Hollow people are surprisingly literate. There’s many a bearded farmer in overalls well versed in the classics, as well as current popular culture. Some might even suggest our long winters foster a kind of earthy intellectualism. Hollow folk are not without some financial where-with-all either. Between keeping antique farm machinery going when any other tool would have given up the ghost decades ago, paying the land tithe, and keeping the kids on Nintendo; you really have to have your wits about you just to hold on to the ol’ family homestead.

I have been looking for a way to utilize this financial and cultural Hollow literacy to better humankind, or at least to balance the Federal budget, now hopelessly out of kilter entirely due to the financial and cultural illiteracy of our esteemed elected officials. How is it that the simplest farmer can do what hordes of MBAs, think tanks and brain farms clearly cannot; to spend only what they take in?

This most basic economic concept is lost on the supposedly brightest of the litter. How is it that three post-WW II generations have so totally lost their way? By applying Hollow sense to the twin issues of Federal fiscal responsibility and creeping cultural irrelevancy, we can, with true New England efficiency, solve several problems at the same time.

To understand the problem, we have to put ourselves in the shoes of the average American. Hold on while I get a clothespin—it stinks out there in the “real” world! For starters everyone is completely overwhelmed and completely over stimulated. Americans are under bombardment from gobs of essentially useless information. Words, images, messages, faxes, phones, email, instant messaging, pagers, snail mail, spam and the never-ending ads. How CAN one cope? Just getting to work is like being in an urban war zone. I am incredulous that anyone puts up with this crap; let alone attempts to thrive in it. They say it takes 5 years to get it out of your system—if it ever does. I recommend getting a hand maul and splitting lots of firewood. Damn good therapy. Offer to split your woodchuck neighbor’s wood. Then they will know you are a nut case transplant flatland refugee.

If the good townspeople of pre-WW I Connecticut were to see their dangerous interstates with burning cars and long delays, interspersed with manic speed; if they were to breathe the foul air, eat the tasteless produce and factory farm meats, and see the vacant, distant, stares of the great hope that is the next generation; surely they would immediately outlaw motorized personal transport, video games, television, factory farming, curriculum-based education and public fluoridation of the water supply. This would of course force us to curb our population, saving the planetary ecosystem as an unintentional side effect.

So how did we get here? The answer is, incrementally. A little bit at a time. A forest here, a stream there. Bigger cars, homes, and offices to show what big men we are. Dangerous SUVs touted as the safe solution for cautious drivers. And always, the constant bombardment of the ads. They are always there, in the background, on the walls, on your kids’ lunchboxes (do they still have lunchboxes?). They are so ubiquitous we stopped noticing them years ago. Inexorably, they influence our images of ourselves and of what is perceived to be normal.

Politicians do it too. They have learned to “phase in” tax increases, all the while spewing out useless information and just plain disinformation. After a while we stop noticing. This seems to have been the plan all along.

They take away our freedoms the same way. A little bit at a time. The ones going on about freedom and democracy are usually the biggest fascists of all.

Fortunately, we can apply Hollow sense to this mess. When everything goes to shit, start by cleaning the bathroom. A good place to start is to ease the overburden of the media barrage. Brevity must be the rule. Ads must be incrementally diminished in duration and influence. Ultimately, advertisements will consist simply of phrases like “Eat at Joes” and “Buy our foreign-made shit!”

The same brevity we apply to media noise can now be applied to the English Language, one of the most insane of all human constructs. No wonder things are such a mess! It takes up way too much extra brain space to process all those useless letters, that no one has time to critique the content (or lack of it). Start with the letter K for instance. Why do we even need a K? It serves no real purpose, other than to hook up as a CK, which has exactly the same sound as either C or K individually. Sometimes K is silent, as in knee. What a blatant waste of space! K can definitely go, and good riddance. And let’s get rid of the rest of the “silent letters” while we’re at it. That double EE can go too, leaving us with ne instead of knee.

Letters that share a sound are just too confusing. Dump ‘em! Now that’s efficiency (efishency). How about getting rid of that silent w, as in wholesome, as long as we are on a roll? Double consonants can hit the road immediately. Who cares about the ll in bill or tt in little? Will anyone miss a dd, as in middle when (midle wil do just as wel) thank you. And what about all those weird vowel combinations? What is up with that? You should be a more wholesome yu. Beautiful would become byutiful, a much more attractive (atractiv) speling. With the energy we save we can all take a day off (awf). Let’s pare down those extra e’s while we are (ar) at it.

Y is just ridiculus. It is just an I with an appendage. Let it go for God’s sake! Is this a case of appendage envy? A simple I as in envi will do just as well.

How about words that sound the same but have different meanings? Will anyone really confuse sew and so or but and butt? It’s the context dummy! I mean dumi. Down with leter spam!

With the extra savings from all this efficiency we can not only balance the budget, but make the metric system the worldwide standard unit of measure. Then the US can cease being the last civilized country on earth to use obsolete measuring systems.

No wonder we cannot even fix our trade imbalance. We can’t even balance our letter imbalance. And how many people know how many pints are in a gallon? How can we? There’s too much stimulation running ‘round our brains.

It’s time to practice a little regressive conservatism, and pare down the barrage of excess letters and useless pitches. Perhaps then the world outside the Hollow will stop obsessing about themselves and get a clue as to what it means to be human in the 22’nd century. Tone down the manipulation and we begin to see that status, fancy cars, and trophy wives don’t cut it. Quiet the noise and we begin figure out what is real. Like fixing antique farm equipment and reading your way through winter. Don’t let the package fool you. There’s many a dumb ass farmer out there sporting an advanced educational degree. Guess it comes down to how you want to live your limited time here on Earth, and just how much you are willing to give up for those Nintendo games. As for me, I’m heading for the Hollow.

These essays were written for entertainment purposes only. The views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of Vermont Soap, its employees, board of directors, our Web host, Web designer, the neighbors who live up the road; or any of the thousands of people who use our stuff. Originally published in edited form by Comic News. Many thanks to Seasoned Books, without which, life in the Holler may never have become a reality.