Three Good Sarcastic Essays from Somewhat Different Eras.

Sarcasm is a tricky little human device, in speech and human-to-human conversational relations it is really annoying for the most part, but in writing (if done with subtlety) it can produce interesting results.

Example 1: A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift (circa 1729)

Swift is trying to address the problem of poverty in Ireland and how it should be solved. He opens by explaining how difficult life is for many children who were born into poverty, and comes to the conclusion that the best thing for everyone involved is for the rich to eat these poor children...

"I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled ...”

"I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children."

This obviously created quite a stir when released, he's recommending that the best way for rich landlords to get rid of 120,000 children is to eat them. The reaction of people who read it was to hate on him and say he's a maniac but the important thing is that they read it to begin with. He provides very important data in the piece on poverty and on how landlords and tax collectors are "feeding" off of the impoverished population. The baby-eating part is just to sensationalize it and gain readership to what is essentially an eye-opener on how the very rich take advantage of the poor. He gained a lot of negative attention surely, yet it remains relevant all the way to today and has it's place in history.

Not 100% true but food for thought...

Example 2: Kill the Poor by Eric Boucher (circa 1980)

Efficiency and progress is ours once more, 

Now that we have the Neutron bomb 

It's nice and quick and clean and gets things done
Away with excess enemy
But no less value to property
No sense in war but perfect sense at home

The sun beams down on a brand new day
No more welfare tax to pay
Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light
Jobless millions whisked away
At last we have more room to play
All systems go to kill the poor tonight

Behold the sparkle of champagne
The crime rate's gone
Feel free again
O' life's a dream with you, Miss Lily White
Jane Fonda on the screen today
Convinced the liberals it's okay
So let's get dressed and dance away the night

While they...Kill kill kill kill Kill the poor...Tonight!

The template for this piece was obviously Swift's A Modest Proposal yet it is interesting that it was met with the same reaction almost three hundred years later. The piece is 100% identical but just revamped for a new era it seems. No one said, "oh wow this is a sarcastic eye opener on the current political system much very similar to an essay written in 1729," in fact the reaction was even worse than 1729, Boucher at one point was even put on trial by his government for this and other material for the crime of "distributing obscenity" and accused of poisoning the minds of the youth. It's strange that 300 years later this re-issue of Swift's sarcastic critique was met with more hostility than it was in 1729.

Media: Boucher on British TV.....Boucher on Oprah w/ Tipper Gore (this is really good).

Example 3: Various Essays by High School Student Peter Nguyen (circa 1999)

This Nguyen character is far less known than the previous two but I think his writing deserves to be remembered as well. His essays took the internet by storm a few years ago (or by gale maybe...not storm), and they are something (see the rest here).

Now, before I make my point let's reduce some obvious error bars and state some obvious counter points. First, these can very possibly be fake, and someone just put red pen on it to look like it was submitted in a classroom. Also, this can be just a form of "self sabotage" and these essays are not important at all. Self sabotage is basically when you purposely don't try so you can not feel the effects of failure ever (i.e. "I know I didn't get X but it's just because I wasn't really trying..."). These essays may be subject to both and that could discredit my following point, but let's hypothetically say that they were neither fake nor self-sabotaged in order to argue my following points in safety.

The environment of the school system Nguyen was in was a very odd one for two reasons. Since the mid 1990's students all have access to the internet, and teachers in the US are given bell curve incentives.

What do kids do with the net? They "research" and then they switch some words around so it doesn't look too "researched" to their teacher.

What are bell curve incentives? Everyone goes on the curve and their grades are dished out by what piece of the curve you hit. The teachers themselves are evaluated for job performance how good their curves are, meaning they get raises and benefits for good curves. That is a conflict of interest as teachers pass everyone and edit marks to even out or fancy-up their respective bell curve to achieve higher pay and climb the pay scale.

So let's put two and two together why don't we? Thirty students go on Wiki or some other site and "research" their essay and then thirty students turn in basically the same essay to the teacher (some with better grammar than others being the biggest difference)...the teacher then assigns them to the bell curve...the ones with the worst grammar go into 60-65, then with bad grammar they go into 70-80, and the ones with excellent grammar get the 85-95 slot. Everyone passes and the teacher looks good for his/her evaluation...and everyone is happy.

Then a Peter Nguyen comes along and throws everything out of whack, where does this fucking shit fit on the bell curve? Nowhere! Getting his essay on that fucking curve is like throwing a brick into a washing machine The teacher doesn't want to fail him because it'll fuck up the curve and he/she can't pass him because he'll have proof that anyone can pass. This crazy guy is daring the teacher to fail him. Why? 

The interesting thing about Nguyen is you can tell from his writing that he is creative, original, and intelligent...so why is he daring his teachers to fail him? Is it in itself a sarcastic critique on the bell curve system in American schools? Could be...

Analysis of Joeseph Ramone's piece, "I donn't wanna go down to the basement"

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hey daddy-o
I don't wanna go down to the basement
There's somethin' down there.
I don't wanna go
Hey, Romeo(a)
There's somethin' down there
I don't wanna go down to the basement
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(Introduction)

    In a society where complexity, elusiveness, and convulution of words and ideas is seen as a mark of being "intelligent," it is always refreshing to see a piece of writing which avoids the aforementioned traits in a valiant attempt to remain simple. If a piece of writing is judged on the difficulty of the words it contains, or how strong the author's vocabulary is, or how effectively it convulutes basic simple ideas; it becomes inherent that all the important data of any written work will be ignored in favor of trivial nonsense.

    Author Joeseph Ramone in his work "I Donn't Wanna Go Down to The Basement" shows emphatically that writers do not have to convolute their work in order for it to be a good piece of writing.

    In "I Don't Wanna Go Down To The Basement" we are ushered into a world of intrigue, uncertainty, and suspense. It is perhaps the greatest work written by any writer throughout the interweaving tapestry of human histories. This essay will look deeper into this treasure trove of information that "I Donn't Wanna Go Down to the Basement" surely is.

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(Translation of Introduction)

    Yo, honestly bullshit sucks. I hate listening to bullshit. Why can't people just talk normal you know? When people just talk bullshit all the time it gets on my nerves. You ever heard that song where that guy doesn't want to go down to the basement? That songs rules! It's so true! I just can't listen to it while I drive though cause it's that freaking good. Man, I love that song!

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(Part 1: Basic Grammatical Breakdown)

    The piece opens with the lead character shouting to an unknown party referred to simply as "Daddy-O." The lead character tells Daddy-O that she or he refuses to go down to a location referred to as "The Basement." The reason the lead character gives as to why she or he refuses to go to the basement is due to "Something [being] down there."  The Who, the when, the why, the where, and the how have all been established within the first three lines of the author's work.

   One of the joys of written text is that much is left to the readers own devices and imaginations in order to paint mental pictures of what they perceive the story to mean. Joseph's style of writing is wonderful as it leaves  the reader purposely in the dark to fill in details themselves, and thusly exercise their cognitive skills.

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(Part 1 translation)

    The dude's all like Yo I don't wanna go down to the basement! He's like scared of something that's down there man!

Yo the dude doesn't even know what the hell's down there.

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(Part 2: Synthesizing opinions and arguments to form more experienced opinions)

    In the aspect of written language acting as a cognitive learning tool the process is indeed quite simple.

1. We read or hear data.
2. Said data is then recorded into the brain.
3. We decipher the code it is written in (English, French, Swahili, Morse, etc.)
4. We decipher the Who, What, When, Where and How of the data we have recorded.
5. We then form an opinion on what the data means and what aspects of it are important.

    We have read "I Don't Wanna Go Down to the Basement" and have already deciphered what is going on, we must now of course form an opinion on it to complete step number 5.

    My opinion on Joeseph Ramones piece is as follows. I believe that he is attempting to bring to life basic childhood fears which we have all experienced. The song makes us think of when we were young and afraid of things uncertain to us. The father of the lead character has asked his child to go the cellar and bring up a box of salt or some other foodstuff or tool of some kind. The child is reluctant because the cellar is dark and cold and it makes the child feel uneasy and scared. Thusly the child outright refuses to go down into the basement. We can all relate in a point in our lives where we felt uneasy or fearful and Joeseph's work both scares us yet also reminds us all of a simpler time when all we had to fear were silly things like dark basements.

    After forming opinions a new process must begin in order to improve our opinion. It is as follows,

6. We construct our opinion from the inputted data we have received.
7. We formulate our opinion for universal outputting by mentally giving it values within a universal code (Eng, Fr, Sw, Mor)
8. We output our opinions to others
9. Others give their input on said subject
10. We then reformulate our opinion once again using the new data we have to work with.
11. We have thusly synthesized our opinion with others opinions and have a more experienced opinion.

    For example, I may tell my opinion to a someone and then they will in turn tell me their opinion. Let's create a new opinion of Joeseph Ramone's "I Don't Wanna Go Down to the Basement" for good measure.

    My opinion of "I Don't Want to Go Down to The Basement" is as follows. I believe that it is a story of a child who lives in a haunted house and dwelling deep within the bowels of this haunted house are ghosts of a ghastly nature. They are ghosts who died many decades ago and reep the land of the living in search of revenge. The child refuses to go down into the basement because he is terrified of these ghosts. This story is ripe with symbolism, the child represents humanity, the basement represents society and the ghosts represent the immobilizing fear of death which exists in all humankind.

    For better measure let us create a third opinion of this work.

    My opinion of "I Don't Wanna Go Down to the Basement" is as follows. A man is living in a run down townhouse with five other roomates and it is his turn to clean the basement where they throw their weekly wild parties. The basement is full of hundreds of empty beer bottles, vomit, and other unsightly scenes. There's probably even a guy down there who passed out drunk and smells horrible. The man, obviously, does not want to go down to the basement.

    All three opinion are equally valid and in no way can ever be proved to be false. In fact an infinite amount of reasons can exist as to why the lead character refuses to enter the basement. All that is inherently true that we know to be true is that "Something" is "down there." By creating as many opinions on this as possible we begin to have a more experienced opinion of this piece of writing. The more data we have to synthesize the more complete our opinions will become as a whole. Discourse is instrumental to the learning process.

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(Translation of Part 2)

Oh man! I wonder what could be down there? Like a wolf or a wolfman or some week old mayonnaise or some crap! Oh man, it could be anything. My friend says its gotta be like a monster or something but I think it's like a robber or something  like that. It could be anything in that basement! Man this song rules!

This is how we learn stuff:

1. We See it.
2. We Think about it.
3. We Talk about it.
4. And stuff.

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(Part Three: The importance of reducing language to it's simplest terms)

    Why at institutions of learning must ideas always be convoluted into 400 page essays? Is elaboration the true mark of human knowledge?
    Take the most intricate of human languages, Mathematics, as an example. Why in math is it essential to reduce fractions to their simplest terms. How come we never say 2 out of 4 but instead say 1 out of 2? Both are fifty percent of one hundred of course yet it seems stupid in math to say 2 out of 4. In the case of English why is it that simplest terms are seen as being a mark of uneducation? In English it would make sense to always speak in simplest terms so that the maximum amount of people can understand, it makes sense. Why write a ten thousand word essay ripe with convoluted vocabulary when you can write a simple piece which states the same thoughts?
   


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(Translation of part 3)

This song rules so much cause the guy keeps it real, he doesn't talk bullshit you know? I hate bullshit, why can't we just keep things more real? When I'm at work and a dude wants me to do something he'll go, like yo go do that thing, the dude wouldn't freaking go into a all kinds of bullshit the dude would just say what had to be done and that's it.