The Hidden Kingdom -- Popcorn by The Colonel #65

 

Who is this woman of shadow, this political “Heisenberg” whose hand is rumored to have been behind the election of Ed “My Name's Zed” McKeon to the board of education (“Ed for Ed”) and the nomination of Stephen “Fishmuscle” Devoto for the planning and zoning commission (“Do Vote for Devoto”)? 


What are her ties, if any, to Al Jazeera? Al Gore? Al Bundy? A. Whitney Griswold?To the shapeshifting feral hogs? To Tina Fey? To rural jurors? To Karen Swartz? To West Coast “stamp collectors”? To the “POLICE DEPT.”? To Area 51? To other numbered areas? To the world-class Connecticut River? To hops growers?  

Has she done hard time? If so, has it made her bitter?

Is she the greasy eminence behind the man who squats behind the man who works the Soft Machine? 

Is she the one in that commercial? 

Why is she never seen undisguised on the streets of the community she seeks to control through others?

Is she paranoid? 

Is it true that she has made all the anonymous comments on The Middletown Eye, casting a cold eye on life, death, and fervid claims that she is a gutless coward? 

What are her ultimate (or even intermediate) goals? 

Is she her own person, or just the velvet glove on someone else’s mailed fist? 

What’s her favorite soft drink? Can she sing “Dance With Me, Henry”? 

Is it true she aspires to remain hidden from NSA "Project Sauron Eye"? Do jeans make her caboose look big? What’s her middle name? 

Investigative journalism has been loosed on her, and if it fails, imaginative journalism will have to take up the slack. Volunteer investigators welcome. 

Results to date: 

☸ If she operates under the handle “Undaunted Optimist,” she may be the source of the saying that “democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.” 

☸ She’s not the novelist Flannery O’Connor, who apparently traded this world for a better in August 1964, when our attention was diverted by Dick Gregory, who later said, “They told me if I voted for Goldwater, there’d be war. I did, and there was.” 

☸ She’s not Dick Gregory, either, who also said, "Don't get hooked on imagination, Chauncey. It can lead to terrible, horrible things." --Mr. Sun (Dick Gregory).

☸ She's not Dorothy Gale, though she may have murky ties to Munchkins.

Keep an open mind -- clues can be anywhere and, to those with eyes to see, may very well be everywhere.

Don't you hate it when the facade of your building slips
 and the neighbors really get on your case?

News that Connecticut is now (again?) moose country brings back memories of bad advice in poetic form from Mason Williams:

How about Them Moose Goosers,
Ain't they recluse?
Up in them boondocks,
Goosin' Them Moose.
Goosin' them huge moose,
Goosin' them tiny,
Goosin' them meadow-moose,
In they hiney.
Look at Them Moose Goosers,
Ain't they dumb?
Some use an umbrella,
Some use a thumb.
Them obtuse Moose Goosers,
Sneakin' through the woods,
Pokin' them snoozy moose,
In they goods.
How to be a Moose Gooser?
It'll turn ye puce.
Gitchy gooser loose and
Rouse a drowsy moose!

Anarchists vs. libertarians, or, Have you ever kissed an anarchist? 

“An anarchist rejects all government, but a libertarian accepts and extols proper government, the proper size and intrusiveness of which must depend on circumstances. 

"No abstract rule can substitute for thought and struggle. 

"Libertarians can disagree among themselves about how much and what kind of government a given situation requires -- anarchists can’t, because they oppose government, period. 

"Sometimes a libertarian must support or even initiate a major expansion of government, fully knowing that it will take huge efforts to roll those expansions back when the occasion for them ends, and the efforts may fail." 

Another take:

"Government is downwardly sticky, like wages, but also like wages, not intrinsically bad. Put otherwise, government is not a necessary evil, but a necessary good, like fire, that bears close watching lest it escape its confines and become evil."  --Roy Marshrigger

And now words from the peanut gallimaufry:

“I've known what it is to be hungry, but I always went right to a restaurant.” --Ring Lardner

“ The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.” --George Bernard Shaw

“Faith is a cop-out. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can’t be taken on its own merits.” --Dan Barker

What have the members of the following list in common?

Alpha Pizza House

A Marvelous Car Wash
Berliner Eispalast

Bowl-O-Rama

Cold Stone Creamery

Denny’s

Domino’s

First and Last

Friendly’s

Illiano’s

Jerry’s Pizza

JT Ghamo’s Tuxedo (Newington, Hartford, Avon)

KFC

Lizzy B’s

McDonald’s

McInerney’s Florist

Nardelli’s

Newfield Pizza

No Anchovies

Papa John’s

Pattie Palace

Pizza Palace

Putter’s Paradise (Berlin)

Sabroso

Subway

Town Fair Tire

All Middletown businesses? No. All restaurants? No. All in alphabetical order? Maybe.

Answer: They all offered various discounts or other special deals to buyers of a $20 discount card in aid of Middletown High School football. We got our discount card from a team member hawking them in front of the new Odd Lots on Washington Street near Staples.

Second right answer: They are all retail establishments.

In conclusion, a moral reflection:

"Too much care for one’s reputation erodes one’s integrity. Tell the truth even if it makes the world discount you as a fool or a knave. 'Not lying' may satisfy the code of a gentleman, as Chesterton said, but it is the coward’s way around the duty to tell the truth. Yet the world can absorb truth only in bits. Tell too much truth at one time and the world will turn on you as on a rabid dog." --M. I. Knotwright