MiSTED: Communism Will Make Life Better 4
The Happy SP2
TOM: They misspelled, "mindless prattle".
> John Reed: Ten Days That Shook the World.
MIKE: Rex Reed: Ten Movies That Shook Michael Medved.
TOM: Robert Reed: Six Kids That Shook The Neilsons.
CROW: Jerry Reed: Ten Songs That Shook the Charts.
> John Reed, a writer and journalist from Seattle,
TOM: Was instrumental in creating the "Grunge Look".
> described the first
> successful insurrection by the working class in this classic book.
TOM: Reading opens up a whole new world of political philosophy.
CROW: It has the energy and immediacy of a first hand account.
MIKE: As told to a ghostwriter.
> Alexander Werth:
CROW: Son of Wool Werth.
TOM: And cousin of Net Werth.
> Russia At War: 1939-45.
MIKE: Part 2: Electric Boogaloo.
> Werth was a teenager when his family fled the Russian revolution and
> moved the family from St. Petersburg to England.
CROW: Like that was a step up?!
> When he returned to
> the Soviet Union as a correspondent for the BBC during World War II,
TOM: He avoided the London Blitz, only to inherit the Siege of Stalingrad.
> he had the advantage of speaking Russian, Polish and Ukranian so he
> was able to talk with ordinary citizens and soldiers
MIKE: Unfortunately, he stuttered a lot, so it was all pretty useless.
>and give a
> ground-up view of the
CROW: Ground-up humans.
> huge human drama unfolding on the Eastern Front.
TOM: Which brought a cold air mass up from the Eastern seaboard, bringing rain,
hail and freezing temperatures to the tri-state area.
> Edoarda Masi: China Winter: Workers, Mandarins, and the Purge of the
> Gang of Four. E.P.Dutton, New York, 1981.
TOM: "Gang of Four"?! Who are they?
MIKE: Roger Corman, Bert I. Gordon, Ed Wood and Coleman Francis.
CROW: No, silly, Clinton, Gore, Gingrich and Dole.
TOM: Maybe it was that punk band from the '80s. And "purge" means to "kill" or
"eliminate", right?!
MIKE: Right.
TOM: Then, purge them, I say! PURGE AWAY!! Kill, kill, KILL, KILL!!!!
MIKE: That's enough. We get the point.
CROW: Yeah! I call dibs on these guys!
MIKE: QUIET!
> Masi,
CROW: Star
>an Italian writer and translator, lived in China as a student in
> the 1950s,
CROW: Oh, so she knew Dick Contino-San, then?!
TOM: Or Tony Tlavis.
MIKE: That's enough guys. Any more Chinese cracks like that and I'll report
you to Kyle Chen.
CROW: Oooooooo, I'm shakin'!
> then returned 18 years later, at the time of Mao's death,
TOM: To celebrate, spit and dance on his grave, and all that.
> as a visiting lecturer. Her book describes what she called "the end of
> a great revolution" in somber terms.
CROW: But not "sober" terms. Masi used to pound down the Stroh's Light till
the floor came up to greet her and vomit became her best friend.
MIKE: Nice thought, Crow.
CROW: Hey, I try.
> Strong: Communes
TOM: Weak: Dorm rooms.
> Red Star Over China
MIKE: Red Storm Over Rising.
TOM: Red Buttons Over Oscar.
CROW: Red Rover Come On Over.
MIKE: Red Foxx Over Hollywood
TOM: Can we stop now?
> William Hinton: Fanshen:
MIKE: I wonder, was he a "Fan-Shen" dancer?! Ha, ha, ha!
TOM: Hit him, Crow.
CROW: Don't I wish.
> A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village.
MIKE: At Christmastime, by Charles Dickens.
> Hinton was working for an international agricultural releif
> organization in pre-revolutionary China when the Eighth Route (Red)
> Army swept through the province seizing the estates of rich landlords
> and redistributing
CROW: What a nice way to say "stealing".
> the land to poor peasants.
TOM: Who had no idea how to tend it.
> He requested permission
MIKE: To speak freely.
> from the new communist authorities to remain in the area and write a
> detailed history of the events in one village. He makes the process of
> transformation of people and society real by his careful and detailed
> account.
CROW: Careful, detailed and fatally boring account.
> Also by Hinton: Shenfan
TOM: While in new York, stay at the lovely Hilton Shenfan, just east of the
park.
> Twenty years after he left Long Bow Village in northern Shansi
> Province, Hinton was able to return to see how the village had fared
> under communist leadership.
MIKE: It had gone into Chapter 11.
> He describes the history of those
> turbulent and exhilarating times through the eyes of his old friends,
> the farmers and organizers of Long Bow.
TOM: By the shores of Gichee-Goomie.
> Away With All Pests
TOM: "All PETS"??!! I'm tellin' P.E.T.A.
CROW: No. "PESTS"! Like someone that bugs the living heck out of you.
Someone who bothers you incessently and is totally useless except to drive you
completely insane.
TOM: Oh, you mean the the author of this garbage heap.
CROW: You got it.
> Joshua Horn, a British orthopedist, emmigrated to China in the early
> 1950s and worked in one of the teaching hospitals in Shanghai.
MIKE: As opposed to a hospital where someone goes when they're sick.
TOM: Maybe it's a hospital where teachers go when they're sick.
> He wrote this book during the height of the Cultural Revolution and it
> reflects some of the most profound themes of that period.
CROW: Oppression, prison, exile, slave labor, shots to the back of the head,
etc.
> In his
> introduction he reveals his dislike for the arrogance of senior
> physicians in the hospitals where he trained in Britain.
MIKE: Oh I get it. He was a slacker that didn't like being told what to do.
Real repectable authority on the subject.
> In socialist China the relations between experts and the masses have been
> transformed. Patients and orderlies accompany the doctors on rounds
> and the physicians learn from and serve the people.
TOM: Oh, right. Like what's a doctor going to learn from an orderly?
CROW: How to chill the bedpans just right?
MIKE: How to remove all of the taste and texture from hospital food?
CROW: How to dull the hypodermic needles?
TOM: I get it. And if the orderlies were those two flash-in-the-bedpan
rap "stars", the Fat Boys, then the physicians could not only heal themselves,
they could laugh themselves into hysterics by watching the dou's crazy antics.
MIKE: Uh, i think you're giving those goofballs WAY too much credit.
TOM: I think you're right.
> A remarkable account.
CROW: will presented, but not here.
> * Words and phrases which may need some explanation are listed in a
> glossary at the end of the pamphlet.
TOM: That's nice of them.
> Each of these terms is underlined the first time it appears in the pamphlet.
CROW: How considerate.
> There is also a list of books and articles for the interested reader,
MIKE: Well, that leaves us out, obviously.
>including sources quoted in the text.
> Glossary
CROW: Starring Betty Luster and Martin Sheen.
> Some words used in definitions will themselves need defining.
TOM: Oh well, then-HUH??!!
> These terms are underlined and have their own glossary entries.
MIKE: Do we really care at this point?!
> base
CROW: How low can you go?
>- The political use of this word refers to the group of political
> friends and supporters around an organizer or a party unit
TOM: Or something that Lou Brock would steal.
MIKE: Or what papa sang in that Johnny Cash song.
> Berlin wall - A wall built in 1961 between the Soviet controlled
> sector of Berlin and the section controlled by western capitalist
> powers. Berlin, the capital of Nazi Germany, had been conquered by the
> Soviet Red Army in the closing months of World War II (May, 1945).
CROW: With the help of the money and manpower from the U.S.
> The city was divided in two, and half of it was placed under the control
> of the US, Britain and France (the major capitalist powers at that
> time). The wall came to symbolize the "cold war" between the Soviet
> Union and the US. It was torn down in 1991 after state capitalism was
> relaced by market capitalism in Eastern Europe and the two sectors of
> Germany, East and West, were reunited economically and politically.
MIKE: About the same time the Soviet Union went down the toilet economically
and politically.
> Bolsheviks, Bolshevik revolution - The original name for the communist
> party in Russia, established in the early 1900s, which overthrew the
> old government of the czar in 1917. After the revolution the party was
> renamed the
TOM: repressive idiots?
CROW: dumb bearaucrats?
> Communist Party of the Soviet Union or CPSU . The Russian
> revolution they led, sometimes called the "Bolshevik revolution"
> established a socialist political-economic system and the first
> worker-controlled nation in the history of the world (see Soviet
> Union).
MIKE: Also see: Historical Dungheap.
> Important early leaders included V. I. Lenin
TOM: And V.I. Warshawski.
> and Josef Stalin.
CROW: (as Ed Sullivan) Right here on our stage, murder of millions, enslaver
of a nation, the Terror of the Steppes, Uncle Joe Stalin! Right after Lou Monte
and Pepito the Italian Mouse and Topo Gigio.
> bourgeoisie - Another word for the capitalist class (French).
> Adjective form: bourgeois.
TOM: Totally Gross Form: Boogers!
> Breshnev - Leader of the CPSU (see Bolsheviks) from 19 to 19 ,
CROW: "From 19 to 19"?!
TOM: Paul Hardcastle wrote this one?
> during the hayday of state capitalism in the formerly socialist USSR. He
> lived like a typical capitalist politician with luxurious mansions,
> many automobiles, etc., while the workers made do with second-rate and
> overcrowded accomodations.
MIKE: So why are you still supporting the system, then?!
> capital - Money or property used to produce other goods. E.g., a shop
> with sewing machines. See also industrialization. Note that most of
> what we think about as private property is not capital, e.g., a home,
> our clothing, a TV set. A capitlist is not distinguished so much by
> how much property he or she owns as by the type of property:
> capitalists own property which, by the application of labor, can
> generate more property.
TOM: And this paragraph can generate the word "property" over and over again.
> capitalism - A political-economic system in which a small class of
> people owns or controls the vast majority of capital. The two major
> forms of capitalism seen in the 20th century are market capitalism
> (also called free market capitalism) and state capitalism (or state
> monopoly capitalism). The two forms differ in how openly different
> groups of capitalists fight for control of the government and how
> completely the dominant group of capitalists can eliminate the
> competition. The forms can be mixed (government appointed capitalists
> have the monopoly on electricity, railroads or banks, say, while a
> tiny number of billionaires not directly appointed by the government
> compete in automobile production). The key feature of all forms of
> capitalism: the working class has no political power and controls no
> capital.
TOM: Hey Mike, isn't there some sort of law of basic English which precludes
the use of the word you are defining in the definition?
MIKE: Since when does this guy care about ANYTHING except spewing his
propaganda all over the place, no matter who he infects?!
> capitalist - A person who owns capital;
MIKE: I own a Capitol record. Does THAT make me a "Capitolist"?!
TOM: No. It either makes you an idiot or a Beatles fan.
CROW: Or both.
> a boss, a member of the capitalist class.
MIKE: Of '75.
> Capitalists make their money by exploiting the labor
> of others (workers). (See class). The word capitalist is also used as
> an adjective to describe the political-economic system run by and for
> wealthy capitalists. (Synonyms: bourgeois [adj.], bourgeoisie [n.])
CROW: Yeah, whatever.
> Central Committee - The leading group in a party organized along the
> lines of the Bolsheviks. This group consults with the broader
> membership of the party,
TOM: In other words, those who have absolutely no say whatsoever.
> develops the political strategy and overall
> plan for the party and leads it in putting this plan into practice.
MIKE: "The Practice" with Danny Thomas, next on NBC.
> China - The most populous country in the world, located in eastern
> Asia. It has an area slightly larger than the US and three to four
> times the population of the US. The old capitalist regime in China
> (backed by the US) was overthrown by a peasant and worker revolution
> led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1949, and socialism was
> established. The left within the CCP tried to push on toward communism
> through various struggles (see Cultural Revolution) up through the
> early 1970s, but the pro-capitalist elements within the Party won out
> and the country had a system of state capitalism from the early 70s
> until the move toward market capitalism beginning in the late 1980s.
[Crow begins shaking violently]
MIKE: What is it, little buddy?!
CROW: I-I-I c-can't take it anymore! "Capitalism", "workers", "revolution",
"markets", "socialism", "communes", "class", "regime". Th-this guy is trying
to make one of the most evil and oppressive systems of government sound like a
picnic in the p-park! A-and not only THAT, but this damn thing is longer than it
took to actually overthrow BOTH Russia and China. I-I'm tellin' ya, Mike, I
can't st-stand this another minute! I-I'll self-destruct, I tell ya!!
MIKE: You've got to hold on, Crow. We've all in this together, pal, so don't
go crazy on me, okay. (To Tom) Encourage him, willya?!
TOM: Oh, okay. Hey Crow buddy, Mike is right in his own little, parochial way.
I mean, just because we've wallowed through page after endless page of this
Communistic drivel, firing off our best broadsides against it to little or no
avail, and just because we've have who knows HOW much longer to go before we
reach the end, doesn't mean that you are not completely justified in your
behavior. In fact, I may join you in a page or two.
MIKE: Nice job of "encouraging" him, Tom.
TOM: Anytime, Mike. Anytime.
MIKE: Listen, Crow. I know we're only about one-tenth of the way through the
glossary, but that the LAST PART. Look how far we've come. Gut it out, buddy,
I know you can do it if you try. Don't do it for you, or me, or Dr. Forrester
or Frank-
TOM: Do it for me!
MIKE: (To Tom) Shut up! (To Crow) Do it for the memory of all that is good with
America and our way of life. And most importantly, for all those who have
MiSTed equally rancid pieces of crap, fiction and non-fiction alike.
CROW: You mean......?
MIKE: Yes! Do it for Claye and Rick Hodge!!
CROW: O-okay, Mike, I'll DO IT!!
MIKE: Good. Good for you. And remember, Tom and I are right here if you
need us.
CROW: Thanks. I think I can handle it, now.
TOM: Rats! I wanted to see you self-destruct.
MIKE: Shut up!
> class -
TOM: What the author has absolutely none of.
> A social group within the population the members of which
> share a common way of earning a living, in a general sense.
CROW: A VERY general sense.
> People who
MIKE: Need people, are the luckiest people in the world.
> earn a living working for wages (who can only make money by working)
> are working class (or workers). Those who earn money by owning capital
> are capitalists. A third group in capitalist society, neither working
> class nor capitalists, is called petit bourguisie
MIKE: Say, Tom, you wear a "petite bourguisie", don't you?
TOM: I wish.
> or middle class (see
> also intellectuals).Most people are born into a class and remain in
> that class all their life, as do their children. In the US and similar
> industrialized capitalist countries, the capitalists make up about 1%
> of the population, the working class about 80% and the petit
> bourgeoisie (professionals plus managers) the remaining 19%.
CROW: On top of silly propdaganda, meaningless statistics.
LAST SKIT:
MIKE: You know, while reading the droning account of a fantasy of the textile
industry while under Communist rule, me and the bots were inspired to come up
with our own Marxist fashion fantasies. Over here, Cambot.
[colored lights turn on and that cheesy jazz music heard on 70's porn films
{Bow-chicka-bow-baw-whan-whan} comes on. Mike takes on the voice of a
pretentious announcer]
MIKE: Welcome to our Communist fashion show folks. Our first creation will be
Thomas Servo in the latest in Chinese fashion.
[Tom rolls in on a makeshift stage, wearing a grey coat draped over his robot
frame. On his head, a small red cap]
MIKE: From Chow En Lai's, the finest in slave labor wear. Note the simple
lines, the strudy fabric, and the dull color. On his, the latest in Mao
emulating haberdashery, a floppy red cap [takes out the Red Book] and no
Cultural Revolutionist would be complete without a personal collection of
Chairman Mao's sayings. Thank you, Tom.
[Tom rolls off, and Crow comes on the stage. Same coat as Tom, but he is
wearing a cossack]
MIKE: And a blast from the past from Crow T. Robot. Note that Crow is wearing
the same type of coat as Thomas, but there is a difference. Crow is wearing a
showy brown cossack, to give your favorite guy or gal a touch of Minsk.
TOM: MINSK! Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
MIKE: Thank you, Crow. And last, but not least, our representive from the
Progressive Labor Party, Gypsy Robot.
TOM: Hee hee--Minsk.
MIKE: Gypsy here is also in the same grey coat, but with a special touch. She
is wearing a fashionable ivory-colored cone-shaped dunce hat.
TOM: Minsk, oh that's funny!
CROW: Will you shut up?
TOM: MINSK! MINSK! MINSK! Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
[Mike gets a roll of duct tape and procedes to tape Tom's mouth shut]
MIKE: That was almost as bad as that anaconda incident.
[Tom makes muffled noises]
MIKE: We're not taking that off until the sign comes on.
[lights flash. Mike rips the duct tape off of Tom]
MIKE: Text sign, folks.
They cancel a message--ten more messages spring up.
They send a court order--ten more home pages dedicated to their trickery spring
up.
They raid a critic's house--ten more critics spring up.
read alt.religion.scientology to find out the truth.
Natalie Welch
Oh, and the two MiStings I have pending are written, but I need to figure
out how to upload. My school changed the setup of all the communication
stations over break. It's up in the air right now as to wheather or not I
can send them.
--
--Natalie Welch | "Do you expect me to talk?"
|
natw...@freenet.columbus.oh.us | "No, Mr. Bond, I expect you
nwe...@tcc.oecn.ohio.gov | to *die*!