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An Allegory for Our Time [Dan Collins]

Or at least, so I’m told:

Here’s a little blast from the past that requires a simple paste and therefore seems worth my time to repeat.  It may seem non-sequitur on the surface but it was appropriate in the context of Goldbrick’s usual blather about some nuanced subject only he has a grasp of.

Watch out Godstein!

All those closeted ‘Beer Putsch’ liberals who have

forsaken their ideology for the sake of winning

are gonna getcha’.

We know ProteinWife’s real name is ‘HighPockets’ and

is a double agent for the Allies.  She has taken down three members of the French Resistance so far

without suffering a scratch.

We recognize the merits of the cross-dressing J. Edgar Hoover and have duplicated his little black book.  We have the dirt on you and yours.

We, of the left leaning CIA set up Cheney using

Joe’s wife as bait.  Hell, the Wilsons were in on it.

Cheney was just doin’ what he thought was right.

And if a few contacts were liquidated, well, it was worth it.  Because we will do anything to stop

BushCo from fightin’ terrorism.  Shit, those freaking loons-who-hate-pantaloons have kept us in gravy for the past 35 years.  We can’t allow those

righteous fighters for truth and justice to kill

our cash cow. So we joined forces with the enemies of Democracy and Freedom to defeat the Crusaders for Justice and the American Way.  If that’s not Patriotism, I don’t know what is.

Posted by Semanticleo | permalink

on 07/26 at 11:37 AM

So, feel free to interpret it as thee may, only know that whoso goes beneath the surface does so at his own peril.

The nineteenth-century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.

The nineteenth-century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.

Or maybe this was an allegory for our time?

Missing U.S. woman found dead behind her bookcase; may have fallen adjusting TV plug

From Associated Press

November 25, 2006 9:44 PM EST

NEW PORT RICHEY, Florida – A woman’s body was found wedged upside-down behind a bookcase in the home she shared with relatives who had spent nearly two weeks looking for her.

A spokesman for the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office said Mariesa Weber’s death was not suspicious. Family members said they believe she fell over as she tried to adjust the plug of a television behind the bookshelf.

Weber, 38, returned home Oct. 28 and greeted her mother, then was not seen again. Her family thought she had been kidnapped and contacted authorities. Family members scoured her room for clues but found nothing, though they did notice a strange smell.

On Nov. 9, Weber’s sister went into her bedroom late at night and looked behind a bookcase, where she saw the woman’s foot. Using a flashlight the family saw Weber was wedged upside-down behind the unit.

“I’m sleeping in the same house as her for 11 days, looking for her,” her mother, Connie Weber, told the St. Petersburg Times. “And she’s right in the bedroom.”

Both Weber and her sister had previously adjusted the television plug by standing on a bureau next to the shelf and leaning over the top. Her family believes Weber, who was 5-foot-3 (1.59 meters) and barely 100 pounds (45 kilograms), may have fallen headfirst into the space.

“She’s a little thing,” her mother said. “And the bookcase is 6 feet tall and solid. And she couldn’t get out.”

The sheriff’s office said Weber appeared to have died because she was unable to breathe in the position she was in.

48 Replies to “An Allegory for Our Time [Dan Collins]”

  1. the yellow dog barks at midnight.

  2. sockpuppet in training says:

    It is snowing in Denver.

  3. Dan Collins says:

    Pisces:

    You are likely to feel a bit lonely and perhaps even isolated, dear Pisces. Perhaps you think that no one else has the same wild thoughts running through their heads that you do. You’d be surprised to learn how many people actually do. It is unlikely, however, that you will share these thoughts with anyone – especially not at this time. Don’t feel like you have to. Just know that you are not alone and that you have a tremendous network of people to support you at all times.

  4. It is chilly in New Mexico and… the cats have torn holes in my hands.

  5. 6Gun says:

    Let me guess.  He pulled a Lost in Translation on us?!

  6. Dan Collins says:

    Hush, you!  I am told that this is brilliant allegory.  Just because I don’t get it doesn’t mean it isn’t.  I was hoping one of you guys would.

    Sorry, Maggie.

  7. i’m just so touched.

    that and i’m not going near any outlets for a while. okay, i have *cough* quite a few pounds on that lady, but i think my bookcases could be even scarier.

  8. I once titled a post “Caliban’s Mirror over Procrustes’s Bed”. I’m not entirely sure what I meant by that, but it’s got Greeks and Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde and sex all rolled into one, and therefore doesn’t have to mean anything.

  9. Dan Collins says:

    Maggie,

    Damn good thing you’ve got some pounds on that lady.  I’m not living with anyone who’s going to turn up dead behind a bookcase 11 days after the fact.

    Angie,

    Dammit.  I was hoping you’d help me unravel the Spenserian layers of the semanticleo anti-Goldsteinian allegory.

  10. Major John says:

    If you crack the semanticleo code, your next assignement will be actus.

  11. Major John, who in their right mind would accept that assignment?

  12. Brendan says:

    The chair is against the wall.

    The chair is against the wall.

    John has a long moustache.

    John has a long moustache.

  13. monkyboy says:

    The next six months are critical?

  14. furriskey says:

    Remarkable. Semantic leo is too reminiscent of the late, unlamented Jack “Fat Boy” Goff for this to be a coincidence. The conceit, the arrogant illiteracy, the posturing absurdity. It has to be “Fat Boy” revivified.

  15. TomB says:

    Mistranslation.

    “Drop your pants, I cannot wait until lunchtime.”

    “My nipples explode with delight.”

  16. Farmer Joe says:

    Tubal-cain.

    Judgement for the plaintiff!

  17. Mikey NTH says:

    All they have is rage?I can’t say that I’m surprised…

  18. semanticleo says:

    Jeez.  You people will distract yourselves with anything to avoid thinking about your signature clusterfuck, Iraq.  Well, I will play along if you want to extend your denial indefinitely.

    how about a limerick?

    There once was a lawyer named Scooter,

    Who spied a spook’s spouse as a looter

    He got caught in a trap

    Agreed he would yap

    And fingered his boss as the shooter.

    Or maybe Collins would prefer another ‘pastiche’?

    Wagners’ ‘…Valkyries’ played through

    a 10 megawatt McIntosh Amp and

    Altec Lansing ‘Voice of the Theatre’

    drivers and woofers cascading, and

    not competing with the rotor clap

    of the Hugheys as FitzZorro, cigar

    clenched in his ivory keys; shouts

    orders to his men “Nail that endo-

    morph!”

    Almost instantaneously, rocket pods

    explode around the rotund Rove,

    too absorbed in masticating his

    T-Bone on a stick, to react to the

    lightning attack. Nevertheless,

    he scrambles, thinning hair

    a’smolderin’, to shelter under a side-

    walk Bistro table, which conceals

    little of his ample frame. Fitz

    pulls the dogrocket out of his mouth,

    and almost imperceptibly whispers;

    “I love the smell of bacon in the

    morning.”

  19. 6Gun says:

    <crickets>

  20. Rusty says:

    The clock bullshit has somehow become understandable.So. He’s got that on the plus side. Other than that it looks like a rap without the music. Which makes it kinda, not kinda, but, really lame. I gave the left more credit for being artsy.

    Hey! does anybody else think that the recycled antiwar 60s philsophy is embarrassing for the left? I mean, you’d think after all this time they would have hipped it up a little. You know. More style. Shit. Some of those guys haven’t even changed their clothes. The whole left philosophy seems to be that – we know everything is crap and we’ll get around to fixing it as soon a we finish this bong. The whole left thing is like walking in on your parents while they’re screwing. Ya know?

  21. 6Gun says:

    Hey! does anybody else think that the recycled antiwar 60s philsophy is embarrassing for the left?

    That and the “10 megawatt McIntosh amp”.

  22. semanticleo says:

    “The clock bullshit”

    You mean ‘meter’?

    >idiot>

  23. semanticleo says:

    “Hey! does anybody else think that the recycled antiwar 60s philsophy is embarrassing for the left?”

    Who’s anti-war?  Oh yeah, chickenhawks.

    Bulletheads Bulletin—-

    After P.E.T.A. and Greenpeace formed an alliance that was funded by the billions in captial put up by Financier George Soros in 2007, there have been numerous attacks by the newly armed watercraft owned by the Needing Orgasms with Whales Society, or NOWS as it is euphemistically called. Although only armed with 50 caliber machine guns and 20mm cannons the conservatives on cruise ships have been scattering across the decks like giant wharf rats when fired on. Of course, the captain of the attacking ship always is sorry. He telegraphs an apology. Must be one those touchy feely types.

    Anyway, a NOWS spokesman says;”They drove us to this. They’re are always on the attack. We finally got tired of just using our words, and fight these nazis. Once we got into it for real, they back down like all bullies do. Some of the ones who talk up the war in Iraq the most are the ones’ least likely to enlist. Bwwwaaack. bk. bk .bk They’re like fucking Vikings with wood swords. They yell alot. But they don’t pack any real punch.”

  24. furriskey says:

    Fat Boy Goff reckoned he could write poetry too, but he was sadly mistaken.

  25. 6Gun says:

    your signature clusterfuck, Iraq.

    Whose clusterfuck?  And why is it so, mister solutions man, if it indeed is?

  26. 6Gun says:

    Posted by semanticleo | permalink

    on 11/26 at 03:23 PM

    You speak that trooth to reality, Clio.  Speak it.  Read it right off the inside of your skull.

  27. Jeff Goldstein says:

    Just for the record, semanticleo is another university type who is afraid to use a real name.  The second (or third, or fourth, I’ve lost count) coming of “Thersites”.

    Brave warriors of the word!  The Legion of Logos, these—out to do battle with wretched neocons whose poison is tainting the human spirit!  They are the semantic soldiers of the New World Order, hardened rhetoriticians who will thrust themselves into the fray whenever the Good Kind of Peopleâ„¢ need them, their actions coordinated to to prevent the coarsening of civilization by the likes of “neocons” like the filthy sophist, “Goldbrick”! 

    So long as, you know, they are allowed to do so from the safety of their anonymous cloisters, their hands firmly wrapped around their hardware.  Because there’s no need to bring accountability into this.

    And after reading their dross, it’s hardly suprising they’d wish to remain shadow internet identities, it it?

    What’s wrong, “semanticleo”?  Nobody paying attention to you over at Tom Maguire’s place?

  28. semanticleo says:

    Goldbrick;

    Perhaps I should use your proper name now that

    it is rumored you have been ‘commissioned’ to write a screenplay.  I didn’t know porn required any actual script, but then I am not an authority.  At any rate, I’m sure the spouse is grateful for any income your might contribute.

    BTW,

    What is your definition of ‘anonymous’?

    My name and email is available to any who wish to

    know my identity.  Or should I publish my home address?  Yours would have to precede.

  29. Rusty says:

    You mean ‘meter’?

    >idiot>

    Posted by semanticleo

    In your own words. You’d have to have been there.

    Ya might want to go back a couple of months and read up a little. That way you don’t come off as lame and you won’t embarrass yourself.Not that you haven’t already.

  30. Jeff Goldstein says:

    Yes, here you are, Dana.  A professor of Political Studies at Pitzer.

    I imagine the university college is proud to have someone stumbling around the internet using names like “Goldbrick” to refer to people of a particular persuasion.

    Incidentally, what’s the standard line taught in “Political Studies” these days about child-rearing?  Are we teaching that it’s no longer an important domestic function, since women have been liberated?  Or do I get to use the grandmother clause—you know, the one where I’m given credit for performing an important and difficult social service worthy of inclusion in history books? 

    Beware the yellow wallpaper.

    And yes, my spouse is terribly grateful.  Sure, I don’t make as much as a Professor of Political Studies at Pitzer College.  But then, I also have the luxury of not being a Professor of Political Studies at Pitzer College.

    So it’s a wash.

  31. Jeff Goldstein says:

    Anyway, take your shots at my “worth” based on how much money you think I bring in, oh champion of the poor!  Me, I’m going to hit the Bowflex.

  32. semanticleo says:

    “In your own words. You’d have to have been there.”

    I was there.  Now I’m gone.

    Tic-tic-tic-tic

    The clock is running and a deletion is coming

  33. Dan Collins says:

    No, I’m not deleting this.  It’s the sort of testimony that ought to be on the intarwebs forever.

    Christ, I had cleo down for 22 or 23 years old, maybe.  Cool that you build houses, though.

  34. Jeff Goldstein says:

    And reads Caleb Williams regularly.

    The funny thing is, he teaches Wollstonecraft.  And yet his first opportunity, he takes a feeble shot at my domestic position.

  35. semanticleo says:

    Yes, here you are, Dana.

    Bonnnnnnggggggg!  Sorry, wrong answer.

    Don’t see any middle initial, but I would be

    bowled over at the coincidence of it being a ‘G’.

    And, yes you do get credit for changing diapers,

    but it does little for the libido.

  36. Jeff Goldstein says:

    Whose libido?  Yours?

    Anyway, if you are not that Dana Ward, why not fill us in?  What do you do? 

    I change diapers.  You troll rightwing sites.  But surely you must do something else—something that brings in income.

    Out with it, “semanticleo”.  What do you fear?

  37. semanticleo says:

    “What do you do?”

    I topple giants masquerading as windmills.  I cook meaty meals of thought provocation and balance the scales of insular astignatism.  I am a champion of the underdog and always play the devil’s advocate.

    Eschewing praise and pep-rally posts, I dismantle the joists which coddle the self-satisfied and the

    smug.  I am Blankman.

  38. Pablo says:

    You masturbate in public and you don’t clean up after yourself.

    You bore me.

  39. Dan Collins says:

    Cool.  But I liked you better when you were building houses.

  40. Darleen says:

    And, yes you do get credit for changing diapers, but it does little for the libido.

    I take it you’re speaking from experience, Cleo?

    Maybe you should get help for that. Healthy adults don’t react that way.

  41. BJTexs says:

    Pride goes before the ejaculation.

  42. Patrick Chester says:

    Ah, so semanticleo is a wee bit… immersed in the City of Heroes game.

  43. 6Gun says:

    And yet his first opportunity, he takes a feeble shot at my domestic position.

    Can’t be, Jeff.  He’s chef of meaty meals of mindlessly dogmatic, self-contradicting provocation and the heavy thumb-balancer on the scales of insular astignatism, don’tcha know.

  44. Darleen says:

    Jeff

    I hope to hell that Cleo is not at Pitzer. A lot of parents paying astronomical tuition for the kids to attend would be rightfully pissed.

    Then again, Pitzer is part of the Claremont Colleges … where a Professor Dunn decided to vandalize her own car and attempt to hoax everyone to believe it was a racist attack against her.

  45. Jeff Goldstein says:

    I topple giants masquerading as windmills.  I cook meaty meals of thought provocation and balance the scales of insular astignatism.  I am a champion of the underdog and always play the devil’s advocate.

    Eschewing praise and pep-rally posts, I dismantle the joists which coddle the self-satisfied and the

    smug.  I am Blankman.

    Hmm. 

    Not that I’m terribly interested in parsing effluvium attempting to camouflage itself as warrior poetry, but what the hell.  I’ve got a couple minutes to kill in between change of possession.

    First, let me just say this:  I’m flattered that, contextually, I am now a giant masquerading as a windmill. Which means, of course, that I am far greater than I try to appear—or, I’m filled with humility, according to you.

    Either that, or you are admitting to being hopelessly quixotic.  Your choice. 

    Personally, I like to topple windmills masquerading as polemical wordsmiths. Witness, for instance, this comment.  Which of course argues against the humility reading.

    Second:  “I cook meaty meals of thought provocation and balance the scales of insular astignatism.”

    And you mix metaphors, too.  But—and I hate to say this—I fear you are giving yourself too much credit.  I mean, what is so thought-provoking about calling someone YellowStain or a diaper changer and trying to circumvent his ideas by attacking what you perceive to be his financial or domestic situation?  Isn’t that a kissing cousin to the “meaty meals of thought provocation” that certain southern Dems used to hurl at civil rights agitators when, in response to the message that a man should not be judged by the color of his skin but by the content of his character, these social sauciers of a previous age would remind the speaker that s/he is nothing but a lowly nigger, or, perhaps worse, a nigger lover?

    Hardly a way to “balance the scales of insular astignatism [?],” unless of course you have a watermelon or an empty diaper pale on the other end.

    Third, were you truly “a champion of the underdog,” you’d probably “eschew” not just praise (which, let’s face it:  you don’t have to do much in the way of eschewing in that area, I’m guessing), but also the lobbing of juvenile personal insults aimed at trying to emasculate an opponent who is quite confident in both his manhood and his life choices, despite his having taken a position in society that is quite outside the norms celebrated in gender stereotyping. 

    For the record, Yes, I’d rather take my son to the playground everyday than grade student papers, even if it means changing diapers for another couple of months (note:  some children eventually learn to go to the bathroom by themselves.  That you seem not to understand this is rather suggestive, and has me wondering if you’re still crapping in a super absorbant crotch guard with Elmo emblazoned on its front).  So what’s your point?

    And ask yourself this:  why do you feel the need always to “play the devil’s advocate”?  I can of course see the wisdom in doing so occasionally.  But always?  That’s nothing but intellectual masturbation, and doesn’t recommend you as a man of erudition near so much as you seem to assume.  And believe it or not, there are those of us who are happy to go through life without constantly slipping around in your drizzlings.

    But I’ll be kind and write that off as your following a biological imperative.  After all, if no one is willingly accepting of your ejaculations, your best bet for your seed to find purchase is to drop it everywhere and hope it insinuates itself into someone’s reproductive tract, however unwanted.

    “semanticleo”?  More like “semanticrapist”.

    And finally, given that you don’t have a site that I’m aware of—or that anyone reads—avoiding pep-rally posts is rather on the same order of accomplishment as my avoiding my period.

    So the next time you’re dismantling those joists that coddle the self-satisfied and the

    smug, you might start with your own.  But not before you ask yourself if joists really ever “coddle.”

    I am Blankman.

    Finally.  Something we can agree on.

  46. Rusty says:

    I topple giants masquerading as windmills.  I cook meaty meals of thought provocation and balance the scales of insular astignatism.  I am a champion of the underdog and always play the devil’s advocate.

    Eschewing praise and pep-rally posts, I dismantle the joists which coddle the self-satisfied and the

    smug.  I am Blankman.

    Yeah? When’s that gonna happen?

Comments are closed.