hello my name is thurber and this post is where i say goodbye
poppa is disappointed
he says we havent written anything since he got home
but youre home youre home we say
and also more food
and anyway rabbit day is over i say
but he says it isnt
its dark outside though
yes but rabbit day ends at midnight he says
and beezel says its just as well because he never knew i had such a crush on abbie the cat
and beezel also says kali is at best a rarely well done lobster but i dont know what that means
so i jump him and poppa yells and mamma says stop it stop it and beezel hides under the stairs
he never got the newspaper job
or the tuna
but kali got some email shes been gloating ever since
and very mysterious and if you ask she pretends to be angry
she says meh a lot
meh meh
poppa says shes the only cat that quacks
anyway poppa said somebody had to say something
because he couldnt since it was still rabbit day
and beezel is still hiding under the stairs
and kali is saying meh
so
goodbye
ISO newspaper columnist.
Thurber doesn’t think we’re strong enough to turn a house upside-down.
“Forget about that,” I tell him. “Real estate is a chump’s game. We’re getting into journalism.”
“But you don’t keep a journal,” says Thurber.
“What do you think we’re doing today?” I say. “Besides, not that kind of journalism. Opinion journalism. Ops and eds. It’s a lot like journal journalism except everybody has to read you and they pay you lots of money.”
“Lots of money?” says Thurber. “Enough for tuna?”
“Enough for tuna and poppa’s office and mamma’s office too, I bet.”
“But we’d have to be very careful to only ever tell the truth unless we’re wrong unless we know we’re wrong,” says Thurber.
“No we don’t,” I said. “I’ve been studying this stuff. It’s great. You don’t have to be right or tell the truth or anything. You just make stuff up and write it down and go play golf and eat lots of banquet dinners of fish with powerful people who tell you anyway what you ought to be writing down.”
“I suppose that’s one way of making sure you don’t know you’re wrong. So that way you can’t lie.”
“Don’t worry about lying! I’m telling you, there’s no accountability for this stuff!”
“Don’t say that,” says Thurber, and he does the thing where he lies down and looks the other way like I’m not there.
“Thurber,” I say.
“Take it back,” he says. “Take it back.”
“Fine,” I tell him. “One day, yes, they will all be held accountable for what they’ve done.”
“Okay,” says Thurber, and just like that he’s happy again.
“Anyway, the Times is looking for somebody. They say it’s good to have some experience, or at least a father who wrote there once in the past or something, but I figure purring is just as good. We just listen to what Kali says when she thinks we aren’t looking and write it down every week and send it in, at least until they invite us to play golf and eat fish and tell us what to write.”
“I can’t play golf,” says Thurber.
“Don’t worry about it! We just have to drive liberals crazy. How hard can that be?”
The paradoxical genius of modern conservatism.
I should like now to elaborate upon some nuances which might have escaped the public-at-large regarding the conservative mission, a mission that I must admit seems today to be in some little disarray. Specifically, I wish to demonstrate that President Obama, though conservative, is hardly what conservatism requires at the moment, and that President Bush, though not at all conservative, should be allowed through his proxies in the Congress to complete the work he began.
I realize this seems paradoxical, even inconsistent, to some lesser minds. Allow me to explain.
The conservative mission, or conservatism, can be mostly aptly summed by quoting John L. O’Sullivan, publisher of a 19th c. periodical entitled The United States Magazine and Democratic Review, whose motto read, “The best government is that which governs least.” How true! Is it not the case, for instance, that when I am outside, and it begins to rain, I am forced to wait, humiliated, by the door, until my people deign to notice my condition and allow me to enter my own house? How much better would we all be if my ingress and egress were not governed by that dam’ door! (You may have originally encountered this motto in its more famous paraphrase by Henry David Thoreau, and it has also been attributed to either Thomas Jefferson or Thomas Paine. That its wisdom has been recognized by such radical revolutionaries only strengthens my point.)
For a time, the actions prescribed by the sainted Buckley were enough: to stand athwart history and yell “Stop!” Certainly, it led to the halcyon age of the sainted Reagan, who pioneered the technique of not-government. By denying the government the funds that it rapaciously sought, Reagan forced it into a posture of not-governing, thereby lessening the amount of government and increasing freedom for us all.
But the creeping socialism and liberal fascism of the dark and doleful Clintonion age redoubled government’s efforts to a truly dangerous degree. When Bush fils took office, it was with the mandate that he save this country and freedom itself from this very present danger. He could see that a return to not-government would not be enough. The extremity of our predicament served as an anvil upon which his native genius was beaten into conservatism’s greatest weapon: anti-government.
Anti-government appears to violate several principles of conservatism: it spends a great deal of money, writes an inordinate amount of new laws and rules, and intrudes to an impressive degree upon the lives of the people-at-large. But it does so in the service of destroying the very government liberal fascists would otherwise impose. Not-governing merely prevents government from further encroaching. Anti-government actively rolls it back. The immediate effects of the drastic anti-governing steps that are taken may well obscure the freedom we will ultimately gain, but we must trust to O’Sullivan and his iron maxim, until government is reduced to a thing which I can bat about between my paws. On that day, we shall truly be free.
Thus, the paradoxical genius of George W. Bush, who, I fear, will always be a martyr to the cause of conservatism; who saved it by taking such radically unconservative steps. It is perhaps too much to hope that President Obama will learn the necessary wisdom of anti-government—though already he finds himself forced into not-governing. I take solace, however, in the fact that Republicans in Congress will not stop pushing our anti-governing agenda until that glorious day when they reduce themselves out of the offices we will no longer require.
hello my name is thurber and this is an answer to a question
hello my name is thurber and this is an answer to a question
i have an email right here
well over there in the email program
it says whats going on
where is the pier
where is poppa
only it doesnt say poppa it says kip
and by pier it means the blog that poppa does
because the blog has pier in the title
and so i will tell the email what is going on
and you too
it is rabbit day
i mean rabbit hole day
thats what poppa said
he left his laptop open on the bed and said
its rabbit hole day
go ahead
you guys and maybe ill let you
cat blog all day
there is a link i would put in a link but i asked beezel and he lost patience and said i should learn how to paste the referent in the anchor or just use textile anyway and i dont know what that means and hes trying to get in here so ill let him back off beezel okay now okay
Jesus, Thurber. Typing straight into the blogging software like that. That’s for kids and Luddites. And could you use a proper title? And the shift frickin’ key? Anyway. Here’s the link. Now. Can I interest you fine folks out there in this cashier’s check I’ve got for a hundred thousand dollars? I can’t cash it myself for obvious reasons, but if you were to go to the bank with me and cash it for me, I’d be willing to split it sixty-forty, you know?
actually i have to say i when i said i had an email right here
it was an email i had beezel write
so i could say i had an email right here
and not be lying
only i was right when i said it
not wrong
because the email was right there since i had beezel write it and all
and if youre wrong youre not lying
so if youre not wrong i dont know
but i do know beezel doesnt have a cashiers check he has a piece of paper and he tried to write cashiers check on it just in case only it doesnt look right and anyway i think he put not enough zeroes in one hundred thousand
and im right about that
and im not lying
so that works out okay but i still dont know about the lying part
anyway i hope that answers the question i told him to ask in the email which is why i wrote this
Nigh unto brilliance.
I wish to take this opportunity to remind you all of one of the defining quotes of our time:
It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can’t get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.
How ironic it is that a mere cat can recognize the wisdom of these words when a vast majority of the supposedly more developed populace-at-large cannot. You will all come around, soon enough.
Step Three!
Thurber wants to know when the tuna’s getting here.
“First we have to order the fifty bajillion dollar airplane from France,” I remind him. “With the teak wood trim and the gold accents and the shag carpeting and the queen-sized bed with the big sunny windows and the Cordova leather seats.”
“And the Cordova leather baby seat,” says Thurber.
“Yes yes, the baby seat, though honestly they can just fly with her in their laps.”
“And the sushi chef,” says Thurber.
“It will have a full crew complement, yes yes.”
“Is that how we get the tuna?”
“No. I mean, sure, yes, I guess a sushi chef has his own tuna, but that’s not the tuna. Remember? Everybody’s gonna see we bought a fifty bajillion dollar airplane from France and they’ll yell at us and I’ll go on TV and I’ll purr and if they’re all like fifty bajillion dollars! From France! I’ll say like I don’t really see why I have to answer your questions if you’re gonna be meanies and then you go on TV and you look like that all remorseful and then we sell the French plane on eBay.”
“I don’t think we can get fifty bajillion dollars on eBay,” says Thurber.
“Doesn’t matter.”
“I don’t think bajillion is a number.”
“Doesn’t matter! We could sell it to distraught solicitors from Nigeria with estate tax issues and it wouldn’t matter. We just need to make sure we get enough money for twenty pounds of tuna.”
“And that’s the tuna?”
“Yes.”
“We don’t have to sell that tuna to buy more tuna or maybe salmon that we shift upstream so we can buy some tuna?”
“No. That’s the tuna.”
Thurber sighs. “I don’t get it.”
“Honestly, we’ve been over this five times now, Thurber.”
“Yeah, but we lose money.”
“It’s not our money.”
“It’s not?”
“Where are we gonna get fifty bajillion dollars? It’s government money, remember? Because we bought all those condos and that office building downtown and we lent all that money to the guy on the Segway to build more condos only nobody wants to buy condos anymore and also there’s that restaurant on the river where nobody wants to eat because of the peanuts, so we go to the government and we purr and you rub up against their leg like that and we say help us, please buy all this stuff from us because nobody else wants to, and the government says gosh, that’s a lot of stuff, maybe you’d better tell us how much it’s worth and we tell them fifty bajillion dollars and they give it to us and pat us on the head and say now don’t get in trouble again and we go and we buy the plane from France.”
“When did we buy all those condos?” says Thurber.
“We haven’t yet! We have to buy some houses and flip them, first.”
“We have to turn houses upside down?”
“They’re worth more that way. Keeps ’em dry when it floods and they go underwater.”
“Wow,” says Thurber. “Real estate is complicated.”
“You know, I bet we could get money for more than just twenty pounds of tuna. I bet we could get a million bucks even, so poppa could redecorate his office.”
“That would be nice,” says Thurber.
“So could you just help me go through this laundry? They’ve got to have left some money in some pockets somewhere.”
“I don’t know,” says Thurber. “When’s the tuna getting here?”
“Come on! Get down here and start rooting! This is too big to fail!”
hello my name is thurber and this is a post about what i do not understand
hello my name is thurber and this is a post about what i do not understand
i ask beezel about it
because beezel says he knows everything which
isnt true but he does know a lot so
sorry im not too sure about punctuation so i just tend to
leave it out but i think i did the contraction right
isnt dont wont cant
anyway i do try to spell properly
you have to give me credit for that even though
beezel says its the word processor
i ask beezel about why are all the newspapers so upset about the mayor
we have a new mayor his name is the same as a beer
poppa doesnt buy the beer though beezel told me that
the new mayor kissed a boy and now the newspapers say he has to quit
they mean quit being mayor not quit kissing boys
he can still kiss boys because we dont mind if mayors kiss boys here
at least thats what i thought and also the word processor doesnt like it when i say doesnt or dont but it wont tell me what to do about it
it doesnt like it when i say i either
anyway i said that
beezel said its not because he kissed a boy
its because he lied about kissing a boy
and he told the boy to lie about being kissed
and maybe he hired a reporter to not report only he didnt hire the reporter who was reporting so maybe that wasnt so smart but i was getting dizzy so i stopped him i said
but what about the president
and beezel said he didnt lie about kissing boys
and i said no he lied about the war
and beezel said no he didnt he hasnt had time to he just got started but who knows they work fast these days
and i said no the other one who lied about the war the first one
and beezel said oh yeah him
and i said why didnt he have to quit
why didnt the newspapers say he had to quit
not just being president
but also lying about the war
he didnt even quit that
hes still doing it
and kali got that look like she always gets and she got up off the bed and went downstairs like that
i should have mentioned we were up in the new bedroom but i didnt think it mattered only now i see maybe it did so thats where we were so pretend like i said it up there so the scene is set
and beezel said because its serious thats why
and i said because its serious so thats why he didnt have to quit
yes said beezel
and i said but kissing boys isnt serious
and beezel said well no not that serious
and i said so if its serious like a war and you lie about it then we shouldnt get upset
its way too serious to let it get to us says beezel
but if it isnt serious like kissing a boy then we should get upset
right says beezel because on account of all the serious things we cant get upset over what else are we going to do
and i said but a lot of people who read newspapers wanted him to quit being president or at least lying about the war is what i said and then i said but also a lot of people who read newspapers dont him to quit even though he lied about kissing the boy i mean the other him but anyway the newspapers all said he should quit even though they never said he should quit the first him i mean
and beezel said newspapers pfeh what do they know
and he got up and left which i think really means he didnt know either
even though he says he knows everything
i dont think its true
and also the word processor doesnt like pfeh
anyway thats why i wrote this blog post about what i do not understand about seriousness and stuff and kissing boys and lying
i dont think beezel lies when he says he knows everything
i just think hes wrong
because if youre wrong then you arent lying
right
question mark
Is this thing on?
Ahem.
Check. Check. 1. 2. 3. Check-check.
BOW DOWN BEFORE BEEZEL! BOW DOWN BEFORE BEEZEL NOOOOWWW!!!
Hmm.
Doesn’t quite have the same ring. Oh, wait, here comes Thurber—
I suppose I understand the basic impulse, intellectually speaking, but damn.
I mean, you could just give them all to me.
Jack-in-the-pulpit; onyx; yellow sapphire; Pantone® 14-0848 (mimosas!); Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn.
It says something that it’s only now as this blog-thing celebrates its seventh year that I’ve figured out how convenient it can be to post-date entries—so that I write them whenever it’s convenient (or whenever I actually think of them), but they appear whenever I actually want them to appear.
The requisite link to the first post.
The colors of the seventh anniversary are, apparently, yellow and off-white, which makes for an appealing synchronicity with Pantone’s choice of color of the year: a “warm, engaging yellow” they named Mimosa. “In a time of economic uncertainty and political change,” they say, “optimism is paramount and no other color expresses hope and reassurance more than yellow.” And they are the global authority on color and provider of professional color standards for the design industries! Says so on the label. So fret not about the folk wisdom that says yellow walls make kids twitchy and loud.
Seven’s traditional gifts are copper and wool; the modern gift is a desk set, which it seems can be combined with one of my preferences such as golf or collecting. Hmm. Golf aside, I think I’m going to like this year better than previously reported. —It’s suggested I watch The Desk Set: what night’s good for you, O Spouse?
Other odds and ends.
Since they keep piling up, and for whatever reason I’m in a pithy mood: Dylan Meconis has a new website; Sara Ryan, who has new glasses, points us to Vice’s interview with Ursula LeGuin; the Spouse has had a tasty epiphany; and this, while not strictly speaking safe for mixed company, might nonetheless prompt a small slim smile.
Nom-nom.
So taking some advice I undid an old feature-that-was-more-like-a-bug around here and flipped off the switch that restricted the atom and RSS feeds to excerpts only, which is why maybe I just spammed your LiveJournal friends page or your old skool reader, I dunno. Sorry. Anyway, you should now see the full body in the feed for every article, instead of just the excerpt.
Unless you’re using Firefox. Um. Which somehow can read that there’s an excerpt present and so chooses to show the excerpt in the feed even though as far as I can tell there shouldn’t even be an excerpt there for it to read. —Of course, if you’re reading it in Firefox through Bloglines or Google Reader or some such, then you’re okay; they seem to pass the full body through whether you’re reading it on Firefox or no. Unless you’re using them in Firefox to subscribe directly to the atom feed. In which case they don’t.
I don’t even have any idea what happens in say NetNewsWire or Feedly or Thunderbird.
Anyway. There’s options! Which is all I ever wanted. (I just wanted more control over them.) —I guess you should point your reader of choice at the Feedburner feed and if you’re still getting it the one way and you’d rather have the other and you just can’t make it work let me know and I’ll see if there’s something I can do on my end. Otherwise I’ll assume y’all’re good and we’ll go from there.
Unkinny.
I’ve written about that sense of ostranenie which is heimlich; how about the home-like stuff that leaves you feeling all outside yourself? —I do not watch football, not anymore, and even then it was only on in the background while I did other things because the grownups had control of the television. I haven’t been to Alabama in years; the time I’ve spent there is measurable at most in months. But I was born there, and the first dirt I ever walked on was dry and red and smelled like pine sap under the sun, so when Jim White sings “Alabama Chrome” and gets to the bridge—
The heat it is withering, humidity smothering.
Strip of silver tape, a sly lie covering
Dent in the side of a redneck ride.
Going deep for the Crimson Tide. —Yeah!
—I can’t help but pump my fist and sing along. Roll Tide.
(I don’t think you understand. My father went to Auburn. War Eagles! See? I can’t help but get it wrong! And yet I can’t help but get it—)
Gonna bump to the thump of the Selma slammer.
Wanna jump up and down like a wack jackhammer.
Sing a little “Sweet Home Alabama”—
Jimmy gimme wink like a big flimflammer.
Boatswain!
I’ve been watching an inordinate amount of Prospero’s Books lately, because it is an ideal entertainment for an infant who’s sitting in your lap while you’re trying to get some work done in a window on the other monitor over there—glorious music, a charismatic man doing all sorts of silly voices, every second there’s something new and rich and strange and beautiful to look at.
—Also, I now remember why it was I’d thought of giving Perdix all those memory-dancers, but that’s neither here nor there. Nor would you be interested to learn that I want my office to look like this:
At least I’ve got the papers-and-books-everywhere æsthetic down.
—While we’re on the subject of movies playing repeatedly in a corner of the screen, remind me to tell you at some point (and I’m not even kidding here) why Speed Racer was maybe 2008’s best movie. Fuck The Dark Knight—those fucking Wachowskis filmed a sequence in the goddamn subjunctive!
The crying of lot 48½.
Once you see the arrow in the FedEx logo, you can never unsee it.
Mad, mad world.
“Mad”ness comes from the lazy epoch.
The aunt is mad at me.
The uncle comes home late.
The children are mad.
The dog is mad.
The housewife is mad at you—
the door is barred.
The ship is sunk, the crew
is mad.
—Ernst Herbeck [via; via]
