persiflage

September 17th, 2009

I distrust my present thoughts hardly less than my past ones and my second or third thoughts hardly less than my first.

Waddo I know?

Michel de Montaigne

Classifieds

John Jacob Jingleheimer Jones would like to get in touch with other people who also have that name in order to form a sort of singing group to entertain children. If you qualify then just look up John in the phonebook. He is the one who isn't you.
There are now available signed copies of The Decline of the Mid-West by Jimmy Spengler (great grandson of Oswald). A scholarly account (in one compact volume) of Jimmy's thesis that cartoon bears undermined the economy of Iowa and Nebraska in the late 1980s. If you are interested and there's is no good reason why you should, contact Bernie Spengler (great great grandson of Oswald) at 4567 Little Eagles Drive, Burntfish, Ia. Some copies may smell of motor oil.
Check out the new video Girls Gone Sensible! See hot young college coeds study for exams, eat right, turn down insensitive boors who are only after one thing, go home early and purchase shoes with substantial arch support. Celebrity host Donny Osmond keeps things rockin'! Available for download at our new website. www.schubertsymphonies.com

Listen to Part Twenty-Three of

The Mystery of the Lost Lenore

Click on the picture. (4:20)

Or start from the beginning.

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This would be our email address:

persiflagemag@hotmail.com

I'm the Kind of Person Who...

I'm the kind of person who always puts a positive spin on things even when stupid jerks totally ruin it for me.

I'm the kind of person who likes people. I can get along with anyone, even that fat guy in my office who is totally boring.

I'm the kind of person who always thinks things threw thoroughly and is very careful. I always work hard at getting things just write.

I'm the kind of person who is always very generous and giving. I volunteer for several organizations. I'm just not sure what they are.

I'm the kind of person who never hangs onto a grudge. Like that time two years ago when I got stuck paying a quarter of the bill even though I only had a small soup. I totally let that go.

I'm the kind of person who is open and honest about how I feel. I believe in expressing my opinion and letting the chips fall where they may.

[Name Witheld By Request]

New Environmental Policy Announced

Pernet Glauskarber, the new Environmental Policy Director for the Province of Manitoba, announced today that the province (Manitoba) would be instituting a new "casual Friday" policy in regards to the environment.

Glauskarber stated that from now on environmental regulations will not be enforced on Fridays. Citizens and corporations will be encouraged to take a lax attitude towards environmental protections on those days. People will be encouraged drive places needlessly, use phosphates and not recycle and industries will be encouraged to dump raw waste wherever they please.

The Director explained that the environment had been getting "a bit of a free ride of late and we felt it should be kept on its toes. Plus it's a lot of fun to pollute!"

When asked for comment the spokesperson for the Green Party was unable to stop sputtering long enough to state anything coherently.

(PNS)

Beware the Engines of Conformity

Those of us who imagine ourselves free thinkers (And who doesn't? Have you ever heard someone say "You know me - I'm a real automaton"?) are often on guard against the more obvious forces of conformity, government, bureaucracies, corporate interests, shriners and the like, but are we equally prepared to fend off the less obvious? I think not.

The engines of conformity are often subtler and more varied than we, at times, surmise.

It is easy (and fun) to point at suburban tract housing, SUVs and business attire and laugh, dismissing the occupants of these things as mindless conformists. These they may well be but does conformity disappear as one moves closer to the downtown on one's bicycle, insulated from the dangers of the streams of traffic by a helmet painted with skulls? I don't know. I'm asking.

The engines of conformity grind away in a variety of guises, their spirit crushing work can be carried out in a vast industrial park, a towering office complex or in an eco-friendly co-op in a reclaimed urban space in the core. All that is necessary is for the denizens of that particular locale to stop thinking for themselves and start slurping up the ladellings of their dominant group without pausing to consider whether they enjoy the taste or are even hungry.

My advice to anyone who wishes to become or remain a free-thinking individual is to discard the fur cape and fez, cease walking your lobster (he doesn't enjoy it anyway) and stop believing aything that you read or hear. Beginning with this essay which may very well be a lode of hooey.

It is only when you begin to question absolutely everything and start constructing your own opinions from your own observations that you will be allowed into that very select group - the true free thinkers.

We meet Thursday evenings but I'm not telling you where. Not yet anyway.

Hugh Briss