“Hey buddy. Isn’t it a little late in the year for interleague baseball?”

“That’s the World Series.”

“The World Series? St. Louis? Texas?!?“

Anyway. By the time YFNA got the news, everybody else and their pet chinchillas knew how the sins of one of his priests had brought down the Church of JoePa …

“This is the Vatican. How may we help you?”

“This is Joe Paterno, Pennsylvania, USA.”

“The Head of the Church of JoePa?”

“You have said so. May I speak with His Holiness the Pope? I seek his advice on a problem we both share.”

“His Holiness has received the news. He will pray for you.”

“I was hoping for something more practical.”

“Prayer is the most practical advice His Holiness can offer, sir. He says, nothing else short of Divine Intervention does a lick of good. Crede expertum.”

And most of them have commented. Either, it’s a scandal that Paterno should, after all his time and accomplishments, be sacked for this one failing. Or, it’s a scandal that Joe Pedo hasn’t already been hanged from the highest rung of his coaching chair at the 50-yard line of the Happy Valley gridiron stadium.

Far be it from Your Friendly Neighborhood Amoeba to fail to do what everyone else is doing. Comment on all this, that is. Though, he confesses, the train of his thoughts don’t have much to do with what Paterno and his associates have or have not done. After all, he was not there. All he knows, Will, is what he reads on the Internet.

Those thoughts have much more to do with us. You and me, fellow citizens of these Untied States of America.

How it is that We the People can let pass, with scarcely a murmur, the bombing to smithereens of a nation full of people on the scantiest and falsest of pretexts.

How we can accept, and even call good, Our insistence on an economic system that consigns a quarter (at least) of the population to grinding poverty, nonexistent health care, and demeaning servitude. And then we look outside of the USA’s borders …

But so help Us if somebody gets caught with pants down in the wrong place at the wrong time! Right, Joe? Bill? Tiger?

We the People will bring down the great and noble if their (alleged) sexual conduct offends us. But We will support the perpetrators of crimes against humanity if they are successful in convincing us that their bedroom conduct is what We deem to be appropriate.

Perhaps you will forgive YFNA the observation that Our moral sense seems a bit, ah, screwy.

If it were less screwy, perhaps We would use it to examine critically the system that buoyed JoePa up, and then threw him down. How many Penn States, Ohio States, Miamis, Southern Californias – just to name four, within the past year or so – will it take before We recognize that allowing Our universities to be held hostage by professional sports franchises is A Bad Thing?

Do We really need tabloid / soap opera entertainment that badly?

If We do, it’s a really expensive taste.

Measured in the thousands of lives it consumes each year. 95% of so-called “student athletes” in the revenue sports get neither a job in the major pro sports leagues (one of which will apparently be hiring nobody this year) nor a credible university education.

Measured in the subsuming of the supposed primary mission of Our universities – acquiring and passing on knowledge – in the name of supporting the revenue sports. Johnny Carson once famously said that We would pay $10 for entertainment for every $1 we spend on education. Which is about the percentage by which revenue sports budget are growing on Our university campuses while We (yes, We) slash and burn the budgets that Our universities need for its people to acquire and transmit knowledge. Faculty, staff, and students at one major University of YFNA’s acquaintance recently were asked to vacate their jobs – and, especially, their parking places – so that their University could host a weekday gridiron game. Perhaps there’s a reason that the University in question removed its motto, Lux sit (“Let there be light”), from most of its branding (logos and such): a last, lingering concession to the principle of “truth in advertising”.

An expensive taste, indeed. One could almost call it immoral.

Specifically, to dress up in the (garish) school colors and celebrate the 150th anniversary of the founding of his favorite institution of higher learning.

The one from which he graduated, piled higher and deeper, just after elephants first learned to shave. And at which he has just been granted the privilege of a title – so long as he finds money to pay himself, not to mention his university (which gets a hefty cut of any money he finds), for this magnanimous gesture.

If you think this is a rare event in academic circles, especially in the sciences, YFNA begs you to reconsider.

YFNA did some considering of his own upon receiving this invitation.

About the mountain of debt that the typical student amasses to attend YFNA’s institution, and most of its ilk in these Untied States … public institutions that were set up to make a college / university education affordable.

About the economic prospects for a student in YFNA’s career field who has graduated with that mountain of debt.

YFNA is convinced that, were he a teenager in today’s Amerika, he would be pointing at a career working for Wal-Mart or driving a truck, his high-school performance be damned. “Go away, nigger peasant. We have an aristocracy in this country now, and our universities are for the noble classes. You are a serf. We don’t want your kind here.”

School colors? The folks who proffered the invitation might be just as happy that YFNA is out of town trying to pay the rent. Otherwise, he just might show up at that party, wearing something appropriate to the occasion.

Sackcloth and ashes.

As you probably know, there’s been a lot of heat generated by all sides over the OWS movement. In particular, there’s been a lot of attention over how “the media” initially ignored the (ahem) noble fighters for social justice against the global financial oligarchy, and then pooh-poohed those (ahem) poor, sorry, clueless jokers who have nothing better to do than carry picket signs and clog traffic, while their betters pay for the wireless networks over which the protestors sling their propaganda.

YFNA, for what it’s worth, chooses to try to enhance his reputation as an equal-opportunity castigator.

The (ahem) financial oligarchy put themselves into this mess by ignoring, or letting themselves be perceived to be ignoring, their social responsibilities. The divide between “rich” and “poor”, and the growth in that divide, is real. By publicly accepting the Friedman credo that “the business of business is business”, they excuse themselves from the moral strictures that those not in the money depend upon to prevent themselves from getting steamrollered. This has happened before, and so have the consequences. Like “New Deal” programs. Or Mao Zedong (Tse-Tung).

The (ahem) noble fighters for social justice don’t even themselves know really for what they are fighting. Progressive Democrat websites admit this, and the servants of the financial oligarchy, like Dave Ramsey, have taken great joy in skewering the OWS movement over this. “Mad as hell” isn’t going to do people much good, long term – whether the movement fails, or it succeeds. Indeed, it’s likely that the movement’s success turns out to be the worst calamity that its proponents could experience.

YFNA thinks that all sides in the current financial debate need, urgently, to review the history of the French Revolution. In which the OVS (Occupy VerSailles) movement toppled, not to mention beheaded, the country’s financial oligarchy, which greatly benefitted … Napoleon Bonaparte. And cast the country into 50 years of financial, political, and social turmoil, not to mention drafting a blueprint of aggressive imperialistic war that was copied, nearly to the planet’s destruction, in Germany a century or so later.

Be careful what you wish for, OWS folks. You might get it.

This particular message proclaimed things like “I am strong because I am weak, I am beautiful because I know my flaws”, yadayada. The kind of thing that’s supposed to make sense because it doesn’t make sense. Probably making cents for somebody in the process. ka-CHING!

YFNA long ago gave up the idea of making either sense or cents in this space. But that doesn’t stop him from wishing to peek at the backside of that “strong because I’m weak” picture. Folk hear this stuff often enough, there must be something to it, somewhere …

Yes, yes, YFNA knows all about the Scythians. The ones that cut out a cynic’s eyes to improve his vision. He’s read Ambrose Bierce too. The Scythians are welcome to try.

Instructions for removing the eyes from an amoeba.

1. Find eyes …

Your Friendly Neighborhood Amoeba supposes he’d better explain.

Some while ago, YFNA set up some aquaria. Seeing as how the adoption of more traditional pets is incompossible with our retaining permission to live in this house. Not that some of the more traditional pets haven’t tried to adopt us, or at least claim our space. But let’s leave those plot complications for Charlene, eh?

The fish chosen for these aquaria all come out of Lake Tanganyika in Africa. There’s a reason, in addition to their being pretty or weird-looking and (more or less) easy to keep. Ever hear of Darwin’s finches? That’s a group of birds, all of which are descended from a single pair that flapped (or got flapped) from mainland South America to the Galapagos Islands, found that they had the whole place to themselves, and set up shop. Eventually, the birds evolved from one pair – and therefore one species – to a flock of species (a “species flock”, natch) each one of which was adapted to all the different ways to make a living (an “ecological niche”) on the Galapagos and acquired bill shapes to match.

The same thing happened in Lake Tanganyika and its neighboring lakes. When Tanganyika first opened up, about 10 million years ago, a single pair of cichlid fish (the “Tilapia” you buy in the fish market is a cichlid) fell in, and its descendants are now adapted to all the different ways to make a living in the lake. Some of the ones in YFNA’s aquaria swim in open water and look like sardines, some live among the rocks and look almost like worms. And some are tiny things that live in snail shells.

Yes. Really.

YFNA set up the aquaria with sandy bottoms, threw in a bunch of snail shells from the garden (another plot complication for Charlene) and from beach-combing in various places we’ve visited, and when all that had settled down, added the fish. Presto. Hours of entertainment watching the fish carry (yes, carry) the shells from one place to another, squabbling over them in the process, and burying them in the sand so only their lips showed. Then guarding those shells, and ducking down into them anytime a threatening-looking Amoeba walked by.

Until, of course, they learned that the “threatening-looking amoeba” carried food.

Ever see a fish beg?

So YFNA was feeding the menagerie about a week ago, when he saw these specks on the sand outside of one of the shells that the male (more about this in a minute) shell-dweller was guarding closely, and kinda frantically. Quilly came over to see. “Oh. Look! Babies!“

Now, as you know, baby dogs are puppies, baby cats are kittens, yadayadayada. Baby fish are called “fry”. (Were you wondering how long it was going to take to get to that explanation I promised?) Don’t ask me why “fry”. Ten of these things will fit on your little fingernail. Filleting them is out of the question. Maybe it’s supposed to be foreshadowing. “Your fate, Finn, awaits on some human’s stove”.

The other fish in the aquarium didn’t have stoves. Just as well: good luck with getting gas or electricity in there anyway. Not to mention that it’s danged hard to manipulate a frypan with fins. Or a filleting knife. It didn’t matter. What did matter was that these fry weren’t going to have lives to foreshadow, Daddy’s best efforts notwithstanding, unless YFNA did something.

Fortunately, for once, the best laid plans of mice, men, and amoebae amounted to something. YFNA reached into the tank, which caused Daddy fish and most of the fry to duck into the shell Dad was guarding, then picked up the fish-laden shell and carried it to the other aquarium, which had been specifically set up to receive them. Some of the fry didn’t make it back into the shell. No worries. YFNA got out his trusty turkey baster, sucked up the wanderers, and squirted them into the new tank. Where all is now well. Apart from the baleful stare that Dad gives YFNA every time he walks by.

So what’s all this about “Daddy?”

Well, dude, one of the gnarly things about keeping cichlid fish is that, unlike many other kinds of fish, the parents take care of their fry. Rear cichlids successfully and get a free show, and you have no idea whether you’ll get Leave it to Beaver or Married with Children or Three and a Half Men.

In this kind of shell-dwelling cichlid, what’s supposed to happen is that the female fish gets (ahem) invited to occupy a shell in the male’s territory. The eggs get laid in that shell, and the female sticks around to take care of the fry while the male guards the territory and keeps all those other fish and their frypans away.

Family life in this particular pair of fish seems to take the form of the female getting into the male’s, ah, shell, laying the eggs and then cutting and running. Leaving Dad to do the parenting thing. Makes one wonder what would happen if there were more than one male around in that tank. Which there isn’t, so I guess we’ll never know. At least, not until those fry grow up. Oedipus, anybody?

I will say this. Dad’s job, and mine, in bringing up these fry is surely going to be easier, not to mention cheaper, than it will be for the babies that some of our blogging buddies have been coming up with lately.

Not that closet.

This closet. The one in which Garrison Keillor’s (not so) Secret Society of English Majors meets.

She’s started a new blog in her own name – Charlene Amsden. No more finding a nom-de-plume big enough to hide under. Like James Fenimore Cooper, oh, like a couple centuries ago, she’s decided to see if she can do better than all these authors whose books she’s been reviewing lately. Check her out and cheer her on.

She’s redecorated the Quilldancer site, too. Probably to clean up the amoeba slime that got stuck on it these past few days.

The poster sells –

C’mon. What else do posters do? The key datum is not whether they’re selling something, but what the something is that they’re selling.

As I was saying. The poster sells the new indie movie Dirty Business. The movie that strives to make its makers rich and famous by getting you to buy in to environmental rabble-rousing. “‘Clean coal’ isn’t clean!”, they yell. “Come on! We’ve got to stop this! Follow us!“

I look out into the parking lot of the crumbling marine field station, full of people who will likely be at the screening of this film, of people with professional training in the environmental sciences who already know that ‘clean coal’ isn’t clean, and that even if it were, burning it would exacerbate global climate change, which they know is a fact of nature, not some academician’s conspiracy.

The parking lot is full of cars.

Inside, lights are on, computers are running (whether in use or not), cell phones are charging – and the conversations are about the outrageous prices for gasoline and electricity, and when the furnace is going to be fixed so we can get some heat in this place.

As has been reported in several technical and press reports lately, the cheapest and easiest way for the energy industries to meet the demand for petroleum products in the face of declining petroleum stocks is to make use of so-called Fischer-Tropsch processes. Which, essentially, make petroleum out of natural gas and (NB) gasified coal (this is the ‘clean coal’ technology they’re talking about). Except for algae, biofuels are a cruel joke, costing far more in land, water, and processing than they produce in energy – and algae aren’t anywhere near ready to perform at the speed of business. Crede expertum.

Stocks of both natural gas and coal are projected to last well into the 22nd century. By which time the planet will be flooded and we won’t have any place to drive our cars anyway. But we all know that anthropogenic global warming is a figment of Al Gore’s failed political rehabilitation campaign imagination.

My credo: People tell lies. Even to themselves – sometimes, especially to themselves. But the mirror tells no lies. Held up to the record of your daily activities and mine, it records the truth. And it is here that the people who make the world work (read: your energy companies) are looking.

Quoth the mirror: If you drive, if you heat or cool your home, if you spend hours with your electronics, and – above all – if you complain to the skies about the prices you pay for the energy to do all this, you have voted for ‘clean coal’. And your solemn pronouncements to the contrary don’t mean a fucking thing.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time to shut down this computer and get to work. Work (that crumbling marine laboratory) is a little over two miles away. It’s about a forty-minute walk.

I’ll probably be the only one who walks to work. As usual.

But so what. Academics, especially those in the environmental sciences, lost their credibility long ago anyhow. ‘Don’t practice what you preach, huh?’ Ask Reg and Syd. Or any Tea Partier.

No, I won’t cite the university, the circumstances, or the article. Websearches should turn all of them up easily enough. In Your Friendly Neighborhood Amoeba’s opinion, the only thing worth quoting in Mr. President’s article was the line in which he fretted for his vision of education at this particular school, “… lest parents think [the university in question] was offering, at roughly $45,000 a year, the educational equivalent of a stag party.”

And the only reason that the line is worth quoting is that it was actual news in, like, 1968. Thereby demonstrating just how out of touch Mr. President is. Perhaps deliberately so; perhaps he has an audience prepared to be told the news of the early Nixon Administration, enough of an audience to keep him well supplied with gall and Viagra. The Viagra, of course, so that he can, when no one’s looking, respond more, ah, appropriately to the sex show.

Your amoeboid correspondent long ago gave up on the idea that university education is A Great Good. (Steven Dietz, in his play Still Life With Iris, has the best and truest take on ‘Great Goods’ that I have seen … if you get a chance, take in this ‘youth’ play.) I’ve alluded to this on several occasions, but let me, if you will, and once for all, write plainly about the reasons why.

Reason no. 1. The University is a business, and always has been a business. And, Mr. Friedman, the sole purpose of a business is to make money. Therefore, the University exists to make money, and has always existed to make money. It so happens that most Universities make money to protect and grow their business, rather than to enrich one or more investors. Promoting this perception makes it easier for the University to make money, by appealing to certain audiences either to spend their own funds on it, or save the University’s coin by refraining from charging the University for their services. The bottom line remains the bottom line.

Reason no. 2. The University has three principal ways to make money.

A. Donations.
B. Grants and contracts.
C. Student payments (tuition, fees, room and board).

Public universities (used to) receive funding from the states in which they resided; I treat this funding as a form of donation, in this case from state taxpayers, who, once upon a time, deemed it a Great Good to make a University education available to students who did not chance to be born into the Rockefeller or Vanderbilt families, and therefore could not otherwise attend a University. A quick check of the news will assure you that We the People no longer consider this service to be of value; in fact, We’d far prefer it if We could charge the Universities for the privilege of educating Our children, rather than supporting them in this role. This makes the public universities, no less than the private ones, dependent on (private) donations, grants/contracts, and students.

Reason no. 3. The University has every incentive to charge students as much as the market will bear for its product, and little incentive to monitor the quality of its product.

Formerly, YFNA argues, the principal product of the University was graduates, especially graduates entering one of the professions. The University’s ability to make money depended on the readiness of these graduates to enter their professions. A student who wasn’t making the grade (or, grades) would be dismissed, because the University could not afford to keep him – the poor student would damage the University’s reputation, and the next class of students would not come. Furthermore, the professions had a strong interest in keeping graduates both properly qualified and scarce. The quality enhanced the reputations (and hence, the earning power) of the professions, and the scarcity kept compensations high.

For the last thirty years, YFNA thinks, the principal product of most Universities and University programs has been courses. Students, told by various figures of Authority that a University degree is a Great Good, demanded the ability to get a degree. Any degree. At any cost. The University, being (see Reason no. 1) a business, and pleased to find that society now gave them the option to sell courses without regard to the quality strictures of the professions (which means they could spend less per course, and thus boost margins), was more than happy to oblige. This is how we obtain students who have University degrees in Marine Biology (and the accompanying six-figure debt) who make less, upon graduation and in a good job, than the kid fresh out of high school who signs on as a trainee manager at a fast-food restaurant. This is also how we get students with bachelor’s degrees who cannot read, write, or do arithmetic. The University doesn’t care if Homer spends his entire six-year undergraduate program playing Tetris in his room with the shades drawn, so long as he pays his fees.

The ‘better’ universities (the Harvards, Yales, Northwesterns, Stanfords, etc.), YFNA reckons, offer one other major product. Adoption. Adoption into the clubs, fraternities/sororities, and other connections that afford the adoptee a chance to enter the same corridors of power and prestige as those who have achieved such status by right of birth. This is the “experience” that many Universities market, in the hope that they can convince the student that she, too, can enter the corridors of power merely by signing on the dotted line, and paying through several orifices simultaneously for the privilege.

For a number of years now, We the People have been told that the acquisition of a University degree is a Great Good. That a progressive society will have a high percentage of degree holders. Your amoeboid correspondent, rather, believes (and has believed, essentially all along) that this “good” is in fact a great evil.

It has led to the creation of a massive education industry that is concerned more with its own bottom line than with the futures of the students it “serves”.

It has generated the gross hypocrisy of today’s “student athlete” – who is no more than an underpaid mercenary serving the University’s Public Relations Department (see Reason no. 2A, supra).

It has focused attention on itself as the portal to success in life, for a fee, and has thus drawn attention away from, and permitted the destruction of, public-funded primary and secondary education. As a consequence, not only are most University students being had, they have been denied the tools (knowledge, especially knowledge of economics) that they need to figure out that they are being had!

Yes, yes, I know, I know. If every student in high school actually made informed decisions about their best paths in life, most of today’s Universities would go broke.

But isn’t that what the Tea Partiers whom We the People just voted into office want anyway?

Mencken‘s Law:

     Those that can, do.
     Those that cannot, teach.

Martin’s Extension to Mencken’s Law:

     Those that cannot teach, teach education.

Quilly, who, as you may recall, used to be a teacher, just passed me the latest New York Times Op-Ed piece on the state of the teaching profession in these Untied States.

The bottom line of this article is, well, pretty much same old same old, brought back to the fore of national debate by the efforts of Our Elected Tea Partiers, in Wisconsin and elsewhere, to ensure that no one in America has services except for the ones who bankrolled their election campaigns.

That bottom line: teachers in Amerika are underpaid relative to their qualifications and job expectations, and get no respect.

Duh.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Amoeba spent some of the precious Sunday afternoon time that he should have spent either working or sleeping wading through a few of the 800 comments that the piece had attracted as of 1800 Pacific Daylight Time, 13 March 2011. He would have commented there himself, but to do so required registration on the blog site, and, begging your pardon, the spambots of the New York Times can keep their filthy, sewery circuit boards the hell out of YFNA’s electronic pockets.

So, the comments go here. Not so many people will read them – YFNA’s not convinced that anybody but the occasional dawg reads anything here – but, as will be made clear anon (or at least as clear as this amoeba can make it, which he’s constantly told isn’t, very), it hardly matters whether they’re read or not.

Speaking of comments. Enough passed through the pseudopods to convince your correspondent that the points of view that are normally expressed when this topic comes up were fully and comprehensively represented.

Including the one from the Teaching Professional who agreed with the article’s main arguments, but didn’t care for its assertion that most American teachers today come from the bottom of their university classes. For this, in the commenter’s opinion, contributed to the popular impression that teachers are lazy and “over payed” [sic].

Including the one from the recent college graduate, who complained that the introductory salary for teachers was far greater than that available to graduates in that person’s own (unstated) line of work. I suspect here a covert contribution from the Secret Society of English Majors – and don’t get YFNA started on the ability of today’s American universities to sell degrees that are worth about as much as the faux parchment on which they’re printed.

Including the citizen from the “economically depressed area”, who claimed that the region’s teachers made $80K, zoomed around in BMWs, and had cornered all the choice real estate.

Including all the teachers whose theories would solve the problem if they would only be implemented by a wise public. And those teachers who blame the public, parents especially, for the whole mess. And those teachers who claim that, unless the demographics are right, nothing can be done with the mess anyway. Not to mention those teachers who blame the union for their woes, plus those who think that the union is the only thing that has kept their woes from being worse than they are, plus those who would keep the union but throw out half of its membership – obviously, that half that’s keeping them from doing what they think is right.

And, of course, including all those who think that they can do away with taxes and all the onerous burdens that go with them, including public education, if they just scream loud enough.

What the hell. That’s what the baby boomers, who are now wringing their hands about the fate of America at the hands of the “Hell, no, we won’t pay!” crowd, did when their country asked them to do stuff they didn’t want to do. Like fight in Vietnam. “Hell, no, we won’t go!” Teach your children well …

Your Friendly Neighborhood Amoeba is having a harder and harder time paying attention to these debates. Usually, he finds, they’re not about We the People finding a way forward. They’re mostly about whoever the speaker is trying to advance that speaker’s cause, for that speaker’s profit (see “NY Times spambots”, supra). They aren’t usually about data and hard analysis of those data. These things, Captain, have no constituency, no audience, no group of people who can implement whatever the data truly tell us should be done and not feel like they’ve lost.

Because what needs to be done seems, to YFNA, so obvious – were it not for the fact that, at each step, somebody thinks they’ve lost.

* Pay teachers a wage commensurate with their training and role in society.
      – Taxpayers perceive that they’ve lost.

* Ensure that there’s a performance metric in place to ensure that the wages are being merited
     - Teachers and their unions perceive that they’ve lost

* Promote a culture that promotes respect for and support of teachers
     - Parents, children, taxpayers again, and, especially, the rumor-mongering mass      media, perceive that they’ve lost.

So We the People bicker among ourselves, each one of Us afraid We might lose something, while other peoples of the world, ones who are prepared to make the proper investments in themselves and their children, move forward, and put Us in peril of losing the lot.

To read their latest, go to this page. Here’s an excerpt …

*      *      *      *      *      *      

“Reg, you’re positively beaming!“

“And why shouldn’t I, Syd? The news lately has been excellent.”

“Even in Washington?”

“Especially in Washington. Those legislators we paid for are staying the course nicely.”

“Yes. I’m hearing quite a bit about their proposed cuts to NOAA.”

“From whom? One of those people working at that dilapidated dive they call a university marine biology station? I’m astounded that either our legislators or you are wasting any time at all on this chicken feed. Get rid of the whole agency. Put paid to those global warming nuts once and for all, and let’s see some real progress.”

“They do say they’re trying to protect jobs …”

Yes, yes, I know. The city’s name is Honolulu. Have patience, doctor, and all will be made clear.

Earlier today (6 March 2011), Your Friendly Neighborhood Amoeba was twiddling with his Facebook page. “What Facebook page?”, you may ask. Well, it actually got set up more than a year ago, at the request of some people. And about 30 seconds before the publication of The Accidental Billionaires.

Now, you should know that YFNA refuses to go to Disney movies, or otherwise patronize Disney products, because he feels that the Disney corporation takes entirely too large a share of the nation’s gross domestic product without his help, and that there are far cheaper and more satisfying ways to rot his mind. Such as sitting in his crumbling office in his crumbling marine biology field station, sweating the next round of 10% budget cuts and trying to work out whether it’s criminal or merely stupid to be accepting students in the current political and social climate. While everyone else is rushing off to see Tron: Legacy.

What goes for Walt goes triple for Zuckerscum, or whatever his name is, in YFNA’s book. Which means that he dropped Facebook like the proverbial hot potato. He would have deleted the page altogether, except (and he should have found out about this before he started) he discovered that delete was not an option. What he couldn’t kill, though, he could safely ignore, and this is what YFNA proceeded to do.

However, he acknowledges that not everybody feels as he does about this. Including Quilly, whose opinions matter and don’t let her tell you otherwise. And since he was already sitting at home with a mind that was 95% rotted by a flu bug, he succumbed to letting Facebook ream out the remaining 5 percent.

Having done so, he started to read about doings of old friends and associates in Hawai‘i – and immediately came upon the startling news that a fair chunk of O‘ahu had been without power for the past couple of days. This reminded YFNA about the time back in 2007 when a storm stranded Quilly and him in Makaha for like three or four days. Or the time in 2008 when a lightning strike blacked out the entire island. While President Obama was visiting. (I don’t think he’s been back since.) It would be fair to say that the O‘ahu power grid isn’t exactly the most robust piece of infrastructure in the history of public utilities.

And then, the power company’s workers went on strike. Which of course delayed the restoration of power by a day or so.

Needless to say, the union and its workers got blasted. With all the screaming about the jeopardizing of public health and safety by the union’s action, you’d think that they were refusing to restore the power in Aroostock County, Maine, during a January visit of the Montreal Express. Instead of in a tropical paradise where most people will lose little more than a couple of hundred dollars worth of meat in the freezer. Of course, for a lot of folk in Hawai‘i, that’s a big loss … coming to that …

Now, YFNA no longer lives in Hawai‘i, so doesn’t have all the facts to hand. He reckons, moreover, that ‘if you’re not actually doing it, you don’t know what’s going on.’ Hell, you probably don’t know what’s going on even if you are actually doing it, whatever it is. However, over the past several years at least, the pressure on the lesser classes to give back such wealth as they have, in order to preserve the assets of the wealthy, has done little but increase. With the willing support of We the People – witness the gutting of the Washington state budget via citizen initiatives, and the election of Mr. Walker to the governorship of Wisconsin.

It is hard for YFNA not to applaud the action of Hawai‘i’s power workers, not to applaud their resolve to be heard, in the only terms short of (for now) violence that will be heard, and be heard before my concerns about the morality of my bringing students into marine biology careers extend to any career whatsoever.

With the possible exception of those owned and operated by Disney and/or Facebook.

*     *     *     *     

Lead EMT: “Car A42. Approaching the 2900 block of Buffett, intersection of Madoff.”

Dispatcher: “Confirmed, A42. Incident should be in view.”

Lead EMT: “It is, Tara. Someone on the pavement. Lexus parked nearby. Female waving us down.”

Dispatcher: “That will be the 9-1-1 caller. She said she’d be looking for you.”

Lead EMT: “How is she involved?”

Dispatcher: “Late witness. Saw the man down, car leaving the scene. Lexus is probably hers. No further details.”

Lead EMT: “Security cameras?”

Dispatcher: “Non-functional. Probably vandalized, again.”

Lead EMT: “Yeah, people don’t much like anything that’ll make ‘em do what they have to do. Well, they’re payin’ for it, sooner or later they’ll learn. Or not. 10-23, Tara. We’re here.”

Dispatcher: “10-4, A42.”

Witness: “Oh thank God you’ve come! He’s still breathing, I think, but he hasn’t moved since I got here … and … and …”

Lead EMT: “We’ll do what we can for him, ma’am …”

2nd EMT: “Which won’t be much.”

Lead EMT: “That bad?”

2nd EMT: “Worse. Check the wrist chip readout.”

Lead EMT: ” ‘No’ code. We’ve come out for nothing. OK, pack up.”

Witness: “What??!??“

Lead EMT: “Nothing we can do, ma’am. He’s uninsured.”

Witness: “Are you crazy?!? He’s hurt! He may be dying!! Forget the fucking insurance and help him!“

Lead EMT: “Damitri, engage Dispatch for me willya, in case we need backup? Ma’am, I didn’t say we wouldn’t help him. I said we can’t. No insurance, no service. It’s the law. We’re under surveillance, and if we go against the law, we lose our jobs. The last citizen initiative …”

Witness: “That was to keep the scum from sucking us dry!“

Lead EMT: “Well, ma’am, there’s your scum …”

2nd EMT: “Joe?”

Lead EMT: “Yeah?”

2nd EMT: “Stiff.”

Lead EMT: “OK. Roll him into the gutter, out of the way. We’ll call Disposal. The fellow’s wrist chip should tell them where to send the bill. Unless this lady here’s prepared to pay it.”

Witness: “I don’t believe …”

Lead EMT: “Lady, you sure don’t look like you’re gettin’ sucked dry to me. Not with those baubles and that Lexus. You want services, I suggest you vote for ‘em. Now why don’t you get into that fine car and drive off? Enjoy it. While you still can. C’mon, Damitri.”

Dispatcher: “Ten-24, A42?”

Lead EMT: “Affirmative, Tara. Just another routine call-out. Send Disposal to the corner of Buffett and Madoff to pick up a ‘No-code’, deceased.”

Dispatcher: “Ten-4, A42.”

Screwtape III came to the attention of the blogosphere when a helicopter accident injected, um, an objectionable being into his territory. Now, they’re in damage control mode. To read about their deviltry, go here. An excerpt …

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“Well, Wormsap, I’d have to say that, in the little matter of your saintly intrusion, we got off better than we expected.”

“Indeed, sir. I hardly expected the Adversary to allow his spy to leave the Hadean Estates without even so much as a press release. But your negotiating tactic – reminding the Enemy’s representatives that they’re having a hard enough time topside managing all the messiahs that they’ve got, without adding any more to the mix – it was a stroke of pure deviltry!“

“Thank you, Wormsap. Grandfather thought so too. Not least because he’s the one who thought of it. But so curse me, if you breathe a word of that to anybody …“

“No, sir. I have no wish to be sentenced to the daffodil fields. Those blessed flowers burn my fetlocks and give me hives. The itching is (ptui) redemptive.”

“Watch your mouth, demon. Better still, watch your quotas. This episode didn’t cost us what we feared, but it wasn’t cheap either. Pure deviltry’s still left us with a lot of unanticipated vacancies, and word’s come up from Lucifer Himself that we’d better recover the revenues PDQ, or all hell’s …”

“Yes, sir.”

“You are taking steps, then?” …

They’re at it again this week. To read what they’ve done (and if you could help clean up after them, I’m sure Susan would appreciate it), go here. An excerpt …

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“Spooky, dude!”

“Yeah. Susan‘s gotten herself into some real dark an’ stormy places lately, ain’t she?”

“Dude. Tunnels, even.”

“Not any of ‘em more scary-lookin’ than this one.”

“Yeah. Looks like our old high school. Before the last round o’ budget cuts.”

“Couldn’t paint the place then either, could they, dude?”

“No way. But rottin’ plaster an’ all, it still had people then. Where’d they go?” …

My medicines the doctors use
(Albeit vainly) to refuse
To me my fair and rightful prey
And keep their own in shape to pay
           – Satan (Ambrose Bierce), in “Tariff”, The Devil’s Dictionary

“Amoeba speaking.”

“[...] Should we be alerting the media?”

“The dog’s not big enough. How may I help you?”

“Sir, we’ve been trying to contact you for days now. You’ve received the biopsy report on that growth. We’d like to proceed immediately.”

“Yes ma’am. Begging your pardon, but, while I bow-wow to your expertise, of course – speaking of dogs – the information I’ve received elsewhere tells me that the matter is not quite so urgent as that. Except perhaps to your shareholders.”

“Sir. This is your life we’re talking about!”

“Which no one in America cares a flying fickle finger of fate about, except in my role as cash cow. Sorry, but last I checked, moooo was not in my vocabulary. Neither was health insurance, like 50 million of the rest of us.”

“But …”

“Yes, yes. If you don’t operate, I will die. But if you do, naturally, I will live forever. Did you remember to compound a youth elixir for that?”

“This is the only life you have, sir.”

“Which I will do with as I see fit. And I mostly see fit not to saddle my friends and relations unto the fourth generation with making the payments on the BMW’s of medical practitioners and health insurance executives. No, wait. The executives will have Rolls Royce machines. My bad. Good day to you, madam.”