Digressions of a Dilettante

Digressions of a Dilettante
Vignettes of Inanity by Bud Hearn

Friday, October 31, 2014

Say It to My Face


There comes a time in the affairs of man when he must take the bull by the tail and face the situation.” W. C. Fields

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Farley was once a friend. His nickname was Sugar Boy. I once had a friend named Sugar Boy. I say once, because nobody knows what happened to him. Last we heard some state boys showed up in his back yard in a black SUV, strapped a straight jacket on him and hauled him off for ‘examination.’ He’s been missing ever since.

It was bound to happen…Farley had too many friends and a volatile temper. He was that kind of guy. He made friends with everybody. At last count he had assembled over 10 million ‘friends,’ mostly women, which offer a clue to his cognomen. He broke all friendship records on Facebook. His mental wiring finally overloaded, frying the circuitry. It’s an ugly sight to see a man come unhinged and reduced to a deranged imbecile. Memories like this are always fresh wounds.

We warned him of the dangers of obsessive behavior, telling him that ‘No’ is still a word. But he was badly dyslexic, always inverting ‘No’ to ‘On.’ He was strange that way.

He finally went nuclear in his backyard. A group of us were playing cards one afternoon in his garage. Sugar Boy went inside. In a few minutes he shambled out of the house, lugging his computer and its peripherals. Two black pistols, both 12-round, 9 mm Glocks, were tucked into his belt. We abandoned the cards and walked out to see what he was up to. Guns will always draw a crowd.

He slammed the computer to the ground and began kicking it viciously. He cursed both it and Facebook. He screamed invectives while jerking the pistols from his belt. We knew he’d lost control when he shot the helpless hardware full of holes. It lay there, belching smoke and emitting an eerie screeching sound, the computer’s last breath. Nothing moved. We stood in stunned silence, staring at the surreal spectacle.

Life goes on. The event lay dormant in my mind until I read a recent article by Joe Queenan. He allowed as how cowardly our culture has become in ‘defriending’ acquaintances. He cited a pseudo-scientific study by some obscure British philosopher who theorized a human’s neocortex had insufficient storage capacity. It can’t handle more than 150 friends at once. He concluded that for every one added, one had to be eliminated.

The Queenan hypothesis is worth contemplating. My Blackberry has accumulated over 3,000 friends in its data base. Sugar Boy’s episode flashed into mind. Why can’t we revert to the ‘old days’ when getting rid of friends was easier? The answer is obvious…our culture has taken the concept of political correctness to extremes. Our lives have become sterile, wrapped in a thick coating of Saran. Our body language cries, “Hey, look at me, but don’t touch.”

In the South Georgia of my youth, if one had a problem with his neighbor, he didn’t call a lawyer, write a letter or circulate rumors. No, he made a house call, invited the neighbor outside to discuss the issue. Most controversy was resolved without bloodshed.

But not today. We are a craven culture when it comes to concluding things. We write letters, e-mails, texts and use caller-ID to do the defriending. Personal confrontation is not decorous behavior.

I once had a business partner whose mantra was: “If it’s important enough to say, say it to my face.” He spent a lot of time in the back seat of police cars. But what’s the problem with a more direct, in-your-face method now? Nothing! Except we’re too lily-livered to do it. We are afraid of violating people’s space with frank discussions or being shot.

It’s not easy to ‘defriend’ people. We are, after all, a genteel culture. While there are many options, we seem to prefer avoidance and attrition over confrontation. Emerson once wrote, “Do the thing and you will have the power.” We should consider this advice.

Lately, I have given much thought to more direct methods of resolution. While Sugar Boy’s adventure of defriending his contact base was extreme, it did make a point. There are options, after all.

So, if you’d like to defriend me, then forget deleting my email, phone number and address and man up….say it to my face!

Bud Hearn
October 31, 2014


Friday, October 17, 2014

New Ideas

A new idea is a stick of dynamite. It can get you killed, especially in small towns. Little-town memories of my youth include this oft-recited axiom: “A new idea and a cold drink of water, taken together, can kill you.”

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Ideas swirl in the Georgia red-clay dust devils that transplant the topsoil. They shimmer in the heat monkeys that rise from asphalt roads that turn liquid in the stifling summer meltdowns. It’s preached on every corner and in every church. Not so much in words, but in the winks, the nods, the habits and thought patterns inbred into generation after incestuous generation.

Ideas are dangerous. Why? Because new ideas step on toes. They change things and tend to upset the status quo, the perceived, predictable and traditional ways of doing things. If anyone is foolish enough to attempt to upset a small-town status quo or the existing power structure, fresh rope suddenly appears. The hapless innovator receives swift recompense administered by local vigilantes.

A hot air balloon rises from a field in France. It’s observed by Alexander Graham Bell and a friend. It floats over some trees, coming to rest in a field tended by peasants with pitchforks. Immediately it’s violently assaulted, collapsing lifelessly in the loess.

The friend asks, “Dr. Bell, now what good came from that hot air balloon experiment?”

Dr. Bell replies, “What good is any new-born baby?”

My mother was always trying new ideas. Like tricking me to eat liver. She pleaded in her best logic, “But son, it’s good for you”. She soon learned that logic is not the best motivator of stupid kids.

Her last attempt to trick me into eating that foul meat went sideways. Its malodorous stench hung in the humid air for blocks in our neighborhood. People fled their homes, gasping for breath. Those horrendous episodes finally broke her will. She abandoned all further ideas and efforts of trickery.

My grandmother had better luck with squash. She baked it in lemon skins, and it was terrific, to which I said, “Jewel (her name, and she was one!), this is the best baked lemon I ever ate.” Like I said, kids may be stupid, but good food overcomes logic every time!

One Sunday, with my mother in tow, I revisited the little Methodist Church of my youth after some 20 year’s absence. We sat in the second row left, near the altar. After the service, two elderly ladies rushed up to me, saying, “We barely recognized you…you were not in your usual place.”

I remember saying, “Uh, where is my usual place?”

Why, your regular place was always in the back right, not the front left.” There you have it…the status quo, alive and well. I’d now become a revolutionary iconoclast!

Maybe it would have been good to have told them that during my absence I had swallowed a new idea that seems to be working. Repentance is one of those ‘new ideas,’ you know. It always has an Audience. It sometimes takes hard knocks to change one’s mind. Now I sit up front, lower left, as close to the fire as I’m willing to get.

Thomas Edison experimented with over 1,000 gas combinations to find one that worked in the electric light bulb. Before success arrived, he was asked, “Dr. Edison, have you failed?”

He replied, “No, I have succeeded in finding 1,000 combinations that won’t work.” You’re reading this now because his new idea continues to explode in the face of the darkness of status quo.

Historical events often don’t create new paradigms as much as they reveal new eras, pregnant with possibilities. It begs question of what might happen if we swallow some new ideas. History is waiting for our actions, not our words.

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The choice is ever before us: nurture the new, or rot in the ruins of a crumbling status quo. We can’t do both. Do you have a new idea? Light the fuse…change history!


Bud Hearn
October 17, 2014

Friday, October 10, 2014

Angola State Prison Rodeo …. A Retrospective


It’s Sunday, October 14th, 2008 when we arrive at Angola State Prison, Angola, Louisiana. The Warning reads: “You are about to enter a penal institution…” The air turns cold.

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In George’s jet eight of us fly to Baton Rouge. From there we drive in a white van across 51 miles of desolate Delta landscape littered with dilapidated mobile homes and hulks of rusted-out cars. Two hours later we enter gates guarded by razor-sharp concertina wire. It’s Angola State Prison, where the rodeo theme is “Guts and Glory.”

A massive black sign with the smiling face of Warden Burl Cain welcomes us. A stark warning comes with it: “If you wish to leave the premises, all guns, knives, alcohol and contraband should be surrendered at once.” We donate our knives and hand over the bucket of KFC, bones and all.

The stark prison stands stoically, nestled silently amid the lush green Delta pastures. Livestock grazes peacefully, framed by miles of white rail fences. Small lakes filled with white pond birds break the tranquil symmetry of the fields. But the serenity disguises the reality of the treacherous institution where death-row and hopelessness co-exist. Surreal and unnatural, like an intruder in the distorted reality of a Salvatore Dali landscape.

The scene inside is chaotic. Multitudes of hefty flesh press together alongside rows of low tables filled with fried swine delicacies: chittlins, cracklins and pigtails. The cooking caldrons crackle and spit as pig fat hits the boiling grease. As each hot batch is dumped onto the tables, a new crowd shoves its bodily mass into the fray. Gnats and flies swarm and buzz in the wild ecstasy of the feeding frenzy.

Beyond, throngs of frenetic shoppers mingle among the cramped booths of itinerant vendors and petty hustlers hawking cheap trinkets and prison memorabilia. It is a monument to human ugliness!

Inside the arena the air swirls with excitement. About 10,000 ‘locals’ roar and cheer. Groups of brawny men and Harley has-beens huddle in tight circles, speaking in guttural utterances. The crowd bares a remarkable atavistic resemblance to the inmates….unnerving.

But here things can turn violent in a hurry. A thick air of tension permeates the tight enclosure. The arena’s plowed dirt is infused with the rancid odor of excrement, urine and fear. Only a 9-foot fence separates prisoners, bulls and spectators.

The inmates, now ‘cowboys,’ are corralled in a wire cage beneath the hospitality suite. From there Warden Cain’s prominent invitees can make sport of this absurdity. When things get boring they can poke the prisoners with sharp sticks to keep them attentive. One wonders what the incentive for volunteerism is!

Such lurid events originated with Caligula. Death is the only win for the participants… a hellish, psychological price to pay. But, this is Louisiana, where a hole in the wall of the State Capital, created by the bullet that killed Huey P. Long, is still enshrined. Carloads of Cajuns worship it.

In one event four ‘cowboys’ play cards at a red table. An 1,800 pound bull charges the table. Bodies fly through the air, landing with sickening thuds in the soft moist dirt. They leave on stretchers. Two remain. The bull charges again, narrowly missing the two who are frozen by fear. The 20-second buzzer sounds. Time’s up. These two share the $200 purse. Meanwhile, the music plays on: “Dum, dum, dum, another one bites the dust…dum, dum, dum….”

Despite this brutish display, the crowd shows a felicitous empathy for the ‘cowboys.’ The only break in the tense drama occurs when a clown in a shiny red Elvis outfit brings out 3 sheep dogs. Tiny monkeys ride on their backs, chasing a pack of wild goats. The laughter is almost too much to bear. Some become incontinent in the constrained effort of containment.

The spectacle finally concludes. The crowd makes its slow retreat into the humid dusk of a declining Delta day. Joining the exodus, we wonder: “What was this all about?”

We conclude everyone has at least one thing in common: A longing to grab excitement in this short life. So, for a few hours our lives and voices fuse into one, as we participate in this wild, unpredictable Spectacle of Life called a prison rodeo.

As we leave I glance backwards. There, inside the barbed wire, the cowboys are prisoners again, shuffling in slow motion in a single file line. They board buses for a short trip to lock-up, their ‘home.’

Suddenly the sky explodes with hundreds of white pond birds. In the gathering gloom of a Delta sunset they begin a slow flight south to their home. As darkness falls, the wind stirs the leaves of the changing season. Veiled yellowed windows of dimly-lit houses pop out of the dark woods. Ghostly shapes move slowly about inside, casting eerie shadows. Our white van lurches forward, roaring through the night with the singular purpose of going home.

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The day’s events distill in sleep. In dreams I see flocks of white pond birds floating silently overhead, heading homeward, seeking the allusive and ephemeral sense of freedom.


Bud Hearn
October 10, 2014

Friday, October 3, 2014

Reductio ad Absurdum


Words are molecules. They expound, confound and often explode. Ever since Einstein, man has been splitting the atom and splitting the hairs of words to the limits of the absurd.

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The other night my friend Bill, a hair-splitting articulate attorney, and I sit together at the season’s opening performance of the Coastal Symphony of Georgia. We whisper during the last movement of Les Preludes by Franz Liszt, attempting to comprehend the profundity of his music.

The program description of the piece reads: “Liszt is considered to be the virtual inventor of the symphonic poem where a nonmusical source provides a narrative foundation for a single-movement orchestral work.” Say what? Dilbert is more concise than this.

We have our several opinions. He argues that the word, ‘nonmusical’ is a misprint. It should be ‘nonsensical.’ Says it makes the sentence intelligible.

He asks my thoughts. I hesitate, then tell him I think it’s some sort of a secret code, perhaps meaning that no one in the orchestra uses deodorant. Both arguments, reductio ad absurdum. Neither can be disproved.

At home I sit. I read. I think. Not always a good thing to think too much. It might form a hypothesis, which might lead to a conclusion. And that’s the beginning of woes.

Conclusions beg for expression. Words attempt to do this. You might be tempted to express your current brain flash to someone, like a spouse. Mistake. They will take the germ of your thought and split its atom into shreds of differing opinion. Whereupon you may appear more stupid than you really are by having expressed the half-baked, caffeine-induced mental flush.

Show me the evidence,” they will say. You suddenly find yourself leaning on a weak reed. You’ll be caught flat-footed, your argument becoming a house of cards. You’ll teeter on a “narrative foundation” just like Liszt. Without empirical evidence, you will instantly become a “single-movement orchestral work.” You will slink away in shame, licking your wounds from the lashes of refutation.

Contrary to common opinion, hard evidence is not found from the theses of scientists, many of whom have bad hair and don’t use deodorant. Like Liszt, they claim to be “the virtual inventor” of incomprehensible things. They make up words, like quarks, and assign them meanings. Imagine a romantic evening with a scientist discussing genomic theory. Horrors! More entertaining evidence can be exhumed from the utterances of preachers, politicians and lawyers.

Preachers, unlike lawyers, tend to pontificate in generalities. They attempt to prove their theories by mental suggestion, word pictures and fantastic recitals of oral historical references. You can walk on water, they say, and turn stones to bread if only you believe. Incomprehensible. But then, seeing is not believing…believing is seeing. Get it?

They will strive to convince you that the world’s gonna soon collapse, roll up like a scroll and melt in a fervent heat. But that dog won’t hunt because it’s too phantasmagoric to comprehend. You might relate to certain aspects of collapse, like the meltdown of your stock portfolio or when the foreclosure writ was nailed to your front door. Who can rebut experiential evidence?

Politicians are master truth twisters and inveterate prevaricators. Verity is not in their vocabulary. They’re blowhards, hurling great swelling words into the universe…words full of sound and fury, words signifying nothing, words that beguile the simple-minded, words that sow promises in the wind that reap the whirlwind.

Lawyers are demonically skillful in weaving words down to senseless nuance, especially with matters of money. Recently a slick one attacked the manufacturer of basketball goals who had advertised, ‘Made in America.’

The product was actually constructed in America, except for several rivets that came from China. Gotcha. False advertising. A miniscule technicality. A magnanimous verdict. The reward? Legal fees in millions. Face it, obesity is the only actual product ‘Made in America.’ Incontrovertible!

As the slickest of all lawyers has instructed us, the word ‘is’ has at least two definitions. It can mean in the ‘present moment,’ or, if it suits the ruse, something occurring but not necessarily in the present moment. It is what it is. Both are irrefutable. Reductio ad absurdum.

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Satis verborum…enough is enough. Stanley slings the euphemistic cow chip straight out: “Sometimes mud gives the illusion of depth.” Indisputable!

Bud Hearn
October 3, 2014