Ghost Troop Home Page April Fools Part 3

September 4, email to Dr. Ted Estess and Dr. Bill Monroe, Honors College, University of Houston

OK, boys, judgment day is just about here, and the hardcover is pending. Ted, remember all the stuff you made a career saying about the banality of evil and the complicity of the German people and the need to remember our humanity as technology threatened it? Bill, remember how you told me on March 31 that the United States was being hubristic (good word) in its approach? Well, y’all were right about the intellectual stuff, but each of you failed to practice what you preached when real national need stared you in the face.

When y’all moved into the trailer park I told you that it wouldn’t change my feelings for the Honors College, and I meant it. That’s why I scouted you and yours to gauge the reaction to tyranny. Y’all teach the ideals of courage, but I was fighting a deadly war with the government who taught me how dangerous the intelligence war could be. Did y’all give me credit for courage? Hell no! Y’all teach ideals of compassion, but I sat on the boards of your porch and begged charity for dead men’s wives and children. Did y’all give me credit for compassion? Hell no!

Could I go on? You bet. Tell you what I’ll do, instead, boys. I’ll give you until Friday to write me an email telling me what you propose to do to undo the sin of being banally evil. I recommend that you become a venue for the dissemination of the intelligence material vital to the preservation of freedom.

I recommend you talk to Tanya Lunstroth. She’s the only one of you with enough common sense to know that what I say is going to happen is really going to happen, and she knows a lot more than you do. She listens. And by the way, it’s only because she pleaded for your worthless asses that I’m even hesitating. You two Hectors have fucked with Achilles. Remember the poem with which I won the College contest in 1980?

The Iliad in Doggerel

Calliope, oh, tell me muse

of ancient, golden day,

within a poem that’s less profuse

than Homer’s epic lay

of brave Achilles boundless rage –

forsooth,’twould fight a god,

or king of men, or thief, or sage

to snatch that Trojan broad.

Who, as we, when duty cried,

departed for the shore,

who, when danger he espied,

proclaimed his anti-war.

“But lo, thou killed my friend,” he said

“so Ghandi’s ways be damned!”

Patroclus fell, by Hector, dead;

our hero no more shammed!

Who slashed and slew and bodies dragged

‘ere Priam could cool his ways,

who knew his fate but never bragged

throughout his final days

that through his death, he’d ever live,

to slay young students’ zeal.

Calliope, O muse, I give

Achilles, noble heel!

Captain May

PS: Below are two lists that will appear at the end of my book, April Fools, Captain May. I am equally disposed to put you on either, gentlemen. You pick which. [Note: Lists, as of that date, are not available for publication – Editor.]

Ghost Troop Home Page April Fools Part 3