Remember When Black Friday Took Place on Friday?

The young nation was divided. The Black Friday purists who insisted on Black Friday sales not starting until the morning of Black Friday had been unable—or unwilling—to reconcile with the block of states who insisted on starting Black Friday sales on Thanksgiving, no matter how much cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie still lay uneaten on the table, or how many relatives still passed out on the couch.

Abraham Lincoln had run for President on the Purist ticket, and his very election brought the dispute to a fevered pitch. Shortly after his inauguration speech, in which the ol’ Turkey Splitter insisted that he had “no intention” of interfering with the institution of big box stores, the “Target” states, as they came to be known, declared their secession from the Purists and went back to greasing the wheels of their shopping carts.

Lincoln, seeing secession as unacceptable, and worrying that all the stove pipe hats would be gone from the shelves by the time Mary Todd hit the aisles at 5 a.m. on the Friday after Thanksgiving, ordered the Union army to stop the Target States of America from seceding. The Union had more ammunition, more railroads, and more coupons from Bed Bath & Beyond which were used to equip the soldiers with much needed towel warmers and memory foam slippers. But the Target States had a passion for shopping and a general dislike of family events and an army of stock boys armed with box cutters ready to meet the Union forces.

The war dragged on and Lincoln needed a solution. He had a meeting planned that morning with Edwin Stanton, the Secretary of War, and Lincoln paced his lanky frame about the Oval Office, preparing himself. He tugged at his beard. Mary Todd had wanted him to shave it for the holidays. Said it was too scraggly.

“Over my dead body,” Lincoln said to himself, and double-checked the bowl of candy on his desk. Yes, there were plenty of green apple Jolly Ranchers.

“I don’t think there’s any other way out of this war than to strengthen the blockade of the stores,” Stanton said, tugging at his own scraggly beard. “They’ve pushed us to this point, and there’s no way I’m missing the Cowboys game to go shopping.”

Lincoln thought about it, tugging at his scraggly beard again. The two men tugged at their scraggly beards.

“Violence is not the answer,” Lincoln said at once. “I should know. I used to hunt vampires.”

“But without violence, I won’t have a job,” Stanton said. “How are you going to keep those Target States from being open on Thanksgiving without violence?”

Lincoln crossed his long legs, and leaned forward, and rested his chin in the crook between his thumb and forefinger.

“I’m going to make a speech,” he said, and, dismissing the Secretary of War, went to go sharpen his pencil.

The next day President Lincoln stood before a crowd in Leesburg, Virginia, known for its many outlet stores, and gave what would become known as the Leesburg Address.

“Four score and seven years ago,” he began, “I received a gift card to a well-known retailer, and now the retailer is telling me that the card has expired.

“But that is all past. We are now engaged in a great civil war over whether it is proper that stores open for Black Friday sales on Thanksgiving. It is not a question of whether a nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that it is never too early to start Christmas shopping, can long endure the helpings of turkey and inappropriate questions from distant relatives, like ‘When are you two getting married?’ or ‘Don’t you think it’s time to do something with your life?’ or ‘Why can’t you put that device down when I’m talking to you?’

“Rather, the question is whether one can really call it Black Friday if it starts on Thursday.”

The crowd stood stunned. Abraham Lincoln had once again spoken an incontrovertible truth. It was impossible to have Black Friday on Thanksgiving, which had always been a Thursday, and always would be a Thursday. And until everyone recognized that truth, the civil war would never end.

So the name was changed to “Black Thursday,” and the stores offered turkey sandwiches and cranberry sauce at the register, and the States were once again United—now and forever, one and inseparable!

Posted on 16 November 2012 by Mark Kaplowitz 13

Remember Election Night?

I’m watching a flat screen television, and on the flat screen television is another flat screen television that shows an image of all the states. Some states are blue, some states are red, but all states are peppered with little dots that denote locations of Denny’s. Next to the flat screen—the one on TV, not the one in my living room—stands a news reporter.

He touches one of the states, and the screen zooms in so that the state fills the screen and now all that state’s counties can be seen, some colored blue, and some colored red. He touches one of the counties and the screen zooms in yet again so that houses can be seen, some blue and some red. He touches one of the houses and now the rooms of the house fill the screen, some blue and some red.

He touches one of the rooms, and the room grows large so that now two people in the room can be seen. One person is blue, the other red. Then he touches one of the people, and now we can see inside the person’s brain. Some of the brain cells are blue, and some of them are red. Most of them are green.

A second news reporter comes over and tries to touch the screen. The first reporter slaps the hand away.

“Only I can touch the magic screen!” the first reporter says, and the awkward moment that follows is mercifully interrupted by an exciting ritual. There are loud noises and fireworks, dancers and clowns, fire-eaters on stilts and acrobats, and above them all a graphic that reads “Projection!” It is announced that one of the states is projected to be painted in a certain color even though only 2% of the votes have been counted.

The channel goes back to the reporters. The first reporter toggles the screen between this election and the election of 1840, when there were fewer states and more log cabins. The second reporter has a black eye but tells us that we are now going to hear from a correspondent in one of the voting precincts.

The image shifts to a large cat with a poofy face. It has green eyes and white whiskers that radiate in perfect symmetry. Behind the cat are people trying to clear a paper jam from the vote-card reader.

The second reporter speaks to the cat. “Tell us, what are you seeing in terms of voter turnout?”

The cat licks one of its paws, and then rubs the paw over its face a few times in a circular motion. Then it looks back at the screen and blinks.

“Yes, that seems to be the story we’re hearing all over the nation tonight.”

My TV goes back to the first reporter with the magic screen. He is showing what the electoral situation might look like if Florida was rotated 90 degrees towards the Gulf of Mexico.

Then the image on my TV shifts to the headquarters of one of the candidates. From the sequence of percentages that flash at the bottom of the screen, I can tell, using a slide rule, that this candidate is about to have a lot of free time. But the people at the campaign headquarters still wave their arms and go “Whoooo” when they see themselves on the big screen.

I eat another piece of leftover Halloween candy. There is a small mound of wrappers next to the bowl.

We’re back to the first reporter with the magic screen again. The screen is frozen at the election of 2612, with water covering most of the coastal states, and their votes tallied by counting the bubbles that rise to the surface. The second reporter is trying to help by sticking a pen into the restart button at base of the magic screen, a terrifying treatment for the first reporter, who apparently forgot to save his work.

Posted on 9 November 2012 by Mark Kaplowitz 6

Remember Life Before Catastrophic Hurricanes?

It was Sunday morning and I was looking forward to drinking coffee from my “We Are Happy to Serve You” cup. The design is the same as the paper cups that are seen all over the City of New York, and someone had the brilliant idea of putting the design onto a ceramic cup. I only use this cup on the weekends because I want the weekends to feel different from the weekdays, when I drink coffee from brown or beige mugs that do not bear writing in an Attic font.

I was about to take a sip when my wife asked me if our flashlights worked.

“Flashlights?” I hadn’t used a flashlight since we were dating, when I would woo her with shadow puppets. I remembered that we had received a flashlight as a wedding present, from the Martha Stewart collection to match our sugar bowl and serving plate. But it had been some time since I’d seen it and I would have to google its whereabouts.

The flashlight did not work. I would not have expected anything less. I unscrewed the top and shook out the D-cell batteries. One of the batteries fell to the floor and just narrowly missed shattering my toe. Heavy things, those D-cells.

“I found the flashlight,” I announced to my wife, and, my work done, returned to my Grecian mug.

“Does it work?”

“Work? Of course not. The batteries are dead.”

“Well don’t you think you should get more batteries?”

“Does this need to be done today? There are a few odes I’m planning on reading after I drink my coffee.”

“Really? Are you not aware that there is a massive hurricane that’s supposed to be hitting us tomorrow? It’s supposed to be a once a century kind of storm.”

“Oh, like that storm they were waiting for in Point Break?”

“I think I’m reaching my point break.”

I placed my weekend jeans over my weekend pyjama pants and drove to the supermarket. Let’s get this battery thing over with, I thought, and then I can get back to enjoying my life. I found the wall of battery-packs. And looked. And looked. There were double As, and triple As, and those rectangular-shaped 9 volts that no one uses. There were microscopic batteries for hearing aids and batteries that looked like a triple A cut in half. But no D-cells. The metal hanging racks with little D-cell signs above them were gaping holes like its teeth were knocked out.

And then I realized. My greedy neighbors had selfishly cleaned out the D-cell batteries. I looked some more, hoping against hope. There were C-cell batteries that looked like D-cells during their adolescence.

I went to another supermarket, to convenience stores, to electronics stores, to the mall, to hot dog stands. Batteries, batteries everywhere, but not one D-cell in the land. I was in a waking nightmare. I could not go home and face my wife without a D-cell. I had been asked to slay the dragon and the dragon was still out there terrorizing the village.

I sat down on the curb by the hot dog stand, and looked up at the sky, praying for deliverance. I noticed a man walking, carrying a plastic bag. The bag had a bulge at the bottom, and from the shape and orientation of the bulge I just knew it contained D-cell batteries. I approached the man.

“Please, sir. Can you help me?”

“I already gave at the office.”

“No, no. I don’t want money. I need batteries.”

His face turned to even greater disgust. He started walking.

“Please, sir,” I said, “I’ll do anything. I’ll give you any amount of money. I just can’t go home without D-cell batteries.”

“You married?”

“Yes.”

“And let me guess, you waited all weekend, with a hurricane coming, to buy batteries for your flashlight that you probably never test, and now all the stores are out of D-cells, and you’re going to be in trouble with your wife if you come home without any D-cell batteries for the flashlights. Is that about the long and the short of it?”

“You got it,” I said.

He smiled. A heartwarming smile, as if my tale of woe had brought back a cherished memory, perhaps a memory of his own first years of marriage, when he was young and poor and never tested flashlights until the storm clouds were getting off the exit. I could see I was working a change in him. My prayers had been answered. He was going to let me have the batteries. There was goodness left in humanity! I wondered if he was going to mark them up or would sell them to me at face value. I hoped he had change for a twenty.

“Awfully sorry,” he said. “Hope it works out for you.” And he walked away.

Posted on 2 November 2012 by Mark Kaplowitz 15

Remember When Interest Rates Were Positive?

“There’s got to be something we can do to get this economy rolling.”

“There isn’t, sir. We’ve taken interest rates as low as they can go.”

“Don’t use ‘they’ to refer to interest rates. ‘They’ should be used only in reference to people. Use ‘these’ or ‘those’ or something. Rework the sentence.”

“Yes, sir. We’ve taken interest rates as low as these…um, those…the interest rates can go.”

“That can’t be true. How low are the rates now?”

“Zero percent.”

“Zero! So isn’t that igniting economic growth?”

“It is reported that more and more people are choosing to move in with their parents rather than start Fortune 500 companies.”

“But it’s cheap to get a loan! Zero percent! Why aren’t people going into more debt?”

“I don’t know, sir. A lack of parking near the bank may be a problem.”

“Well, if zero percent won’t do, we’ll have to go below zero.”

“Below zero, sir? You don’t mean—”

“Oh yes, I most certainly do. Negative interest rates.”

“Negative interest rates? But that would mean that people would have to pay for the right to deposit their money. And people who borrowed money would be paid for the right to borrow it.”

“Exactly. Now let’s see them try to not go into debt and spend.”

The newspapers dubbed it “Monetary Fallacy,” but after a few months it was hard to argue with the results. Saving was at all time low, and spending at an all time high——and that was saying a lot. Sales of flat-screen televisions over 60 inches quadrupled. The number of new employees that were needed to carry those televisions from the register to the customers’ cars reduced the national unemployment rate by three whole percentage points.

And technology was not the only sector that was booming. People took out loans to make additions on their houses. Even people who already had very nice houses were finding deficiencies that they had not noticed before. Suddenly everyone had to have a charging room, filled with outlets so that people could charge their phones and laptops and eyebrow trimmers.

“Oh, you don’t have a charging room?” went a popular conversation. “Well then, looks like we’re hosting Thanksgiving this year.”

Because borrowers were paid to borrow money, some people quit their jobs so that they could borrow full time. And thus even more positions were freed up. Young people who had taken out thousands in educational loans to earn post-graduate degrees in esoteric areas like Tupperware Organizing could finally pursue their chosen field.

“Sir, you won’t believe it! The unemployment is the lowest it has ever been!”

“Excellent. And they told me I couldn’t do long division. Tell me, what is it now?”

“Zero percent.”

“Zero?”

“Why yes. Why are you making that face, sir? Isn’t zero percent what you wanted?”

“Of course not! If unemployment is zero percent, then what do they need policy wonks like us for? How will I pay for my new charging room?”

“But sir, we can’t let the unemployment rate go up in an election year.”

“Well then, if we can’t let the unemployment rate go up, we’ll have to take it even lower.”

“Sir, you don’t mean—”

“Oh yes, I most certainly do. Negative unemployment.”

“Negative unemployment? But sir, how does that work?”

“Haven’t I taught you anything?”

Posted on 26 October 2012 by Mark Kaplowitz 6

Remember When Debates Involved Debating?

When I was in ninth grade and it was announced that we were going to attend a debate by the two candidates for class president, I was surprised to hear that we even had a class president. Until that moment I had thought our class was governed by an oligarchy of characters from video games who directed the teachers to make us read things like Beowulf.

So one day, instead of spending third period in math class and discussing how a line was equal to itself, we were corralled into the auditorium so that two of our peers could talk about how they were different from each other.

The two candidates stood at podiums on the stage – one on the left, and one on the right. The candidate on the left, a very nice young woman who until then I had known only as the girl with the purple school bag, was the incumbent president. The young man on the right – rumored to be a jerk but good at math – her challenger.

After the two candidates each made introductory remarks, displaying their talent for speaking in a monotone directly into a piece of paper, students were allowed to ask questions. The first question was, “As class president, how would you create more activities for students?”

The left-hand candidate had the chance to speak first, and she said, “Thank you for your question. Activities are a very important part of a student’s life, and I know that you’re hurting for some activities. I know what it feels like to have nothing to do. Last year my parents took away my television privileges because they caught me smoking a cigarette. All afternoon I had nothing to do except stare at a blank wall. Eventually my parents realized how important television was to me and let me watch it again, and all was right. So I know what you mean, and when I’m class president I’m going to make sure that students have lots of activities.”

Then the right-hand candidate interjected, “But student activities declined by over twenty percent since you took office at the end of eighth grade! When I’m class president, we’re going to reverse that trend.”

Then the left-hand candidate said, “That’s not true. You are not using accurate statistics. You should do your homework.”

“I don’t need to do my homework,” he replied, “I’ve always been great at math. I’m in the honors class.”

Then the teacher-moderator stopped the arguing and invited the next question from a student.

“What are you going to do about the quality of the school lunch?”

The right-hand candidate said, “Thank you for your question. For years we have been under the oppression of the school lunch. There is a central authority that decides for us what we should be eating, and it isn’t good! When I’m class president, my plan is to create a marketplace of lunch vendors, so that students can decide for themselves what they want to eat.”

Then the left-hand candidate said, “Privatizing the school lunch might be nice if you get a big allowance. But for middle-allowance students, a school lunch marketplace is only going to make an expensive lunch even more expensive. The answer is to make the existing school lunch taste better. And I’m going to do that as class president.”

“And how are you going to do that?” asked the teacher-moderator.

“Oh, you want me to elaborate?” asked the incumbent. “We were told we wouldn’t have to elaborate.”

I couldn’t take it anymore. It was time to ask these candidates a question that was relevant to our lives. Activities? School lunches? These things were not important. No matter who won this election, we would still have to go to class. We would still have to get changed for gym. We would still have to read Beowulf. Before I knew it, I was standing at the microphone, clearing my throat, and asking my question.

“What exactly does the class president do?” I asked.

The candidates looked stunned for a moment. I could hear some laughter behind me, and I sensed that I had asked the single question that everyone had wanted to ask. My heart filled with such joy I felt close to tears.

And the next thing I knew, I was being escorted out of the auditorium while another student asked a question, and the candidates were articulating their five-point plans for implementing a more convenient schedule of late buses.

Posted on 19 October 2012 by Mark Kaplowitz 17

Remember When I Started This Blog?

Today marks exactly two years since I started this blog. So to celebrate, I’m re-posting the very first post I ever posted here. I read it now and feel that I have come a long way. I hope you’ll agree. – MK

Do you remember Beavis and Butthead, that cartoon on MTV?

I do.

It was spring and I was in ninth grade. A friend of mine quoted some dialogue at the lunch table one day. I watched the show that night and thought it was the funniest thing I had ever seen in my life. It was on at 9:00 or 10:00 p.m., I believe, and I started taping an episode every night on the VCR. The characters spoke to me. I too was a young man who saw the world divided into things that were cool and things that sucked.

One time my mother watched the show and forbade me from watching it anymore. I had to watch and tape in secret. I figured out how to tape the show without the television being on. I would bring the tape to a friend’s house and we would watch it and laugh and I would think to myself, “This show is never going to go out of style.”

The two main characters spent a lot of time watching television. Whenever an image of fire came on to their screen, they would shout, “Fire! Fire!” not in alarm, but in excitement. I too was excited by images of fire at that time.

Parents were outraged. Educators were disappointed. Congress got involved. The “Fire! Fire!” got edited to “Fight! Fight!” which did not make any sense. Until that time I had thought censorship was something that happened only in places like the Soviet Union. Now I knew the truth.

A few years ago while I was cleaning out some old boxes of stuff, I found my tape of Beavis and Butthead. It was marked with a simple “BB” so that my mother would not know what it was. I dusted off the VCR and popped in the tape.

You know something? It was still funny.

Heh heh. Huh huh.

Posted on 11 October 2012 by Mark Kaplowitz 14

Remember When News Was News?

By now I’m sure you’ve all heard the tale of two weddings in Philadelphia and the ensuing brawl and tragic death of the uncle of one of the brides. In fact, I’m sure you’ve more than heard of it – likely you’ve seen the video, over and over again. I know I did.

Or perhaps you’ve been more focused on the fans at the Kansas City Chiefs football game, who cheered when quarterback Matt Cassell left a 9-6 loss to the Baltimore Ravens with a concussion. There’s so much news out there it is hard to choose how to spend one’s time.

Last night I watched a cable news channel in hopes that the resident analysts would direct me to the most important stories. I happened to tune in to the middle of a report about a man who had left a teaspoon full of cereal in the cereal box, and put the box back in the cabinet, not considering the fact that he was taking up valuable cabinet space with an amount of cereal that would satisfy not even the smallest mouth. The show had lined up a panel of experts to discuss the event.

“This is further evidence of the fragmentation of the American family,” one expert said, head neatly fitting in to the box allotted to it on the screen.

“Well, I think the problem is that the husband just assumes his wife is going to take care of it,” said a second. “Clearly the kitchen is still seen as a woman’s domain. We have a long way to go.”

“I take offense to that statement,” said the third expert, a little taller than the others, and who kept ducking to stay within the confines of the box. “This isn’t about gender wars. This isn’t about family, either. This is a conspiracy by bowl-manufacturers in making us think that a teaspoon of cereal is not a serving.”

The fourth box on the screen was reserved for the host, who said to the camera, “What do you think about this guy leaving a teaspoon of cereal in the cabinet? Email us your comment to the address at the bottom of your screen. We want to hear from you.”

I changed the channel to another cable news program. This time the event was a birthday party gone awry. The parents of the little birthday boy had served soft drinks as refreshments, and several of the guests had been raised in homes where the only available beverages were water and freshly squeezed guava juice. One of the kids had filmed the entire thing with his cell phone, and now millions of viewers were treated to a grainy video of children being served soda.

This show had adopted the round table format for its experts. The nutritionist called this behavior “appalling.” The child social worker also said it was “disturbing.” The famous tort litigator – plugging his new book, “Holding Party-Throwers Accountable” – eagerly set forth several theories of liability.

“The key question,” the attorney said, “is whether the parents will be seen as acting with malice in serving the soft drinks, and not merely negligence. If its malice, it will mean big dollars. If negligence, just dollars.” The host of the round table ran the video clip again, and all agreed – myself included – that the parents’ faces were malicious as they poured cola into little plastic cups for little hands. Disgusted, I turned to yet another cable news channel.

At first I did not know what I was watching. It was another video, this one of a man, sitting on a couch, holding a remote control, and starting straight ahead at something, likely a television. He looked vaguely familiar. He had the same pullover fleece and flannel pajama pants that I was wearing at that exact moment. And even the couch on which he sat his slovenly mass looked just like my couch. Perhaps he had been my classmate in high school.

The analysts were breaking down this man’s body language and discussing the ongoing epidemic of people not getting enough exercise. One of the experts started to say that with all the cable news programs available these days, showing clip after clip of ordinary people who do not know they are being filmed, it was no wonder that they can’t pry themselves away from the screen. Then a large monster emerged from the left side of the screen, devoured the expert in one bite, and the network went to a commercial.

I changed the channel to find another cable news program. They’re always going on about how people don’t get enough exercise.

Posted on 10 October 2012 by Mark Kaplowitz 5

Remember When You Had Never Heard of Austerity Measures?

Last Sunday night, or Monday morning if you use the metric system, it was announced that François Hollande had defeated Nicolas Sarkozy in the runoff election for President of France. The voters, by a crushing 51.62 majority, rejected the austerity measures being pushed by Mr. Sarkozy, and embraced the 15-minute work week being promised by Mr. Hollande.

I used to hear the word “austere” used only in connection with the 17^th Century Puritans, who observed strict fiscal discipline by tightening the buckles on their shoes and hats. But after “austerity” was anointed the Merriam-Webster Word of the Year for 2010, I started paying attention to this newer usage, and what it meant for my Pez habit.

The term “austerity” when used in connection with economics means, in a very general, non-nation-specific, Wikipedia kind of way, “a policy of deficit-cutting, lower spending, and a reduction in the amount of benefits and public services provided.” The more I’ve heard this word on the radio as I search for the latest Katy Perry hit, I’ve started to introduce some austerity measures into my own life as a way of reducing my debt obligations to foreign markets.

The first area in which I tried to impose some fiscal conservatism was in garbage collection. In my home, we typically throw garbage out. But this requires paying for someone to come and pick our garbage every week. So to save on this bloated budget item, instead of throwing out our trash, I started taking it to work and using it as weight to keep books open flat on my desk. On occasion the weight still contains some food, yielding double austerity points for saving me from having to buy lunch that day.

Another area that was really adding to our households expenses was eating out at restaurants. So to save money I decided to start cooking. But first I had to learn how.

“Honey,” I asked my wife, “where do we keep all the ingredients and recipes?”

After an hour of searching through the kitchen, and getting bogged down in the drawer that holds all the pens, tape measures, and keys that don’t go to any locks, I was ready to make chateaubriand, a dish that has fallen out of favor in America but which I’ve always liked pronouncing.

Searing the meat was easy enough; in my youth I was a Boy Scout for several weeks and so was familiar with fire. But I really got hung up on the shallot. Like, what was a shallot? I searched on the Internet, and found that a shallot is “a botanical variety of the species Allium cepa.” Still puzzled, I looked at a picture of shallots. “Ah, they look like onions!” I said, and located an onion that had been rolling around in the vegetable drawer of our refrigerator, a drawer I hadn’t opened since the Prussians sealed off the city and attempted to starve us. After serving the chateaubriand, however, I think my wife would have preferred starving.

My last austerity measure was designed to save money on gasoline. I started hitchhiking to work once a week. The thumbing-signal I mastered pretty quickly, but I could never get the red polka dot cloth tied properly to the end of the stick. There was a seminar being offered at the local community college on “Introduction to Running Away From Home,” but, thanks to the austerity measures, my education budget had been slashed, and I had to hold my polka dot cloth with my lunch and work in my hand.

No one wants to pick up a hitchhiker who can’t master the polka dot cloth on the end of a stick. I learned this the hard way. But maybe that’s what austerity measures are all about—learning how to learn for free.

Posted on 10 May 2012 by Mark Kaplowitz 6

Remember William Shakespeare?

They didn’t have birth certificates in Elizabethan England, so no one knows for sure the date of William Shakespeare’s birthday, something that I imagine created a lot of problems whenever Shakespeare tried to pick up a prescription at CVS. But we do know that Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616. So don’t forget to wish him a Happy Deathday on his Facebook profile.

In his honor, I thought I would re-read Hamlet and give a brief summary of the Bard’s greatest work featuring goblets and someone named Ophelia.

We are in Denmark, and Hamlet is the Prince of Denmark. His uncle, Claudius, is the King; his mother Gertrude, the Queen. Queen Gertrude used to be married to Hamlet’s father, when Hamlet’s father was king. But Hamlet’s father was murdered, and Gertrude found being married to a corpse unbearable, as she could never get it to mow the lawn. So she married her brother-in-law, and was spared the hassle of changing her last name on her driver’s license.

One evening Hamlet is approached by his father’s ghost, who tells Hamlet that Claudius murdered him by pouring poison in his ear while he slept. After that, the Danish kings appointed sleep testers. The sleep tester would fall asleep before the king would, and if no one poured poison in his ear, the King knew it was a safe place to nap.

Hamlet’s father, the ghost, wants revenge on his brother Claudius for murdering him, seizing the throne, marrying his wife, and eating the last piece of Halloween candy. Hamlet knows he has to avenge his father’s murder by murdering Claudius, perhaps with nose poison, but Hamlet is not in any great hurry. Hamlet instead walks around the castle philosophizing and making poetry and not working. This explains why Hamlet is 30 years old and still living at home.

In a later scene, Hamlet stabs what he thinks is his uncle behind a curtain, but is in fact his uncle’s counselor, Polonius, pretending to be the Wizard of Oz. Hamlet now must flee, having just killed a human being and all. King Claudius sends him to England, where a Dane will surely blend in when he’s not driving on the wrong side of the road.

Claudius also has Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two of Hamlet’s friends, accompany him to England. Hamlet never really liked them ever since Hamlet’s father made Hamlet invite these two wet blankets to Hamlet’s tenth birthday party. Hamlet was forced to say, “Thank you for coming to birthday. I hope you have a good time,” through clenched teeth, and even had to write Rosencrantz and Guildenstern a thank-you note for the colorful shirt they gave him.

In England, however, Hamlet convinces the English King that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have to be executed for always wanting to go back to the hotel instead of sight-seeing.

Hamlet returns to Denmark. He’s hanging out with his friend Horatio, walking through a graveyard because it’s the cool thing to do, and sees two clowns digging a grave. Hamlet speaks to one of the clowns, who tosses up a human skull. Then another ten clowns come out of the grave. Hamlet learns that the grave is for Ophelia, this girl he used to date before things got weird. Hamlet talks to the skull, and pretends it is talking back to him by moving the jawbone with his hands and speaking in a high voice. Horatio is starting to feel a little uncomfortable, but doesn’t say anything because people at odds with this Hamlet seem to have short life spans.

In the last scene of the play, Hamlet has a duel with Laertes, Polonius’s son, who is avenging his father’s death. We don’t know if Polonius appeared to Laertes as a ghost. Maybe he did and then Hamlet’s father the ghost got angry for having his idea stolen, and challenged the dead Polonius to a duel of ghosts. Or maybe Hamlet’s father the ghost did not care that the ghost idea was being stolen, until his father, Hamlet’s grandfather, appeared as a ghost and told Hamlet’s father the ghost that the ghost-infringement by Polonius the ghost had to be avenged.

Hamlet and Laertes duel in front of Claudius and Gertrude, who sit at a table with goblets and food like they are at Medieval Times. Gertrude has ordered another drink but the waitress is taking so long she decides to drink from Claudius’s goblet. Unfortunately for her this goblet has poison instead of Diet Pepsi, and Gertrude falls dead. As it turns out, Laertes has been fighting with a poisoned sword, and stabs Hamlet with it. Hamlet, however, does not die right away, but is able to go on for a while, saying witty things and deciding what he wants to TiVo that night.

Hamlet, even while poisoned, somehow wrestles the poisoned sword from Laertes and stabs him with it, and, at last, stabs Claudius. Now everyone is dead, except Horatio, who tries to stab himself but is stopped because without him there will no one left on stage to start the slow clap. The play ends with the bodies being cleared away by the same people who clean up Times Square after New Year’s Eve, and the Norwegians enter to sell their celebrated skin care formula.

Posted on 23 April 2012 by Mark Kaplowitz 5

Remember When You Could See Around Most Vehicles?

We’d come to the end of another Saturday lunch at P.F. Chang’s, and I was chewing gum so that if I got pulled over at a police checkpoint my breath wouldn’t smell like gluten-free ginger chicken with broccoli. I turned the ignition, adjusted the rearview mirror, released the emergency brake, popped in my “Drive Time Gaelic” compact disc, and put the car in reverse. And then I realized I couldn’t see to my left because we were flanked by a van that had plunged my gluten-free sedan into night.

“How am I supposed to see around this thing?” I asked my wife who was gazing into a compact mirror by the light of her smartphone. The van had a sticker on the rear right passenger bay window. It said, “I brake for large objects.”

Then I remembered a scene from the World War II movie Saving Private Ryan. I asked my wife for her compact mirror. Then I took the gum out of my mouth and stuck it to the back of mirror. I affixed the mirror and gum to the snow scraper that had been lying idle on the floor of the backseat, opened my window, and stuck the whole apparatus out and angled the mirror so that I could see around the van. It was the most use the scraper got all season.

“I think I can pull out after this Honda and Panzer tank,” I said.

“Okay, Field Marshal. But you’re buying me a new mirror.”

I got pretty handy with the scraper-scope. Any time I needed to see around a Suburban or Avalanche or Hummer, I just stuck the scope out the window and ignored the birds that came to perch. Sure there were stares from passerby, and even a few inquiries from police officers who wanted to know which facility I’d escaped from. But soon everyone recognized me, like you recognize that guy who drives around with a flag on his antenna that says, “Make Lemon Bars, Not War.”

Then one day I noticed other people with scraper-scopes. Except they didn’t all use scrapers and compact mirrors. Some used dentist’s mirrors. Others used shaving mirrors with metal accordion extenders. I even saw someone who had trained his dog to stick its head out the window, carrying in its mouth a long bone that had been wrapped in reflective foil. We the oppressed…we the downtrodden…we the great unwashed masses of coupe-, sedan-, smart-, and zip-car drivers were united in our quest to behold the other side of sport utility vehicles. When we passed on the highway we would waive to each other with our scopes.

It was another Saturday afternoon and I was in my car, savoring the interplay of the gluten-free “Buddha’s Feast” with the flourless chocolate dome. As usual my car was in eternal night thanks to a Dodge Durango and a minivan with seven gables. I stuck out my scraper-scope, angled it to see what I could see, and just happened to focus the mirror on the mirror of another scope sticking out of a Civic three spaces down. The two mirrors instantly produced an infinite number of smaller and smaller reflections inside each other, ending in a point of light so blazing that I was unable to see for a few moments.

And when the purple splotches finally cleared from my vision, there was nothing left of the compact mirror but some smoldering dust.

“Well, that’s it,” I said to my wife. “That was our only hope of getting out of here. Now we’ll have to wait until our sun becomes a super nova and swallows up all the SUVs on Earth.” I started looking for something good on the radio.

“Is that all?” she asked me.

I thought for a few seconds.

“Or I guess I could always back out slowly.”

Posted on 16 April 2012 by Mark Kaplowitz 2