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 Dear Editor,
Now there's a touch of class! Marjorie Hunt has elevated the sport of demolition derby to respectability. [Issue 19.] She ought to think about taking her luxury-car smashup show on the road... well, maybe not on the road as such. . . Mario Androgyny
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take two
Dear Editors,
I would like to see larger excerpts of Double Take for the sake of continuity. With several months between installments, some refreshing is necessary. Other than that, three thumbs up. —Oak Ridger
That's serialization & schedule derailment for ya. At least it's refreshing to refresh. And we do plan on bringing you longer installments. The three-thumbs endorsement: perhaps referring to you and a one-armed sitter—or did you pass happy formative years playing out back of the plutonium refinery? —Ed.
Esteemed Colleagues and Rabblerousers,
Dr. Scott's Double Take is a new kind of feature in our beloved Journal, but one upholding the tradition of top-notch contributions. I have but one nit to pick: the asterisks with which you mutilate frank language. This jars the reader a bit out of the moment. It's 2011! I doubt that children are reading. What do you achieve by thinly veiling four-letter words? Come, you wily rascals. For all your furtive shift, you know that the obvious expletives are translated into English by the mind. —Mack Ademian
Ed.#1 note: By the dirty mind, Mr./Ms. Ademian. We cite crunched numbers indicating that the clean mind is keyed by asterisk coding to perceive "gosh," "dang," "hind end" /"hiney," and "progenitive outreach" in place of the peppery equivalents. Granted, it's 2011 and children aren't reading (nor should they, with Play Station and Wii to guide them), but we also have responsibilities to the delicate blossoms of dawn who abide us so long as we afford them credible serenity. It's implicit in their unwritten contracts.
Ed. #2 note: See, we could care less about everyone else, including ourselves. We are delicate-blossoms-of-dawn-whipped.
Ed. #1 note: Not delicate-blossoms-of-dawn-"whipped" per se, Editor. We practice a policy essential to any transcendant society's thriving: reasonable sensitivity to the sensibilities of the sensitive.
Ed. #2 note: "Reasonable sensitivity to the sensibilities of the sensitive."
Ed. #1 note: Sure. Try it in the street, Editor. Try it at the dinner table. Wear it to conferences and arraignments, galas and gallows. You'll be interested to know that you did.
Ed. #2 note: You're crackers, Editor.
Ed. #1 note. You're crackers, Editor. I'm crackers and cheese. No, wait. I'm crackers and caviar. You're just plain crackers. —Don't roll those eyes at me. Roll them off a cliff. Tell you what, I'll suffer you to roll just one of them at me if you can do it, both eyes open. Just one. Stop! I said one. Can you count? Now I grow vexed. Don't make me devolve. You wouldn't appreciate me when I devolve.
Ed. #2 note: I don't appreciate you now.
Ed. #1 note: No, you don't appreciate your place, which is what I put you in.
Ed. #2 note: How about put a sock in it, and let's take another letter.
Ed. #1 note: I could go for a truce. A sensible call and wise. Though what is wisdom?
Ed. #2 note: Wisdom, Editor, is but a tooth. —I thought you were going for a truce. I'll have one while you're at it, and bring me back some coffee.
Ed. #1 note: You're fired.
Ed. #2 note: As are you.
Ed. #1 note to self and others: What I contend with...
Ed. #2 note: One but shrugs.
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Editor, Journal of Provincial Thought:
Some of Professor Loose's ideas in Issue 18 and prior jogged my hard-won complacency, so I set about drafting a bill of challenges. I have found that his account of what the Book of Genesis actually says and does not say, as well as the chronology, was not assailably inaccurate. It was his interpretive framework and his take on the implications that got my goat. Goat procuration is not an intellectual crime the way misrepresentation would be. I would have preferred to take him down on hard facts than on remotely colorable opinions. My hit list is out the window. As things stand, the only way that fellow brewpub intellectuals can settle our differences is in a proper Greco-Roman wrestling match refereed by saucy distaffs. What say ye now? —Germanicus
Is everyone quite sure this isn't yet another deviant ploy to get bare and grapple with celebrity before the eyes of the innocent? Professor Loose says he's throwing that matchup, Germy—you win—hip-hip yay! —Ed.
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Hail!
I rise my glad *ss to the celestial summons of activist poet Herman Parsons. His brilliance ignites the truths that would lie in shadow, showering down sparkling revelations of "how it might be" and "how it might have been." Parsons hands me a torch and I follow. —The Artist Formally Known
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Dear Editor,
Mom's tips are as useful as they are thoughtful, but she writes with such a smile that I wonder if she is pulling my leg and just making everything up. I will only cooperate if I know I'm not being clowned. —Space Horse
When my grandfather first brought his family to this country, he always told them "Better to be clowned than cloned, unless you need help in the garden more than a good laugh." Grandfather, by the way, was the only person known to have survived the sinkings of both the Titanic and the Bismarck. For all the good it ultimately did him as he slowly drowned himself in the bottle. —Ed.
Dear Mom,
It is noble work you do and a great public service. Allow me to thank you by giving back a nugget of wisdom that I dreampt up: Success lies in always reaching for the horizon yet never reaching it. —OB1
Ed. #1 note: There is a horizon?
Ed. #2 note: We are Infinity's motherless child.
Ed. #1 note: But not Momless.
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Dear Editor,
Dhahgedu ["A Man Calleth Him Self a Prophet, and Saith and Taketh Things"], as the first of the unabashed exploitive opportunists, set humanity on a course that in time would defeat our virtually infinite potential. Way to go, you lying, scheming, bean-stealing bully b*st*rd. Being eaten in the trees by birds was too good for you. (It's no credit to me that I relished every delirious line of your chronicle.) —CTG
The ruin of homo sapiens might be too heavy a rap to lay on one rascal's head. Seems to us Dhahgedu had a lot of competition in the jive & jack department—from the Tempter to every named character to the faceless members of the multitude. Could your estimation of the species' potential be a bit rosy? —Ed.
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Dear jpt,
"Pilgrim's Excellent Adventures" are truly excellent. So why don't you go more in-depth? —S.N.
We do. —Ed.
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a sound hound
To the Editor:
Going musical puts a feather in your cap. The theme composer [C. Adam Smith] deserves to hear applause for his work. AudioPile is also a great showcase for folk tales that could have been lost someday. I played the stories of Tennessee Dave and the Major [Folk Hardtack] for my wife, who normally doesn't like anything, and she got a real kick out of them. It felt like I did something right. —Plan-It Man
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Letters Editor of jpt,
Why doesn't Fartch Bombastic Fuzzlegod ever get any mail? He's the best writer you got, right? —C.R.
Mr. Fondlegod is okay for a non-doper, I suppose. Mail: he deletes it all. A waking-world job of bitter entanglements doesn't leave him time to breathe too much of this ether. In a way, we're lucky he says as little as he does. —Ed.
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My Friends,
Can you run a photo of Sister Judy the Brau Frau? I'm looking for my soulmate and I think she's it. I can tell by the tender way she arranges and poses beer. Beer gives my life meaning. —Cubby
We are sworn to protect Sister Judy's cover against the unscrupulous brewers whose sinister agents seek to coopt her talents for their own commercial gain. —Ed.
Ed. #2 note: Besides, we are not in the soul-matching industry. We're sure you're special, but this is about the thirtieth request we have had for a Sister Judy outing. This Journal is about other things.
Ed.#1 note: It certainly is.
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Dear jpt,
The pilgrimage to the Outer Province of Dobar-Bodar is no trick to try with the family and dogs, but it is an interesting changeup from the norm. (Any norm.) The question dogging me is, is Dobar B. shooting from the hip? A man can tell you anything, but unless he's shooting from the hip it's hard to say where he's shooting from. —Kendrick
Ed. #1 note: Hip.
Ed. #2 note: Hip, yes.
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Confidential to Anonymous Pat: Most of our community would not wear flip-flops to their trials, as they would see nothing good in taking a judicial beatdown or in making the opposition's case. All courts publish a rule requiring proper attire, although most assume no need for a flip-flop level of specificity. Talk it over with your toes, citizen. —Ed.
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luminance
