Fredrickville - Rhymes with Purple

Fredrickville - Rhymes with Purple Rhymes with Purple http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4 en-us Copyright 2010 Mon, 21 Feb 2005 00:00:00 -0500 Mon, 21 Feb 2005 00:00:00 -0500 webmaster@fredrickville.com Fredrickville.com-128 Exhibit AJ: Welcome to Middlebury, have a beer and a rubber. http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/51/Exhibit_AJ_Welcome_to_Middlebury_have_a_beer_and_a_rubber <img src="http://www.fredrickville.com/boards/4/51.jpg" align=center border=2> Fredrickville Column: Rhymes with Purple <img src="http://www.fredrickville.com/boards/images/hepburn1.jpg" align=center> Home, Sweet Home At last, I have arrived. I have been caught in a sort of limbo since last May; no longer a high school student, not yet at college, not really a productive member of either the professional or the social world of adulthood, I have been the ultimate child bachelor. My needs have been provided for by my parents, I have worked to keep myself busy, and for the most part I've spent my time vacillating between being lonely and being really happy to be left alone. And now I'm finally here. I've broken out of the bizarre sort of Purgatory that came of my forced leave of absence from the academic world, and I've finally made it to college. I did my best to come into college without preconceived notions or prejudices, but I couldn't help but pick up a few. Just kidding. I had, from listening to and visiting my friends already at college (and a few people at Middlebury in particular), developed a pretty clear picture of college as a sort of intellectual Utopia. I believed quite firmly that colleges were populated exclusively by groovy and intelligent people who love nothing more than a good meaty conversation about politics or history or the subtle nuances of language. I knew that there would be alcohol, drugs and sex being enjoyed in extreme quantities all around me, but I was assured that there would be plenty of social opportunity for a straight-laced boy like me. Oh, how I wish the first sentence of this paragraph were true. Let me give you a quick run-down of what I learned about my new home during orientation: I can get free condoms from my RA, CRA, JCRA, MOAB and SUV, or from my dean, or from the health center. Any one of these places can offer me a wide selection of colors, sizes, styles and even flavors. That's right, my college will give me free flavored condoms. And, on the off chance that somebody is overcome by the desire to "make the pointy meet the mushy" and can't stand to find a free condom before they jump one another's bones, the female can just go to the health center afterwards and get a free morning-after pill. The new Atwater Dining Hall on campus boasts the largest window in the state of Vermont. Don't even pretend that you're not jealous. The college buys alcohol for the students. The college buys booze for the host of the party, you tell the host of the party that you are underage, and the host puts a black "X" ON your hand and a cup of beer IN your hand. The only way an underage drinker can get in trouble for, well, being an underage drinker, is if Public Safety catches him or her with an open container in his or her hand. That means that I, as a hypothetical (and, I assure you, ONLY hypothetical) underage drinker, could be caught sitting in front of a table strewn with empty and half-empty alcohol containers with my name written on them, obviously inebriated and drenched in beer, with a sealed bottle of Hennessy in one hand and a sealed bottle of Absinthe in the other?.and I would get off Scot-free. I could fill every remaining space in my room, with full, sealed bottles of grain alcohol?.and the school wouldn't be able to do a darn thing to me. They wouldn't even be able to make me get rid of the stuff. What happens if I manage to get caught by public safety in the act of pounding a bottle of Jagermeister? Well, I would get a citation and have a meeting with my dean, at which nothing at all would happen. It would take THREE citations before my parents even found out about my boozification, and a whopping five before any sort of disciplinary action more serious than a meeting was taken. I have no objection to such freedoms. People should live as they want to live, as long as it doesn't infringe upon my basic human rights to be able to pretend that everybody around me is sober and virginal and to have friends that do something other than drink, smoke or screw. Sadly, however, such individuals don't seem to exist. Or rather, the people that share my interests are all either drinkers or smokers-just about everybody on campus is a fornicator, but such misbehavior is usually easier to ignore than habitual self-medication. I am now going to give up on this submission, for it is not funny and too long already. I shall put up more funny?..sometime. Required Reading (because I know you missed it) <A href="http://scarygoround.com/">Scary-Go-Round</a> Oh webcomics, what would I do without ye?... <a href="http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/51/Exhibit_AJ_Welcome_to_Middlebury_have_a_beer_and_a_rubber">Visit Fredrickville.com for more!</a> Rhymes with Purple Mon, 21 Feb 2005 00:00:00 -0500 Fredrickville.com-129 Exhibit AI: False Advertising http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/50/Exhibit_AI_False_Advertising <img src="http://www.fredrickville.com/boards/4/50.jpg" align=center border=2> Fredrickville Column: Rhymes with Purple False advertising laws only work if the public knows that it's being duped. In the case of high-class, expensive restaurants, the average consumer has no way of knowing whether or not what they are getting is what they think they paid for. For instance, if you or I were to go out and buy a low-yield nuclear weapon, we would have no choice but to swallow whatever the salesman said about special features and net devastation, because you and I don't know a darn thing about nuclear weapons and the salesman is probably better armed than we are. Restaurant owners are not generally well-armed, but the same general principle applies: Beyond being able to identify a hamburger and recognize at what point it becomes a cheeseburger, there are very few people who don't make a living cooking or critiquing food that can tell an heirloom tomato from a beefstake tomato or can identify the difference between black truffle oil, white truffle oil, olive oil and blended salad oil. The writers of menus, therefore, are pretty much free to make promises they have no intention of keeping, without any need to fear a reprimand from the Better Business Bureau or even a complaint from a cheated customer. Make no mistake about it: the people that write the menus want to make the food sound both exquisite and unbearably expensive. The theory is that if something sounds sufficiently expensive, you won't feel too bad about paying way too much for it. If you go out to eat, you're probably not getting what you think you're paying for. As part of my constant and tireless battle to stick it to The Man, I present the following examples from those hilarious works of fiction called 'menus' at The Shaker Table: Lunch While the dinner menu is significantly more relaxed in its approach to the truth, the lunch menu does feature at least one flat-out lie: -Baked Polenta, served with a roasted, organically grown heirloom tomato, local goat cheese and wild mushroom gravy ('Polenta', first of all, is an important-sounding word for corn meal mush mixed with about eighteen different types of milkfat. The end result is like grits swimming in oil. More importantly, by the end of the season our 'organically grown heirloom tomato' is actually a regular beefstake tomato from Sysco Foodservice Corp. Our 'local' goat cheese is imported from Norway, and the 'wild' mushrooms in the gravy are regular button mushrooms bought through Sysco from indoor greenhouses.) Dinner Appetizers -Sauté of Locally Harvested Forest Mushrooms (our 'locally harvested forest mushrooms', depending on the season, either come from the basement of some fungus nut here in New Hampshire or by air mail from vast mushroom farms in Japan. A better name would be 'imported basement mushrooms'.) -Fresh oysters of the day (Where by 'fresh' we mean 'frozen'. 'Fresh' and 'frozen' are similar in that they both have an 'fr' at the beginning, but there the resemblance ends. But you, as the average consumer, would not be very inclined to plunk down thirteen bucks for 'thawed raw oysters of the day', would you?) Salads -The Shaker Table Salad: Mixed organically-grown baby greens from our garden, house-made herbed croustini, pear mayonnaise dressing (Again, 'our garden' only lasts so long. Our greens now come from huge factory farms where they are raised with herbicides and pesticides and chemical fertilizers galore. Our 'herbed croustini' is actually a peasant bread, made by chopping up old bread scraps and adding them to the flour of a regular wheat bread. This salad would be better described as 'less than a cup of poison-sprayed lettuce, a piece of dry toast, served with salty mayonnaise that might taste a little bit like pear if you're lucky.' I feel indescribably dirty whenever I sell one of these culinary falsehoods.) Entrees -Grilled Portobello mushroom caps with mushroom duxelle, truffled oil and melted truffle cheese. (This is an excellent example to illustrate a couple of very important guidelines. First: if you see a word that you don't understand, ask about it. A 'mushroom duxelle' is nothing more than a puree of onions and cheap button mushrooms with some red wine. It's mighty tasty, but not quite as impressive as it sounds when you call it a 'duxelle'. Second: be wary of the word 'truffle' and especially the word 'truffled'. Truffles themselves, when they are not made of chocolate, are insanely expensive subterranean mushrooms with a heavenly taste and texture (where by 'heavenly' I mean 'barely noticeable, except in large quantities'. They cannot be cultivated and can only be found by specially-trained pigs or dogs. The word 'truffle', however, is often used as an adjective to indicate an ingredient with a smooth texture and an insufficiently impressive name. The 'truffle cheese' in this case is normal gruyere cheese, aged a meager sixty days and available through Sysco. It has never even seen an actual truffle. The 'truffled oil' in question varies depending on what we have on hand. In my brief tenure at The Shaker Table, this oil has been served as regular vegetable oil with shaved black truffles mixed in, a mixture of eight parts olive oil and one part white truffle oil with shaved lobster mushrooms mixed in, and a whole lot of vegetable oil with about a capful of black truffle oil and some cheap button mushrooms mixed in. If you see the word 'truffle' anywhere in the description, and the price is under forty dollars, you're not going to see, taste or experience a truffle in any way.) Do the world a favor and be a cautious consumer when you order out at fancy restaurants. And if you think there's any chance that you might not be getting exactly what you read on the menu, call the bluff. Ask to see the manager, give him an earful, and then tip your server well on your way out, because they don't get paid enough and it's not their fault that the menu writers and kitchen staff are out to screw you senseless. Required Reading I'm going to break from tradition for this post and assign required reading that is not available on the intarweb. You all need to go out and read something other than Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson, because the man is a genius and his other works are sorely under-appreciated. Suggested titles include, but may not be limited to: Hells's Angels, Generation of Swine, and any of the Gonzo Papers volumes.... <a href="http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/50/Exhibit_AI_False_Advertising">Visit Fredrickville.com for more!</a> Rhymes with Purple Wed, 27 Oct 2004 00:00:00 -0400 Fredrickville.com-130 Exhibit AH: Culinary Compensation http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/47/Exhibit_AH_Culinary_Compensation <img src="http://www.fredrickville.com/boards/4/47.jpg" align=center border=2> Fredrickville Column: Rhymes with Purple Men are stupid, and even the mere existence of women make us stupider. This statement cannot be supported any more unequivocally than by the apparently common belief among men that sending your food back in restaurant is a good way to impress a woman. As your faithful and unbiased reporter from the inside of the restaurant business, gentleman, let me tell you that unless the food is really terrible, you’re probably not making yourself any more attractive by complaining about your meal. In fact, you’re probably just showing your date that you have neither a brain nor a penis. I mean, honestly-if you feel the need to prove your manhood to your date by harassing people that are paid to serve your every whim anyways, you must be compensating for something (or the lack of something). This may seem harsh to the uninitiated, but let me show you what I mean. A week or so ago, a funny-looking gentleman brought his wife or girlfriend or mistress or whatever into The Shaker Table for a nice candlelit dinner. This gentleman ordered a steak (medium), and the poor female unlucky enough to accompany him ordered a roasted chicken half. We cooked their meals, plated them up nicely, and sent them out. The waiter brought their food, and had hardly put the man’s plate down in front of him when the man seized his steak, cut it open, and declared it to be too pink. It’s as if he knew ahead of time that his meat would be insufficiently cooked for his tastes; I can imagine two reasons for his premonition: he either had ordered the steak less well-done than he wanted it, so he could send it back and impress this poor woman with his strength of character and lack of genitalia, or he always ordered his steak medium-rare and was consistently disappointed to find that his steak wasn’t cooked enough. Let me share a secret with you, dear readers: If you always order your steak medium-rare, and it always comes out more pink than you would like it….you don’t actually like your steak medium-rare. You like it medium. Please use this handy guide when choosing how to order your meat: Choose “Rare” if you want your steak to have a dark red, chilled middle. Choose “Medium-rare” if you want your steak to have a red, hot middle. Choose “Medium” if you want your steak to be hot and pink all the way through Choose “Medium-well” if you want your steak to be hot, grey and juicy all the way through, with a small, faint circle of pink in the middle. Choose “Well” if you want your steak to be thoroughly disgusting. Er….if you want your steak to be grey all the way through, with no pink juicy goodness left in it. To be honest: if you want a steak, you don’t want it well done. This is the standard used by fine establishments around the world, where by “fine establishments” I mean “anywhere the meat doesn’t arrive at the restaurant partially cooked to begin with”. Anyways, back to our story: We got the steak back, looked at it where he had cut it, and found it to be a perfect medium. “Oh well,” we said. “The customer is always right, Even if the customer happens to be wrong.” The steak went back into the oven until it was cooked to a perfect medium-well. Steak, feeling far too much like a boomerang, goes back to customer, customer takes two bites and sends steak back. Steak, beginning to feel a bit rejected, gets cooked until it is well done, customer eats a couple more bites and then decides that we’re never going to get it right. Customer goes home hungry and angry. Cooks go home bitter and tired. Woman goes home frustrated because not only is her date a jerk, but her date is now in a bad mood, and she had to keep sending her chicken back to be kept warm while the poor steak was being re-cooked, since it would have been impolite of her to continue eating while Sir Whingealot was waiting. The moral of the story? Don’t send your food back to be re-cooked just to impress your date, because you will probably just end up ruining the evening for all involved. And if your date complains about his or her food, check it. If the food is cooked the way your date ordered it, stand up and walk away, because your date is either a fool or a poorly-endowed jerk…probably both. But I’m not bitter, I swear. I honestly hope that the gentleman enjoyed his steak, which he apparently meant to order “well done”. I also hope that it gave him gas bad enough to drive his date away forever, especially if she was his wife. Required Reading: With the election upon us and the Grand Choice just around the corner, it’s about time you checked out <a href="http://politicalanimals.blogspot.com/" Political Animals</a> for a “fair and balanced” (read: “funny, and liberal-leaning”) look at the two candidates, as presented by a pair of cloven-hoofed ruminants of the ovine family.... <a href="http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/47/Exhibit_AH_Culinary_Compensation">Visit Fredrickville.com for more!</a> Rhymes with Purple Mon, 18 Oct 2004 00:00:00 -0400 Fredrickville.com-131 Exhibit AG: The Religious Right Wants To Eat Your Babies http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/45/Exhibit_AG_The_Religious_Right_Wants_To_Eat_Your_Babies <img src="http://www.fredrickville.com/boards/4/45.jpg" align=center border=2> Fredrickville Column: Rhymes with Purple I received the following email as a forward from a relative of mine, a card-carrying member of the Religious Reich. Oop, sorry, I meant the Religious Right: 2004 Election Voter Guide Depending on the way you lean, the following information could have bearing on decisions you make November 2004. Issues of Importance? Gay Marriage President Bush is opposed John Kerry favors Partial-Birth Abortion President Bush is opposed John Kerry favors Restoring voluntary prayer in the public schools President Bush Favors John Kerry is Opposed Assault on Mel Gibson for making film about Christ President Bush supports Gibson John Kerry participated in Left's assault on Gibson, suggesting possible anti-Semitism even though Kerry had not seen the film. Assault on boy Scouts for belief in God and not allowing Homosexual Scout Leaders President Bush supports Boy Scouts' stand John Kerry opposes boy Scouts' stand Asking for God's blessing on America President Bush often asks God to bless America in his speeches John Kerry attacks Bush for mentioning God so often Judges President Bush says, "We need common-sense judges who believe our rights are derived from God." John Kerry insists on judges who support the ACLU's radical-anti-Christian, anti-God, anti-family agenda. John Kerry is insistent on blocking President Bush's federal judge appointments. Overall Record President Bush does not vote on issues before Congress but, based on his publicly stated positions, would receive an 85% conservative rating from the American Conservative Union if he did. John Kerry - According to the highly respected, politically-neutral National Journal rates Kerry the most liberal U. S. Senator in 2003 -- more liberal than Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton. Needless to say, I don’t agree with the contents of this email and I am rather upset by the fact that whoever wrote this bit of propaganda is justifying intolerance by saying that it’s the “Christian” thing to do. Apparently I read a different Bible than the members of the Religious Wrong, because the Jesus I have come to know and love doesn’t preach intolerance and doesn’t give us permission to judge one another and is known more for His benevolent and universal forgiveness than He is for his swift and terrible judgment. And so, for your viewing pleasure and edification, I would like to present: 2004 Election Voter Guide: REMIXED! Depending on the way you lean, the following information could have bearing on decisions you make November 2004. Issues of Importance? <strike>Gay Marriage </strike>The right of the United States Government to dictate with whom you are allowed to fall in love: President Bush favors John Kerry opposes Don’t go and tell me that homosexual marriage is abhorrent to God. Eating pork is also abhorrent to God, according to the same Old-Testament rules that forbid homosexuality. Our Messiah came and told us to “love your neighbor as yourself”. NOT “love your neighbor as yourself, unless your neighbor is gay.” Jesus did not come to teach hate or to spread homophobia…he spent his days hanging around with prostitutes and tax collectors, for Patricia’s sake! <strike>Partial-Birth Abortion</strike> The right of rich white men to tell women just exactly what they can and cannot do with their uteruses: President Bush favors John Kerry opposes Nobody is pro-abortion. Nobody is out there telling girls “get knocked up and then kill the baby, you’ve never HAD such fun!” Kerry, like me, is pro-CHOICE because, as males, we have no right whatsoever to tell a woman, any woman, what she is allowed to do with her reproductive equipment. If we encourage men to think that they are entitled to tell any and all women what they are permitted to do with their bodies, we start getting into the realm of a totalitarian patriarchy. Today a ban on partial birth abortions, tomorrow a ban on abortions, next Thursday forced female circumcision and legalized rape. <strike>Restoring voluntary prayer in the public schools</strike> Ensuring that public schools will continue to be a safe and comfortable place for people of any religion or no religion to learn: President Bush opposes John Kerry favors Assault on Mel Gibson for making film about Christ President Bush supports Gibson John Kerry participated in Left's assault on Gibson, suggesting possible anti-Semitism even though Kerry had not seen the film. There are no facts presented in the email to support this claim, and I don’t know anything about it, so I’m going to leave it alone. I will caution you to make sure that you get all the facts about this and everything else before you swallow what this guide (either in its original or its remixed form) has to say. Assault on boy Scouts for <strike>belief in God and </strike> (John Kerry has never said that he opposes the Boy Scouts for believing in God) <strike>not allowing Homosexual Scout Leaders </strike>Unfounded homophobia: President Bush supports Boy Scouts' stand John Kerry opposes boy Scouts' stand Where in the life and teachings of Jesus do we see him supporting inequality? Where in the Bible does Jesus tell us we should be quick to judge one another? Asking for God's blessing on America President Bush often asks God to bless America in his speeches John Kerry attacks Bush for mentioning God so often If you want to keep the state out of the church, keep the church out of the state. The last time the Church was allowed to run a country, people were burned at the stake. The last time a government was allowed to rule the doctrines of the Church…people got burned at the stake. I have no problem at all with the President praying and making decisions based on his faith and how he feels led…but religion is now and always should be a private matter. Forced faith is no faith at all. Judges President Bush says, "We need common-sense judges who believe our rights are derived from God." The judges that President Bush appoints, however, support him in his efforts to rob Americans of their civil rights with legislation such as the USA PATRIOT Act and the proposed constitutional amendment banning homosexual marriage. Should judges that believe that our rights come from God be taking those same rights away? John Kerry insists on judges who support the ACLU's fight to preserve the Bill of Rights, the only thing keeping the US Federal government from becoming an abusive totalitarian regime. John Kerry is insistent on blocking President Bush's federal judge appointments. Overall Record Neither candidate wears overalls all that often, but why do we really care? So…would you rather have a president that claims to believe in less government and more freedom when it comes to providing services such as welfare, Social Security and Medicare while infringing upon your Constitutionally-protected rights to free speech and privacy, or a president that will make sure that those who cannot support themselves will be taken care of, while keeping the government out of your private life and even <gasp> letting you marry the person of your choice? I noted with satisfaction that the original Voter’s Guide did not mention anything about President Bush’s doctrine of pre-emptive military action. This post is much, much too long already, so I will simplify my thoughts on the Religious Right’s support of the Iraq war by quoting a bumper sticker available from http://www.northernsun.com: Who Would Jesus Bomb? No required reading today, I had to spend my day off at work so I didn’t get a chance to find one for you. Blame Chef Tim. ... <a href="http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/45/Exhibit_AG_The_Religious_Right_Wants_To_Eat_Your_Babies">Visit Fredrickville.com for more!</a> Rhymes with Purple Wed, 06 Oct 2004 00:00:00 -0400 Fredrickville.com-132 Exhibit AF: College Administration (and the Dawn of a New Series Of Posts) http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/43/Exhibit_AF_College_Administration_and_the_Dawn_of_a_New_Series_Of_Posts Fredrickville Column: Rhymes with Purple A long time ago, Middlebury College had some housing troubles. Even though they own the whole darn town of Middlebury, Vermont, apparently they did not have enough dorm space to house all of their students at once. When faced with such a quandary, most rational humans would say “well then, just don’t take so many students!”. This is why most rational humans are not allowed to work in college administration offices. If you are a school administrator or, even better, a politician, you’ve probably already figured out how Middlebury College decided to deal with their housing woes. Send about a fifth of the Junior class abroad for the second half of the year, and keep one fifth of the incoming Freshman class out of the way until the Juniors leave and the Freshman can take over their dorms. And thus was born the February Admissions Program at Middlebury College. Let’s make one thing absolutely clear right now: I didn’t apply for February Admissions. I applied for regular September admissions, because I didn’t know what else I would do with myself for the first semester if I were to delay the commencement of my years as a college student. With this in mind, you can imagine my surprise when I received a letter from Middlebury inviting me to begin my four-year tenure as a student of the College not in September, as I had been hoping, but in February, as I had not even considered. Despite my confusion and mixed feelings as to what I expected a semester off to do to my ability to absorb and retain information, not to mention my motivation to actually participate in organized education, I accepted Middlebury’s gracious offer. After all, half a year off couldn’t hurt me too badly, and the other schools that had accepted me weren’t nearly as good. Besides, replacing an outgoing Junior would mean getting a cushy single for my very first semester as a college student. My forced semester off seemed alive with promise: I could go back to France, I could volunteer for a political campaign, I could take a Wilderness Emergency Medical Technician course, I could learn to belly dance. “But wait!” said a nagging voice in the back of my head: “your parents are both teachers and you work at a summer camp, and you’re about to start at the most expensive four-year college in the history of mammals. Do you REALLY have the money to afford any of these important life experiences?” “No” responded my mother, who had apparently been eavesdropping on that nagging little voice “but we’ll find a way to make it happen anyways”. A nice sentiment, really. I appreciate my parents’ commitment to the idea that I should be able to take advantage of every opportunity, regardless of the fact that we’re not rich…but I couldn’t help but feel that my younger siblings were about to be sentenced to a life of eating canned beans and dropping out of high school early to get minimum-wage jobs, just so I could not go to school in Europe while I could just as easily not go to school here in these grand United States. And so I bade goodbye to the chance to go to France and eat cheese or go out into the woods to learn how to save people, pulled out the classified advertisement section of the Concord Monitor, and began the grand job hunt. A restaurant job, I reasoned, would be both a good opportunity for learning and growth, and a good way to make money doing something that I enjoy (or at least tolerate). I could work in a kitchen, learn some new cooking techniques, see how I survive away from both academia and youth ministry, and decide once and for all whether I wanted to pursue a career in the culinary arts (turns out I don’t). I landed a job at a certain restaurant which, in order to protect the interests of the restaurant (and avoid a slander suit), I will not name here. I will only tell you that the name of the restaurant starts with “The Sha” and ends with “ker Table”. I’m also not going to tell you that the restaurant is found on Shaker Road in Canterbury, New Hampshire. So don’t even ask, because I’m not telling you. I am working there sixty hours or more each week, so my time to write is highly limited. I do, however, plan to use the minimal time and energy I spend writing to bring you: the most daring exposé about the darker side of the fine dining business EVER TO BE FOUND ON FREDRICKVILLE. Required Reading: <a href="http://www.schlockmercenary.com" target=_blank>Schlock Mercenary</a> Please peruse the archives....hope you've got some time on your hands! The poor art and the fact that the humor is only sporadically laugh-out-loud funny are forgivable because he's been posting daily for FOUR BILLION YEARS. No webcomic artists do that. None. So go show him some love.... <a href="http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/43/Exhibit_AF_College_Administration_and_the_Dawn_of_a_New_Series_Of_Posts">Visit Fredrickville.com for more!</a> Rhymes with Purple Wed, 29 Sep 2004 00:00:00 -0400 Fredrickville.com-133 Exhibit AE: La Nuit Des Publivores http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/41/Exhibit_AE_La_Nuit_Des_Publivores Fredrickville Column: Rhymes with Purple The French, much to my dismay, are just like us. Their dogs and cars are smaller, their sidewalks are dirtier, their food is better and their breath is worse, but they are basically just as self-consumed and ridiculous as we are. They scorn our decadent society, if only a little bit, but they are no better. The most upsetting part of my ten-day stay in France was the realization that French kids really, REALLY want to be American kids. They get their fashions from California, their software from Silicon Valley, their video games from…whatever slimy cave coders and game geeks hide in, and their shoes from Converse (ok, I’m actually pretty happy about that part). Their music and movies are all either American or unpopular. They even sing American music, but they have no bloody idea what the lyrics mean. My fifteen-year-old host brother Pierre-Marie and I were hanging out in his room playing (American) video games and listening to some sort of angry teenage (American) music. Pierre-Marie was singing along with a song about drugs and exploitative, promiscuous sex, with dark hints of suicide here and there (something like "I just want to kill myself, no big deal just take a whole lot of painkillers and wash them down with bleach and stab myself through the head with a railroad spike, I hate my life even though I love pot and having dirty sex with prostitutes.")...I was a little taken aback to hear such a young person singing such terrifying lyrics, until he stopped singing and asked me to translate it for him. Surprisingly enough, even with three years of high school French under my belt I still don't know such simple words and expressions as "black tar heroin" and "<vulgar expression indicating "make love to"> a bunch of <breeder's term for female dogs> then blow my brains out with a Howitzer". What is American language education coming to, that I could successfully enter the "intermediate" level of French class without ever learning such vitally important expressions? The failures of the American education system aside, I eventually gave up looking for the words and told him that the song was "something about strong cheese and women with hairy armpits". That seemed to satisfy him, so he went back to singing along with his addicted, abusive, misogynist, suicidal American Idol. I feel bad that I wasn't able to tell him what he was really singing, but....if he doesn't understand a word of it anyways, where's the harm? Some adult who knows some English is eventually going to hear him singing something and assume that he is a homocidal, psychopathic maniac, but that's no big deal, right? I'm sure the French mental health institutions are absolutely fantastic, what with their socialized medicine and all. Significantly more frightening in terms of my overall hope for humanity was the first event of my time on The Continent. The first night after I had arrived, my host brothers dragged me into Paris to see a show called "La Nuit Des Publivores". They tried to describe it to me, but I didn't really understand much of it....I picked up something here and there about "beaucoup de glaces compris", so I figured that it couldn't be all bad. When we finally got to the theater, arriving at 9:30 for a midnight show, the line at the door was nearly a block long. So we stood in the light rain of a Paris evening, breathing in cigarette smoke and trying to get a glimpse of one another around the language barrier. When we finally go to the door, a very large black man muttered something in entirely-too-quick French and started groping me. When in Rome...... After the black guy had decided that I either wasn't bringing in anything dangerous or wasn't cute enough to fondle thoroughly, I slipped through the doorway, presented my ticket and was pushed out into a gauntlet of young French girls who were wearing vendor's boxes around their necks, making a lot of noise and handing me all sorts of bizarre stuff. Not really knowing what was going on, I simply took what they handed me and tried not to get separated from my brothers. When we finally got through the gauntlet and into the theatre, I took stock of what I had in my hands. It was the normal sort of thing that you would expect at a show like that, or at least I had to assume that it was since I didn't really know what sort of show it was. There were balloons and keychains and noisemakers and condoms and sample bottles of Astroglide and subscription cards to what I assumed, based on the pictures, were pornographic magazines but which turned out to be things like "Food" and "Home and Garden". In the theater, we found seats and listened to American disco music played at fifty jillion decibels (about 40 centimeters in the metric system) and watched a light and video display that could have given Hellen Keller a seizure. People blew up their balloons and their condoms and tossed them around the theater, and there were a few spontaneous conga lines that formed, circled the floor once and then dispersed. At one point we all did the "YMCA", which doesn't sound nearly as good when you call it the "ee grek em say ah"...and then, much to my surprise, the actual show began. The show was an international advertising festival. The best television commercial spots from around the world, where by "around the world" I mean "from California and a few token Latin American countries" were played back to back....for six hours. There was an intermission every two hours, when they handed out as much free ice-cream and iced tea as you could ever want. My brothers enjoyed it, but I wasn't terribly impressed. The Night of the AdEaters was, after all, nothing more than the Superbowl without all those pesky guys in intensely homo-erotic pants to get in the way of the commercials. Required Reading <a href="http://www.meninhats.com">Men In Hats</a> Psychotic Evangelists, angst, scorpions, people on fire, and hats...all in webcomic form. How could you possibly go wrong?... <a href="http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/41/Exhibit_AE_La_Nuit_Des_Publivores">Visit Fredrickville.com for more!</a> Rhymes with Purple Fri, 23 Apr 2004 00:00:00 -0400 Fredrickville.com-134 Exhibit AD: Sex and Strong Drink http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/40/Exhibit_AD_Sex_and_Strong_Drink Fredrickville Column: Rhymes with Purple The French. We all knock them for being on the logical side of the war in Iraq (i.e, the side that isn’t involved), and we make fun of them for eating a lot of cheese and smelling really bad. Well, I just spent ten days living with a family of four just outside of Paris, and I’m here to tell you that everything you’ve ever heard about the French is true. They all drink a lot, they’re all obsessed with cheese, lingerie and perfume, and they all smell terrible. With those things said, though, I would like to offer the French side of the story, as told by a ignorant and vulgar American pig. They drink a lot of wine. And champagne. And beer. Very little hard alcohol, but what they lack in potency they make up for in volume. Although my host father was really the only member of our “family” that drank with any regularity, he would go through about a bottle of whine, or the equivalent in beer or champagne, at every meal except breakfast. EVERY MEAL. But he never got drunk. He drank for the taste, as most French do. The wine flows like water, but I only saw two drunk people in the entire time I was there-fewer than you see walking on the streets of Boston at six o’clock on Saturday morning, fewer even than I see every Sunday morning in my church. They grow up drinking wine, and drinking it for flavor and not for intoxication, so alcoholism is simply not a problem. Along with an abundance of alcohol, the French have an absolute GLUT of naked women. They’re everywhere! In the movies, in the advertisements, in the Sunday funnies….naked women on billboards, naked women on TV, naked women in public places, naked women hiding in my suitcase. I’m absolutely SICK of naked women. This relaxed attitude toward the <ahem> “beauty of the feminine form” is enough to make even the most red-blooded American porn freak uncomfortable, and it doesn’t stop with the billboards. The public acceptance of sex and all things naked extends to all walks of life; there are racy lingerie stores in the metro station (“Let’s see, I got bread and cheese, but I know I was supposed to pick up something else on my way home…oh, that’s it! UNDERWEAR!”), and all of the mannequins in the clothing stores appear to have been modeled after the same really well-endowed man and the same poor girl that had just been rescued from hypothermia. The mannequins had NIPPLES, for the love of Mike! Not sedate American nipples, either. You could take out an eye with nipples like these. Despite the lax attitude toward sex and the body, sex-related crimes are virtually unheard of in France. It seems paradoxical, but it makes sense when you think about it. If I’m this bored by naked people after only ten days, imagine how people growing up in a world like that must feel. Sex is not foreign or exotic or interesting, and you don’t have to go out of your way to see some booby; why should a pervert go to all the trouble of making crude jokes at a fully-clothed woman when he can just go pick up an issue of Time magazine and find all the nudity he needs in the advertisements? Sex and nudity are everywhere, so nobody is willing to get into trouble trying to find them. No wonder they need so much lingerie-they’re all so bored of the naked body by the time they become sexually active that covering it up is the sexiest thing you can do. Check back later for more observations on those darn “Cheese-eating surrender monkeys.” Peace, out. Required Reading <a href="http://www.yetisports.org">Yeti Sports</a>. From the people that brought you Penguin Smack, you can now enjoy three hopelessly addictive Penguin-based games. Good luck getting any work done now, suckers!... <a href="http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/40/Exhibit_AD_Sex_and_Strong_Drink">Visit Fredrickville.com for more!</a> Rhymes with Purple Tue, 30 Mar 2004 00:00:00 -0500 Fredrickville.com-135 Exhibit AC: Those damn kids http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/39/Exhibit_AC_Those_damn_kids Fredrickville Column: Rhymes with Purple Tomorrow I will be an adult, and so I feel that I am now qualified to tell you a little something about kids these days. Back in my day, a scant six years ago, middle schoolers were just reaching the threshold of discovery. In sixth grade, I was barely cognizant of the fact that girls and boys had some different bits to them, and I didn’t really feel any urgent need to explore these differences in great depth. My peers were much the same; some of the kids with older siblings or younger parents were “dating”, but we all still thought that the four “bases” were not calling each other names, talking civilly, hugging and holding hands. Seventh grade meant the start of Wellness class, a time of great discovery which I spent with my fingers jammed into my ears and shouting “NO NO NO NO, I already know more about the opposite sex than I ever wanted to!” Eighth grade saw a major advancement in my personal levels of maturity and interest when I stopped blocking out the information that was forced upon us in Wellness and started making fun of it. In recent years, however, middle school students in general (according to various news outlets) and Derryfield Middle School students in particular (according to careful observations of the sex-crazed little gremlins and notoriously reliable rumors) have stopped asking their Wellness teachers “my goodness, WHY would anyone want to do something so disgusting and unnatural?” to asking “geez, why would anyone do it like that when it’s so much more satisfying to do it like this?” As a senior, I look back at my middle school years as a time of innocence and forced learning. As seniors, today’s eighth grade class will look back at their middle school years as a time of lost innocence and the exploration of various sexual perversions. According to various news articles, more and more students are failing to enter high school with their virginity intact. More middle school students are experimenting with sex than ever before, and the numbers aren’t anywhere close to being the most upsetting part of the problem. Since they are only kids, and since they don’t really know what’s going on and are just experimenting, kids who become sexually active in middle school are more likely to have multiple partners in their first year of sexual activity than those who become sexually active later in life; worse, kids who become sluts in middle school are much more likely to sleep around through the rest of their lives. Such a lax attitude about sex has led to “games” like the one where girls wear easily-torn-off gel bracelets (with different colors to represent different acts) and the boys try to tear the bracelets off in the hope of being rewarded with sex: “I got a red bit of plastic off of your wrist, so now you have to blow me.” Gee, basing sexual relationships solely on bracelet-removing prowess seems healthy to me, what’s all the fuss about?| National events aside, there seems to be a growing skankiness problem in the Derryfield Middle School. I have to navigate through the middle school hallways by looking at the ceiling tiles, since looking ahead of me would involve seeing enough exposed flesh to make even the most naïve person expect calls of “hey sailor”. Harlots, the lot of them. Worse than the sudden inability of middle schoolers to find clothes that fit is the behavior of the tiny little Jezebels when they are in the computer lab. As soon as you allow any of these knee-deep sexpots out from under the oppressive rule of the Middle School and give them an internet connection, they point their browsers to the dirty pictures and replace their chatter about who is dating whom with vivid descriptions of who is sleeping with whom, and how often, and with which animal by-products. I almost feel like I should be getting in trouble just for writing about this. To counteract this growing problem, and to check the booming global population, I recommend that any person found looking at any picture less chaste than the Mona Lisa, any print material more steamy than the U.S. Constitution, or any television shows not featured on PBS’s “Bookworm Bunch” should be immediately rendered sterile. That’ll teach the buggers! Required Reading <a href="http://www.zug.com">Zug.com</a> I can't promise that it's all completely clean, although it's certainly not dirty. I would call it a PG-13, or maybe a PG-15. Either way, it's absolutely hilarious. And it is, apparently, the world's only comedy website. Which means that Fredrickville is either serious, or not of this world....... <a href="http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/39/Exhibit_AC_Those_damn_kids">Visit Fredrickville.com for more!</a> Rhymes with Purple Sun, 15 Feb 2004 00:00:00 -0500 Fredrickville.com-192 I jus' wanna CELEBRATE! http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/-25/I_jus_wanna_CELEBRATE Fredrickville Column: Rhymes with Purple Hey wow, they captured Saddam Hussein. For some odd reason, though, I don’t feel any more free or safe. Weird. Maybe I don’t feel any different because Saddam has been standing in a grave since we invaded. He wasn’t actually dead, but he might as well have been. He wasn’t organizing anything, he wasn’t spraying chemicals on Kurds, he CERTAINLY wasn’t having anti-US pep rallies with Osama Bin Laden and his crew of hairy, suicidal male cheerleaders. He was standing in a hole, doing nothing more threatening than growing a big Santa-like beard and whimpering like a little schoolgirl. But thank goodness we caught him! Who KNOWS what he might have done if we hadn’t found him when we did. He might have even developed facial hair capabilities which could have decimated the careers of important Americans like Z Z Top. Yessir, I certainly am glad that we caught Saddam, because now we can interrogate him and get all sorts of information about his non-existent weapons and the inner workings of his government, which hasn’t been in power for a month or two now. Capturing Saddam must have been a really important event, because all the people of Iraq took to the streets to celebrate. Wait, no, we’ve just heard word that only MOST Iraqis, not ALL, are celebrating. Oops, we’re getting another report that only SOME Iraqis…I mean A FEW Iraqis….ok, I give up. There are really only about five people celebrating. The rest of them are either at home clicking the light switches and turning the taps and saying “So they’ve caught Saddam. Why are the power, water and sewage systems still not working? Why is my life still worse than it was before I was “liberated”?”, or they’re out in the desert (wait a moment, it’s ALL desert) loading their mortars and building their car bombs and laying plans to continue killing the foreign invaders. “Hooray, Saddam’s been moved from one hole into another a little bit further away. Now if we could just get more of these damned Americans INTO some holes, we might actually see some change around here.” It’s not actually true that Saddam’s capture doesn’t change anything. I was lying to you. You’d think that you’d be used to it by now, since your duly elected government hasn’t told you the truth since it was unduly elected. Now that we have Saddam, we can begin the crucial healing process of sending President Bush’s approval rating rocketing upwards like a sea-launched missile-defense missile racing toward its target in another blatantly-rigged test. That’s right, folks: the capture of Insane Hussein, combined with the recent economic revival, practically guarantees that we the people of the United States of America will be spending another four years under the collective thumb of the Bush Reich. I bet that Saddam is absolutely WRIGGLING with pleasure at the thought that, just by allowing himself to be found, he is damning all the American citizens that he hates so much to four more years of rapidly decreasing civil liberties. Even more delicious, in the eyes of our freshly-shaven prisoner, is the fact that Bush’s re-election guarantees four more years of aggression between the US and the Arab world. Syria, Lebanon, Iran-they’re all going DOWN. And, as Saddam and Osama (if he’s still alive) both know, and as the American public should have realized by now, these impending wars will only fuel the hatred and instability that makes the Middle East such a fertile breeding ground for terrorism. So when the Iraqis stop shooting into the air and the dust settles in five years, we will be living in a very different world. The entire Middle East will either be American colonies or Iran-style radical Islamist states. Personally, I plan to be living in a VERY different world; a world with a strong socialist government, constitutionally-mandated pacifism, great chocolate, investor-friendly banking laws and cute nurses. Bush isn’t my president now, and he certainly won’t be in the future, because I’m moving to Switzerland. ... <a href="http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/-25/I_jus_wanna_CELEBRATE">Visit Fredrickville.com for more!</a> Rhymes with Purple Mon, 15 Dec 2003 00:00:00 -0500 Fredrickville.com-136 Exhibit AB: Bags http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/38/Exhibit_AB_Bags Fredrickville Column: Rhymes with Purple I’m most dreadfully sorry that I missed my update on Sunday. I was in Portland, Oregon, hearing about how outdoorsy, athletic and ecologically-conscious everybody in the city is supposed to be. Which is amusing, because at least eighty percent of the people that I saw in my two days out there was smoking like Chicago's industrial sector. There I was in what was supposed to be the “greenest” city in the country, and the people were producing more particulate smog and greenhouse gases than our Chevy Astro van accelerating uphill with a trailer behind it. Even better, my hosts wanted me to believe that all these human chimneys were among the most active people on earth, people that bike to and from work every day and spend their weekends hiking, skiing and kayaking, pausing only for a few push-ups and sit-ups. Bull. I don’t care if you DO live in an oxygen-rich temperate rainforest, unless you want to tow an oxygen tank and a team of experienced emergency cardiac surgeons along with you at all times, you can’t be both a chain smoker AND a triathlete. Shriveled, prune-like lungs just don’t work that way. One thing I did manage to notice through the pallor of cigarette smoke was that the entire eastern side of the country should be burnt down immediately. I base this statement on the fact that the emissions that would result from such a fire would be absolutely dwarfed by the ecological damage that would be forestalled by destroying all civilization on the eastern seaboard and starting over. The east, compared to the rest of the country (where “the rest” is defined as “Portland, Oregon; Phoenix, Arizona and the airports in San Francisco and Detroit”), has an unhealthy fixation with putting things in bags. Whenever I buy ANYTHING, from a book to a rutabaga to a can of soup to a computer game, the cashier puts it in a bag. Without asking. Even a candy bar, which I can obviously carry pretty easily, is tossed into a five-gallon plastic bag. Then when I say “oh, sorry, but I don’t really need a bag”, the cashier/bagger/retailer puts on an expression that says something to the effect of “why are you making me do all this work? Now I have to REACH into the bag, GRAB your candy bar, TAKE the stupid candy bar out of the bag, and then PUT THE BAG BACK ON THE RACK, all to save some stupid tree or llama or whatever it is that gives us bags.” I always worry, when I see such an expression, that as soon as I turn my back the cashier is going to set fire to the entire rack of bags, just to spite me. Everywhere else I’ve been, however, I haven’t had a single purchase thus bagged. I bought three books somewhere in Portland-the cashier thanked me, took my money, folded the receipt and put it into one of the books, then handed my the stack. She didn’t even ask if I wanted a bag. I almost kissed her, it was so refreshing. Here in the east, that would be considered poor service. Out in the real world, you’re expected to ask for a bag if your hands are too small and child-like to carry a newly-bought book. The same thing happened in Detroit, which is an incredibly environmentally apathetic city. I couldn’t find a single recycling bin in any of the restaurants, food courts or hallways in the four hours I spent in the airport, but when I bought a toy, a candy bar and a book in one of the gift shops, the guy asked if I needed (not “wanted”, “NEEDed”) a bag before he packaged it up. Wonderful. Then I went shopping today, back in good ol’ New Hampshire. At Borders, I bought two paperback books, CARRIED THEM, IN ONE HAND, to the counter, paid for them, and then had to practically lunge at the cashier and physically prevent her from putting a bag around my .5 pounds of book: “No, I don’t need a ba-I said that I don’t need a bag! NO! STOP! Don’t put it in a bag, for the love of trees!” Ridiculous. The moral of the story is that it is entirely possible that my columns, from next September on, may be coming to you from Oregon, where I will be choking on cigarette smoke, practicing my fake cough, and rejoicing in the lack of bags and the wide availability of recycling bins and pretty moss. Required Reading <a href="http://www.backyardartillery.com/machinegun/">Rubber Band Machine Gun</a> Oh....my.....bacon. No dorm-dweller or cubicle-prisoner should be without one. This is going to be the hot toy for this Christmas, DON'T MISS OUT! Link Pimp O' the Month! Since I haven't gotten ANY submissions yet, I have no choice but to declare myself the Link Pimp O' November. Let's just say that the computers in The Vermont Country Store's Weston division, which are supposed to allow customers to visit the Store's website, now have Fredrickville as their homepage. Who knows how long it'll last, but I caught five people browsing the site and giggling, and I know that at least one of them wrote down the address, so it's good enough for me. I'm going to treat myself to a pint of Ben&Jerry's icecream as my prize. GET OUT THERE AND PIMP! And then be sure to tell me about it-you might as well get credit for all your hard work, eh?... <a href="http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/38/Exhibit_AB_Bags">Visit Fredrickville.com for more!</a> Rhymes with Purple Sun, 30 Nov 2003 00:00:00 -0500 Fredrickville.com-186 Exhibit D: Hair http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/-19/Exhibit_D_Hair Fredrickville Column: Rhymes with Purple Walking down the hallowed halls of the average high school or even just down the street, one is confronted with oodles of teenagers, chiefly males, with hair so chemically treated that it’s a wonder they aren’t completely brain dead from so much industrial waste seeping into their scalps. Green, purple, hot pink, bleached. Gelled, teased, mohawk-ed, often a danger to low-flying aircraft. And to what end? Why do these (questionably) bright, reasonable young people commit such heinous acts of chemical warfare upon their very craniums? I find it quite easy to forgive continued use of such products, given that I am convinced that the chemicals seep into your hair follicles and cause judgment-impairing brain damage. But why do they even start? Is the average male that caught up in impressing members of the opposite sex that he is willing to splash toxic substances on his scalp? And why are all these young men so convinced that girls will actually appreciate them more because they have unnaturally stiff and brightly colored hair. If nature had intended us to be able to “sculpt” our hair, we wouldn’t have to spend so much money and time to do it. Speaking of spending so much money, what do you think is the REAL reason these boys do this to themselves? Marketing. As usual, this inane behavior is motivated simply by advertising firms which have convinced a large portion of the teenage population that gelled hair is sexy. So the young men of the nation are willing to plunk down their dollars for jars of chemicals to put in their hair, even though the same effect could be achieved through simple application of Elmer’s Glue and Crisco (believe it or not, I know at least one person that uses Elmer’s. And nobody notices-in fact, I think I might be the only person that knows.) So again, the forces of marketing have been able to make copious amounts of money by taking advantage of the vanity of rich beautiful people, and in return makes them look like morons. As much as I hate how commercial our culture is, you have to hand it to the pharmaceuticals companies-they really know how to screw stupid people out of their money and make them feel like they are getting the better part of the deal. ... <a href="http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/-19/Exhibit_D_Hair">Visit Fredrickville.com for more!</a> Rhymes with Purple Fri, 21 Nov 2003 00:00:00 -0500 Fredrickville.com-137 Now With Auto-Swear! http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/37/Now_With_AutoSwear Fredrickville Column: Rhymes with Purple I’m not really a technophobe. If I didn’t have a computer, I would probably shrivel up and die, and not just because I wouldn’t be able to visit Fredrickville. I have a rather nasty fine-motor deficiency, and so it is easier and more efficient for me to write whatever needs to be written on the computer. I can express myself more quickly and more intelligently when I don’t have do deal with the additional physical challenge of forming those blasted tiny letters. So I’m a big fan of technology in general, and for the most part I have very little against it. But cordless phones are just no good. There is a very simple emotional reason why I object to cordless phones: it’s no fun to hang them up. If I want to subtly drive home a point (like “shut up, I hate you”) to a telemarketer or classmate or political campaign organizer (if you are an employee or volunteer associated with the Dean campaign, please take note: I don’t like Dean. I liked him right up until I heard him speak, and then I realized that he’s a whiny, indecisive, hateful and weak-minded political Jello mold. I no longer wish, therefore, to attend house parties or pass out leaflets or work with his gosh-darned LGBT-friends committee. There’s a reason why my answering machine says that we are supporting Mickey Mouse in the Democratic primary. I put that on there just for you.), I used to be able to slam down the phone after I was done telling them exactly where they and their after-school organization meetings could go. Now, however, the best I can do is to push a little button in a decisive and terminating sort of way. Unfortunately, no matter how angrily or forcefully or violently I push that blasted button, it does the same thing: beep. I can’t even get a decent heavy-metal chord out of it. It just seems so terribly anti-climactic: “No, we don’t want any of your freaking pixie-stick, eggplant gargling, baby shaking satellite dishes! I hate television, I hate satellites, I hate dishes, and I HATE YOU!” *beep*. We either need to make it so that cordless phones can be hung up by smashing them down on the cradle, or we need to have two buttons on all handsets: “Polite off” and “Just Eat Rancid Koala off”. “Polite off” (“P-off” on the keypad) would terminate the call with the existing wimpy little beep, or possibly some nice music or a friendly voice saying soothing things. “Just Eat Rabid Kangaroo off” (“JERK-off”) would end your calls with a brain-numbingly loud, incredibly angry voice shouting a string of curses bad enough to immediately cause internal hemorrhaging. Even better, we should modify that Tele-Zapper gizmo. You know, the one that detects whether an incoming call was dialed by a computer, and then removes your number from the database? Instead of just taking your phone number out of the computers, the new and improved Schmuck-Zapper would detect whether incoming calls were dialed by a computer or somebody you don’t like, answer it for you, and then give the unwanted caller a good cussing-out. And then zap your number off of their database. Of course, if anybody ever invents such an item or such a button, I’m going to have to find a way to get our household off of the Do-Not-Call registry, because I would rather have the fun of making telemarketers cry with my new gadgets. Yes, technology is a wonderful thing. Required Reading <a href="http://www.worldbeardchampionships.com/Gallery/gallery.html">World Beard and Mustache Championships</a> Why not?... <a href="http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/37/Now_With_AutoSwear">Visit Fredrickville.com for more!</a> Rhymes with Purple Sun, 16 Nov 2003 00:00:00 -0500 Fredrickville.com-138 Exhibit AA: Drugs http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/36/Exhibit_AA_Drugs Fredrickville Column: Rhymes with Purple We, as a nation, are addicted to drugs. Chemically dependent. Absolute FIENDS when it comes to mind-altering substances. And this problem is not confined to republican talk-show hosts, highschool dropouts and college art majors like we like to believe. Our sinister addictions run much, much deeper than that. Lawyers, teachers, kids, even my own mother all have issues of dependency on drugs designed to alter one’s mental and emotional state, and it’s about time somebody took a stand and tried to bring an end to this madness. I’m hoping one or more of you will read this and feel motivated to do something, because I’m kinda tired. I’m not talking about tobacco, alcohol or even pain relievers, although they scare me too. I’m not worried about the people that chug Nyquil, and I don’t feel it necessary to remind you the dangers of huffing, snorting, shooting or smoking all those other wonderful forms of “adult candy” that we all, thanks either to our fellow addicts or our school systems, know entirely too much about. I’m more worried about stuff like Ritalin, Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil and all the other junk that our doctors feed us. There’s a very good reason that the government tries so hard to control this stuff. It’s nasty. Even when it’s doing what it’s designed to do and nothing else, it messes with the most basic workings of your brain. Am I wrong to be frightened by the widespread use of pills that are engineered to distort our perceptions, repress our feelings and hallucinate emotions that we don’t have? We like to be happy. Obviously. Everybody likes to be happy. Nobody likes to be sad or angry, and so we take drugs that make us happy no matter what. Since we are too weak, too lazy or too busy to make ourselves happy or even to listen to what our emotions are trying to tell us, our doctors give us drugs that modify our minds at the chemical level and take away any feelings we don’t like and replace them with feelings we do. This seems like a really dangerous modus operandi: instead of attacking the real problems, those things in our lives and in our society that make us unhappy, we attack the unhappiness itself. We are, as a culture, too weak to accept the fact that we might actually have to put in some minimal sort of effort to achieve happiness. Everybody on television is happy, and so we feel like if we’re not happy there must be something wrong. Of course it can’t be our fault; not at all. Nothing is ever our fault. So we blame a chemical somethingorother in our heads, just like sports teams fire their managers every time they lose a big game-because the fans and the players can’t accept that maybe, just maybe, they aren’t quite the best team in the world. We’re perfect, we do everything right; it’s just our brains and our coaches that mess stuff up. Fifty years ago, we weren’t pumping any of these chemicals into our bodies, and yet there were fewer suicides. There were fewer suicides because, instead of masking their feelings with emotional Tylenol, people worked through their problems. Social, professional and familial issues were handled by talking them through, finding a course of action that would rectify or at least ameliorate the problem without inconveniencing the outside world too much, and then the unhappy person would change whatever needed to be changed to make life tolerable. If what you’re doing makes you sad or angry, STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING. If holding your hands against a woodstove hurts, you don’t take a painkiller. You take your stinkin’ hands away from the stupid stove. I promise you, there are no bizarre side effects involved with relaxing a little bit more or spending a little bit more time doing what you love. Well, there were fewer suicides because people worked things out and dealt with their problems, but there were also fewer tall buildings worth jumping from. Required Reading <a href="http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus.html">Save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus!</a> Protecting the environment is everyone’s responsibility. Please give generously to protect this amazing animal from extinction. ... <a href="http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/36/Exhibit_AA_Drugs">Visit Fredrickville.com for more!</a> Rhymes with Purple Mon, 10 Nov 2003 00:00:00 -0500 Fredrickville.com-139 I'm sorry, I have failed you. http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/35/Im_sorry_I_have_failed_you Fredrickville Column: Rhymes with Purple My mom is in college. Again. She's going for her Master's degree, so she can be a real professor instead of just an adjunct. Or something. That's not important. What IS important is that she was assigned a fifty-page (!) paper about a month and a half ago, and decided that it was a good idea to start working on it a week and a half before it is due. So she was on the computer all day, and then when she got sick of it I was doing homework, so...no real post this week. That's right, my mom managed her time poorly, and you get punished for it. I'll try to post again sometime before the Apocalypse. I leave you with this thought: How wretched must it be to be a wet dog looking for lovin'? The dog didn't do anything wrong, but nobody even wants to be near it, let alone pet it. Le pauvre chien.... <a href="http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/35/Im_sorry_I_have_failed_you">Visit Fredrickville.com for more!</a> Rhymes with Purple Sun, 02 Nov 2003 00:00:00 -0500 Fredrickville.com-140 Exhibit Z: A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Cynic III http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/34/Exhibit_Z_A_Portrait_Of_The_Artist_As_A_Young_Cynic_III Fredrickville Column: Rhymes with Purple 4) It rarely ends well. I’ve seen too many of my peers lose good friends simply by dating them. As soon as you start calling it “dating”, everybody seems to get more sensitive. When people get more sensitive, they are more likely to get upset. When people get upset, they break up friendships that would normally have stuck together well. Wobert’s Law: The easiest way to lose a good friend is to date him or her. 5) I’d have to go to dances. By now you should know how I feel about dances. (See Exhibit F). 6) I’d probably have to go to movies. I know that it’s not a given that I would have to go to movies, but that seems to be what couples do. All the time. Because it’s dark in movie theaters, so they can grope one another in peace, and this is apparently worth ten bucks a person. Or something. Whatever the reason that people go to them, I really hate them. REALLY (Exhibit W). I haven’t been to see a movie since The Two Towers came out. In fact, The Two Towers was the last movie (except for training videos) that I watched in its entirety. Heck, I haven’t even watched any television since the end of my last school year. I feel about movies basically like I feel about dances. So if my girlfriend wanted to go to the movies, I would have to go. And it would be wretched. 7) THINK OF THE PUPPIES! <img src="http://www.fredrickville.com/boards/images/puppies.jpg"> Required Reading <a href="http://www.vectorpark.com">VECTORPARK!</a> First person to find the point without chemical aid wins my eternal and undying respect.... <a href="http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/34/Exhibit_Z_A_Portrait_Of_The_Artist_As_A_Young_Cynic_III">Visit Fredrickville.com for more!</a> Rhymes with Purple Sat, 25 Oct 2003 00:00:00 -0400 Fredrickville.com-141 Exhibit Z: A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Cynic II http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/33/Exhibit_Z_A_Portrait_Of_The_Artist_As_A_Young_Cynic_II Fredrickville Column: Rhymes with Purple 2) I don’t have the time or the money. This seems pretty self-explanatory. I work in the summer at a summer camp, and all of the piddling little sum that I make goes into the bank for things like college and a computer and a car. I don’t really even have money to treat myself to movies or meals, let alone another person. And the chivalrous gentleman in me will not allow me to split the bill permit a lady to pay for me. It’s just not acceptable. During the school year, I have about thirty hours a week that are not spent sleeping or doing school-related stuff. I can’t spend that little bit of available socializing time with just one person; it’s just not efficient enough. If I can only do one fun thing a week with other people, there needs to be at least two other people involved to make it worthwhile. Anything less means that I am not getting the net amount of socialization done that I need to. 3) I’m not interested in sex, or even in lower-grade physical relationships. According to our culture, this means that I must be gay. I can assure you that I’m not, but I must also tell you that I have a nearly complete lack of sexual drive. Partially because of my faith, which prohibits pre-marital sex, and mostly because of a lack of interest, I don’t see any reason to fool around and squeeze people in the dark or stick my tongue in another person’s mouth. My tongue is perfectly happy where it is, and has no desire to visit other tongues or to entertain other tongues in his humble abode. Besides, I’d have to actually worry about how my breath smells and stuff if I started sharing air and saliva with girls. A friend once told me, in an attempt to persuade me to start dating, that “Dating is just like friendship, plus ‘insert tab A into slot B.’” I feel like there must be something else to it, but since I haven’t figured out what that something else might be I have decided to take his word for it. And since I have no interest in inserting any tabs into any slots, I guess friendship will do just fine for right now. INTERACTIVE EXPERIMENT: Stand in front of a mirror. Pretend that you’re making out with someone. Do everything that you would do if you were making out with someone, except to the air. Watch yourself in the mirror. Goodness, don’t you look silly? How does sharing that with another person make it any less silly? ... <a href="http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/33/Exhibit_Z_A_Portrait_Of_The_Artist_As_A_Young_Cynic_II">Visit Fredrickville.com for more!</a> Rhymes with Purple Sat, 25 Oct 2003 00:00:00 -0400 Fredrickville.com-142 Exhibit Z: A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Cynic http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/32/Exhibit_Z_A_Portrait_Of_The_Artist_As_A_Young_Cynic Fredrickville Column: Rhymes with Purple Here we are at Exhibit Z. Wow. 26 stupid practices, products, professions and people, and I’m just getting warmed up. To celebrate the end of the alphabet, I chose to give you, my faithful readers, a super-special post. This is a very emotional moment for me. I wish that I could say that this post took me so long to right that I wasn’t able to post last week, but in reality I was just lazy last weekend. If it makes you feel better, though, then this post took me two weeks to write because I had to keep stopping and fighting to keep my emotions under control, because this is the last time I will ever write Exhibit Z. A long, long time ago, in Exhibit H, I wrote about dating in general. I mocked all the silly little things that make highschool dating what it is, and I made it clear that I don't date. But I'm not sure I made it clear why, and so I've decided to give you a glimpse into my inner workings. I have a little cut on my side, and if you just squeeze in there and take a left, continuing up past the longs, through the palate and into my brain, I'd like to give you a tour of the little corner of my psyche that I reserve for dating. Here, instead of a list of pickup lines and girls that I've dated, you will find a list of the reasons that I don't date. 1) I don’t trust myself. I’m not mature enough to take responsibility for other people’s emotions. I’m not even responsible enough to do my own clothes shopping or manage my own diet, and yet my friends, my peers and even my parents all expect me to jump at the chance to own a share in the emotional welfare of another human being. They want ME, a mere child that cannot even take care of his own physical health, to take a post that would make me vice president in charge of the emotions of some other mere child. I’m not old enough to legally make any decisions concerning my own physical health, but apparently I’m much, much older than I need to be to mess with the far more delicate and important emotional health of other people. If this makes sense to anybody, please explain it to me. Perhaps the idea of being in a position to affect people’s emotions wouldn’t scare me so much if I wasn’t such bumbling fool. Were I to involve myself in a dating sort of relationship with a girl, I would not simply be capable of influencing her emotions. Anything and everything that I did would have an effect on her, and I just don’t trust myself not to Dubya things up. The idea that I could break somebody’s heart without even realizing it scares me more than Dick Cheney’s energy commission, so until I’m a bit more socially adept I think I’ll just leave the innocent women of the world alone. Perhaps I’ll be competent enough at reading people and thinking things through when I’m in my early eighties. Just in time for me to become a dirty old man and take a trophy wife. The most basic elements of my personality prevent me from dating. I am, by nature, rather straightforward and even, at times, downright brash. I don’t always think about whose toes I will be stepping on before I do something, and I often end up smashing someone’s toes and then moving right on up the leg until I’m stomping on somebody’s navel before I realize what I’ve done. This wouldn’t be a problem if I had more of a mean streak, but apparently that gland is underdeveloped or something. I feel absolutely terrible when I hurt another human being, no matter how necessary it is. FACT: I have been involved in one relationship. That’s right: I, the mighty Wobert, did indeed date at one point. This relationship was based entirely on a misunderstanding. The story goes something like this: In the spring of eighth grade, a girl that I didn’t like much at all came up to me and asked me out. I sputtered for a moment or ten, casting about furiously for a cyanide pill or a fifty-story drop, but there were none on hand. I looked pleadingly about for another few moments, hoping that the building would explode or a rampaging aardvark would disrupt our conversation, but both the animal kingdom and the world of physical phenomena had decided to abandon me. So I did what any suave eighth grader would do, and I asked her to let me sleep on it. The next morning, after staying up all night trying to come up with a good excuse, I came in to school fully planning to reject this poor girl. I caught one of my (male) friends first, ran the speech by him, and asked him if it was kind enough to avoid bloodshed but still firm enough to get the point across. He said that it was. I blame him for what followed. I found the girl. I started to explain that, although she was very nice and all, that my father would never allow it and that I was very…. “That’s ok” she said. “We can work around that. Oh, you don’t know how happy this makes me. I was sooooo worried that you were going to reject me.” My life flashed before my eyes. I almost sprained my baffled brain trying to get out if it. As I was telling my brain to come up with a good, gentle explanation, my brain was going “AAAA! I said everything right, where does she get off thinking that I want to go out with her?” Abandoned completely by my brain, my mouth simply said “Meep.” And so it began. A whirlwind romance that lasted all of two weeks and included about thirty seconds of actual conversation, twenty minutes of awkward silence, and literally hundreds of hours of me avoiding her at all costs. Including skipping classes. Classes taught by my own father. The relationship lasted for two weeks because that was how long it took me to get up the guts and the gentle words to dump her. Well, I don’t actually know how long it took me to get up the guts to dump her, because I just left a message for her on the bulletin board. We never talked again after that. Perhaps the words weren’t actually gentle enough, but I think that it’s more likely that she just realized what I knew all along-that we didn’t even have enough in common to be casual acquaintances. Either way, she didn’t come in to school the day after I dumped her. Apparently she was pretty upset…and, even though I didn’t like her to begin with and I was exceedingly glad to be rid of her, I felt absolutely awful about upsetting her. And so I immediately set out to ensure that such a misunderstanding would never occur again. I told everyone that I no longer wished to date at all. I told my friends that, if ever a girl should approach them asking about me (because that’s how things were done at that age), or even look like they were showing an interest in me, my friends were to take them aside and explain that I wasn’t up for grabs. And then not tell me about it, because I really couldn’t care less. And so I became a hermit. And then this explanation became WAAAY too long for one post, so I had to split it into three. Huzzah! ... <a href="http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/32/Exhibit_Z_A_Portrait_Of_The_Artist_As_A_Young_Cynic">Visit Fredrickville.com for more!</a> Rhymes with Purple Sat, 25 Oct 2003 00:00:00 -0400 Fredrickville.com-143 Exhibit Y: Motivational Speakers http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/31/Exhibit_Y_Motivational_Speakers Fredrickville Column: Rhymes with Purple IMMORAL JOBS: 1. Hitmen 2. Drug dealers 3. Motivational speakers 4. Prostitutes Hitmen, drug dealers and prostitutes all hurt people for money. Hitmen kill people for money, drug dealers feed the dangerous chemical habits of others, and prostitution leads its customers into problems with their consciences, the police, and a host of opportunistic social diseases (not to mention angry pimps with canes or burly boyfriends with drug addictions). So it’s pretty easy to see how these three occupations made it onto my (abbreviated) list of immoral jobs, but the reason that motivational speakers deserve this abuse may be less obvious. Motivational speakers capitalize on the insecurity and incompetence of the general public, and make an absolutely obscene amount of money for doing it. Apparently so many people are growing up with really bad parents that nobody knows how to work hard or be committed to their goals or make good decisions such as avoiding drugs or not feeding their genitals to wolverines, and so motivational speakers are able to make a pretty darn good living by telling people that you get rewarded more for working hard than for not working at all and that genitals are not a necessary part of a wolverine’s diet. It seems to me that this should be more of a public service than a money-making opportunity. Don’t all people have the right to know that goals take work and that drugs are bad for you, just like all people have the right to know that an active wood stove is hot or that wet floors might be slippery? But janitors don’t get paid any more for putting up the little cones that warn of slick floors, and parents don’t get any sort of recognition for teaching their toddlers the word “hot”, while motivational speakers are paid through the olfactory protrusion to spread such earth-shattering news as “Your boss is less likely to fire you if you don’t staple your co-workers to the cubicle wall”. Here is an entire class of people that travels about the country and the world, telling people that the only way to get ahead is to work at it; if this is true, why don’t we see motivational speakers begging on the streets? They don’t do any work. They don’t provide a necessary service. They’re probably not even pursuing their dreams: how many toddlers or students or college graduates say “I want nothing more than to spend my days in crowded auditoriums full of people that hate me so I can tell them things that they should already know.”? NONE. A motivational speaker is what you become if you can’t cut it as a politician or television news anchor; anybody with a larynx and reasonable confidence in themselves can be a motivational speaker. You don’t even need to be pretty or well-spoken, and you definitely don’t need to have any new ideas. Apparently all motivational speakers are trained by the same company or read the same book or something, because, with the occasional exception of a new anecdote, all motivational speakers always say the same things and lead the same exercises. Our senior class retreat was led by a motivational speaker that started the day with the painful cliché of “If you only had one day left to live, who would you call, what would you say, and why haven’t you done it?”. I stopped listening after that, because I was trying to figure out how much money I would make if I copyrighted the phrase “If you only had one day left to live…” I quit when I realized that the calculations would involve both math and knowing how many motivational speakers are currently in circulation, not to mention lawyers. I really don’t want to know how many motivational speakers are roaming the country right now, because I think I would probably be terrified and lock myself in my bedroom, which happens more often than you might expect (do you know what kind of nasty stuff lurks in the average carpet? At least the dead skin cells in the carpet in my room are mostly MY dead skin cells, so they attract MY mites and bacteria). By far the best part of our session with this motivational speaker was when he led us in a goal-setting exercise that I had done with a friend just the night before. Except his was planned and supposedly researched and stuff, and mine was just the logical outcome of a conversation. So motivational speakers are essentially friends for hire, except they’re the sort of loud, annoying and imbecilic friends that you would expect to hang around people who have to hire their friends. So I would like to propose some sort of legislation that make the knowing use of clichés and corny anecdotes punishable by death. Then I would train all the motivational speakers to do something useful. We could train them to be the subjects in human pain-threshold testing or teach them to operate a jackhammer. Better yet, we could put them in charge of feeding the wolverines. Required Reading <a href="http://machall.com">Mac Hall Comics</a> I highly recommend that you read through the entire archives on this site when you get a chance, because these guys are amazing. Nothing like a good webcomic to get your day started correctly. Of course, they only update once a week, which means that I only ever have one really good day a week. If being addicted to webcomics is wrong, I don’t want to be right. ... <a href="http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/31/Exhibit_Y_Motivational_Speakers">Visit Fredrickville.com for more!</a> Rhymes with Purple Mon, 13 Oct 2003 00:00:00 -0400 Fredrickville.com-144 Exhibit X: Cheerleaders http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/30/Exhibit_X_Cheerleaders Fredrickville Column: Rhymes with Purple Ah, cheerleaders. You’ve all heard the arguments against cheerleading, so I won’t remind you that cheerleading encourages girls to capitalize on their bodies, that cheerleading makes girls think that they aren’t thin enough, that cheerleaders are ditzy, empty-headed bimbos, and that cheerleading in general is not based on school spirit or athletic pride or any such lofty ideal, but rather on two simple facts accepted by the entire market-capitalist world: men like sports, and men like sex. That’s why there are cheerleaders prancing about wearing bikinis at professional and college football games in late November. But of course you already know all that, so I won’t waste your time telling you about it. Moving along, I think I can safely assume that we all agree that cheerleading reflects poorly on our society and is simply a hallmark of how very depraved we are and shouldn’t be allowed in public, but for those of you who still feel the need to defend cheerleading as an actual sport or even insist that it is actually good for American girls in some sort of way, let me assure you: I couldn’t care less without being clinically dead. I’ve heard all the arguments in favor of cheerleading, and they’re crap. For every one girl that gains confidence by being accepted onto a cheerleading team and working hard and doing well, there is one other girl that has been crushed and depressed when she was cut from the team and one who has developed an eating disorder to try and fit into a slightly more obscene skirt. SO, now that we’ve all either agreed that cheerleading is the devil or left, I will proceed with my rant. The time was late morning/early afternoon. The place was Derryfield Park. The companion was Legs. The activity was walking to a spot on the cross-country course so we could encourage some real athletes. The weather was cold and rain-esque. And then we saw it. There, on the football field, surrounded by beaming mothers shivering under umbrellas, was an army of tiny little girls learning how to be cheerleaders. The five-seven year old girls were staring intently at their instructor, a “real, live cheerleader” of about fourteen, and trying to put their ankles behind their heads or something. I must be honest, they were cute…at least at first. Then I realized what was happening. They were being indoctrinated. Brainwashed. Force-fed a culture of sex, elitism, eating disorders and shallowness. And their mothers were just standing there watching them. No, it was worse. Their mothers were encouraging them. When I saw all those proud faces looking out over these innocent little girls practicing in the rain, I wanted to jump the fence and shake the mothers by their shoulders. I wanted to ask them “How do you sleep at night knowing that, far from protecting your daughter from the evils of the world, you are handing them over to the forces of evil…and SMILING about it?” I wanted to elbow the instructor out of the way and scream “Run while there’s still time!” But I didn’t. I left those little girls to their cruel fate, and I don’t know if I will ever be able to forgive myself for it. Hey look, a cookie…. <a href="http://emayhem.org/" target=_blank>Required Reading: Electronic Mayhem</a> (that's a link) This site is wonderful in it’s own right, but even better because they linked to us and even said that they liked us. So go show them some lovin’. I get all of my movie reviews off of Emayhem, which may explain why I haven't gone to see any movies since the second Lord Of The Rings came out. In other news, I haven’t received a single submission for the Shameless Link Pimp o’ the Month Contest, which can only mean that you folks haven’t been spreading the word about Fredrickville, which is absolutely not okay. So get out there and represent!... <a href="http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/30/Exhibit_X_Cheerleaders">Visit Fredrickville.com for more!</a> Rhymes with Purple Sun, 05 Oct 2003 00:00:00 -0400 Fredrickville.com-145 UPGRADE! http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/28/UPGRADE Fredrickville Column: Rhymes with Purple Soo....since Fredrickville has recently gotten all spiffed up and sexified, and since I feel behind the times because the rest of the site has all sorts of new features and I don't (although I just got a new sweatshirt that's all fuzzy and soft inside), and because I'm lazy and don't feel like writing a legitimate post right now, I've decided to take this opportunity to unleash and/or announce some exciting new junk that will be joining my regular ire here in this little corner o' the web. Second things first: THE SHAMELESS LINK PIMP OF THE MONTH CONTEST! Here's the deal: You like Fredrickville. Fredrickville likes you. Other people would like Fredrickville too, if only they knew that it exists. So you need to get out there and spread the joy. And you won't just be spreading joy to the people around you. Of course not. You could be getting a big slice of joy for yourself. Send me proof of your joy-spreading, whether it's a link that you managed to get up on a more popular site or a picture of you evangelizing on a street corner or video of you wandering about an amusement park wearing nothing but Fredrickville stickers, and I just might send you a prize. The most shameless, amusing or efficient link pimp every month (as judged by me and various people I trust) will get a prize valued at no less than five dollars. If you really go out of your way and do something crazy, you'll probably get a better prize. If you get us so many more hits that the server collapses under the strain, I will personally deliver the prize to your door (assuming that you live in New England) in (or out of) a costume of your choosing (assuming I can find/make it). Email me your submissions, along with any necessary explanation and your contact information, and let the games begin! **Legal-esque butt-covering section: We here at Fredrickville are not responsible if you hurt yourself or anyone else or get in trouble in the pursuit of these magnificent prizes. All submissions become property of ME. All of my decisions are final and binding, no matter how much you don't like them. And finally, please don't do anything stupid. And if you do, please don't sue/hurt me/anyone else. Third things penultimate: REQUIRED READING Every week, I'll (try to) include in my post a link to a site that I like. This week, it's going to be http://www.fark.com because it makes me giggle. I realize that it's not actually a "link" so much as an "address" this week, but that's just because I don't know your crazy interweb-speak well enough to make links or use link buttons, but I'll see what I can do about that. **A metaphorical crucifix to stave off the metaphorically blood-sucking undead beings known as "leeches"...er..."lawyers": Just as the rest of the Fredrickville crew is not responsible for what goes up on this board, I am not responsible for the content of the web pages I refer you to. I will try to keep them reasonably clean, but you never can tell. For instance, http://www.wufo.org used to be the webpage for the Williams (college) Ultimate Frisbee Organization, until the domain got snapped up by evil flying monkeys. Now it's a company which claims that "...we conduct international introductions and tours to bring men and women together in a tasteful and comfortable environment for the purpose of finding a potential spouse. We have a successful average of five engagements a day!". Which wouldn't be quite so amusing if the Williams College website didn't still link to it. First things last: More overall anger, accompanied by a more sporadic and accidental update schedule. School burns like flaming Silly String this year, so there will be a lot more pent-up spleen than ever before. There will also probably be more weeks when you have to survive without my scathing wit (and immense modesty), because there will be more weekends when the total amount of time necessary to complete the work I need to do will exceed the total amount of time available in which to do it, and I will thus not be able to post. **Psycho Lawsuit-Nazi Repellant: I don't really recommend lighting Silly String on fire, no matter how cool it looks. I'm certainly not going to tell you how to make an awesome flaming-string-spewing contraption of death by holding a lit lighter in front of the nozzle on a can of Silly String and pressing the little button down. And I'm not at all responsible if the can blows up in your hand, because that would just hurt a whole lot.... <a href="http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/28/UPGRADE">Visit Fredrickville.com for more!</a> Rhymes with Purple Mon, 29 Sep 2003 00:00:00 -0400 Fredrickville.com-146 The Tape Age, Part XI http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/26/The_Tape_Age_Part_XI Fredrickville Column: Rhymes with Purple The Tiananmen Square Riots were also begun over Duct Tape. The students of China suspected that the Chinese government was holding back Duct Tape from the people. Outraged by this hoarding, they attempted to stir up popular support for a movement to overthrow the government. The Chinese Politburo perceived this movement as a military threat and moved to stop it, but, according to the global community, they overreacted. While it is apparent that while Duct Tape is a great force for good, it can also play on the human psyche in unnatural and dangerous ways. As one of Julius Caesar's top advisors warned: "Power corrupts, but Duct Tape corrupts absolutely."... <a href="http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/26/The_Tape_Age_Part_XI">Visit Fredrickville.com for more!</a> Rhymes with Purple Sun, 21 Sep 2003 00:00:00 -0400 Fredrickville.com-147 The Tape Age X http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/24/The_Tape_Age_X Fredrickville Column: Rhymes with Purple The presence or lack of Duct Tape has also been a strong catalyst for radical political change. The Communist Party became immensely popular in Russia when party leaders decided to change their motto to "Duct Tape For All!". In the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx describes why a revolution by the working, or proletariat, class would be immensely successful in an industrialized country: Revolution is inevitable. While the poor workers in the Duct Tape mines provide the substance upon which all of the wealth in the world is based, they receive barely enough of this wealth to survive. Once the workers realize that the entire economy of the globe rests on their shoulders, they will be compelled to rise up and seize the wealth which is rightfully theirs. Possibly the most effective way of achieving this revolution is a strike by the mine workers. When Duct Tape stops being produced, industrial production ceases. When industrial production ceases, wealth stops growing. When wealth stops growing, the existing social structure will crumble and the proletariat will emerge at their rightful place at the top of the social ladder. This passage, condensed into the one line "The workers control the means of Duct Tape", was a rallying cry for the Bolshevik Revolution and Communist sympathizers all over the world.... <a href="http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/24/The_Tape_Age_X">Visit Fredrickville.com for more!</a> Rhymes with Purple Sun, 21 Sep 2003 00:00:00 -0400 Fredrickville.com-148 The Tape Age, Part IX http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/23/The_Tape_Age_Part_IX Fredrickville Column: Rhymes with Purple * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Thus we have a primary source account of the earliest known discovery of Duct Tape and its effect on one small tribe of cave-dwellers. Throughout history, Duct Tape has been the driving force behind many of the major technological revolutions that the world has seen. The Industrial Revolution would have been a complete failure if vast reserves of Duct Tape had been not been discovered off the coast of Russia. Henry Ford himself has said that his invention of the automobile would have been a complete failure if he had attempted it without the aid of Duct Tape. Even Thomas Edison, the inventor of the light bulb, admitted that "The mysteries of the incandescent filament would have eluded me entirely had I not had a roll of tape on my work bench at all times to patch up mistakes", and the original Franklin stove was held together entirely by the miraculous tape. However great its benefit to humanity, Duct Tape has also caused considerable trouble. It has been observed that when a person, culture or nation faces even the possibility of a Duct Tape shortage, there is large-scale despair and panic. This phenomenon can be observed in the above account of the first culture to mine Duct Tape. The new discovery led to such a drastic increase in the quality of life for the tribe that when the villagers were faced with the possibility that they might run out, the entire civilization was turned upside down. But Lack Of Duct Tape Syndrome, or LODTS, is by no means restricted to ancient cultures. The motivation behind Germany's attempted European conquest in World War II could be reduced to a projected shortfall in the German Strategic Duct Tape Reserves. When news of this possible catastrophe hit the streets, the German public panicked. This state of uproar paved the way for the rise of the Nazi party, which gained the support of the public by promising to expand the German borders and secure the vast deposits of Duct Tape in Poland and Italy.... <a href="http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/23/The_Tape_Age_Part_IX">Visit Fredrickville.com for more!</a> Rhymes with Purple Sun, 21 Sep 2003 00:00:00 -0400 Fredrickville.com-149 The Tape Age, Part VIII http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/22/The_Tape_Age_Part_VIII Fredrickville Column: Rhymes with Purple After two days' hard work, he had fashioned the world's first wheel-barrow. A stone circle with a hole in the middle was attached by means of a short, straight stick as an axle to a large basket made of the special mineral, reinforced with sticks. Although the stone wheel made it very heavy, the wheelbarrow made it much easier to carry the freshly mined stones from the cavern to the village, and the children were delighted when their fathers gave them rides in the new contraptions. Eventually the cavern in which the stones had been collected ran empty, and there was a general panic in the settlement. Certain that their lives would eventually go back to the way they were before the wonderful stones were discovered; the people of the village entered a state of mourning. The women put ashes in their hair. The men stopped going out to hunt. The children stopped playing and just lay about. People everywhere were crying. Fights broke out. The oldest of the Wise Elders attempted to calm the people: "Please, do not despair. There must be more of these rocks somewhere! We have hunters out all day searching. We will find more stones!" The people would not listen. Someone in the crowd stood up and shouted "That is all well and good. But what if we cannot find more stones? What will we do then? Eventually the boats will spring leaks. Spears will break, and we will not be able to mend them. Our way of life will be ruined!" At this, a fresh cry rose from the crowd. Many people sunk to their knees in despair. The Wise Elders found that they were rapidly losing control of the situation. This insubordination was practically unheard of, and nobody really knew how to deal with it. The Wise Elders were accustomed to being revered in the village for their indispensable intellect, but now they were being talked back to by a lowly hunter. When it looked like nothing could be done to restore order, one of the hunters that had been out searching for a new source of the stone in the vicinity of the mine came running into the center of the village and shouted that one young miner, Frungh, had gone insane. A group of us ran with him to the mine to see what was happening. Frungh had attached a curved and pointed bone to a stout branch with some of the remaining rock to create a primitive pick-axe, and was attacking the walls of the cavern as if he blamed them for taking away the stones. We were worried that he would cause the cavern to collapse, or even start another earthquake, so we all tried to get him to stop. As we were shouting down at him and throwing things to get his attention, he began smiling and hacking away even faster. Choking back my fear, I climbed down into the hole and attempted to reason with him. When he wouldn't listen, I attempted to restrain him. With the strength of a rampaging cabbage, he wrestled away from me and charged at the wall yet again. His eyes were bloodshot and he was foaming at the mouth. His breath came in ragged gasps, and if you looked closely he appeared to be crying. Frightened by his insanity, I backed away and climbed out of the hole, despairing at the loss of Frungh, who was basically still a child but could have grown to be one of the strongest hunters in our tribe. One look told me that the others that had stayed on the surface had seen all that happened. Hanging our heads, we shuffled back in the direction of the village. But as we were leaving, we heard a cry from the cavern. It sounded like Frungh was being eaten alive, he was screeching so horribly. We ran back to see what was happening, and saw Frungh laughing and doing a strange little dance of joy. And above his head he held...A STONE! Not just any old rock, either, but one of the special ones that I had discovered! We hoisted Frungh out of the pit and placed him on our shoulders and paraded back into the village. When the people realized that we were not, after all, going to revert to the Stone Age, the whole tribe was elated. The women washed the ashes out of their hair and the hunters grabbed up their spears and went out to get the ingredients of a fabulous victory salad. Even the Wise Elders, as old, stoic, and creaky as they were, danced long into the night. Soon the miners were back at work with the crude instruments that Frungh had created, hacking away at the walls of the cavern, separating the special stones from the blank walls.... <a href="http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/22/The_Tape_Age_Part_VIII">Visit Fredrickville.com for more!</a> Rhymes with Purple Sun, 21 Sep 2003 00:00:00 -0400 Fredrickville.com-150 The Tape Age, Part VII http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/21/The_Tape_Age_Part_VII Fredrickville Column: Rhymes with Purple Over the next year, now that they had access to such a large supply, the elders were able to perfect their basket-weaving technique to the point where they could fashion watertight containers large enough for a man to sit in comfortably. When it was discovered (quite by accident) that these huge containers could float, the tribe was able to use them as boats to cross streams and rivers that had previously been effective barriers. The huge herds of vegetables on the other side of these bodies of water supplied the settlement with enough easy food that their quality of life increased dramatically, and they were able to spend more time thinking and less time hunting. With this newly found leisure time, the tribe developed a system of writing and I was able to begin these memoirs. The children of the village also profited from the discovery of the new stones, since whenever a stone ran out of the grey part the grown-ups loved so much, a smaller, brown circle was left over. These circles made great toys, and the children played for hours passing them back and forth and creating race courses for them to roll down. One day, one of the elders observed the children at play and had an idea. He closed himself in his cave with a large stone, enough food for a few days, and three or four of the new stones. ... <a href="http://www.fredrickville.com/article/4/21/The_Tape_Age_Part_VII">Visit Fredrickville.com for more!</a> Rhymes with Purple Sun, 21 Sep 2003 00:00:00 -0400