Stop Putting Stuff in The Hole
Stop Putting Stuff in The Hole
Elon Musk and a school story, plus some Bystander updates.
I've been thinking about Elon Musk again, but it’s not like it used to be. Thinking about Elon used to be fun! It meant mockery, high schadenfreude, childlike pleasure that the richest man in the world had purchased a rifle, polished it to a gleam, took aim at his foot and then pulled the trigger again, and again, and again.
But you know what I realized? I don’t want to think about Musk anymore. He just can't help himself, and he makes me sad. But not just him, because we’re right beside Musk, celebrating every tweet, getting high off his impulsivity. Why can’t we refuse him our attention? Poor Elon, poor us.
It reminds me of something that happened at an all-boys school I taught at. It was close to summer break, in late May. By then the boys and I had a simple arrangement: I would try to teach algebra while they tried not to learn it. It wasn’t always easy to hold up my end, but a deal was a deal and I was doing my best.
That’s when I looked out the classroom door and saw a firefighter marching by. Then another and then another. “Oh my god there’s a fire,” a kid said with vocal disappointment, no doubt because the firemen’s relaxed pace meant that there was not a fire, or at least not one that would do any interesting damage. But then what was going on?
I only got the story later, at the end of the day, when the history teacher explained it to me, because it happened in her room, in the middle of her lecture on Vladimir Lenin.
All the desks at this school were made of wood, and kids often graffitied them. (MR. PERSHAN SUCKS BALLS, etc.) But one innovative child, forgotten to the ages, found a structural flaw in the surface of his desk. He jammed his pen at it and chipped off some wood. Then a bit more, distracted perhaps from his schoolwork but displaying the can-do attitude we were trying to inculcate in the first place.
The true genius however was the kid who sat in that seat after him, because when he settled in and noticed the burgeoning hole, he drew a big-ass arrow pointing directly to the hole. “Keep digging,” he wrote.
The boys of this school weren’t always enthusiastic for algebra, or history for that matter. But destruction of school property? That was a different story. Dutifully, over weeks, even months, they chipped away at the hole in the desk. Each day they came a little bit closer to tunneling through to the other side.
And then, that day in May, it happened. Someone broke through.
The kid who finally did it was a sweet boy. He was lousy at math and impulsive in a way that made him difficult to teach. But he was guileless and easy with a smile and could laugh at himself when the moment called for it.
Consider what you would do in his position if, after weeks and months of anticipation, you had finally been the one to achieve what others had collectively dreamed of. Would you jump out of your desk in victory? Would you shout woohoo and pump your fist? Or would you silently celebrate at your seat?
No, you wouldn’t do any of those things, you would do exactly what this kid did. You would stick your thumb in that hole.
Nobody could get it out. He pulled, but the thumb was jammed tight. The boy eventually got the history teacher’s attention, but what was she going to do? Eventually they got the ineffectual principal in. He was the one who called Ladder 34 and asked for assistance.
The first thing the firemen tried was olive oil. They applied it to the thumb and the hole. I have always found this part of the story mysterious. Do fire fighters always carry olive oil? Do they know canola is cheaper? Were they planning on making a salad? Would they share the recipe?
No matter, as the olive oil didn’t help. The fire fighters left and returned with a higher grade lubricant. This part is pretty interesting too. I'm not sure what exactly firefighters are up to all day but I guess they stock their trucks with a few different kinds of lube.
Well, the super-lube didn’t work either. But the firefighters didn’t seem too disappointed. They went back to the truck and came back with a saw.
By the end of the day, the thumb was fine but the desk was destroyed. True, it had not been a nice desk, but I was still sad to see it go. Those boys had made something. True, what they made was incredibly stupid, but it was distinctively their own. Then one weird kid couldn’t keep his thumb to himself and ruined the whole thing. Now the desk was gone forever.
Anyway when I think about Elon Musk and his inability to stop mashing that TWEET button and my inability to stop watching him do it, I’ve also been thinking about that desk.
I can think of something else I’d put in that hole
Come on, keep it to yourself, we’re talking about kids here!
It has been another fun couple of weeks over at twofiftyone.net. I’m loving it all: the cartoons a bit too disturbing for The New Yorker (but funny!); the brief, punchy, premise-driven (and funny!) pieces; the light poems with a dark edge (that are funny!). For a good time, send your work to editors@twofiftyone.net. Though don’t be alarmed if it takes a few days for the good times to kick in.
Here are just a few things that have recently graced our pixels . First comes an image I’ve been haunted by since it graced my inbox. It’s…best not to try to describe it. But, blame! Blame goes to Mark Silverstein, out of whose wonderful mind the following image emerged:
Last week we published another exceedingly clever cartoon from Jason Chatfield, whose Substack you should subscribe to and whose new book with Bystander hero Mike Reiss would make a wonderful gift for the holiday (especially if that holiday is Christmas or Simpsons Day). Here is said cartoon:
Finally, I firmly believe that we are living in a Golden Age of apologies, and Jeff Kulik has truly penned one for the ages. Here he is with “A Keynote Speaker Apologizes”:
I just want to be clear that I was totally unaware that Dr. G. Howard Schultz’s film, Guess Who’s Behind Faking the Moon Landing? had offensive and conspiratorial elements. I should have been clued in by the looks on your faces as I summarized the film’s central thesis. In my defense, at the time I was high on toad venom and hand sanitizer.
To the Master of Ceremonies, I want to extend my sincere apologies for unwanted physicality. In the moment I had been under the impression that a small gremlin was hiding in the lapels of your coat. The gremlin accused me of unspeakable things and was concealing a very sensitive document regarding who was really behind the Bay of Pigs Invasion; I was only trying to neutralize the threat. I meant no disrespect to your personal space and will happily pay for damage sustained by the coat.
Finally, let me just clearly state for the record that I stand with the Esperanto-speaking community and against cannibalism in all its forms.
I hope we can all move forward from the events of that evening, many of which I can no longer recall. Looking forward to seeing you all at StampCon 2023.
Follow more of Jeff’s work here!
And of course there is much more besides over at twofiftyone.net, so please go check out what we’ve been up to. You can support our online output by subscribing to us on Patreon at the “web supporter” level or by sharing your favorite cartoons or pieces with others online. If you print them out and share them with people at work, that’s also cool.
And now, a word from Michael Gerber.
GERBER’S WEASEL’S CORNER
I really dislike being called by my last name. To me it smacks of prep school and the military, two groups with a long history of atrocities. So when Mike P. called my little check-in “Gerber’s Corner,” I immediately began scheming up an alternative.
Once, when I was five, I turned to my parents and said, “’Mike’ doesn’t sound like me. I wish I had a nickname.”
“Oh yeah?” my dad asked. “Like what?”
“Something cool. Something like ‘weasel.’”
So, fulfilling a lifelong dream, I christen this “WEASEL’S CORNER.”
Wait, maybe that’s even worse.
Too bad, we’re stuck with it.
This week:
#24 is being copyedited, as soon as I turn my notes on Sean Kelly into a eulogy. It’s makes me sad to even type that.
The 2023 Calendar is being finished. This year, the photos are a quiz—with a prize to be determined later.
The goddamn Yale Record 150th Anniversary Issue is leaving my desk at last. The alternative is setting my apartment on fire in what they call “a hard reset.”
We’re on track to ship #24 and the Calendar to the printer around December 12!
Your Friend,
—“Weasel”
Gotta get that calendar for my nephew
Can’t blame you, aggressive headline voice, Anthony will love it!
If you don’t currently subscribe and want to get a calendar, the holiday bundle is for you.
The holiday bundle gets you:
A PDF subscription for all 2023 issues of The Bystander
Two back issues of the collectible print magazine
Our 2023 Calendar
Give Anthony the calendar and place the back issues on your toilet tank for months of quality bathroom reading.
Thanks I think this will really improve my relationship with Anthony
I really mean this—I hope it does. Until next time.
This was The American Bystander’s Viral Load. The parts that weren’t written by other people were written by Michael Pershan, Deputy Editor of The American Bystander. Help support our work by subscribing or sharing this newsletter. And because you made it this far, the funniest thing I read this week was the part of Phillip K. Dick’s Ubik where the door to his apartment is coin-operated.