Shame on You, England

No less an authority than John Cleese once said that the worst insult you could hurl at an Englishman is to tell him he has no sense of humor. We imagine that South Yorkshire judge Jacqueline Davies has received many such insults over the last couple of days, after ordering convicted "Twitter Terrorist" Paul J. Chambers to pay a nearly $5,000 fine.

If you haven't followed the case, the facts are these: In January, Chambers planned to travel to Northern Ireland to visit a woman he met online. Upon arriving at Robin Hood Airport--

(DIGRESSION: "Robin Hood Airport"?!? EOD)

--Chambers found all flights grounded as a result of weather. An avid "tweeter," Chambers then posted the following message to his followers: "Robin Hood Airport is closed. You've got a week to get your [expletive] together, otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!!"

Now, this is what we in North America call a "joke." Admittedly, it lacks a certain knee-slapping quality that we find in our finest humorists, but still we would expect a country that prides itself on its sense of humor--and on its finely-tuned sense of irony--would pick up on the subtle, almost Wildean undertones present in Chambers' quip. Unfortunately, the authorities saw no humor in the post; instead, they saw imminent danger. Police arrested Chambers at his place of employment, which quickly became his former place of employment. He was convicted of sending a menacing message over a public telecommunications network. He moved to Northern Ireland to live with the woman he planned to visit on that January night (some happy ending there, we suppose), but was subsequently fired from another job when his criminal record was discovered.

Since his conviction, Chambers has become a cause celebre among the Twitterati and free-speech advocates everywhere. He has spawned a Twitter topic, #I am Spartacus, where people from around the world can proclaim themselves fellow "Paul Chamberses" and announce their intention to blow up the landmark of their choice. In that spirit, although we refuse to tweet, we would like to proclaim our intention to blow up time itself (we got the idea from "Doctor Who"--nasty Daleks!) if Paul Chambers' conviction is not overturned!

Postscript: Has it not occured to anyone that if someone were actually planning a major terrorist attack, he or she would be unlikely to announce it on "Twitter"? Facebook, maybe, but Twitter?

Classix Revisited with Guest Blogger Gabriel "G-Dog" Hershkowitz

So, like, I'm readin' King Lear, right? This play make sense to any of you? I don't get it.

Here you got this ancient-ass king who wants to split up his kingdom--which, y'know, is fucked up in the first place. Who splits up a motherfuckin' kingdom? What, like, it worked so well for. . . oh, I 'on know. . . Korea? Or. . . uh. . .Dakota? Seriously! Anyway, Ol' Man Lear wants to split up his kingdom and give the pieces to his three daughters (and where the hell is Queen Lear anyway? You never hear nothin' 'bout her!). So he calls everybody together, and he's like, "Yo, Bitchy Daughter Number One, Goneria, you want some of this? This kingdom here? OK, tell me how much you love me." (Which, y'know, is also kinda creepy if you think about it.)

Anyway, Goneria's all, like, "Oh Daddy Daddy, I love you soooooooo much," but really she's fulla shit 'cause she could care less about Daddy. All she wants is the kingdom, right? But Lear falls for it--or at least he's OK with it, 'cause he says, "Cool, here's what you get. Now, let's hear from Bitchy Daughter Number Two, Reagan." And Reagan's all Jan Brady and shit 'cause she's the middle child, y'know? But anyway she does the same thing's Goneria and she's all, "Oh, Daddy, you know what my sister just said? Well, like, that plus more!" And Lear's all, "Cool, cool. OK, here's what you get."

So far, so good, right? OK, so here's the part I don't get. See, 'cause Lear calls Daughter Number Three, Cordelia, who's like his total favorite and everybody knows it, and he even says to her, like, "OK, Sweetie, so tell Daddy how much you love him and I'll give you the best part of the kingdom. Y'know, the part with the trees and no cornerboys." And Cordelia's all, like, "No." And Lear's all like, "What?" But Cordelia's not playin', right? She's all like, "Look Dad. You know I love you and I know I love you and if that's not good enough, then I guess it's not good enough, but I'm not gonna play some stupid game just to make you happy."

Well, Lear totally loses it. He's all like, "Oh, snap! What the fuck? You little bitch. Get the fuck out of here!" And Cordelia leaves and Lear gives her part of the kingdom to the two suck-ups and everybody's all up in Lear's shit 'cause he doesn't give Cordelia anything and the whole country goes to hell and Lear ends up wandering around in a storm and catching pneumonia or something and dying along with, like, millions of other people. Good job, Cordelia.

Yeah, that's right: Good job, Cordelia. 'Cause am I the only one thinks this whole thing is her fault? I mean, sure, Lear's bein' a jerk, but he's old and nuts--he's splitting up his kingdom, yo! All Cordelia's gotta do's play along, right? Like it's gonna kill her just to say, "Yo, Dad, I love you, like, more'n these two ho-bags put together"--which is true anyway!

All's I know is, if my pops's givin' away kingdoms, and he asks me how much I love him? I'm gonna be all like, "Damn, Dad, you the shit, yo! Now slice me off a piece of kingdom and let's go par-tay!"

(Yo, that picture's from John Webb's Guide to the Works of William Shakespeare. Check it out a'ight?)

From the Halls of Montezuma. . . . (A Brief Post)

Academy-Award winning producer Dino de Laurentiis died the other day. Of course, we thought he had died a long time ago, so, in a sense, this is good news.

The Solipsist is weary today. We have off tomorrow for Veterans' Day, so we hope to recharge a bit. For now, suffice to say, mad props to all those who serve or have served in the armed forces. Like self-righteous evangelical blowhards towards homosexuals, we may hate the sin (war) but we can love the sinner (soldiers); unlike self-righteous evangelical blowhards, we will not get caught up in a bathroom stall sting with war or soldiers after taking a "wide stance."

Happy Veterans' Day, everyone!

It's OK--Nobody Reads This Stuff

Last week, a friend posted a picture on her Facebook wall--actually, a screen shot from another Facebook wall. It showed the following status message:

"OMG I HATE MY JOB!! My boss is a total pervvy ****er always making me do *** stuff just to **** me off! ****ER!!!"

The boss posted the following comment:

"Hi. I guess you forgot about adding me on here? Firstly, don't flatter yourself. Secondly, you've worked here 5 months and didn't work out that I'm gay? I know I don't prance around the office like a queen, but it's not exactly a secret. Thirdly, that '*** stuff' is called your 'job', you know, what I pay you to do. But the fact that you seem able to **** up the simplest of tasks might contribute to how you feel about it. And lastly, you also seem to have forgotten that you have 2 weeks left on your 6 month trial period. Don't bother coming in tomorrow. . . . And yes, I'm serious."

Sure, we all appreciate the young lady's comeuppance. Our appreciation arises, though, not so much from the young lady's obnoxiousness--for all we know, her boss really is a "pervvy ***er" [sic]--but rather from her monumental stupidity: trashing her boss on a semi-public forum, TO WHICH SHE HAS PREVIOUSLY INVITED HER BOSS!

Note the key phrase in the boss's reply, though: "You also seem to have forgotten that you have 2 weeks left on your 6 month trial period." This obviates any potentially touchy legal issues. Sure, we understand why her boss fires her, but honestly, she could have been fired for much less--for nothing, in fact.

Life imitates. . . well, life (assuming the Facebook post is real). The National Labor Relations Board has filed suit against American Medical Response of Connecticut, an ambulance company, after the company fired an employee, ostensibly for making disparaging comments about her supervisor on Facebook. The NLRB claims the post and the ensuing commentary by other employees constitute protected speech; the company claims the employee was fired for multiple reasons, only one of which was the "negative personal attacks [DIGRESSION: As opposed to "positive" personal attacks? EOD] against a co-worker posted publicly on Facebook." Indeed, the employee's wrath arose in part from AMR's requiring her to prepare a response to a customer's complaint about her work. She hardly comes across as a model employee.

The case does raise interesting questions, though, about how protected one's speech is. Isn't bitching about the boss a time-honored American (and Russian, and German, and Australian. . . . ) tradition? Many a sitcom gag revolves around a hapless employee venting at the water-cooler while his interlocutors roll their eyes, raise their eyebrows, and engage in all manner of pantomime to warn the speaker that, "MR. MCELROY IS STANDING RIGHT BEHIND YOU!!!!" Is there something about the utilization of the social network that aggravates the offense?

Well, yes, insofar as the social network is a public medium. While it may be acceptable to vent to one's fellow workers about an annoying boss, what happens when other "Friends" read the post and get the wrong (or, who knows? right) idea about the company? If we were the management, we would be less upset by the employee's feelings--or even the fact of her publication--than by the tone: We wouldn't want the public to think some vulgarian represented our company. More to the point, while we defend to the death the employee's right to have her opinions, and even to share them in a proper forum, we would--as in the case of the employee mentioned at the beginning of this post--question her judgment. Someone stupid enough to post her personal vitriol where anyone can see it must accept the consequences of her actions.

In closing--and apropos of nothing--let us just say how much we love Solipsist Community College and all the people who work there, particularly President W. and Vice-President M. and Dean K. We couldn't ask for a better bunch of colleagues, friends--dare we say, surrogate family members and veritable soulmates to make our days bright, our nights warm, and our dusks crepuscular. Why, these people are just the salt of the earth, and we resolve here and now to name any future sons, daughters, or pets after the exemplary faculty and staff of this truly idyllic workplace, the likes of which. . . . .

Kvetching

We have a Yahoo! e-mail account. Almost every time we check our mail, we see one or two messages awaiting us in the "Spam" folder. Now, by definition, this is mail we probably don't want to read. So, more often than not, we simply click the "Empty folder" button without even opening the folder. At this point, Yahoo! asks us if we're sure we want to delete all the items in the folder. Why, yes, Yahoo!--yes, we are sure. You know how we know we're sure? BECAUSE WE CLICKED THE DAMN BUTTON!

Still, we suppose it's a considerate gesture on the part of the faceless programmers at Yahoo! to force us to confirm our desire to delete: After all, we haven't even LOOKED at the folder. Maybe some life-changing communique awaits. But why do we get this message even after we have opened the folder, decided we do not, in fact, want to add seven inches to our penis or send money to a recently destitute Nigerian prince, and marked every single item for deletion? How careless do these people think we are?

Get on this right away, you Yahoo! yahoos!

Well-Begun and All. . . .Well, Never Mind

We just finished reading Earth: The Book, a sort of companion to America: The Book, written by Jon Stewart and the other funny folk of "The Daily Show." Whereas the previous volume was a sort of mock civics textbook, this is a broader satire, designed as a sort of primer for whatever alien visitors stumble upon earth after its human population has inevitably destroyed itself. We planned to provide our regular "Well-Begun and All Done" feature, but then we realized that would be silly. This book lends itself more to dipping into than sustained reading, and any page contains something at least giggle-worthy. Herewith, then, a random selection of quotes from Earth: The Book. We encourage you to purchase your own copy for the full effect.

On language: "As our larynxes descended, we were able to make sounds with our mouths in new and far more expressive ways. Verbal language soon overtook physical gesturing as the primary means of communication for all human beings except Italians" (36).

On sexual reproduction: "Strictly speaking, the differences between the sexes were purely anatomical. But in reality their ongoing disconnect formed a deep vagina of misunderstanding seldom filled by the penis of knowledge" (42).

On marriage: "Marriage was the sacred institution on which our society was based and had to be protected from gay people. You see, sometimes when a man and woman's father loved the mutual economic and social benefits a partnership of sorts could provide very much, the woman's father drew up a contract for betrothal involving his daughter and some cattle. Later on, women gained the right to make their own decisions about who they would marry. This is when men began shaving" (76).

On work: "If you were not making or growing things, you were part of our other vast work sector: the service industries. There were financial services, food services, customer, administration, medical and tech services. There were services that placed individuals into other service jobs, and services to complain about the lack of service you had been receiving from the aforementioned service services. You would think any such well-serviced society would be happy and satisfied. Well, you never spent three hours being passed back and forth between an automated response menu and a persnickety 22-year-old Calcuttan named 'Chuck'" (130).

On Disney: "Across the globe there were a half-dozen city-sized locations where humans could visit Mickey Mouse, a beloved fictional rodent who lived in a Magic Kingdom. Despite the dedicated places of worship and the rodent's exalted status, the love of Mickey Mouse should not be confused with a religion. Like God, the creators of Mickey Mouse were ubiquitous; but unlike God, they were vindictive and litigious" (228).

And, for your additional reading pleasure, check out, America: The Book.

It's Not Much of Cheese-Promotion Agency, Is It?

The New York Times sets the agenda for the nation. Along with The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and the Sheboygan Sun, the Times may be considered one of the country's "newspapers of record." What the paper reports is what matters to the nation--and nothing matters more than what appears in the upper-righthand corner of the paper's front page. So, what matters to the nation today? What menace looms. . .well, menacingly. . .over the body politic? What scandalous miscarriage of justice or outrageous official corruption puts the very fabric of our society at risk of unraveling?

Cheese pimping!

The headline says it all: "While Warning About Fat, U.S. Pushes Cheese Sales." No, really, that says it all. While the federal government and such notables as Michelle Obama fret over the nation's expanding waistline, another government-funded agency, the non-profit Dairy Management, Inc., promotes the consumption of cheesy comestibles (cf., Monty Python).

Intergovernmental hypocrisy always makes for good copy. But intergovernmental hypocrisy revolving around dairy products? We don't think this merits upper-righthand corner above the fold 1,000-word treatment. Was yesterday really such a slow news day?

Here's an idea for a story: In time of national economic crisis, US government spends $140 million to convince people to order the cheeseburger.