Dr. Pangloss @
the Longview Current
So I created Dr. Pangloss.
While flipping through pre-internet clipart, I stumbled upon a sketch of a short, Einstein-like professor and perched him precariously on another sketch - a Greek column. That quirky little figure sparked something, and Dr. Pangloss was born as my alter ego—a clever, pedantic, and slightly eccentric spokesperson for my column.
“So why did I name him Dr. Pangloss?” I hear you ask. I took the name from Voltaire's 1759 comedy Candide, ou l'Optimisme and its perpetually upbeat tutor, Professor Pangloss. Like his namesake, my Dr. Pangloss was pedantic, full of humor and whimsy, and frequently played on Leibnitz' philosophy of "in this best of all possible worlds." He became a go-to persona for idea exploration and reader entertainment since it was the ideal balance of humor and depth for my writing.
While I regretfully did not keep track of most of the article dates, I believe these are roughly in order. So without further ado, I give you:
I discovered my love for writing while volunteering as a writer for the Longview Current, the school newspaper at Longview Community College in Longview, Missouri, from 1985 to 1988. I experimented with many storytelling techniques while volunteering as a reporter, movie critic, and columnist. While I also wrote under my own name, I wanted to go further - I wanted a character, a voice, a persona.
Panglossian pontification
Gentle Reader-
I went into Building 1 yesterday to beat the cold and saw an administrator turn a corner, so I followed. I observed him pull a small device from his pocket and when he pushed the button, a staircase unfolded from the ceiling, and he went up it.
Luckily for me, he left the staircase down and I overheard a secret meeting...
FIRST VOICE: All right, I've called this meeting in order to address the Pangloss problem.
SECOND VOICE: You mean he's on to us?
F.V. Yes, he's figured our that we've pocketed the campus renovation money. Now, we've got to decide on a way to get enough money to start renovations again.
THIRD VOICE: Can't we just hang up more fake pictures?
F.V.: No, that won't work. We've got to get some money, and FAST!
S.V.: We could raise prices at the bookstore. Say, thirty cents per pencil eraser, stuff like that.
F.V.: No, someone would catch on. Something else.
T.V.: There's always the Student Union...
F.V. No, I've got it! We can close down most of the parking spaces - excluding ours, of course.
S.V.: And what would that do? F.V.: Well, we could close off some of the lots, and hand out tickets for the other empty spaces. We'll say the lots will be used for Parking for construction personnel; they'll buy that.
T.V.: So all the other students will want parking spaces. So what? F.V.: Don't you remember
economics? We have the supply, they have the demand...
S.V.: And we charge the students for parking spaces? Brilliant, (name deleted)!
F.V.: Of course we won't charge them right away, and it won't last forever; only until we can figure out a legal way to increase tuition. Now then...(this is when I left.)
So, you say, the Administration holds all the cards, what can we do? Well, this is why I'm telling what I know in my column and not keeping it to myself. I know somehow that some member of the Administration will get their hands on this paper before it is published and things will be speeded up to cover their tracks. It feels great, running the school from my typewriter!
Send me letters on any subject and I will put, them in my column. Expose yourself in print!
Dr. P exposes administration
by Dr. Pangloss, a' bouche ouverte ab incunabulis
February 13
I hear on good authority that there are plans being made to change LV's mascot name from the Lakers. It appears that the massive LV Athletic Department dislikes the nickname "Laker", mainly because a Laker is more difficult to capture artistically than, say, a Viking or a Mustang. It's so important to have a readily identifiable mascot for those eagerly sought-after T-shirts and beer mugs. I've already bought a huge amount of Longview seat pads, realizing how they'll appreciate in price once our baseball team wins the College World Series.
But I digress. Longview wants a new mascot, and I have a suggestion--we should reinstate the Longview Slug.
Now wait a minute; hear me out. A little nothing college in Santa Cruz adopted the slug as their mascot. Granted, it was a change from the Snow Leopard, a creature pretty much maligned as a mascot by the student body because "it really does nothing except eat fish and urinate in the snow." After the U of California at Santa Cruz adopted the Slug, People magazine ran a full page on the new mascot, one, a student said, "no other college has ever had." I got ugly about the fact that Longview did have the slug almost 10 years before they did, but no one listened to me. Apparently, Longview is more of a backwater college than UCSC.
So what to do? Reinstate the slug! The slug was voted in back in the '70's by a "penny vote"--all the candidates for mascot names were given a mayonnaise jar, and students were urged to vote by dropping a penny in the appropriate jar. I don't think we should vote the slug back in in this manner. First, it never was clear back then what happened to all the pennies; two, there in a definite chance some overused name like Tigers or Wildcats would win. And three, me being the kind of person I am, I've already chosen a more clever way to choose.
All Longview student names are in the main computer in Bldg 1. Through an anonymous source, I am able to tap into that computer with the one I use in the news office. So, in scant seconds, I would be able to check to see if a student is actually enrolled or not.
Here's the thing. Send me a letter. It can be a letter with a suggestion for a new mascot, it can be a letter made of cut out words from different magazines telling me how stupid I am, it can be a letter by a student telling me that if I don't shut up, God will "sendme home." Any letter at all will do.
Once I get the letters, I will check your name off a master enrollment list. I will be able to find out who wrote any letter, despite attempts at disguised handwriting. By next issue, I will have a list of everyone who didn't send me a letter, and through a clever loophole in the LV charter, these non-letter senders will be considered as voting for the slug as LV's mascot.
Want the slug as a mascot? Don't send me a letter! The Limaecidae you save may be your own. Keep those cards and letters coming!
Doc P.
Hello, y'all!
by Dr. Pangloss, mascot-for-hire
Recently, I was at an unnamed grocery looking for a good deal on pickled pig's feet when I happened across the breakfast cereal aisle. As I watched two housewives battling tooth- and-nail over the last box of Putty-Pops, I ruminated over the myriad cereals on the shelves.
Rambo Cereal. Help fight the Commies in your neighborhood by eating your Rambo cereal every day! Remember-save those box- tops for the M-60 giveaway! Mount it on your bike! Scare the neighbors silly!
Graze-the Natural Breakfast Cereal. One serving will give you all the vitamins and minerals you need for a good month and a half. No sugar, no preservatives, no artificial flavoring and no artificial coloring added. In fact, they consider it a sacrilege to even eat it with milk. In the handy 22 serving box.
Hunky-Dory Sweet Pops-Hey kids! Pour this in your bowl! Honey-glazed flakes, marsh- mallow treats and chocolaty-covered sugar sticks make for a great breakfast! You get a full day's allowance of all the important vitamins and minerals-if you eat it with milk, toast, orange juice and a few Centrum. Enjoy the enclosed free bubble gum, and when working the puzzles on the back of the box, remember-neatness counts!
Warm Gloopy-the hot cereal-Although they do the hard sell for this on TV (if you love your child, you'll send him off to school with a hot meal, or something like that) let me tell you the straight scoop-you have to get up earlier than normal to fix it; wait for the water to boil, slowly add the mix as per the instructions and set it off the burner to cool. All of this work yields a glop which tastes like lightly flavored wallpaper paste. Oh, if you let the pan dry with the cereal in it, the only way you can get it out is to use a chisel.
Fuzzy Wukkins cereal-You've bought the plush figures, you've seen the Saturday morning TV show, you've bought the Colorforms set, the extra Fuzzy Wukkins clothes, the hand-painted figurines and have shelled out four bucks to see the movie, why not buy the cereal? You don't seem to be in control of your wallet now as it is! So what if birds won't eat it? The box is lovely!
What is my favorite cereal? I don't have one. I will continue to eat bacon and eggs for breakfast until General Foods or some other company sees fit to use me as a cereal spokesman. Could you picture Pangloss Puffs?
Doc P.
Pangloss' surrealism on cereal
by Dr. Pangloss,
who contains a full day's supply of Vitamin B.S.
Hiya! This...hey! Who are you? No one is allowed to use the typewriter but me after midnight...ugh!
Hello. This is Akmed Al-Jabar Al- Stephenson, a proud member of Colonel Khadafy's Literary Suicide Squad, and I have commandeered this column in the interest of Libya. We respectfully request...oof!
Lucky I had a spare handcuff key in my sock. As I was saying, I feel the Pit in Building 6...ow!
We have immobilized your spokesman, Pangloss, and will not release him until we receive 50 million dollars, or a free subscription or...uhhhh!
My orthodontist told me my teeth were sharp, but I didn't believe him until now! Anyway,...hey, help! Help! HELP! HELP! Mmmph! Mmmph!
We...(pant)...have just put your Doctor Pangloss in our wrought- iron Painful Immobilization Suit, and we will start with the bamboo slivers if our demands are not met. We want...Aaagh!
I knew that stick of TNT would come in handy some day. I just want to tell my Libyan guest, you can't hold me, because I'm FICTIONAL!
Fictional?
Yes. You see, this scene is being written by a real person, and, unless the writer is a very sadistic fellow, nothing is going to happen to me. And let me tell you something else...
What?
I was just stalling. You see, we've reached the end of the column! There's not enough room for you to make your demands.
Oh, really? You must be joking. Nuts.
Now that I have him on the run, let me give you the official standing of this paper about terrorist activities in this column - at no time will we allow this paper to be taken over by an evil foreign power. Although they may surround the column, looking for a weakness, I swear that this unsuccessful attempt was a one time fluke. So anyway...oof!
Doc. P.
Pangloss holds off Libyans
by Dr. Pangloss
of Hungedunga, Hungedunga, Hungedunga, Hungedunga, and McCormick
Dear Dr. P. (Miniscule),
Regarding your miffed-ness at not being allowed to play in the Trivia Bowl; Fictional is right.
As for your ten questions of which the answers are "none," Question seven is wrong. I wrote you; therefore, you owe me a penny!
Unsincerely,
The Critic.
Dear Mr. Critic,
I received your first letter after I wrote that column, but you are right. A donation of one cent has been made in your name to the National Idiot Smart-Retort Letter Writing Society of which I am sure you are a member
Don't you have something better to do with your life than making attempts to find fault with someone who is perfect?
Doc P.
Is Dr. P. wrong?
featured editorial comment and response
Hiya! I want to tell you what happened to me here the other night.
I was walking among the lower buildings around midnight - I had parked in a Staff parking space and returned to find my tires slashed and a note on my car saying "Don't do it again!" As I was stranded I decided to take a look at the construction site.
Walking up the hill, I could hear a small voice saying "Where is it? Where is it?" in Old High Irish. As I approached the site, I saw a little man in knickers and a huge red beard, studiously scratching his head.
"Anything I can help you with?" (I said in old High Irish, of course, since I know everything.)
"Tis nae much ye can do for me, brother," he said, "for I've lost me pot o' gold." Apparently he considered me to be a leprachaun too, as I spoke to him in his own tongue and we were of the same relative height.
"Where was it?" I asked, fighting the urge to use my horrid Irish accent.
"Twas right here, an' I had such a bonnie place t' hide it! Twas guarded by the birds an' wildlife of the meadow, an' no one has come near it since they built that place!" he said, pointing to Building 11. "When they built tha' buildin, a bunch a' school bigwigs trew' a party in this meadow, an' sure if I didn't attend ta see wa' was goin' on. One o' the Ad- ministrators, he look'd at me kinna weird, so I left. I think he's been afta me pot o' gold since then! An' now I canna find it!"
So I helped him look for his gold the rest of the evening. We scoured that meadow, and as the sun began to rise, I found the empty pot. Attached to the lid with some Scotch tape was a letter on official letterhead, which went like this-
"We found your pot of gold, and we think it would be much safer to put it in a bank or in tax-free municipals for you than in an old pot buried in our field. Do you know how much of our resources it took to find that pot? We had to disguise the search as construction work, but the results were well worth it...
"Thank you for your donation. We have decided to give you a token of our esteem for your troubles.
Sincerely, the Administration" In the bottom of the pot was a Longview keychain, used.
Since then, I scraped up enough money to buy a one way ticket on People Airlines to Cork, Ireland and put the leprechaun on it. He promised me he'd write and come back to Longview after he gets another pot of gold.
Longview leprechaun loses pot o' gold
by Dr. Pangloss
one of the few people who can spell "shillelagh" without looking it up
My Dear Dr. Pangloss,
It is refreshing to find such an esteemed figure writing for our own Current. Your writing is witty, articulate and your topics of discussion well-suited for such a forum.
I am enclosing one penny as recompense for your donation to the National Idiot Smart-Retort Letter Writing Society on behalf of Mr. Critic. Please say hello to your young protege, Monsieur Candide, for me and once again, accept my heartfelt praise for your most urbane column.
Voltire Lives! Lieutenant Skip
Dear Lieutenant Skip, (any relation to Major Tom?)
Although it is not customary for columnists to accept gifts (if only because columnists rarely receive them), thank you for the penny. I took if forward in time to the year 3512 where an original Lincoln copper penny is worth quite a lot to coin collectors. With my sudden windfall I purchased another collectible which I can use, and which will appreciate in value by the year 4000 - an original 1972 Pinto.
Dr. P
Pangloss receives praise
featured editorial comment and response
Dr. P.,
Yes, actually I have something better to do with my time.
In all seriousness though, Dr. P. (of whom I know the real name, which should make you mad), has lent humor to an otherwise unhumorous paper.
On a campus dedicated to the seriousness of yawning, to add humor to the everyday mundaneness of it all is a feat not to be taken lightly. You have done a wonderful job of brightening many a student's day with your own particular brand of insane humor.
I shall not write again, although hopefully some other smart (expletive deleted) will write in and give you a hard time. Keep up the crazy work.
Your friend, The Critic
Dear Critic,
I have done a wonderful job of brightening many a student's day? I have? I mean, I have!
I am sorry this will be your last letter. To my readers, don't break this fine tradition! Send me a letter today!
Dr. P
Critic bids adieu
featured editorial comment and response
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