Category: Uncategorized

Dear Mark, Johnny, and Greg –

I write to you to apologize. As you may remember, at Goose’s wedding we sat together. I had tied my tie with a windsor knot, and each of you had tied his with a half-windsor. When someone commented on my more formal, dare I say stately, knot, I took the opportunity to mock you, saying that I was the only person at the table who did not look as if he was going to his first communion. This was, perhaps, a bit much.

Please accept my apology. Also, the fine folks at Brooks Brothers have put together a site to help us learn even more knots. I couldn’t help but think of you.

Yours,

Alex

I do dig these old posters.

Looks like ma bookie Del is slowly working his way towards stardom, his likeness appearing in an ad for what appears to be for a videogame in which you point at the sky and say “Holy shit, it’s the Christ!”. Maybe you kill demons or something.

I normally eschew discussions of religion on B A Start, but here’s what bugs me about the rapture. So, all the good people go to Heaven and everybody else stays of Earth, which has recently been transferred to new ownership. What kind of Heaven is it to watch loved ones suffer at the hands of Satan? I mean, you get up there, look around, and notice a few coworkers are missing. Doesn’t that bug you a little when they hand you the harp, the knowledge that people you know will spend a thousand years being tortured? Or is that the kind of thinking that gets you kicked out. Either way, it just doesn’t sound all that heavenly to me.

Unbearably hot weather marks the beginning of a season in the B A Start household; time to start figuring out what to dress as for Halloween.

The great conversation lasts months, with scores of concepts tossed aside until the winner is declared. Then, the day before the event a final switch-up is made, and well-planned wigs, props, and oddly-colored glasses find themselves put out to pasture without even seeing use.

In the past few years, I’ve been Buddy Holly, the Invisible Man, and the Mad Hatter. What will this year’s jam sessions bring? Only the Ghost of Halloween Future knows for sure.

Today’s lunchtime conversation: Fraggle Rock.

The Doozers, the benevolent hard-hatted fairies of the Fraggle world, baffle me. What a horrid existence, consumed by the sisyphean task of building and rebuilding their radish-steel buildings, only to watch as the relatively giant fragglekind eat them for pleasure.

Perhaps, though, they have attained some atlantean zen society. If it weren’t for the sons and daughters of fraggledom, they would be able to build their sugary utopia in days. What, then, would they do with themselves? Life without work is misery, so why not create an impossible task for you and yours? An entire species devoted to an unattainable ideal, happily plugging away towards it until judgement.

This, clearly, is the secret of their people, known only to the eldest of the Doozer elders. And the Trash Heap, of course.

Sorry for the lack of posts, diligent B A Starters. Been running around like a looney tune since the last installment.

I’ll take a quick moment for this rumor. Allow me to say that I doubt it. What about Mark Hamill?

Went to a show the other night and everybody but me was dressed like Elliott Smith. I was dressed in my work clothes, looking more than a little like a put-upon divorced father on his night with the kids. I think I’m going to go buy a black t-shirt and one of those Fidel Castro hats to keep in storage for just such an occasion, one in which I need to dress like I’m acting out in order to blend in.

Jess: How do I save this?

Alex: Just hit the button that looks like one of those old floppy disks.

Now that’s what I am discussing. And to think, I didn’t bring my DS to the hospital out of respect. How long before young Maeve gets a chance to blue shell the old man? Should Unkie Alex’s christening gift be a Noble Pink DS lite?
Girls like pink, right? Do you buy gifts for christenings? I really have no idea how this all works.

As a teenager, I got into a fight with the Religious Right. The Merrimack school board went God on us, and started doing crazy stuff. Things got messy. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say on the topic:

In recent years, Merrimack has also been a battleground of sorts for the Gay Rights and school prayer movements in New Hampshire and nationwide. In the mid-1990’s, led by a conservative majority, the Merrimack School Board passed a series of school regulations banning what they called “Homosexual Acts and Homosexual Materials” in the school district and mandating a district-wide daily “Moment of silence“. Banned actions included same-sex hand holding and hugging. Banned materials included any literature written by purported homosexuals. Merrimack erupted into a firestorm of political debate, bringing the town into the forefront of the growing debate over homosexuality in the U.S. The scandal culminated in months of dramatic regionally televised school board meetings, student-led walkouts, and a national news special. Today, the district still observes a daily moment of silence, but the bans on homosexuality have been all but forgotten.[3]

As you can imagine, the ‘live free or die’ types didn’t like this very much. Our parents held large meetings in their homes to discuss how to fight the board or support it. Any public event became polarized, with knots of people looking askance at one another. Whose hand did you shake? Who did you ignore? Were you with side A or side B?

I was into it. I argued the topics all the time. I coughed or dropped things during the moment of silence. I interviewed the school board members on their opinions on a variety of sensitive topics, and published their responses verbatim in the school newspaper right before an election, trying to give the jerks the rope required to hang themselves. I imagine I alienated a lot of people without realizing it, but hey. It really bugged me.

Why do I bring this up? I ran across the issue today as I read this page on banned books. Good old Merrimack.

The concept of book banning was one of the many that pissed me off back then. The very term got my blood boiling. What I realize now is that is a high school strikes a book from its curriculum because it contains a swear word or a sex scene, it’s not that big of a deal. We can always go to the public library and get it, or the book store.

Now, if a book is removed from the curriculum because it was written by a homosexual? That’s a real problem.

Overall, I’m glad I ran across this reminded of my hometown’s past (and present) today. While my juvenile fervor may have subsided a little, topics of public school literature curricula and school prayer still get a rise out of me.