Obama Proposes Facial Hair Stimulus

This just in from the Bagpipe’s own White House correspondent:

President Barack Obama called a press conference Saturday in his now-infamous “Atomic Economics” room in order to unveil his latest proposal in the fight against recession.

“My fellow citizens,” he said, in a voice grimmer than a triple-B bond, “We have gone too far for ordinary solutions. This is a solution with special sauce and sautéed onions. A solution worthy of a situation that increasingly resembles a crap sandwich with a side of warm coleslaw. I propose that the federal government approve a $15 billion dollar budget allotment toward the immediate growth of facial hair on my face. This is real change. This is a new face in the white house. This is what I came here for.”

Dangling modifiers aside, the president’s words were greeted with immediate applause, because really what else can you do? An official press release from the White House clarified his statements as much as humanly possible, which is as good as they’ve got since Klaatu resigned.

“The President’s facial hair stimulus program is designed to encourage the American people by lending gravitas to the Presidential aura in hopes that he can approach the bearded cool of other famous facial-haired African-Americans like Denzel Washington, Cornel West and ?uestlove from the Roots.

In addition, history has taught us that every truly great President has exhibited fantastic facial hair. Just think of Chester A. Arthur, whose impressive mutton chops enabled him to enact sweeping reform of the civil service. Or Rutherford B. Hayes, whose wizard-like beard gave him the confidence to put down labor strikes with federal troops. Not to mention William Howard Taft’s elegantly curved moustache, which reportedly made him a turn-of-the-century sex symbol, despite his three-hundred pound girth. For these reasons, and others which we would like to discuss but it’s time for our coffee break, we urge the congress to pass the facial hair stimulus as soon as possible.”

Following the announcement, bearded, mustachioed and muttoned men everywhere gathered in trashy bars and outdoors stores to celebrate. In the meantime, the Obama administration continued work on their next slate of stimulus-themed party hats, briefs, body oils and off-shore accounts. “The work never stops, and neither do we,” said one operative, still shaking from the after-effects of Stimulus Speed, which he’d likely mixed with Crisis Crank. In other news, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke sweats a fine single-malt. Correspondent out.

April Fools!

In honor of the day after April Fools, here is my latest output of satire:

Math Major Dies in Tragic Conceptual Firestorm

At 7:55 last Tuesday morning Sophomore Al Pharkerson arrived early for class in Mills 380, entirely ignorant of the flaming inferno awaiting him. As best as investigators can establish he was reviewing his notes from the previous Thursday’s Concepts in Mathematics when he misapplied an extremely volatile matrix series to a fractal equation, resulting in what mathematics safety specialists have dubbed “the perfect storm.”

Apparently Mr. Pharkerson’s ignorance of higher mathematics, combined with the dizzying amount of complex concepts facing him, ignited the flammable substrate of pure numbers that hangs in the atmosphere around the third floor of Mills, resulting in a conceptual firestorm so destructive it nearly consumed the entire science department with its intense heat.

The Pharkerson Incident (or PI for short), as math historians have dubbed it, takes its place in the pantheon of mathematical catastrophes alongside such famous disasters as Euclid’s Logical Lightning-Storm and the Great Fire of Princeton in 1987, reportedly sparked by the invention of string theory.

“We regret that such a regrettable occurrence took place on our campus” said Dr. Snark, Covenant’s resident expert on the mathematical paranormal, “however, given the dangerous nature of the equations Mr. Pharkerson was dealing with, I think it can be safely said he knew the risks. The lesson we should all draw from this sad story is simple: math is dangerous, kids. Stick to the Liberal Arts.”

“Praise Hero” Allows Anyone to Lead Chapel

Microsoft’s latest Praise Hero video-game for the X-Box 360 has shaken up youth groups, church camps and Christian colleges everywhere with its egalitarian implications: now anyone can lead worship.

The video game is similar to the popular Guitar Hero and Rock Band games, but instead of classic rock tracks, it includes such praise music classics as “Lord I Lift Your Name on High” and “Heart of Worship.” In addition, optional accessories like the patented Hand Position Sensor Glove and the Obligatory Cello offer even broader possibilities for game play.

Covenant’s own Chaplain Messed’er is excited about the possibilities. “Now we don’t need to limit our chapel worship-leading positions to those who can strum three chords and carry a tune. Anybody can do it. And I mean anybody. We might even let Joel Piedt help out.”

Given the run-away success of Praise Hero, Microsoft has begun development on further Hero-style interactive product lines. Reportedly Philosophy Hero is a possibility for the academic market, along with other more controversial titles like Knife Fight Hero and Dead Cat Swing Hero. No word yet on the much-anticipated Do Something Real For Once Hero, which threatens to throw the entire franchise into an all-consuming black hole of self-parody.

The Hot Watch: “It” is In

“It” is the new thing in music. “It” is next. “It” is big. “It” is it. “It” is what’s on the Hot Watch this week. Oh yes my indie fishies. There is a new genre burbling out of the fecund pool of genius somewhere in South Brooklyn, and that genre is “it.”

“’It’ is like no-wave,” said one single 40-year old unemployed expert, “but without the wave. Or the no.” “’It’ just is, man” commented another lousy excuse for a human being, “’It’ is music in the realm of pure being.”

The semantic difficulties caused by the new genre’s baffling name can all be traced back to the movement’s founding band: ^*%!!!!), whose name is only pronounceable by trained linguists and native speakers of Igbo.

“It” has so far generated more buzz than Flo Rida’s admission to criminal possession of goat testicles, the growing self-knowledge of Madonna’s sentient hair-piece, and Britney’s come-back. This despite the fact that no band associated with the genre has yet released a single recording.

“We’ll get around to it” said ^*%!!!!)’s lead singer. First we have to re-design our web-site, start a tour diary and learn which way to hold the guitar.” Anticipation and pretension both remain high, as does this reporter’s tab at the Greenwich Village Pub, but that’s beside the point. Incidentally, “The Point” is probably the next genre on the Hot Watch.

Also next on the Hot Watch: the Grizzly Bear side-project chain reaction reaches critical mass; Chris Brown offers restitution to Rihanna to be payable in pizza bagels; and Matt Brown breaks into the underground trip-hop scene. Stay tuned.

Book Review: Beer and Loathing

This spring break I read two things: Sartre’s What is Writing? and a novel entitled (no joke) Beer and Loathing in Panama City: A Bloodthirsty Spring Break Exodus, by Keith Strausbaugh. Sartre says of the poet, “one might think that he is composing a sentence, but this is only what it appears to be. He is creating an object.” In other words, literature is the creation of an object outside of the self. Then again, from another point of view literature is an encounter with another self.

Strausbaugh’s book fails on both counts. Though his unpleasant self is spattered across the pages of Beer and Loathing, he doesn’t give the reader any reason to want to keep the encounter going. And he certainly doesn’t go far toward creating a credible artistic object. His parody of Hunter S. Thompson soon degrades into a parody of himself, leaving the reader with a plotless mess of flat characters.

Beer and Loathing in Panama City is not a good book. What fascinates me is the fact that Keith Strausbaugh wrote it. He created a fictional proxy for himself, sent this self-object on a wild ride through the soul-destroying emptiness of spring break Panama City, then wrapped it up in a cheap paperback and self-published it. What impulse drives a human being to do this?

According to Sartre, “the function of the writer is to act in such a way that nobody can be ignorant of the world.” Strausbaugh certainly burns with this desire for “disclosure,” in Sartre’s words. His abrasive style builds to an angry diatribe against traditional morality, but the form can’t bear the weight of the content.

Bad art fails to turn the creator’s need for expression into something that can affect the beholder. Tomorrow I will forget Beer and Loathing in Panama City and so should you. But you won’t forget Sartre once you’ve read him, even if you want to.

Strausbaugh’s failure and Sartre’s success both prove that this need for disclosure is a force to be reckoned with. Something inside of us yearns to be expressed, but once it’s out it becomes an independent thing-in-itself. Or, from another angle, we strive to create self-transcendent beauty but then find that our creations reveal us in unexpected ways. No matter how many different ways we talk about it the final point is that we can’t stop talking. Literature is an essential act.

The Bail-Out

If you read only one thing about the financial crisis, read this CBS interview with Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke.  Really.  Fed Chairmen almost never give interviews, but since these are extraordinary times, he did it anyway.  He explains the crisis and the government’s response to it in very approachable terms.

Sonnets: Loss=Transformation

I

In Praise of Forgetfulness

A patterned absence: shadow leaves on snow,

A strain of music on the wind, a wisp

Of something in my mouth. The subtle gifts

Are given in his place, and somehow known

As traces, tracks left by the animal,

Who, great as men are great, would naturally

Impress himself on his surroundings, we

Reason, not willing to admit that all

The tears aside, a door will be a door

Without his heavy knock, a book will be

A book without his voice. The way we see

Him missing in the kitchen’s dirty floor

Persists, as dirt persists, but then again

Did not the dirt itself once pass—to man?

II

The Birdmen Lose Their Wings

It was difficult at first without the wings,

The feeling was all off, the balance wrong

As if we’d lost the tunes to all our songs

But something still impelled us all to sing.

We leapt off cliffs and balconies and dropped

Like stones in water through our native air,

Then higher, higher climbed, high as we dared,

Till even the most desperate had to stop.

We walked for several days on bloody feet,

Like animals, all shackled to the earth

Back packed with all the others lame from birth.

Till drawn by some starred piper to the sea,

We dreaming limped through dark awaiting night

And plunged into the cool, deep, secret flight.

III

After the Ascension

Angel: Why stand you staring after him?

He’s gone but he will soon return again,

And you will drown in floods of glory when

He rends the earth’s thin veil, but do not swim,

Inhale. Yet while you breathe stale air, I say:

Do not forget what wonder round about

Enshrines your dry dust path. Soon you will doubt,

It will be long, you will not know the way

But do not be so foolish as to think

That dust is dust, and not the stuff God’s hands

Made into you, that man is only man,

And not the image of the great unseen.

So now go forth, shake temples, shudder kings.

Go forth! Your world must shatter ere it sings.