Saturday, July 07, 2007

More Coffee For Me Boss, Cuz I'm Not As Messed Up As I Want to Be

Thank you for all joining me here today. I know that I am usually only active clandestinely and that my audience with His Majesty has now fallen on hard times, but I have a very important topic with which to discuss with you at some point in time should you ever read this missive: Truth.

Many people are under the impression that Truth is a universal absolute, that there is one true way that events happen that can be firmly documented and agreed upon by those willing to embrace it. By embracing this vision of Truth, one has the advantage that one gets to feel smugly superior and/or (usually and) pontificatory about it. Making Truth an absolute, unarguable standard means that one must also go to absolute, unarguable lengths to defend it. Some have even gone as far as to argue (often on the internet) over it, which is odd if they believe the Truth to be unarguable. Those extreme lengths are horrifying in their breadth and depth.

Other people, on the other hand, believe that truth is nothing more than a story that someone tells to make themselves feel better about the absolute disaster that this universe unarguably is. This belief would imply that any given person's truth is just as true as Ignatius Riley's truth is true. For some this is hard to accept.

However, a deeper investigation of "Truth" reveals that both camps are not only a little bit wrong, but a lot of bit wrong.

You see, Truth is an anagram for thurt. Wait. No, that's not what I meant. What is important is that "Truth" is an anagram of "Ruth T." This is an unarguably obvious reference to Ruth T. McGrorey, former professor in and Dean of the State University of New York at Buffalo's School of Nursing. Some of McGrorey's most notable work was while working as a Consultant in Nursing for the Paraguay Project (University Archives collection 19/1/708). This project was initiated by the US State Department Project to provide the National University at Asuncion with UB's health sciences expertise. A three-year contract was signed between the Health Servicio of Paraguay and UB in 1956 and renewed continuously until 1971. The contract set up an exchange whereby Paraguayan doctors were sent to study at UB and two Buffalo faculty members, in addition to short-term consultants were sent Paraguay. While in Paraguay McGrorey helped to develop a Nursing School at Asuncion. McGrorey also implemented many changes nationally, helping to bring Paraguayan nursing and medical standards on par with North American standards. In 1962, Asuncion honored McGrorey with the Distinguished Visiting Professor title and in 1969 an honorary doctorate.

So the truth of the matter, or should I say that the Ruth T. of the matter is that everything we think of as truth, whether you are of the arguably unarguable school of truthspeak the unarguably unarticulated vague school of thinking, is actually just a reflection of the efforts of one mid-twentieth century nurse who went to Paraguay and probably started several underground socialist movements that are still in existence today known as the Paraguayan Socialist Nursing Liberation Faction of the International Sisterhood of Paraguayan Nurses. They have been known, from time to time, to carry out shadowy terrorist actions at the behest of the overlord of the underworld, Eudora Welty.

2 comments:

Mike Croghan said...

Dude, that's so true....

kate said...

You and your wife are such breaths of fresh air. (even all the way from Detroit!) And, yes, my day is fuller and richer when I can read anything either of you might care to share.
So there! :)