MAILBAG

Astrophil from Kenora wrote in to ask: "Palinode, what would an entry look like if you only had twenty minutes at the end of the day to post something and you're too busy to write a coherent, cogent and lucid entry? Yours, Astrophil". Good question, Astrophil. I expect it would look like this:

Some people will come here expecting words. Others, food. Those who expect food (eg., cookies) will not only be disappointed but perplexed. Perplexity and disappointment are the natural results of expecting food (eg., bologna) from computers. Perhaps there will come a day when food (eg., zucchini bread) can be downloaded from grocery and restaurant servers, but that day is not here yet. Great scientific minds have been labouring over the issue, and one day - of course - the issue will come to fruition, rising like fresh bread from the minds of our white-coated friends and travelling down the information superhighway to our personal computers. Pardon me: make that the information and food (eg., blancmange) superhighway. Or suprehighway, as they say in Canada. The question is: why has the issue not yet come to fruition, even with all our white-coated friends working in the early hours of the morning, every morning, for so many years now, in the scientific bakeries of our nations? I suspect that fruition can only brought about by the proper amount of leaven, judiciously added to the recipe. Only leaven may allow the "bread" to "rise" and the issue come to fruition. Why has it not happened? Our scientists, our friends in the white coats, are cowards. This is obvious. The real question is, why are they such damnable cowards? There are two factors involved: 1) the food (eg., flan) companies seek a stranglehold on the means of distribution. They have so alienated the scientists from the product of their labour that the scientists have grown confused and cowardly. 2) weak blood. The scientists are the product of a long line of weak-blooded effete sophisticates, with none of the natural barbarian spirit that has made our nations strong. One day a great reckoning shall arrive, and our barbarians will feast on the food (eg., dirt) that slides down the internet like grain down a goose's throat. The weak-blooded strain arrived on Earth around 3000 BC when -

There you go, Astrophil. If I had no time and no ability to assemble a coherent argument, that's what it would look like. And now I must go home. Yours, Palinode.

parode - exode