The sun was not yet coming up over Santa Monica Boulevard, but it had already been a long night of chai and I was looking for my car, which I had left on the street. A newish Mercedes screeched to a stop just in front of me, and fearing the worstâLindsay LohanâI stumbled back in the direction of my chai house.
Two odd looking men got out, and none too subtly gestured that I should get in the back seat. I say odd looking because, though they appeared to be clean and their hair and beards were neatly trimmed, they were both wearing togas. They were nowhere near young enough, and we were nowhere close enough to UCLA, for that to make sense.
"We just want to ask you some questions," said one, who was slightly balder than the other. He had a slightly tantalizing accent, a kind of singsong.
"It won't take long," said the other, in the same accent, "and we'll bring you back here. Buy you a nice cup of chai." They maneuvered me into the Mercedes, and Baldy slipped into the driver's seat. It was a really nice car, but not Lindsay Lohan's. The unboxed diapers on the back seat made me think more of Britney.
We hummed along through the empty streets, in the direction of the Santa Monica Mountains.
"So, how is life among the philosophers?" asked Baldy.
"I don't know," I said. "I don't live among philosophers any more."
"Had the wits to get out," said the other one, who was driving. "No," said his companion. "He had the wisdom to get out—the wisdom to get out of philosophy!"
They yucked it up for quite a while over that.
"But our problem is even harder," said the driver finally. "We have to get the wisdom out of philosophy!"
"That''s not hard at all!" cried his companion, and they both collapsed in helpless guffaws.
"But seriously," said the driver. "We hear things aren't so good. We hear philosophers stopped getting Guggenheims in about 1994. We hear fewer and fewer philosophers get NEH's. We hear no philosopher has gotten a Macarthur since—since the gods know when!"
The car was now well into the mountains, and in fact had left the ritzy residential streets behind and was bumping down a dirt road. On the left was an eerie looking ranch gate; in the smoggy moonlight I cold see that behind it was an empty field about a hundred yards deep, and beyond that just woods. It was the old home base, I knew, of the Hollywood Nazis—a bunch of none-too-bright actors who never got much further in their Nazi sympathies than gathering in Errol Flynn's mansion, now burned to the ground, and grousing about the studio heads, all of whom they thought were Jewish.
Just inside the forest there was a fallen log, and they made me sit down on that. The two of them stood before me, and Baldy took over. It went like this:
BALDY: Does your society produce many philosophers?
ME: Not so many, about eight thousand.
OTHER GUY: that is quite a few.
BALDY: Where are they to be found? Where do you keep them?
ME: In universities, I guess, in philosophy departments.
BALDY: Aha! This is what we had heard. Your society, then, has rounded up philosophers and placed them all in "departments" so you can keep an eye on them (I could feel the quote marks).
ME: I don't know that anybody wants to keep an eye on them, but yes, most philosophers are in philosophy departments.
BALDY: So they are clearly identified. You can keep them where you want them—how do you say, like fish in a barrel? This is a brilliant way to disarm critical thought! Does anyone outside the "departments" talk to them?
ME: It's kind of de facto discouraged. A department is a busy place, and the people in it usually don't have time to socialize widely. They mostly talk to one another.
Baldy and the Other Guy were elated to the brink of dance. "At last!" said Baldy. "A society that knows how to handle philosophers! You get them a 'department' and you shut them up in it and then you watch them and nobody talks to them! Expensive, but I bet it works!"
Then the other guy took over.
OTHER GUY: You certainly do not, I assume, allow these philosophers to talk to young people.
ME: Sure they do. That's their job.
O.G.: That's their job?
ME: Well, yes. The function of a university is to educate people, and philosophy departments are in universities, so they have to educate people. It's what they are paid to do.
My two friends were dumfounded. "You mean a 'department' is a sort of educational institution? It is not a—how do you put it—desmôtêrion?
Oudamôs, I said, for the first time in my life using classical Greek for conversation.
"We came here for nothing," said Other Guy.
"Ô Anyte," said Baldy, "aphronoi eisi entautha, iômen!"
Kai hôs takhista, Ô Melete, said the Other Guy.
Anytus and Meletus—for it was they—tossed me the car keys and walked further into the forest. I stumbled behind them to a marble and copper contraption which looked like a sort of walk in barbecue. They did walk into it, and in a moment it began to glow and shake, and then it disappeared. The car keys were on the ground, so I picked them up and drove back to Santa Monica Boulevard. Somewhere down there, a homicidal starlet was looking for her Mercedes.
i like lindsay style... thanks for your info anyway :)
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