Lament (1/1/97)
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Walking through the student neighborhood the other evening, I passed a large boardinghouse and overheard a typical group of guys hanging around on the front porch exercising their gifts for repartee. It used to be unusual for people to stand around outdoors in thirtydegree weather, but it’s an important part of the Slacker ethos to hang out no matter what circumstances may oppose it, and, again, though cigarette smoking is once again universal it is no longer permitted indoors, even in houses full of nicotine addicts: plus ca change, etc. [or the other way around.] Usually the conversations you overhear in this fashion are imbecilic and depressing, e.g., the two guys I’d overheard the night before this holding forth on peanutbutter pussy [brown, spreads easily]: imitation Gangsta. But on this occasion out of a clear and cloudless ether I heard someone proclaiming loudly to the laughter and approval of his audience: “Don’t crush that dwarf! Hand me the pliars... .”
From which evidence I suppose we may conclude that, whatever one might have hoped, though the drivein theater, the hamburger that tasted like one, and a general appreciation of the rules of English grammar have fallen by the wayside, such pathetic fossils as mainframe Cobol and the collected works of the Firesign Theater seem destined to lurch forward into the Twentyfirst Century. — And we beside them. Go figure.
____________Christmas song (12/24/96)
