the Wakefield Doctrine

   ‘ello.  Welcome to the Firstaversary (Post) of the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers).

Having been some days in preperation
A splendid time is guaranteed for all.
And tonight Mr. Kite is topping the bill!

Warning!, Warning! Warnung!  There is a Severe Cultural Reference Overload Warning in effect for the balance of this Post.  At the first indication of excessive use of common and overly-used cultural reference  please relay a warning to other readers, (in the preferred form: Danger!! Danger!! Will Robinson) and calmly scroll down to the bottom of the page, click on the (blog-lifted) music video and await the All Clear.  Or, if you would rather, get under your desks (if you have a laptop) and put your hands on top of your heads or whatever the hell the advice for us 1950s and 1960s school kids was so that we might survive the atomic bomb attack that was surely going to occur the next morning at school.  Go ahead, flash your severe weather watch!  chance of unpleasant tornado warnings all you want!  grew up at a time in our culture when it was considered good entertainment programming to have Ed Sullivan present the Beatles and then after the commercial Ed would spar with Topo Gigio (that little Italian mouse) and then, without warning Ed would say and now a special feature and BAM!  this animated featurette thing with the calming title: “IN CASE OF ATTACK” , besides the under-the-desk survival advice, there would (and I swear I can still see in my mind) be this cartoon atomic bomb blast complete with animated kids flying to the left and then to the right (’cause of the blast wave then the vacuum, or was it the vacuum and then the blast wave?) …that was really not the way to have a goodnight sleep on a Sunday evening to go to school the next day, waiting for the “light of a thousand suns” to shadow-graph your friends heads on the wall of the yellow-damn-bus that you rode to school in, wondering who you would let into your bomb shelter (if you had one), which you didn’t, but there acutally were  ads in the newspaper for a bomb shelter store with all types of models, you really hoped that if your family bought one it would be the cool, totally underground one or at very least, the above ground model with a submarine door with those big wheel things on the front. Your biggest fear was that your family would do something with cinder blocks in the basement, without even a door (how could you shoot at the neighbors if you didn’t have a door, huh?) and those messed up port-a-pots toilets with a bag underneath, no way you would use one of those with your whole family in the same….

What?  Oh! sorry…got a little carried away.  Yes, of course the Firstaversay of the Wakefield Doctrine.  Who wouldn’t know? (Well, other than 99,999,950 blog readers)

So.  How to commemorate this milestone?  Probably best to go traditional, you know great moments/Posts/Comments in the last 12 months, shoutouts to friend of the Doctrine that sort of thing. (The Dickens’ references?  Can’t quite remember, but I trust it will all meld.)

Was going to do clips of Posts when certain events happened, first Comment from someone outside of the Progenitors and Downsprings, the first appearance of lasting characters and maybe even some favorite vids…but then I got to thinking…what the hell has the point of this thing been?  Why did we start and why are we still writing these Posts? (This is a multiple choice question):
a) to get famous, make money and eventually have a fanzine (based in the Philippines) that will run fotostories like “clarkscottroger caught bloglifting!!!”
b) take a creative expression of my clarklike nature and see if it can live (and flourish) outside of the dark, dank confines of my (damn) head
c) write posts, get invited to join groups of people who think I accounted for the whole thing myself one June morning, sort of Waynes World for blogs
d) see if what the theory (of clarks, scotts and rogers) holds for the potential to improve oneself is, in fact true and effective.

(Correct Answer at the bottom).

So big shout outs to Friends of the Doctrine:

Renaissance Ronin who back in the fall (starting October 26th, to be rogerian) did some commentation that gave us a sense of having a “stranger” talk to us about this thing.  It brought us out of the, “this is a cool club we have here, should we invite some other kids“? frame of mind.

Jason at the Enlightenment Project…actually was the first non PD Comment writer.  Jason’s blog demonstrates the kind of focus and discipline to produce content on a regular basis, content that has a freshness and ‘liveness’ that we strive for with each of these Wakefield Doctrine posts.

Mel Spatula in the Wilderness…what can we say?…early influence… with quality and fun found in the content of the Spatular. (To continue with the cultural references) Mel is, for those of us here at the Doctrine, sort of a combination of Wally and Eddie.  One of the first to have a WD hat (for his damn head), now that I say that, hey Mel! wheres them pictures of your hat in front of the Lake  at?. (btw Mel), when the time comes* for the screenplay, I got dibs on being Matt Damon! (lol sorry dude you gots to be Ben.)

(And though some of you might get a little nervous) I want to thank Janie Sullivan and Britney and Jimmy and Mr. B and Principle Clark for coming into existance in the course of the last year.  You have added immeasurably to the effort to bring the Wakefield Doctrine to the world.  And even though some of you will be Seniors next September (Summer School is still an option Jimmy) I know we will be hearing a lot from you in the coming year.  Thanks to the faculty and staff and students at Millard Fillmore High (motto: “we’re frickin imaginary, but we got Slovenian exchange students”)

Goodnight Slovinians, where ever ya are!

Answer: none of the answers ! (that’s right!  not ‘none of the above’, I said none of the answers.)  Now a quick quiz!  Serious this time!  Really!
(Match the type with the reaction):

clark: a) laughs; b) gets mad, decides to write a scathing response; c) gets mad, then laughs with grudging respect
roger: a) laughs; b) gets mad, decides to write a scathing response; c) gets mad, then laughs with grudging respect
scott:  a) laughs; b) gets mad, decides to write a scathing response; c) gets mad, then laughs with grudging respect

(Answer pt2 below)

* (before the end of the year for first rough draft)

Answer Pt2: jeez sure are gulible aren’t you?  None of the above, what am I the answer man?  Now that you mention it, I guess I sort of am.

Short Post this morning, much to do.  Not much time to do it in.

Trying to come up with something totally cool and catchy cause it will be one year tomorrow when this thing started.  Nothin.  Not only do I have nothing, I am feeling my clarklike aspect start to kick in…in reaction to the perceived pressure of commemorating/celebrating/whatever the hell it is that one is supposed to do on significant milestones. (Sounds like a Lesson of the Day).

the Wakefield Doctrine Lesson of the Day.  Not so much a lesson as an observation of the differences between clarks, scotts and rogers in response to societally designated important days. (Which include birthdays, wedding anniversaries, retirement and funerals).  On second thought, let’s start with the point of this whole exercise in blogation which is to present a way of thinking about stuff, mostly people.  This way of thinking is called the Wakefield Doctrine and it is done along the lines of ‘personality types’, as in astrology, phrenology, scientology; you know it’s an ‘ology’ which means it’s scientific and you should read it and believe it. (Plus it is a theory, as in the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers) so it surely has to have something interesting to it.  And it does.  Not unlike a supermarket magazine rack, the Wakefield Doctrine has something interesting, something that should be true about it.  And even though pages and pages are spent on talking about the basis or, the underlying principles, the supporting evidence and uses words like ‘habitual perception’ and ‘predeliction’ it is still just one of those things that have enough ‘truth’ to it to make people remember it.  It all comes down to getting up from your computer and going to work and hearing some ‘middle management’ type person hold forth on action lists, performance paradigms all while sucking up to their boss in public (and without the slightest bit of self-consciousness) and then 30 minutes later find that same person gossiping in the break room.  The goal of this blog is to have you at this point say to yourself, “what a roger“, or be with friends and the person sitting on the fringe of the group even though they have been part of that gathering for years, suddenly noticing that that person has been saying things and somehow their words evaporate in the air (like cartoon dialog balloons fading as they move) only to hear those very words come out of the mouth of that really noticeable person, much to the delight of the crowd, who are all laughing and saying things like, “they are the funniest person how do thy think of that stuff” and you look back to the person on the fringe and you see the secret smile and you say to yourself, “I believe I have just caught a glimpse of a clark“…(the scott was there all along, a hub around which the social structure rotates).

That’s what I think I want to say on the (clark: “whatever”; scott: “fuckin aye big day partay”!!!; roger: “I have done a great job, but it hasn’t been easy and you are all so lucky”) First Anniversary of the Wakefield Doctrine (the theroy of clarks, scotts and rogers) blog.

But I guess I will be talking about how far we have come, and where we might be going, blah, etc, blah.  The tone of this Post is attributable to my clarklike aspect, the eternally disappointed, why can’t I be more like, I really need this thing to make up for all my shortcomings, part of me that was really exacerbated by my going out into the blogsosphere ( looking for images for today’s Post) and, by virtue of the search terms (anniversary, birthday, celebrations etc) I was neck fuckin deep in (successful), (self-promoting), (thousands of Readers for year after year), and (did I mention I am the best of all blog-writers?), blogs.  And believe it or not, my reaction was that I need to make the Wakefield Doctrine work even better, faster cause all of what I see in terms of successful, high-profile blogs have a rogerian self-promotion combined with a scottian aggressive confidence behind them.  I need to do better for the Doctrine.

Talk stop.  Music start.

(Since we clearly are of an age that makes the Beatles irristable, let’s get the obvious tune out of the way.  Damn it, this is the Wakefield Doctrine and if we are nothing else we are not going to be (too) predictable, so there is no fuckin way we will be doing the vids that you would think one might might do on Firsaversary Day)

(I need to tell you, I like the live vids better but the only one I could find was Paul McCartney in recent times and though it was quite a good, faithful rendition of the song…he just looks so very, very old…lol so much for not caring about age.)

Yes? Britney? …Sure why not?

no…this can’t be the way real blog writers do what they do! Surely there is a better way to get started than to surf the net for photos and song lyrics and hope that something grabs you. Take today’s session, please*. I started with some line for a subtitle that I have already forgotten, then went to the Beatles for a line from ‘Daytripper’. OK ‘acceptable’ subtitle in place (…takin the easy way out…) on to find a photo…nothin. Typing words into image search…headed towards “Plain and simple”, bunch of fashion photos…tempting, but the Wakefield Doctrine is gender neutral, so have to surpass on most of those, on to “dry as toast”…still nothing finally one photo has picture of bologna sandwich…boiinnggg, (as the old cartoons used to represent), Oscar Meyer commercial jingle and now I have a subtitle that makes me respond. (clarks + respond =  ) (very funny). So the most difficult part is over with, first paragraph-lette is done and now I just have to keep typing, get a Wakefield Doctrine Lesson of the Day and a video and I can call it a day.

Trouble is, in the course of writing the above, I stumbled across Henny Youngman (“King of the One Liners) and Oscar Wilde (“King of the apocryphal Last Words) In Oscar’s case last words, depending on source, “I’ve always hated that wallpaper. One of us has to go”;  and *Henny:

Wakefield Doctrine Lesson of the Day: the point of all this effort, with the blogs and the posts and the film clips already, is to reduce the Doctrine to a simple to follow plan.
Plan? We don’t need no steenkin Plan!! The derisive laughter of the scotts and the howls of personal affront-hood of the rogers, I can hear in the distance, I think they’re callin my name. Neither a scott or a roger would be inclined to see any point to change/improvement/otherwise altering what they are.
“So”, you might be asking yourself at this point, “why bring it up”?
The answer is quite simple, if you are here a third time, you are not the average clark or scott or roger. (Better make that the average scott or roger, god knows clarks tend not to average, even when they are totally run of the mill).
If you are a scott reading this, I would ask the question: “Hey predator girl/boy, whatcha doing readin? (We can read) glenn’s Comments about how so focused on the real and the concrete and none of this mystico/psycho/mumbo jumbo shit, real life forms ain’t got time for intro..speck…shun, fuck that! scotts are all action orientated and all.
And rogers, sitting back in your chair, yeah you binyon. I know you can write circles around this blog and one of these ddays you will show us all how it really should be done, what with your casual, confident, “hey-I-have-something-interesting-that-you-want-to-hear”, you know pull the herd into a circle around the water cooler, loading dock, break room, “just you and me here in the hall for a minute”.
Both of you, “hey I’m  much too busy to waste time contributing to this thing and besides you won’t let me scream at the Readers, like a 5 year old who is bored and getting angry that everyone around them seem to have something interesting to do”, I’m talking to you. You know, scotts and rogers.

The  Lesson of the Day is this: you are mutated. You are not just a clark or a simple  scott or merely a roger. Not if you are reading this still. You have the benefit of an overly-developed clarklike nature.

lol Come back scott!!  Don’t hit the off button rogers!!  lol I will make that statement acceptable, don’t you worry ’bout nothin.

The fact is, none of the real clarks or scotts or rogers would be bothering with this Wakefield Doctrine thing. That simple. But I am doing all of this because apparently there are enough clarks, scotts and rogers with the flexibility of mind, confident curiosity, the need to grow and improve to keep me doing this thing. The Readership levels are laughable by blog standards, but screw it. There are between 35 and 45 people who show up here on a regular basis and it is not only ’cause I gots some good vids up.  Speaking of which, where the hell is that janitor?

I really am not feeling up to dealing with a metaphorical, un-resolved life crisis figure, so I will end this on the sophisticated note that we have all come to expect from this thing of ours.