Friday Fiascos #1: A Retread

One of the several reasons I started this blog was that I had too many thoughts floating around that I found entertaining, and I needed a way to empty my brain.

(It can justly be claimed that I was doing quite well at that before the blog, to which I reply that nonetheless it is a necessary step in washing Mr. Miyagi’s car.)

If that were my sole justification, the blog would have already succeeded — as soon as I open a page to start a new post, my mind is completely blank.

It is rather embarrassing, but I have nothing newly prepared — the songs I hoped I’d have ready are each about a couple of stanzas and a decent arrangement away from an acceptable state of completion, and I’ll have to put those off for next time. Instead, I’ll empty not my brain but my storehouse of old verses.

This is one that few other than I have seen (even its subject hasn’t seen it as of yet, which I hope to rectify by a well-placed e-mail). Said subject is Paul R. Katz, who wrote an editorial in January in which he satirized the pretensions of his schoolmates.

This satire, of course, was taken literally by a large number of said schoolmates, with far-reaching consequences, the most notable of which was that I spent a night composing this bit o’ doggerel:

If Katz would be ironical

When he would so defame us

(Amid the faults he’d chronicle)

As each an ignoramus,

If his meaning is distillable

As meaning to deplore us

When he extols the syllable

And praises the thesaurus,

And if he mourns for clarity

And hampered comprehension

With words of false sincerity

In tribute to pretension,

If it’s true that humanity

Is growing proud and pompous,

And intellectual vanity

Is threatening to swamp us,

Then what he writes is right and apt
And rounds of plaudits should be clapped.

But when he writes satirically

In manner keen and subtle,

I test his claims empirically

And offer a rebuttal:

When all the condemnations of

The column so offend us –

Not through insinuations of

Pomposity stupendous;

Instead, we think he’d chivvy us

By calling us moronic,

So we remain oblivious

To how his tone’s sardonic.

I find it indefensible

To mock excessive knowledge,

Yet not be comprehensible

To members of this College.

If we’re too dumb to grasp his gist,
His column should be soundly hissed.

Thanks for reading.

– Bry