humor | the Wakefield Doctrine

scott-roger-ds#1-akh-glenn-joanne-phyllis-mel-jason-ronin-mj-kino-pixie-cy-doug

December 24, 2010 By clarkscottroger

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers) for our second frickin Christmas!

Damn… a whole year!
Those of you who have been with us over the last 12 months, no doubt feel the same sense of astonished appreciation that seems to come with every Doctrine Post at this time of year. And since the Christmas Season, in this culture at any rate, conveys a certain license to those of us not gifted with the ability to clearly convey emotions, let me at least try to say how much we have enjoyed the benefit of the people associated with this here blog here.
It is not so much what the people here at the Wakefield Doctrine have done over the past year, rather it is how much they have taken this thing to be theirs and (conversely) given of themselves to it; all in ways while not spectacular nor dramatic or grand, are somehow more impressive. I am most grateful for what appears, from my clarklike perspective, to be the natural assumption of being a part of that all the DownSprings and Progenitors and Friends of the Doctrine show in what they have written and said and contributed to the Wakfield Doctrine. More a job for the roger to express, I am nonetheless moved. And I will say simply, that I feel that no matter what we do in the coming year, my life is immeasurably better for having met and been a part of this blog with all the people involved.

So, quick out. Did somebody say, ‘re-gifting’? Here is part of what we did last year:

Angola…Feliz Natal e (feriados felizes do específico da cultura)!
Australia..Merry Christmas and Happy (culture specific) Holidays!…on the barbe
Belgium…Vrolijke Kerstmis en Gelukkig (kweek specifiek) Vakanties!
Bosnia and Herzegovenia… Čestit Božić i Srećna (specifična kultura) praznici! (I hope!)
Brazil….Feliz Natal e (feriados felizes do específico da cultura)!
Canada…Merry Christmas and Happy (culture specific) Holidays!…eh?
China…愉快的聖誕節和幸福（文化細節）假期！
Columbia…¡Feliz Navidad y Feliz (cultiva específico) Feriados!
France…Joyeux Noël et Heureux (cultiver spécifique) les Vacances !
Germany…Fröhlich Weihnachts und Glücklich (kultivieren spezifisch) Feiertage!
Ghana…Merry Christmas and Happy (culture specific) Holidays!…(!click!)
Greece…Καλά Χριστούγεννα και ευτυχισμένο (πολιτισμός συγκεκριμένες) διακοπές!
Ireland…Merry Christmas and Happy (culture specific) Holidays!…go bragh
Israel…חג מולד שמח ושמח (תרבות ספציפי) חופשה
Italy…Buon Natale e Felice (la cultura specifica) le Vacanze!
Philipines…Merry Christmas and Happy (culture specific) Holidays!…(send translation-o)
Slovenia…vesel Božič ter vesel ( kultura poseben ) dopust
Spain…¡Feliz Navidad y Feliz (cultiva específico) las Vacaciones!
Sweden…Munter Jul och lycklig (odla specifik) Helgdagar!
United Arab Emirates…عيد الميلاد قد وسعيد (ثقافة معينة (العطلة?! (dude!)
United Kingdom…Merry Christmas and Happy (culture specific) Holidays! pip! pip!
United States…Merry Christmas and Happy (culture specific) Holidays! y’all!

By Right of Re-Gift, I will use the Don McLean tune ‘American Pie’ (which is odd, as the first time around, could not stand the guy.)

Hey! Somebody go get glenn! He missed a present, musta been behind the couch or something. lol

Wait! Wait!! Here is a vid that the mutated (among us) will get a kick out of…

Filed Under: Featured, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: humor, Personal, personality types, relationships, the Wakefield Doctrine

since you ask, yes there are 3 personality types in the Wakefield Doctrine schema (he said schema, huh huh)

December 21, 2010 By clarkscottroger

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

The last two weeks of the Year really kinda suck, don’t they? Not in the “the holidays are too commercial and that’s why they suck” kind of way, not even the “too much pressure to be friendly, when is this going to be over” and especially not in the “not enough time to shop, I must get more presents”. I do not mean that when I make this statement.
It is more of the, “have we written enough Christmas-themed Posts yet, or is there time for one more?” and “oh well, better start on the New Years in review and right after that the 2011 Wish List” Posts.

That’s kind of where we are today. Figure a few more days until Nackles¹ puts in his appearance (or not, god willing). No, today is more the kind of day when I know I should be working harder on the Doctrine, but manage to allow myself to get distracted. (see the footnotes to this Post. Which I might add, took nearly as much time to write as the rest of this Post).

In any event. At first I thought I would do a Post with a Gift Theme, using music videos as the gift. But once I got past glenn and roger, I realized that as much as people like to see them in each Post, the music videos matter way more to me than they do to anyone else. So, ‘no go’ for the gift Post.

Lately have been giving a lot of thought to the idea of comfort levels. And the Doctrine. Blog. glenn enjoys taking the line, ‘hey you got to get edgy, shake things up you know do things to get the Reader’s attention’!!!  Of course that is just glenn being as predictable and limited and repetitive a scott as I am being a predictable and limited a clark. While I do not dispute the need for the scottian approach (after all this is the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers) the flaw to what glenn is suggesting (whether he is aware of it or not) is that his (approach) is, in fact, a totally impersonal approach to the Readers.
Yeah, I know! And yes, yes I did just make that statement. Criticizing another for being impersonal…sort of like hearing a roger say, “screw the genealogy charts, let’s go out and just live for today“! But the problem of what glenn suggests is that it is a ‘script of outrageousness’ one created to make people notice that someone is saying something.  Unfortunately his only (personal) contribution is ‘the nerve’ to say it. And to his credit, he does the shock stuff really well. I know, I have seen him act like that in public…the scottian bravado. But with no personal investment, it’s just shouting out the window of a moving car…someone else’s moving car, for christsake.
Even still, he is right about need to not get comfortable, with this thing of ours. Hell, I give much more credit to AKH, at least she has the nerve to move outside of her own natural environment (scottian female; visual left to Readers) and she doing much to help get the Wakefield Doctrine blog in front of people every day…behind the frickin scenes (to use one of her favorite expressions) The photo we use on her little column ( Hey! A scott is talking! )? It is fairly emblematic of the true nature of ‘KH’s  approach to her work at the Doctrine.

The Doctrine does tell us that it is a natural tendency for all of us to stay with what we know, nothing revelatory there. But that does not mean that we have to. Stay. With the familiar routine. Which brings us around to my original concern that these Posts are suffering from the same slide into predictability that we are all heirs. You know what we say here at the Wakefield Doctrine:
“…as long as you remember that there is something you have forgotten, then you are not really, yet in trouble…”

Maybe another Post-A-Day thing might get the juices flowing. See? Right there! That expression, get the juices flowing! I need a show of hands now.
This expression is characteristic of which of the three personality types: a) cla….lol yeah right! b) scott or c) roger?
Alright, hands down, how many of you said “why a clark, of course! Yeah, I thought so. This is a perfect example of where my own comfort zone ends and therefore this is where I need to be. Hell I should run there, damnit. As glenn often makes mention of the fact that he, ‘doesn’t get how a clark will look for the un-comfortable in order to develop themselves, to overcome their limitations’.
(Wait a minute. He has made that statement on a number of occasions. And he is a scott…furthermore, we know that them peoples live with excitment levels that would put most clarks and rogers to sleep faster than a tourist party of Samoans in NYC on 9/11.)
The Wakefield Doctrine tells us: as predators, scotts exist in a world of predator/prey, in a world that is essentially hostile. They do not build, they do not farm rather they are solitary hunters who, if the need arises, will gather in packs. However, once the need is removed they will return to the solitary hunt. And even the scottian female is, at the core a solitary lifeform . (As we have heard from AKH), the scottian female will utilize the enticement of the spider to lure her prey/food/aka rogers to her den (metaphorically etc). But think about that statement. When was the last time you saw a herd of female spiders roaming the countryside, stopping from time to time to have a web-spinning bee? I think not. I think that for a scott to experience that which they exhort the clarks to do, i.e. get out and get crazy, stir things up, these same scotts must spend some quiet time, alone in a group. Try being the blue monkey. As much as we find it difficult to write shit like this, I think I will no longer listen to a scott who has not demonstrated the willingness to go outside their forms. The ones that can do this are truly worthy of our attention.

Music Mr. B.!! According to the Wikipedia the Poster we have ‘out front’ came to the world circa 1968…do I hear… the…. Chambers Brothers!?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niDmkXnWdVA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzZHmHqEE7k

1. Nackles A short, short story by Curt Clark (Donald E Westlake) early influence back in the day of reading constantly, mostly pulp science fiction books, bought at the College Hill book store and a (de-remembered) book store also on Thayer St. This was back in the day… we were in high school, pre-Woodstock fer cryin outloud! It would be a major Saturday trip to Providence, go to the East Side, then (walk!!) down to Weybosset St to another bookstore. To give you a sense of the times, an expensive paperback (only your parents would have bought a Hardcover) was .95 (that’s 95 cents!). We would spend at least 45 minutes in each store, going through everything. And this was when they ‘invented’ posters. Of course, I had the inevitable Mushroom Cloud poster (pre-Woodstock, don’t forget) and a first edition of the eponymous ‘Hang in there, Baby’ cat poster. To the credit of my people, the first edition photo had a much more desperately, panic’d kitten than was found in subsequent iterations, you know before the college coeds discovered it.

Filed Under: Featured, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: humor, Personal, personality types, predicting human behavior, psychology of personality, relationships, the Wakefield Doctrine, three personality types

…hello? what?…. hey! it’s for you

December 19, 2010 By clarkscottroger

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

We are happy to be seeing quite a few new faces. If you end up finding the Doctrine an interesting site, in all likelihood you will like it here for one of three reasons:

You never met new information that you didn’t find fascinating to some degree;
There’s some kick-ass music videos and that ALK and this glenn guy they really seem alright
There is a tradition here that goes back at least 35 years, how bad can it be?

First a ‘cook’s tour’¹ of this site: the Wakefield Doctrine maintains that all of us fit into one of three ‘personality types’, we are all of us, a clark or a scott or a roger. What is unique about this theory is that it does not involve taking a test or filling in a survey form that tries to get you to list your likes and dislikes, hates and loves, favourite colors and pet peeves. No, the Doctrine is way easiest, it simply says, “hey you are either a clark or a scott or a roger! (But here is where it gets easy!) here in this blog we will show you how each of the three types ‘look and sound and act’ . Ya find the one that is most like you…bam! now you know your personality type!
Of course, there is much, much more to it than that, but it is real damn simple to start and most of all, it’s fun! And not just fun in the ‘omg I am just like Hilary“! (or Justin or whichever cultural icon appeals to you). No frickin way, this is more fun! How can I say that? Because not only can you and your friends go and look for the rogers and clarks at the mall but you and your friend can talk about how that new teacher is such a scottian bitch and… you, alone in your room can feel that maybe now you know why people are so mean sometimes.

It’s all here in these Posts and Pages and Comments and such. Again we say welcome, make your self at home and if you have any questions just ask! ( Remember…there are no stupid questions, just your questions).

Very good drive through Wakefield last night. Courtesy of the wonders of modern technology, we had Ms AKH and DS#1 in the car with us for the better part of 47 minutes. Damn this Doctrine-thing ‘shore is gettin interesting.
What we did was this: glenn and I started out on our usual trip to Wakefield. Being away for three Saturdays, he and I drove the traditional route, including a stop for gas, (unfortunately neither the alien nor the near-transparent-clark-girl were there) and then we drove down through Galilee to not buy ice cream, finally out to the main road (Rt1a aka Ocean Rd). At that point, just north of Scarborough Beach, AKH was called, put on hold, DS#1 was called, un-hold AKH and there we were…Wakefield with 3 DownSprings and a Progenitor! Can I get a damn!

At first the conversation was the slightly over-energized, off-tempo in a first-time, stage-fright kind of way that you might imagine. But even that was as the Doctrine predicted, i.e. how a clark reacts to stage fright is distinctly different from how a scott would react. But ‘nerves’ quickly dissipated and we settled into quite a stimulating discussion. Very interesting.

Topics revolved, for the most part, around how cool the whole ‘drive to Wakefield’ has very suddenly become. The simple idea that we could have an actual discussion among Progenitors and DownSprings about the Doctrine. Now the thing about this blogsite here, is we try to create a sense of a discussion of the Wakefield Doctrine via the Comments after a Post and everything, but this thing last night was just plain cool.
…damn! it was real. With “actual people” doing what people do when engaged in a challenging and stimulating conversation: contradicting themselves, correcting their last statements, objecting to how their last statement was being interpreted. But in a car. Driving through Wakefield. Discussing the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers.

This will be continued. But before we get out (for now) a couple of the high-points of the conversation:

who was sitting in the front and who in the back (don’t even ask!)
what was the itinerary and why was I stopping on the green lights and driving through the red
how would AKH and glenn get along (never having ‘met’)…
something was said about how cool this would have been if we were younger…(I am embarrassed to take responsibility for that)
the beginnings of a discussion on gender differences, i.e. how is predatory aggressiveness differently expressed in scottian males v scottian females
(decided that that topic should continue in camera, for now and that it would expand to clarks then rogers)
brief discussion about the bad rap that scotts might get when new Readers hear the word: predatory
finally, glenn (somehow) could hear what we have been trying to say about evolution, that properly approached/defined is not a bad thing
this last was the proof of the benefit of these trips to Wakefield
decided next time to try and get AKH to come to Wakefield in person so we can get the roger and DS#1 into the dashboard, then watch world collide

Very good Saturday. Will be adding to this Post throughout the day.

Mr. B? Show us what you have been brought, at such great cost to us here to provide our Readers, yo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbFAEw_Foqw

1. Cook’s tour n Informal a rapid but extensive tour or survey of anything
[after Thomas Cook (1808-92), British travel agent]

Filed Under: Featured, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: humor, personality types, relationships, the Wakefield Doctrine

Maybe I was wrong to ever let you down, but I did what I did before love came to town

November 24, 2010 By clarkscottroger

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

As everyone knows we are about to celebrate Thanksgiving here in Oceania. Once a single-day holiday, calendar-creep now has it starting on Wednesday and ending Sunday night (…”man, did you see the traffic on the interstate”?). We will make every effort to keep the Posts coming, even through such a distracting time of year. (This Post is as mixed and confused as the Holiday itself).
Second only to Christmas in it’s demands upon the members (of our) culture, Thanksgiving is shedding it’s historical camouflage and coming into it’s own in terms of proscribed ritual behavior. Of course, Thanksgiving has always laid claim to being a standalone, not-a-hand-me-down, genuine American holiday, unlike those twin imported festivals, Christmas and Easter. As children we are not only taught the story of The First Thanksgiving, we even had school-directed Thanksgiving lessons.¹ As a result, it is a holiday in which it is relatively simple to know how to act properly and as such, is clark-friendly.²I probably should resurrect/re-post something from the Doctrine archives that deal with the holidays, but hey! it’s Thanksgiving Week!! And we all know what that means!

…it means stress raised to levels otherwise experienced only on Wedding Days, (the day before) major Surgery, asking a girl out for the first time and/or giving birth; all delivered to every single member of your family unit in equal doses:

the cook-person (usually the female, but not always) “hey get out of the kitchen, you’re in the way”!/”hey where did everyone go, why do I have to be stuck in the kitchen”?
the children “why can’t we go outside, we hardly know those people”!/”I will try to get home at least for dinner, but I have a term paper that has to get laid”
the relatives (old) “why I remember when you were just this tall”!/”don’t you remember when we all went to the shore, you were this this tall”
the relatives (young) “why can’t we stay home and have dinner”/”there’s nothing on TV, they don’t have any video games at grandma’s house”!
the invited friends “hey, you know what would be really exciting“?/”hey, your family are really nice people”!
the turkey/the carving/the presenting of the food, “it’s over-cooked I just know I over-cooked it”!/”no, it’s just fine! It’s just that the knife is still too dull”!
the desserts “hey, more than one desert at a single meal”!/”what the hell is a ‘Mince’ and why is it in a pie”?

We all know that “the holidays” are experienced differently by each of the three (clarks, scotts and rogers) and therefore the demands of the celebrations are very effective illustration of the nature of each. But if there was no Thanksgiving, a roger would have invented it! (Actually, they probably did). Think about it! A holiday celebration that is:

based on a factual historical event (sort of)
the protagonists (of the story) are religious refugees, persecuted and driven away together on boats
food, specific food and a not-to-be-deviated-from Menu
ritual menu and a full schedule of events
shopping in herds, as the climax of the celebration (Black Friday)
a moral taught to the young: we came here, those strangers who helped us were different, (…we had a feast and wiped out their culture)

I will be so bold as to suggest that there is no more rogerian a holiday than Thanksgiving! If there was a St Roger, his feast day would so be in the last week of November. (Saint Roger; Holy Mother Church’s only self-martyred Martyr. He died at the hands of the original Pilgrims and the Wampanoags; records in Vatican archives tell us that St Roger’s suggestions throughout the day were accepted with good nature by all in attendance, i.e. “..don’t you think the deer is a little over-cooked”…”pumpkin pie? who would make a pie out of those things?”…”why is that construction-paper Indian’s head all folded”… But, as the story has it, the assembled party reached their limits when he was heard to say, “what do you mean, ‘no turkey’? the best part of the holiday is a cold turkey and pemmican sandwich at around 9:00pm’. His martyrdom is the subject of an up-coming Ken Burns documentary, “St. Roger…when enough is not nearly enough“)

And since we are on the subject of rogers and holidays, is there any human activity that is more one sided, over-hyped, expectations-sure-to-fall short, ( not counting sex on the eve of a relationship breaking up), than parades? I don’t care if you are a trombone player in the middle of the herd or someone sitting in their living room watching it on TV…you are a roger. (…Someone tell me I’m lying.)

In any event, my own memories of (childhood) Thanksgivings are all about the walnuts. (Among the several once-a-year foods) a bowl of nuts was put in the living room for the guests but the cool thing was that the nutcracker and those pointy-picking-something-out devices were included. I did not, and still do not like walnuts, but the chance to use the implements was the high point of the day. (…well that little memory-leftover has nothing to do with any of the rest of this trainwreck of a Post, lol)

1) such as pageants and plays and a whole bunch of shit that we were forced to make out of construction paper (using those rounded scissors and that white-paste-stuff that you could never keep off your fingers) and then the fuckin head of the Indians you so carefully crafted would get folded over and the whole thing still had to go up on the border around the blackboard of the classroom.

2) you really should not need this explained to you…about clarks…and holidays.

Filed Under: Featured, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: humor, Personal, personality types, relationships, the Wakefield Doctrine

Posts, Posts, Posts,*

November 10, 2010 By clarkscottroger

But seriously folks, this Post-writing gig, while fun, satisfying and totally ego-enhancing gets to be a grind.
So today we will have a Contest! Today is the start of the:
The First Annual ‘Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers) Hey! I Can Write a Better Post than That Contest’!**

In any event, the rules of the Contest are simple. Write us a Comment with a brief description of your idea for a Post, we will re-print all the entries in a new Post and everyone in the blogosphere gets a Vote! The entry with the highest Vote wins and that person gets to write a Post and get it published on the Wakefield Doctrine! Now some of you might be thinking, “sure, we come up with a great idea and write a great Post and you get all the traffic and Reader Comments, how fair is that“? You know you might have a point there, but why don’t you go ahead and read all the other Posts in the Doctrine and count up the Comments. In any event, you get a damn byline, what the hell do you want?
As to Reader participation the last Post was a pleasant exception. Nearly everyone had some interesting Commentation….(btw), it has been brought to my attention that some of the clever sayings created by us here at the Wakefield Doctrine are beginning to appear out there in the real world. People! we want to know when that happens, no make that we need to know when that happens! Just yesterday, a scottian woman I work with told me that she heard the expression, “Yes. Yes I did hear that” on some TV show. Of course, since she heard it on television she insists that we did not coin that expression here at the Doctrine! If anyone hears mention of the Wakefield Doctrine or the theory of clarks, scotts or roger in general and/or expressions specific to these Posts, i.e. “he is such a roger“…”what a clark“…”not too scottian, is she?” out in the real world, please for Jethro’s sake write to let us know.

Enough of that, back to the Contest. hey glenn!! this Contest? “some Rules may apply“. Why doncha let the Readers know about rules that may apply? We want your ideas, we need to expand our horizons, to break out of this fuddy duddy rut that certain DownSprings are insisting we are in, here at the Wakefield Doctrine, now sit up straight in your chairs, no laughing or giggling and pay attention.

All of this ‘out with the old’ attitude can be laid at the feet of those two rogers, Mel and the (progenitor) roger. At the start of this week, Mel has been posting some decidedly accessible Posts…all about feelings and happiness and gratitude and stuff…(for you new Readers, Mel is a Friend of the Doctrine and writes a blog, Spatula in the Wilderness. He used to be an actual wielder of said implement running a kitchen in a hospital in “Michigan” But recently he changed jobs, went corporate but his blog is still most excellent. Did notice however, that Mel responds to Comments even quicker than before, ‘hey Mel, fun having access to the net all day long, no? Now get those reports on my desk!’ )(lol)

So Readers! Send us you Post topics.

Two Post ideas that I really would like to try. One is from the progenitor roger: “Ten Important Things in My Life that I have Forgotten” and my own contribution: “That First Band/Album That changed the course of My Life.”

Ten Important Things in My Life that I have Forgotten

the first girl I had a crush on
what happened to that girl/crush
who I bought my first car from
when it was that I first started thinking about the Wakefield Doctrine
my High School Graduation (I did not forget the post-ceremony party….wish I could)
what happened to my (childhood) belief in religion
the last time I played music on stage
the first time I realized that I was a little… different?/weird?
what the most fun I have had that was not inextricably tied to a significant mental/emotional/physical price
why the fuck I thought this was a good idea

You know, I think I am skating closer to the edge of personal involvement with this 10 things I forgot idea, what say we just call it a day.
Mr. B if you….what? Contest Prizes? damn! you’re right…lets see…what can we give out…(lol, ’cause Western Union is too old a reference)…I got it! a nearly free hat (for the first 5 entrant’s damn heads)!

** (or as the Progenitor roger would have it the First Annual WDTOCSARHICWABPTTC… actually it sounded better over at the Depression Concession).

No, glenn there is no connection between this choice of video and Robyn Hilton (damn you google! clarks cannot impress anyone anymore with obscure references.)