1. ments still standing about; they reopened the many erections and saved them from attacks by
collections of artworks that had long seemed so the Philipines.
uniformly dull that nobody went near them. Helen of Troy launched a thousand ships
They distinguished styles and the different ages with her face. The Trojan War raged between
of their emergence-in short, they found a past the Greeks and the Tories. We know about
and used it to create a new present. Fortunate- this thanks to Homer's story about Ulysses
Iy, they were bad imitators (except for a few Grant and Iliad, the painful wife he left be-
and their twisted view of their
pedants), hind. King Xerox of Persia invaded Greace, but
sources laid the foundation of our nascent-or fell off short at the battle of Thermosalami.
perhaps one should say, renascent---eulture. It Alexander the Great conquered Persia, Egypt,
has resurrected enthusiasm in the young and and Japan. Sadly, he died with no hairs. Reli-
talented, who keep exclaiming what a joy it is gion was polyphonic. Featured were gods such
to be alive. as Herod, Mars, and Juice.
The Greeks were important at culture and
It need hardly be pointed out that this anony- science. Plato invented reality. The Sophists
mous author's extravaganza did not represent any justified themselves by changing relatives
body of contemporary opinion, only his own. Nor whenever this needed to be done. Lust was a
can it be ascertained when and on what grounds his must for the Epicureans. U. Clid proved that
vision of the future occurred to him. there is more than one side to every plain.
Pythagasaurus fathered the triangle.
Archimedes made the first steamboat and
power drill.
Rome was founded sometime by Uncle Re-
mus and Wolf. Roman upperclassmen de-
[Account]
manded to be known as Patricia. Senators
HINDSIGHT INTO THE wore purple tubas as a sign of respect. Sparta-
FUTURE cus led a slave revolt and later was in a movie
about this. The Roman republic was bothered
by intestinal wars. Cesar inspired his men by
From quot;A History of the Past, Part II,quot; a narrative stating, quot;1 came, I saw, I went.quot; He was assi-
compiled by Anders Henriksson from statements nated on the Yikes of March, when he
found in student papers over the last fifteen years; is reported to have said, quot;Me too,
his first such composition, quot;Life Reeked with]oy,quot; Brutus!quot;
A
was published in 1983. Henriksson is a professor
of history at Shepherd College, in Shepherdstou}n,
tidul wave of Goths, Huns, Zulus, and
West Virginia. The essay appeared in the Winter
others impacted Rome. Athena the Hun ram-
of The Wilson Quarterly.
issue
paged the Balkans as far as France. Society
was crumpity. Neo-Platonists celebrated the
joys of self-abuse. When they finally got to
From the secondary sources we are given hind- Italy, the Australian Goths were tired of plun-
sight into the future. Hindsight, after aU, is caused gering and needed to rest. A German soldier
by a lack of foresight. put Rome in a sack. During the Dark Ages it
was mostly dark.
Medeval society was arranged like a tree,
Civilization woozed out of the Nile about
with your nobles in the upper twigs and your
300,000 years ago. The Nile was a river that
had some water in it. Every year it would flood pes ants grubbing around the roots. This was
known as the manurial system, where land was
and irritate the land. Mesapatamia was
squigged in a valley near the Eucaliptus river. passed through fathers to sons by primogenu-
flecture. Power belonged to a patriarchy em-
Flooding was erotic. [udvisrn was the first
powering all genders except the female. Nuns,
monolithic religion. Old Testament profits in-
for example, were generally women. In the ear-
clude Moses, Amy, and Confucius, who be-
ly part of the Middle Ages female nuns were
lieved in Fidel Piety. Moses was told by Jesus
free to commit random acts of contrition and
Christ to lead the people out of Egypt into the
redemption. Later they were forcibly enclus-
Sahara Desert. The Book of Exodus describes
tered in harems. Russia was run over by Batu
this trip and the amazing things that happened
on it, including the Ten Commandments, vari- Cohen and crushed under the Mongol yolk.
Certain tribes of India practiced voodoo innu-
ous special effects, and the building of the Suez
endo. The Crusades, meanwhile, enlarged op-
Canal. David was a fictional character in the
portunities for travel.
Bible who faught with Gilgamesh while wear-
Historians today feel that the renaissance
ing a sling. He pleased the people with his
J~9120 2000
HARPER'S MAGAZINE / APRIL

2. My Squid Suit Brings Isolation, by Brad Eberhard. Eberhard's work will be on display next month at the Bang Studio in Hollywood, California.
was the result of medevil people being fertal- The American colonists lived on a conti-
nent and England was an island. Thus the
ized by events. Italy was pregnent with huge
ideas and great men. Machiavelli, who was of- Americans wanted independence. Benjamin
Franklin, already famous as inventor of the
ten unemployed, wrote The Prince to get a Job
with Richard Nixon. Ivan the Terrible started light bulb, persuaded French King George III
to help the U.S.A.
life as a child, a fact thar troubled his later
The French Revolution was like a tractor.
personality. This was a time when Europeans
It gave people the understanding that you
felt the need to reach out and smack some-
one. Ferdinand and Isabella conquered Gra- need change in order to make tracks in the
world. The Third Estate was locked out of its
nola, a part of Spain now known as Mexico
motel and had to do its business on a tennis
and the Gulf States. Columbus came to
court. Another problem was that France was
America in order to install rule by dead white
full of French people. Revolters demanded lib-
males over the native peoples.
There was an increase in climate during the erty, equality, and fraternities. Fraternity
breeded pride in the nation and therefore
eighteenth century. Agriculture fed more
people as crop yields became lower. These thicker political boundaries. In 1799,
Napoleon performed a coo. Napo-
were factors in the better times to come. The
Scientific Revolution developed a suppository ~ leon fertilized all his life.
of knowledge which greatly helped later gener-
~he Industrial Revolution was slow at first
ations. Copernicus showed that the solar sys-
tem rotates around the earth. Sir Issac Newton due to the lack of factories. Great progress was
made through the introduction of self-acting
invented the newton. Locke taught that life
was a fabula rasa. mules. Telephones were not available-com-
~~Q122 HARPER'S MAGAZINE / APRIL 2000

3. treaties after World War I all came horne to
munication went by mouth to mouth or
roast. Japan boomed Pearl Harbor, the main
telegram. The airplane was invented and first
U.S. base in southern California. The Allies
flown by the Marx brothers. The social struc-
landed near Italy's toe and gradually advanced
ture was Upper Class, Middle Class, Working
up her leg. Stalin, Rosevelt, Churchill, and
Class, and Lowest Poor Scum. Nobles claimed
Truman were known as quot;The Big Three.quot;
to be descended from better jeans. British pater-
Hitler, who had become depressed for some
nalists were motivated by quot;noblesse oblique.quot;
reason, crawled under Berlin. Here he had his
Certain members of the lower middle class ex-
wife Evita put to sleep and then shot himself in
hibited boudoir pretensions. The slums became
the banker.
brooding grounds for lower class unrest.
World War II became the Cold War, be-
In Russia, the Decembrists attempted a coup
cause Benjamin Franklin Roosevelt did not
du jour. Mazzini was a conservative liberal so-
trust Lenin and Stalin. An ironed curtin fell
cialist who founded a revolutionary group
known as quot;Little Italy.quot; Pope Leo XIII is across the haunches of Europe. Berlin was air-
lifted westward and divided into pieces. Israel
known as the author of Rectum Novarum, a
was founded despite the protests of local
book of conservative ideas. Another man to
influence the state and others was Kark Marx, Arabs known as Zionists. The Marsha Plan
put Europe back together with help from Kon-
who advanced diabolical materialism. His
ideas about revolution, condos, and supermen rad Adenauer, a French leader whose efforts
intrigued many. led to the creation of the Cornrnu-
rJquot;
Prostitution, considered to be the world's nist Market.
oldest profession, got its beginnings in the
.the British Empire has entered a state of
nineteenth century. Sex in this period was a
very quiet ordeal. Feminists argued that sex recline. Its colonies have slowly dribbled
outside the family would make you go blind or away, leaving only the odd speck on the map.
Mohammed Gandi, for example, was the last
lose your memory. Leaders of the women's
British ruler of India. In 1921, he cast off his
movement included Florence Nightengail, Su-
western clothes and dawned a loincloth. This
san B. Anthony, and Crystal Pancake.
Burt Einstein developed the theory of rela- was a good way to get through to people. The
tivism. Marie Curie won the Noel prize for in- French Empire, on the other hand, fell into
venting the radiator. Writers expressed them- total term-oil as they clutched painfully at re-
selves with cymbals. Cubism, splatterism, etc., maining colonies in Argentina and the Far
East.
became the rage.
Most English believed in the missionary po- South Africa followed quot;Apart Hide,quot; a pol-
sition. Admiral Dewey sank the Spanish Ar- icy that separated people by skin color. Actu-
ally, the fall of empires has been a good
mada in Vanilla Bay. The Russo-Japanese
War exploded between Japan and Italy. The thing, because it gives more people a chance
German takeover of All-Sauce Lorrain en- to exploit their own people without outside
raged the French, who clamored for vendetta. interference.
The U.S.S.R. and U.S.A. became global in
In 1914, the assignation of Archduke Ferd-
man gave sweet relief to the mounting power, but Europe remained incontinent.
tensions. Wars fought in the 1950s and after include
When the Davy Jones Index crashed in 1929 the Crimean War, Vietnam, and the Six-
many people were left to political incineration. Minute War. President John F. Kennedy
Some, like John Paul Sart, retreated into extra- worked closely with the Russians to solve the
terrestrialism. Hitler believed in a Panned Get- Canadian Missile Crisis. Yugoslavia's Toto
many and therefore insisted that Czechoslavia became a no n-eve n tu a l is t communist.
release the Sedated Germans into his care. Hochise Min mounted the power curve in
England's rulers vanely hoped for quot;peas in our Viet Nam. Castro led a coupe in Cuba and
timequot; but were completed foddled by Hitler. shocked many by wiggling his feelers every
Lennon ruled in Russia. When he died, the time there was trouble in Latin America.
U.S.S.R. was run by a five-man triumpherate- This required the United States to middle in
Stalin, Lenin, Trotsky, Menshevik, and selected bandana republics during the 1960s.
Buchanan. Stalin expanded capitalism by Mentally speaking, Russia had to reinvent it-
building machine tractor stations. When self. Gorbachev became top Russian after the
things didn't go as planned, he used the peas- death of Leoned Bolshevik.
ants as escape goats. The historicle period ended shortly after
Few were surprised when the National World War II-III. We, in all humidity, are the
League failed to prevent another world war. people of currant times. This concept grinds
The perverbial chickens laid by the poor peace our critical, seething minds to a halt.
READINGS 23