LET'S PUT THE CTHULU BACK IN CHRISTMAS

It’s not about the monster show, the man in the rubber suit that jumps out of the dark. A B-movie or a rollercoaster can accomplish as much. That is a momentary scare, not something that freezes your soul until you can never be warm again.

The most frightening thing in the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft isn’t the ichor dripping from the jaws of elder gods, or the thought of vulnerable flesh being pierced and stripped from our bones by the scuttling claws of unnamed things that the very sight of would drive men to insanity. We already have diseases enough that do that to our bodies in microcosm, and in our visible world men build machines to destroy other men, women and children in a hundred ways to teach us that our hopes and dreams and ideas of beauty and truth are easily turned to garbage for dogs and crows.

The horrible perception of reality in Lovecraft comes when his characters feel the weight of aeons before humanity ever existed and the endless stretch of darkness after our last spark is gone. It is the awareness of the indifference of the universe that is represented by the metaphor of Lovecraft’s Elder Gods. You matter no more than a speck of sand that dreamed it was a mountain once.

In contrast, in, I hope, unending opposition, we have the symbolism of Christmas Eve: that an indifferent universe heard Job’s complaint, and took on human form. I am well aware of the historical evidence that makes the baby Jesus just one of many gods and avatars of the same idea; I usually find myself better read on the subject than most of Christianity’s critics and defenders.

It seems to me that these half-informed debates over the historicity of Jesus are beside the point. The conservative Christians and Muslims, with their simpleton’s insistence on their faith as literal and exclusive “fact”, do more damage to religion than the most science-bound atheist.

I have faith in certain metaphors as the potential salvation for mankind. Shelley was right about that much, when he called poets the secret legislators of mankind, even if he was a dope about sailboats. I feel anger and pity for those religionists who claim, “If every word in my holy book [insert title here] is not literally true, then all my faith is in vain.” A pretty shoddy faith, if it’s so easily undone.

It’s the meaning we attach to a vulnerable child that spits in the eye of Lovecraft’s indifferent, cold stars, and the marketplace sensibility of the social Darwinist capitalists who dominate our culture, and the mechanistic reductionists who sneer at love and the nuturing impulse as mere chemical predestination.

The ox and ass of the nativity crèche were once recognized by Egyptians as Osiris and Set, giving their blessing to the new god bedded down in their hay. If the self-important, indifferent to human suffering god of the Old Testament would give up his place of prominence to an unwed mother from a gynophobic culture and an all-too-human child, then surely that’s a good thing for the rest of us? Let us be tender towards the universe tonight as if it were a small child, and if the Elder Gods are still cruel, then that's their problem, not ours. Punk-ass slime monsters.

Who Will Ann Coulter Call If She Needs Bail?

Complaining about about right-wing hypocrisy and the pecadilloes of public moralists is like complaining about the heat in July or the snow in winter. I am concerned here with what happens as they fall down the other side of the Wheel of Fortune.

Twenty years ago, a friend of mine had a niece who was just beginning a career in entertainment. My friend was concerned that "the little shit" should be careful whose hands she stepped on as she was climbing the career ladder, because she'd be needing them if she ever slipped and fell down. Despite the odds, her niece has made a living in the arts for the past twenty years; any failures were moderated by other triumphs. I've fallen out of touch, and never heard anything more about the niece's backstage behavior towards housekeeping staff and the spear carriers, but if her career collapses, I'm sure she has a place to sleep.

When I was a janitor, I knew more about the people whose offices and toilets I cleaned than they knew about me. Some I could have embraced as friends; there were others I wouldn't have pissed on if they were on fire.

Now Ann Coulter faces felony charges for voting fraud. There's always been an age discrepancy on her driver's license (unless she voted at the age of 16 in 1980), but now according to a Florida election official's incident report, she tried to vote in a precinct she wasn't registered for and then tried to vote twice in the same race, a no-no loaded with 5 years in prison and a fine. The part of me that feels a little sorry for Malvolio at the end of "Twelfth Night" says this can happen to anyone. I myself have a phobia against filling in forms. If a form requires that I attach other forms, I panic, hide the form under other forms, withdraw into a corner of the room and go into shock like an animal caught in a trap. ("Tharn", the rabbits called it in Watership Down.)

Let her fill in the forms and forget about it, I say. Arthur Anderson, the Palm Beach County elections supervisor, agrees: "We want to give her a chance. She needs to tell us where she really lives." Do as I do-- ask a friend or relative to talk her through the process, promise her a treat when it's done. This is why we pay other people to fill in our tax forms. I assume Miss Coulter became successful not for fame or better restaurants, but so that she could hire a secretary to handle the forms. If it all turns to shit for Miss Coulter, I'm curious to see who her friends turn out to be; she has made a career out of bashing people lower than herself, and they might be the only friends she has left. If she gets tossed into the tank, she might want to rethink her mockery of anti-apartheid activists, her call for a New McCarthyism, and "I think the government should be... engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport... and sending liberals to Guantanamo." All I'm saying is, if I were a Harvard professor or a liberal Supreme Court judge, and Ann Coulter had called for my murder, I'm damned if I'd chip in for her bail.

The president of the National Association of Evangelicals fessed up to buying amphetamines and three years of monthly "massages" from a gay prostitute. The circles I travel in would say "to each his taste" and shrug, except that the fellow is a prominent gay basher with a wife, five children, and a 14,000 member megachurch.

Republican Jim Gibbons in Nevada is having a very bad week including attempted rape, a $300 bar tab (oh, THAT'S only going to get more expensive), and millions in no-bid sweetheart contracts for friends. All of this could just be a wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time story, except this is a guy who screams about illegal immigration but hires an illegal for eleven years, then drinks for two hours with a 12-top, spends $300 and leaves a ten-dollar tip.

Republican Congressman Don Sherwood, a married, "family values" conservative paid $500,000 to his mistress if she would just shut up about the strangling incident until after the election.

When my own life hit a rock, it was instructive to find out which of my friends stayed true, while others dropped me as a bore and an inconvenience. One of my "closest" friends couldn't see me because he didn't want to miss Adrienne Barbeau's nude scene in "Swamp Thing". Ordinarily I would sympathize with this excuse, but damn, man, rent the video.

This was not long after he'd taken a management job and started dropping me for golf dates with new friends he openly described as people important to his career. "Le affaire Barbeau" involved an invitation to watch the film with the movers and shakers. None of them were at his funeral. Another friend-- that I might have judged in our first acquaintance as superficial, overly-concerned with bourgeois social propriety-- lent hundreds of dollars with a bohemian indifference as to when I paid it back. "Thus the whirligig of Time," Feste tells Malvolio, "brings on its revenges." We never learn what Malvolio did to Feste to inspire the feud between them; we do know Malvolio could not call upon his friends when he fell from grace because he had no friends.

I envision a day when Guantanamo Bay is packed with every gay, liberal, homeless, black, lesbian Harvard graduate, Arab, elite intellectual, cock-sucking, muff diving, dope smoking, Communist, Socialist, titty baring, Muslim, French, porn-loving, wine-drinking, Bush-hating, flip-flopping, anti-Semitic, Times reading, rap-singing, terrorist-sympathizing lawyer in the country. In that post-apocalyptic America, Ann Coulter is about to be groped by Jim Gibbons and there's no one left alive to answer her 911 call but Alan Dershowitz. And Dershowitz can't come because he's barricaded himself in the bathroom to escape the zombie of Roy Cohn.

No wonder Jesus hung out with the publicans and sinners; they were more humane than the moralists. Now if we could just get Lloyd Dobson to Shut The Fuck Up Already about everyone else's spiritual growth, and worry about his own...

Merry Christmas Eve

A Merry Christmas from little Liam James Norbeck, professional nephew, born December 15, 2005 to Colleen Carol and Dan Norbeck. This is his first meeting with his eccentric relatives, the ones that live in a petting zoo. Eyes responding to mother and father's voices. Grandfather Jim and Uncle Michael with tears in their eyes. Our Phoebe's littermate, Boss Hogg known as Bossie, is shown curled up with the family and accomodating herself to the new baby. Their brother, Professor Bobo, has had to cope with a move and a baby in the same week, and is being verklempt elsewhere in the new house.

I hold to the conceit that animals talk at midnight, and probably deliver messages that show them to be better Christians than the rest of us, excepting of course for Liam. I shall miss their moment of speech again, being at midnight mass to seek the mystery buried underneath the human madness of the world. I leave to them to articulate a proper message of animal wisdom. From Cleo, Fanny, Luna, Phoebe, Doc, Pig, Bossie, Professor Bobo, and from their cousins Rhonda, Twyla, Whisper, Teresa, Shortie, and Tubby. Best to Tank and June, who is not a dog but a hirsute Mexican acrobat. Also Iggy, Maia, and kitten Louise who is no longer the smallest one in the family. Eat. Sleep. Love. Play. No Harm.

MEMO FROM: Jesus of Nazareth/ TO: Congressional Torture Caucus

Somebody over in Congress finally read the Constitution, or had lunch with Robert Byrd, or maybe their kid came home from civics class and explained it to them. At any rate, they have rediscovered checks and balances and have started to grow some balls.

The McCain amendment S.AMDT.1977 forbids the torture of "persons under the detention, custody, or control of the United States Government." It was attached to a major spending bill, but the current president has announced he will veto it. (I'm pleased that Michigan's own Carl Levin was one of the co-sponsors. I'm very fond of ol' Carl; I ran around with a lot of Jewish kids in high school and Senator Levin reminds me of everyone's dad or uncle.)

There were, of course, abstentions (feelthy people, pah! -- we will speak no more of them) and nine senators who voted against the amendment. In alphabetical order, they are:

Wayne Allard, Colorado (odd choice for a former veterinarian with pretty mountains on his website)
Kit Bond, Missouri (Sen. Bond has a son in the Marines-- I pray the lieutenant's never captured and finds the shoe on the other foot)
Tom Coburn, Oklahoma (Oklahoma stands united for torture! And him an OB/GYN man who delivered babies. It's wonderful how the moral sense can compartmentalize itself)
Thad Cochran, Mississippi (awards from National Wildlife Federation and The Nature Conservancy-- here's a fellow I can talk to)
John Cornyn, Texas (lists his favorite book as "Bonfire of the Vanities" and favorite film as "Jerry Maguire"; thinks his "most embarrassing moment occurred when I muffed the opening pitch at a Round Rock Express baseball game"... we're frickin' doomed)
James Inhofe, Oklahoma (posing with young soldiers who behind the grins are thinking, "If I'm ever captured, this bastard is going to get my nuts cut off.")
Pat Roberts, Kansas (Senate Intelligence Chairman, also on Select Committee on Ethics; and yes, his ethics are "select")
Jeff Sessions, Alabama (Alabama; no surprises there)
Ted Stevens, Alaska (Ted's been a madman for years now, and I see no reason for him to change)

Several bloggers are calling them "The Nazgul", a literary nickname for the nine dark riders and servants of Sauron from "The Lord of the Rings."

I'm curious as to whether or not these fellows openly adhere to the teachings of Yeshua of Nazareth, aka Jesus the Christ, who was himself a victim of torture. I assume they do identify themselves as "Christian", when asked, that being the most popular answer for politicians these days. (I'm looking for a quote from Mark Twain, wherein the devil says to a smug fellow, "The trouble with you is, you think you're the best people here, whereas you're really just the most numerous.") I'm not speaking from any high moral ground-- I indulge myself with elaborate revenge and torture fantasies for people who hurt animals or little kids, bullies in general-- but I'm not making laws. Even from the coldest perspective imaginable, I thought they got the memo Torture Doesn't Work as an intelligence gathering tool. Satisfying, yes, but productive, no. This is an old Victorian notion in fiction, that you've converted the bad guy by making him cry. By the time you're finished venting your anger, the other side has changed their plans and the information you got from the torture victim is out of date. It doesn't change people's minds, either... you can bomb the shit out of someone's home town and blow up any number of old ladies and kindergartners, and all it does is make the citizens even more determined to fight you. Did Abu Ghraib (new even more offensive photos coming soon, I hear) accomplish anything beyond increasing anti-American feeling? How the hell did we blow the lead, the world sympathy we had on September 12?

Has it occured to anyone that the Nazgul Nine might be Al-Qaeda sleeper agents?

Days of Rage

I was carrying so much anger about ignorant, un-Christian "Christians" and the damage they do that I went to 5:00 Mass. Thought I'd ask the priest afterwards how he dealt with fanatics. Killing kind of rage, the kind that hurts you more than it hurts them and can slide so easily into despair.

First one there. Others drifted in, idle chat about their day as we waited to begin. One of the worshipers was tired, having spent the day working in pediatric intensive care. Another was asked about their latest CAT scan and their own recovery. A toddler, there with mother, father, and baby brother, visited us all in turns, then sat quietly reading something called "My Quiet Book", with all its pages made of cloth. Ken stuck his head in the door and asked us to remember in prayers a parishioner whose son was getting married in two weeks but the future mother-in-law was just killed in a car accident and a four year old with stage four cancer, both parents doctors, which meant they already knew more than was good for them as they worried...

Kind of puts you in perspective, doesn't it, punk?

We were supposed to thank God for something he'd given us. Yeah. right. Thank you for all the anger. Some inherited, a lot more of it earned, and some of it, quoting myself now, a chip put on my shoulder by Spartacus and knocked off by Wat Tyler. I've even been angry with God this year (God can take it; God knows they can dish it out). What am I, a fricking samurai-- the man with nothing to lose can accomplish great things?

The homily was about Mary. Whether you believe or not, metaphor or objective reality, Mary's probably the best of us. A human girl-- no super powers, remember-- given something she never asked to carry. Then a woman who loses a child, the worst thing imaginable, and in a particularly horrible way, yeah she can carry that too.

Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world. Have mercy on us. I tend to imagine a literal lamb, lost animals safe from hurt. My little furry angels. The murdered lamb, as blameless as Mary.

My anger went away, or at least settled down to an acceptable simmer. God wasn't there for the self-righteous winners, wasn't a prosecutor like Dobson and Falwell and Robertson and our local mean-spirited pipsqueaks. They were too busy hating with a sanctimonious grin on their face, and driving nice cars. God was down here with the broken ones, getting the shit kicked out of her/him like the rest of us. It's the daily crucifixion. Even if we're lucky enough to avoid the harshness of society-- born in East Grand Rapids, say, instead of the 9th Ward of New Orleans-- we're still crucified by time, wearing us down, breaking and burning us.

Sooner or later, of course, reality, life will find a way to snap your self-perceptions like a twig. An old hippie in Stephen King's "Firestarter" says "life is short, pain's long, and we're here to help each other through". Some of us know that by instinct, and it makes us kinder to others, more tolerant not less, and some haven't learned it yet.