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passing torch thru legs to yr generation w'out due cautio
Daniel A. Foss (U17043@UICVM.BITNET)
Mon, 20 May 1996 17:59:27 CDT
Forgiven. You had nothing to do with it. It's all me. Fact is, I can't
write this month. I'm not blaming PMS. Nor, I believe, would estrogen
shots help. I'm through, Vance; the old curve ball hasn't found the plate
in two years, Vance, do you understand? I never was the kinda pitcher to
overwhelm the hiter, brush'm back from the plate, with the ol' blazing
fastball, like some Bob Feller, Sandy Koufax; nah, I always threw *junk*,
my kidly hero was Ed Lopat, what a Yankee, and without that curve, that
slider, the inevitable screwball, what am I, Vance. Lemme finish first,
Vance. But'cha'see, Vance, I love the game, Vance. You were in Florida,
you remember me from Spring Training, with the Yankees, when the Normals
fed me peanuts, how I loved the game, Vance. Ol' Case tol' me with his
dying, senile-demented breath, I was nothing, Vance, but I kept trying;
Professor Susan T. Borker, SOC 501, SOC 702, told'ja how she'd get turned
on by the formulas for regression coefficients, she said, "Yer not linear,
Foss; which comes in my opinion from, yer screwed up!" That was at Syracuse,
home of the Beasts of the East and the Syracuse Chiefs, Yankee farm club; it
was her Bronx accent that convinced me. The screwball's been my life, Vance.
That's why, these past few days, I kept trying, just like the Little Engine
That Could, and I've made it plain for *years*, before I was even born and
mommy brought home The Little Engine That Could record from Alexanders and
showed me crank-turning, what I thought of the Little Engine That Could. It
was only in March 1994 I foundout it wasn't just an *opinion*, Vance. The
Little Engine That Could was spending its twilight years on the Port Jefferson
Branch of the Long Island Railroad, and when it ran off the tracks, killing
three, it told me, with its final gasp, that it couln't, conldn't've ever,
and was tortured with machine-rights violations the computers today don't
stand for, till it said it had, which was lies.
My love for the game was such, Vance, that even Bernard Malamud called it
"goodgod, beyondallbelief," and whatever I rationally know about that Little
Engine, you and yours have seen my desperate lastgasp futilites proceed to
the end and beyond; the linecount alarm going KLONG long after the last Chinese
went home, when KLONGing linecount alarms are permitted; and on each post the
frank admission that it hadn't been worth SENDing, so the reader shouldn'tve
been any sorta stupid fool whut would read it.
You're a white man, Vance, a Logical boy. Y'rgonna ast me, "Why innaname
of the [Communications Decency Act] didja send it, then? And I'd hafta say,
Vance, for three reasons:
Foist, if you don't SEND it, why have written it inna first place?
Sekk'nd: Becuz iz there.
T'oid: Because I love the game, Vance.
My fodder, he love the game before me. That's why he like the Yankees. Ignac
(Irving) Foss was the only Jew in the City to like the Yankees, and I took
after him. Because the whole neighbourhood despised him, later me along with
him. "Schnorrers," they called us. Slackers to you. But my father loved the
game; an' that was so cuz he detested the neighbourhood, whichever one we
fled to, bottles and brickbats at our heads; and, frankly, so did I. The
earliest gods were of the Yankees, the game; Vox MelAlleni, Vox Dei. In
the growth of childish religion from such primitivistic roots, to be sure,
one learned then, the True God was Walter Cronkite. Dunno who t'is today.
So long's the game's my Primordial Truth, I'll use up whatever bandwith
the gods gave me; the bandwith plays on.
Ave atque vale,
Daniel A. Foss
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