They Egg My Car, I Turn the Other Quarter-panel

For some people a car is an extension of the self. It's an iconic symbol of their inner desires and fears. Some want to go fast. Some want to feel safe. Some may even want to seem as though they are more well-endowed than they actually are (still cannot get over the Hummer [It's almost as though we're on cultural steroids]). But for many of us, a car is still primarily and most importantly a tool used for transportation. Sure, it can help get you laid, save your life in the event of an emergency, double as a house, or whatever. But there was definitely a vote somewhere around 1906: horse-and-buggy or automobile. Had it been a vote on style, I'm afraid Henry Ford might not have become the household name he became. Nor would I have gotten laid on the night of November 12, 1995 at approximately 10:18. Just kidding. It was November 13. Just kidding.

Not that I ever owned a car that could have gotten me laid. Which is not to say that I can't be gotten laid. I can be gotten laid by lots of things. Once, my microscope got me laid. Seriously. No, seriously. And now that I'm getting into electronics, they're practically throwing themselves at me--to which I reply, "Ladies, ladies, please. Don't make me get out my Tesla coil." But anyway, I never owned that kind of car. I wish I had a story to tell about my 1981 Datsun 310GX and Susie-so-and-so. Or about my 1982 Toyota Tercel and Ms. what's-her-name. Or better yet, about the threesome in the back of my 1987 Ford Festiva with purple and pink frilly pinstripes (As if you could even sit three people back there!). Thanks a lot, Henry! How's the soy treatin' ya?

I won't, however, deny that a car may be, in some instances or regards, a true extension of the self that owns it. I have some friends who really feel that a car's sleek design, performance, and maneuverability show the rest of the world that those qualities are a natural extension of the owner's personal refinement. Whatever, dude. All I know is I got a 1995 Mazda Protege with some bad teeth, if you know what I mean. I'm sure the innards are in disarray. Gonna break down anyday now. Better call a doctor. But yeah, an extension of the self. Since I took ownership of mine, it's got a dented hood, a busted window, then, plastic wrapped around that window's door for about eight months, paint damage from vandal key-markings, and now, the final insult--egg--on the front left quarter-panel. Perhaps needless to say when sporting a week's worth of untrimmed beard growth: I still haven't washed the egg off my car and it's been a few months (I think [I mean, it could have been there a lot longer for all I know {What day is this?}]).

Now, some of you may be thinking, tsk-tsk (others of you may be thinking, that's a lot of parenthetical notation). More likely, you're asking me, where's my self-pride. Well, we'll get to more on that some other time. But for now, allow me to submit another calculation altogether. Suppose the vandals believe that other people think just like them, that belongings (and cars, particularly) are somehow intimately tied to the owner's sense of self, so that by defacing them, they, the vandals, are directly wounding the pride of the owner. And the vandals' belief would be vindicated by the owner's reaction if the owner's pride were so superficial as to be wounded by such an act. Now, suppose the owner had this calculation in mind, all the while not washing his car of the egg, but instead, actively denying the vandals their satisfaction of seeing the symbol of his wounded pride, a cleaned quarter-panel.

Now, you might say, a cleaned quarter-panel would show defiance to a vandal; that it would show him he cannot win. I'm sorry about your misfortune. The vandal sees a dare. And they're usually as up to the challenge as any Hummer-driving, middle-aged, suburbanite mom. You cannot defeat vandals. It's only a question of how sweet you are going to make their victory. A "loss" by your terms is a victory in theirs. It's like terrorists. You cannot defeat them once they've made up their mind. At best, you can proactively promote conditions that tend not to breed terrorists, and not respond as they'd hope, with undue attention to one's pride or semi- or equally-as-blind violent retribution on masses of innocent people.

With that at least partially in mind, I decided not to wash it off in my own display of defiance; my pride resides somewhere deeper, where their random acts of violence cannot penetrate. No, the egg is not on my face, my friends. It is on my car. But, you know what? I'm gonna turn the other quarter-panel.

Of course, on the other hand, it may just be that I'm a lazy bum full of self-delusions...



© 2005 George Czar

Vinnie: The Vignette

It was either the shrimp or the clams. And seeing as Vinnie was feeling every bit of his 5' 0" stature, he chose the clams. No ma’am, no shrimp for Vinnie. No pint-sized beverages. No small fries. No finger sandwiches. And certainly no cocktail wieners, either. He was a grown man. Couldn’t she see that? He would have shown her too.

"I’ll have the clams."

He pulled his chin back a bit while he talked and dropped his Adam’s apple as far down his throat as he could manage without swallowing it. In the past he’d tried huffing different solvents to deepen his voice. He found one that worked, but only temporarily. And since he couldn’t keep from passing out afterwards, it didn’t do him any good. So he turned to smoking, which, aside from deepening his voice a little over time, also had the advantage of making him look more grown-up. Or so he thought. Vinnie still had to take out his driver’s license each time he wanted a pack of squares. And it was never the quick once-over of the compulsory sort a clerk gives to simply remain in compliance. He and his license were almost always given thorough scrutiny. The clerk, if he was older, would hold the license out at arms length and look down at it with his eyebrows raised high. Then, he’d eyeball Vinnie with his head down so he could see over the rectangular rims of his reading glasses. Boy, did that just eat Vinnie up. He was 23 and had two cars and a house to his name. There were 17 hairs on his chest. He was a grown man. Couldn’t they see that? He would have shown them too.

And that was just it. Vinnie never had the opportunity to show them, any of them. It always worked that way, where, just as he’d figured that he was being done some egregious injustice on account of his small stature and he’d resolved to make a stand, why, then, the other person would seem just as disinterested as a doorknob. Vinnie was sure that the whole world laughed at him behind his back. Nothing could be further from the truth. Some people noticed he was a bit short, certainly. But it was never cause for fits of the giggle bugs. No matter, though, everything mocked Vinnie’s size. Take a simple handshake. Nothing could be more civil and agreeable than a handshake between two fellows. It was a joke to Vinnie, a god-awful joke. His hand was almost invariably swallowed every time by his counterpart. A handshake makes fellows of otherwise natural adversaries, puts one on an equal level with the other. Vinnie felt all the keen brotherhood of the handshake right up until the handshake itself. Then he made his hand as stiff as he could to assert himself and to prevent its being crushed, and cursed the god-awful humiliating experience with all his mite. He knew he was just as good as any other man, but somehow he felt inferior.

Nothing pissed off Vinnie as much as midgets and dwarves. They were special and he was just short. And he hated the pygmy tribes of Africa, too, as they could at least enjoy acceptance within their own culture since it was composed of people like themselves. It was no matter to Vinnie that they were exploited by the larger people of the towns and villages.....

The waitress finished taking Vinnie's order. She went back to the kitchen. And Vinnie's worst nightmare came true....


© 2005 George Czar

Alarm Clock Radio

Alarm clock radio,
You shake me from my silent slumber
With sleepy-time sonic thunder.

Your doleful shrieks
And your digital display
Count not the weeks,
But each monotonous day.

Twenty-four hours from a.m. to p.m.
You ought to be screaming carpe diem.
At an hour of my choosing, you steal my rest
Like some sick, self-mutilating jest.

I’m a glutton for stress.
For your snooze button I press.
I can’t contest your punctuality,
But for nine minutes, I can delay reality

And recapture the cornucopia of images
Lost in my head
While I revisit a utopia of visages
In the land of the dead.


© 1997 George Czar

A Not Entirely Non-Palindromic TidbiT: An Informal Linguistic Analysis of Such-and-Such

As you may have already noticed, I take an unusually strong interest in words and the things that can be done with them. Strong as my inclination may be, however, I am only a dabbler in the babbler arts. I take as monopoly money what others might make their bread by. For them, the lingua franca will suffice by itself, lending all that is needed to gain currency, to transact, to get whatever is to be gotten in this world. I'll call them "paid writers", generally. But for some, and this includes me in large measure, lingua franca is not enough, it needs to be folded back in on itself, or brought to bear on itself, like smashing matter together in particle accelerators to better find out the nature of the matter. Now, you might be asking, what's the matter with me. To which I would reply, that's a complicated question that begs a separate article altogether. But what makes language tick? How do its nuts and bolts fit together? And, perhaps most importantly, how can we better employ it to enjoy life more? These are the things folks like me want to know and, perhaps, vainly seek answers to.

For now, I will be happy to titillate your yearnings with the invagination of a "tidbit". You heard me right. Sounds dirty doesn't it? And you thought this linguistics stuff would be boring!

As the title to this piece suggests, "tidbit" is almost a palindrome, but it's not. Read backwards, it spells "tibdit", which--while pretty neat-looking--is not a palindrome. On the other hand, it is certainly something. I don't know if there is a name for it, yet. But if there's not a name for it, I'm calling it "invagination", when a word or combination of words is symmetrical when "folded" around a center line. In this case, "tidbit" could be folded as "tid bit" if you can imagine a more symmetrical font being used so that, for instance, the tails on the t's would not cause asymmetry. I suppose I could just call it "symmetry". But that wouldn't do me any good in trying to illustrate the fun of bringing a language to bear on itself--figuratively and literally.

Moving right along then...

Interestingly, I, like our fearless leader of the same first name, have struggled with dyslexic moments from time to time. Only, I like to fancy that my struggles are of a higher order and of a more subtle fashion. Anyway, I once mistakenly wrote "logarithm" for "algorithm" in a piece about the origin of human language (which, if you behave yourselves, I just might share with you later). Two, seemingly similar, or too seemingly similar? They each are composed of the same letters. Only the first four are arranged differently, "-rithm" remaining the same. Such specialty words with such similar spellings and identical endings must have similar roots right? Well, take a look for yourselves....

algorithm

1699, from Fr. algorithme refashioned (under mistaken connection with Gk. arithmos "number") from O.Fr. algorisme "the Arabic numeral system, " from M.L. algorismus, a mangled transliteration of Ar. al-Khwarizmi "native of Khwarazm, " surname of the mathematician whose works introduced sophisticated mathematics to the West (see algebra). The earlier form in M.E. was algorism (c.1230), from O.Fr. Modern use of algorithmic to describe symbolic rules or language is from 1881.

logarithm

1614, Mod.L. logarithmus, coined by Scot. mathematician John Napier (1550-1617), lit. "ratio-number, " from Gk. logos "proportion, ratio, word" (see logos) + arithmos "number" (see arithmetic). arithmetic c.1250, from O.Fr. arsmetique, from L. arithmetica, from Gk. arithmetike (tekhne) "(the) counting (art), " from arithmos "number, " from PIE base *ri- "number" (cf. O.E., O.H.G. rim "number;" O.Ir. rim "number, " dorimu "I count;" L. ritus "religious custom"). Originally in Eng. arsmetrik, on folk etymology from L. ars metrica; spelling corrected early 16c. Replaced native tFlcrFft "tell-craft."

...As you can see, there's plenty to dissect. They do have a similar root in "arithmos". But it's more complicated than it first seems.

Another curiosity of language--and this may be more reflective of the idiosynchratic nature of my own idiolect than anything else--is that every time I see the word "awry" I cannot help but think of "haywire" and vice versa. Everytime I see "haywire" I think "awry". Why is that, I ask. I answer (if only to amuse myself): It must be because their meanings are similar enough and that their constituent letters are similar enough and that their pronunciations are even similar enough that they both occupy neighboring neurons in my brain. Is it only my idiosynchratic, idiotic idiolect, or does anyone else suffer this boner as well?

And last but not least, is one of my own little gems of garbled english. It bears being stated that I have a bit of a flare for the dramatic, that I tend to act out in mimicry what I've heard in the past, much like a child--jokingly, at first, because, for instance, it's somehow funny to talk like mom and dad. But sometimes, that mimicry becomes its own beast, is internalized completely and becomes part of me. Thus spawned, my idiolect, my own language, my own beast comes into its own again and again in a compounding fashion, adding on accents and what-have-you somewhat haphazardly. And so I find my speech can take on myriad shades of separate dialects all at once. Here, in this phrase, it seems to convey a certain blackness--that is, African-American vernacular--melded with ordinary, common white-folksy talk. And I am probably going to be comfortable with that. In fact, the phrase is the previous sentence. Only, when spoken, it sounds like, "Omina prolly be comfterble with at".

And so ends the informal analysis of such-and-such.


© 2005 George Czar

The Wee Hours

Ron awoke. He worked hard at the saliva, pushing and pulling it, spreading it thin to each corner of his sleep-dried mouth. Soon, the unrelenting parchédness forced an earlier-than-usual refrigerator raid. Through the latched bedroom door, into the thick wall of hot, humid air, down the interminable hallway of the all-but-vaulted ceiling, drunkenly lumbering along. The gooey mouth of morning stench of unbrushed cheese and crackers. At long last, the pearly white gate, the long-handled white door of airlocked cool, wherein lies the thirst-quenching elixir. Ron's bare back, bristling with temperature changing goose pimples and pelt fur. Only, he called them "goose bumps" and "man fur". Chugging. Chugging. Chugging the elixir; one part hydrogen, two parts oxygen, nine hundred seventy-three parts sugar. Kool-aid, indeed. Somnambulant. In the buff, exchanging pleasantries with the house plant hanging from the corner. Ron's mind began to stir with its first thoughts of the day.

Meanwhile...

The business of the bank at 2:00 p.m. was a steady, white affair. Keys were being pecked at in every direction. Phones rang and were being answered quickly and politely. There were suits, ties, skirts and blouses--all dancing around as if in a fixed little bubble of whirring, preordained maneuvers. Except, every now and again, a stapler needed refilled or the floor rewaxed. But, by-and-by, intelligent design was not without the foresight of such circumstances. And extra cogs, gears, and pulleys were duly put in place long before any stapler was ever out of staples. And so the tellers, with their pert little curls, manicured nails, and cherubic faces could call with confidence from their machicolated workspaces, the next customer. There were turnstiles, counters, compartments, right angles--everywhere, the axiomatic certainty of a geometer's proof.

But this was a new bank, a new machine, not yet tried and tested. It was but a few days and five hours old, when, at 2:01 p.m., the yonder stirrings of Ron's mind became the murmurs of a little chubby lady teller taken with the view of a naked man-beast outstretched toward the ceiling, talking to what seemed to be a house plant. A man waiting for his first car loan almost heard her as she turned to her co-workers, all in a line at the drive-thru window, and in a hushed tone, with a red face, delivered them a taboo.

"Don't look in the window up there." Whispering even more quietly--but emphatically, "He's naked again."



© 2005 George Czar

I was certain that a gnat had landed on the bridge of my nose.

The Idea Monger and His Alphabet Soup

I was sitting around wondering what to write. Then, I had an idea. Why not have a bowl of alphabet soup? What better way to conjure up the elusive muse from within my own noodle than to have a hearty helping of those alpha-numeric noodles, steeped in a steamy broth of salty herbs? Ah-ha. The random combinatorial action of the swirling spoon making whirling words from eddies. Eddy-fied spaghettis. Yeah, that's the ticket. I'm going to buy some alphabet noodles and create The Soup That Wrote a Million Verses.

On a separate, but related note, I wonder if the Chinese have pictograph soup. Wouldn't that be something?



© 2005 George Czar

The Over-Soul: Let Us Hearken Unto It

The Germans, I believe, had a word for it: Über-Pflumpfelmetzerkeit. It literally meant, "over the river and through the woods". In their own cacophonous way, they were attempting to describe the Over-Soul, that most sublime of profundities first described by Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American philosopher and Transcendentalist. Today, there is a college named for him, as well as a whole line of mid-range furniture, specifically, mattresses, I think. That's what you get for being a radical.

Where have you gone Ralph Waldo Emerson? Our nation turns its lonely "I" to you. Here in America, something's gone awry. We've substituted the Over-Soul, a thing of subtlety and nuance, for overkill, over-size, and overdone. I won't even tell you what the Germans call those things. It ain't pretty. But up, up, and away we've gone with Superman and the supreme celebration of the individual, treading the Over-Soul underfoot. We've gone from Transcendentalism to Condescendentalism.

While we're at it, let's all buy a Hummer and give ourselves blowjobs. For such as it is, we've only transcended the masturbatory. We creep ever-closer to the purely hedonistic "Orgy-Porgy" of Huxley's Brave New World.

Individual liberty and autonomy are absolutely crucial, to be sure. But wheresoever has there ever truly been an island in the universe? Whosoever has confined his act to isolation so that he may dispense with--with certainty--all utilitarian aims?

And though it may be granted that all things, being deconstructed, are nonsense; that all arguments are rendered moot by-and-by and consigned to oblivion; I here lay claim to the resonant wisdom of the ages, to the soundest foundation mankind has known: that a proper relation of the individual to his society is a harmonious striving, though forever imperfect it must be. As to his psychological self, wherein all things lie--bizarre and befuddled the one moment, clear and orderly the next--I leave him to his own inner-light, his own luminant ruminant, saying only: now chew on this; the Over-Soul comes in three mouth-watering flavors. Let us hearken unto it.


© 2005 George Czar

We, Who Don't Do Body Counts

No one ever told anyone to
"shoot that man".

We concentrate our firepower
here
or there.

We lay down cover fire in a
general direction.

We take out artillery units,
infrastructure,
soft targets.

We don’t kill
people.

Let them count ‘em.
But don’t trust ‘em.
Arabs have a funny way
with numbers.

© 2005 George Czar

Fanciful Speculations on the Communistic Nature of Evolution's Natural Selection Based on Division of Labor within Neolithic Culture

Like many manly men, I find myself with a superfluity of hair where there once was none--namely, on the body--and a dearth where once there was plenty--namely, on the scalp. And then, the thought occurred to me: maybe this genetic predisposition was nature's way of equalizing the division of labor amongst groomers in early man. If a man came about genetically that grew both a lot of scalp hair and a lot of body hair, then, maybe his social group refused to groom him on the grounds that it would result in an unfair division of labor. Once ostracized from the group, he--and his genes--stood little chance of perpetuating themselves; and, outside of the occassional mutation, died out. So then, we are left with abundant/adequate scalp hair and little/no body hair types or little/no scalp hair and abundant/adequate body hair types. And this keeps the division of labor amongst groomers in early man harmonious. Just kidding. Sort of.



© 2005 George Czar