A treatise on the importance of the Short Sleeved Dress Shirt (SSDS) to America’s future prosperity

Reading Note: This essay is based on the 10th Grade writing prompt: If you could bring back any style from any period what would it be? and why?

The American Golden Age, or AGA, Which spans the 1950’s and early 1960’s has many defining characteristics: prefabricated suburbs, the rise of youth culture, rock and/or roll, wars initiated by executive fiat, a robust and optimistic middle class and most importantly ATOMIC SCIENCE! While Atomic Science might be narrowly defined as science surrounding the study and manipulation of the Atom, I am using it as a synonym for Super Science AKA GeeWizardy, the boundary pushing fields of science whose casualties and collateral are politely ignored in order forward the cause of humanity, capitalism and the American way, not to mention sticking it to Ivan. Ah, those vodka swilling, bear loving, wayward revolutionaries certainly gave us the incentive to strive and sacrifice in a race to compete with our own existential intellectual insecurities, the need to prove that our way of life, our revolution, both Political and Social, were superior, drove us to the brink time and time again forwarding the triumphant American Dream. To reach these lofty heights, without risking the lives and ire of the noncombatants in this struggle, vast tracks of land separate from the cities, town, villages, hamlets and unincorporated settlements had to be found. Testing ranges for unknown devices, both secret and often lethal were essential, the trial and error style approach a hurdle into the unknown often requires, without the embarrassment that catastrophic public failures so often entail. The Commies had the Siberian wastes, frigid, sterile ranges only suitable for scientific testing and the reeducation of political prisoners. The warm fur lined great coats and other snug winter garments spoke of a class not aligned with the common man, but of a manicured social elite set apart and cultivated in a manner not commensurate with any egalitarian principles. America had a far better, warmer, but still stark and only semi habitable zone for the cultivation of the Atomic Sciences, the American South West. Whether a nuclear testing sight, launching UFOs, building a to scale replica of an American city, the construction of a sin Mecca or some combination of the above, ones imagination could run rampant, free of recrimination from weak willed and small minded civilians. Though, when the time came to unveil the newest wonder, we had average men, with crew cuts, birth control glasses and the Short Sleeved Dress Shirt or SSDS explaining in pained laymen’s terms what they had produced to a patient, beloved newsman who would help us digest and accept what our fathers once believed impossible.
Unfortunately our capitalist tendencies, to homogenize, standardize and mass produce all that is appealing and successful gave way to the anarchy of individuality and the dissolution of our national team spirit in a metaphorical and, occasionally, actual orgy composed of variable quantities of drugs, sex and rock and roll, the levels of which depended on the caprice and abilities of the individual to acquire them. It should be noted that there was an attempt to homogenize, standardize and mass produce drugs, sex and rock and roll during the Regan Era, though such attempts broke down after the end of the Cold War, during the ”anything goes” Clintonian period. Government installations were shut down, downsized and mothballed in the name of peace dividends and where experimental aircrafts once roamed and mushroom clouds sprouted in otherworldly glory, planned communities sprout and suburbanite slobs chew their cud of overpriced processed foods and unscripted images mirroring their own hedonistic listlessness. Pop icons, sports figures, business leaders and even politicians have dissuaded generations from healthy competition, team spirit and the cultivation our intellectual wealth in favor of individual aggrandizement, consumption and a wariness of authority. This trend has created a frustrated, restless, and obese herd slowly falling prey to the forces of social entropy. What is the answer to this malaise? The complex answer requires vast computing power, field testing, an Army of like minded individuals working in concert for the greater good and the testing of our civilization in a crucible of Iron and Blood to fully answer, the simple answer is the SSDS.
While one might ask how simple apparel can change the course of a civilization, I wouldn’t give some butterfly/domino effect type answer, since, if that would satisfy you, I would be preaching to the choir, which, while enjoying heavenly sanction, is just mental masturbation. No, I will instead propose the image of conformity, anathema to popular culture, allows the only true and healthy individuality, as some one of base spirit and simple mind would be unable to differentiate themselves from the crowd, their lack of talent and personality loosing the plumage that slavish attention to trends and media obsessions can provide. Skill, wit, strength, decency and intelligence could once again establish their social worth. Instead of arbitrary high school clicks such as the nerd, bully, jock etc. The playing field could be leveled at the point that a youth transforms into an adult and incidentally a fantastic time for indoctrination. Fitting in based on social utility, instead of cynical marketing that promotes, condones and breeds the mental and physical weakness that keeps us in fear of relinquishing our social clichés in lieu of an honest life, of course we would have to mandate some other garb for youngsters to wear in order to make the SSDS a symbol of maturity. The adult world claims over and over that High School is temporary condition, its confinement aberrant and fleeting, yet its pull is tidal in every waking thought and impulse in our adult life, its psychological effects evident. While we might change our life’s trajectory from the course decided in our early steps to maturity, its subconscious pull will always warp our thoughts to the impressionable template formed in the pupa like confines of the American High School, making it the perfect place to begin the reformation of America, as generation XYZ attempt to mimic the youth in a vain attempt to reclaim their own fading formative years, and sense of juvenile freedom, together, in collusion they can stand up to societal forces which seek to keep us in a perpetual state of childhood and instead turn our schools into a battle ground for the respect, responsibility and privileges a mature human demands and should be accorded, along with a uniform to denote this transformation. What about the baby boomers? They are a Detroit-like generation, mostly a burnt out husk, flashes of washed out glory and naïve optimism, with pockets of intense energy, genius and skill maintaining their generational pride, but as a cultural force, their time has passed.
So why the Short Sleeved Dress Shirts? Why not a speed suit, short pants, a leotard or the garb of a 16th century Polish lord? Because none of those things lend the image of social, intellectual and generational cohesion while comfortably mastering the North American elements, besides the aforementioned American Southwest, the last contiguous region of our now extinct frontier to be conquered, whose red rock mesas, parched deserts and brush lined riverbeds still excite the imagination with their austere, hostile beauty, the SSDS is universally suited for summer wear allowing a full range of motion, aeration, and the rapid transformation from formal to informal by the simple act of tucking and untucking. As for other locations and climates, well, coats, jackets, sweater, svesters, vests, undershirts, aprons awash with culinary humor and any manner of over garments can still be applied for outdoor comfort, where appropriate, and the maintenance of a single indoor garment will help decide a generally accepted interior temperature. This will allow the phrase “Is it hot in here? Or is it just me?” to indicate embarrassment, rising tensions both sexual and hostile, instead of simply asking if it’s okay to change the thermostat, as a racial, gendered and idiosyncratic median sets the appropriate indoor temperature at a universally tolerable 72 degrees Fahrenheit, and if you are still having a hard time of it try a cold or hot beverage to manage your wacked out sense of what is comfortable. Let’s also mention the obvious plus of additional pocket space, pockets, the home of all we generally need on hand without the need of constant awareness that an external pouch requires when one moves from place to place. Protected or not, the shirt pocket can contain things that one wants immediately evident without the need of memory or forethought, it is on your chest for G-d’s sake.
So we have established the social and utilitarian reasons for the SSDS and its cultural connection to the AGA, so why not? What possible argument could someone have against such a national uniform being instituted at a voluntary, but socially mandated, level? Some might call such a homogenous and cohesive group a bunch of Nazis, but since these half-sleeves are not, in fact, actual Nazis, the people who made such a statement are attempting to dilute the term, which is the first step in defanging a great historical tragedy, such people should go back to Iran, were Holocaust deniers are accepted by those self proclaimed Aryan peoples. Nazi loving Mohammedian sympathizers aside, only base consumerists can really complain, as their trending ways would be put on the path to extinction making their vain obsession with riding cultural waves a more complex task that would actually require self improvement and development. Perhaps they could take up a new hobby, Civil War enthusiasts and Renaissance Fair tailgater might be suitable, fulfilling their need to dress up in silly costumes and pose on terms that are not their own. The last and mightiest foe of a stylistic return to sanity is the Industries which rely on fickle, capricious consumers to live it large on their yachts, skyscrapers and in their gated communities. A standard garment, while seemingly only targeting shirt manufacturers, would likely influence the SSDS wearing public, begging the question why further standardization isn’t instituted so we can repair our own cars? Why not keep the same vehicle for as long as it functions and is functional for ones purposes? Isn’t furniture that will last a life time cheaper in the long run than Nordic trash only suitable for the most transient of domiciles? Shouldn’t a trademark be an indicator of quality, not something of worth in and of itself? Shouldn’t the dialogue, humor and content of my entertainment enrich my mind? Develop my faculties? Shouldn’t entertainment be more than mindless escapism numbing me into mental impotence? Why aren’t simple answers better than esoteric, relative and pedantic ones? The social snowball that such a change in our practices could, possibly, theoretically, leave us happy, content and in control of our lives. Such a shift would leave the marketing and retail world in the lurch, they could no longer manufacture markets for their products, they would either need to adapt, find new markets abroad, sell to rich and poor alike, customize their products and services to the actual needs of an enlightened consumer base or quit the biz entirely and become carnival workers, moving from town to town grifting rubes till the marks get wise and chase them out onto the open road in search of greener pastures. They, of course, will fight this tooth and claw, heads twisting around spewing pea soup like filth from every media orifice in all directs as they scuttle about on grotesquely bent limbs lashing out with bureaucratic and legal strength, but in the end, if the SSDS clad army of common sense can maintain, it will triumph, inaugurating a new AGA of empowered citizens bent on refining their civilization instead of being degraded by it.
The road ahead is simple yet difficult, but the first step is only a change of clothes away, so link hands, bare forearm to forearm, and let us march forward to a bright future where flying cars are feasible, though we don’t produce them for public use since that would be impractical and unsafe. Where the American flag is planted on increasingly distant terrestrial bodies as an exercise of our intellectual prowess, the scientific rock stars known as the “Astronaut” space trekkings’ wisely assisted and guided by an army of typically dressed NASA men from Cape Canaveral once more. Brave and confident Americans empowered to do thing because they are hard, taking the atom in hand, playing G-d as he looks down on his sandbox hurdling through the void, nodding approvingly as his American primates cease their petulant self obsession and glorify his creation with all that is noble, honest and true in humanity, the buttoned down, collard, American Dream in bloom, pollinated by class blind freemen, living as Americans have always sought to, E Pluribus Unum.

A song in his heart

Ole Thomy Capin, always had a song in his heart, that was the problem, always had a song widdlin at his soul even when he thought he'd vainish'd those ole creaky toones. You’d think you could talk to him again and he was all playful, making toys out'a string an twine and helping your sister with groceries, but then a guitar wire would show up in his ball of twine or a passing car radio would blast some godforsaken folk music and ole Thomy would start a singing. You see when Thomy gets a singing he hasn’t care in the world, and doesn’t care who he hurts or how he does it and he gets real funny like.

For example, one cold winter’s night, as a light snow fell on our little town, ole Thomy was fiddling away on quiet street corner about his favorite colors, to no one in particular, since us townies know when we need to stay locked up tight indoors by a roaring fire with a hot cup of cocoa quietly praying to whatever might save us. Unfortunately for a young couple who thought they might come down from the sky lodge for some of our famous spiced cider and rustic tales, but without a pub open and all the shops shuttered they slowly circled towards that frantic music like a couple of June bugs hypnotized by the mantis’s prayers that only they can hear. He slowly brought his fiddle to a rhythmic plateau, cutting short verse about how he loved the black of night before the dawn, to say “ Well, you two look like a couple who likes good music, dont’cha? Of, course you do, well we’ll have a good time then, we’ll have a good time then…” Well those two poor youngins should have known better, but ole Thomy’s curly locks, gentle eyes and corduroy jacket would put just about anybody at ease, not to mention Thomy’s downright uncanny nose for sniff’in out human weakness. Next thing you know out came his jug of spiced cider and a lively tune.

“Well now, what do you folks want to sing about, I think a spider is what I'll be. Imagine all the possibilities…” he trailed off. Most folk would have gotten a little scarred about a lone stranger pretending to be a spider, with all its inferred predatory imagery and alien menace, but these folks had already drank deep of our strong cider, which Thomy had added his own special spices to and as the paralytic, sedative and alcohol weaved their dooming threads through their now addled minds, it was all they could do to stumble about half blind, knowing they should cry out but forgetting how. Before long they were twitching on the shallow snow and out came the twine, ole Thomy singing to himself as he envisioned his new toys and the games he would play with them.

Well the next morning, exhausted from a night of singing, playing and digging a shallow pit in his root cellar, ole Thomy smashed his fiddle screaming at himself. He swore he would never sing a single note again. Of course he knew he was lying. Even at that very moment of ultimate remorse. He would hear the rhythmic swaying of the ice glazed trees, the chirping of the birds, and he knew no matter where he went or what he did the music would find him, because deep down past the barbaric drums and manic chanting, past the mad fiddler who demanded sacrifice, through the frozen ice caves and pits of his psyche, he knew he would always, always, have a song in his heart.

Reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oz9cQOX4X3w

Renyold’s Band Omni Media Experience Part 2

Beer my friends that is the catalyst, time travel is not something to be taken literally, wait no that’s not the terminology I intended I am just saying that our understanding on time travel as postulated by such conceptual analysis’s as Terminator, Back to the future and countless other chronological fantasies is false, time travel is not only a MC square type situation it must be done incrementally and in a mentally acceptable fashion, a Marquis De Sade could not fathom a 1950’s America, and thus could not travel directly from point A to point Z. There are many letters between and as far as decomposition goes traveling back 2,000 years could be a life time pursuit, if we are speaking of linear thinking that is, and we are not. It seems the combination of hops (a distant and somewhat homely cousin to the infinitely more flashy Marijuana) and alcohol can warp time, much as mass can and often does. That is the variable which Renyold C. Macantire discovered, that and a secondary but almost comparable discovery, basing the location of the majority of your personal adventures in the environs of British Columbia will automatically give them a gothic quasi supernatural tinge, a natural twilight zone.
With the mechanics of the tale explained let’s get to the 21st , I mean if you’re going to make a time machine into a car, you mine as well do it with style…and unique ability. Having been a subject of the occult since a zygote it is only appropriate that Mayan prophecy would come to fruition through him. Aching for a DUI Renyold burst out of B.C. and trekking till he found the burrito of his dreams passed the 88 mile barrier transcending time and space and kicking relativity in the ass. Babylon, the whore of cities was the first and natural destination, since we ARE living in a Renyold based universe now, that’s right out of billions of years of slag we have about 5,000 years worth of shit. Whether that’s the chronology of a almighty G-d or just a mile stone when the apes stopped throwing shit at each other, Babylon, the Accadian’s the whole civilization deal was bland, flavorless corn fed and weak not unlike our own democracy and needing the “Rock” in the vitalizing tripartite force of love and peace.
Mark Twain understood that the world was not as it should be in both realities, from a red neck child lording over a full grown ‘negro’ to the opposition to genocide in the Belgian Congo the man had come to understand the world through the deluvian tides of the Missouri, Mississippi and in spirit the Nile, hence the birth of rock.
Rock, what is it to the average man, not much, if you’re not the creative type its nothing but noise, but if you have moved passed the classical composers and need a stronger fix, well that’s when the fevered pitch and tone of rock strums the dendrites of the brain just so, bringing a mix of pain and pleasure, not unlike spicy food, onto a conscious level. A Renyold-less world is one of cultureless progress only he is privy to, the rest of us live in a world saturated with his influence, inventing the term Reinformation:
The word Reinformation was first used in 1454 by the Venetian inventor Reduxious Informentii who saw the transformation of Haga Sophia and believed that information itself was being reinvented. This is of course impossible but it was a fun idea to play with like a mental bauble of questionable reality. Of course a definition for this impossibly constructed word remained elusive. So some believed that Reinformation would fade into histories scholarly depths, those people are called retards, and we have special homes for them. The rest of us knew that Reinformation would once again raise its nebulous and improbable head. As for what Reinformation means, to know it would be to read Webster’s dictionary and “ Get it” , to cry when somebody said “no, let me explain it again” knowing that the original explanation died in its birthing so future explanations could live, to change the term Reinformation into a continually changing Noun, Adverb, Adjective, verb, and dangling modifier. Its very nature, when understood, would be change. To know it is to break the surly bonds of human logic and touch the face of G-d… and then to have your hand crumble to dust as you are unclean and unfit.

Babylon
The world of idolatry? Inappropriate, but me and you would have lived in such a pre Enochian moral squallier for an endless eternity if the champion against original sin hadn’t raised his inebriated head above times colossal force and engaged history in a meaningful physical debate. Why not worship a single G-d of immeasurable power? It’s a fun idea, one a supreme deity could get on board with instead of a mass of intelligent apes viciously fucking each other to death within a few generations of a cataclysmic flood. Noah, not the man for the job, everything coming from him being a McDonald’s of humanity, history needed some jumper cables. In the haze of a Urian summer Renyold saw the ziggurats, the layered cake of human expression smacking G-ds sun in the face like a drunken whore (since whores are natures upstarts) in perfect Hebraic Acadian, which all non-knuckle draggers used, he expressed the idea of a tower, not just any tower but one from which the world could wage war on this G-d of everything.
Well I don’t have to tell you things didn’t turn out well for that generation, but the division of the world along linguistic lines spawned endless and deviant understandings of the world, like a fever dream reality took on new form. His brain splintered into seventy odd parts, the conscious disconnected and forlorn from the whole he turned to the trick of the Alzheimer’s patient and taught himself to sing his mind. Music, the shit that keeps the cosmos in order and the sun burning at an acceptable level, suddenly hit human consciousness like a meteor in the Yucatan. Express ones lust for the world in lyrical terms if all sensible cohesion was lost? Give me one good answer to why we should do that? That’s right, sex and peace had competition because humanity finally knew what it wanted to do with its life. For the first time, having lost touch with their co-humanists, eating rotten fruit didn’t seem like a bad idea. Humans and elephants bonding in inebriation couldn’t last, dexterity couldn’t be in hand AND nose, this G-d fellow wouldn’t stand for it, plus we were chosen and that’s just how things work, plus where else am I supposed to store umbrellas.
The world seemed destined for drink and a pitiful future, a bit better then it was before, but still a weak contender till under the fog of pomegranate wine Renyold rode out in his G-d like conveyance leading to a polygamist orgy, though the man isn’t to blame as the only sane reaction to the impossible is a debouch in the name of the infinite. Having laid the fundamental groundwork of his species slow march, Empire, possibly the most ‘Metal’ of institutions, red in claw and tooth, made its appearance on the scene.
A river is interesting thing, a physical representation of persistence, stranding Plesiosaurs inland and transforming once salt water Octopi into freshwater monstrosities, than why not enslave the minds of humanity to a single whim, a sensible jump, no? Why did it take my Childs life? Was it an undercurrent? A Crocodile? Or perhaps a vengeful unknown deity exercising its might to impress and intimidate us. If the last case is true in addition to the wealth such a waterway imparts, it must be appeased, great powers require sacrifice, let us bend society to its diluvian will of flood and famine. Anything fucked into existence is cheap in the absence of sentimentality, while vast waters and high places connect to our primal natures, pyramids in the sand and hanging gardens in the desert, the will of the world had been superseded with fragile civilization aping its might, a tipping point that a drunk and half blind Renyold drove into.

Renyold’s Band Omni Media Experience Part 1

Whatever the musings of mad ole Abdul, spooky reed infested eastern European rivers or even the stoning of random victims to enhance the quality of corn pale in comparison to what I am about to tell you, something whose inalienable reality will shatter the reader's mind making all you have ever ‘known’ false and the myth’s and tales you dismissed as wild fantasy…well those might well remain as such, people have creepy imaginations filled with teenage cheer leading vampires and alternate realities which defy even the extensive realities of infinite time, though this my friends is a tale to be told.
December 21st in the year of your lord 2012 a lowly grease monkey by the name Renyold C. Macantire drunkenly fiddled with his vintage Delorean DMC-12, none of that non-vintage Texas based crap, after having left Ohio State University in disgrace and solitude. Not so much laughed out of the University as having failed to keep his GPA up to their ‘academic’ standards due to his irrationally successful canonization of the sacred fraternity of “Tappa Tappa Keg.”
Once believed to be nothing more than an excuse to drink beer and enjoy the collateral effects of women with low tolerance drinking beer he proved beyond any empirical doubt that the whole basis of the fraternity system relied on the sacred order of Tappa Tappa Keg when the order itself was imported from the bohemian classes of primordial Egypt to the fertile and party loving Aegean shores from which such educational orders have sprung. After the Athenian defeat to Spartan Militarism, and TTK’s eminently sensible attitude of staying ahead of the curb in the face of Macedonian ascension they relocated to the German hinterland where their love of Barley and Hops inspired the Germanic peoples for centuries till their gothic descendants overran the decadent wine drinking peoples of the Roman Empire.
Unfortunately for you, the uninformed reader, I have been sworn to secrecy as far as the orders histories from 476 in the year of the 30 year old virgin till 1977 when the unrecorded visitation of the psychedelic group whose thankful attitude for fatality typifies their band, unleashed cosmic forces unknown to man at that time were recorded by none other than myself Blake Newberry in the inland port city of Cleveland Ohio.
With the native, though deceased, powers of American aboriginals released along with the sickeningly powerful emanations of American Rock mixed with the Shamanic resonance of psychedelic fuckupedness passed through the placental barrier to infuse the embryonic Renyold C. Macantire with mystic knowledge only known by a few wizened fading Beatniks who remained as the sole possessors of the ancient knowledge passed through the ages from the banks of the Nile to our present time, a new age/period/epoch/happy-go-lucky-funtime was born.
Unknown to myself who was dealing with my own Demons, literal ones, not some sort of literal device but an actual demon who haunted me and demanded attention so my concern over a mindfucked hippie princess was less than acute, sorry, that’s just how I role, began a domino like effect which would change history forever.
Born some eight months later in the provincial capital of Columbus Ohio Renyold’s life was bonded to the world of Rock and at times Roll with some supernal connection to Jazz, Blues and certain bastardized mixes of rhythm, gospel and soul music. While his youth and adolescence was amazingly interesting to the point of eclipsing any other coming of age story and setting the standard for ‘boy meets girl stories’ in the western world, I cannot mention it both because of his own wishes and due to the restrictive social requirements of the literary world, fuck you Ayn Rand I will form a collectivist socialist state whenever I damn well please. Women. Anyway…
So, post romantic entanglement (ie an abortion later) our man enrolled in good ole OSU, swearing an eternal hatred towards the cannibalistic, adultering, incest loving minions of Michigan State and the hubris of the estrogen fertilized, grade inflating foppishness of the Ivy League, as all good G-d fearing individuals might do, he became privy to such secret mysteries as he had always suspected, thanks to his ability to hold a cherry long enough to drop it in his drink with his butt cheeks, as the members of The One True fraternity have practiced since time immemorial, though bastardized versions of this initiations have permeated the Greek system, degrading such practices with substitutions like olives in Gin, and disgustingly lemon slices in Tom Collins by some fraternal orders, just because something is called a Cocktail doesn’t mean it should be demeaning, but in this case it applies. None the less the pure and ancient ritual almost forgotten, and relegated to a few uninformed campuses until the arrival and return of the high school graduate Renyold C. Macantire, was born anew.
The original name of the fraternity is unimportant, as are most things, lets face it life is pretty meaningless most of the time. What is important is what he learned from the charcoal prints lifted from ancient and destroyed Germanic rune he stole from the inebriated form of a wizened ex-Nazi professor whose grade wrecking ways left him little sympathy, achtung indeed mein furor, during that most Germanic of festivals in the month of October. From this source he was able to deduce the basis of social cohesion.