Tag Archives: outsanity

May 13, 2012 · 4:33 pm

The Devil’s Dictionary: Corportion, Congress, Lobbyist

In our continuing quest to revisit a classic, or even a curiosity from the past and see how relevant it is, we continue with The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce. Originally published in newspaper installments from 1881 until 1906. You might be surprised how current many of the entries are.

For example, here is a definition for the words Corporation and Congress. The Old definitions are Bierce’s. The New definition is mine. From time to time, just as it was originally published, we will come back to The Devil’s Dictionary, for a look at it then and how it applies today. Click on Devil’s Dictionary in the tags below to bring up the other entries.

OLD DEFINITION
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.

Congress, n. A body of men who meet to repeal laws.

NEW DEFINITION
Corporation, n.The only think I could add to corporation is: An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. Peopled with overcompensated executives whose sole purpose is to privatize the profit and socialize the debt. In the vernacular: heads, I win (I get to keep the profit); tails you lose (You have to cover the bad debts).

Congress, n. A body of men and women who meet to repeal laws, generally at the behest of a corporation. This is now true of both the federal Congress and the state Congresses throughout the U.S.

Lobbyist, n. Paid influence peddler, bag man for the corporation, general thief in the night whose sole purpose on behalf of corporations is to see that Congress understands which laws are to be repealed or weakened, and how this should be done, particularly since too many lobbyists are former elected officials. Lobbyists can promote on behalf of other entities and not only corporations, but the goal is generally the same.
[Editor’s note: lobbyist was not a term long in use when The Devil’s Dictionary was created.]

Final word:
“It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.” –MARK TWAIN

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May 5, 2012 · 10:18 am

Found story: The Last Bookshop

The last bookshop man in the world sat alone in his small store. There was a knock on the door. Startled, he looked up from his science fiction book to find the woman of his dreams standing in the doorway, wearing very little at all. And though she was an android, it had been a long time, so he proposed something indecent to her.

Chair in the last bookshop

The last bookshop

She smiled at him, not without some sympathy, then said, “Not tonight, honey, I have to reformat.”

She then turned and left the room.

He put the book back on the shelf and went to another section.

#

The last bookshop man in the world sat alone in his store. There was a knock on his door.

Before he could answer, the door swung open and a man in a fedora with a tommy gun barged in and started spraying the room with bullets.

The man with the machine gun aimed high, but was bringing his aim lower and lower, yelling over the noise that “The Boss” had sent him to get “the dame.” So where was she?

The last man barely had time to dive to the floor and even then he heard one speeding over his head.

The gun ran out of bullets. The man with the fedora backed out of the room and disappeared.

magazine from the last bookshop

Old magazine from the shelves of the last bookshop


The bookshop man slowly picked himself up, limped to the door, and shut it. He could not be sure if the man with the gun was another android, but he put the Hammett novel back on the shelf just to be safe.

#

The last bookshop man in the world sat alone in his store.

This time a Conan-like brute with a broadsword did not bother to knock, but kicked the door open and charged into the room, swinging. He hit books, slicing the spines, knocking them off the shelves. He hit shelves, splintering wood, embedding his sword.

He yelled something about a woman, or that’s what the last man thought he heard.

Because the room was small, Conan-like was having trouble getting a full, strong swing of his massive sword. Still, as he stomped toward the last man, the last man was not sure how he would escape this one. The same thing preventing this Conan type from getting a complete swing of his sword was also prevent his escape.

The last bookshop man was sure this was going to be his last. Then the scantily clad android woman appeared in the door and announced, “I’m reformatted.”

The Conan-like man jerked his sword out of the shelf, turned, and lunged toward her.

She squealed in an almost mechanical way and ran away, the muscle-bound Conan-like in determined pursuit.

The last bookshop man slumped into his chair and waited for his heart rate to return to normal.

#

The last bookshop man in the world sat alone in his store. This time, there was a lock on his door. This time, he was reading haikus.

[Editor’s note: inspired by a visit to Central Street Books, dealer in old and rare books, in Knoxville, TN.]

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Filed under bookshop, Found story, Photo by author, story, writing

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May 4, 2012 · 8:14 am

Drawing conclusions: Geek Speak

Speaking Geek

Speaking Geek is not that hard.

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April 29, 2012 · 8:47 am

The blathering idiot and poetry

The blathering idiot knew April was poetry month and he thought he could impress his on again, off again girl friend Zoey with a poem or two. But the month was running out and he had not yet thought of anything poetic to write, though he had taken the time to study some about poetry making.

Additionally, after the restaurant fiasco where he had waited and waited and waited for an employee to come and wash his hands because the sign in the rest room clearly said: Employees must wash hands, and this caused him to leave Zoey’s young daughter Xenia sitting by herself for over 30 minutes, which she then reported to her mother, well, his relationship with Zoey had cooled once again.

So, this was his chance, though a part of him was beginning to wonder why he should care.

He started with something at least a little familiar:

Roses are red and violets are blue
Your eyes are weird and you are, too.

The blathering idiot was proud to have gotten three rhymes in two lines, but the more he looked at the couplet, the more he realized Zoey would not appreciate his poetic efforts at assonance. At least that what he thought it was called. She would probably say he was just being one.

He then tried something that incorporated the month:

The month of poetry is about to end
The rains of April have been real thin.
A new month stands about to begin.
May nouns, verbs & rain come again.

Blatheriing Idiot as poet

Once upon a poem dreary....

There wasn’t anything about Zoey or love or stuff like that in that poem. He tried several more, and then several more after that. He tried haikus. He tried sonnets. He tried free verse and blank verse and some things to which he was adverse. Finally, in desperation, he tried limericks. First one. Then a second. And finally, he came up with one that wasn’t quite what he had in mind, but it did capture his mood, and might express to Zoey how he felt since she wasn’t talking to him much since the restaurant incident:

There once was a man from Nantucket
Who went on a dinner date and got stuck with it.
Not the bill, I say,
though that, too, came his way,
but the knife in his heart and the luck of it.

He read it and reread it and re-reread it, and then finally decided to put it in an envelope and mail it to her. He wasn’t from Nantucket – wherever that was – but she knew that. And while it didn’t directly mention love, love was there. And while Zoey wasn’t mentioned directly, she was in there, too.

He could only hope it wouldn’t give her too many ideas.

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May 6, 2010 · 11:03 pm

Sometimes it DOES take a Rocket Scientist (True Story)

Scientists at NASA built a gun specifically to launch standard 4 pound dead chickens at the windshields of airliners, military jets and the space shuttle, all traveling at maximum velocity. The idea is to simulate the frequent incidents of collisions with airborne fowl to test the strength of the windshields.

British engineers heard about the gun and were eager to test it on the windshields of their new high speed trains. Arrangements were made, and a gun was sent to the British engineers. When the gun was fired, the engineers stood shocked as the chicken hurled out of the barrel, crashed into the shatterproof shield, smashed it to smithereens, blasted through the control console, snapped the engineer’s back-rest in two, and embedded itself in the back wall of the cabin, like an arrow shot from a bow.

The horrified Brits sent NASA the disastrous results of the experiment, along with the designs of the windshield and begged the US scientists for suggestions.

You’re gonna love this…

NASA responded with a one-line memo — “Defrost the chicken.”

That bit of information probably wasn’t in the User’s Guide.

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