Sir: I have a suggestion. What I think is that we should take the things that are over here, and put them over there. There are entirely too many things over here, and they clutter the place up. All that clutter leads to traffic congestion and accidents and whatnot, so we are paying a high price for having all those things over here. But if we moved them over there, then they would not be over here. Now, it is quite likely that they would cause just as much clutter and other difficulties over there, but that is only to the moral good of the world. It has been well established that over here is where the good people are, whereas bad people are the ones who exist over there. Whatever inconvenience we cause the bad people is not only justifiable; it is laudable. It would be ideal if evil could simply be eliminated from the world. Of course that cannot be done all at once, but one first step we can make in the direction of ultimate good is to take the excessively accumulated things that are over here and put them all over there.

Sincerely,
Rimbaud Fistula Prack,
Pine Township

Sir: Since I see that others have used your forum to address general difficulties that no other forum seems to take into account, I wonder whether you might give me a little space to protest against the constant mispronunciation of the name of our church. The etymology of the name should be perfectly obvious: it comes from the open-mouthed posture of our congregants as they drink in the Spirit (Lat. Spiritus, breath) while I preach. The name is therefore pronounced as two syllables, not three, with the accent on the second syllable, and the second A pronounced long. I hope this definite statement will clear up any confusion.

Sincerely, The Most Rev. Arnie Spigot,
Archbishop and Business Manager,
Agape Fellowship,
Bethel Park

Sir: As a parent, I have a duty to speak out when I see that my child is not getting the attention she requires. I have discovered that our schools are organized on a false assumption, and since I have been unable to get through the thick layers of administration to someone who would listen to reason, I am forced to turn to your publication to reach the public at large, who are the ultimate authorities in all matters that concern the public at large.

My daughter Rumelia goes to Blandville Elementary, where she is treated as an average school student. But she is not average. My daughter is far above average. She is exceptional, and she needs a school that recognizes her exceptionality. Yet she was not placed in one of the programs for the “gifted,” and I have determined by constant and ruthless inquiry that the number of students so placed in our city schools is very small in proportion to the general population.

However, I have made a survey of parents in my neighborhood, as well as at social events, grocery stores, hookah bars, monster-truck rallies, and axe-throwing establishments, and I have found that almost without exception their children are exceptional. My estimate, based on my weeks of research, is that fewer than ten per cent of children are below average. And that is a generous estimate, since the only parent I spoke to who actually claimed to have a below-average child was Mamie Robinson, who said her son Tad was a bit dim, and I have to agree with her there, because all that kid ever does is sit around and read books all day, and how is he ever going to learn anything that way? But all the other parents I talked to said their kids were above average, and even allowing some margin for error, that’s still got to be nine out of ten kids.

So it is time our school board woke up and faced the fact every parent knows: the average child is above average. Children who are average or below are a small and pitiable minority.

You can see, therefore, the necessity of changing the entire basis of our educational system. Schools should be designed to accommodate the great above-average majority. A few dollars can be set aside for a facility for the average kids, but every child should be assumed gifted until proved otherwise by solid evidence, such as book-reading. The ordinary school program, which will be designed for gifted students, will focus on reinforcing in the students the idea that they are special and deserving. Occasionally one of the students from the school for the average can be brought in as an exhibit for them to sneer at, which should be effective in helping them learn to be special.

But none of this will happen unless we, the parents, wrest control from an apathetic and inflexible school board. That is why I have organized a march to the city Board of Education Building beginning Tuesday at 10 a.m. We will assemble at McCarmody’s Axe Bar on Bland Street, where each participant will be issued a torch or pitchfork, and then the Board will be made to feel the wrath of the multitude. The above-average majority will be oppressed no longer.

Sincerely,
Rumelia’s Mom,
Blandville

Tragedy struck the gaming world Tuesday night when six players of a tabletop science-fiction military-strategy game were killed at the Dragon’s Den Game Grange on Bland Street. According to preliminary reports from city engineers, the building was not so constructed as to handle the weight of the 187,024-page rule book the players were attempting to consult to resolve a dispute over whether a deciduous tree counted as ½ cover or ¼ cover if the game was set in late autumn. Family members have announced that funeral games will be held in the Consolidated Lead Brick Manufacturing Company warehouse in Chateau, whose floors are rated for a load of 1,850 pounds per square foot.

Sir: Since there has been a bit of a storm over me on social media over the past few days, I thought it would be wise to use your forum to explain myself and address the fundamental misunderstandings that lie behind the vocal objections by certain fanatics.

As a film director, I take pride in my work and my reputation. I believe a mere list of some of my works—Heavens II Betsy, Atlas Shrugged IV: Who Moved John Galt’s Cheese?, Othella the Mare of Venice, and the acknowledged classic Herb and Irv Hit Themselves on the Head with Hammers, for example—would suffice to establish my bona fides as an artist. When, therefore, I make an aesthetic decision, it is not made on a whim. It is a carefully considered choice made on the basis of a sound understanding of aesthetic theory.

No discovery in aesthetics has been more profound than the discovery that the only truly cinematic colors are orange and teal. It has forever changed the way films are made. Now set designers know to paint all walls teal, and costume designers know to specify only teal fabrics, and lighting artists know to place an orange filter over their lights, so that the actors will appear to be orange heads bobbing in a sea of teal. The heads can be made even oranger, and the backgrounds and costumes tealer, in post-production. No other aesthetic is truly cinematic.

Unfortunately, this discovery limits the kinds of actors we can employ. The orange lights will be effective on White actors, and on most East Asian actors as long as they are not from too southern a latitude. But they simply will not work on Black actors. It is not possible even in post-production to make a Black actor’s face look orange in a natural way, according to the highly artificial convention of naturalness that the orange-and-teal dogma requires. This is not racism: it is simple hard cinematic fact.

So it is perfectly true that I posted a sign on the casting office that said “NO BLACKS NEED APPLY,” but this was meant to be a kindness that would spare potential applicants trouble and embarrassment. The paper grocery bag hung by the sign for comparison purposes was meant to be a handy guide that would help applicants know in advance whether they were wasting their time, although it is rendered useless by the thick encrustation of very impolite graffiti that seems to overwhelm every bag I hang up there. In everything I have done, I have been true to my aesthetic principles, but I have also attempted to be kind and accommodating to the people affected by those principles.

I hope therefore, that, having made this explanation, I may be permitted to continue filming my all-orange-and-teal cinematic version of Two Trains Running without the interruptions that have plagued the production in the past few days.

Sincerely,
Monty McCarrion,
Director,
Pantocrator Pictures

Sir: Your essay about the penny and the nickel (“Where We Went Wrong with Pennies,” Apr. 27) was heartening as far as it went, but it did not go nearly far enough. Stopping the minting of pennies was a good first step, and stopping (as you suggested) the minting of nickels would be a good second step. We must not, however, be afraid to take the third step, and the fourth, and the steps after that, canceling dimes, quarters, half-dollars, and all the denominations of paper currency: in other words, all the forms of exchange collectively described as “cash.”

As president of the Steamfitters & Phrenologists Federal Savings Bank, I believe I speak with some authority on matters of money. Cash transactions, to be blunt, are nothing more than theft. When a payment is made in cash, it enriches no one but the recipient of the cash. No banker receives any remuneration from the transaction. We are cut out entirely. Have your readers ever stopped to think that, when they make a payment in cash, they are taking food out of the mouths of my wife and my children and my mistress?

My father, Algernon Steamfitters, worked tirelessly to make sure that every transaction that went through his bank accumulated a fee, even if it were only two or three per cent, because he was a true patriot, and he was inflexibly opposed to socialist giveaway programs like cash transactions. It was a proud moment for him when he persuaded the county government, merely by force of logic, to stop accepting cash payments for services like registering deeds and accepting bribes. I have built on the firm foundation he left me, and I am proud to say that I have found opportunities for fees my father never even dreamed of.

I am a charitable man at heart. I believe that most ordinary people, when they make an underhanded payment in cash at the supermarket or the massage parlor, are thinking only of their own narrow self-interest, not actively trying to undermine the capitalist economy. Nevertheless, they must be educated to understand that they are playing into the hands of our enemies. We cannot have a strong nation without a strong banking sector, and we cannot have a strong banking sector if people keep finding ways to weasel out of paying bankers their due on every financial transaction.

But education can do only so much. Even if most people are fundamentally honest, some are not. There will always be those who will take advantage of the loophole left open by cash transactions, and they will continue to press that advantage until cash itself ceases to exist. Therefore I say to the governing powers: You have won the first victory. Now continue the battle until we have won the war against cash.

Sincerely,
Robert Z. Steamfitters,
President,
Steamfitters & Phrenologists Federal Savings Bank

Pittsburgh city police have rounded up more than three hundred suspected NFL draft dodgers, according to a spokesman for the Department of Public Safety. The offenders were discovered in libraries, art museums, tea shops, and other venues where the mandated 24-hour events coverage was not available. The spokesman said that the offenders would be transported in a specially secured trolley to the Gateway subway station, where they would be handed over to NFL officials for reeducation.

At the annual Mon-Yough Musical Progress Exposition in McKeesport, Prof. Randall Swig demonstrated a prototype of the Seven-Tube Oscillo­phone he has been working on for the past fourteen years. Prof. Swig told the crowd of interested onlookers that he believed he was less than a year away from a complete diatonic octave, but had suffered several setbacks when tubes burned out.

Sir: In reference to yesterday’s correspondence from Dr. V. L. van Wafel (“Schools Are for Learning, Not Sports,” Letters, p. A-14), I am very much afraid that Dr. van Wafel has completely misunderstood the problem. I would like it to be understood that I wholeheartedly endorse his premise: viz., that the purpose of school is learning. However, when he goes on to give examples of the kind of learning he endorses, he fails to understand the entire basis of the modern world we live in. My son Ervin attends Blandville High School, so I am familiar with the course of instruction there, and I have been reliably informed that it does not differ in substance from the curricula in other schools in our metropolitan area, except of course the Friends school, because Quakers are nuts.

Consider, for example, the math classes Dr. van Wafel insists are so essential. What do they teach that will be needed in the real world, the world into which Ervin will be unceremoniously thrust after his education is completed? Absolutely nothing! Every day, my son Ervin walks out the door with a phone in his pocket, and that phone has a calculator app that knows all the math he will ever need. And don’t tell me he needs to know algebra or trigonometry. Algebra is just a series of puzzles where you have to guess the secret number hiding behind a letter, and that’s fine if you like that sort of thing, but you don’t find prices expressed as “2x * y” at the Aldi. And nobody even knows what trigonometry is, let alone what it does.

But what about English? Well, here’s a little secret: Ervin already speaks English, and he learned to do it before he ever got to Blandville High. So all they ever have him do in English class is read stories and write essays about them. Fine, but he can read stories on his own time if he wants to do that. And if there must be essays about Nathaniel Hawthorne, we can have AI do them. That’s why we have artificial intelligence: so nobody has to waste time writing essays about Nathaniel Hawthorne.

I could go on about all the other classes, but they’re all useless. Spanish? We have Google Translate! Science? Everyone knows science is a left-wing conspiracy. And as for sex education, he’ll get much more up-to-date information if he just hires a prostitute.

No, the only teachers who teach anything actually useful are the coaches at Blandville High. Ervin is on the football team, so I can see the valuable life skills he brings home every day—how to use physical violence to get what you want, how to hit people where it hurts the most, and above all how to cheat and get away with it. That is the only skill that truly brings success in the real world. If you learn trigonometry, I suppose you can be a high-school math teacher. If you learn to write nice little essays about Nathaniel Hawthorne, I suppose you can stand at the entrance to the Liberty Tubes with a cardboard sign. But learn to cheat and get away with it, and you can be anything you want. Other parents tell me that the coaches in the other sports teach that same lesson, and Blandville’s enviable record in everything but lacrosse shows that they teach it well. I don’t know what’s wrong with that lacrosse coach.

So I would urge Dr. van Wafel to reconsider, not his principles, which are sound, but the application of those principles. Schools are indeed for education. They are places where our rising generation can learn the kind of ruthless dishonesty that will be necessary in any career path they take later in life. But the place where that education really takes place is the athletic field, not the classroom. The only real education our children get happens in school sports. —Sincerely, Abel Funkengast IV, President, Dubious Investments LLC.