ments still standing about; they reopened thecollections of artworks that had long seemed souniformly dull that nobody went near them.They distinguished styles and the different agesof their emergence-in short, they found a pastand used it to create a new present. Fortunate-Iy, they were bad imitators (except for a fewpedants), and their twisted view of theirsources laid the foundation of our nascent-orperhaps one should say, renascent---eulture. Ithas resurrected enthusiasm in the young andtalented, who keep exclaiming what a joy it isto be alive.

It need hardly be pointed out that this anony-mous author's extravaganza did not represent anybody of contemporary opinion, only his own. Norcan it be ascertained when and on what grounds hisvision of the future occurred to him.

[Account]

HINDSIGHT INTO THEFUTURE

From "A History of the Past, Part II," a narrativecompiled by Anders Henriksson from statementsfound in student papers over the last fifteen years;his first such composition, "Life Reeked with]oy,"was published in 1983. Henriksson is a professorof history at Shepherd College, in Shepherdstou}n,West Virginia. The essay appeared in the Winterissue of The Wilson Quarterly.

From the secondary sources we are given hind-sight into the future. Hindsight, after aU, is causedby a lack of foresight.

Civilization woozed out of the Nile about300,000 years ago. The Nile was a river thathad some water in it. Every year it would floodand irritate the land. Mesapatamia wassquigged in a valley near the Eucaliptus river.Flooding was erotic. [udvisrn was the firstmonolithic religion. Old Testament profits in-clude Moses, Amy, and Confucius, who be-lieved in Fidel Piety. Moses was told by JesusChrist to lead the people out of Egypt into theSahara Desert. The Book of Exodus describesthis trip and the amazing things that happenedon it, including the Ten Commandments, vari-ous special effects, and the building of the SuezCanal. David was a fictional character in theBible who faught with Gilgamesh while wear-ing a sling. He pleased the people with his

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many erections and saved them from attacks bythe Philipines.

Helen of Troy launched a thousand shipswith her face. The Trojan War raged betweenthe Greeks and the Tories. We know aboutthis thanks to Homer's story about UlyssesGrant and Iliad, the painful wife he left be-hind. King Xerox of Persia invaded Greace, butfell off short at the battle of Thermosalami.Alexander the Great conquered Persia, Egypt,and Japan. Sadly, he died with no hairs. Reli-gion was polyphonic. Featured were gods suchas Herod, Mars, and Juice.

The Greeks were important at culture andscience. Plato invented reality. The Sophistsjustified themselves by changing relativeswhenever this needed to be done. Lust was amust for the Epicureans. U. Clid proved thatthere is more than one side to every plain.Pythagasaurus fathered the triangle.Archimedes made the first steamboat andpower drill.

Rome was founded sometime by Uncle Re-mus and Wolf. Roman upperclassmen de-manded to be known as Patricia. Senatorswore purple tubas as a sign of respect. Sparta-cus led a slave revolt and later was in a movieabout this. The Roman republic was botheredby intestinal wars. Cesar inspired his men bystating, "1 came, I saw, I went." He was assi-nated on the Yikes of March, when he

is reported to have said, "Me too,

A Brutus!"

tidul wave of Goths, Huns, Zulus, andothers impacted Rome. Athena the Hun ram-paged the Balkans as far as France. Societywas crumpity. Neo-Platonists celebrated thejoys of self-abuse. When they finally got toItaly, the Australian Goths were tired of plun-gering and needed to rest. A German soldierput Rome in a sack. During the Dark Ages itwas mostly dark.

Medeval society was arranged like a tree,with your nobles in the upper twigs and yourpes ants grubbing around the roots. This wasknown as the manurial system, where land waspassed through fathers to sons by primogenu-flecture. Power belonged to a patriarchy em-powering all genders except the female. Nuns,for example, were generally women. In the ear-ly part of the Middle Ages female nuns werefree to commit random acts of contrition andredemption. Later they were forcibly enclus-tered in harems. Russia was run over by BatuCohen and crushed under the Mongol yolk.Certain tribes of India practiced voodoo innu-endo. The Crusades, meanwhile, enlarged op-portunities for travel.

Historians today feel that the renaissance

My Squid Suit Brings Isolation, by Brad Eberhard. Eberhard's work will be on display next month at the Bang Studio in Hollywood, California.

was the result of medevil people being fertal-ized by events. Italy was pregnent with hugeideas and great men. Machiavelli, who was of-ten unemployed, wrote The Prince to get a Jobwith Richard Nixon. Ivan the Terrible startedlife as a child, a fact thar troubled his laterpersonality. This was a time when Europeansfelt the need to reach out and smack some-one. Ferdinand and Isabella conquered Gra-nola, a part of Spain now known as Mexicoand the Gulf States. Columbus came toAmerica in order to install rule by dead whitemales over the native peoples.

There was an increase in climate during theeighteenth century. Agriculture fed morepeople as crop yields became lower. Thesewere factors in the better times to come. TheScientific Revolution developed a suppositoryof knowledge which greatly helped later gener-ations. Copernicus showed that the solar sys-tem rotates around the earth. Sir Issac Newtoninvented the newton. Locke taught that lifewas a fabula rasa.

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The American colonists lived on a conti-nent and England was an island. Thus theAmericans wanted independence. BenjaminFranklin, already famous as inventor of thelight bulb, persuaded French King George IIIto help the U.S.A.

The French Revolution was like a tractor.It gave people the understanding that youneed change in order to make tracks in theworld. The Third Estate was locked out of itsmotel and had to do its business on a tenniscourt. Another problem was that France wasfull of French people. Revolters demanded lib-erty, equality, and fraternities. Fraternitybreeded pride in the nation and thereforethicker political boundaries. In 1799,

Napoleon performed a coo. Napo-~ leon fertilized all his life.

~he Industrial Revolution was slow at firstdue to the lack of factories. Great progress wasmade through the introduction of self-actingmules. Telephones were not available-com-

munication went by mouth to mouth ortelegram. The airplane was invented and firstflown by the Marx brothers. The social struc-ture was Upper Class, Middle Class, WorkingClass, and Lowest Poor Scum. Nobles claimedto be descended from better jeans. British pater-nalists were motivated by "noblesse oblique."Certain members of the lower middle class ex-hibited boudoir pretensions. The slums becamebrooding grounds for lower class unrest.

In Russia, the Decembrists attempted a coupdu jour. Mazzini was a conservative liberal so-cialist who founded a revolutionary groupknown as "Little Italy." Pope Leo XIII isknown as the author of Rectum Novarum, abook of conservative ideas. Another man toinfluence the state and others was Kark Marx,who advanced diabolical materialism. Hisideas about revolution, condos, and supermenintrigued many.

Prostitution, considered to be the world'soldest profession, got its beginnings in thenineteenth century. Sex in this period was avery quiet ordeal. Feminists argued that sexoutside the family would make you go blind orlose your memory. Leaders of the women'smovement included Florence Nightengail, Su-san B. Anthony, and Crystal Pancake.

Burt Einstein developed the theory of rela-tivism. Marie Curie won the Noel prize for in-venting the radiator. Writers expressed them-selves with cymbals. Cubism, splatterism, etc.,became the rage.

Most English believed in the missionary po-sition. Admiral Dewey sank the Spanish Ar-mada in Vanilla Bay. The Russo-JapaneseWar exploded between Japan and Italy. TheGerman takeover of All-Sauce Lorrain en-raged the French, who clamored for vendetta.In 1914, the assignation of Archduke Ferd-man gave sweet relief to the mountingtensions.

When the Davy Jones Index crashed in 1929many people were left to political incineration.Some, like John Paul Sart, retreated into extra-terrestrialism. Hitler believed in a Panned Get-many and therefore insisted that Czechoslaviarelease the Sedated Germans into his care.England's rulers vanely hoped for "peas in ourtime" but were completed foddled by Hitler.Lennon ruled in Russia. When he died, theU.S.S.R. was run by a five-man triumpherate-Stalin, Lenin, Trotsky, Menshevik, andBuchanan. Stalin expanded capitalism bybuilding machine tractor stations. Whenthings didn't go as planned, he used the peas-ants as escape goats.

Few were surprised when the NationalLeague failed to prevent another world war.The perverbial chickens laid by the poor peace

treaties after World War I all came horne toroast. Japan boomed Pearl Harbor, the mainU.S. base in southern California. The Allieslanded near Italy's toe and gradually advancedup her leg. Stalin, Rosevelt, Churchill, andTruman were known as "The Big Three."Hitler, who had become depressed for somereason, crawled under Berlin. Here he had hiswife Evita put to sleep and then shot himself inthe banker.

World War II became the Cold War, be-cause Benjamin Franklin Roosevelt did nottrust Lenin and Stalin. An ironed curtin fellacross the haunches of Europe. Berlin was air-lifted westward and divided into pieces. Israelwas founded despite the protests of localArabs known as Zionists. The Marsha Planput Europe back together with help from Kon-rad Adenauer, a French leader whose efforts

led to the creation of the Cornrnu-rJ" nist Market.

.the British Empire has entered a state ofrecline. Its colonies have slowly dribbledaway, leaving only the odd speck on the map.Mohammed Gandi, for example, was the lastBritish ruler of India. In 1921, he cast off hiswestern clothes and dawned a loincloth. Thiswas a good way to get through to people. TheFrench Empire, on the other hand, fell intototal term-oil as they clutched painfully at re-maining colonies in Argentina and the FarEast.

South Africa followed "Apart Hide," a pol-icy that separated people by skin color. Actu-ally, the fall of empires has been a goodthing, because it gives more people a chanceto exploit their own people without outsideinterference.

The U.S.S.R. and U.S.A. became global inpower, but Europe remained incontinent.Wars fought in the 1950s and after includethe Crimean War, Vietnam, and the Six-Minute War. President John F. Kennedyworked closely with the Russians to solve theCanadian Missile Crisis. Yugoslavia's Totobecame a no n-eve n tu a l is t communist.Hochise Min mounted the power curve inViet Nam. Castro led a coupe in Cuba andshocked many by wiggling his feelers everytime there was trouble in Latin America.This required the United States to middle inselected bandana republics during the 1960s.Mentally speaking, Russia had to reinvent it-self. Gorbachev became top Russian after thedeath of Leoned Bolshevik.

The historicle period ended shortly afterWorld War II-III. We, in all humidity, are thepeople of currant times. This concept grindsour critical, seething minds to a halt.

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