A Journal of Humor and Verbal Anarchy

 
None of the above

Unimpressed by the hullabaloo over the Iowa Caucuses? Bored beyond tears by news coverage of all those paunchy white bread, cornfed Iowans shuffling through the halls of the local high school At a glance, Iowa is reported to be home to 16 million pigs and just 3 million people. A disproportionality that entitles Iowa to be considered as a shooting backdrop for the next film remake of Animal Farm. Simply another media circus? The society of the spectacle gone haywire? Or should Ez have said hayseed? What do you expect from a civilization that has made the SUV a national fetish?

No, this isn't a blog about national politics. What could be said or will be said about politics has been said endlessly and then repeated on the 11 o'clock news, only to resurface in the headlines of the Ithaca Journal.

Ez wants to talk about none of the above. Literally.

Remember taking a mutiple choice quiz back in school? Ez's favorite answer was always d) none of the above. For example: Who was the first president to have driven in an SUV? a)Martin Van Buren b)Calvin Coolidge c)HWilliam Howard Taft, or d)none of the above. Ez invariably chose d). Regardless of the question. D was always a safe answer. Having d) there meant that a possibility existed that a) the author of the test might have a sense of humor, b) that there might well be people sitting in the same room with you stupid enough to choose a,b or c or; c) that the truth might lie somewhere else, unseen, untouched. lurking somewhere out there, off the page: or d)none of the above.

Needless to say, this test strategy didn't get Ez into Harvard. But that was back in the 60's. People were just starting to talk about 'thinking outside the box.' Truth is, you didn't think outside of the box in the 50's. Suddenly folks began to question the conventional wisdom about society, politics, life. But, look where it got them? What ever happened to Woodstock Nation? Most 60's kids eventually drifted back into the mainstream, took their places in the office towers, the muffler shops, the state houses. Those that didn't moved to places like Ithaca, opened up boutiques and headshops. They not only fooled themselvces into thinking that they were really outside the box, they also did a good job keeping the big boxes out of Ithaca for 25 years.

Now they all support Dennis Kucinich.

But is that really thinking outside the box? Nowadays thinking outside the box is generally associated with making money. Does anyone anymore think outside the box? We're talking about 2004. The damn box has been implanted in our brains for christsakes. You can't see the sides of the box anymore - you can't even read the label - it's like code embedded into our cerebral cortex.

Who's Dennis Kucinich anyway? Maybe there's something a little suspicious about a guy who takes money from Shirley Maclaine to finance his presidential campaign. After all, here's a person who thinks she's been reincarnated a dozen times. Maybe she was Herbert Hoover in another life. Or even Boss Tweed. Benedict Arnold. Who knows? Maybe , if he became president, Kucinich would burn incense in the Lincoln Bedroom, deliver the State of the Union adress in the lotus position. Replace the Washington Monument with a giant crystal. Pretty scarey. Eh?

Ez sticks with his original choice. d)none of the above.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 8:28 PM