ADAMANT: CAUSE FOR THANKSGIVING ?

....Blogging : Ye Pilgrim Fathers Worft Miftake !

Since 1620 New England hath looked to Antiques Road Show for its Hiftory lessons, but now ye Puritan Broadcafting System insists ye Device shown here, delivered to our shores in 1638, was ye nation's 'first printing press.' God's Teeth--what arrant knavery ! Every school-childe knows it be ye Pilgrim Fathers first PC,

....... ....Ye Mayflower Compaq

Of The First Fruits Of New England Blogging forsooth precedeth Bundling, for Nathaniel Hawthorne records in scarlet letters that Hester Prynne's lap-top was busy before the Puritans landed, and the late Lord Protector's Glorious Software Revolution begat that Happy Instrument of New England's Preservation,
Ye Cromwell Disc Drive

So ere the Founders of the Bay Colony set foot on Plymouth Rock, they adopted the Mayflower Compaq, and began to esteem Blogging a Duty to God.

Anno1638, the Compaq's New Model Operating Syftem enabled ye print-out of the first Evidence of the Pilgrim's Progress, The Freeman's Oath, which made voting conditional on church attendance. This was necessitate by the Forest Primeval hereabouts, which, as it ruineth Wi Fi reception, made it impossible for many godly Persons to download the Sermons on which their State of Grace depended. Therefore ye Pilgrims had to be sat down in Church each Sabbath, and read to aloud for some hours before Lunch, the Afternoon being reserved for accusing Neighbors of Witchcraft, and disputing whether Damnation be best obtain'd by Faith, good Works, or untimely Beta Releases.

As Calvinist content-providing burgeoned .Clergymen soon feared Sermon Piracy. Hence they sent to England for the latest in hard-copy server technology , a mighty oaken Maine-Frame denominated the Ingeniose Blackletter Matrix CCCLX. The sight of these heathenish Numerals alarm'd the Lord's Elect, many fearing it might copy their e-mails to the Pope of Rome. To restore Comity , Governor Hornblower did rechristen it Ye IBM 360.

Thus was realiz'd the hopes of ye heathen Vikings who came ashore heere in search of a rune-mail download server six centuries before ye English, --Â Vinlanda being but Erik The Ubergeek's mifprint for 'Black-Berry Land' .

Wi Fi Reform'd by ye Pilgrim Bloggers
The writing of Puritan soft-ware proved harder, for Harvard College imparted greater Proficiency in Latin & Greek than C++, a problem which plagues our nation to this day. This dearth of literate offspring drove the Pilgrim Fathers to sell the bulky Matrix to Salem, where it was multitasked as a Witch-Press and Pillory. They then try'd outsourcing of soft-ware to the Indians, but baroque bandwidth betwixt Boston and Bangalore being Scant, Native Americans were recruited instead.

This proved a difaster. Familiarity with smoke-signals made ye breech-clouted savages adept at internet protocols, but being invited to Thanksgiving Dinner, they took unkindly to English cooking, tomahawked their Hosts and ran gibbering into the Woods to found Dartmouth College. There they developed a lucrative trade in Algonquin Bibles, Anabaptist pornography and Quaker self-help manuals.

Governor Winthrop's diftribution of virus infected blanket soft-ware to these Reprobates limited these Enormities until Anno 1729, when the Unitarian Renegado Elihu Yale converted a Pequot wigwam into a diploma mill issuing Doctorates of Divinity emblazon'd Linux Et Veritas

Soon Yale's pernicious homilies were common as loaded dice in a Conneckticut Indian Casino, and birch-bark upon which to print Libel Writs ran short, so the reverend Cotton Mather took up paper making, selling his Surplus to the sot-weed factors of Virginia to roll Cigarettoes. Thif led to a Plague of other Enormities, as New Amsterdam dispatched John Appleseed to spread Dutch Vices. Soon there was Cyder-drinking by the Shores of Gitche Gumee, and an ultramontane Population much in need of sermonizing, so Fear-God Gates, rusticated from Harvard for possession of playing cards, and Appleseed's industrious bastard Increase Jobs emigrated West to propagate the Lord's Word 1695.

Programming Ye CCCLX Main-Frame:

Gates & Jobs Lock'd in Disputation at
Ye Salem Dual-Processor Synod of 1679

Providence smiled on their Zeal. From Jobs' orchards the MacIntosh arose and from Gate's Yankee ingenuity a Great Awakening of the right to self-publish sermons on all subjects, Areopagitically, as Milton intended, without the least fear of editing. They knew not what they did, and today in every shining City on a Hill ,the Lord's Elect call down the Wrath of almighty Providence upon them

For now blogs are ground out faster than counterfeit Wampum, and bloggerel unending overfloweth our inboxes much as from a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wilde beasts and wilde men. Hath the Lord but granted the Pilgrim Fathers a good Deliverance from that fearsome Engine of Preterition, The Mayflower Compaq, it would be cause for a Day of Univerfal Thanksgiving.

Comments

If I recall correctly from Steven Weisenburger's exegesis of Thomas Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow," Pynchon's ancestor William Pynchon--founder of Springfield, MA, by the way--did in fact leave the Bay Colony in order to return to London to stop an IP offense being committed against his sermons.

That his sermons themselves served as cause to get him booted out of the colony is another matter.

Posted by: John Burgess | October 17, 2006 at 03:19 PM