Taking the Redbait, fishing for receipts—and Martians, too! (Red Emma)

by Red Emma 

[Dissent 37, 11/15/99]

     In an age when pithy, incoherent and stupid electronic communications replace thoughtful, well-argued letters, it’s refreshing to read Curt M’s pithy, incoherent and stupid e-mail received by the editor of this infamous and, by contrast, consistently well-written journal. Emma is a Luddite, but Roy was kind enough to share the poison pentium communiqué from the Rasputin of the Old Guard. 

     The frothy memo was received by Editor Bauer on the anniversary, happily enough, of the fall of the Berlin Wall (and, as Red often points out, unhappily, Kristallnacht too. Speaking of Nazi hobbyists, Trustee Frogue hasn’t attended Student Liberties Club meetings for a few weeks, perhaps bored with playing spy and taking calls on his jackboot phone). I begged Roy to reproduce the e-mail, below. If you’re reading it, it’s because I frightened poor Roy, sneaking up behind him and doing Mathur’s “IVC clap.”

Subject: 

Re: Please help 

Date: Tue, 09 Nov 1999 11:08:08 0800\ 

From: ... (Curt McLendon) 

To: [He spammed it] 

Re: The FA Orphanage Fiasco 

Yeah, let’s see if the FA Rep Council can extend their small-minded, nitpicking, quasi-legalistic maneuvering—not because the membership cares nor because there has been any wrong-doing in the past, but because it might further punish the “old guard.” So what if it inhibits the good deeds that the FA used to do? Oh yeah, we must also avoid appearing as the petty, vindictive, cold, selfish, political martinets that we are. 

Let’s see, we just point out that we are completely in favor of Bob Kopfstein helping needy orphans but he must do it now by either fronting the money himelf [sic] or begging for it, collecting receipts from Tijuana market vendors (right!) and hoping to get reimbursed from the same warm, generous, understanding people who caused the problem to begin with. Let’s do all of this by a vote of the Soviet (oops) Rep Council, and spin it to the members with our propaganda (oops) email machine. 

—Curt McLendon (minority member of the Rep Council)

     Roy’s diplomacy astounds me. He answered the above e-mail with a message that said, “Curt: Thank you for your lovely memo.” [Ed.: Curt responded to Roy’s message with a hostile e-mail.] Pretty generous for a guy who’s been yelled at, threatened, even expelled from F.A. meetings by the Small Circle of Fiends which Big Mac (the “brains” of the operation, if you can reconcile that physiological paradox), along with El Rey [Ray Chandos, IVC electronics instructor], guides so confidently (and bitchily), a sinking dinghy in the treacherous and unfamiliar waters of democratic reform. 

     Yet you’ll notice that Big Mac is so desperate at this point that he pulls out the inevitable revanchist trump card: Commies. The Soviet Union. Yes, folks, Reds! As it happens, this week the State of California was forced to release (prematurely) its own shameful record of harassment and persecution of the left. 

     Our own not-so-Golden State had its own pathetic, if nonetheless toxic, version of the House Committee on Unamerican Activities. Nobody was exempt from this witchhunt. Not lawyers, doctors, Hollywood stars, trade unionists. Not teachers. No, especially not teachers. So, although it’s become tediously painful for me to keep doing it, Red Emma again points to the beautiful irony of a teachers union once led by Republicans, anti-unionists, bigots and homophobes. 

Something a pescado 

     One reason the Fiends are so pissed off is that our new treasurer, Red Ronnie, asks, so tediously, so consistently, so annoyingly for—gasp!—financial accounting. Records. Documents. Receipts. Imagine the tyranny, the Stalinist skullduggery, of this wretched red Minister of Finance! Evil Empire! Comintern! Star Wars! Sandinistas! Yo queiro Taco Bell! 

     Check this out: the members of the deposed junta want us to believe that businesses in the sovereign country of Mexico cannot provide receipts to customers and that, when Mother Teresa Kopfstein buys frijoles and arroz, he can’t bring that little bit of accounting across La Frontera and deliver it to Ronnie. Hey Bob: in Spanish, the word for receipt is “recibo.” 

     Red Emma visits Mexico enough to have received receipts for everything from gasoline to fishing licenses to groceries. Red Emma just got his receipt for an annual fishing license in the mail (el correo) from the Oficina Recuardaro de Pesca. In fact, most merchants insist on carefully writing out a record of customers’ purchases. And in any supermercado, you get a recibo just like in El Norte, where, in some circles, you can condescend and stereotype and imagine gringos will accept your mierda. 

     As you can see, Red Emma is less shy about using a little Pidgin Spanish than being taken for a pigeon.  

More vocabulary words 

     The Spanish for E.T. is estraterrestre. Perhaps when the creatures finally arrive from space, they’ll locate Curt, author of yet another odd spammed e-mail:

Subject: SETI 

Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 18:56:42 0800 

From: ... (Curt McLendon) 

To: ...[It was spammed our way] 

Dear Colleagues, If your computer is like mine, it sits idle for a [sic] significant periods of time. You can choose to have your computer do some important science-support work during times that it would otherwise be idle by downloading a program (“SETI@home”), which once installed, makes your computer part of a network of personal computers that are helping to carry out the search for radio signals from extraterrestrials. No joke! This program downloads data chunks collected by the big radiotelescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, analyzes the data looking for signal patterns that might indicate an intelligent extraterrestrial source. 

Reductions of funding have otherwise put serious limitations on attempts to do this with big computers. It’s a chance to help do some big science with your own computer. 

The program runs only during “idle” times (as a screen-saver program). You can read much more about the project and download the program at this website: 

http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/ 

This is a serious, legitimate, risk-free project. Although achievement of its goal is highly speculative, it is a project well worth supporting. 

Thanks for your time, 

—Curt McLendon

     I can see it now. The silver craft hovers above a townhouse somewhere in South County. Curt has carefully painted the words “Tourist Information” on his roof. The small, bulb-shaped green visitors descend a steel ladder under the Mothership. They knock politely on Curt’s door. He sells them a map. They thank him, eyes shining, and scamper back to the UFO. 

     Suddenly, they turn back. Their leader, who is wearing, as it turns out, EXACTLY THE SAME NEON GREEN OUTFIT AS SHERRY MILLER-WHITE, steps forward and, his long arm now fully extended, asks Curt for a receipt. 

     —RE

See also The Old Guard’s not-so-sweet Charity

Andrew Tonkovich