Category Archives: Scott Birdseye

Letters: Maine 2008

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Dear Axes & Alleys,
It has come to my attention that a number of businesses are touting “green” not as an adjective to describe physical appearance, but as an adjective to describe the level to which said product affects the environment. This makes no sense. Plants are green because of chlorophyll. But the environment is made up of more than plants. 70% of the Earth’s surface is blue, and of the remaining 30% only a portion is green. There are white glaciers, brown deserts and mountains and gray rocks. Even many plants are mostly brown, such as the amber, not green, waves of grain. Perhaps the Green Party should change its name to the Gabbgaw Party, since it really represents green, amber, brown, blue, gray and white. This would provide a more honest view of environmental issues. Thus we would not call hybrid gas-electric cars green or say that they are “less green” than solar cars . We would instead say that a solar car was more gabbgaw than a gasoline powered car. We could even go a step further and quantify gabbgaw. I, for one, would love to see a car ad and know that this year’s model features 23% more gabbgaw. It makes sense to me.
Vice President Alfonso “Al” Gore, NL.
Nashville, TN

Dear A&A,
It would be a lot of fun to take a boat ride one day. If I could take a boat ride with any five people living or dead, my choices would be Geoffrey Chaucer, Horatio Nelson, Jesus, Amanda Marble and Moon Unit Zappa.
Tricia McGulley
Harper’s Ferry, WV

To the Editors,
I really don’t understand this religion called Zoroastrianism. Sure, Zorro was an interesting character, I guess, but I don’t think that any amount of swashbuckling swordplay would defeat Angra Mainu and Azhi Dahaka the Dragon King.
Ikpot Thompson
Montreal, Canada

Dear Axes & Alleys,
I once telephoned David Lowery from a pay phone in the South. I can’t divulge how I came across his number, but I didn’t reach him anyway. No, instead I got on the other end of the line his estranged wife. We proceeded to have a six minute conversation about what a jerk he was and also how their apartment had a leaky bath tub. I suggested she use some caulk to fix that up.
Batty Mountbaten
Blimey, NY

A&A,
I was wondering the other day why more people didn’t use the word spangle, except when they talk about the national anthem of the United States of America. Well, it turns out that the national anthem could really use a hyphen. For the longest time I thought it was spangled with something else while the stars were bannering. It’s also kind of redundant. A spangle is a small glittering object. Stars are small glittering objects. They could have just had it be “A Banner” and been done with it.
Clem Hartley
Corso, Portuguese Bavaria

Editors, Axes & Alleys,
Do you think you could make your magazine in the shape of a trapezoid? I think it would be easier to hold.
Jimmy “Five Fingers” Jackson
Pistol Grip, NH

Dear Axes & Alleys,
I really don’t like Sticker Page. Every time I try to cut a sticker out for my own use, I end up ruining yet another laptop screen. I never even get a chance to staple the pages together.
Tom Today
New York, NY

Axes & Alleys,
I have a few suggestions for your magazine. First, I think you should include a section for letters from your readers. Next I think you should report on a big news topic. Maybe something of global import. After that you might want to include a regular report on something technological or scientific. I always like those. A classifieds section would be great so that readers could conduct commerce with one another. Having a page that could be printed out for stickers would be fun for the children and mentally infirm. I would absolutely love a travelogue column and perhaps an advice column written by an historical figure. Various and sundry other articles could be included, too. Ooh! You could even have a front and back cover. I don’t read your magazine, but I thought these would be some pretty awesome suggestions. Let me know.
James Whitmore, Jr.
Sunnydale, CA

Dear Axes & Alleys,
I am writing to complain about your Axes & Alleys brand fluegelhorn valve oil. No one told me it was flammable.
Kerry Absalom
Pinter, WY

Editors,
The Treader Family is deeply disappointed in your discontinuation of the scratch and sniff issue. We recently relocated to the Czech Republic and were enjoying this new way to experience the magazine. The new burn and sniff edition is not a satisfactory replacement.
The Treader Family
Prague, Czech Republic

Dear Axes & Alleys,
When are you going to publish that chicken paprikash
recipe I sent in back in August of 1968?
Wolfgang Puck
Amsterdam, Austria, UK.

Volume 456-BR8: Issue 11: Maine 2007

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cover35

Axes & Alleys: We Did What We Could!

darts

Dear Readers,

What you are reading now is not the original month of Maine issue. No, unfortunately the editorial staff spent a wild evening out at the local watering hole and by the end of the evening we were so trashed that we accidentally left the galley proof at the bar. We thought about calling the next day to see if it were still there, or if someone had turned it into the lost and found, but we couldn’t do that because we were too embarrassed about what DJ Trickyfingers did to the dartboard. They’ll probably have to buy a new dartboard.

Instead, we just threw this new version of the issue together at the last moment before the deadline. It’s not as good as the issue should have been, but it’s okay, because we all had a really great time that night.

xxx ooo

Delores R. Grunion
Editor-in-Chief

The Maine Cover Girl: Aimee Echo

Azura Skye
Aimee Echo, of theSTART and
the unfortunately-named Human Waste
Project, is a Los Angeles-based person
who has noted the politeness of the
A&A Editorial staff.

Globalization and Puppetry

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Nary a month goes by when Axes & Alleys does not receive some complaint about point number two in our September 2003 article “Helpful Hints for Protesters.” Many such letters are clearly from formerly gruntled puppet constructioneers, but a significant proportion seem to have come from a portion of the population who have had the felt pulled over their eyes. Ran Jirui responds.

“Papier mache puppets will change the world.”
– Sam Waterston, New England Blue Blood

“Grotesque effigies paraded down the metropolitan streets of the Western industrialized nations have solved monetary crisis after monetary crisis.”
– Hugh McCulloch, former Secretary of the Treasury (1865)

“I changed my tax initiatives because of them puppets.”
– George W. Bush, President Emeritus, United States of America

Look like fake quotes, don’t they? That’s because they are. And they always will be. You will never hear any of those people or anyone vaguely important say anything remotely in agreement with a positive view of puppetry vis a vis global change. In fact, on a graph with puppetry at one axis and global change at the other you will never see any positive movement because such a graph is impossible to create due to lack of data.

What you’ll find if you correlate the data on purchase of materials for the making of papier mache puppets expressly for use at anti-globalization protests is a net effect of jack squat. Even the disposal costs of such grotesqueries (as the esteemed Mr. McCulloch would put it) are less than the utility of water-soluble beer can.

In the context of the aforementioned point number two, “2. Puppetry will not create a workable interest rate,” let’s take a look at a photo of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States of America:

Now, I’ll give you Donny Kohn might show up to a meeting with a sock-puppet in tow or put a papier mache manikin on the top of his Volvo, but no one listens to him anyway. There isn’t a single other member who would even look at a puppet if it was wrapped around a 50 grand note stuffed in the panties of a stripper with an economics PhD from Harvard dancing on a conference table at the Bear Stearns offices on Wall Street.

There are only three times in history when puppetry of any sort has affected anything of any consequence: Sun Tzu saw a shadow puppet play performed in what is now Thailand sometime in the 6th century B.C. which informed the final chapter of The Art of War on the use of spies, Wegbaja of Dahomey was inspired to construct a palace at Abomey around the 1650s by seeing a master puppet maker at work cementing the continuing success of that African empire, and most recently the Good Guy forces withdrew from the Aral Sea campaign as a result of the deformed representations of President Armstrong and corporate magnate Daniel Bester shown in cahoots at massive anti-war protests around the world.

Otherwise puppetry as an instigator or influencer of anything at all relevant to the grand movements of history is bunkum, a porpoise in the produce section, a flight of towels wending their way toward Saturn, three policemen in a submarine, your father wearing electrified nipple clamps at a rodeo, like smoking a cigar underwater, making love to utilitarianism, begging the question at the porn industry awards, a chair with a wart; in short, utterly ridiculous.