Vignette No. 2

Neil deGrasse Tyson sits on a park bench. Lance Armstrong rolls by, curled up inside a large tire, on the pavement in front of him. He is waving a miniature Brazilian Imperial flag. The treads of the tire are glyphs, constantly changing form and position. Some of the glyphs are left on the pavement, all of them Latin characters: THE STALKS DO NOT RETURN ONCE THE PAPYRUS IS MADE. A humpback whale moves in front of the sun.

Twin joggers, both male with shaved heads, stop in front of Neil deGrasse Tyson.

"Ceci n'est pas une vignette," the one on the left says. His left eye pops out of its socket and falls to the ground, rolling, and rolling, until it bursts into a billion tiny shards of light. The shards transform into butterflies; the butterflies are gone in an instant.

"They sow the wind and reap the whirlwind," the one on the right says. He climbs onto the shoulders of the other, and they cartwheel into a sea; and on the other side of the water they rise and their hands and feet make tracks at the shores of infinity, stretching onward, toward and past the horizon until there is no difference between heaven and earth. The waters slide over the sand and the tracks are gone.

A butterfly lands on Neil deGrasse Tyson's open hand. It looks at him accusingly. He stands.

It rains. It's rained a lot lately.

/*This is a companion piece to Vignette No. 1.

Vignette No. 1

A young woman sits on a park bench. A jogger passes, going east; a jogger passes, going west. A boy rolls down a hill, collecting chlorophyll and stray blades of grass on his shirt and jean shorts. Jorts.

The wind picks up subtly. Pages of a newspaper under the park bench flutter. A cloud eclipses the sun. A bird in a tree behind the bench starts to sing; a bird in a tree in front of the bench replies. Distantly, the horn of a car is sounded. Twice.

A foil gum wrapper tumbles down the pavement. The young woman idly watches it go by. She feels a vibration from her purse and retrieves a phone. After a moment, she replaces it. Her knees slide over the wood to touch each other. Her legs, crossed above her ankles, swing back and forth; the soles of her shoes scrape the top of the turf with each pass.

Her legs stop swinging. She stands, slinging her purse over her shoulders. She walks past a young man, sitting against the tree behind the bench; and with a small bag of popcorn in his hand. She smiles, just for a moment.

Favrefiction No. 2

Half-Time: Full-time Consequences

Brett Favre who was Gordon Favres brother was one day in an office typing on a computer. He got an email from his brother that said that linemen and linebackers were attacking his place and aksed him for help so he went.

Brett Favre got his computer shut down and wet on the platform to go up to the roof of the building where he left his motorcycle and normal people close because he was in his office football pads. Brett Favre got on his motorcycl and said "its time for me to live up to my family name and face full time consequences" so he had to go.

Brett Favre ramped off the building and did a backflip and landed. He kept driving down the road and made sure there was no cornerbacks around because he ddint have football.

The contrysides were nice and the plants were singing and the birds and the sun was almost down from the top of the sky. the mood was set for Brett Favres quest to help his brother where he was. Brett Favre looked around the countrysides and said "its a good day to do what has to be done by me and help my brother to defeat the enemys".

Brett Favre was late so he had to drive really fast. A cop car was hiden near by so when Brett Favre went by the cops came and wanted to give him a ticket. Here Brett Favre saw the first linebacker because the cop was posessed and had coked up.

"I cant give you my lisense linebacker" Brett Favre said

"Why not?" said the coked up linebacker back to Brett Favre.

"Because you are coked up linebacker" so Brett Favre shot the linebacker in the head and drove off thinking "my brother is in trouble there" and went faster.

Brett Favre had to go faster like the speed of sound and got there fast because Gordon needed him where he was. Brett Favre looked at road signs and saw "Soldier Field" with someons writing under it saying "u shudnt come here" so Brett Favre almost turned around but heard screaming like Gordon so he went faster again.

Brett Favre drove in and did another flip n jumped off his motorbike and the motor bike took out some coked up linebackers infront of Brett Favre. Brett Favre smiled and walked fast. Brett Favre then looked on the ground and found football so he pickd it up and fired fast at coked up safeties in front of a house.

Brett Favre said "Coked up safeties leave this place" and the coked up safeties said "but this is our house" and Brett Favre felt sorry for them becaus they couldnt live there anymore because they were coked up safeties so he blew up the house and killed the coked up safeties so they were at piece.

Then Brett Favre herd another scream from his brother so he kept walking really faster to get where he was. Soldier Field was nothing like the countrysides there was no birds singing and the pants were dead and teh dirt was messy and bloody from coke.

When Brett Favre got to where the screaming was started from he found his brother Gorden Favre fightin the final bosss and Gordon said "Brett Favre! Over here!" so Brett Favre went there to where Gordon Favre was fighting. Brett Favre fired his football from teh "gun" really fast and the football went and shot the final boss in the eyes and the final boss couldnt see.

Gordon Favre said "its time to end this ones and for all!" and punched the final boss in the face and the final boss fell. Brett Favre said "thanks i could help, bro" and Gordon Favre said "you should come here earlier next time" and they laughed.

The laughed overed quickly though because Brett Favre yelled "LOOK OUT BRO!" and pointed up to the top of the sky. Gordon Favre looked up and said "NOO! Brett Favre run out of here fast as you can!" and Brett Favre walked real fast out.

Brett Favre loked back and saw Gordon get steppd on by the next boss and he was mad and angry.

"I'll get you back evil boss!" Brett Favre yelled at the top of lungs.

to be continued..?

/*Adapted without permission from a story by squirrelking

Favrefiction No. 1

Brett Favre waited. The lights above him blinked and sparked out of the air. There were defenders in the backfield. He didn't see them, but had expected them now for years. His warnings to Cotch Serman were not listenend to and now it was too late. Far too late for now, anyway.
Brett was a quarterback for fourteen years. When he was young he watched the playoffs and he said to dad "I want to be on the NFL teams daddy."
Dad said "No! You will BE KILL BY DEFENDERS"
There was a time when he believed him. Then as he got oldered he stopped. But now in the stadium base of the Pack he knew there were defenders.
"This is Serman" the radio crackered. "You must fight the defenders!"
So Brett gotted his football and blew up the pocket.
"HE GOING TO KILL US" said the defenders
"I will tackle at him" said the defensive tackle and he fired the swim move. John juked at him and tried to blew him up. But then the o-linemen fell and they were trapped and not able to tackle.
"No! I must kill the defenders" he shouted
The radio said "No, Brett. You are the defenders"
And then Brett was a Viking.

/*Adapted without permission from a story by Peter Chimaera

Phony Quote No. 1

"We're gonna need a bigger boat. Or eleven bigger boats. Hell, make 'em aircraft carriers. Actually, we don't even need eleven, but might as well, right?"

Clark Clifford, 1968

One-Liner No. 2

Self-determination? More like self-defenestration.

One-Liner No. 1

The Laffer Curve is a real "laugher," all right.

United States Foreign Policy In The Latter Half Of The 20th Century

The previous democratically-elected author of this blog has been deposed in a coup, funded by the CIA, with leaders trained at SOA/WHINSEC. A new blogger will be installed who subscribes to a neoliberal ideology and is cognizant of the interests of the United States in the region; so long as these criteria remain satisfied, the new blogger will receive the full support of the government of the United States--irrespective of any authoritarianism or human rights issues that may develop.

The process of this blog inevitably becoming an blogospheric powerhouse due to the unfettered free market will henceforth be referred to as the Miracle of Crucifictorius.

A Grammatical Note

In the context of the Internet, there are several traditional debates for exposing people who Did Not Do The Research. Among these are:

• An airplane is located on a conveyor belt. This conveyor moves backward at exactly the same speed as the plane moves forward. Will the plane be able to take off? (It will.)
• Does 0.999... = 1? (It does.)
• Should the expression "I could care less" be replaced by "I couldn't care less" since the latter is obviously correct?

The last expression is the one we concern ourselves with here. In fact, both are correct, since both take advantage of different aspects of language in order to convey the intended meaning. However, since the literal meaning of "I could care less" (1) is discordant with its intended meaning, certain elements argue that (1) is incorrect.

A very fundamental element of humor is irony. Perhaps the most immediately effective form of irony is sarcasm--famously referred to by Oscar Wilde as "the lowest form of wit" (Wilde can suck the figurative "it"). Sarcasm could be applied to a statement by putting a spoken emphasis on a particular word in order to signify that, in fact, the opposite is what the speaker actally thinks. Alternatively, exaggerated emphasis may be placed on one word or multiple words in order to negate the entire statement's face value. 

Both of these senses concern us. When spoken, (1) sounds like "I could care less". In the first case, we can take the opposite of care--not care--and substitute into (1), which then reduces to (2). In the second case, we negate the entire statement by reversing the verb; this, in turn, reduces to (2). We have demonstrated that the two statements are identical in meaning.

Then, what if no emphasis is placed on any word in (1)? Our elements in question would say that  it follows that the phrase is parsed literally, given that there is no indication that sarcasm is present. This claim is disproved by the existence and appreciation of deadpan humor. Delivery notwithstanding, (1) was most likely introduced with the emphasis on particular words; it exists now only as a piece of culture--by definition a shared territory of meaning--with the understanding that this original meaning remains the current meaning. The delivery of (1) is therefore irrelevant to its being understood with the proper, and intended, meaning.

To wit, anyone who claims (2) is superior to (1)--or that (1) is wrong--is a moron.