"Five others died in the airstrike, including Sheikh Abd-al-Rahman, al-Zarqawi's spiritual adviser, who died of head wounds and a massive skull fracture, Caldwell said Saturday. The total casualties included three males and three females; one of the females was a child between the ages of 5 and 7, he said." -- CNN June 11, 2006
What kind of human being is this, that the world is made better and not diminished by his death? What a horror is this, that a little girl were killed alongside him-- but the menace you pose to other women, other children was so great that the cost of collateral damage was not considered too high?
This has me thinking about that scene in "Night of the Shooting Stars" (La Notte di San Lorenzo), when the villagers are trying to decide what to do about the schoolboy son of the town fascist, a pretty blonde child in a tiny black uniform who practically froths at the mouth with the poison bred by his father in his fangs. Then one of the men makes a decision for the sake of all the children of the town, and does what has to be done. "Who Must Do the Terrible Things?" asks a Japanese proverb; "He Who Can", comes the answer.
And the mad pain of the father, chewing at his own flesh and crawling like an animal in the dirt to see his child killed, a grotesqe, demonic, almost comic display. Then someone remembers that for ten years this pitiable creature felt not a drop of pity for thousands of pretty little children being sent to their death by the carload, and they end the animal's torture with a bullet.
Did Zarqawi had a moment of regret for the death of his own child, or was he still calculating his options and thinking about how to escape this attack?
Evidently Zarqawi spent the wonder years in and out of Jordanian prison for a variety of crimes, then found God and politics in jail. This is an old story, this prison recruitment of stone killers. Sure, you like killing folks in horrible ways, but you're not to blame-- "they" are, they ones who who locked you up in here. The King of Jordan, the Jews in Palestine, the Americans, the Saudi paarty boys. My brother, I offer redemption. You can still kill people in horrible ways, but now you're killing for the Cause, killing for God, and can saw away at infidel necks with a righteous glow.
I wish I could say that this kind of bug only rises to the top in fanatical Islam, but we've heard enough smug boasting from G. Gordon Liddy, from Oliver North and his Contras, from Bill Casey and his Phoenix Program in Vietnam-- to know that this kind of useful sociopath is always going to be around waiting for someone to give them permission to hurt their fellow human beings. Tim McVeigh and his war on day care centers could have had a sterling career at CIA if he'd had just a little more discipline. Gangsters used to call them "bugs", meaning a useful but not terribly reliable tool for setting fires or committing murders. You gotta wonder if Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan, Arthur Bremer-- or Lindsey Englund-- were such as these.
And now as an example to the children, we have Barbara and Jenna Bush's Daddy; an affable stooge who has arsfardled his way into spending 2,500 American lives, billions of dollars and thousands of people dead that I never even knew existed. But Daddy's not a monster, because his road to Hell was paved with words like Freedom, Liberty, Democracy and "Patience" that he doesn't understand.
I have no conclusions about any of this; just idly doing some dark math, one of those silly little mental games demonologists play.
No wonder the girls drink.
"All the Stones the Builders Rejected" 
(And some days it takes more Stones than others...) Where Mythical Bestiary meets Contemporary Culture and Chews On Its Leg Until Covered with Slobber.
"FOUR COLOR LOVE" by The Metasciences of Chicago
Another day at work is nearly overYou must've seen the whole thing on T.V.
Seventeen more city blocks and I can almost smell you
Waiting at the windowsill for me.
It's our 41st anniversary
But we don't look a day over 23
Not in this life
Not in this universe
We were still in high school when I met you
If you believe the continuity
I rescued you from robots and untied you from the tracks
You pretended not to know that it was me
We didn't even kiss until issue 26
This world still feels like 1963
I love this life
I love this universe
You'll keep my identity a secret
And you will know the touch beneath my glove
I may go out every night and risk my life for strangers
But you're the only girl I'll ever love.
Gwen Stacy isn't dead, she's only sleeping
And Elektra isn't evil or insane
Those bastards in the Pentagon can't really kill Sue Dibney
No more than they could kill off Lois Lane
And I swear to God that there'll be Hell to pay
If anybody tries to take you away
Forget this life
Forget this universe
You're everything I need
You are my life.
You are my universe.
They'll have to go through me.
Four Color Love Story, from "Pencils Down" by the Metasciences (Ruth Barabe and Daniel Kibbelsmith).
6/6/6
Cross your fingers that no lonely soul in a clock tower does anything stupid today, or we're never going to hear the end of it.
I'm not talking about reasoned discussions of evil by Malachi Martin, or the demon-as-metaphor found in my own fiction, or the 68% of 2,201 adults surveyed online who told the Harris Poll they believe in a devil. I'm not even talking about the objective evidence before our eyes of demonic possesion: three minutes of gibbering from the Bizarro President, for example, or the Vice President barking and growling on Sunday morning TV with his hands clenched together to appear reasonable while barely suppressing the urge to tear his questioner's head from her shoulders, or almost anything that comes out of the mouth of John Gibson or Anne Coulter.
I'm complaining about people who ascribe significance to the number "666", waiting for mischief to occur on June 6th, 2006. Some of them read a book once, or stood next a book while someone else told them what it said.
Evidently, no one ever told them that the Gregorian calendar, rolling around to 6/6/6, is not the same calendar used in "biblical" times. I wonder how they count to 700? Do they skip a floor, like people avoiding the Thirteenth floor in a hotel? What happens if their purchases at Wal-Mart total up to $6.66?
Remember when everyone had to sit and nod and be polite about the most appalling nonsense, from Erhard Seminar Training to your stoner roommate droning on for hours about the dangers of mucus in the diet, or what your horoscope meant?
I remember my friend Dan Daniels trying to defend Truth from a superstitious crowd in a bar in Grand Rapids: "So if what we believe to be "true" is a bead on a wire, and "objective reality" is a spot at the center of that wire, and we can never quite balance the bead exactly at the center because of our own imperfections-- still, isn't it true that the bead can either be closer to the center or farther away, so that if I say, 'We're sitting in a bar in Grand Rapids', and you say 'This is an illusion, and our physical bodies are really spirit messages being beamed to us from Angels on Mars'-- well, isn't one of us going to be a little closer to describing reality than the other?"
"Oh, no," answered the woman he was questioning, "both interpretations of reality are valid and true."
That generation of tolerance for every opinion, being so open minded that our brains fell out, helped give us the dream world of Karl Rove and the Bizarro President, where "we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
We now have a culture so full of credulity and manipulation that actual events, real conspiracies, real massacres, real evil is disguised behind a hundred distractions and superstitions. Today the Bizarro President evaded his prom date with reality by proposing a constitutional amendment to protect us all from gay marriage, and everyone in the chattering class felt compelled to stop what they were doing and pretend this was important enough to talk about. Ladies and Gentleman, I give you a vital issue of Manufactured Importance.
That's something that drug addicts, and alcoholics, and persons possessed by minor devils do so well-- change the subject away from themselves, whenever the conversation gets too "real".
I'm not talking about reasoned discussions of evil by Malachi Martin, or the demon-as-metaphor found in my own fiction, or the 68% of 2,201 adults surveyed online who told the Harris Poll they believe in a devil. I'm not even talking about the objective evidence before our eyes of demonic possesion: three minutes of gibbering from the Bizarro President, for example, or the Vice President barking and growling on Sunday morning TV with his hands clenched together to appear reasonable while barely suppressing the urge to tear his questioner's head from her shoulders, or almost anything that comes out of the mouth of John Gibson or Anne Coulter.
I'm complaining about people who ascribe significance to the number "666", waiting for mischief to occur on June 6th, 2006. Some of them read a book once, or stood next a book while someone else told them what it said.
Evidently, no one ever told them that the Gregorian calendar, rolling around to 6/6/6, is not the same calendar used in "biblical" times. I wonder how they count to 700? Do they skip a floor, like people avoiding the Thirteenth floor in a hotel? What happens if their purchases at Wal-Mart total up to $6.66?
Remember when everyone had to sit and nod and be polite about the most appalling nonsense, from Erhard Seminar Training to your stoner roommate droning on for hours about the dangers of mucus in the diet, or what your horoscope meant?
I remember my friend Dan Daniels trying to defend Truth from a superstitious crowd in a bar in Grand Rapids: "So if what we believe to be "true" is a bead on a wire, and "objective reality" is a spot at the center of that wire, and we can never quite balance the bead exactly at the center because of our own imperfections-- still, isn't it true that the bead can either be closer to the center or farther away, so that if I say, 'We're sitting in a bar in Grand Rapids', and you say 'This is an illusion, and our physical bodies are really spirit messages being beamed to us from Angels on Mars'-- well, isn't one of us going to be a little closer to describing reality than the other?"
"Oh, no," answered the woman he was questioning, "both interpretations of reality are valid and true."
That generation of tolerance for every opinion, being so open minded that our brains fell out, helped give us the dream world of Karl Rove and the Bizarro President, where "we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
We now have a culture so full of credulity and manipulation that actual events, real conspiracies, real massacres, real evil is disguised behind a hundred distractions and superstitions. Today the Bizarro President evaded his prom date with reality by proposing a constitutional amendment to protect us all from gay marriage, and everyone in the chattering class felt compelled to stop what they were doing and pretend this was important enough to talk about. Ladies and Gentleman, I give you a vital issue of Manufactured Importance.
That's something that drug addicts, and alcoholics, and persons possessed by minor devils do so well-- change the subject away from themselves, whenever the conversation gets too "real".
THE BIZARRO PRESIDENT
"Bizarro... what's happened to you? I can't believe you've really destroyed your homeworld!"
"Ha! That am only the beginning! Next, me realize that Superman never kill, so me kill lots of people! Them very grateful! Scream with happiness!"
-- from "Superman: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" by Alan Moore
It's a strange business, inhabiting an archetype, and George W. Bush has found his: he fully embodies the Bizarro Superman, that seriocomic villain who causes havoc by doing exactly the opposite of what Superman would do.
This apotheosis is so terrible to behold that the creator of Bizarro Superman, Alvin Schwartz himself, now recoils from his creation with the kind of loathing not seen since Victor Frankenstein's wedding night: "Last week, I wrote about my creation of Bizarro way back in 1958. This week, I find myself writing about another Bizarro, writing in anger and anguish over what has happened to my country. For it is now in the hands of Bizarro-Bush who has turned everything upside down..."
I'm hardly the first to make the connection (see below), but this may be the tipping point where the phrase "the Bizarro President" permanently replaces "President Bush" as our identifier for this person who causes so many wicked things while convinced he is an avatar of virtue. With his head full of half-truths and right-wing cliches, he lurches from crisis to crisis, and then bawls and pouts when his impulses blow up in his face.
The children of the world are his pet mice, and he is their Lenny, smashing them instead of petting them, angry and hurt when criticized, then baffled and sad when the children stop moving.
But never sad for long. Since he cannot be wrong, and his policies have failed, it must be the world that has failed him, not the other way around. The Bizarro President dusts off the wreckage, adjusts his suit with a comedic shrug, unfurrows his brow and finds his smile again.
***
HELP SPREAD THE MEME! Forward this and other references to a "Bizarro" presidency:
"What a great United States Senator Rick Santorum is. (Applause.) He and Zell [Miller] serve in the Senate together. I'm proud to have Rick Santorum as my campaign manager for the state of Pennsylvania. I'm proud to have -- call him friend, and I know you're proud to call him Senator." (Applause.)
Bizarro Bush:
He's the exact opposite of what a president should be
"Because the — all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculated, for example, is on the table. Whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases There's a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those — changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be — or closer delivered to that has been promised. Does that make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled."
"The use of federal dollars to destroy life is something I simply do not support."
Bush to Bring Troops Home, Resign on Bizarro Earth
"The Defense of Marriage Act declares that no state is required to accept another state's definition of marriage. If that act is overturned by activist courts, then marriages recognized in one city or state might have to be recognized as marriages everywhere else."
Bizarro Bush Apologizes
"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
Under Bizarro Bush America has a failing economy, a huge budget deficit, high unemployment and is a country scorned around the world.
Bizarro Bush Movie
"I think we all agree, the past is over.
This is still a dangerous world.
It's a world of madmen and uncertainty
and potential mental losses.
Rarely is the question asked
Is our children learning?
Will the highways of the Internet become more few?
How many hands have I shaked?
They misunderestimate me.
I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity.
I know that the human being and the fish can coexist.
Families is where our nation finds hope, where our wings take dream.
Put food on your family!
Knock down the tollbooth!
Vulcanize society!
Make the pie higher! Make the pie higher!"
"Ha! That am only the beginning! Next, me realize that Superman never kill, so me kill lots of people! Them very grateful! Scream with happiness!"
-- from "Superman: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" by Alan Moore
It's a strange business, inhabiting an archetype, and George W. Bush has found his: he fully embodies the Bizarro Superman, that seriocomic villain who causes havoc by doing exactly the opposite of what Superman would do.
This apotheosis is so terrible to behold that the creator of Bizarro Superman, Alvin Schwartz himself, now recoils from his creation with the kind of loathing not seen since Victor Frankenstein's wedding night: "Last week, I wrote about my creation of Bizarro way back in 1958. This week, I find myself writing about another Bizarro, writing in anger and anguish over what has happened to my country. For it is now in the hands of Bizarro-Bush who has turned everything upside down..."
I'm hardly the first to make the connection (see below), but this may be the tipping point where the phrase "the Bizarro President" permanently replaces "President Bush" as our identifier for this person who causes so many wicked things while convinced he is an avatar of virtue. With his head full of half-truths and right-wing cliches, he lurches from crisis to crisis, and then bawls and pouts when his impulses blow up in his face. The children of the world are his pet mice, and he is their Lenny, smashing them instead of petting them, angry and hurt when criticized, then baffled and sad when the children stop moving.
But never sad for long. Since he cannot be wrong, and his policies have failed, it must be the world that has failed him, not the other way around. The Bizarro President dusts off the wreckage, adjusts his suit with a comedic shrug, unfurrows his brow and finds his smile again.
***
HELP SPREAD THE MEME! Forward this and other references to a "Bizarro" presidency:
"What a great United States Senator Rick Santorum is. (Applause.) He and Zell [Miller] serve in the Senate together. I'm proud to have Rick Santorum as my campaign manager for the state of Pennsylvania. I'm proud to have -- call him friend, and I know you're proud to call him Senator." (Applause.)
Bizarro Bush:
He's the exact opposite of what a president should be
"Because the — all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculated, for example, is on the table. Whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases There's a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those — changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be — or closer delivered to that has been promised. Does that make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled."
"The use of federal dollars to destroy life is something I simply do not support."
Bush to Bring Troops Home, Resign on Bizarro Earth
"The Defense of Marriage Act declares that no state is required to accept another state's definition of marriage. If that act is overturned by activist courts, then marriages recognized in one city or state might have to be recognized as marriages everywhere else."
Bizarro Bush Apologizes
"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
Under Bizarro Bush America has a failing economy, a huge budget deficit, high unemployment and is a country scorned around the world.
Bizarro Bush Movie
"I think we all agree, the past is over.
This is still a dangerous world.
It's a world of madmen and uncertainty
and potential mental losses.
Rarely is the question asked
Is our children learning?
Will the highways of the Internet become more few?
How many hands have I shaked?
They misunderestimate me.
I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity.
I know that the human being and the fish can coexist.
Families is where our nation finds hope, where our wings take dream.
Put food on your family!
Knock down the tollbooth!
Vulcanize society!
Make the pie higher! Make the pie higher!"
Why We're Losing the War on Terror: #370,001 In a Series
For those of you who missed early episodes in the series, here is a recap:
Reason # 1: Calling it a "war". If we had taken a law enforcement approach to hunting down Osama bin Laden, with military backup as needed, we would still have the support of civil societies around the world.
Reason #2: Caribbean piracy was virtually eliminated in the late 1600s when the competing countries of France, Spain, Britain and the Netherlands finally got sick of pestering each other and agreed to take away the pirates' safe harbors. Instead, the Bush administration has expanded the territories where terrorists might find eager recruits. The administration's short attention span in Afghanistan has given the Taliban time to catch its breath, instead of crushing the dictatorship with our heel.
Reasons # 4-560: the current White House Office staff (support personnel excluded).
Reasons # 561-569 Why We're Losing the War: The eight people on the White House Office staff who know what they're doing, but who are constantly undermined by the other 458.
Reasons # 570- 668: Everyone who works in the Office of the Vice President. It is the policy of the office of the Vice President to refuse employment to anyone who might tell the current Vice President something he doesn't like to hear.
Reasons # 669-857: At least 188 members of the current National Security Council staff.
Reasons # 858-860: The two members of the National Security Council staff who were kicked out of meetings because of their fancy talk about reading maps, learning a foreign language, studying local history and "trying to understand how the enemy thinks." Weirdoes.
Reasons # 861-350,000: Kerry voters in Ohio whose ballots were stolen after being forced to wait in line 12 hours or more by Ohio's Secretary of State.
Reason # 350,001: Kenneth Blackwell, Ohio Secretary of State and co-chair of President Bush's re-election committee. Not to be confused with Mr. Blackwell the fashion maven, but we'll take humor where we can get it.
(Personal note to Mr. Blackwell: As the country doctor said to the patient with gonorrhea, I hope that piece of ass was worth it-- because you're certainly going to regret it when someone you love comes home in a box, as a direct result of your diddling with the vote in Ohio. Sleep well tonight.)
Reasons # 350,002-370,000: The 2004 count in Florida that showed 20,000 more votes for Bush than there are registered Republicans in the state. Can it be, as Bart Simpson warned, that "the dead have risen from the grave and are voting Republican"?
Ormondroyd's Encyclopedia Esoterica, fearless in matters of the occult, interviewed all 20,000 of these zombies and determined that they had, in fact, voted for Harold Stassen.
Finally tonight, we offer Reason # 370,001 Why We Are Losing the War on Terror: the inability of the global culture to examine itself with any sustained effort. What is it about this international culture, that it produces dissidents of such vileness, they feel real joy in blowing up themselves and hundreds of innocent victims?
Instead of asking that question, the dominant culture demands that we spend all our time and money "hunting down the terrorists"-- a hopeless effort, if we never address conditions that encourage the terrorist to not just imagine, but act out his rage. You tell me that Islamic countries encourage extremism, and I agree absolutely. Why, then, do we help them exterminate their moderates, until we have a climate where only fanatics can grow? More pie, Bandir?
Should anyone wilfully misinterpret these questions as sympathy for the devil, ask them this: if you have rats in your backyard, and the rats carry disease, would you spend all your effort in shooting the rats-- or should you clean up the garbage that's attracting the rats?
If you're George W. Bush or the irascible Donald Rumsfeld, you blow up your neighbors' houses, then shoot at the rats as they run out, inadvertantly killing the neighbor's dogs and small children. When the neighbors complain, accuse them of ingratitude. Like Tom and Daisy Buchanan, "careless people, who smash things up and retreat into their wealth and let other people clean up their messes", leave the garbage for someone else. Pose for photos with the Saudi prince of rats. And act surprised when the older children want revenge for their dog and baby sister.
***
THAT'S ALL for today; be sure to tune in for Episodes #370,002 to #99,005,385-- as we lay the dead at the doorstep of the 98,635,383 Americans who think two more years of the Bush administration couldn't possibly do any more harm.
(Figure obtained by calculating 33% out of a population of 298,895,101. There ain't no flies on me.)
SEE ALSO:
A Little Touch of Hotspur in the Night
A Thankless Task for Diogenes
Why They Voted for Hamas
The Mummers' Play
Reason # 1: Calling it a "war". If we had taken a law enforcement approach to hunting down Osama bin Laden, with military backup as needed, we would still have the support of civil societies around the world.
Reason #2: Caribbean piracy was virtually eliminated in the late 1600s when the competing countries of France, Spain, Britain and the Netherlands finally got sick of pestering each other and agreed to take away the pirates' safe harbors. Instead, the Bush administration has expanded the territories where terrorists might find eager recruits. The administration's short attention span in Afghanistan has given the Taliban time to catch its breath, instead of crushing the dictatorship with our heel.
Reasons # 4-560: the current White House Office staff (support personnel excluded).
Reasons # 561-569 Why We're Losing the War: The eight people on the White House Office staff who know what they're doing, but who are constantly undermined by the other 458.
Reasons # 570- 668: Everyone who works in the Office of the Vice President. It is the policy of the office of the Vice President to refuse employment to anyone who might tell the current Vice President something he doesn't like to hear.
Reasons # 669-857: At least 188 members of the current National Security Council staff.
Reasons # 858-860: The two members of the National Security Council staff who were kicked out of meetings because of their fancy talk about reading maps, learning a foreign language, studying local history and "trying to understand how the enemy thinks." Weirdoes.
Reasons # 861-350,000: Kerry voters in Ohio whose ballots were stolen after being forced to wait in line 12 hours or more by Ohio's Secretary of State.
Reason # 350,001: Kenneth Blackwell, Ohio Secretary of State and co-chair of President Bush's re-election committee. Not to be confused with Mr. Blackwell the fashion maven, but we'll take humor where we can get it.
(Personal note to Mr. Blackwell: As the country doctor said to the patient with gonorrhea, I hope that piece of ass was worth it-- because you're certainly going to regret it when someone you love comes home in a box, as a direct result of your diddling with the vote in Ohio. Sleep well tonight.)
Reasons # 350,002-370,000: The 2004 count in Florida that showed 20,000 more votes for Bush than there are registered Republicans in the state. Can it be, as Bart Simpson warned, that "the dead have risen from the grave and are voting Republican"?
Ormondroyd's Encyclopedia Esoterica, fearless in matters of the occult, interviewed all 20,000 of these zombies and determined that they had, in fact, voted for Harold Stassen.
Finally tonight, we offer Reason # 370,001 Why We Are Losing the War on Terror: the inability of the global culture to examine itself with any sustained effort. What is it about this international culture, that it produces dissidents of such vileness, they feel real joy in blowing up themselves and hundreds of innocent victims?
Instead of asking that question, the dominant culture demands that we spend all our time and money "hunting down the terrorists"-- a hopeless effort, if we never address conditions that encourage the terrorist to not just imagine, but act out his rage. You tell me that Islamic countries encourage extremism, and I agree absolutely. Why, then, do we help them exterminate their moderates, until we have a climate where only fanatics can grow? More pie, Bandir?
Should anyone wilfully misinterpret these questions as sympathy for the devil, ask them this: if you have rats in your backyard, and the rats carry disease, would you spend all your effort in shooting the rats-- or should you clean up the garbage that's attracting the rats?
If you're George W. Bush or the irascible Donald Rumsfeld, you blow up your neighbors' houses, then shoot at the rats as they run out, inadvertantly killing the neighbor's dogs and small children. When the neighbors complain, accuse them of ingratitude. Like Tom and Daisy Buchanan, "careless people, who smash things up and retreat into their wealth and let other people clean up their messes", leave the garbage for someone else. Pose for photos with the Saudi prince of rats. And act surprised when the older children want revenge for their dog and baby sister.
***
THAT'S ALL for today; be sure to tune in for Episodes #370,002 to #99,005,385-- as we lay the dead at the doorstep of the 98,635,383 Americans who think two more years of the Bush administration couldn't possibly do any more harm.
(Figure obtained by calculating 33% out of a population of 298,895,101. There ain't no flies on me.)
SEE ALSO:
A Little Touch of Hotspur in the Night
A Thankless Task for Diogenes
Why They Voted for Hamas
The Mummers' Play
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