Chapter Seven: The Pontification of Moss Landing
Subject: The Pontification of Moss Landing
From: Douglas Clay
Date: 03/14/15 21:38
To: Randall Clay
It has been a good while since I last mentioned Pope Paulsen, and if that has given you the idea that he has ceased to be a part of everyday living back here, allow me to correct that misapprehension right now: in fact, the situation has escalated, through the 'standing date every weekend' stage and now into the 'considering moving in together' and 'relationship that has a sufficient presence that one can actually talk about it as if it were a physical thing' stages. In short, the situation here is dire.
It is not that Pope is all that horrible of a person. I mean, I've known people with stepfathers who are much worse, even actually abusive. But if he were that bad, then Mom would have sent him packing long ago. No, what Pope is is something far more difficult to get rid of and almost as unpleasant to have to live around: he is an amiable buffoon with delusions of parenthood. The only good news is that he does seem to want kids of his own, which should be a non-starter with Mom and so might bring this whole thing crashing down. Hopefully before too many days like today.
The day began all right, a rainy Saturday morning with plenty of time to watch various versions of my Shouter Ur-Text, which I'm calling "The Adventures of King Strong-Hands" for lack of a better name. Now, this is a very old story, which means that it has been presented and re-interpreted many, many times, in all of the various forms of dramatic presentation that the Shouters employ in their art. The oldest versions are what we call a Narrative Trialog, in which the story is told by three voices, speaking simultaneously. The first describes the situations, the second the actions of the protagonist (and, sometimes, his close allies), and the third sort of acts like a Greek chorus, asking foreshadowing questions and occasionally commenting on the meaning of the actions.
Next in the history of Shouter literature is the Trialog with dance, which is as the above, except that at the same time, several more shouters are acting out the action of the piece, 'silently' (They're never actually silent, but in this case they are only speaking with the lower mouth, conveying stance and mood but not information.). Then, even later, the 'dances' occasionally speak lines of dialog at some points in the narrative, and finally, the form evolves into a full-out play, with action and speech, in dialogs and trialogs and larger groups, even, replacing all of the narration. The last form is, of course, more loosely related to the original work, since most of the lines are rewritten to conform to the more 'naturalistic' modes of speech. (Conversations involving only two participants, though the only kind present in the earliest forms, appear to be rare and overly formal in more modern works.
Anyhow, the story I'm covering is about a Shouter who's arms are much stronger than the average. Shouters have four arms, each long, agile, and ending in a 'hand' consisting of a sensing 'ear', a gripping claw and a manipulating thumb. But their arm strength is not one of their strong points: most of them need to use two arms to successfully grip any kind of heavy tool, like, say, a sword. But not this guy; he can fight one-handed (or, more specifically, with four swords instead of two.) Swords are very popular weapons in early Shouter history; used almost exclusively in warfare. Possilbly because the weak arms couldn't use a spear with enough strength to penetrate one another's skin. Swords almost have the same problem; it's extremely difficult for one Shouter to actually kill another shouter. So, when they went about fighting wars in their pre-firearms era, the general result was a lot of severed arms. One of the first high-probability-correctness terms I've put forward based on this was reading an equivalence between the terms for "three-armed" and "verteran". They can get by, in some social roles, with only two or even one arm, also, but losing the last is a death sentence, a slow and painful, both physically and psychologically death sentence at that. So all in all they were probably made a lot better off when they developed guns and could kill each other more quickly and painlessly.
So anyways, there I am, stepping through the original trialog, the dance, and a modernist 'based on' version, watching for the same words and phrases describiing the same sort of action, when Pope bursts in and announces that we're going to go out on a Picnic. 'As a family'. So that's a days work wasted, I can sense it. But I make the mistake of attempting to appeal to logic.
"Um, you are away that it's raining?" I said. And it was, still, not a mere sprinkle or shower but a good, solid later winter rainstorm, certain to instantly soak anything that ventures outside and with winds just itching to invert their quota of umbrellas before the sun comes out again.
"You know, boy-sorry, Doug, Martin Panzer said in his book that you don't let things you can't control interfere with your plans. No, instead you find a way to control them."
"So you can change the weather?"
"Better. 'We wouldn't have rooftops if it weren't for rain.'" he quoted, and lead me and Mom down to the car. Mom already had a basket prepared, and smiled weakly at me as we shut the doors and pulled out of the garage. Pope turned the stereo on, and it began playing off of his channel, loaded up with '90s bubblegum and boy-band music. Pope Paulsen is, probably, the only person alive who actually still enjoys the Spice Girls on a non-ironic level.
So, off we go toward the somewhat creepy office building in which Pope works. It's a fairly large office which is, most days, say nine out of ten workdays, almost completely unoccupied. And full to capacity the other day. They're big fans of telecommuting at this particular MP NeoTech branch, but need enough space for meeting day, on which everyone actually comes in to work but nothing useful actually gets accomplished. Anyhow, he scans in his ID and leads us in, then into the elevator, and up to the roof, on which there is some kind of greenhouse-like enclosed park. If the company wasn't part of the Fortune Ten, I'm sure that the police would be buy every other week to make sure nobody was growing weed up there.
Now, the rain is still coming down, hard, and making a constant stream of loud impacts on the glass ceiling. As a result, the only way that any of use can hear a word the others are saying is by shouting at pretty near the tops of our lungs. This is, of course, what Pope Paulsen believes is the perfect opportunity to start a political discussion, with him asking which of the Repbulican Primary candidates has the best chance of beating Parker in the general. I express a disbelief that Parker can, at this point, be defeated, and suggest that that is probably a good thing.
"Ah, Democrat, eh? Well, they say if you're not one at eighteen you've got no heart and all that. Still, what is it that makes you want to support the big taxers, eh?"
"Well, people who make more should pay their fairer share, right?"
"Well, sure, but what's a fair share? Let's say that you, me, and Martin Panzer were splitting a pizza, and the total cost of the pie was twenty-four dollars. Now it's pretty clear to me that the only fair way to divide that cost is if we each throw in eight bucks. Why should buying a government be any different?"
"Well," said I, quite possibly more just for the sake of disagreeing than anything else, "What if one person ends up eating almost all of it? If someone's going to be eating two or three slices for every one I get, they ought to pay more. And your rich people get more out of the government, since they've got more property for the police to be guarding."
"That's a pretty good argument, lad, a pretty good argument. But not a great one. Government isn't just about protecting property, now, is it? It's protecting your life itself, and your liberties as well, right." I reluctantly agreed. "And those are more important than property, aren't they? A lot more important. Probably thousands of times more important. So what you and me and Panzer are getting from government, each of our slices of the pizza, are going to be consisting mostly of our life-protecting and liberty-protecting parts, and those are all equal, right? You don't want to say a rich man's life or liberty is worth more than yours, do you? No. So next to that, the amount that comes from property-protecting is tiny, just a fraction of a peperoni."
"The trouble with trying to finance the government from taxing the poor is that, well, they really don't have a whole lot of money. So you've got to go and tax the rich if you want to actually do anything with it." I ventured.
"Oh ho, the Willie Sutton argument." I was nonplussed. "Willie Sutton. Famous criminal in the 19th century. Someone once asked him why he robbed banks. Know what he said?"
I didn't answer, so he continued.
"'Because that's where the money is'. Well, that's why Me and Barnham" (Barnham being, I gather, his favorite candidate for the primaries. "favor a flat percentage tax rather than a fixed sum."
"Oh. Because that would be silly." Paulsen failed his 'detect sarcasm' check. "Anyhow, it doesn't really matter what I think. I don't turn eighteen until well after the primaries. The general election will be my first time voting." And that pretty much ended that discussion. Besides, the food was pretty well done for. After that, Pope insisted on all of us going to a movie, and picked out She's Not Harold, which is probably the least funny comedic film about transvestism ever released upon the general public. Pope Paulsen, of course, was laughing loudly throughout.
Something obvious must be done, and quickly. Although...
Pope is planning on taking Mom on a romantic getaway over the 'oh, it's just a fantastic coincidence that it happens to fall on Easter Weekend' spring holiday, leaving me alone in the house, which is exceptionally cool, as it has prompted Jenny to make a cross country trip to visit me around then. As the Pontiff himself would probably say without thinking about it, it's an ill wind that blows nobody good. So any plans to break those two up will have to be put on hold for now.
Your Brother
Douglas
From: Douglas Clay
Date: 03/14/15 21:38
To: Randall Clay
It has been a good while since I last mentioned Pope Paulsen, and if that has given you the idea that he has ceased to be a part of everyday living back here, allow me to correct that misapprehension right now: in fact, the situation has escalated, through the 'standing date every weekend' stage and now into the 'considering moving in together' and 'relationship that has a sufficient presence that one can actually talk about it as if it were a physical thing' stages. In short, the situation here is dire.
It is not that Pope is all that horrible of a person. I mean, I've known people with stepfathers who are much worse, even actually abusive. But if he were that bad, then Mom would have sent him packing long ago. No, what Pope is is something far more difficult to get rid of and almost as unpleasant to have to live around: he is an amiable buffoon with delusions of parenthood. The only good news is that he does seem to want kids of his own, which should be a non-starter with Mom and so might bring this whole thing crashing down. Hopefully before too many days like today.
The day began all right, a rainy Saturday morning with plenty of time to watch various versions of my Shouter Ur-Text, which I'm calling "The Adventures of King Strong-Hands" for lack of a better name. Now, this is a very old story, which means that it has been presented and re-interpreted many, many times, in all of the various forms of dramatic presentation that the Shouters employ in their art. The oldest versions are what we call a Narrative Trialog, in which the story is told by three voices, speaking simultaneously. The first describes the situations, the second the actions of the protagonist (and, sometimes, his close allies), and the third sort of acts like a Greek chorus, asking foreshadowing questions and occasionally commenting on the meaning of the actions.
Next in the history of Shouter literature is the Trialog with dance, which is as the above, except that at the same time, several more shouters are acting out the action of the piece, 'silently' (They're never actually silent, but in this case they are only speaking with the lower mouth, conveying stance and mood but not information.). Then, even later, the 'dances' occasionally speak lines of dialog at some points in the narrative, and finally, the form evolves into a full-out play, with action and speech, in dialogs and trialogs and larger groups, even, replacing all of the narration. The last form is, of course, more loosely related to the original work, since most of the lines are rewritten to conform to the more 'naturalistic' modes of speech. (Conversations involving only two participants, though the only kind present in the earliest forms, appear to be rare and overly formal in more modern works.
Anyhow, the story I'm covering is about a Shouter who's arms are much stronger than the average. Shouters have four arms, each long, agile, and ending in a 'hand' consisting of a sensing 'ear', a gripping claw and a manipulating thumb. But their arm strength is not one of their strong points: most of them need to use two arms to successfully grip any kind of heavy tool, like, say, a sword. But not this guy; he can fight one-handed (or, more specifically, with four swords instead of two.) Swords are very popular weapons in early Shouter history; used almost exclusively in warfare. Possilbly because the weak arms couldn't use a spear with enough strength to penetrate one another's skin. Swords almost have the same problem; it's extremely difficult for one Shouter to actually kill another shouter. So, when they went about fighting wars in their pre-firearms era, the general result was a lot of severed arms. One of the first high-probability-correctness terms I've put forward based on this was reading an equivalence between the terms for "three-armed" and "verteran". They can get by, in some social roles, with only two or even one arm, also, but losing the last is a death sentence, a slow and painful, both physically and psychologically death sentence at that. So all in all they were probably made a lot better off when they developed guns and could kill each other more quickly and painlessly.
So anyways, there I am, stepping through the original trialog, the dance, and a modernist 'based on' version, watching for the same words and phrases describiing the same sort of action, when Pope bursts in and announces that we're going to go out on a Picnic. 'As a family'. So that's a days work wasted, I can sense it. But I make the mistake of attempting to appeal to logic.
"Um, you are away that it's raining?" I said. And it was, still, not a mere sprinkle or shower but a good, solid later winter rainstorm, certain to instantly soak anything that ventures outside and with winds just itching to invert their quota of umbrellas before the sun comes out again.
"You know, boy-sorry, Doug, Martin Panzer said in his book that you don't let things you can't control interfere with your plans. No, instead you find a way to control them."
"So you can change the weather?"
"Better. 'We wouldn't have rooftops if it weren't for rain.'" he quoted, and lead me and Mom down to the car. Mom already had a basket prepared, and smiled weakly at me as we shut the doors and pulled out of the garage. Pope turned the stereo on, and it began playing off of his channel, loaded up with '90s bubblegum and boy-band music. Pope Paulsen is, probably, the only person alive who actually still enjoys the Spice Girls on a non-ironic level.
So, off we go toward the somewhat creepy office building in which Pope works. It's a fairly large office which is, most days, say nine out of ten workdays, almost completely unoccupied. And full to capacity the other day. They're big fans of telecommuting at this particular MP NeoTech branch, but need enough space for meeting day, on which everyone actually comes in to work but nothing useful actually gets accomplished. Anyhow, he scans in his ID and leads us in, then into the elevator, and up to the roof, on which there is some kind of greenhouse-like enclosed park. If the company wasn't part of the Fortune Ten, I'm sure that the police would be buy every other week to make sure nobody was growing weed up there.
Now, the rain is still coming down, hard, and making a constant stream of loud impacts on the glass ceiling. As a result, the only way that any of use can hear a word the others are saying is by shouting at pretty near the tops of our lungs. This is, of course, what Pope Paulsen believes is the perfect opportunity to start a political discussion, with him asking which of the Repbulican Primary candidates has the best chance of beating Parker in the general. I express a disbelief that Parker can, at this point, be defeated, and suggest that that is probably a good thing.
"Ah, Democrat, eh? Well, they say if you're not one at eighteen you've got no heart and all that. Still, what is it that makes you want to support the big taxers, eh?"
"Well, people who make more should pay their fairer share, right?"
"Well, sure, but what's a fair share? Let's say that you, me, and Martin Panzer were splitting a pizza, and the total cost of the pie was twenty-four dollars. Now it's pretty clear to me that the only fair way to divide that cost is if we each throw in eight bucks. Why should buying a government be any different?"
"Well," said I, quite possibly more just for the sake of disagreeing than anything else, "What if one person ends up eating almost all of it? If someone's going to be eating two or three slices for every one I get, they ought to pay more. And your rich people get more out of the government, since they've got more property for the police to be guarding."
"That's a pretty good argument, lad, a pretty good argument. But not a great one. Government isn't just about protecting property, now, is it? It's protecting your life itself, and your liberties as well, right." I reluctantly agreed. "And those are more important than property, aren't they? A lot more important. Probably thousands of times more important. So what you and me and Panzer are getting from government, each of our slices of the pizza, are going to be consisting mostly of our life-protecting and liberty-protecting parts, and those are all equal, right? You don't want to say a rich man's life or liberty is worth more than yours, do you? No. So next to that, the amount that comes from property-protecting is tiny, just a fraction of a peperoni."
"The trouble with trying to finance the government from taxing the poor is that, well, they really don't have a whole lot of money. So you've got to go and tax the rich if you want to actually do anything with it." I ventured.
"Oh ho, the Willie Sutton argument." I was nonplussed. "Willie Sutton. Famous criminal in the 19th century. Someone once asked him why he robbed banks. Know what he said?"
I didn't answer, so he continued.
"'Because that's where the money is'. Well, that's why Me and Barnham" (Barnham being, I gather, his favorite candidate for the primaries. "favor a flat percentage tax rather than a fixed sum."
"Oh. Because that would be silly." Paulsen failed his 'detect sarcasm' check. "Anyhow, it doesn't really matter what I think. I don't turn eighteen until well after the primaries. The general election will be my first time voting." And that pretty much ended that discussion. Besides, the food was pretty well done for. After that, Pope insisted on all of us going to a movie, and picked out She's Not Harold, which is probably the least funny comedic film about transvestism ever released upon the general public. Pope Paulsen, of course, was laughing loudly throughout.
Something obvious must be done, and quickly. Although...
Pope is planning on taking Mom on a romantic getaway over the 'oh, it's just a fantastic coincidence that it happens to fall on Easter Weekend' spring holiday, leaving me alone in the house, which is exceptionally cool, as it has prompted Jenny to make a cross country trip to visit me around then. As the Pontiff himself would probably say without thinking about it, it's an ill wind that blows nobody good. So any plans to break those two up will have to be put on hold for now.
Your Brother
Douglas
posted by Jeff R. at 4:55 PM
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