whisperblend

2007-03-18T20:34:00.000-04:00

Do you know that the war in Iraq killed 21 of our soldiers and Marines last week?
Do you know that it is costing the United States $1 billion every week?
Do you know that this war in Iraq weakens us abroad and divides us at home?
Do you know that when any Republican Senator, Congressperson, Governor, or Presidential candidate stands by our Preznit or tries to speak for ‘the troops’ he or she is merely promising to send more of them to their deaths?

And for what? For what exactly?

Just askin’.

I’m back and it is coming with both barrels motherf*ckers.

Peace.

Out.

Is It Safe

2006-11-08T23:01:00.000-05:00

You know, the thousand year Reich only lasted 12 years too.

Random Virginia

2006-10-16T20:20:00.000-04:00

Hey if you think George Allen is a cowboy, you think My Little Pony can win the Kentucky Derby.

Just sayin' is all.

Part 3 at week's end.

Part II

2006-10-08T21:48:00.000-04:00

When the people give way, their deceivers, betrayers, and destroyers press upon them so fast, that there is no resisting afterwards. The nature of the encroachment upon the American Constitution is such as to grow every day more and more encroaching … The people grow less steady, spirited, and virtuous, the seekers, more numerous and more corrupt, and every day increases the circles of their dependants and expectants, until virtue, integrity, public spirit, simplicity, and frugality become the objects of ridicule and scorn, and vanity, luxury, foppery, selfishness, meanness, and downright venality swallow up the whole society.
--John Adams

Sully was the new kid that autumn at Pia Zadora Charter School in Farmington, New Mexico. There used to be a great joke told about Pia Zadora and her acting abilities:

I am told that in a dinner theater production of “The Diary of Anne Frank” with Pia Zadora in the title role [no, really] when the Germans showed up, looking for hidden Jews, the audience started shouting “She’s upstairs! She’s upstairs!”

Thus it was, for reasons unknown, the founder of the school, no more than a sad collection of rusting Quonset huts set back about 200 yards from old interstate 64 next to a bustling Wal-Mart, named it after one of his favorite soft core porn actresses of the early 1980s.

The students at Pia Zadora were mostly kids from the nearby Navajo/Hopi res’, a few Chicano kids, and Sullivan Dewey. With his black hair and deeply tanned skin he blended in pretty well with his classmates but it was his clear green eyes set in high cheekbones that allowed him to stand out. And, he had a preternaturally vicious sense of humor that stood him in good stead with those same mates in their dealings with one Mr. G. W. Bystander.

His community service defined by the World Court in The Hague in a plea agreement Mr. Bystander, who necessarily operated under an appropriate assumed name, found himself teaching conflict resolution in a dusty part of the four corners area, in a ramshackle charter school in New Mexico.

Mr. Chainey, Bystander’s erstwhile partner was serving his sentence donning a blue vest each Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evening (sunlight being harmful to him) and handing out little yellow smiley face stickers at the Wal-Mart next door to the school. But Chains, as folks tended to call him, with his stroke victim grin just plain scared the hell out of the customers, mostly the children. He was banned from the grocery section where his mere passing soured the milk and spoiled the eggs in their cartons. And he couldn’t work the nursery either because, again, his presence led to massive die offs of the chrysanthemums and the petunias turned brown in their pots, and even the mulch ended up drying out and turning to dust in the bags. It was awful and finally the managers had Chains sit in the back with the security staff watching the monitors, mostly out of harm's way.

Sullivan’s mother was a ranger at the Chaco Canyon Culture National Historical Park Visitor Center. This is where Sullivan spent his weekend days and this is where he first felt the presence of the ghosts. Echoes of souls past and whispered witnesses to the follies and foibles of the present. Sullivan never actually saw a ghost in the empty pueblos and dusty canyons above Farmington but the wind hummed and howled as if in betrayal and mourning and slowly, slowly Sullivan felt a task settle upon him.

The pretzels were Sullivan’s idea.

Mr. Stanley Burns

2006-10-01T09:37:00.000-04:00

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

-Benjamin Franklin

PART I

Sullivan Francis Dewey believed in ghosts.

He stood at the podium in the City Hall in Oslo, Norway, on a cool late summer evening and felt not the presence of the many living souls sitting in the hall that night, dressed in their finest tuxedos and gowns, but the approving whispers of the vapor clad dead.

He began.

“Your majesties, excellencies, Prime Minister, Madame President, Mr. Secretary General, members of the Nobel Committee, distinguished friends all:

I stand here deeply humbled, breathing the free air, and speaking to you with profound thanks in my heart for this honor you have bestowed upon me and my team. Our work of the past decade, the efforts being recognized tonight, has, as its antecedent my efforts as a Mesoamerican anthropologist. By the time I arrived on the scene, so to speak, I stood on the shoulders of those who had toiled in jungles and deserts to map pyramids, roadways, and the royal courts of the societies that came before ours in what was once quaintly referred to as the New World. That work, while arduous and detailed, left many questions unanswered.

With the MacArthur Foundation grant I was awarded I was able to expand that work using what, at the time, were the most powerful supercomputers available running complexity theory and game theory algorithms to map out how those ancient societies developed and progressed down to the individual family unit level. With our tongues firmly planted in cheeks we began to describe ourselves as ‘quantum anthropologists’. But, really it was not at all very different from what paleontologists have been doing for half-century now that is observing lions and other predators in their native habitats in order to theorize about T. Rex behaviors. We just added a bit more granularity, if you will.

Before I get too deeply into the weeds though of how we transitioned into what became known as “peace gaming”, I want to share with you a little story from my childhood.

Last Night I Had a Dream

2006-08-22T22:18:00.000-04:00

I am on a riverbank on a bright hot day in Iraq. Small arms fire is hissing all around us and is soon followed by the shuddering whumph of incoming mortar rounds landing in our vicinity. I am with a group of people, some of whom are in uniform. And, absurdly, because this is a dream, I hear President Bystander in the background giving the Washington Happy Talk about, and I am not consciously making this up, economic explosion in Iraq. Meanwhile real explosions from the business end of Soviet era RPGs are making our lives, uh, interesting. We are told to get to the humvees for immediate evac’. Fine talc (from the Persian and Arabic talq, yeah I wiki’d it motherfuckahz, so?) sand thrown up into the air from the explosions settles on us as ash from a hundred little volcanoes as we make our retreat.

I am in the right rear seat of the lead humvee. Sitting next to me is James Carville. Sitting next to him is Senator Sam Brownback. In the front seat between two uniformed gentlemen is Senator Hillary Clinton. I turn to Carville on my left and his eyes are pale grey, wisps of white hair rest haphazardly on his skull like a halo. So I turn to Carville and say, ‘This is an utter and complete cataclysmic fiasco.’ Or words to that effect.

And Senator Clinton turns around from the front seat and says, “Shut up.”

I respond by nodding toward Carville and saying, “Bet you don’t tell him to shut up.” Carville and Brownback are silent and stoic as if in shock or some deep reverie.

Senator Clinton continues to glare at me as I begin to get emotional, “I am one of those 30 percent of the electorate that would eat broken glass for you.” I am, by now, weeping and in the midst of a soliloquy about American ideals and how even Brownback over there shares these notions that endow America and her people their nobility. But by now it’s ending, I sense that Carville and Brownback and Mrs. Clinton are sickened by my display. We ride on into the desert and an uncertain fate. I awake on the futon in the loft. Tired and ashamed.

Later in the morning I receive an email from a friend and he asks, “Is Hillary running?”

To which I now reply, “Is Colin Farrell stubbly”.

Maeve and the Dragon

2006-08-17T23:25:00.000-04:00

High above the desert among the snowy peaks of the Skyfang Mountains Bahbwahda the ancient wizard sits cross-legged in front of a small lean-to shelter outside the gated mouth of a cave. A small campfire sends smoke like ribbon into the silver blue of the morning sky. The wizard, long white hair under a woolen cap and a white beard is preparing his morning tea. He lifts his lips from the steaming teacup, looks to the mouth of the cave with its iron gate securely fastened and resumes his quiet chanting in a language so old and from so far away that no one else alive still speaks it save him. His breaths form little puffs in the cold air. He stops chanting for a moment yawns extravagantly, says, “Oh, no”, as his chin slumps to his chest and he falls asleep for the first time in 1000 years. Just as he begins to snore the iron gate across the cave swings open with a noisy creak and a great roar rises from deep under the mountain.

Down east of the wizard in a still green mountain meadow Kenelee the shepherd girl wakes up from a restless night. She had tossed and turned for hours with strange dreams as the moon marched as silent witness across the black sky. She sits up suddenly and looks out at her flock of fluffy sheep over the rim of her sleeping bag, her dog Flinker barks furiously and tears off toward the flock. As he does so a great purple dragon blots out the rising sun and approaches the flock from the opposite direction and not even noticing Flinker’s furious barks and yowls swoops down to grab 2 sheep where he hovers for a moment and says to the girl, “Thank you for breakfast. I am Malegauth and I know the name of every star in the sky and every grain of sand in the deep desert bring me all the gold, silver and jewels in your village down below and I will not make you my supper tomorrow.” And he stretched his great leathery wings and swept into the morning sky.

Kenelee leaps out of her bedroll to help Flinker gather the flock back together and get them down to her village. Kenelee had never seen nor certainly spoken with a dragon before but as she calmly gathered her flock together she felt her mother and father would know what to do. On her way back she came upon the wizard asleep in his lean-to, and the great open mouth of the cave. On one post was a small scroll with a picture of the dragon and the iron gate under these pictures was written - -

Duatha naneen ashen boyahun
Breve natal kenshima mian
Ooeevi chibe trip dayahun
Stella dovenee maladagathian

Kenelee had no idea what it meant but she thought it might be important and brought it with her.

Now as it happened a young woman from the city had been staying in the village that week. Her name was Maeve. She was small and had black hair that fell to her shoulders, dark skin and clear green eyes and a thin nose that crinkled when she laughed, which was often. She was a teacher and a healer. Each autumn when the snows drew nearer and the days grew shorter she would visit the mountain village and bring medicine for the people and books and candy for the children to help them make it through long winters. Young Kenelee almost knocked her down as she ran into the village shouting warnings about a sheep-stealing purple dragon up in the high meadow.

Maeve followed Kenelee through the village to the girl’s home and listened intently as she told the story from earlier that morning. Flinker was still nervous and paced back and forth outside the sheep pen around back. As her parents began to scold her for telling fanciful stories and scaring the folk Kenelee pulled a glittering purple scale the size of a dinner plate but as hard as steel and light as a butterfly out of her bedroll and tossed it on the table. To Maeve she handed the scroll who regarded it with much interest. Maeve, who had been glancing up at the sky often as the young girl told her story, picked up the scale and felt how light it was. She tucked it and the scroll into her cloak .When Kenelee finished her tale her parents sat her down and coaxed into her a hardy breakfast of warm cereal and milk and the last of the fresh summer fruit. Maeve stepped outside and glanced at the village. She knew she had to get back to her city, Celestian, and speak to the Council of Nine and her brothers and sister. Just then a group of boys ran by kicking and chasing a leather ball, Maeve leaned down and grabbed one of the boys and told him to ring the silver meeting bell in the center of the village she had something to say.

A few minutes later Maeve stood in her maroon velvet robes and told the people of Kenelee’s village to gather up only what they needed she was taking them back to the city with her – the old and the sick could ride in her wagons. While the teacher admitted to them that she knew very little of dragons having never seen one, she feared the worst and feared for these people who had little gold, silver or jewels to satisfy the dragon’s greed and no weapons at all with which to defend themselves. The city was a two-day ride and while it might be dangerous to be in the open desert at night with a hungry dragon about, leaving these people behind would be much worse. There was grumbling among the villagers and some who didn’t believe the story, but they trusted Maeve and off they all went.

Two nights later Maeve and the villagers arrive at the great city of Celestian, which was once in fact 2 small towns separated by the broad deep river to the sea. Once these two towns almost made war upon one another but a small girl and her friends and a silver horn stopped all that as they stood on the bridge over the river. But that is a story for another time.

The city was in chaos – Malegauth had beaten them there. He had taken cattle, demanded gold and silver and jewels and burned fields as he went. Maeve headed straight to the guild hall where the Council of the Nine would be meeting and found her brothers and sister there as well. The Council governed the city and represented the guilds and communities within the city and all had a voice here. Maeve and her brothers were its four guardians: Hatahn of Shield and Spear, the oldest son of Porthios the last king of Celestian; Buteo, which means Broadwing of the Ax; and, Anavise brave huntress of Bow and Arrow; and Maeve herself whose name means Bringer of Song, contributed knowledge and wisdom to the defense of the city.

Hatahn addressed the Council as Maeve entered the Great Guild Hall and assured them that he and the other guardians would defeat this dragon and return the city to its peace and prosperity. The Council for its part decided to string the dragon along and try to satisfy it with cheap trinkets and glass beads that they would offer if the Guardians were defeated.

And defeated they were all in the course of one moonlit night outside the high sand scrubbed walls of the city – Hatahn was first to confront Malegauth.

Hatahn stood outside the gate and said to the great dragon before him, “Come Malegauth you and I have business and my spear will lay its justice upon you.”

Malegauth spreads his wings breathed fire into the air and spoke, “I know the name of every star in the night sky and the name of each grain of sand in the deep desert, and your weapons will fall upon my scales as rainwater falls on the mountainside.” And with one swing of his tail the dragon knocks Hatahn back through the city gate and into the stables.

Buteo strides forward and says to Malegauth, “ You malcontent of a lizard, come bring your pretty face to my ax”. Malegauth looked up into the sky, laughed a dark bitter laugh as he reached down and grabbed Buteo in one massive claw and hurled him back into the city, the shards of his ax flung at him.

Anavise got off three arrows toward the dragon before he stole her gold pendant and chased her back with the fire of his breath behind the city walls.

Now all this time Maeve had been in the city’s heart, its library, poring over old books looking for ways to banish a dragon. The lives of her family and all her people now depended on her to find a way to defeat this ancient menace. Looking at the scroll Maeve concentrated on volumes of dead languages and finds what she has been looking for, an old wizard’s handbook of spells, each spell in all the old tongues. She reads the scroll and finds its translation - -

No weapon can harm him
Nor strength avail
To banish the dragon
Tell him to Get Lost
And you will not fail

Maeve strides out of the library as the dragon awaits this time inside the gates. Celestian is quiet and the night is clear and cold. Many of the city residents have fled to the sea in fear hoping for passage on the ships in the harbor to take them far away with all that they have on their backs.

Maeve stands before the great dragon who regards her with bemusement. He roars and sends flames high into the night sky as if he could ignite the moon overhead.

Malegauth growls, “I know all the names of the stars in the night sky and the names of each grain of sand in the deep desert where no man has ever walked. Your weapons do not harm me and there is nothing I cannot do.”

Maeve swallows and nervously steps forward, “Great Malegauth there is in fact one thing you cannot do.”

Now dragons, as you may know, are much given to boasting, but they nonetheless have a sense of honor and never turn down a wager…so, “What is this thing you say I cannot do.”

If you cannot do it will you leave us alone forever?

Impossible, there is nothing I cannot do, insisted the dragon.

“Perhaps you are right Malegauth and I am a fool and soon to be your supper, but will you trouble us no more forever if I am correct.”

The dragon ever prideful spits out, “Agreed.”

Maeve, for a moment becomes unsure of herself and the dragon sensing this puffs out his purple scaly chest and begins to spread his leathery wings, Maeve clears her throat and says just two words.”Get lost”

“Wha, what did you say to me,” roared the dragon as he lifts up into the sky and hovers menacingly above a serene Maeve, slim hands clasped at her waist in front of her. She knew she had won.

“Oh mighty dragon, you who know the name of every star in the sky and every grain of sand in the desert, you who have flown all over this great world and lived beneath it as well. I said, get lost. Find a place whereby you cannot find your way back, I say unto thee again. Get. Lost.

The dragon lifted his head toward the moon that had now climbed halfway up into the night sky and howled as if betrayed as in fact he was by his own pride and lit the sky with bright orange flame and in a flash of silver and green disappeared.

Those people left in the city and watching from the walls cheered as Maeve turned, weary from fear and the rush of confronting a dragon without benefit of sword or shield and walked slowly back into the warmth of a grateful people.

At the same moment the iron gate across the mouth of the cave swings shut and Bahbwahda wakes from his nap none the wiser.

A Toast and a Hope

2006-08-06T20:25:00.000-04:00

May the blessings of liberty some day come to all people of good will around the world.

We who are governed by greedy, fearful, cynical men who govern not well at all and wish instead to rule over us and our heirs, may they fade into a disapproving history. And may our memories of their vile deeds and awkward speeches drift away as dusty dry autumn leaves give way to the snows of a harsh winter. Winter does not endure, spring will come and bring growth and the promise of long summer days of peace and serenity.

Hope has not yet departed this land. We are free and we seek to do right. We are no different than our brothers and sisters elsewhere in this world. We are all connected to one another as the earth is to the sun, the moon to the earth, the seas to the land, you to your family and thus to all families everywhere.

20th Century 3 Degrees

2006-07-20T21:44:00.000-04:00

This was a eulogy I delivered some years ago for my Grandmother. A couple of snapshots for one story of one person from the 2oth century.

Well, Aloha

Father, I will tell you that my Grandmother loved her faith – it sustained her every day of her many years. It taught her humility, generosity, and a concern always for those less fortunate, for she always felt that she herself was quite fortunate. And wherever she lived, wherever she went, she was most concerned about how she could get to Mass.

You know that my Grandmother was a registered nurse for 25 years at Georgetown University Hospital. A working mother in the 1930s. As a nurse she touched so many lives, she worked for Dr. John Walsh who delivered Jackie Kennedy’s children. It’s personal for me though for she helped nurse my mother through 5 difficult pregnancies; 4 boys and Anne and Anne if you had come into the world as a boy she would have walked out of the delivery room and retired on the spot. And through Anne, who is a successful and respected nurse herself, Grandma’s work, her vocation continues on.

And after she retired and said goodbye to my Grandfather, who died more than 24 years ago, well, she couldn’t just stop working. She worked so hard, so long, caring for her own four boys, Grandfathers now, she had to keep going, stay connected, and contribute. She got on the bus, walked or caught a ride to where she wanted to go. She never learned to drive. “Honey”, she’d say, “I’ll take the bus.”

She worked for the Red Cross helping out at blood drives in the area. That gave her such pleasure being with the good people who do that vital work. And thanking the people who come to donate. You know it was just more fun when she was there.

And for the past few years I’ve had the privilege of keeping her up-to-date on the happenings at the White House, more specifically, in the Greetings Office. She has many friends there still and I know they’ll miss her. She got on that bus every week for no pay for almost 17 years to help get those cards and photos out. While it is true, that politics is at the margins of most people’s lives the work that those folks do helps every President regardless of party, be he scoundrel or saint, stay connected to the people he serves. And you know the pleasure and joy of those receiving those cards. I am so proud to be able to call y’all friends.

All that she was, all that she accomplished, I think she missed her true calling. We could all be retired living off the proceeds from the diet book Grandma should have written – how I thrived through 1 Great Depression, 2 World Wars, and 4 sons on a diet of onions, cantaloupe, grapefruit, and fudge. I mean, I’ll have what she had – uh, hold the onions.

I started by saying, Aloha, Grandma’s favorite greeting. Grandma loved Hawaii. The Royal Hawaiian Hotel on Waikiki Beach. This giant pink hotel. She went several times and never stopped wanting to return. There is so much to love about Hawaii but she loved that Royal Hawaiian because it is pink and because it is the hub of activity on the beach. So I’ll just ask that when you go there; standing on the beach as the sun comes up in the mornings over Diamond Head or Haleakala; or on a lanai watching the beautiful sun set in the Pacific, think of her.

She loved to travel. Hated to fly. Loved to travel. She loved California, the Mountain West, and the Canadian Rockies. And always she came back with new friends and stories to tell. And a bag. Usually a colorful bag – large – huge. She loved handbags. Some of you may have one or two.

She loved golf. Never played the game, but loved watching it on television and loved riding the cart at Joe and Lally’s down there in Bethany. Again, I think it was the green, green landscapes and she just thought the world of Tiger Woods. She loved watching him succeed and thought he embodied a classy demeanor that she admired.

She also admired Cal Ripken , and couldn’t the Orioles use him back, ah never mind. But, I think with Cal she saw a little of herself because for years and years he came to the job no matter what, stayed out of trouble, and conducted himself with dignity and class.

Well, there’s so much more, I’ve hardly begun but I’ll finish here and say that I’m not so sad today that I cannot see the light of her long long life in the eyes of all of you here today.

Finally, I’ll say that I’ll miss her and just ask that you teach your children the good things she taught you and in that way too she will live forever. We all will.

Thank you. Aloha oy. Mahalo.

A Letter for Realz

2006-07-15T00:40:00.000-04:00

The Honorable James H. Webb
Webb for Senate
P.O. Box Blah Blah Blah
Richmond, Virginia

Dear Jim,

May I call you Jim, great, thanks.

Look, Jim, I don’t really have much use for the current junior senator from the Commonwealth of Virginia. I happen to believe that George Felix Allen is a drooling idiot and a candy-ass golf cart cowboy wannabe but the boy does have $6.6 million cash on hand for the reelect and that alone commands a measure of respect. Mind a little free advice? OK, here goes.

To begin with, I know you don’t really need this nonsense. That’s coming through pretty loud and clear. Saw you talking to George Stephanopoulos’ hair on Sunday. As is manifestly clear you are right about Iraq, you don’t need to play that stupid game of timetables and responding to anything any of those blowdried gasbags ask you (you feelin’ me Chris Mathews and Tim ‘little russ’ Russert). In other words, answer the question you want to be asked and stick to it. No sarcasm neither – works at a fund raiser, maybe, but not with the gasbags. Here again, you’re right, the war profiteers (i.e. Haliburton) are rakin’ it in while our men and women in uniform grit it out in the suck , pickin’ sand out of unspeakable places and wondering if this is the day an IED makes a grease stain out of ‘em on Highway 8 between Hillah and Karbala.

Those brave Americans and their families are still the only ones President Bystander askin’ for sacrifice while Allen and the rest of ‘em talk about the injustice of the ‘death’ tax. Honestly, how many privileged sons and daughters of the Commonwealth will ever be singed by the estate tax. Now ask yourself and Allen while you’re at it how many sons and daughters of the Commonwealth are serving their fellow citizens in the United States Armed Forces – think there’s much overlap between the two groups. Doubt it. Godawful ain’t it?

This is why we need you. You and other members of this ‘band of brothers’ running in various races around the country. Leadership, oversight, common sense, and courage that’s what you’re offering. George Felix just bringin’ more of the same. Do you get me here – the Cheney Administration and their meat puppets in Congress like Allen don’t have any plan, they just got more of the same. Cronyism, cover-ups, fear and division. That’s what they got.

Now clearly, serving in the United States Senate ain’t rocket science. Exhibit A is George Allen. Exhibit B would be, oh, I don’t know, Norm Coleman, James Inhofe, sweet fancy Moses, take your pick, I won’t belabor the point. I will, however, thank you for offering to serve. The world is clearly too dangerous a place to continue to entrust stewardship of our future and our children’s future to these clowns. OK, let’s wrap this up.

Just a couple more things here, brother. First, you never know where the lies are gonna come from so don’t even try to defend against their shit. Whenever asked to respond to some outrageous bullroar just look into their eyes and say, “there he goes again”. Got it? Worked for Reagan, am I right people? Worked for the Gip’ It can work for you. Use it. It’s a nice little rhetorical trick that’ll allow you to marshal your thoughts before you launch.

Second and finally, the Rovians (and Allen ain’t nothin’ but a grinnin’ droolin’ acolyte of Atwater’s ratfuckers from back in the day) will attack you at your strongest perceived point. Once questions are raised there all else becomes grist for the cable mill, ask John Kerry, Max Cleland or Jack By God Murtha. Good men. Honorable and young once. I know you’ll do better. Be prepared.

Keep fightin’ brother. You’ve got a story to tell. Go out and tell it. And win.

Please.

Win.

With more respect than is apparent here,

Vulgarian

2006-06-16T21:31:00.000-04:00

Came across this book title this afternoon at Borders. Children's section, down there just past the Magic Tree House books:

Daddy Drinks Because You Shop

2006-06-08T21:09:00.000-04:00

OK, so today there was good news out of Iraq. An evil man is dead and he'll be in hell soon having a sweetened tea with the likes of Strom Thurmond. That's right no virgins for you but fuck all the goats you can wrestle away from Stalin.

Thank you to every member of our armed forces who took part in the airstrike today. And to all 130,000ish of you over there - thank you, come home soon.

And to whoever decided that Zarkie's usefulness was at an end and ratted him and perhaps his issue out - thank you as well. Be you Sunni or Persian. Thank you

2006-06-03T16:13:00.000-04:00

We turn our attention now to the good news out of Iraq today..

It takes the lotion out of the basket and rubs the lotion on its skin..and it writes letters

2006-05-28T17:24:00.000-04:00

Dear S,

Absolutely loved the ads that you ran last month on Kos, MyDD, Talking Points Memo and the like. Guess the Rude Pundit still working a bit too blue for you yet. But the ads were examples of a great strategy and hopefully allow you to leverage the netroots in your primary. I think they can make a real difference in this race you’re in.

Anyway, wanted to follow up with a suggestion for every Democrat everywhere running for anything this cycle. Two..little..words. Ready?

“Had enough?”

Rinse. Lather. Repeat. Roll with it brother. You ask every voter and every blowdried gasbag with a 22 minute cable shoutfest - you feelin’ me Chris Mathews and Tim ‘Little Russ’ Russert. HAD. ENOUGH.

I know, brilliant right? Ah, don’t mention it. Really. Don’t. Besides, it was Newt Gingrich’s idea - he just handed this to you in an interview in the April 3 issue of Time magazine. Imagine, the alleged ‘intellectual’ behind the 1994 Republican Revolution, although, let’s face it the last good Republican idea was the Emancipation Proclamation. Oh, I know he just got it from the title of one of Carville’s books, but that just proves my point, no.

Look, you could go all call-and-response on they asses. To wit:

Had enough of The Message and are you ready for The Truth.

Had enough of fearful, cynical men telling you to be afraid.

Had enough of watching protection becoming a protection racket.

And have you had enough of incompetents implementing bad policies.

Yeay and verily brothers and sisters. Yeay. And. Verily.

That’ll do it for now.

And yeah, I've had enough. Did you really have to ask.

A Fable in 3 Versions

2006-05-09T18:51:00.000-04:00

CLASSIC VERSION:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks he's a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself!

MODERN VERSION:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks he's a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.

CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.
America is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when they sing, "It's Not Easy Being Green".

Jesse Jackson stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group singing, "We shall overcome." Jesse then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake.

Nancy Pelosi & John Kerry exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his "fair share."

Finally, the EEOC drafts the "Economic Equity and Anti-Grasshopper Act," retroactive to the beginning of the summer. The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government.

Hillary gets her old law firm to represent the grasshopper in a defamation suit against the ant, and the case is tried before a panel of federal judges that Bill appointed from a list of single-parent welfare recipients.

The ant loses the case.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around him because he doesn't maintain it. The ant has disappeared in the snow. The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Vote Republican

I know. Ugly, racist, repugnant and for cripes sake, not even funny. The poor are poor because they're morally inferior. Hey, y'all lemme have a shot. Ready..here goes.

VULGAR VERSION:

Ahem.

The ant works so hard, so very hard all summer long. Hey, she needs the income, right. She’s a single mother now, not unusual for an ant. Especially one married to someone who had to go far away on his third pump over to the sandbox. And the third time, if you’ll pardon the expression, was the charm. You see, Mr. Ant was a truck driver back here in the world but he was also in the Marine Reserves. And boys and girls I think we all know what that means nowadays don’t we. Anyway, Mr. Ant died in a roadside bombing on Route Irish carting bottled water from the heavily fortified airport to Forward Operating Base Valiant 30 kilometers away. So sad, but as Tom Cruise would say, it is what it is.

So, Mrs. Ant is painting the spare bedroom in the basement of their town home. She’s having trouble making the mortgage without her husband’s income so she’s taking on a boarder, the President of the College Republicans at the local university. She needs to supplement her income because neither of her jobs offer health insurance. She works most nights, weekends, and holidays at SuperHypermart (and without the discount her 2 kids wouldn’t have clothes) and 3 days a week she is cook and housekeeper to the Grasshopper. She finishes the paint job and decides to be a little subversive and leaves out a Marine recruitment brochure in the room on the nightstand under the bible.

Now life is good for the Grasshopper. Got his own syndicated radio show where he works 3 hours a day, maybe 5 if he needs to record some bumpers or spend any time in the production studio, able to supplement that income with the sale of his "books" (totally ghosted by some underpaid unknown scribe) and "newsletter". People love to hear him go on and on about feminazis and environmental wackos (no Kermit in this story, amphibians all over the world are being decimated by an invasive species of fungus that now thrives in new places because night and day air temperatures are moderating due to global warming). He’s able to more than take care of his 2 ex-wives and even dates a snappy nonblonde CNN anchor for awhile. The Grasshopper asks the Ant to make another run to the pharmacy to pick up his prescription for his back pain. He doesn’t hear her reply because of the acute deafness caused by his addiction to the painkillers - so he lights up another cigar as he cranks up the sound on the preseason football game between the Eagles and the Vikings. Sure looked good on that new plasma screen HDTV the Grasshopper bought with his tax cut.

Midway through the 4th quarter just as the Vikings are about to punt - the Ant is arrested on prescription drug fraud. A felony in her State. She pleads it down to a misdemeanor if she’ll turn in the Grasshopper. She does - Grasshopper pleads no contest to a single felony charge and gets 18 months probation and rehab, the usual sentence for first time offense. First time offenders and the leniency of the justice system usually one of the Grasshopper’s favorite topics on his radio show.

Obviously Ant loses her housekeeping job but also the job at the SuperHypermart once store manager finds out about the misdemeanor conviction. She loses her boarder who was a big fan of the Grasshopper’s and is not happy that she turned on him. Oh, and he scrawls an obscenity on the recruitment brochure and leaves it on the nightstand on top of the bible.

Winter comes. Grasshopper spends the weekends in Boca Raton and just has to check in weekly with his PO.

The Ant’s younger child who already has asthma gets walking pneumonia and has to spend a week in the hospital. No health insurance, the Ant puts the whole thing on her 17.99% Mastercard. They fall behind on that one and the creditors eventually come and take the house and the Ant moves in with her sister across town. It’s a small house and they make do for awhile but truth is that her brother-in-law is a mean drunk and gets abusive when the Vikings lose.

Mrs. Ant gets her kids out of there and ends up in a shelter.

Grasshopper sits in his darkened living room watching the NBA playoffs on his big screen tv wondering why he can’t get good help these days.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Vote Republican - you’re on your own out there suckahz.

The Oracle of Ass-Burn

2006-04-07T23:21:00.000-04:00

INTERIOR. BEDROOM. A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT.

A man tosses and turns, the woman on the other side of the bed is in the deep repose of the REM sleep of an honest soul.
Along the wall of the man’s side of the bed is a small wizened figure and he’s singing softly, almost a lullaby to the couple. Barely heard above the rain lashing the windows.

FIGURE IN TATTERED QUEEN ANNE CHAIR

Heaven, I’m in heaven
And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak
And I seem to find the happiness I seek….
Hey, wakie wakie hands off snakie there Vulgarian

MAN IN BED SITS UP AND THROWS OFF COVERS

Christ…wah, who’s there? Is that? Couldn’t be. Joe Franklin….
You scared the shit out of me, is it you Lord? Do you know what time it is?

FRANKLIN

Close enough.
Is that some kind of joke. Do I know what time it is. Right. And, uh, for the record I did not rape that girl, what’s her name, Sarah Silverberg.

MAN

Silverman. God, isn’t she adorable and hilarious, what’s not to like.

FRANKLIN

Look Vulgarian, make no mistake God shall not be mocked for a person shall reap only what he sows.

MAN

Heard that one. Galatians, right? Or are you Deion Sanders all of a sudden going all third person on me.
Look Lord, I was not mocking you. I was mocking those pampered thieving clowns who refer to themselves as your humble servants on Earth. I mean c’mon where’s the love for the poor and the sick. You know, other than zygote-Americans.
It’s just that I don’t hear the Falwells, Dobsons, Robertsons and so forth goin’ on and on about poor people, the disenfranchised, helping the sick without reservation or easing suffering in our wealthy society.

FRANKLIN CROSSES HIS LEGS

What’s your point, here V, I don’t see you too often down at the soup kitchen or going door to door for the battered women’s shelter. Knowwhatahmean.

MAN

Word. I am an utterly compromised human being. But, hey, I don’t claim to speak for you or to you on my own damned network. All I got is the little pink blog that no one reads. And. All I’m sayin’ is that once you take all the shit about Jesus helping poor people and lepers and shit out of the New Testament, whadayagot left. Not much, right.
I mean all your guys wanna talk about is fuckin’ . You know, no gay fuckin’ No lesbian fuckin’. No premarital fuckin’. No fuckin’ without procreatin’ In case you haven’t noticed Lord there’s 6 and half billion of us on this muddy rock. And, really, blah fuckin’ blah.

FRANKLIN SMILES

Fucking makes the world go ‘round, Vulgarian.

MAN

You said it brah. Just how ‘bout you tell your boys to start goin’ on and on about alms for the poor and have ‘em go all Quaker on us and start opposing war and shit. You know, thou shall not kill and shit. I don’t remember seein’ any caveats on that granite monstrosity that Judge Moore carts around Alabama.
And, finally, because I gotta get some sleep here. How much money does the Catholic Church have anyway.

FRANKLIN

Now, V, you know that’s classified.

MAN

Thought so. How ‘bout Benedict gives it all to Rwanda and Uganda and lives in a grass hut at the top of the Spanish Steps for awhile. Robertson sells it all and moves to Alabama and builds houses, you know, like Jimmy Carter.
Oh right. Nevermind.

FRANKLIN

Look, chief, I gotta go. Just wanted to say you’re doin’ a heckuva job.

MAN

Now, wait a minute. Hell you mean by that.

FRANKLIN

Start worrying about things you can do something about. Dobson doesn’t know Corinthians from a hole in the ground. And Falwell, well, besides producing enough gas to melt all the glaciers in Greenland couldn’t find his own ass with both hands. Now, go get ‘em tiger.

MAN SITS UP AGAIN
After a dream about the green foamed sea that becomes a nightmare about a volcano the man sits up in bed, and says “Lemon Pledge” rubs his eyes squints at the clock radio that flashes 3:33, groans and lays back down on his side and drifts back to a fitful sleep.

END

Pat and God

2006-02-19T19:03:00.000-05:00

Let us propose 2 things on this fine blustery day.
The first thing is that the Lord our God works in mysterious ways. The second thing and it’s corollary, really, is that those religious leaders among us who have their own networks, radio shows, fabulous parsonages, city states and what have you, really do, in fact, talk to this God on a fairly regular basis. By cell phone, Blackberry, or conventional land line it really doesn’t matter. They chat, make small talk, debate a little, the usual. No big whoop. And that brings us to tonight’s story.
The 16th hole at Hell’s Point Golf Course in Virginia Beach, Virginia, is in a word, a beast. The distance from the black tournament tees to what is the smallest green on the entire course is 582 yards, dogleg left. As the course brochure puts it this shot at Hell’s Point requires accuracy and finesse. Course management and patience is required here. Play this hole to make par. Don’t get greedy. Should you make a birdie, consider it a bonus. This hole has reduced better men than today’s foursome to bitter tears and angry recriminations in the clubhouse as they soak their sorrows in weak gin tonics and tip the bartender grudgingly as they clench one pleathered fist and grimace at anyone who’ll listen that they will par that damn hole if it’s the last thing they do upright in this life.
So it is that James Dobson of Focus on the Family squints into the afternoon sun, hand over his brow as he says, “Hey, Pat, you really got ahold of…oh no it’s hooking left, left, left, ooooh it’s in those trees about 200 yards I’d say. Looks like somebody’s caddy hangin’ out down there, maybe he can help you find your ball.”
Pat Robertson sneered at Dobson, “Thanks, James I don’t need your insipid play-by-play, how about just keeping your eyes on the ball so’s that we know where it lands. And where’s Gary? Is he in the men’s room, again. Ah, of course here comes numbnuts to grace us with his presence.”
Gary Bauer was emerging from the men’s room from just across the cart trail, his astonishing caddy Arturo trailing behind with an odd smile on his broad, copper face, all glistening capped teeth and long, pomaded black hair, and a powerful cologne leading the way. To call Arturo Ochoa Lopez y Garza de Medillo the black sheep of his family was an understatement. Father a retired Argentine diplomat who over the years had helped the Israelis hunt down fugitive Nazis in his native land, his mother a professor of classics at the University of Buenos Aires. While both his brother and sister had become physicians and prominent in their fields Arturo had careened from one bad endeavor to the next until he landed in Houston, Texas, and the arms of Senor Gary at an evangelicals conference back in 1999. Ever since he had made a modest if steady living - $5000 a month and free reign of the Capitol Hill townhouse so, white dudes in cardigans and young hill staffers could come over and blow him any time of the day or night. Always on call, always at the ready. That’s our Arturo.
Pat Robertson put away his driver as he said, “Gary you little twerp, you’re up, try to get it off the tee this time.”
Bauer reached for his Calloway graphite shafted 1 iron and put the ball on the little orange tee and said, “Pat, honey, sweety, do you still fuck your wife for pleasure, because we really wanna know.”
Arturo chuckled but Robertson scowled as he got in the cart and took off to find his ball, flippin’ the bird over his shoulder as he drove up the path.
Dobson and Jerry Falwell cleared their throats and waited their turns. Falwell, as well, farted loudly, braaaap. They both were decent low handicap golfers and thought a round on Pat’s dime was a small price to pay to keep an eye on the Cornpone Soprano and Bauer both of whom continued to harbor Presidential ambitions having both made respectable showings in Republican caucuses in years past.
Robertson brought his cart to an abrupt halt. He got out and looked across the fairway into the grass and the loblolly pines, where a small black man was just standing and smiling at him. Robertson looked back to the tee while Bauer hit his shot which rolled past where he was standing with some good momentum. “Little bitch”, muttered Robertson as he walked across the fairway, Callaway Big Bertha 3 iron in hand, ready to find his ball and take his second shot.
Robertson said to the Man, “I say, son, have you seen a Titleist IV around here”.
“Pat”, said the Man.
“Mind giving me a little help here,” Robertson was wacking at the grass with his club looking for his ball.
“Pat.”
“You’re being mighty familiar and I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced, hey, anybody ever tell you you look like Sammy Davis, Jr.” Except without the glass eye, funny thing, I never knew which eye.”
“PAT, it’s ME” , said the small black man in the dark blue silk shirt and tan cashmere slacks.
Robertson stopped weed wacking and leaned in with a tentative grin, “Lord, is it really you?”
“Word”, said the Lord breathing in the air and smiling at a Blue Jay calling overhead.
“I don’t understand, Lord, we usually do this on a conference call back at the office”.
The Lord rotated one good eye in Robertson’s direction as he said, “I was in the neighborhood, Pat. Thought I’d give you a little face time, that ok with you.
The Lord smiled as he lit an enormous cigar, striking the match in the air. “Mind if we pedeconference a bit”.
Robertson slung his club over his shoulder as he walked under the trees in the afternoon sun.
The Lord smirked a little as he asked Robertson, “How are you and the wife getting along, things ok at home?”
Sheesh, thought Robertson, what is it with everybody today. “We’re fine Lord, thank you for asking”.
“Don’t mention it, babe”. The Lord winced and rocked back on the heels of his calfskin loafers as Falwell’s ball zipped between them but was gently guided back onto the fairway and dropped between 2 kidney-shaped sand traps 150 yards from the flag.
Whoops and hollers from the tee as the Lord continued walking and said under his breath, “You’re welcome, Jerry.”
Robertson and the Lord came to a small clearing where a mockingbird up above was running through his litany of calls and whistles, mimicking the Jay, a starling, a red-shouldered hawk, on he went but then fell silent as the two men entered the clearing below.
The Lord took the cigar out of his mouth as he blew a smoke “ring” that looked like the Trevi Fountain in Rome with pigeons and tourists all around. Robertson almost wept as he scratched behind his ear. He looked down at the grass and said, “Hey look, Pat, a Titleist IV, right?”
Robertson cleared the ball from the grass.
The Lord continued, “Pat I just popped in to tell say you’re doin’ a heckuva job.”
Robertson looked worried as he shifted his eyes around the clearing. “Well thank you Lord, I am merely your humble servant.”
“Yeah, well, I loved the Sharon thing although technically, not mine. Don’t do strokes, well ok I’ve done 5 but only 2 on this planet and none this century. Don’t ask, ok? Just. Don’t. Ask. Besides, I’m more of a big picture kind of guy, know whadamean?”
The Lord put his cigar back in his face, “Look, you keep talkin’ that smack about the Middle East, Dover Township, Europe committing racial suicide what with all the Ayrabs and immigrants and whatnot, yada, yada, yada.”
“And stick with the Old Testament will ya, it’s my favorite to tell ya the truth”
Robertson looked down at the ball “ I think you can count on me doin’ my best, Lord.”
The Lord winked as he took the cigar out and jabbed it toward the preacher, “I know I can, Pat. Heckuva job.”
“Oh and Pat…loosen your grip just a bit - won’t hook so much.”
Robertson turned around and found himself alone in the clearing as a flock of starlings overhead whispered into the fading winter light. He hit his ball cleanly onto the fairway.
Somewhere up ahead Jerry Falwell leaned over his ball and farted loudly, braaap. Dobson and Bauer rolled their eyes at each other and sat in the cart as Robertson came up behind them slapping Arturo on the back.
The men completed the last 2 holes with a minimum of rancor and were high-fiving each other as the made their way into the clubhouse. Just a few clouds to roll in off the nearby ocean to obscure the setting sun.

The Coldest War

2005-12-27T21:22:00.000-05:00

Beep beep beep beep.

Slam.

Ouch.

Archie Limekiln woke up and stared at the alarm clock that currently flashed 10:33am. Classic rock shot out at him from the radio like an arrow through his aching head. Evanescence or Coldplay he could never keep ‘em straight. This morning it just hurt. He couldn’t remember where he got that Patron tequila, hell, he might have stolen it, but it did the trick and this morning he was paying the piper, so to speak.

Shite, Archie thought, it was only Tuesday. It was just the first week in December and already he had worked 23 days straight. At least another 17 days to go working doubles at the Collier County Mall for a little extra cash before he heads further south to the Keys to work doubles washing dishes at the dingy restaurant at Lester’s Fish and Dive in Marathon until the tourist trade dries up soon after Memorial Day.

Archie got up, put on the coffee while he brushed his teeth and his dirty blonde beard before hopping into the shower. 5 minutes of hot water today, more than enough, he thought. Tonight after work he’ll just get into the cheap vodka with his cold pizza and he’ll grit it out or not even take a shower before heading to the mall tomorrow morning. He won’t really need the hot water again until Friday when he’ll do the dishes.

You gotta be one tough cracker to get through summers in Southwest Florida, and you could, at the very least, call Archie one tough cracker. Ran away from his family over here from Liverpool for a Disneyworld vacation they won in a radio contest. That was 17 years ago and Archie had scratched out a living ever since. Other than 2 bouts of West Nile virus he had bounced along pretty well.

After a breakfast of coffee, grapefruit, and dry cocoa puffs Archie heads out the front door of the ground floor garden apartment at the edge of Naples, hops on his electric scooter and tools up I-41 to the mall for his shift that will run until 11:00pm.

When he gets to the mall he parks next to a clump of Australian pines growing up out of the asphalt at the Sears end near the abandoned Red Lobster that now served as a cock fighting venue for the Dominican True Bloods that ran rackets in this part of Collier County.
Archie made his way in through the appliance section of Sears where he could see the new wall-sized membrane tv screens on display showing last night’s final broadcast of the CBS Evening News with Bill O’Reilly. Ironic, Limekiln thought, that O’Reilly had chosen the Christmas season to retire, it’s really how he had made his bones, so to speak.

Ten years ago Archie had joined O’Reilly’s crusade, if you will, his war for Christmas he had called it so many years before. O’Reilly had taken a wrongful termination settlement from Fox “News” and parlayed that into his own foundation. He had to shelter that windfall somewhere.

It was a 501(c)(3) a “non-profit” you know, kind of like Pat Robertson’s 700 Club or Jerry Falwell’s very old “Moral” Majority, in other words a pure profit making venture and the best way to make money in the America of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. For $35 each year you got O’Reilly’s monthly news report, web access and dial in priority to the radio show and a little laminated card that identified you as a Righteous United Believers Empowerment Soldier (RUBES) in O’Reilly’s Army. Man, it felt good. For awhile. Then Archie couldn’t really swing the $35 and O’Reilly joined CBS and became their flagship anchor and, really, after that, what was the point. Because by then, O’Reilly had won.

Archie made his way to the underground locker room to don his gear and his robe and his belt. Get in the Christmas mood dude, thought Archie. A couple of deep breaths, his gear assembled Archie headed upstairs to the main Christmas display in the center of the mall under the food court. The elaborate display where all the parents brought their little ones for a Christmas picture to be photoshopped into all their greeting cards would be Archie‘s abode for the next 11 hours. Until closing time.

Archie sat in the glorious Christmas throne. The sword of righteousness in one fist, the hickory staff of justice in the other clenched fist as the first family tentatively crept up to set their little 4-year old Tyler on Archie’s lap. Archie scratched at the plastic crown of thorns and he bled a little as Tyler sat down with a huge grin. Archie got into the spirit of Christmas a true Furious Jesus as he asked little Tyler what was good in life. And Tyler answered him:

“To crush your enemies,
see them driven before you.
And hear the lamentations of their women.”

God, it was like Silent Night, Holy Night to Archie’s modern ears and he laughed a dry husky laugh and gave the kid a candy cane while the green and red clad apostles took pictures and sent him on his way. Another day had started for the Collier County Mall Christmas Jesus.

Only 5 hours to dinner break.
Mele Kalikimaka.
Y’all.

Author! Author!

2005-11-19T19:35:00.000-05:00

With apologies to any random Discovery Channel or Learning Channel program other than those inane (and desperately cheap to produce) home makeover shows or any of that nonsense starring those morons with the tattoos that trick out motorcycles. But I digress.

Igliik sat on his haunches next to the fire as the sun went down along the low ridge off to his right. Facing south Igliik looked out over the river valley in the twilight of an early autumn evening 27,000 years ago in what is now southern France. Igliik was a small man of about 19, almost middle-aged and fortunate for his people, stout ,with long arms, dark hair swept back by the wind, and twinkling black eyes that sat like marbles deep in a bearded face with strong cheekbones and a smooth forehead. Sitting with him on this ridge were his brother Mahag and what passed for the small band’s shaman, Tegelek. Not a loquacious people, the brief blessing ceremony at an end, the 3 men sat around the fire enjoying the sounds of the valley as night fell.
Some time later, with only the stars for company , and as the owls hooted to each other in the valley below, Igliik picked up his leather satchels and headed into the cave. Igliik did a little inventory in his mind as he descended deeper in the darkness. He wore a cloak made from the skin of the old she-bear who had occupied this cave before. He had been up the previous spring expecting a battle royal in order to chase a bear and her cubs out of the cave, but the she-bear had no cubs this year and she was near death when Igliik found her just a few feet from the entrance having no energy left to head out after her winter hibernation. It was, in fact, a mercy killing since the bear had lost all her teeth and was in terrible pain from a gum infection. Over his shoulder Igliik carried two leather bags one filled with elk jerky and some dried fish, and walnuts and tallow lamps, enough for 3 days, the other his paints in small bladders that he would use to fill one wall with images of his life and people. With one hand he carried a torch to light his way forward and down. Water would be no problem, where he was going was a small clear pool with a sandy beach, and most importantly no bats to foul the water. After a couple of hours and a few scrapes and bruises Igliik made it to the small beach and the wall that would serve as his canvas.

The people of this time and place had no elaborate religion or ceremonies, that had been for the Neandertals mostly to the north and who had died out some 5,000 years before, largely for reasons unknown. Igliik and his band thought of the Sun as their Father, the Moon as his Sister, the Earth as their Mother with the stars as ancestors and the herd animals as mostly benign spirits to be represented on the cave walls as a clarion call for next spring’s hunts. Their dead they buried with a few meager belongings and little fanfare.
Igliik got to work. He lit a tallow lamp and took a deep breath, closed his eyes for a moment as the silence of the cave wrapped around him like a blanket. He opened his eyes, dipped his fingers in the paints and began drawing stick-like figures that to him represented the mammoth, the elk, the cave bear, the smilodon, and the cave lion. He painted them grazing contentedly on the plains to the east, jumping, running, caring for their young. In short living life as he and his people had observed them for many generations with little change. Further along the wall he drew his own people singly or in twos arms raised in triumph or terror he knew not which. He painted like this for 2 and a half days finishing with the wall by showing a massive hunt of several bands chasing elk and mastadon into a deadly ravine where the hunters would descend to finish the killing and divide the meat and organ and skins, virtually all of the animal among the bands to get them through the summer, autumn, and winter into next spring’s hunt. Like so many artists before and since Igliik represented those things he saw and knew of the prehistoric world around him.

Late on the third day, his food gone, and the last tallow lamp flickering weakly in the vast dark, Igliik became a little delirious whether from hunger or the solitude and silence he got a weary smile on his face as he went to the wall one last time. On it, in a small corner near the water’s edge he drew 2 people engaged in coitus. And thus for Western society at least, pornography was born in a cave in Southern France many years ago. After a couple of hours ascent Igliik stepped out of the cave on a cloudy night, snow began to fall as he stood on the ridge next to the remains of the fire from 3 nights before. He looked down at the evergreens with clumps of aspen trees, pale in the dark but a brilliant gold during the day. Connected at the roots they often turn colors all at once. Igliik made his way down the rocky path and back home to his small band.

Speaking of turning aspens we come now to one I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, formerly Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff and National Security Advisor to the Vice President of the United States Richard Bruce (big time)(Dick) Cheney. Ugh. Product of the finest schools Andover prep school, graduated from Yale, and a law degree from Columbia Law School. Years of government service at the highest policy levels at the Department of Defense, Department of State and, finally at the White House. Currently unemployed (but sitting on a $5 million legal defense fund) and record holder for number of felony indictments of a sitting senior White House appointee, and after Teapot Dome and the Grant Administration that’s saying something. He currently possesses five felony indictments, to wit:
one count of obstruction of justice;
two counts of perjury; and
two counts of making false statements. Dude’s facing up to $1.25 million in fines and 30 years in Federal stir. All because they were too lazy to refute a former ambassador who largely agreed with them. But because he wasn't playing nice they decided to smear him by revealing his wife's non-official cover status at the CIA - an organization Libby and his freres considered disloyal. It was lazy and stupid and venal and it was how these people have been winning elections for 25 years.

But really, all that’s besides the point. Mr. Libby put out a novel of early 20th century Japan 9 years ago. Book is entitled, “The Apprentice” and tells the story of a rural apprentice innkeeper named Tetsuo and his coming of age as the circus arrives and he gets his world rocked, if you will. The following passage has appalled internet and dinner party audiences all over town for the past few weeks, I bring it to you from the New Yorker magazine from early last month as they did a survey of the variety of Republican authors and their awful attempts at erotica, such as the following:

At age ten the madam put the child in a cage with a bear trained to couple with young girls so the girls would be frigid and not fall in love with their patrons. They fed her through the bars and aroused the bear with a stick when it seemed to lose interest.
And, finally:
He asked if they should fuck the deer.

I couldn't even type that without wanting to take a shower in lye soap. Get one of those Karen Silkwood anti-radiation scrubdowns, you know. I mean what is it with these people. Never mind.

Now look I’m pretty sure Igliik and his people had were very limited in their moral senses, and he may have even bit somewhat bemused by Mr. Libby’s little scene there, you know, if someone would describe it to him. But really, well, number one the passage speaks for itself, and number two makes you wonder how far we have really come in 27,000 years of civilization, you know.

The Gnome Comes Home

2005-10-28T23:31:00.000-04:00

and forever after October 28 became known as St. Patrick's Day

Captain Kinerah knew she should not have had that breakfast burrito in the galley before they made their jumps. The captain of the survey ship DELOREAN made her approach and kept one eye on the intruments monitoring the status of the nearby star out here on this far tip of the arm of a backwater solar system in the spiral galaxy. The panel told her that this sun was unstable, had been for some time, and was bathing the planet below with high doses of ultraviolet and gamma radiation. She flipped the comlink switch and advised her passengers to hold on as she initiated the braking maneuver to enter the planet's thin atmosphere. Goddam snipe hunt she thought, gripping the joystick and gritting her teeth as the ship bounced along the outer fringes of the atmosphere before letting the computer take over for final approach to the landing zone. Her co-pilot should have been upfront with her, but it seems he had gotten into the burritos as well and was currently curled up in a fetal ball in his bunk midships battling the same intestinal bug she thought glumly.

Bushie the porch gnome felt the heat of the noonday sun on his back like a hot iron. His burlap garment scratched at his withered and chapped flanks as he trudged on I-10 out of Pascagoula and away from the porch for the last time. The Lott clan, bereft of all but the home in Pascagoula let the gnome go as he was of little use to them any longer. The decades of abuse they dished out for sport and the neglect they demonstrated for fun left the gnome of little use to anyone at all. Walking, walking leaving behind the spiders and Karl the black snake who had been his only "friends" for so long. Other than them no one heard his whimpers at night as the ghosts of the dead and maimed soldiers and marines, their wives, fiances, and mothers, and the children unnamed and uncounted as 'collateral damage' in the myriad conflicts he had set in motion tore at him with their skeletal limbs and milky eyes. Ever westward he slouched, Gulfport, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans where he stopped for the night and crawled under a wrought iron bench in the blue light of Jackson Square to doze fitfully, if at all.

The DELOREAN set down on a high ridge overlooking what appeared to be a dry creek bed. The team from the Imperial Archeological and Historical Institute disembarked in the glistening environmental (e)-suits and set about surveying the landscape. This team of 3 men and 2 women were specialists in early human history and they were looking for something very specific on this trip. Much of human history through the early 29th century had been pretty well preserved but there were gaps, there always are. And this team was looking for clues to what happened in the years leading up to the singularity that occurred in the middle 21st century when artificial intelligence became viable and nanotechnology matured freeing mankind from his little world at long last.

Bushie the porch gnome made his way out of New Orleans for the last time. Again, westward he trudged in the heat and the humidity, now add chafing to his troubles as his calloused, fungus infected feet dragged on the cracking pavement out of town and on to Houston and from there further west still. It was 3 days of this when he came over the road and spied what he was looking for, the remains of a small 'ranchette' now overgrown with cedar trees, and wild horses, which the gnome feared in a primal fashion. So he avoided the horse herd, and they in turn gave the gnome wide lattitude because of the smell he gave off. The porch gnome made his way, bells on his nutsack jingling, to a pinion tree by an almost dry creek, oily green water making its way south to, well, wherever, the gnome didn't care. He sat down against that tree and drifted off to a sleep with no dreams, but as he did he felt an almost forgotten rumble in his bowels, and one final release, a salt denuded pretzel in the dust. Well, better'n chokin' on it he thought. And died.

The archeologists had been working this site and a few others like it nearby for the past 2 weeks and they were almost ready to pack up and head home across the galaxy when their most senior and dedicated member, a widower named Collins saw, in the late afternoon sun, a flash down by the creekbed. He walked over to the spot and began brushing away at what appeared to be fossilized human remains fairly well preserved in this atmosphere, but still, not much more than the outlines of bones, except for 2 tiny steel spheres the size of BBs that had settled in the pelvic region of the remains, which Collins collected in a lucite jar and headed back to the ship for final departure.

Once in orbit the team catalogued their samples and Collins finally brought out the miniscule steel spheres and put them under a microscope - on one side had been inscribed the word neuticals and on the other the single letter W.

Captain Kinerah told her passengers to get ready for jump as she made her way back to the head, Collins asked her what was up and the captain, never a fastidious woman, told him "calm down pops, I gotta hit the head and take a cheney, stay away from those black bean burritos. "

option 3

2005-10-22T21:36:00.000-04:00

Miss me, y'all.

Never thought of the 3rd option for Ms. Miers:

C) She's Eddie Haskell in drag.

Sorry, I've been away. Computer broke and had to go out and get a new one. We'll see how long this one lasts.

The Fixer

2005-10-03T22:33:00.000-04:00

Every Administration has one. The fixer, the one who knows where all the bodies are buried, all the soft spots, where to apply the leverage, you feelin' me? Well, because Ms. Miers has known the President for 30 years back when he was presumably still doin' coke and Jim Beam in truly herculean quantities if not passed out Tri Delts then she's seen some tings. And she knows how to keep secrets. So shrub owes her, bigtime. And so that brings us to today.

Now look , this is a good pick for the simple reason that it seems to set the loony wingnuts' teeth on edge (or is that tooth). And under any circumstances that is a good thing. Keeps 'em from doing the other shit they seem to be good at and that's basically dismantling the New Deal and Great Society, setting the rest of us at each other's throats, and toppling Flinstone-level third world armies of frightened conscripts and then setting the most volatile region on earth 1) against us and, 2) on fire with populations overwhelmingly made up of disillusioned and very angry 13-25 unemployed males. But I'm not debatin' on that shit tonight, no.

Here's what I am talkin' 'bout - David Frum who used to be a speechwriter for our current manchild in chief said last week that Harriet told him that George Bush was the most brilliant man she ever met. Now from this one little bit of hearsay evidence we can make one of two conclusions, either:
A) Harriet has an exceedingly limited social circle and all reports indicate that the American people are certainly gettting their money's worth here in that all she does is work 16 hour days 7 days a week. Or,
B) To engage in hyperbole like that is to let slip the fact that she must possess an extremely acerbic and lacerating droll wit.

I choose B.

Hear ye, hear ye.

All rise

The Loneliest Gnome in All the World

2005-10-02T22:24:00.000-04:00

One of the oldest adages in politics and, one of my favorites as a matter of fact, is that a somebody beats a nobody. Every time.
Ladies and gentlemen I give you - - Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and, for good measure, Senator Hillary Clinton to name just two.
So it is that Bushie the porch gnome finds himself bungeed to the spare tire on the back of Boss Trent’s ramshackle motorhome on the way to the inauguration of the chief executive of New Orleans one Paris Hilton, soon to be the Honorable Paris Hilton, Mayor of New Orleans.
Also in attendance, Governor Britney Spears Federline Zimmerman Hudson Taomorino al-Hakim Jefferson Jackson Rodriguez Swett presiding. Why the fuck not, right. Right?!
Boss Trent was asked to do the Mayor-elect’s hair and makeup and so it was they hit the road that January day.
Anyway, it was freezing this January morning on the road between Pascagoula and New Orleans and Bushie was not a happy gnome. No, not at all. But, he was very rarely a happy gnome since he retired to Boss Trent’s stoop lo these many years ago. This is where he said he would be someday and that day came and people were only too happy to oblige him his dream of spending time on the porch of Trent Lott’s home in Pascagoula, the one rebuilt after the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina. This is where he said he would come someday as the rest of Mississippi lay in ruins and southern Louisiana was nothing but a fetid miasma of sorrow and recrimination. Revered he was still in a few compounds in Idaho, reviled he was everywhere else.

It was unthinkable that Bushie would have moved on as a relatively young gnome after his presidency to do important things. Contribute to humanity, if you will. Write papers or articles for some faux “research institute” like the Project for a New American Century(PNAC) (the folks who provided the “intellectual reasoning” for the invasion of Iraq) or the American Enterprise Institute PNACs rancid progenitor. Or that he would have embarked on a studious retirement of bookwriting on his life and times and “service” to a great Nation. Wrtite books? Write books? Yeah, right. He didn’t read books, despite what you saw tucked under his arm on the way to Marine 1 on the South Lawn enroute to another dusty dry vacation at his “ranchette” in west Texas. Hey, screw those fancy liberal Eastern elites with their fancy reasoning and big words. You think Hank Hill read 1776? No way, hombre, not if it was 40% off at the Meglomart, no way.
Build homes for poor people or manage emerging democracy elections like Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton, puhleese – no shock ‘n awe in it people, no thanks.

The motorhome is directed to a spot in the north lot of the infamous Convention Center in New Orleans. As it came to a stop the bells on Bushie’s nutsack jingled a little. The bells were tied on his scrotum because when he first got to the mansion in Pascagoula he would wander inside and look for the liquor cabinet, that, dammit was always locked up. The bells would alert the night valet who would chase Bushie back outside and under the stoop. He would curl up staring at the black snake he named Karl, black snake with one rheumy eye and kidney stones ( Janice get research to see if snakes have kidneys), and he would imagine Karl hissing at him, something about lost opportunities and assuaging the base, and whatnot. Big fucking words to Bushie. But the nutless gnome has no fight in him. Oh no, not since his stones dried up and evaporated in that classroom in Florida. How long does a man’s testicles take to dry up and go pop. The time it takes for said grown man to read My Pet Goat in a classroom full of 2nd graders. 7 minutes, yo. You could make fun of Michael Moore all you want, hell, I might indulge from time to time but that is one thing no one can ever, ever, take away from us and that is that 7 minutes that the gnome looked around and had no one to bail his ass out. Not this time.

Boss Trent gets out of the motorhome and unclips Bushie from the back of the motorhome and flicks his right ear where the golden orb spider spends her nights and sets the leash on Bushie for the walk over to City Hall for the inauguration ceremony. In one hand Boss Trent has his beauty kit with about a gallon of hair spray inside and in the other the leash with Bushie on the other end loping along. They make their way to a line of Dons Johns at the back of where everyone will be sitting and Bushie is chained to the brightest bluest John in the row so that everyone at the event who makes their way back for a piss is invited to piss on the gnome. The gnome got soaked that day with no one for company, not even Karl the black snake to hiss his curses. Oh, for the wet leaves and mud of the stoop back in Pascagoula. Hopefully, the autumn rains will come soon and wash the sticky and the stink away.

Bushie the Porch Gnome

2005-09-25T23:00:00.000-04:00

With apologies to J.K.Rowling.

Bushie the porch gnome woke up in the damp leaves and the pine needles and the mud under the front stoop of Boss Trent’s place looking out over the gulf in Pascagoula, Mississippi. God what a night. It had rained and rained. Another tropical storm had made her way across the Florida Keys earlier that week and had gained strength over the warm waters of the gulf and had come ashore on Friday night with torrents and torrents of rain. But this storm moved quickly up into the Southeast and Bushie faced a crisp Saturday morning with the sun coming up as he absently scratched at his acorn-sized peepee, made the bells jingle around his vacant nutsack and tugged at the spider who had spent the night in his ear in a futile effort to stay dry during the cold wet night.

Bushie the gnome was a sad and lonely figure these days. With only a pillowcase for clothing, and sandles sometimes. Barely fed with whatever was leftover when Boss Trent spent the weekends here in Pascagoula. He was indeed a sad figure. The Cheneybot never came by anymore to check on him. The gnome wasn’t sure since he had never read the papers or listened to the radio and of course there was no television or internets under the porch. But the gnome thought he had heard Boss Trent on the phone talking about some park rangers who had found the Cheneybot near a creek in a Wyoming reserve, fishing pole in the grip of his right hand, his servos rusted and the stroke-victim grin frozen on his face. The rangers brought him back to Jackson Hole, dropped him off with Earl the best taxidermist in the State of Wyoming who worked his magic on the Cheneybot and sent him to the Mayor of New Orleans, Dr. Paul Thibodeaux, who had him mounted in a 2nd floor display case near the bathrooms in the Garden District Museum of Hurricane Katrina.

A harsh, damp, cold autumn Saturday in Pascagoula. Bushie shivered a little in his wet sackcloth. He had a small glass of water from the downspout and remembered that he had to get the motorhome ready for Boss Trent and his family who were gonna make the 300 mile drive to Oxford to see Ole Miss play Florida late that afternoon. First he had to clean the commode and empty the tank, then he had to wash the whole vehicle and vacuum all the leftover cheetos off the floor in the back and wipe down the vinyl seats where Boss Trent’s grandsons had spit up. They always got car sick, whether from overindulgence or just plain unpleasantness they always got sick in that motorhome. Hurl and Ralph Bushie called them, the two grandsons, their names being Earl and, well, Ralph. Bushie hated them for what they made him do when no one was looking. Those two boys spent their summers tormenting the gnome in the most unspeakable ways. Hey, did ya ever see “Deliverance”, well that gives ya some idea. Except for Bushie, Burt Reynolds never shows up with that badass bow of his. 'Course that wasn't nothin' compared to the whippings he got when Ole Miss lost and they lost a lot this year. Boss Trent would wear out his right arm with that bull whip of his.

But actually, thinking of those boys makes Bushie think of his own daughters. They had actually made it out of a rough patch to become quite successful madams in the New New Orleans. Having parlayed a series of dimly lit pornographic recordings of themselves having carnal relations with the inmates at the recently reopened Angola Penitentiary into a small fortune – Jenna always said that’s why Jesus invented Paypal, they no longer had to make money on their backs like in college. They could pay other Tri Delts a somewhat less than living wage doing it with frat boys and Chinese businessmen. Bushie’s thoughts moved on.

He really didn’t think much of the past. That early September day when he stood on the tarmac at Louis Armstrong Airport joking about getting hammered in New Orleans as a youth while dehydratred babies died in their mothers’ arms in the shadow of the convention center not 5 miles away, and old diabetics sat down on the curb to die in the heat and dank humidity of a tropical afternoon. The booze and cocaine had finally burned a hole in his brain so that his waking hours were a blur of chores and discomforts and his nighttime hours were filled with shrieking and moaning of the dead and dying – his whole term, dead and dying. Bushie the porch gnome sleeps very little because of all the vacant-eyed dead who haunt his dreams.

But that’s as it should be.

It's Pat!

2005-08-23T22:33:00.000-04:00

No, not that lame Julia Sweeney character she parlayed into a lamer feature length movie back in 1994. Shit Lorne Michaels has been doing for almost 30 years just so Comedy Central has content to cover those hot useless Saturday afternoons in July.

No it's Pat Robertson. Yeah, that one. The bag of pus who basically agreed with that other bag of pus Jerry Falwell who said that we were attacked on September 11, 2001 because we had it comin'. You know because America, the most church goin' nation on earth. The America where 85% of its citizens say they believe in a merciful, just and loving God. Well, America had turned it's back on God because of the ACLU and the abortionists and feminists and pagan environmentalists and shit. You know basically the 48% of the national electorate. All 51 million of us. We had it comin'. Like a passed out sorority girl who gets gang raped on the 2nd floor bedroom in the Sigma Phi house because she was rockin' those tight tight jeans in the bar downstairs. She had it comin'. And so did we.

I guess he kind of agrees with Osama there.

That Pat Robertson belched out on his 700 Club yesterday that America should, as a matter of state policy set out to murder the duly elected President of Venezuela. A guy currently holding office with a 70% job approval rating. No, really, Media Matters has the whole thing, they always do. The Reverend Pat Robertson who ran for the Republican nomination for President in 1992 ( so don't give my any of that just another private citizen shit, fucker has his own netowrk) explicitly advocated assassination of President Chavez.

And what, pray tell, is President Chavez exact crime? Hmmm? Did he order the executions of hundreds of thousands of his fellow Venezuelans? Are there mass graves ringing Caracas containing the dusty bones and mangled corpses of these innocent citizens? No. Has he launched any preemptive wars against his neighbors Colombia, Guyana, or Brazil? No, not so much, no. Not at all, really. Did he mail anthrax to the National Enquirer or CBS News. Well, not that we know of, no. But pretty unlikely.

So why, oh why, did Reverend Shitbrick order his execution. Because, because, well, there's just no other way to say it Hugo hearts Fidel. That's it. Pretty much. Oh, and Venezuela has oil, lots of it. And Hugo doesn't heart the US Government either. More precisely he doesn't care much for our own dear Kristian Kultural Konservative Leader the Right Hand of God hisself President Shrub. I'm pretty sure that the rest of us 291 million Americans are OK with him, it's pretty much just Shrub and Shitbrick at this point.

Look, this is our future boys and girls. We're gonna need that oil, us and the Chinese and the Indians. And if'n we have to pop a few heads of state well, in the words of Tom Cruise, "Matt, Matt, Matt, you just don't understand about these things..." And Jesus will bless us for doing it according to this cornpone Soprano Reverend Robertson.

And right about now I'm wondering what exactly is the difference between Shitbrick and Osama. Well, Shitbrick can issue his fatwas from the comfort of his own network and only goes home to one wife.

Fuck the Bill of Rights, I need to fill up my Hummer.

I gotta go.

The Duke

2005-08-17T00:22:00.000-04:00

Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815, and later became a Tory Prime Minister of Great Britain once said when confronted with the chickenhawks of his day, that "Great nations do not have small wars". You know when the shootin' starts shit can get outa hand, or words to that effect.

I mean the hornets are buzzing and the stings are going to leave more than welts on your elbow. As you tuck little Keegen, or Madison, or fuckin' Ashley into bed this evening ask yourself what life for them might be like 10 years for now. Wars can escalate, especially in the part of the world where we are currently engaged. That's where I'm coming from, yo. Here's where you can agree with your conservative friends Iraq is not Vietnam. Really? No shit.

Vietnam was a tiny little geostrategic backwater at the time and we had 500,000 people there at the height of it. We've got less than half that in Iraq now in the most volatile region on the planet. On the cheap, this is how they went about it, oh and off budget too. We keep having to pass these emergency spending bills this way everybody is complicit and those that don't wanna play along well, you can accuse them of not supporting the troops. Sound at all familiar.

Right, right. Great nations, small wars, huzzah, huzzah, freedom, freedom, freedom, stay the course, stay the course, yada, yada, yada. Hope is neither a strategy or a plan and that's all this administration is really going with. No constitution yesterday, so we'll hold our breath until next Monday, the 22nd, when the Iraqi drafting committee is supposed to report out a draft constitution that 2/3 of the Parliament can get down with. And hilarity, as they say, will ensue. There's supposed to be a further series of elections over the next couple of months, but really, unless you're paid to how can anyone keep up with this shit.

Now, no matter what these elections produce, which, let's face it is likely to be more chaos and enmity among the Kurds, Shia, and Sunnis, we are getting out of there for the most part beginning in the Spring. For a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the 2006 midterm elections in this country. No, no not all 138,000 of 'em (in addition to a division or two around each election to totally lock the place down) but I bet half will be back by Labor Day 2006. The other half- well, holed up in the desert out by the Baghdad Airport in a semi-permanent base that will be in operation for 20 years. Also, the type of deployments our Army and Marines are engaged in are no longer sustainable. Our armed forces are half the size they were 35 years ago. Hell, 40% of the people over there now are reservists. And they are not happy and at some point it becomes illegal to deploy them any further. Again, if we had been attacked by these people none of this would be even an issue. Laws would be changed, sacrifices would be asked of all of us. But that's not the case here, the only ones being asked to sacrifice are the people in uniform and their families, while the tax cuts continue to bleed the Treasury down to it's lowest revenues as a percentage of GDP since 1959.

Wars change not only the nation on whose soil the battles take place, it changes the nation whose warriors return from those battles. Remember Gulf War I gave us Timothy McVeigh and John Muhammed (the DC area sniper) and those boys hardly saw any combat at all, ground operations lasted 100 hours. We're coming up on 2 1/2 years of intense urban combat a hideous grinding stalemate in a place that in a word, sucks.

And if you're a liberal, or a news outlet other than Faux News, or Bill Clinton - well, it's all your fuckin' fault, motherfuckahs.

God, that's enough for now. I gotta go.

Puzzlement

2005-08-10T20:12:00.000-04:00

Goddam that scotch is good.

Look I'm on vacation this week. The weather's good, daughter's got gym camp 3 days this week. I get to run in the morning. Afternoons at the pool with said offspring soakin' up sun and chlorine. Back home in the evening to fire up the gas grill and throw some marinaded meat on, corn on the cob and yes, fuck you Dr. Atkins, a starch. Life, ain't bad. Lovely wife and daughter, nice home, both cars running ok, for now. Of course it'll be catfood for Christmas when this housing bubble bursts but that's for another day.

Point is, and I do have one, I just can't get that worked up over shit this week.

Except.

Except I see this thing on CNN whereby Rummy, I love that fucker, well, you know love him like Dracula loves garlic, or O'Reilly loves Al Franken. Anyway, seems Captain Bligh over there is pointing a bony finger in the direction of the Iranians who, says he, are sending sophisticated weaponry into Iraq because them and the Syrians want chaos in Iraq, while everyone else in the region is totally down with the whole bringing democracy to the Middle East thingee. You believe that shit, yeah, me neither.

First, you didn't see any of this coming bro' . I mean we've been there for over 2 years now. 2 fuckin' years. Some of our marines are on their third pump. (Marine tours are 7 months, Army is usually 13 months, more or less - I'll get Research on that, clean it up and whatnot). Yeah, yeah I know "you go with the military you have not the one you wish for..." yada, yada, yada. Except, except. This wasn't Pearl Harbor, fucktard, we CHOSE the time and the place for this little adventure. No, you didn't see it but the people at State and CIA and your own freekin' uniformed personnel saw it coming, that's why they told you they wanted to go in with no less than 250,000 combat and support personnel. Ah fuck it. Sand over the desert, right.

Oh, right the Iranians, the new best friends of the Shia dominated government in Iraq because well, many of the current Iraqi government ministers spent their exile years, the Saddam years to you and me, in Iran. Hey, their pretty fuckin' friendly with those folks across the, say it with me, the Persian Gulf. Anyway, while our Shia are making nice with the Shia who happen to run Iran, we're losing 30 people a week to this Sunni insurgency. Because, for the Sunni, it just don't look too pretty. They been fuckin' the Shia for about 40 years and payback, as they say, is a beeyotch in Chanel. And the Sunni don't have any oil. The Shia in the south do and the Kurds in the north do but the Sunnis all they got to do is literally pound sand, you know.

And those weapons Capt. Bligh is referring to - shaped charges, you know the ones that are shredding our Strykers and HUMVEES. Shaped charges are doing a number on our overworked and underpaid uniformed personnel over there. They totally destroy the vehicle and everyone in it armor, hillbilly armor, whatever.

No the Iranians don't want chaos in Iraq. They just want us out. And until the shitheads in charge get a fuckin' clue more of our good people, our best people, are going to die while the Iraqis build themselves a nice little Muslim theocracy based on Sharia law.

Iran's got time and, well, money. They're the 2nd largest oil producer in OPEC right behind the Saudis, and with oil at $64 a barrel they got money. Play nice with the Europeans and us, why? They're building a nice little Shia superstate with their Iraqi brothers to balance out every other authoritarian Sunni regime in the region. They'll play nice when oil is at $20 a barrel. You see that happening anytime soon? Yeah, me neither.

Vulgarian out.

Anchors

2005-08-09T21:40:00.000-04:00

Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, and Tom Brokaw.

As my wife has pointed out Peter Jennings was only 67 years old. Yeah, yeah, I know that used to be quite old. It used to be my grandfather in his '65 Impala telling me he could hit a major league fastball. Anybody could in his view. It was that breaking stuff that kicked many a big leaguer's ass. Needle or no. But since we're in our mid-40s that doesn't sound so, well, advanced.

But Peter Jennings was one of the 3 white men who brought us up to date each evening as we had dinner or changed for an evening run or game of tennis or, hey, whatever it is that one does between 7 and 730pm each evening across this land. Not to give too much away here but all times will be eastern until further notice.

To be honest Peter was actually the orange one with the Canadian accent. Dan Rather, well, Dan Rather will always be the man as far as I'm concerned. The last of his kind. I can't possibly imagine what it was like to work with the man but to watch him, oh to watch him, especially on election nights was like surfing on a razorblade. Finally, Tom Brokaw, the genial man who floated to the top at NBC with the funny accent and the thin-lipped smile. Capped his career with the Greatest Generation business - which, OK, gets to me. But later on that for now. I'll get to that. For now, for now, Peter Jennings and his departure and with it the literal death of network news. Do me a favor, next time you come across a teen or twenty-something ask them who any of those 3 men were and what they did. They won't know, but we will . We'll know that PJ spent 60 hours on the air after September 11, 2001. We'll know about the hellholes he and Rather in particular made their bones in.

Remember them because the world of TV News nowadays is a pastel imitation of what these men and the organizations they came from used to do. Pastels with screaming matches in between Nantucket retreats.

That oughta do for now.

The vulgarian