Boycott Scotland! Freedom Tape!

From CNN.com: Anger over the decision [to allow the Lockerbie bomber to go back to Libya] has prompted a call for Americans to avoid travel to Scotland and boycott Scottish products including whisky.



Republican senator from Mississippi, 83 year old Freemont Indignan, tabled a resolution that the 3M corporation either rename its popular Scotch Tape product "Freedom" Tape or else leave the country.

"And forthwith and henceforth, I will no longer eat haggis," said the senator.

The senator did, however, admit that he would continue to wear kilts during his private time because those are made in China. "I have always preferred a good, airy kilt over dungarees."

Where monsters are made -- in Ivy League schools

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Do you want to know where the monsters of modern life come from? The Ivy League schools of the United States.

Who are these monsters? Wall Street and American intelligence agencies.

A recent writing project necessitated some research about the CIA. As I did my reading, something occurred to me: the same epic incompetence, greed, sociopathic/psychopathic behavior exhibited by the CIA in its torturing, democracy-overthrowing history mirrors the behavior witnessed in recent years on Wall Street. How Wall Street traders and financiers gleefully, and without accountability, tank our economy, and then feel justified and entitled to receive millions of dollars in bonuses for their misdeeds. What do these two groups of miscreants have in common? So many of them come from Ivy League schools.

One CIA hero I was reading about was Dan Mitrione. He may not have been Ivy League educated, but the men who recognized, encouraged and employed his particular "talents" surely were. Mitrione was a small-town cop who joined the FBI, and later, the CIA. He was regarded as an expert in "harsh interrogation techniques." In fact, Mitrione was so proficient at mistreating human beings, he was sent to South America in the late 1960s by the CIA to train others to better mistreat human beings. One of Mitrione's signature tactics was taking very fine wire, which was attached to an electrical source, placing the ends of that fine wire in between a person's teeth and then applying electric shocks. Done in the name of freedom and goodnenss, democracy and God, no doubt.

In 1970, Mitrione was kidnapped by "terrorists" and murdered. About Mitrione, the CIA said that he exemplified the highest principles of the police profession. Right.

The "perfect storm" of this sociopathic, psychotic, remorseless inhumanity and epic incompetence of the Ivy League was embodied in George W. Bush (Yale and Harvard educated) who is noted, far and wide, for his efforts to tank the economy and his deeply held disrespect for human life.

Having never come within a hundred miles of an Ivy League school, I have to wonder, what the hell are they teaching people there?

Learn more about forgotten CIA hero Dan Mitrione

Rush's Ark

Gawd went to his bulbous, bilious servant, Rush, disturbing him as he penned a list of reasons why he hated his neighbors in the village. Gawd said, "Rush, build an ark by this number of cubits, by that many cubits, by whatever else number of cubits. And fill this ark with two of every venal, petty, contrary opinion and belief -- catch them like fireflies and be sure they survive. I have been on a binge, drinking the Cosmos' version of Milwaukee's Finest, and will soon empty my bladder upon the urinal puck of your world."

Rush waited -- twig poised above his wet, clay tablet -- to see if Gawd was going to say more. Gawd did: "Oh yeah, and in order for these venal, petty, counter-intuitive opinions to flourish upon the earth, be sure to bring people upon the ark whose minds have all the same jagged edges and asymmetrical crevices for these cancerous beliefs to live in."

Rush waited to see if there were more instructions. There were not. He wondered if a "cubit" was a unit of measurement from that liberal, communist, new-world-order metric system. There were days when he had his doubts about Gawd.

So, Rush built the ark. Actually, Rush employed his usual strategy when there was work to be done -- he got others to do it for him. He duped them with promises of high wages, payable upon completion. On the day of completion, the workers came around Rush's hut looking for their payment. By that point, the sky had darkened and it appeared Gawd's cosmic beer-binge was ending. All that remained was The Great Micturition.

"Give me one more day," Rush told the workers. "It's about to rain. As soon as it stops raining, come back, and I'll pay everyone."

The workers were unhappy with this, but figured a short delay couldn't hurt.

As the rains fell, Rush led all of the unreasonable, cancerous, sniping opinions into the ark. By the time he invited his few friends into the ark, Rush was wet and cranky; his crotch hurt from his legs rubbing together during all of the walking he was forced to do corralling and herding the opinions.

When Rush's friends -- Anne Coulter, Glenn Beck, Sean Inanity, Bilious O'Reilly, Michael Wiener and Robert Novak (who was no longer alive, but strangely, nobody noticed) -- boarded the ark, the first thing they noticed was the primitive conditions of their new habitat.

"Where are the waiters and domestics going to sleep?" Anne Coulter asked. "I like being served, but I don't want to actually be around those people."

"We're going to have to live without some of our creature comforts," Rush explained.

"I resent being called a creature," Sean Inanity pouted, crossing his arms. "And while I'm at it, I don't see a hair stylist station."

"There are no hair stylists!" Rush said, impatient. "It's just us! Don't you understand? Gawd is pissing this world away, and we've been chosen to be saved!"

"Sounds like socialism to me," Glenn Beck said.

"What do you mean?" Bilious O'Reilly asked him.

"I don't know," said Glenn Beck.

Robert Novak kept his own counsel.

* * *

The rains came, flooding the earth. The workers who'd built the ark waited at Rush's hut until they were swept away by the rising tides.

The inhabitants of the ark --

"I resent being called an 'inhabitant'" Sean Inanity groused through pursed lips.

-- unpacked their possessions. Each had been assigned an area in the ark. Everyone insisted on having their own space, to do with whatever they pleased.

The first sign of disharmony among the residents of the ark --

"I prefer to be called a 'passenger,'" whined Sean Inanity.

-- was when Michael Wiener began his prolonged colonic ablutions within his area. He had every right to do so, nobody argued that, but he went about the unpleasantness without the slightest thought for the people around him.

Bilious O'Reilly produced an axe from his luggage, and began chopping at the floor of the ark. Rush rushed over to stop him. "Are you insane?" Rush shouted. "You're cutting right into the bottom of the ark! You break through there, you'll sink us!"

"It's my right," Bilious O'Reilly said.

"Well, Jeezus, sure you have the right," Rush said, exasperated, "but that doesn't mean it's right to do it!"

"It's my right," said Bilious O'Reilly.

* * *

Sean Inanity had brought numerous books of matches into the ark so that he could continue one of his favorite passtimes: lighting farts. Seeing flashes in the darkness, Rush approached Inanity, wondering what he was doing. Although the activity looked like fun, danger was on Rush's mind.

"What're you doing?" Rush demanded. "If you light the ark on fire, you'll sink us all!"

"It's my right!" Sean Inanity pouted. He always hated being interrupted when the gas was flowing.

"Well, sure, but what good is your right if you burn up the boat?"

"It's my right."

* * *

One day, Rush awoke with a start from an afternoon nap to the sound of automatic gun fire. He hurried to the other end of the ark and found Anne Coulter shooting at targets with her Ingram Automatic pistol. She was shooting at slow moving opinions that had innocently wandered to her end of the ark. She'd hit a few of them, but had also ravaged the wall of the ark.

"What the hell are you doing?" Rush shouted. "If you shoot through that wall, you'll drown us all!"

"It's my right," Anne Coulter said, turning with her gun, forgetting to aim the barrel downward. Rush stared at the pistol's bore, pointed directed at him.

"Could you point that away from me?" he said.

"Oh sure," Anne Coulter said. In shifting it away from him, her finger accidentally pulled the trigger and fired a round into the floor of the ark. She shrugged and laughed. "Oops."

Rush struggled to control himself. "Understand, that wall and this floor are all that stand between us and all of the water. If the water gets into the ark, the ark will sink and we'll drown. There is no land for us to swim to. No lifeboats on this ark. It's just us."

"But it's my right," Anne Coulter said.

* * *

Then there came the day when a constant, seemingly-unending thudding sound awakened Rush. He walked through the ark and found Glenn Beck with a ping pong paddle in each hand, pounding two balls rhythmically against the wall in his area. Rush watched. Beck was incessant. The sound was maddening. Within two minutes, Rush was ready to strangle him.

"Glenn!" Rush shouted louder than he intended.

Beck caught the balls and turned to Rush. "What's up?"

"Do you have to do that?"

"What? Ping-ponging? I do it for exercise."

"Jeezus, you exercise like that? How do you stay so fat?"

"A remanant of my heavy drug use. When I was an addict, I must've blown my works apart. Still, ping-ponging's fun."

"But the sound of it is driving me crazy."

Glenn Beck looked at him, blank. "But I do it for exercise."

"But, really, the sound has me going out of my mind."

"It's my right."

Rush gritted his teeth. "Yes, I understand it's your right. But in the name of all that's holy, could you please see your way toward giving it a break for a while?"

"But it's my right."

As Rush walked dejectedly away from Glenn Beck, he passed Robert Novak's section. Bob had been very quiet since coming aboard. At least he understood what it meant for people to try and live together. Rush entered his area and heard laughter. The laughter didn't sound like Bob, and a moment later he saw its source -- the opinions and beliefs Gawd ordered brought aboard were skittering and running around like rats. They took off when Rush entered. It took some doing, but Rush eased his massive girth onto the floor, so that he sat next to Robert Novak.

"Bob, what's wrong with the others?" Rush said.

Bob said nothing.

"We've got to live together on this ark. I don't like the inconveniences any more than they do, but until the floodwaters recede and dry land once again appears, we're stuck here."

Bob said nothing.

"You're very wise, Bob. You keep your own counsel. There's no getting through to them."

Through the ark echoed the sounds of gun fire, incessant ping-ponging, the chopping of wood, giggles and short gas bursts catching flame, and the wet, gruesome sounds drifting down from Michael Wiener's section.

And the first narrow stream of water ran down the center aisle of the ark. The wretched, cancerous, bat-like opinions and beliefs cackled at the sight of it -- sure, they could fly. It was water from outside. Rush looked at it and hung his head.

Bob kept his own counsel.

Rush reached into his pocket and took out a bottle of Oxycontin. "What the fuck?" he said.

Bob kept his own counsel.

Conservatives are conservative on courage

Who was that gun-toting anti-Obama protester?

Liberals protest war. Conservatives protest health care. Got it.

So, a guy shows up to one of President Obama's health care town hall meetings with a 9mm strapped to his thigh. Provocative. Avant garde, even.

The thing I don't understand about conservatives is that they live in society as though there is no society. They live within a community as though there is no community.

We have police. We have a military. Yet, these fear-filled quivering rabbits carry firearms around on their person to church, to the grocery store, to the liquor store, the playground, to work. Then they have the gall to veil this obvious, selfish, childish obsession with fear by calling it "love of freedom," "exercising my rights," or simply "I do it cuz I can!" Part and parcel with this pervasive fear among gun-toting conservatives is the need to lie about it.

I have handled firearms. I have fired a Glock, a Magnum, a shotgun and a Bushmaster at a target range. It was fun. I also learned that day that no private citizen in any civilized nation should ever have the right to carry one of these corpse-makers in public. No way.

"But I use my gun to hunt!" comes an indignant cry.

You hunt outside of a health care town hall meeting where President Obama is going to speak?

Then there are the gun-owning hunters who lavishly whine about being looked down upon because they hunt.

Well, listen buddy, hunting is a primitive act -- like taking a shit outside. Sure, go ahead and do it, you've got the right, I guess, but don't do it and then turn around making any great claims to sophisticated personhood. We created society so we wouldn't have to go out and kill for our food -- and so we could shit indoors, in private.

And if you're so gawddamned frightened all the time -- sleep with a nightlight.

Thank You, Masked Man!

There was sadness at the wake. There always is. But the characters sat stoically, facing the coffin in which their creator lay. And they all came: Dutch, the warden, Kinky the hospital attendant, Uncle Tom from Death Row. Tarzan and Boy. With a lump of chewing tobacco bulging like a tumor in between his cheek and gum, Fat Boy the used-car salesman, ogled Jane, winking at her when he caught her eye. Dracula and his bats were there, as were Ike, Sherm, and Nixon, sharing a flask with the White Collar Drunk. Tonto sat with the Lone Ranger and Silver (who was also crammed into the row), asking him to explain what had happened to their Kemosabe. To which the Lone Ranger exclaimed, "I'll explain if you'll get your goddamned hands off me, you barbarian!"

In the back of the chapel stood Christ and Moses. Bishop Sheen and Cardinal Spellman sat in front of Them, whispering to one another. Seated in the front row of the chapel, clothed in their judicial robes, sat Magistrate Kaiser ing intently to Judge Axlerod, who said over and over, "I swear to God he said: 'blah blah blah!'" Next to them were the pall bearers: six police officers wearing executioner masks beneath their hats. They were members of the Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York police departments. No one knew from what city the sixth officer had come.

With an empty chair separating her from the pall-bearers, the widow grieved. She was Lenny's shady lady: Hot Honey Harlowe. She wore a black crushed velvet dress, which clung to her lushly sculpted body. Her long, wavy red hair hung down her back. She cried and fidgeted with the object she held in her hands-Lenny's favorite microphone.

Standing at a podium at the front of the chapel stood Father Flotsky. He looked on all of the fatherless characters, and in his Barry Fitzgerald brogue began his eulogy, "Once a boy goes the bad road, the good road is hard to follow. When the good road is hard to follow, the bad road opens and the good road closes. Lenny was not a bad boy. Saying words of four letters doesn't make anybody bad. 'To' is a preposition, and 'come' is a verb. When Jackie Kennedy stood up in the Presidential limousine during her husband's assassination, the moment after the President was shot, she was hauling ass to save her ass!"

The old priest looked down at the placid countenance of Lenny Bruce. Father Flotsky sighed and said, "There is nothing sadder than an aged hipster."



Father Flotsky motioned to the pall bearers. They came forward and lowered the coffin's lid. With three officers on each side they raised the coffin onto their shoulders and carried it down the aisle like a trophy.

The atmosphere at the cemetery was even more melancholy. The police lay the casket on the straps stretched across the gaping mouth of the open grave. The orphans gathered around. In the midst of the gathering, stood Honey holding the microphone. Although she was a living person, she stood among Lenny's creations for she was often more fictional than real to him.

Father Flotsky, in full ceremonial garb, asked that the lid of the coffin been raised to allow him to bless the body, and so Honey could lay the microphone on Lenny's chest. The police officer whom no one knew stepped forward and raised the lid.

The characters breathed a collective gasp when they saw there was no body in the casket, but that it was filled with plastic dog crap. Tarzan turned to Nixon, "Plastic dog crap?! Who'd build a factory to make plastic dog crap?!"

Nixon shrugged and said, "I don't know how you couldn't, seeing as the plastic vomit sold so well."

The unknown police officer turned to the gathering and removed his hat and mask. It was Lenny. To everyone's amazement, Lenny removed every stitch of clothing he wore except for the gun belt, which he turned in such a way so as to cover his nudity with the holster.

"What?" Lenny asked, looking at the stunned faces. "Nobody ever seen a naked Jew before?"

No one replied.

Lenny slipped his thumbs into the gun belt and said, "Before I go, I just want to get something clear: If you take a kike and a dyke, a spic and a mick, and put them into a room with a kraut, a gook, a fag, and a spook, what do you have? A room full of people. So, if you put an F next to a U, then throw on a C and a K, what do you have? A word. And if you think about it, one that's pretty nice. Because, when I think about that word I don't imagine scenes of death and killing. No. I get images of her," he pointed toward Hot Honey Harlowe. "And if any of you schlubs think that's dirty, if you think that's decadent, amoral, or asexual; if you really think I'm rank for telling you that you're probably a bunch of fruits.

"I'm not saying there are no harmful words. There are. Like "mutilate." God, that's an ugly word. Or how about these dirty four letter words like "kill," "hurt," or "hate?" Or how about these: "entrapment," "harassment," and "we find the defendant guilty as charged!?"

Lenny gazed at his grieved characters. He approached Honey and kissed her tear-wet cheek. As he turned to the anxious expressions on his characters he said, "You worried about where I'm going from here? Am I going up? Down? Well, since I believe that the earth revolves, you can go to Heaven at six-oh-five in the morning, and hell at eleven-twenty-nine at night. You could say hell is to the left. I don't know. But if I see God I'll bet He's pretty pissed off. He might not have a TV, but I'd bet He knows about all the crappy things we're doing in the world. All this killing and hurting shit we're doing is a boil on God's ass, so he sent Jesus to lance that boil. But we killed Him. And if you think about it, it's a good thing we got Him when we did because if we killed Christ in the last fifty years we'd have to contend with generations of parochial school kids running around with little electric-chairs around their necks."

In the rear of the group, Christ smiled at Moses.

"Nah. Hey, I gotta split. There's a subway train due to go by in the Great Beyond and Marilyn Monroe's standing next to the tracks-I gotta be ready with my gun when her skirt goes up. So, in the words of Will Rogers, 'I never met a dyke I didn't like.'"

Lenny turned away from the assembled characters who watched his skinny, white Jewish ass as he walked off into the sunset.