My local newspaper, the Topeka Capital-Journal, carries the comic strip Dilbert, which occasionally features a character known as Mordac, the Preventer of Information Services. Mordac earns his title by being so obsessed with the security of his company’s systems that he makes it essentially impossible for anyone to access them. In Kansas, we have a real-life counterpart to Mordac – Kobach, the Preventer of Voter Registration. In his excessive zeal to prevent non-citizens from being able to register to vote in Kansas, our esteemed Secretary of State has advocated policies that have prevented more than twenty thousand individuals from being able to register to vote. In a debate with his opponent in the recent election, Mr. Kobach justified this by pointing out that it had been determined that at least twelve of these individuals had been determined not to be citizens. Not twelve thousand, or twelve hundred, or even twelve dozen – twelve individuals, as compared to the twenty thousand people, deemed guilty by Mr Kobach until proven innocent, who were unable to register to vote. Mr. Kobach claims his intention is to protect the integrity of elections in Kansas, but as I see the situation, he is doing exactly the opposite. Twelve votes will seldom be enough to swing even a local election, but twenty thousand people denied the right to vote because they are unable to jump through the hoops that have been set up to make it difficult for them to do so could make a real difference in even some statewide elections. Mr. Kobach and his supporters insist that the twelve individuals they have been able to identify represent only the tip of the iceberg, and that there must be many more illegal immigrants just waiting to decide the outcome of elections in Kansas if given the opportunity to do so. I believe that the most appropriate reply to this contention is a word coined by Theodore Roosevelt – BULLfeathers. The hordes of non-citizens desperately awaiting an opportunity to hijack our elections exist only in the paranoid fantasies of the reactionary bigots who seek to use alleged voter fraud as an excuse to deny the right to vote to as many young, poor and minority voters as they can manage to disenfranchise. I have seen Mr. Kobach quoted in print as insisting that he is not a bigot. This may well be true; I do not claim to know the inner workings of his mind. However, if this really is true, then his actions suggest that he is instead an opportunistic demagogue, pandering to the bigotry of others in order to advance his own political future. In either case, it is about as appropriate to have Mr. Kobach safeguarding the voting rights of Kansans as it is to have a fox guarding a chicken coop.
Category: Feeble attempts at humor
How did they die?
When I was younger (long, long ago), newspaper obituaries most often stated that the person who was the subject of the obitiuay had died, although in some cases they stated instead that the deceased had passed away. This second usage actually offended some people, who felt that it was an attempt to deny the reality of physical death, but that is not the point I am trying to address here. Instead, I have noted that in recent years, perhaps as newspapers have begun to treat obituaries more as a profit center than as a news item, obituaries have become somewhat more florid, referring to the deceased as having gone to be with Jesus, departed this vale of tears, crossed the rainbow bridge, etc. I don’t necessarily have a problem with this, since those paying for the obituary should be allowed to phrase it in a way that is meaningful to them, but it has occurred to me that another way to approach this matter would be to phrase the information in a way that relates to the decedent’s occupation, since in many cases this is one of the things that most defined the person’s life. With this in mind, I offer the following list, which attempts to identify how in at least some cases a person’s obituary might be worded to reflect that person’s occupation in life:
| Occupation | Manner of Death |
| Building custodian | Kicked the bucket |
| Agribusiness owner | Bought the farm |
| World poker tour participant | Cashed in his/her chips OR Folded his/her hand |
| Motel operator | Checked out |
| Bounty hunter | Went to his reward |
| Rodeo cowboy | Bit the dust |
| Working cowboy | Rode into the sunset OR Went to his last roundup |
| Casino card dealer OR Vaudeville song & dance man OR Shakespearean actor |
Shuffled off this mortal coil |
| Test pilot OR Astronaut | Slipped the surly bonds of earth |
| Sea captain | Sailed into the sunset |
| Professional mover | Relocated |
| Musician | Began decomposing |
| Football quarterback | Passed |
| Football field goal specialist | Kicked off |
| Movie director | Faded to black |
| Professional boxer | Went down for the count |
| Realtor | Moved to a quieter neighborhood |
| Astronomer | Became one with the universe |
| Attorney | Rested his/her case |
| Librarian | Closed the book |
| Travel agent OR Lifelong resident of Alaska | Went south |
| Professional singer | Joined the choir invisible |
| “Survivor” participant | Was voted off the island |
| Navy frogman | Croaked |
| HVAC Technician | Assumed room temperature |
| Geometry teacher | Became horizontal |
| Watch repair person | Ran out of time |
| Orchestra conductor | Laid down his/her baton |
| Professional truck driver | Reached the end of the road |
| Respiratory therapist | Expired |
The items below were added after the original posting of this entry:
| Building Demolition Contractor | Imploded |
| Surgeon | Suspended operations |
| Agricultural Custom Cutter | Met the Reaper |
| Plumber | Went down the drain |
| Postal Carrier | Completed his/her appointed rounds |
| Anesthetist | Began sleeping the big sleep |
| Railroad engineer | Left the tracks |
| Professional genealogist | Joined his/her ancestors |
| Nuclear reactor technician | Went offline |
| Paranormal Investigator | Gave up the ghost |
| Ornithologist | Sang his/her swan song |
I would be happy to receive suggestions for additions or revisions to this list.
This could have happened
One branch of my family, on my father’s side, did a fair amount of genealogical research in order to try to determine whether any of our ancestors in that lineage had fought in the Revolutionary war. They confirmed that at least one ancestor, a man named William Sexson, had in fact served under George Washington in the war. William had been born in Virginia, and was therefore doubly proud of his connection with General Washington, so he took every opportunity to tell his children stories about him, including the story about the cherry tree, which even then, and even though it was fictitious, was well known.
Some time after the end of the war, William moved his family, including his son Frederick Free Sexson (my direct ancestor, who appears in the family history as Free Sexson) from Grayson County, Virginia to Whitley County, Kentucky. Although the area was at that time sparsely settled, there were other families around, and young Free got to know, and become friends with, other boys of about his age.
As sometimes happens even now, boys of a certain age got together on Halloween and performed pranks that seemed like a better idea at the time than they did the following morning. This was the case on the morning of one November first, when William, obviously very angry, approached young Free and said to him, in a stern voice “Son, I’m going to ask you a question, and I want you to give me an honest answer: did you and your friends push our outhouse off the cliff last night?”
Young Free realized that he could be in serious trouble, but he remembered the story of George Washington and the cherry tree, which his father had told him many times, so he answered “Father, I cannot tell a lie. Yes, my friends and I did push the outhouse off the cliff last night as a foolish Halloween prank.” Whereupon William gave his son the worst beating of his young life.
Afterwards, young Free, with tears in his eyes, said to his father “Pa, why did you do that? I told the truth. George Washington’s father didn’t beat him after he told the truth about cutting down the cherry tree.”
William answered “Son, that is true. George Washington’s father did not beat George Washington when he told the truth about chopping down the cherry tree. But George Washington’s father was not IN the cherry tree when George Washington chopped it down.”
About the title of this blog
In order to try to head off any possible confusion, I feel that I should explain that I am not affiliated in any way with the rock band Kansas. To my knowledge, I have never met any member of the band, or anyone directly associated with any member of the band.
I bring this up because Kansas included the song “People of the South Wind” on its album “Monolith”, in 1979. As people who were educated in schools in this state may know, and most other people probably do not know, the word “Kansas” comes from the language of the Kaw tribe, and is normally translated as “people of the south wind”. Thus my source for the phrase “… of the south wind”, is not the band’s song, but the same source that the band used for the title of the song. As to the use of the word “rant”, I’m sure that will be appropriate for at least some parts of at least some of the postings I plan to add here. Those who disagree with the sentiments I express may consider the word “rant” appropriate for the entire blog, but I would like to believe this is a matter of opinion.
On the subject of words that come from the language of the Kaw tribe, another of those words is “Topeka”, which is of course the name of the city that is now the capital of the State of Kansas. It used to be written routinely that the word “Topeka” meant “a good place to dig potatoes”, but in recent years I believe that some doubts have been expressed in at least some quarters about the accuracy of this translation. One school of thought (not often voiced) is that a more accurate translation might be “these honkeys will believe anything you tell them if you keep a straight face while you’re doing it”. Another possibility, also seldom voiced, is that the word “Topeka” was created by a shaman of the Kaw tribe who had a prophetic dream that a city in this location would one day become the state’s capital, and that the word should actually be translated as “behind schedule and over budget”.
To return to the alleged topic of this posting, I don’t believe I can be considered to have stolen the title of this blog from the band Kansas. I prefer to think that we have both drawn upon a shared cultural heritage.