Close watchers and avid readers of 3rdarm.biz who also happen to be scholars of language* surely took note of the last entry’s dateline… “September 06 2005”. I chose to leave this erroneous date intact, because I orignally wrote it and consequentially missed it in my biz edit and biz review. Biz edit and biz anew are the scan tachticks that I use to scan the biz for errors in print, and it works like a fresh washer/dryer combo a good chunk of the time. Somecasionally erroredits are outragoues.
* the Mind of Biz Commonsense reports that 80% of 3rdarm.biz readers also consume Bill Safire’s on language column, and that 99% have either read the book or watched the film, “The Exorcist”, as well as 17% reporting that they tried to read “The Stand” by Stephen King, or attempted to sit through the whole miniseries made for TV, but could not do it.
There are more Brits than citizens any other country but the 3rdarm.biz host nation reading 3rdarm.biz and I’ve no idea who any of these Britsscotsburs are. Use the contact page and let me know, or I’m shutting off the pump that fills Resevoir Britsamused@bizremarks.Biz. Blody hollor.
Last saturday nite, while I got down to the crazy feet hustling drinks for an office holiday party, I was reminded of what the woman server I was serving with once told me I’d never make it. It was the very first day of my job at the hotel, more than two years ago, and I had never bussed tables before. Having just moved to Boston and my dishwasher Empire treasure thoroughly spent I was desperate to make it as a busboy at the Fisheries.
The first night I worked at the hotel was a busy Saturday night, and I remember the violent pandemonium I witnessed only in brief snatches. But I do recall crystal clear this woman Dawn of Dawnland (we’re all in Dawnland) talking to me while we were side by side at one of the glass enclosed side stations. “You’ve never bussed tables before? I can’t believe they hired you.” She told me that I probably wouldn’t make it as a matter of fact.
I guess thats a kind of selfish memory, not in the least representative of Dawn’s memory of that night. But the beauty of time is that its so big. Hard to understand what I felt when she told me that this man wouldn’t make it that night, and matter of fact I might not have made it that night. But I made my motion by and by and in the end we worked together, its important to me.
I think my feelings can best be summed by the following passages from the chapter “Inherit the Whirlwind” from the book, “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” by Thomas Frank:
“Sometimes the Conservatives were even moved to declare that it was the damnable scientists, in their megalomaniac desire to impose their obscene views on the rest of the world, who started the Kansas fight in the first place.
Having provoked the inevitable reaction, the Cons promptly began to scream “religious persecution,” recasting themselves as the victims of a secular world’s determination to stamp out the godly. Just as the small-minded hillbillies in “Inherit the Wind” persecute the high school science teacher for his views,* so the Cons carefully totted up each bit of criticism that was leveled at the Kansas board by the national media and imagined themselves nailed to the cross. All the ridicule, they believe, is merely the followers of “naturalism” expressing their irrational hatred for “people of faith.” The Cons are thus, in their own minds, victims of bigotry as surely as any of the usual population of the discriminated-against—- the “people of color.”
*Contemporary anti-evolution returns again to the 1960 movie “Inherit the Wind” (a dramatization of the Monkey Trial starring Spencer Tracy) and the need to reverse the “paradigm” that this movie supposedly established.”
Note to aunty: Monkey Trial? Spencer Tracy? Movie?