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Stress Test Thank you for your prompt attention to this problem. Ed. Note: Yes, Reader, we know. It looks spurious to us too. But given the Hon. Mr. Condit's present troubles we couldn't bring ourselves to further burden his staff by calling to confirm. Anyway, the missive bespeaks a level of horny desperation (or is it desperate horniness?) whose widespread existence in the world is why we created the "Randy" awards in the first place. We thus print the message as we received it and leave it to you, dear Reader, to ponder its possible validity. Chad chimes in However, I must demur when it comes to the following observation: "He [President Bush II] through exhausting travels has drawn us irreparably closer to various critically important geopolitical allies, from Mexico, to Spain, to Belgium, to Sweden, and climatically, to Poland." There are two very conspicuous omissions from this list of critically important allies: Slovenia, which Mr. Bush should have been credited for visiting, and Chad, which he should be gently chastised for ignoring on his Odysseus-like history-shaping trip. To say that we Chadians are disappointed is a spectacular understatement. At the very least, he could have stopped here to visit his twin daughters, Jenna and Dubya, who are presently drying out here under the terms of a plea-bargain with the Austin Municipal Court, at Mme. Ambassadortrix Harris's health spa and rehab clinic. This great national disappointment is not confined to Chadians alone; Mme. Harris, Linda Tripp, and Strom Thurmond, all of whom have chosen to forego the creature comforts of the United States in order to provide a tangible example to our benighted citizens on how to live a better life, are also feeling a bit hurt at this no doubt inadvertent but still real snub. The gentleman from Arizona does not do us justice with his description of primitive conditions in Chad. What he describes was certainly true up until the end of the year 2000, but now, since the arrival of Harris, Tripp, and Thurmond, and the concomitant influx of significant governmental, charitable, and corporate U.S. development funds, our nation has become embryonically modernized. I invite him here to the Pamplemousse health spa and US embassy to take some more slides.
Respectfully, Your faithful servant, Editor's Note: New readers may not be aware of Mr. Kwaadutu's copious dispatches from Chad
in which he kept us informed of the shocking, nefarious goings-on of Bushies in his
hard-pressed country in the early days of the so-called administration. The "letter
fromArizona" to which Mr. Kwaadutu refers may be found by scrolling down to the 3rd
letter below, headed "Chad and the Limits of Satire." From the White House Isn't it interesting that President Clinton's and his family's privacy was completely respected by the ultraliberal left-wing press, but now that a compassionate moderate such as George W. Bush is in office, the word "private" means nothing more than an adjective for "parts." We refer of course to your utterly tasteless feature on the "Randy Awards", in which you show illegally obtained photographs of the First Family's personal recreational activities. To show Mr. and Mrs. Bush's privileged conjugal conduct is reprehensible enough, but to also show the frolics of their twin daughters, Jenna and Rubya,(who aren't even of legal drinking age,) verges on child pornography. We also don't appreciate the scene with the horses and the sheep at the ranch. We hereby demand that you remove these purloined photos from your website immediately, or face prompt private and governmental legal action. At the very least, you could put small black bars over their eyes to protect their identity. A word to the wise should be sufficient.
Ari Fleisher and Karen Hughes Editor's Note: We are of course tickled pink (what other color would
a progressive publication like this be tickled?) to learn that Magellan's Log is
bookmarked and favorited on White House computers. We also are left marvelling at Mr.
Fleisher's and Ms. Hughes's visual acuity in examining and decoding the images in question. We leave it to our
readers to interpret the bizarrely salacious inferences drawn by Fleisher/Hughes from
these image which, let's face it, are more than a little ambiguous. Dear Magellan, Ed. Note: No magic here. We have bitten the bullet, sort of,
and started requesting contributions. As for how we survive, go to ML 1 and read the
explanation behind our pitch. Re Murdoch Chad and the Limits of Satire I suppose that this message will be seen as a sign of your success because you have offended someone. Please feel free to stop in for a visit sometime and I'll show you my slides of what my
little corner of Chad is really like. Ed. Note: Satire is a tricky undertaking. The intensity of satire depends
on, among other things, just how offensive the object of the satire is. We consider that
Bush-Cheney and the various monied interests of America engineered a coup d'état
in November-December, 2000. Such power plays are offensive in any country. But for one to
occur in the full glare of world media in the world's only remaining "super"
power is not only offensive but, we feel, very dangerous. To illustrate, via satire, just
how callous and insensitive we consider those who engineered, and benefitted from, the coup
are, we reached all the way to the tragedy-ridden nation of Chad. How better to
illustrate the indifference of this administration than by imagining how it might use with
complete hauteur such a country as a reward for one of its loyal Florida
partisans. Offensive? Yes. Out of the realm of possibility? Given the track record of the
Bushies so far, we think not. Christian Management Theory The Cox Conundrum will forever change the way we look at and understand the operations
of human work-groups. I would normally be eager to share my insights with you, but I fear
that this would have a deleterious effect on the sales of my planned book on the subject.
Suffice it to say that everything you know about Peter and Dick is no longer valid. Had I
been able to find a publisher, say, three years ago, the current NASDAQ meltdown and
energy crisis would have been easily averted, all the recent unfortunate US military
collisions involving submarines and spy planes would not have occurred., and Dick (that
word again!) Cheney would not have had all those heart attacks. Sam Walton Professor of Business and Theology Bob Jones University Ed. Note: We attempted to confirm the authenticity of this remarkable letter, but calls to BJU quickly plunged us into a conversational morass which ended with a BJU vice-president for external affairs uttering the memorable line: "I can assure you that we have NO Cox on OUR faculty!" Musicological Upchuck [RE: Disgustingly Eurocentric Music Quiz] AMEN and AMEN!!! I heartly endorse your sentiments regarding Karl Haas. What an insufferable and pretentious bore!! Everything else about the man that I have seen on the web partakes more of hallucinatory hagiography than credible biography, much less illuminating criticism. The man seems to be regarded as some sort of musicological "guru." Thank you for having the temerity to suggest that this particular emperor has no clothes. (Ugh. What a revolting image.) There is however one minor quibble. I believe that question 5 on your test rests on a mistake. The mother of Wagner's children was the daughter of Franz Liszt. Thank you for an enjoyable website!! Marcus McDaniel Ed. Note: Mr. McDaniel (and others for whom listening to Karl Haas is about as pleasurable as listening to fingernails on a blackboard) will enjoy our earlier venting of spleen re KH. An exploration of our "Culture Wars" feature will eventually lead you to a fuller appreciation of ol' Karl's manifold shortcomings as music commentator (go to the "Abysmal Culture" section, Example 3). And yes, you caught us with our Grove unopened on question 5. Emma Conquers All Dear Magellan, Please add me to your membership list of the Emma Kirkby Appreciation Society and let me have any further information if possible. Many thanks. Barbara Woodyatt (UK) Dear Magellan, Put me on your membership list. Thanks Ingrisani (no country given) Dear Magellan, I´m a 17 aged girl from Germany and I have heard Emma Kirkby for three times.... (I have some Cds of her and was so fascinated that I wanted to hear and see her. So I wrote her and she said me when she has concerts in Germany). Her voice is so unbelievable clear and......wonderful... Lena Giovanazzi (Germany) Dear Magellan, Please add me to the membership list. Eric Delf (UK) Dear Magellan, I would like to join the T.G.C.E.K.A.S. [Texas Gulf Coast Emma Kirkby Appreciation Society] and be informed about Emma Kirkby. So, please add my name to the membership list. Thank you. Frans de Jong (Netherlands) Dear Magellan, My name is Gocha Starszak. I'm a graphic designer and I live in Gdansk (Poland). I like a voice of Emma Kirkby very much. I colect her recordings and I like her live concerts. My favourite recording is BWV 51 "Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen" (conducted by J.E.Gardiner), but I like a lot of the others (especially Bach, Purcell and Monteverdi). Sorry, my english is poor, but... my passion is sincere. Gocha Starszak (Poland) Ed. Note: Though the international media machine has never been cranked up for Emma Kirkby, her voice has found and inspired a global audience. Mail continues to arrive in response to two rather obscure pages (here, and here) we’ve done relating to her.
Hello there. I am a 15 year old female living in Illinois and I just visited a website that had an article about asian-american stereotypes. And well....you guys are hmm...how can i put this without swearing....you guys are fucking morons! Yeah..yeah..you're probably going to dismiss this as some lil asian girl whos gone mad but.....i found ur article a lil bit upsetting if u cant tell. Hm...what if i wrote a list about white guys/gals stereotypes? would that sit well with cbs(or any other white guy/girl dominated network)? we're not all afraid of blacks....and if u want to talk about racism against blacks...well who were the ones who put them on slave ships?! yeah i may be studious....but i find that many of my white classmates are too...does that make them asian? must be huh? what makes people have to categorize people into these stupid stereotypes? they're offensive...and i think that you would find it offensive too if someone posted something about ur gender/race/nationality/religious beliefs up somewhere. well i'm going to put on my dragon lady makeup and eat some fried rice and go put some kung fu moves on the neighborhood's ganster and then study. Helen Lau (USA) Ed. Note: The piece that offended Ms. Lau has been making the rounds of Usenet groups, list-servers, and the Internet for some years. When it comes to offensive humor, we follow Molly Ivins’s advice: Pick on somebody your size or bigger, but only a bully picks on the poor, the weak, or the disadvantaged. Asians at this late date hardly fall in any of the latter categories. And if Ms. Lau would spend some time looking around other issues of Magellan’s Log, she would discover our many expressions of respect for the whole range of Asian culture.
Dear Magellan, Eventually, McLuhan will be remembered, not for any particular theory, but for visionary method - recognizing media's semiotic authority; media effects decoded from its limitations not improvements; Euclidean confirmation and extrapolation; and, most profound for me, seeing the bigger picture beyond human self deception. I rarely see the suggestion that the navigation of this interactive net via digital mainframe is a copy of the human brain. How many Neurologists are program designers? Yet, shouldn't they be aligned? So, here's an interesting fact about McLuhan: just before the onset of his fatal brain tumor, he was investigating the bicameral brain (left/logical, right/intuitive), and some missing work at the Center on the role of the cortex. Might keyboard protocol engage left brain while on line preferences are right brain, and tending to psychotic? Or have I passed beyond geek? Michael Oster (no country given) Dear Magellan, Dear Magellan, Dear Ma Gellan:
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