Hilarious Justice

I cannot take authorship credit for this one. It appeared in my e-mail, sent by Marianne. I have no idea where it originated but it is just perfect.


This letter was sent to the Lions Bay School Principal's office after the school had sponsored a luncheon for seniors. An elderly lady received a new radio at the lunch as a door prize and was writing to say thank you.


Dear Lions Bay School,

God bless you for the beautiful radio I won at your recent Senior Citizens luncheon. I am 84 years old and live at the West Vancouver Home for the Aged. All of my family has passed away. I am alone and I want to thank you for the kindness shown to a forgotten old lady. My roommate is 95 and has always had her own radio; but before I received one, she would never let me listen to hers, even when she was napping.

The other day her radio fell off the nightstand and broke into a lot of pieces. It was awful and she was in tears. She asked if she could listen to mine, and I told her to fuck off.

Thank you for that opportunity.

Sincerely,

Edna

Feminism, Mysogeny and a Day in the Life of a Man named Dave

Every day I wake up and face the same battle. I am beset on all sides by those who would take advantage of me at the first sign of weakness, or do me malice at the first opportunity. Furthermore, I live in the midst of a population of children who simultaneously brighten my day and drive me insane. Their exhausting presence is only bested by the estrogenic labyrinth that I must daily navigate. Amongst my ex-wife and mother, who will be left free of adjectives for political reasons, and my recently pregnant gf, whose horrible all-day 'morning' sickness seems to have given her occasion to visit upon me the most imaginative verbal descriptions of my shortcomings, it is a miracle that I survive. Immodestly perhaps, and to my credit, a lesser man would not. Fortunately, I have aged (just) enough to have acquired the wisdom to merely laugh (but if you hear any of them tell it, my greatest wisdom should be the knowledge that I really have none). You see, one must laugh, if they are to save themselves from crying - one's own crying or that of the children, or worse, that of the estrogen.

One thing I have observed is that women operate and communicate largely in the figurative whereas men operate almost exclusively in the literal. If a man says he wants a hammer for his birthday, he means that he wants a hammer for his birthday. If a woman says that she really doesn't like diamonds and that she doesn't want anything for her birthday, it is a code that means you damnwell better get her something for her birthday and if it is a diamond (which it had better be) it had better be large enough that she can justify liking it even though she 'really doesn't like diamonds'. This might sound like a mysogenistic tirade against women, but to the contrary, it is an admission that their contention about my so-called wisdom is true. Indeed to the credit of all women, they are operating at a metaphoric and symbolic level of linguistics so complex and variable that even the greatest wisdom of man could never hope to crack the code. Men are baffled and intimidated by this puzzle of communication with no possibility of ever understanding. And what's worse is how perfectly all women seem to understand each other, further emasculating the inadequate male and relegating him to a position of stupidity and inferiority in his inabilty to comprehend the meanings of a language so simple and obvious to women, and that is, on some technical level of syntax, but certainly not of semantics, his own.

See you in estrogenic hell,
Shakes.

re your blog. Yes, I do read it!

My mother, Carolyn, sent me the following e-mail in response to my blog commentaries on the changing world of teens and text. It was eloquently written with some unspoken insights that I thought worthy of publication. The world of fallen technology that she envisions is, I suspect, a long way off and not what teens of the immediate future would find relevant, but her points are surely worth adding to the debate. I think everybody should watch the movie Wall-E after reading this.

Your latest entry, What is the Meaning of Life/Text? was interesting. The main problem I have with all the technology is that kids, and people in general, are getting so removed from nature and face-to-face dialogue that they are not learning the nuances of the world outside their other forms of communication. Nature has its own language, and pacing, and by not keeping connected to it we lose our sense that we are part of a greater whole (ie the earth and natural forces) and forget that we are part of that life-web. We are as much influenced by the pull of the moon, by vagaries of weather, by changes of hormones, by seasons, etc. We also communicate without words, but like the whales whose language is drowned out by the sounds of boat motors, and so is not being passed on to their offspring, we lose the skill of reading facial expressions if we spend our time looking at screens. I rather suspect that parts of our brains which have evolved to recognize and interpret these signals from other people and nature are becoming shrunken, and no longer function as well as they used to. Those societies which still survive by living off the land retain these skills, and in the end, when we are no longer an oil-dependent world but have to go back to living off the land, growing our own food for our survival instead of importing it from somewhere else, those people who have practiced these survival skills will be better off than the ones who are highly skilled at using technology. The horse-whisperers will have the right instincts, and the practised patience to achieve what needs to be done, while those whose expectations for "instant-everything" will have a harder struggle.

To get back to the subject of books - there is still nothing more satisfying to me than to curl up in bed with a good book. I don't know if a laptop would be as satisfying, or one of those Kindle books, even if it allows the sensation of page-turning. There is just something about the feel (and even the smell) of a paper book that is hard to duplicate. For me it has the potential of having my favourite pages marked in some way so I can go back to them (or, horrors, photocopied, even if that goes against the rules) so I can apply something pertinent to another context.

Anyway, interesting commentary. I don't know how to make a comment on your blog because when I tried, it wants me to be a member or fellow blogger or something - none of my comments show up.

Love, Mom

Light at the End of the Tunnel . . . and the Beginning of the Next One!

A lifetime of effort, soul-searching, waiting, naysayers, and hope was answered today. I recieved the following in my e-mail:

M.A. Program in Theatre History
Wednesday, April 1, 2009 2:23 PM
From: "Jennifer Wise"
To: "David Christopher"

Dear David;

It is with great pleasure that I'm writing to offer you admission into the M.A. program in Theatre History at UVic. The committee likes your proposal, and thinks that you will thrive within a graduate program. Congratulations!

You'll receive official notification from Graduate Studies shortly, once all the papers have been processed. In the meantime, I extend my congratulations, and encourage you to feel free to write whenever you have any questions.

Best regards, Jennifer.
************************
Dr. Jennifer Wise
Associate Professor and Graduate Coordinator
Department of Theatre
University of Victoria
Victoria, British Columbia
Canada V8W 2Y2

See you in 'the stacks',
Shakes.