A Few Brief Comments, vol. 1

I think that animated rat thing over to the right is by far the coolest thing that I've ever stolen for my web page. I found it as a result of typing "Rats" into Yahoo and then clicking on a lovely site called "Aargh, the Rats!" which is a site in the United Kingdom devoted to the interests of British rat enthusiasts. I'm sure that an audience for this site exists.

In any event, I didn't start this commentary with a topic in mind and simply wanted to keep up my tradition of putting an image off to the right for every article I write. It's gone well so far.

So, what do you want me to write about? I think I'm going to write a little bit about the college lifestyle. I received a forward recently that documented all the things that a particular person hated about college and the one that most closely related to me was his disgust with the social obligation to hold open the door for people. I thought that this was only an Olivet phenomenon, but I was both surprised and horrified to learn that such an affront to the traditional American value of self-reliance has spread throughout the system of higher education. Yes, I realize that it's inconvenient to get out your key every time. Yes, it can be cold out sometimes. And yet there seems to be a point at which it is absurd. I don't especially want the door held open for me, because it's a simple matter to reach into my pocket and get out the key as long as I'm not wearing gloves. If I am wearing gloves or carrying something that makes it inconvenient to reach into my pocket, I go through the process of getting out my key as I walk toward the door and by the time I get there, it's a simple issue.

The problem with people nowadays is that they never plan ahead. In fact, the only time when people planned ahead in recent history was the 1950's. That's right. That was the decade when everyone was a wonderful Christian person, family values abounded, and people never flaunted their breasts on television. People in the 1950's were known to plan ahead very thoroughly, sometimes writing out scripts for potential conversations with employers or spouses and rehearsing the lines in case such a conversation occurred. They would keep a notebook of all their plans for the next month or so and if something changed, they would throw it out and start over without a second thought because they had planned to do so.

People back then were a lot more patient back then, too. Kids had a much longer attention span as a result of MTV's non-existence. When kids were not throwing spit-balls or chewing gum in class, they would often read War and Peace for pleasure as early as second grade, by which time most of them had learned Russian and could read it in the original. Back then, the educational system taught kids something. There was none of this cultural sensitivity crap because kids knew darn well that they were living in the best culture around and that learning about others would be a huge, tedious waste of time.

People nowadays don't have any pride in their country. All anyone can ever do is apologize for the past history of the country. You've got Slick Willy up there delivering a speech apologizing for slavery while some hussy, well, you know -- and no one even cares. Back then they would have cared because politicians back then were upstanding moral citizens who cared about what happened in this country. Even though it wasn't written in the 1950's, I would like to take this moment to quote the chorus to a song we all know and love:

And I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free.
And I won't forget the men who died, who gave that right to me.

Back in the fifties, people were known to die to give rights to other people. In one famous case, a man declared that he wanted people to have the right to serve God as they understood him and then he suddenly died. That got everyone's attention. It was better back in the fifties. TV didn't have all those colors to distract you from the storyline. There was constant threat of nuclear apocalypse and half of the world's population lived under autocratic regimes. But man, was it ever halfway through the twentieth century. I mean, if you want to see a decade that was in the middle of the century, look at the 1950's. They had it right back then.