Friday, July 30, 2004
Acronyms
D.O.H. Dreadlocks - Only - Hippie. Someone who has dreadlocks and believes in Chiling, Reefers, and Eastern Philosophy, but gets really agro when someone forgets to return their lighter.
They all knew he was a C.I.D. man because he kept inquiring about an officer named Irving or Washington
After he made up his mind to spend the rest of the war in the hospital, Yossarian wrote letters to everyone he knew saying that he was in the hospital but never mentioning why. One day he had a better idea. To everyone he knew he wrote that he was going on a very dangerous mission. "They asked for volunteers. It's very dangerous, but someone has to do it. I'll write you the instant I get back." And he had not written anyone since.
All the officer patients in the ward were forced to censor letters written by all the enlisted-men patients, who were kept in residence in wards of their own. It was a monotonous job, and Yossarian was disappointed to learn that the lives of enlisted men were only slightly more interesting than the lives of officers. After the first day he had no curiosity at all. To break the monotony he invented games. Death to all modifiers, he declared one day, and out of every letter that passed through his hands went every adverb and every adjective. The next day he made war on articles. He reached a much higher plane of creativity the following day when he blacked out everything in the letters but a, an and the. That erected more dynamic intralinear tensions, he felt, and in just about every case left a message far more universal. Soon he was proscribing parts of salutations and signatures and leaving the text untouched. One time he blacked out all but the salutation "Dear Mary" from a letter, and at the bottom he wrote, "I yearn for you tragically. A. T. Tappman, Chaplain, U.S. Army." A. T. Tappman was the group chaplain's name.
When he had exhausted all possibilities in the letters, he began attacking the names and addresses on the envelopes, obliterating whole homes and streets, annihilating entire metropolises with careless flicks of his wrist as though he were God. Catch-22 required that each censored letter bear the censoring officer's name. Most letters he didn't read at all. On those he didn't read at all he wrote his own name. On those he did read he wrote, "Washington Irving" When that grew monotonous he wrote, "Irving Washington." Censoring the envelopes had serious repercussions, produced a ripple of anxiety on some ethereal military echelon that floated a C.I.D. man back into the ward posing as a patient. They all knew he was a C.I.D. man because he kept inquiring about an officer named Irving or Washington and because after his first day there he wouldn't censor letters. He found them too monotonous.
"I am," replied the woman, "How did you know?"
spotted a woman below. He descended a bit more and shouted, "Excuse me,can
you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't
know where I am."
The woman below replied, "You're in a hot air balloon hovering
approximately 30 feet above the ground. You're between 40 and 41 degrees
north latitude and between 59 and 60 degrees west longitude."
"You must be in Information Technology," said the balloonist.
"I am," replied the woman, "How did you know?"
"Well," answered the balloonist, "everything you told me is, technically
correct, but I've no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is
I'm still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help at all. If
anything,you've delayed my trip."
The woman below responded, "You must be in Management."
"I am," replied the balloonist, "but how did you know?"
"Well," said the woman, "you don't know where you are or where you're
going.. You have risen to where you are, due to a large quantity of hot
air.
You made a promise, which you've no idea how to keep, and you expect people
beneath you to solve your problems. The fact is you are in exactly the
same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it's my fault."
