ZOOMERS ???

 

The Old Fart Magazine to Arise from its Ashes and Enter Cyberspace: Declares War

 

Curmudgeons Awake!

 

When this magazine was a regular paper periodical in the good old days we were abominated by some for the use of the word “Fart” in our name. But it seems that today, in the 21^st century, the bad word in our name is “Old”.

 

That wonder boy of television, the ever-youthful Moses Znaimer, inventor of MuchMusic and other things, has declared ‘old’ a bad word. In a recent interview he declared: “Old is not a good word, and variations on the concept of old make people squirm, especially since we came out of a culture that wildly overemphasized youth, so we have an entire generation that is kind of programmed to resist the concept of age."

So he has coined a new word for old people, Zoomers – talk about squirm – and threatens to produce a magazine of that name, actually the first issue, I just noticed yesterday has hit the streets: the innocent Wayne Gretzky, aged 47, is on the cover. We have not seen a copy but are informed that there are nine photographs of Moses in the first issue. Maybe he should have called the magazine Exodus. Go to www.mosesznaimer.com for his biography and you will find that so terrified of age is Moses that he does not give his age or the year of his birth.

 

Let’s be clear - The Old Fart Magazine, for and by curmudgeons, was not and nor is this site intended for or restricted to old people. Indeed, we have a nine year-old curmudgeonly nephew, one Dashiell, and it will be difficult to keep him off the site if he finds out about it. Who has not known a seven-year old curmudgeon? And they come in all genders…..

 

But we do maintain that old is good. Who does not prefer old furniture – me, I am partial to 18^th century Georgian, Adams brothers, Hepplewhite etc., not that I am so fortunate as to own any – and who will argue that wine improves with age? There is beauty in age and truth but I go on….

 

This site is not about praise but condemnation and we declare war on Zoomers. Really, when they first started to grow up, the Boomers, they did have their good points, still do, we had many friends among them, they were useful for getting dope and other things and they were against war and hypocrisy, but boy, after they got a bit older, wow, aren’t they in the White House and on Wall Street? In Ottawa? Enough said. It may have had something to do with them being the first generation not to be toilet trained, parents being the first generation to read Dr. Spock. (Parents were also the first generation to defer to both parents and children. This observation was attributed to Leonard Cohen by my wife – I have never seen it in print, God forbid that I should read all his stuff, but I have always suspected that she was given this nugget of wisdom in bed – that’s the only benefit of being cuckolded by a poet, you get – second-hand – nuggets of wisdom).

But we are not opposed to them as a generation, we are not going to take on the whole f’ing generation: only those who embrace Zoomerism are going to have to bear our wrath and contempt and this apparently includes all members of the Canadian Association of Retired Persons (CARP) which Moses seems to have taken over. You fools.

 

Any comments please send to curmudgeons@theoldfartwebpage.com  . You can sign your own name or a nom de plume, we don’t care, but we would like to know the municipality and country you are writing from. We don’t promise to print it and if we do, it may have a limited shelf life.

 

And remember, as Polonius remarked to Hamlet, brevity is the soul of wit. As Dorothy Parker remarked – elsewhere on these pages – it also the soul of lingerie but we don’t want over-zealous curmudgeons forwarding pictures demonstrating the latter – there are other websites for those, but perhaps we should consider illustrating the Dorothy Parker pages with one or two examples.

 

Hey, that’s an idea, a contest, the first Old Fart Web Page contest, - winner to get one of the black walking sticks with a cigar case in the handle, designed by Soheil Mosun, from the original Old Fart Magazine mail order list, retail value $200 – they cost over $100 to manufacture – for best illustration of Dorothy Parker’s dictum that brevity is the soul of lingerie – entries to be exhibited discreetly on the Dorothy Parker page. How about it?

 

Write to us at curmudgeons@oldfartwebpage.com and attach your scanned entry. Remember most photographs are under copyright, so to ensure that we don’t get sued, take the photograph yourself, and get the model’s permission of course to enter the contest. We have to limit the contest to original photographs, I am informed by curmudgeonly lawyers. And please no smut, or pictures of guys – ugh!

 

When we have 100 entries we will close the contest and ask readers to vote for the winner of The Dorothy Parker Memorial “Brevity is the Soul of Lingerie” Contest.

 

Good luck, old farts.