The Sacred Potato Mystery Deepens

In an earlier post, I contemplated the meaning of the Sacred French Fry.

Now we have this, via the Californian: http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/06/18/news/californian/61707181839.txt

For the last nine years, students in Darren Thomas' Advanced Placement
history classes at Chaparral High School have been enshrining members into the
American Hall of Fame in the form of Mr. Potato Head.

-small snip-

The 2007 inductees, honored at a ceremony June 6, were Clara Barton and
Frederick Douglas. Their likenesses, created using the popular toy, join Rosa
Parks, Thomas Edison, Earl Warren, Lyndon Johnson, Mark Twain, Jane Addams,
Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Theodore
Roosevelt, Henry Clay, John Marshall, Abraham Lincoln, Martin
Luther King, Thomas Jefferson, Harriet Tubman and Andrew Carnegie in the Hall of
Fame.

Well, it's about time Mr. Thomas' class got around to enshrining the great one. I can just see the looks on the faces of the Neoconfederates as they realize Father Abraham has claimed a new conquest, this time on the battlefield of a high school history AP classroom.

Inducted into the Hall of Shame was Sen. Joseph McCarthy. He joins Nathaniel
Forrest, the founder of the Ku Klux Klan, Aaron Burr and Boss Tweed as spuds of
infamy.

How ya like them taters, Mr. Bradford?

Like the noble potato, prior to picking by free and equal hands, Father Abraham is rooted deep in the soil of America's foundation - low, but sturdy soil.

NyTimes Falls to Calhounites

I must confess I don't keep up with the Beltway much since my subscription to The Star lapsed, but the following pictograph of Clarence Thomas suggests that the New York Times would like to renominate Justice Taney.

Ask Harry

Dear Harry,

Emulating your most gracious example, I am now surrounded by fawning acolytes of my own. While the accompanying lightening of my workload and validation of my gifts can be gratifying, increasingly I find myself exhausted by their endless requests. How do you handle it?

Sincerely,
Depleted in Dallas

Dear Depleted,

Oh heavy lies the crown! Disciples are a stealthy burden indeed. At first, its "Let me go forth and spread the word!" "Let me take up your class load!" "Let me smite the dissenters!"

Next thing you know, its "Sign off on this abortion of a thesis!" "Sign the forward to my e-book!" "Look! I've quoted you out of context for the 300th time!"

Yet, someone must ensure we stay in print long after our time. Keep them near, teach them as you may, and let them love you. But always, always, deny them your vital essence.

Hope that helps!

Ashton Kutcher: Calhounite

This time Kelso has gone too far:Ashton Kutcher Moons Abraham Lincoln Monument

October 2, 2006 12:25 p.m. EST
Maira Oliveira - All Headline News Reporter

Washington, D.C. (AHN) - Ashton Kutcher decided to put on a brave face and
test his limits with inanimate objects in the country's capital last week. The
former "That 70s Show" star made a recent trip to Washington, D.C. with his wife
Demi Moore, hoping to do a little bit of sightseeing and to embark on an
unforgettable adventure - and that he did.

During his few nights stay, Ashton decided to bare his butt for Abraham
Lincoln's entire stone fixture to see.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Despite what Larry Kramer, Gore Vidal, Carl Sandburg, Walt Whitman, Joshua Fry Speed, or a long list of scholars understandably would like to fantasize, I can assure you that Father Abraham would have not the slightest interest in Kelso's ass. Even less so in stone form.

Second, I've put up with that crazy kid's hijinks long enough. You DO NOT PUNK Abraham Lincoln!!! This is no ordinary monument we're talking about, but a temple in which the memory of our savior is enshrined forever, until it is destroyed, only to be rebuilt on the third day.

Ashton Kutcher, you're on my shit list. That is a place you do not want to be, my young friend. Well, it's not a place so much as...a list, a list on which you should not wish to have your name placed. But you're on it now. Your time is coming. You will know not the day nor the hour. Just you wait.

A Deep-fried Sign from Above

Well friends, a new day is surely upon us. Thanks to the sprightly young fellow who runs A. Lincoln Blog, I am aware of this story: French Fried Abe?.

Yes, it seems our Savior is revealing Himself to us once again, this time as a french fry.

I know what you're thinking: why would our Lord Lincoln reveal himself to us as a french fry? How could that make any sense? What's his carb count? FOOL! It is not for you to question Him! Approach the Sacred Fry with reverence! The Lincoln works in mysterious ways. Whether destroying entire communities of civilian population, or incarnating Himself as a deepfried shred of potato, He saves our beloved Union with every spasm of His mighty Spirit! Yours is but to praise.

Pilgrimages are to commence at once to the site of the Sacred Fry, once I have ascertained that location. As one of my flock, you shall have instructions soon. Keep watching the Claremont Review of Books or that gay little Remedy blog my groveling disciples run for further news.

The time of Our Lincoln is soon upon us.

P.S. I'll kill anyone who eats that fucking fry.

Editors are Stupid (and Aquinas is a liar)

Ok, so I'm sitting there at Barnes and Noble, minding my own business over a venti Caramel Machiatto and a half-dozen or so espresso brownies, when some greasy emo twat two tables over starts telling this fat chick all about Nietzsche. None of it's worth repeating, but suffice to say, the German is "totally fucking real." Nauseated by this abortion of public higher education, I became curious to see what sort of nihilistic excrement was populating the Philosophy section, and waddled thusly.

What should first catch my eye in the "A" section? I'll tell you. St. Thomas Aquinas on Politics and Ethics, a Norton "Critical" Edition edited by some frivolous Princetonite called Paul E. Sigmund. Being a rather noted expert on Aquinas, it occurred to me that I might be included in such a "critical" anthology of Aquinas and secondary sources. Indeed, it seems I am. Right there on page 120 (a surprisingly low placement behind a lot of rather mindless twaddle) is a brutally short excerpt from my splendid 1952 book on the "Stupid Ox."

How does the editor introduce a work of brilliance to be reverently beheld by all intelligent men? With the following (in a mere parenthetical, no less):

"Jaffa's book undertakes the not difficult task of showing that Aquinas often departs from Aristotle while claiming merely to be interpreting his thought"(emphasis added).

Not difficult? NOT DIFFICULT! I'll tell you what's not difficult: removing a stinking pile of puerile trash from the shelf, tucking it under a fold, taking it to the Men's Room, tearing it into tiny pieces and flushing it down the toilet. The pieces I didn't use, that is. Thanks for nothing Paul E. Sigmund. May you meet the fiery fate of all who are useless to the regime.

BUT HERE'S AN OBJECT MORE OF DREAD

Ed: While Lincoln certainly celebrated Death in his presidency, this work from early in his career shows that that most profound student of Shakespeare was himself a poet of the first rank.

But here's an object more of dread
Than aught the grave contains--
A human form with reason fled,
While wretched life remains.

When terror spread, and neighbors ran
Your dangerous strength to bind,
And soon, a howling, crazy man,
Your limbs were fast confined:

How then you strove and shrieked aloud,
Your bones and sinews bared;
And fiendish on the grazing crowd
With burning eyeballs glared;

And begged and swore, and wept and prayed,
With manic laughter joined;
How fearful were these signs displayed
By pangs that killed the mind!

And when at length the drear and long
Time soothed thy fiercer woes,
How plaintively thy mournful song
Upon the still night rose!

I've heard it oft as if I dreamed,
Far distant, sweet and lone,
The funeral dirge it ever seemed
Of reason dead and gone.

To drink its strains I've stole away,
All stealthily and still,
Ere yet the rising god of day
Had streaked the eastern hill.

Air held her breath; trees with the spell
Seemed sorrowing angels round,
Whose swelling tears in dewdrops fell
Upon the listening ground.

But this is past, and naught remains
That raised thee o'er the brute;
Thy piercing shrieks and soothing strain
Are like, forever mute.

Now fare thee well!
More thou the cause
Than subject now of woe.
All mental pangs by time's kind laws
Hast lost the power to know.

O death! thou awe-inspiring prince
That keepst the world in fear,
Why dost thou tear more blest ones hence,
And leave him lingering here?

Luxuriating in a Song of Myself

50

There is that in me--I do not know what it is--but I know it is in me.

Wrench'd and sweaty--calm and cool then my body becomes, I sleep--I sleep long.

I do not know it--it is without name--it is a word unsaid, It is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol.

Something it swings on more than the earth I swing on, To it the creation is the friend whose embracing awakes me.

Perhaps I might tell more. Outlines! I plead for my brothers and sisters.

Do you see O my brothers and sisters?

It is not chaos or death--it is form, union, plan--it is eternal

life--it is Happiness.

Oh, how I do love you Walt Whitman.

Father Abraham!

Father Abraham had many sonsMany sons had Father AbrahamI am one of them and so are youSo let's all praise the Lord.Right arm!Father Abraham had many sonsMany sons had Father AbrahamI am one of them and so are youSo let's all praise the Lord.Right arm, left arm!Father Abraham had many sonsMany sons had Father AbrahamI am one of them and so are youSo let's all praise the Lord.Right arm, left arm, right foot!Father Abraham had many sonsMany sons had Father AbrahamI am one of them and so are youSo let's all praise the Lord.Right arm, left arm, right foot, left foot!Father Abraham had many sonsMany sons had Father AbrahamI am one of them and so are youSo let's all praise the Lord.Right arm, left arm, right foot, left foot,Chin up!Father Abraham had many sonsMany sons had Father AbrahamI am one of them and so are youSo let's all praise the Lord.Right arm, left arm, right foot, left foot,Chin up, turn around!Father Abraham had many sonsMany sons had Father AbrahamI am one of them and so are youSo let's all praise the Lord.Right arm, left arm, right foot, left foot,Chin up, turn around, sit down!