tito tito LeeThe New AusteritiesOpportunities in Alabama AgricultureThe Sweet-Scented ManuscriptThe Fields of Asphodel

Friday, April 2, 2010

This blog has moved


This blog is now located at http://titoperdue.blogspot.com/.
You will be automatically redirected in 30 seconds, or you may click here.

For feed subscribers, please update your feed subscriptions to
http://titoperdue.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Population and its Problems

But first, before concerning himself with economic affairs, the Regulator opted to address the most pressing of national issues, a population catastrophe in which the average American acre was expected to provide habitation for 29.32 citizens, as opposed to the 1.09 of more healthy times. The earth groaned under the weight. “Never,” said he, (said the Regulator) “has so much ignorance and so many vile appetites been compressed into such tight quarters, save only perhaps in Europe, Asia, and Latin America.” He went on: “Every man his hundred acres! And let no domiciles come within three hundred yards of each other, certainly not. Every man his library, incunabula mostly and all of them leather bound!” (Wild cheering.)

“And how, Sir, may we bring the population down?” (This was actually asked by one of the bystanders.)

“Why, by giving them six months to get out of town!”

“’Them?’”

“Bet your sweet ass ‘them!’”

(Wild cheering.)

“And then we cancel all constitutional rights for those as lag behind. Want to take their houses and rape their wives? Have at it!”

“Actually it’s their daughters, Sir. Not their wives.”

And so thus Lee, who gave the order that same day. Not content with that, he next wheedled some 17 million youths off to Key West with promises of beer, video games and sex. It needed just two score of patriotic Americans to sever the single highway to that island and push it out to sea. Amazing, how quickly the quality of life on the mainland began to return to the “gold standard” of 1940-58. Next, he fobbed off almost 72 million liberals to a certain well-known large city in the Northeast which the Executor (as he was sometimes called) immediately quarantined with a laser-defended wall varying from thirty to thirty-five feet in height.

Had he died that moment, The Regulator would surely have gone down as perhaps the greatest benefactor in the whole history of the West. But still his work was not done, not even after he had purged the nation of those some seventeen million afflicted with the “cathode ray tube sickness,” a mortal condition characterized by atrophy of the brain.

[Next week: Europe]

Labels:

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Bookmark Interview

My interview on Don Noble's Bookmark program will be rebroadcast on November 22 at 11am on Alabama Public Television.

Labels: , ,

Friday, November 13, 2009

Inauguration of the Regulator

Blustery day, that when Lee “Leland” Pefley, age 77, composed and committed himself before a crowd of more than thirty souls to the “Great Oath,” properly so-called, that marked his assumption of total power in the political, economic, military, and cultural realms. His right hand on a copy of the first edition of the novel named after himself, he pledged all sorts of things. (Thirty souls! A select group, to be sure, chosen by lot from unpublished writers and long-term prisoners furloughed for the purpose.)
“I do pledge,” it is said he said, “do pledge to do what is most aesthetically pleasing, and to hell with practical results. Anyway, I’m sick of results and people of that sort. What is the quality of American poetry, yes? And how many of us, really, can speak both Aeolic and Attic Greek? These are the questions my cabinet shall address next Monday at our annual fry.
(Some of those prisoners are still at large, the neighbors claim.)
“And what will be my policy you ask?” (He pointed to the one who had asked it, a roseate and gimlet-eyed rubicund man with a beetling brow handcuffed most cruelly in barbed wire.) “We don’t need no stinking policy! All we need is…” But here his voice was overwhelmed by the National Orchestra’s rendition of the second movement of Mahler’s eighth, a performance commanded by him at 3:15 that same afternoon upon awakening for the brand new day.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

The Coming of the Regulator

How strange, that the young people of today have no apparent collective familiarity with the seminal events of 2017-22, that “social earthquake,” so-denominated, that established the foundations of our current happiness. Indeed, a recent poll carried out by the J. W. Booth Institute suggests that as much as 14% of the youthful population could not immediately identify the official oil painting of Regulator Leland (“Lee”) Pefley on display in our nation’s capitol in Richmond. It might seem therefore that the time has come to review the signal achievements of this epoch-making individual who, if it is not too much to claim, restored our republic to the condition that in the normal course of events it could (and should) have assumed some seventy or eighty years earlier.
But first, recollect how this person ascended to the newly formed emergency position of Regulator, a last ditch measure to shore up our national boundaries and restore some, at least, of the features of the by-then forgotten American Constitution, (to employ the nomenclature of the nostalgists of that day). Prior to having dissolved itself in the autumn of 2015, you will remember how the Senate in its final action had set up this new position, granting wide executive powers agreed to endure for five years. Remember, too, that the quality of our higher officers had already begun to improve somewhat, owing to the new method of selection by lottery. Even so, (you must also recall) our society remained in the most parlous condition, the “War Without Pity” still raging in full flood between The Junta, The Bloods, and The Caucasoid Rump.