Friends of OEE: ZOMBIE PANIC ROOM at The Red Lion!

Charlie is convinced an army of the undead is out to get him. His wife Nicole is convinced he’s retarded. In a last-ditch effort to save their marriage, Nicole and Charlie prepare themselves for a weekend of intensive marriage counseling. But before they can escape from their marital strife, Nicole will have to escape from the Zombie Panic Room.

See it in tryouts while drinking beer in convivial company at a haunted tavern!
A staged reading at the Red Lion!
Just kitty-corner from the Biograph Theatre and its alley, where the notorious Dillinger met his fate!

ZOMBIE PANIC ROOM by Jef Burnham

August.07th,2005

TIME:
Sunday - 6:00 p.m.

PLACE:
THE RED LION PUB
2446 N. Lincoln Ave.
(second floor)
Chicago, Illinois 60614

ADMISSION:
FREE
(donations are gratefully accepted)

Discount Parking:
Available at Children's Memorial Hospital with
Red Lion Pub validation.

Web: www.theredlionpub.com

"And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire"

Kipling on Blowback, or the Law of Unintended Consequences

No surprise at the latest bombings (more people were killed in Egypt and Iraq than in London). Colin Powell told Bush, "If you break it, you bought it", but no one seems to understand what that means until the bombs start coming home. I love London, and I love the Tube, and resent her being put in the crossfire.

If there is any reason to smile, it's that when we heard there was a failed attack at Shepherd's Bush, we were quick to exclaim "Holland Park! Holland Park!" (Friends of "Absolutely Fabulous" will know that Edina, who lives on the border of Shepherd's Bush, always protests that she REALLY lives in the MUCH more fashionable Holland Park.)

If piracy and slavery were suppressed by taking away their refuges, (South China Sea and the Sudan still exceptions), why did we think we would contain terrorism by giving them a vast new playground?

If there is a reason to frown, it is our obtuse insistence that we can fuck around, and fuck around, and fuck around with a hornet's nest and never get stung ourselves. Pardon me for feeling disgust at the sancimony of official mourning from Bush and Blair (Bush, by the way, was back to
  • yukking it up
  • the next day-- while sitting next to Blair). With all the tons of ordinance left laying around (some of it brought by Donald Rumsfeld himself), why are we shocked! --shocked!-- that it was used to blow up blue eyed babies instead of brown eyed ones?

    "Why do Americans think it is heroic and honorable for our troops to massacre Iraqis with bombs, missiles, gunships, tanks, and heavy machine guns, but cowardly and barbaric when our victims fight back in the only way they can?
    .... The war is breeding terrorism and cannot be won.... As long as Bush continues to operate with Mao's belief that power comes out of the barrel of a gun, terrorism will prosper and people will die for no reason except their refusal to hold corrupt leaders accountable."
    -- Paul Craig Roberts at
  • Counterpunch


  • America, the Naive. I pray you and yours stay safe.

    AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
    I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
    Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
    And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
    We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
    That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
    But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
    So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

    We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
    Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
    But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
    That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

    With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
    They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
    They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
    So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

    When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
    They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
    But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
    And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."

    On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
    (Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
    Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
    And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

    In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
    By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
    But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
    And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

    Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
    And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
    That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
    And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

    As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
    There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
    That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
    And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

    And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
    When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
    As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will bum,
    The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

    -- Rudyard Kipling

    Provence, Four





    photos by Sheila O'BrienLa Chamatte, looking over the village and the wedding.
    An medieval church that contains all the cycles from birth to death; the entrance leads through the graveyard, including local men murdered by the Germans as members of the Resistance during World War II.
    The wedding's not official in France until the civil ceremony performed by the mayor; Vergons shares her mayor with several other villages.

    Kill All the People You Want, but Cover Your Breasts, for God's Sake!

    And You Ask What Has Driven Me Mad Dept.

    From an unsigned editorial today in
  • The New York Times

  • ".... A game like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas has a lot to tell us, most of it unpalatable, about how American culture looks through certain eyes. But so does the reaction to this modification and the scenes it exposes. As always in America, sex and nudity create the scandals, not systemic violence..."

    Way back in the Stone Age, Lenny Bruce complained about the response to Hitchcock's "Psycho", and a culture wherein violence was okay but nudity was verboten. I first grasped this when the moneymaker "Jaws" was rated PG and the much more humane "Harry and Tonto" was given an R rating for language and incidental nudity. More anecdotes on the phenomenon
  • HERE
  • I suspect a cultural historian could find the same hypocrisy going back at least as far as the Stanford White murder, when America cared less about Harry Thaw kiling a man than about the seduction of Evelyn Nesbitt.

    Some of this weird kink in the American psyche is invented, whipped up by the entertainment media, looking for a sex scandal to enliven its stories. Sometimes the lip smacking is inconsequential, like the discovery that Janet Jackson is a mammal. Sometimes it harms the republic itself, as with the time wasted on the Lewinsky affair.

    It should be noted that my own storytelling sometimes includes graphic sex and graphic violence, the former reserved for the heroes and the latter usually practised by villains. Cruelty to animals and innocent people upsets and enrages me as a monstrous aberration, but sexual activity as just another part of life's rich pageant. Sex and violence in the media are on a continum, like good cooking and bad cooking.

    WHAT DRIVES ME MAD is the willful naievety of the American parent. "Grand Theft Auto" and "GTA: San Andreas" have been played in basements for donkey's years, and now the Righteous Outrage of Suburban Motherhood has only just awakened, because someone discovered that sex was involved-- not the imaginary killing of thousands-- and how many Iraquis HAVE been killed so far, in a war none of them volunteered for--? Does anyone else see a pattern?

    From a posting by "CJs Girl" at
  • Gaming Tips
  • message board:
    "Many things affects your sex appeal [within the GTA game]. The clothes you wear, the hairstyle you have, the car you last drove, how many and which types of tatoos you have. For the hairstyle, I'd pick the most expensive. Cornrows are good sex appeal hair cuts. The blonde CornRow is really good for sex appeal. Afro's are good too and the High Afro is too. When you get to the big city where the casino's are you can get Elvis styled hair, which is excellent for sex appeal. The car can be the best cars you can find. Each type of car lowers or brings up your sex appeal. Back tatoos give the most sex appeal. Don't have too many tatoos, because that can bring down your sex appeal, because you will be "full of ink". I guess the women don't like too many tatoos. I think 3 should be the limit if that. For the clothes: low top shoes give you more respect, which can help with sex appeal a little. I think when you wear the hat or cap backwards it brings more sex appeal. I think sideways does well too. I think when you buy clothes from the more popular clothing stores, it brings up your sex appeal. ZIP clothing stores work well and I think Binco works just as good. Didier Sachs works best from what I have heard, but I haven't gotten that store open yet. Make sure to have plenty of style. I buy all of the clothes available at each store I open to when I get to a dressing room at a Safe House I can have a variety of clothes to choose from. Your local Grove Street Gang Members help you out with your outfits. They'll tell you what they like and what they don't." ***

    *** Readers are strongly advised not to ask sociopathic killers for fashion hints while engaged in reality.

    One of these fantasies is destroying America in the mind of YOUR innocent baby right now.

    WAITING FOR BAIL: essay

    Reprinted from The Kalamazoo News, copyright Michael Fountain
  • Read the rest HERE


  • .... He’d said the same thing to three others that night, each of them coming into jail for the first time. I recognized the emotion behind it—he was trying to convince them that he wasn’t just part of the system, that he was a human being in a hollow place. I used to work in such a place; I used to talk the same kind of bullshit.

    .... I wasn’t sure how to feel about this. I felt gratitude; I also saw it as just one more way they get you on their side, get you dependent on them.

    .... When you’re in a place like this you walk, sit, eat, answer questions or silently wait according to their schedule, the schedule of the institution, and a friendly individual will get you hooked on the smallest taste of human decency so that you start to think of that particular cop—the cop who lets you keep your clothes on, the cop who flips you a book of matches—as my cop. You watch him move behind the desk with the others; you feel a small sense of panic when he drifts out of sight. His face is the face of Daddy, Uncle, God; the other guards, acolytes of the institution, are bland, unfriendly blobs. ...

  • Read the rest HERE

  • For more articles, fiction, and artwork by Michael Fountain
  • Visit the O.E.E.
  • Provence, Three

    Photos by Patricia Relf Hanavan with exception of the Alpine marmot; look for her books at Amazon.com.
    1) Yelling at beggars from the window of Michel and Maureen's house in Vergons. Built in the 1700s along a winding street.2) "Ils sont fou, ces Americans." 2) Former Congo bush pilot Gilbert supervises truly dangerous animals: Americans moving a sleeper couch. This room had been used as a smoke room for hams; Michel, Bridget and Maureen cleaned, painted, papered, and dug out the beams, floor installed by Michel et moi.
    3) People all around the world, they'll be dancing in the gitte...
    4) Wedding gifts: every home should have one.5) Maureen teaches Bill the forbidden Nipple Dance.
    6) Mike Martin on the Fossil Hunt, wearing Ann Anson's hat against the sun; a touching Victorian moment, posed in a meadow as "The Flower Fairy".
    7) A complaint was made about the profound lack of nymphs and dryads bathing in the ancient springs; Louise attempts to make up for this.
    8) B., Pat and Bill, with a Provencal marmot in an Alpine hat that yodels when you squeeze it.

    Provence, Two

    Photos by Patricia Relf Hanavan
    1)The real mayor of Vergons is Sallie (pronounced Sall-EE), who lives with Claude and helps in the garden and restaurant but really covers the whole town. Intelligent and sympathetic, as interested and patient with small children as with the elderly. A champion boar hunter, too, almost killed when one fell on her. Sallie has been placed in our pantheon of all time great dogs.2) Prosper and Nicole, Michel's sister, gave a Fourth of July celebration for the Americans. A local Gypsy chanteuse with Che Guevara on her guitar sang wonderful songs, and Whiskey, part corgi, part sheltie, part God knows what and all adorable played quietly or napped at her feet.
    3) The path up La Chamatte.
    4) Wild boar, sanglier, running from dogs in a non-lethal boar hunt. Pat aimed at the first and caught the second on camera. Like the bear, you know it's really a forest and not just a tree park when there are wild boar present. Endured much contempt because I was the one who really wanted to see a wild boar, and everyone else kept tripping over them. I finally saw a group at dusk with seven striped and spotted infants. It would do a lot of Americans a world of good to have a potentially dangerous animal in their midst.
    5) Local fossil hunt: myself, Dick Anson, Louise and Michael S. Lots of ammonites but no really big ones.