Taboo sits in a world of dune sand, blowing light, aware of many thoughts and forgetting many others. The sun is warm, but the air is shallow--very cold, and with chilly fingers the air teases the hackled skin of Taboo's every thought. Taboo is thinking about the heft, the weight, the exhaustion of every step he took to climb the hills of sand through the hollow wind that breathes across the sun.

During one such thought, someone takes a photo.

The hike from the base of Colorado's Great Sand Dunes to his seat, that moment of Taboo's contemplation, takes a length of time. How much of that time does the photo capture? Or does the photo only capture a single, isolated frozen moment?

What story can Taboo Tenente tell you, to provide you all information you need to know, in order to understand Taboo's longer journey from the photographed moment of contemplation to the moment of this article's writing?

Telling One Story

When you write a story, you must only tell one story. True, every story has an inside and an outside. True, every story owns the rights to the smaller stories contained within. True, all writers and readers bring with them libraries of stories and impose them upon other stories written and read.

But the writer of a story must always remember the single story in the moment of telling. What thread of motivation ties one moment to the next? That thread is One Story. If the One Story is good, many important things will remain unsaid, and the reader will hear them anyway.

Theme? Meaning?

Flannery O'Connor distrusted the value of theme. She preferred to think in terms of meaning. Theme is forced. Theme is generic. Theme is man fighting for himself against the universe. Meaning has no summary. A story has meaning if and only if the story is superior to its own summary.

Here's an example: what does Catcher in the Rye mean? Is it a "Coming of Age" story? Yes, of course. But the story has meaning because the story can never find proper reduction. Catcher in the Rye has meaning precisely because the story has already been reduced to its smallest possible size.

Purpose

Five years after that mystical moment sighed through his perch atop a mountain of sand, Taboo finds himself regularly walking around Lake Wingra, in Madison, Wisconsin.

A thin swath of oak, maple, pine, and prairie rings the lake. Taboo walks the six-mile path five times weekly. He has a girlfriend, a job, an apartment, and a car--obtained in that order. On occasion, these items work the way they're supposed to work.

Taboo is working as a vocational case manager for individuals with developmental disabilities. Some of his clients grasp his testicles through double-layer jean-canvass. Some urinate on the kitchen floor while huffing angry, petulant faces in his direction. Still, Taboo finds the work rewarding.

But Taboo believes he is living an unhealthy life. He attributes his lack of health to laziness; and therefore forces himself to make time for an exercise regime of lake walks. Eventually, he values the walks more than the other items in his life, and refuses to compromise his walks for anything: weather, work, friends--even for health.

Taboo discovers that exercising for health was never the purpose. What, then, was the purpose?

Motivation

When you write, where do you find the beginning of a story? Where do you find the ending? Purpose finds itself at the end of a well-conceived story, as does meaning. Motivation, however, is harder to locate.

We think of laziness as the antithesis of motivation: you have the motivation to accomplish a purpose; your laziness prevents the accomplishment of purpose.

Let's say Taboo's motivation for walking was a feeling of laziness, and a dissatisfaction with laziness. Finding motivation was the intended purpose. Taboo did accomplish a purpose, but did not find access to the well of motivation he sought. What purpose did he accomplish? To figure out the solution, he'll have to wait for the story's end.

But Taboo looks back and discovers a photograph of sky and sun and sand and decides that some link exists, a path to get here from there. He can accept that the end has yet to be told, but he decides to believe that Desire connects two moments within a lifespan. How did Taboo get here from there? He got here through a single, complex, hidden, unspoken desire.

Whose Story?

Here's my question: who owns the story? I've just outlined one potential story about Taboo. The story hasn't yet taken shape; I've only designed a frame, of course, and should I want to write this story, I will have to return to step one: I must determine the One Story that I want to write.

Then I must decide who will tell the story. For example:

1. I have created a narrator, Taboo Tenente, to tell the story of my Blog--not only this post, but also the story of my entire blog.

2. Taboo Tenente created a character, Taboo, to embody this article's particular protagonist.

3. Taboo Tenente has decided to tell this story about his past-self (Taboo) with third-person omniscience, but the reader is aware of the connection between storyteller and character: they are the same person, separated by a gulf of time.

I, on the other hand, have created Taboo Tenente to speak with a first-person voice. My interest is to remove myself from these articles, to somewhat protect my real thoughts, and to allow myself the distance to write with a sense of irony--these articles are reflections of my real, unprocessed thoughts. I create Taboo Tenente to search out the purpose of each.

Today I've tacked a photo of myself to this article--not a photo of Taboo Tenente, not of Taboo, but of myself. Then I let Taboo Tenente get on with the boring business of logically figuring out if there's any real meaning to be found.

No doubt he'll come up with something. He's good at finding intuitive though inevitably awkward meaning. Once he's exhausted himself with his purpose, I can usually get back to the business of my own writing, my own living.

But let me tell you something about this damned Taboo Tenente: he can be a persistant asshole. He gets my lazy ass up at three in the morning sometimes, wanting to know all the why-ses and how-ses that I've been afraid to explain to him. I believe I've given him enough shit to deal with on his own, as things stand, but Taboo Tenente isn't one to take advice.

All that shit I dump on him never does the trick. He always wants to know more and more. Insufferable: why am I sleeping? Why am I working? Why am I writing?  How can I write so much and return with nothing?  And sometimes when I wake up in the morning, I find that it's actually nighttime and Taboo Tenente has spent nearly the whole day mucking up my life.

Or fixing my life, I suppose. Everything is relative, you see--depends on who's telling the story.

(See: Case Study: Robbie, Part I)

The boy is twenty years old, has slept for nearly five years, wakes up after a confirmed absence of cardiac electrical activity. Temporary hypersensitivity and demonstrated sensory defensiveness for twelve hours. Muscular atrophy. However, after this brief transitional dysfunction, he speaks without any indication of brain damage, and from a simple mathematics question, he intuits the conceptual paradox of infinity.

--Harold drinks his water in two swallows, then continues.

I asked Robbie to discuss the differences between the two simple mathematics problems: an addition problem and a multiplication problem. The question requires Robbie to describe the difference in function, and why--when applying the different functions to the same numbers--the functions lead to different results.

He told me his first inclination was to identify--correctly it would have seemed--the function as the essential difference. But then his mind grabbed on to the idea of the equal sign in each problem as the central issue. Of course he is correct: there is no equation without the equality demand. We all understand that both sides of an equation, by definition, are the same.

But Robbie made a critical, intuitive leap: he equated the mathematics problems with the Rorschach test associations. He intuited two concepts: all questions are equations; and all questions are formulated through desire--the most basic, relevant desire being the desire for a solution to a problem.

He proceeded to ask me what my associations were with the ink blot progression we had look at earlier in the morning. I told him I had made no conscious associations with the blots; my energy was focused on Robbie's reactions, rather than my own. He pressed me, wondering whether or not my thoughts should be the same as his. In essence, he wondered whether there was a function or property tied to himself, or instead tied to the picture. So, if "Robbie's Thoughts" equal "ink blot," and if "Harold's Thoughts" equal ink blot, then shouldn't "Robbie's Thoughts" equal "Harold's Thoughts?"

(See: Case Study: Robbie, Part II) 

Robbie had spent six months in the hospital, and with no prior memory to compare this experience, he was completely content with his life. The doctors subjected his eyes to laser examinations, and his muscles to fitness examinations—all of which, Robbie felt, were satisfactory. Sometimes Robbie built structures with blocks. Other times he arranged fruits and vegetables by shape, size, and color. He told stories about simple water color paintings, and explained his reactions to shadowy, blotted images that looked like solemn birds or wiry legs of spiders, or midnight flowers blooming in shrouded, rainy windows.

Sometimes Robbie asked questions; sometimes he answered questions.

Above all, he enjoyed himself the most when a man named Harold joined him for a discussion. Harold was a tall, skeletal man with pale skin and a strong clamp of jaw that swallowed his face, clear to his nose. Robbie liked him the most because of his seriousness, the way he focused his entire bent body on Robbie—as if no one else existed—as if everything Robbie said had meaning.

One day, Harold brought a new game. He placed two large cards upon the desk in front of Robbie. They looked like this:

2 + 3 = 5

and

2 x 3 = 6

Robbie already understood why adding three blocks to his collection of two blocks would increase his overall block supply—and he needed only to count his inventory to arrive at a sum. In this case, his supply now totaled five.

The second arrangement seemed less sensible, though he comprehended the method required of him. If Robbie had two blocks, Harold could conceivably offer to give him three groups of his two blocks—and yet, in order to achieve the desired total, Robbie had to assume that Harold was only giving him two (not three) groups of his previous two blocks.

Throughout several previous sessions, Robbie had repeatedly asked why he wouldn’t have eight blocks rather than six; because, he reasoned, his own two blocks, increased by three groups of his two blocks, would provide him with 2 + 2 + 2 +2 blocks.

Harold, however, refused to acknowledge Robbie’s prior block ownership.

Multiplication was a barter system, Harold explained, and no one gets without giving. If someone was going to give Robbie three groups of two blocks, Robbie must cede his rights to his own blocks, or the block grouping would not take place.

Harold thought that Robbie’s reaction to multiplication problems was somewhat curious, and thus devised this game. He laid out the two problems:

2 + 3 = 5

and

2 x 3 = 6

And then he asked Robbie to explain the difference between the cards.

Robbie considered. There were many obvious differences. The action symbol, “+” or “x”, on each card was different—or, at least, positioned in a different way. Just as obviously, the third number on the first card was different from the third number on the second card. It seemed, then, that the action symbols were responsible for all the differences, and Robbie was about to say so when he was struck by a sudden intuition.

It wasn’t the action symbols’ responsibility to determine differences or similarities; on each card, the second symbol, the “equal” sign, held the responsibility. The sign was the same on both cards, yet because of the variation in the action symbols, the equal sign demanded a different third number. Without “=” nothing mattered at all. In fact, without “=” there would be no action in the first place. (2 + 3) meant nothing until you wanted to know its value. You needed to have a desire for knowledge before the knowledge could exist.

Then Robbie considered every question that had been asked of him in the months following the sudden awakening of his own brain, and he realized his mathematics intuition was correct. When a doctor asked him, “how does this picture make you feel?” the doctor could just as easily have asked him to explain the equation (picture) = (Robbie’s thoughts).

But was that an explainable equation? What if, instead, Robbie had asked for a similar explanation from the doctor—would it be the same thing to say (picture) = (doctor’s thoughts)?

And if it was the same, then (Robbie’s thoughts) would equal (doctor’s thoughts), and Robbie wasn’t sure that this was true.

In that moment of doubt, Robbie understood the answer to Harold’s question.

“Okay, I get it,” Robbie said.

“Excellent. Please explain.”

“All right,” Robbie agreed. “First, I need to know what you think the difference is between these problems.”

Harold, as always, took the response seriously. “You do? I will agree to tell you what I think, after you tell me what you think. Do we have a deal?”

“But I can’t tell you what the difference is, until you tell me what you think.”

“And why is that, Robbie?”

“Because that’s the difference!”

“Please explain.”

“Before lunch you asked me to tell you what I saw in those pictures. And I told you they made me think of spiders holding hands in a circle while crawling across the surface of a mirror.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“Well, what did the pictures mean to you?”

“I wasn’t thinking about the pictures, Robbie. I was thinking about what you were thinking.”

“But would those pictures make you think about spiders?”

“I don’t know—it’s a good question. Everyone looks at a picture and thinks different things.”

“Even though they are the exact same pictures?”

“Yes . . . Isn’t that interesting?”

“When you asked me what I saw in those pictures, you were really asking yourself the question, “why does Robbie see spiders in these pictures, and how is this different from what someone else might see?” But you could have asked, “who are you, Robbie?” while showing me the picture, or any picture, or without showing me any picture at all?”

Harold spent a moment thinking, and then replied, “I’m impressed, Robbie—though you have avoided telling me why these two mathematics problems are different. Let me say this one thing about the pictures before I redirect you back to the mathematics. Those pictures I show you are not images of anything particular. They are only hints, or clues—or a frame for you to fill, and the way you fill the frame will help me understand how your thoughts are working.

“Some doctors think, for example, if a person looks at these pictures and sees a single, large object—like a spider—then the person is feeling lonely, or depressed; other doctors believe that a person who sees a single spider has a strong sense of self, because the person is able to identify an object both separate and distinct from his own self-identity.

“On the other hand, a person who sees many, interrelated shapes, such as a community of spiders holding hands, might be a well-connected human being, who feels himself to be part of something more universal. Doctors aren’t looking for the specific images that you might see, Robbie. They want to know the way you see things. Do you understand?”

“Yes!” Robbie said. “That’s exactly what I’m saying, Harold. These two number cards are completely different—one of them is you, and one of them is me.”

“Then you don’t recognize any similarities?” Harold asked.

“If you chop them up into little pieces, then you could say that both cards have a ‘two’ and a ‘three’ and an ‘equal’ sign—but as a whole, those differences don’t really mean anything.

“The ‘equal’ demands that the first card means ‘five,’ that the second card means ‘six.’ ‘Five’ and ‘six’ are different, the way ‘Robbie’ is different from ‘Harold.’

“My first thought was that the action of each card, the ‘+’ and the ‘x,’ was the difference, but then I realized that ‘+’ and ‘x’ aren’t different at all until ‘=’ demands a difference. None of the numbers, actions, or symbols mean anything without ‘=’. You must want to know something for it to mean anything.

“So,” Robbie continued, “the answer to your question is that nothing is different until we both look at the cards, and both try to answer the problems. Because, if it’s just me thinking, then it’s like having just one card. When you start thinking, as well, then we have two cards.

“But even if we both look at the same cards, if we both think about the same questions and the same answers, it’s still exactly like those pictures you showed me. It’s not the answer we find, is it? The answer never matters. The real problem is that we demand to know the difference, even when the meaning of both of the cards is exactly the same.”

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Taboo Tenente: A Thinker's MFA Journey - Home

Fiction writers love to write about writing--more than they like to write fiction, sometimes. You can fill bookshelves with writing-instruction books without scratching the surface of the genre. Worse: publishers and editors spew forth collections of letters and interview-snippets formed from their pet writers, the writers who made them plenty of dollars. Thus the aspiring young writer can sift through useless pages of tripe and pontificating without learning a solitary axiom or skill--though they might think they are accumulating crucial concepts. That's who spends the dollars: young writers who couldn't possibly know better.

Purchasing an "editor on writing" book is the worst mistake a young writer can make. For example, Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King could kill your love for reading and writing, and thoroughly corrupt your understanding of both at the same time. The first chapter, "Show and Tell," devotes itself to the title thesis: the generic writer's rule of showing the scene rather than telling the reader about it.

Showing rather than telling is a wonderful guideline for writers. But it isn't the point. Writing good, intriguing, thought-provoking stories is the point. In Self-Editing's first chapter, Browne and King (two editors--what a shock) have the nerve to whittle down a delicious scene from F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Why? Who knows? Removing the unnecessary may be the editor's job, but why confuse the student of writing? Read The Great Gatsby if you want to study stellar writing, and leave Self-Editing on the shelf.

Evan Marshall: nuts. Marshall has a "16-step program guaranteed to take you from idea to completed manuscript." In fact, he's written a collection of writing workbooks headed by the title The Marshall Plan. Hey folks: this isn't writing. This is scrapbooking. If you don't give two whits about writing but you still want to publish a book, then The Marshall Plan might conceivably provide you with some watery, quasi-information on how to proceed. For such an individual I'll make this suggestion: Go buy a cookie cutter and do something more useful with your life.

Certain fiction writers have a knack for voice, and when a publisher decides to collect these authors' scattered scrawlings, a reader can get lucky.

Here's a great one: Ernest Hemingway on Writing: Source Link. This collection organizes and showcases Hemingway's take on various aspects of writing. Because Hemingway devoted himself to developing the "true sentence," inside and outside his fiction, you can find sources of wisdom (and understand them) on what it means to be a writer, on the writing process, and on the art of writing itself.

Some of the quotes here are priceless, for example: "A man's got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book," and "a writer without a sense of justice and injustice would be better off editing the year book of a school for exceptional children than writing novels." Still, for the aspiring writer and Hemingway aficionado, nothing (nothing) beats A Moveable Feast, by Ernest Hemingway: Source Link.p>

The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers, by John Gardner: (Source Link), is invaluable to the writer--if the writer is wary. The writer must use extreme caution when reading this book, if only because John Gardner proves his fluency in arrogance. In addition, he is preaching. A writer with his head screwed on properly will probably burn this book before completing it; and yet, no other book compiles as much concrete, hard-nosed, straight-up-now-tell-me facts about writing that we need to hear. If you are patient, Gardner will explain concepts like tension, like sentence-structure variance, like narrative distance, like plot--Gardner explains these ideas thoroughly, like he was teaching; like he cared. There is nothing wishy-washy about his explanations, either; for a disgruntled MFA student writer like myself, concrete is sexy.

I have saved The Modern Library Writer's Workshop, by Stephen Koch: (Source Link) for last: this is a special book. Stephen Koch is the former chair of Columbia University's graduate writing program, and this book he's put together is nothing short of amazing. Using the knowledge and experience he collected over twenty years as a writer and professor, he offers nothing short of the heart-felt, inspired wisdom that every writer desperately wants to hear. Everything is about perspective. He brings together the theories proposed by all sorts of writers--from Ernest Hemingway to Anthony Trollope to Eudora Welty to Stephen King. He explains both the logistical side of writing and the artistic side.

More importantly, he constantly reminds us of- and brings us back to the most essential aspect of all: in order to write well, you must first write something. In the end, of course (or the beginning, depending on your perspective), after learning about styles and skills and theories, you must put down your books and start writing. That's what this is all about: writing and writing until, years later, you realize that you are no longer trying to write; you are, in fact, a writer.

These books, and none more so than the last, help the young writer remember that all writing begins somewhere, and all writers--the James Joyces AND Danielle Steeles--must start writing before they know how to write well. They only know that they want to write.

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Meet Jim Jarmusch

Broken Flowers is the most recent of several Jarmusch flicks, but was only the second I'd seen. Several years ago I rented Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999), a bizarre blend of gangsta and dark comedy as viewed through Jarmusch's radically unique camera. The stylized filter and pace and content of Ghost Dog doesn't suit everyone, inspiring Wesley Morris to say "it's too cryptic and unfulfilled to serve as a tool for anything beyond its own obfuscation," and Stephen Hunter to say "it's too bloody to be funny and too silly to be dramatic and too self-indulgent to be anything other than what it is, one more bad movie." So much for enlightened criticism.

Broken Flowers is just as stylized, but perhaps our nation's whitebread reviewers felt an obligation to the big names who acted in this film. Sharon Stone, Jessica Lange, Frances Conroy, and Julie Delpy play a few of the women from Don Johnston's (Bill Murray) past, and Jeffrey Wright plays the hilarious arm-chair-detective neighbor. My guess is that the great performance given by Forest Whitaker didn't satisfy the nation's celebrity fetish in Ghost Dog--nor did the Wu-Tang Clan's RZA cameo appearance.

Broken Flowers is about the drift, the slide, the loss of belief that happens to people. We call this midlife crisis, or loneliness, or fear of death. In the film, our arm-chair detective, Winston (Jeffrey Wright) decides that the author of a mysterious letter Don Johnston receives must be identified. The letter declares that Don has a teenage son, and that the son has run away from his mother's home--in search of Don. Winston believes that discovering the mother's identity (among the vast collection of Don's ex-lovers) will add a necessary fulfillment to the molasses of Don's life.

Don's initial reaction to the letter is an even mix of one-part disbelief (the letter is probably spam) to one-part indifference. But Don's most recent lover has just left him, and his current life is a slow, endless repetition of naps and television--and most significantly, inaction. Because of this, Winston is able to direct Don on a long, convoluted investigation of his past lovers.

I'll leave the summary at this point to avoid spoiling what I believe to be one of the best films made in recent years. But I have been considering the reasons this movie affected me and, finally, I think I see a glimmer.

Don Johnston is trying to draw a line connecting each of his past relationships to his current condition. Learning the reality about his "son" means less than identifying the mother--at least initially. Eventually, this line becomes an obsession that allows for only success or failure.

But what if--from the narrow, isolated context of the moment--what if neither success nor failure is possible?

1. Broken Flowers, DVD Source Link; Crazy Bill Murray 2 for 1 Deal;
2. Broken Flowers, Soundtrack Source Link;
3. Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai, DVD Source Link;
4. Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai, Soundtrack Source Link.

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At ten in the evening on Wednesday, my "Teaching Freshman Writing" class finally ended, and my spring break began. Some of my fellow MFA - ers joined me for a soothing pint of uniquely beechwood-aged king of beverages at Tam's, our local divery.

After slaking my initial thirst with that incomparable first draught, I relaxed a bit and found myself having a serious conversation with a woman from my teaching class.

We were talking about friendships evolving into relationships, and relationships devolving into friendships. I was somewhat surprised to find myself participating in this conversation--not because I successfully avoid such conversations in general (in fact, I believe I have an unethical monopoly on such blather), but because I was talking to this woman on a non-academic level.

I'm learning that once you begin to transgress upon social boundaries, there is no end to what tomfoolery you can accomplish.

For the sake of practicality, let's say this is the fifth conversation about "friendships versus relationships" that I've held in approximately six weeks.

The first conversation about relationships, naturally, set off the cacaphony of other events, other talks, and each subsequent conversation flowed very naturally from this first transgression. This transgression took place with a woman I've known for a very long time--let's say she's a very good friend; it was a transgression, too, though any and all transgressions were of the verbal and emotional variety. Nevertheless.

The second conversation took place between my girlfriend and myself as a direct and immediate result of the first; though this particular conversation has been more or less continual--or at least cyclical--for the better part of the last two years.

The third conversation was a sad, heart-to-heart I had with my old friend's long-time partner--he happened to be one of my best friends.

The fourth conversation--a conversation about friendship conversations--spanned approximately three days: My brother and I discussed "friendship versus relationship" conversations as they take place within many contexts of time and place and responsibility. He pointed out that "honest" and "fair," when added together, do not always equal the value of "right." I was still stewing on this idea when I found myself involved in the fifth of the five conversations.

While speaking with the woman from my class--and mostly while listening--I began to realize that there is never such a thing as an objective conversation.

I knew this and know it still, and yet the blathering but ever-logical Taboo Tenente is addicted to the idea of defining and isolating different pieces of a puzzle, to the deconstructing of every aspect of an interaction, and to attempting the creation an objective perspective.

Because, of course, if you can define the specific problem, then isolate that problem from other problems, then perhaps you will be able to fix that specific problem. Then, quite simply, you can progress to the next problem and solve it with equal facility. Easy.

But there is always a context.

Why was I having the first conversation? What does it mean that it took place when and where it in fact took place? It could have happened at any of several other moments in time--and yet it took place at this time, at a time when this conversation would create the most excruciating of complications.

Why did the second conversation--so much resembling other conversations I've been having with my girlfriend--feel so differently, now? Did the first conversation really change everything?

Why was I able to have a rational conversation with the partner--my friend--when all the strange, twitching anger I didn't know I felt was beginning to bubble to the surface; when he must have been touching the surface of his own tremendous sense of anger and resentment and betrayal?

Why, when I haven't really spoken with my brother in so long about anything that really matters (except fishing--which, by the way, matters), was I able to have that cathartic, moderately-clarifying talk?

And finally, why did I have this last conversation with this woman, of all the people in the world, in all the places of the world, at this time of all times from eternity until eternity?

The answer is Context.

We can't see the context when we're in it; and afterward, in the next moment, our new contexts prevent us from seeing the WHY of the old context.

Everything in life inexorably moves forward: your thoughts, emotions, health, consciousness, morality, addictions, pizza--everything. And as life moves forward YOU move forward, making you new in every single moment of your life.

Your memory wants you to think of yourself as the same old hunk of meat, so that you can identify the logic to the madness; so you can mine the nugget of "you" truth; so you can locate the reasons for the now of your life; so you can believe that you've written your own story.

But it doesn't work that way.

It may be true, as they say, that a man's character is his character from the beginning until the end. But because of the newness of every moment, you'll never know HOW your character was ultimately defined. No one knows until the entire story is written.

So you must value the impossible, incomprehensible moment. You must understand that every moment means more than you can understand. It is a meaningless addiction to believe that you are stuck in a rut, that you are doomed to circles of sad living. You must try.

"The chipmunk ran into the rocks and a butterfly came out," Kerouac writes. "It was as simple as that."

Source Link: Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac;

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In light of the Senate's support for the renewal of the calamity we call the Patriot Act, I thought I would dust off an old article of mine, written for a blog existing long ago, in an era when Taboo had youth juice burning long trails of fire through his veins. Now Taboo is nothing but an old fogey with barely enough spunk to shake his fist at the news reels. At least my hard drive still has memory.

So here it is:

Taboo's First Amendment to the Constitution

You silly, silly people. What have you done now? All of your focus on saving poor, defenseless American flags has blinded the educational system and warped your children's sense of values. They all believe that killing Iraqi civilians is freedom, while seeing a blurry, surgery-enhanced nipple is worse than. . ..No. It's so bad that there's nothing worse, anywhere.

BEN FELLER, AP Education Writer reports that "more than one in three high school students said it [the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States] goes "too far" in the rights it guarantees. Only half of the students said newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories."

There's no consistency. You want guns to protect yourself, and such a right was written into the Constitution so you could take up arms against an oppressive government. You want freedom to practice your religion, and such a right was written into the Constitution so your government would not have power over your god--I'm sure you no longer remember, but this was most likely the reason your ancestors tamed the untameable seas. You want the freedom of speech, because . . . because . . . .

Do not worry. I will tell you why. You want the freedom of speech because the freedom of speech provides for every freedom you enjoy. Freedom to speak your part returns your humanity to you. Without this freedom, there are no freedoms left.

Here's the crux: many silly, silly people believe that in order to show your patriotism, you must cede this right to your government. In fact, the American incarnation of Patriotism has perverted everything that made this country great. There is nothing wrong with loving your country: if your country is great, then love it, respect it, and bring your country flowers every week or so before she forgets about you. But if you think blind support of your government is what this country is about, then you are one hundred percent incorrect, and may which ever deity you believe in have mercy on whatever you believe drives the subatomic neural processing of your being.

You silly sod. Your Founders wrote the Amendments so you would be protected against your government. Burning a flag does not make you a traitor. Writing an anti-policy article does not make you a traitor. However, your children think that it might, because of all your gesticulating and your cursing of those hairy, hippie-pinkos. Yes, the superbowl half-time show is a public, family forum. Yes, you are not supposed to see a nipple in a public, family forum. Nevertheless, please be careful when you demand stringent censorship in front of your children.

Which is worse: if your eight year-old son spies a nano-second of nipple and then steps out back to torch a flag (in the official flag-torching manner prescribed by the United States Fire Safety Squad); or if your eight year-old son becomes a fifteen year-old son who has no use for the freedom of speech?

So I'd like to propose an Amendment to the Constitution. The Amendment will allow for your inalienable right to speak your mind, your right to not have your thoughts detailed and copyedited by the government, and to burn a flag if it gets soiled.

Does this sound in any way familiar? Because it probably will not to your children.

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