6 March 1995

BY GOSH

"Who am I to argue with history?" —Capt. Kirk

ANNOUNCEMENTS AND VARIOUS KIBBLES

IN CASE YOU DIDN'T NOTICE, BY GOSH has taken a one-month hiatus. In the interim the editorial board of BY GOSH applied for and received a SSHRC grant to examine Reform Party post-secondary education policy ("never trust anyone with a high school diploma").

BY GOSH HAS BEEN SOLD to Mr. Rogers Communications Inc. Henceforth we will be practicing "negative option billing." All those who no longer want to receive BY GOSH must send $500 to the box behind the steam pipes and e-mail me with a cognate essay-length explanation why.

I'VE GIVEN UP trying to cajole someone to attend GSA meetings on behalf of GOSH. Regrettably GOSH will have/has had no representation at board meetings this term.

ATTENTION DAVID COPPARD. You are requested and required to hand over all humorous marking out-takes to your local BY GOSH gauleiter. Resistance is futile.

CONGRATULATIONS TO [ HT ] for weaselling even MORE money from the Department. We don't know how you do it, but we want to.

DON'T FORGET Coffee Hour every Wednesday. I know I do.

BY GOSH IS SATIRE and should not be taken seriously under any circumstances. Especially when I'm making fun of YOU.


CONGRATULATIONS TO PUBIC HISTORY WORK-TERM RECEPIENTS
(OR, HOW TO GET MYSELF PLACED UNDER A FATWAH)

BY GOSH congratulates the following public-history graduate students for getting themselves kinda-sorta gainful employment. The following descriptions of their work-term assignments come to me from the very best of sources.

LIZ BLONDIN, as a participant in the Cover Your Ass Graduate Student Hygiene Project, will be operating a boiled-soap distribution centre, handing out cakes of lye to the needy and unkempt.

[ DB ] will be responsible for security during the visit of Mexican president Zedillo, protecting the assembled entourage from falling pesos and presidential siblings.

[ BD ] is responsible for writing the DND code of conduct for the "Airborne-Lite" ("One Third the Yobboes of Regular Elite Regiments") regiment to be established this fall.

[ NF ] will be acting as Sergio Marchi's point persion, responding to all letters, phone calls and bricks congratulating the Minister on his adherence to long-held values of open immigration ("Send me your Idle Rich, with Tax Shelters in Bermuda or the Cayman Islands...").

[ AF ] will be working as a full-time troglodyte, wandering Needless Hell trying to convince someone, anyone, that her job is just as valid as burger-flipping as a work-term assignment.

[ MH ] will work ninety-seven hours a week in a government- mandated historical site seventeen miles under frozen tundra, for a salary larger than the University's payroll. How lucky!

[ KI ] will write an election-winning budget strategy (one option: "If it feels good, charge it ... make the children pay!" [FRANK]) for the provincial Ministry of Finance.

[ KO ] will be taking the mop to unsightly tritium spills in Pickering, Ontario. Don't forget your lovely lead coveralls, Kath!

Tar and feathers for the above should be directed to the e-mail address at the top of this issue.


ANGUS MCWETBOY'S PRISON NOTEBOOKS, PART I:
"ANTONIO GRAMSCI NEVER ROTE THIS GUD, OR DORIS LEWIS & MS. HYDE"

Surrounded by these prison walls, awaiting my trial on the charge of appropriation of voice, I find my mind wallowing in ennui. My mind wanders to past events . . . to my first tour of a cheese factory when I was three . . . to Pete Luckett clubbing me with his massive daikon . . .

I remember the night my car broke down in front of Doris Lewis's house. Of course it was a dark and stormy night. The rain drizzled down like an Airborne initiation ritual; the storm bellowed like Myron Thompson passing gas. I rushed to the door of a low-lying bungalow by the side of the road. I knocked tentatively and waited.

The door creaked open with a little ping (where had I heard that machine before?). Before me stood a person who looked like a cross between Roseanne Skoke, J. D. Hogg and Prairie Dawn. "Hi, I'm Doris Lewis!" she yelped. "Won't you come in; you look soaked!"

I dragged my soggy ass inside and looked for a place to sit. "Let me take your coat," she said. "Do make yourself comfortable until the storm breaks." I availed myself of her hospitality and sat down. She went away to hang up the coat, but returned with several sheets of paper.

"Fill out this form," she said, firmly.

"Why?" I asked, perplexed.

"For the coat. I need to keep track." I filled out the 14-page form and signed it without further complaint; I thought she would brain me.

"And these three forms as well."

"Whatever for?"

"General Assistance Requisition Form, Storm Assistance Form, Polite Hospitality Form. Necessary, completely necessary," she explained.

So I spent the hour filling out these forms. When I was finally finished, I began to look for the lavatory. But she was bringing out my coat and showing me the door. I protested: "But it's still raining!"

"Lunch break, no time to argue, only have three hours," she said breathlessly, pushing a confused me out into the rain.

I must say I endured the precipitation with dignity. Moreover, the hailstones were only the size of clementines, and did not persist beyond 45 minutes. I was dutifully contemplating drilling holes in her eavestroughing when she opened the door. I expected the verbal equivalent of a Valour'n'Horror Dresden Special, but her manner flummoxed me.

She greeted me as an old friend. "My dear Angus, how have you been? Oh, I hope you haven't caught pneumonia. Come in, come in!" She buried me under about a dozen blankets, forced a mug of coffee into my hand, and forced me to get comfortable. There were no forms to be found in the area. "Now do rest up until the storm breaks, no matter how long it takes," she insisted. Under such care I managed to doze dreamily.

I awoke to the sound of thunder, and found myself face down in the mud as pellets of freezing rain pounded my brain stem. To my lapel a form was safety-pinned, citing me for staying beyond regular operating hours.

This was my first encounter with Doris Lewis and her Hyde formula.


BY GOSH is a silly piece of pap published whenever its editor gets off his duff. Submissions are desperately needed. If you have something, please please please send it to me.

By GOSH: Jan 20 / Jan 27 / Mar 6 1995
a strange part of mcwetboy.net