the education and information of the world public, are almost always constituted as communities. Not all bodies are constituted this way. Some have more upper-thigh fat, which contributes to a more congested thoroughfare (and trust me, it is thorough).

At any rate, just like cities, there is a great deal of variation between constitutions, culture, and between the happiness of its citizens. Remember that the Divine Plato, in his chief dialogue The Republic, chiefly builds from divine excellencies of nature and the human soul a puppet play of the ideal city as could be constituted in the ideal form divinely, chiefly, and without an overabundance of squash. I hereby propose this very method as the start of our investigation - which of the two compares most closely to the ideal city?

SIMP. How do you talk like that, anyway?

CUSA. If you are referring to the rhetorical complexity of my personal mandarin, I'll have you know that my grandfather was at Eton, dog!

SIMP. Well maybe he shouldn't have been eatin' dog.

TESS. Now listen Custy, I like where you are going with this. The basic idea is that universities and colleges are like two different types of countries. Ok, fair enough. I guess we're trying to figure out which one is the "first world" country, right?

CUSA. Aptly put, my sans-cullottic chum. And it's exactly on this point that the University comes on top...

I said, comes on top...

SIMP. *sips his drink*

CUSA. No? Nothing? Alright then. On top.

Remember that it is we who are the intellectuals, the researchers, the golden philosopher kings of the Platonic Republic. We pump the world engine with the fuel of our thought; we send out the armies of Enlightenment, critical thinking, and engaged dialogue into the world to conquer the nebulous terrorism of bias; it is we who, in an ever faster and manic age of information and digitization, act as stewards for the knowledge of the present and future....

TESS. Ok, I hear what you are saying, but I think you might be veering off-track a little. The point of this exercise was to figure out which community was the best. Well, tell me, from a practical stand-point, how much does a burger cost on campus?

CUSA. A burger? They are fairly expensive actually. 7-8$? I don't know. I never get them.

TESS. Oh?

CUS. They are kind of gross. You know, iffy. Unbalanced. Most of the food on campus is distributed through a pretty sketchy food corporation.

TESS. Interesting - Socrates can't cook his own meals? Very different from what we have. I had a delicious lunch today on my college campus actually - a beautiful organic salad and leek soup. For four bucks!

SIMP. What kind of salad was it?

TESS. Quinoa!

SIMP. Oh, I've heard of that. It's that food that sounds differently than it's spelled and tastes even worse.

CUSA. It sounds delicious and healthy to me. How do they sell it so cheaply?

TESS. It's made by the culinary students - as part of their curriculum. They sell the food they cook on campus at reduced rates, they get to practice, we get to eat well crafted, home-cooked meals - everybody benefits!

CUSA. What a charming idea! Wish we could do that...We have to run bake-sales on the sly for fear of getting shut down by the administration. And even in those, the cupcakes are as half-baked as the causes they support. 

SIMP. Buy a baked good! Save the bare-back black squirrel from extinction!

TESS. I didn't know there was such a thing as a bare-back black squirrel.

SIMP. Well there's only one, but he's getting on, you know.

CUSA. Do you see what we have to deal with? Er...With what we have to deal?

TESS. Well compared to that, we're kind of a communist paradise - on college campuses so many of the programs offer real goods and services. We've got cheap haircuts, tailors, carpenters, mechanics - and everybody working for the love and challenge of the labour itself. A walk through campus is like a stroll through a real town.

CUSA. And so cheap...

TESS. Is there really nothing like that on University campuses?

CUSA. Are you kidding? Take a walk from the University Centre to the library. You won't find anything of value there you couldn't pick up somewhere cheaper, faster, and with a better general odour. And I mean the same thing for the goods and services as well as the ideologies and STDs on display or being hollered in your ear or shoved into your hands with a wink and a scowl.

No,  where you guys are Copernican, we are still Ptolemaic. For us, the stars revolve around our own egos. No mentality for sharing. But what could we even offer one another? Books, articles, reading material... Certainly no preserves or haircuts or anything like that.

TESS. Sounds kind of top-heavy to me.

SIMP. And not in the good way!

TESS. What way is that?

SIMP. The bad way.

CUSA. And how. Look, you realize we can't even govern ourselves? You'd think a place so infatuated with learning would be governed mainly by well educated students and professors, right? Well, somehow a wily eunuch class of administrators have wedged their way in between them. Real shysters. They are basically an MBA fund-driven conglomerate who run the place like a third-world slum lord, squeezing money out of tenants and cramming 20 families to a single toilet...

TESS. Third world? You'd think "liberal education" would involve a little self-reliance.

SIMP. They are pretty good at the breakfast buffet...

CUSA. Brains and buttocks alike are heavy things to cultivate. But the one thing we do have over you colleges is the single most important of all.

TESS. What's that?

CUSA. We have good libraries. Presumably, once in a while, someone gets around to reading some of them.

SIMP. Reading in a library? What are you, a satanist? Libraries are for three things, and three things only - oggling, toggling, and googling.

CUSA. So long as we have books...

SIMP. Ma se io vi concluderò, in virtú delle medesime proposizioni concedute ad Aristotile, che i corpi celesti sieno essi ancora, non meno che gli elementari, generabili e corruttibili, che cosa direte voi?

CUSA. Come again?

SIMP. Not without a quart of gin, friend.

TESS. You all have book-dependency. It seems to me like we embody the popular spirit of a classical city-state much more effectively than you guys do. You're like monks.

CUSA. Maybe. But we shave less. I'm calling it in for the day, shall we splitcher again?

SIMP. Ladies and Gentlemen, while our two antagonists walk off hand-in-hand to the bar, I present a little song entitled:

Ode to the Dialogue as a Forgotten Vehicle for Social Change -

From the dramas of the Grecian

To the works of Galilei

Nothing has been so efficient

To get from point A to B.

Why d'you brag about your Euclid?

Why'd you ramble like Descartes?

Why'd you make a documentary?

Why d'you map it on a chart?

Nothing naturaller, nothing simpler

Than a conversa-ti-on

Between friends had of an evening

Where is heard everyichone.

Let us plunge in information
Let us let free the bits and bytes

For to help its liberation
Is the steward's sole delight.