On Conformity

The horrid word of the moment is conformity — submitting to the other fellow's whims, influence and propaganda.

The
villains are vaguely identified as ruthless persuaders, sometimes known
as the Madison Avenue boys, whose sneaky, repetitious sales pitches
reduce their audiences to quivering idiots incapable of resistance.

This, of course, is abhorrent to individualists. It gives them a trapped feeling.

The more resolute fight back by exposing the villains. One such conformity fighter, Juan Gonzales of West 4th Street, claims to have discovered the root of all such evil.

IT STARTED, HE SAYS, when someone conceived the diabolic idea of dividing a gallon of liquor into fifths.

Juan
goes on, "When we have conformed (hateful word) to such an extent that
an old-fashioned quart withers us into spiritual, mental and joylesspygmyism then we are indeed lost."

He asks, "Where are the valiants
of an earlier day, when men were men, whose major sin was a love of
life, and who could slap down a gallon jug on the board, look at it and
say, "There you are my friend, you're big and I'm big, let's battle it
out.' "

It could be that Juan has been watching too many westerns.

THE SONIC BOOM, states a press release from George AFB, is here to stay and Americans must learn to live with it. Agreed.

What
is it? When a plane exceeds the speed of sound a shock wave forms like
a  cone around it. The cone is like a funnel going through the air,
with the plane at the pointed end. The plane, so to speak, drags the
cone. When the trailing edge reaches the ground under its flight path,
boom!

Thank you, George AFB. But who pays for the cracked walls and the broken windows?

Another
thing. Sitting at home, feeling the house shake, it is very difficult
to determine if it's a s.b. or you know what. Ours or theirs, that is.

And
as long as we must live with them, how about scheduling them so people
will know when they're likely to be bombed — oops, boomed. Perhaps
they might be included in the weather reports, the temperature of the
sea water and conditions on the freeways, which come to us every hour
on the hour of this frenzied life.

WELL, it happened. The classic boo-boo.

Soon the contractors will turn over to the state of California two stretches of highway near Oroville
— one 7.5 miles long, the other 5.8 miles long. They meet at the edge
of the gorge of the Feather River, which someday will furnish water to
Southern California.

But there's one slight omission. No bridge.

The legislators allocated $8 million for the new highway, but got busy with other things and neglected to appropriate
another $8 million to build a 2,731-foot bridge across the chasm, which
is 562 feet deep. The bridge will take two years to construct.

And so the fine roadway will likely remain unused for about three years — a monument to, well, you name it.

ABOUT A year ago, the papers had a wirephoto of Fidel Castro stretched out on the ground in his mountain camp, reading a book. Larry Powell [Lawrence Clark Powell–lrh], UCLA librarian, wondered what book. Political theory? A history of Cuba? A detective story?

When
Castro came to power, Powell wrote a letter congratulating him and
asking what the book was. He has just received a cordial reply. it was "Kaputt" by Curzio Malaparte, a story of revolutionary turmoil in postwar Italy.

AT RANDOM — A viejo borracho strolling bast City hall was sipping cerveza
from a can in a paper sack. Bravest man in town, in Slim Doyle's
opinion … Ironic commentary dept.: Briefcases of lawyers leaving the
Law Library are inspected to be sure the legal eagles haven't — ahem
— absent–mindedly misplaced a tort or a replevin in them …
Overheard: "I don't mind getting old but I wish my kids wouldn't
confuse the 20s, when I was their age, with the Gay '90s!"