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01/14/2006: "Roosevelt Cabbagestalk"
Salvete vulgi, 
In response to the stellar reaction I've received from my recent review of
acclaimed psychic and possible escaped sideshow attraction Sylvia Browne's
philosophical masterpiece Animals on the Other Side ["stellar
reaction"? OK, class, compare and contrast the paltry 29 votes Nathan's
review garnered to the nearly 3300 votes picked up by Jesus' General for
his Heterosexual review of Kate O'Beirne's Women Who Make the World
Worse - Rodney] , I'd decided to brave the chilly literary waters once
more. My latest review may be found here as well as below.
Warmest regards,
Nathan E. Bulwar-Lytton
"The Busy Mom's Guide To Wisdom" by Lisa "Blair" Whelchel
While most of you are, no doubt, familiar with me in my capacity as
Theater Critic for the Burley Observer, few of you are probably aware of
another role that I fill: that of a devoted son who, as a confirmed
bachelor, has resided with his mother for over sixty years (admittedly,
if one subtracts the years I was away at school - from ages three through
eighteen I attended Burley Boys' Academy where I boarded, at mother's
insistence, despite its immediate proximity to our home -, college, and
graduate school as well as the decades I spent working as a Foreign
Correspondent for Grit and - depending on how much stock one puts in
Recovered Memory Therapy - a brief, foggy period spent in the company of
Anton LeVey and Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme the actual amount of time I've
spent in mother's company is somewhat closer to eleven months, six days,
and nineteen hours).
For the majority of my life, my filial responsibilities were limited to
refilling mother's cognac class, chasing suspected Papists away from our
grounds, and speaking only when I was spoken to, as mother, a feisty woman
who enjoyed a certain amount of local celebrity stemming from an affair
she allegedly conducted with Ayn Rand, remained healthy and alert well
into her late nineties.
Sadly, as anyone who has ever attempted to conceal a wheel of luxurious
cheese in a sock drawer knows, nothing lasts forever and in recent years
mother's heath has declined to the point where she because easily exhausted
while beating the servants and has been forced to limited her daily ritual
of screaming obscenities at a faded snapshot of John Maynard Keynes to
under a half hour.
Along with this decline in Mother's physical condition, her mental state
has also been on the wane. Every morning for the past few months Mother
has awoken convinced that the year is 1951 (coincidently, the same year
in which the supposed tryst with Rand took place). After numerous
consultations with mother's physician, Dr Crippen, it was finally agreed
upon that, as no medical remedy will be available in the foreseeable
future, the best course of action would be to indulge Mother's delusion
as the shock of reality might be too much for her ever weakening
constitution.
Now, you might think that keeping up the ruse that it's 1951 would be an
impossible task (and that may have been true a decade or so ago), but
recent developments have turned what could have been a Bataan Death March
of duplicity into a yummy, yummy cakewalk. For example, if one simply
substitutes the word "Communist" for "Terrorist" and "Santorum" for
"McCarthy" the dodge becomes surprisingly effortless. Oh, and the Federal
Mint's reissuing of those buffalo nickels hasn't hurt, either. I daresay
that, so effective has the deception been that, catching a glimpse of
Condoleezza Rice in The Observer the other day, mother remarked, "My, that
Roy Cohen always dresses so smartly"
The only predicament I've encountered thus far has been in procuring books
for mother's nightstand which realistically convey the ideology of that
simpler, pre-Feminist, era. Most "modern" literature involves such
unacceptable concepts as "gender equality", "skepticism" or "a woman's
right to choose". Nothing is more of a dead giveaway that a book wasn't
written in a bomb shelter by a demure housewife than seeing the words
"Queer Positive" on the dust jacket. That's why Mrs. Whelchel's latest
effort has been, please pardon the pun, such a Godsend. If I didn't know
better I'd swear on a stack of King James Bibles (the REAL Bible) that
"The Busy Mom's Guide to Wisdom" was penned during the Eisenhower
administration.
As long as Mrs. Whelchel continues to churn out such charming,
unimaginative books, mother will never have to face the dreadful fact that
she is no longer living in a world wherein each morning rugged men devour
a three-martini breakfast before departing for the office in large, finned
automobiles while their wives stay quietly at home and pine for the release
which only death can bring.
exercitus - us - army
