Mea Culpa

There is nothing wrong with your set

Greetings faithful and highly intelligent readers from deep in the jungles of Java!

I apologize for missing today’s column. I’m on tour in far distant parts of the archipelago, slavishly doing my duty to encourage young, budding writers and linguists, in hopes of preserving the glorious English language against the predations of Bumbledicks and anti-intellectuals, such as Alexandria Occluded-Cortex.

While I normally try to anticipate such unthinkable situations as not being able to spill my entrails on my digibit canvas, I occassionally run up against an age old problem for the content creator — lack of time dilation technology. Even with state-of-the-art time management tools and decades of experience doing ten things at once, I occassionally find the Crystals of Time working overtime against my interests and the desires of an enthusiastic audience. I do confess, however, that receiving enthusiastic ovations and fawning adulation from live audiences is invigorating and well worth the long hours and arduous navigation of buffalo trails through dense and mysterious jungles of the planet’s equatorial regions.

Fear not! Despite swatting at mosquitoes the size of Cessna 172s, encounters with constrictors as long as prarie freight trains, and vast herds of miniature Java deer stretching to the horizon, I will return on Sunday with my usual unhinged rantings and ravings against the dying of the light.

One observation I take away from this experience is the conflicting joy and horror I feel, knowing that university students thousands of miles away from pockets of native English speakers, who are more masterful at the language than those who took it up at their mother’s knee. Furthermore, there are more polyglots per square kilometer in these parts, than in an entire geographic region of the United States.

There was a time when one could not complete 16 years of matriculation without having studied at least two languages — the Mother Tongue and one other. For myself, I had to spend two years studying Latin, two years in German, eight years in Spanish, and 16 years in glorious English, before they would even consider handing me a scrap of vellum emblazoned with my nom de guerre. It is no wonder my native culture is withering under the onslaught of bumbledickery.

Sadder still is the profound lack of experience in classic literature found among my fellow countrypersons. I suppose I could blame some of my exposure on my theatrical career, where Shakespeare, Beckett and Shaw were frequent guests, but I couldn’t even leave high school without being versed in Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas (aliteration anyone?). Perhaps instead of allowing partisan politics to be too much with us, we should focus more on local school boards and curricula, to ensure more critical thinkers who treasure Tennyson over TwiX, and Turgenev over TikTok.

As I tour across the lush and lovely tropical land, and eating the tasty breakfast Mrs. FarSide has prepared, with enough spice to power a small town for a week, my thoughts turn to the screaming need to turn away from meaningless and fleeting political debates and circuses, and return to fundamentals that will do more to save society than any court decision or elected clowns. A sense of cultural continuity is the prescription for a society in freefall.

And so, I am left with one parting question: if I am topping the bill, why is my stunning countenance relegated to the bottom left quadrant?

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