Homonyms, Allegiance, and Really Bad Girl Scouts

The similarities between the poetry by Lee Ann Brown and Chapter A of Christian Bok's, Eunoia, have yet to dawn on me.Therefore I will focus on Brown's poetry of "Pledge" and try to elaborate in great detail.

To begin "Pledge" by Brown is entirely satirical. In using the first letter of the original word (in most cases, there is some deviating from the original)written in the Pledge of Allegiance and trading the ending with another word it makes the passage nonsensical; almost giving off a Lewis Carol vibe. For instance, "And to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." is replaced with "And to the reproduction for which it stands, one naughtiness,under good, indivisible,with lick and juvenile for anatomy." I'm sure this is not what the forefathers had in mind when they composed the Pledge of Allegiance. Changing the words gives this pledge a completely different connotation, on that note, it seems to be in favor of pedofillia, which is illegal (and therefore almost hilariously ironic). This reminds me of a Robot Chicken sketch when there is a little girl satirizing Schoolhouse Rock and singing about homonyms, which are words that are spelled or pronounced the same, but mean different things. Word of caution: This link is not for the easily offended. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bLhL9EFMEQ Why this reminds me of the poem, if not blatantly obvious, is because of the play on words (and the slightly derogatory or risque language used) which is in each of the examples.

In the second pledge, which is a mimic of the Girl Scout pledge, I found a lot of humor. Mostly because I was kicked out of Girl Scouts in 5th grade and relish in any opportunity to make fun of the beliefs which such a corrupt troop pretended to adhere too. Although I guess that was some time ago now. I realized long ago that falsely attempting to use those guidelines in their lifestyles didn't make those girls into good people. Which I can see as a sort of underlying message in these poems. People will remember these pledges for many years, and sometimes not even realize what they really mean, and how they should model their behavior accordingly. So do these fancy sayings have any real effect on us or cause us to have any more allegiance than we would already carry? I wish I knew. For it would be easy to say, yes, that because these pledges are ingrained in my head they have caused me to be more patriotic. Although in the case of the Girl Scout pledge it actually seems to have the reverse effect. The pledge is hammered into the heads of young girls for rote memorization, and I'm not sure it was ever fully explained to us why we should actually care about what the words really mean. The same seems to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance as well, if we are not taught the meaning of what the pledge stands for then does it really do it's job of instilling patriotic behavior and allegiance to one's country? I say no.