Necon Surety Has Cut-and-Run

I was witness to a ghoulish, reprehensible display this week that revealed to me -- painfully so -- why America takes the idea of going to war with another nation so lightly; takes it on eagerly; almost gleefully, like going into this year's Homecoming Game.

At my unnamed place of work a department wide meeting was called earlier in the week, during which much talk of our position in the marketplace was bandied about. At one point, a maniacally smiling man and a jolly bloated woman addressed the audience. Nauseating patriot music was piped in and a photograph of American soldiers taken during World War II was displayed on the screen at the front of the room. As the duo read their parts with saccharine gusto, they compared our company's position in an increasingly crowded and competitive marketplace to the American soldiers portrayed in the HBO series Band of Brothers fighting the Battle of the Bulge.

The duo related a scenario so familiar from our culture: the United States up against insurmountable evil; the U.S. distinctly in the role of the underdog. The climax of the presentation came when the maniacally smiling man read out the scene when a German scout was sent to the American line with a note from the German commander asking if the Americans would surrender. The American commander scrawled on the note "Nuts," meaning, no. And incredibly, "Nuts" became our rallying cry in that antiseptic auditorium. When the maniacally smiling man asking if we were going to give in to our competition, the dull-eyed drones shouted back, "Nuts!"

Well, the smiling man did capture the sense of his presentation in that moment. It was truly fucking nuts. One of the most morbid and nutty displays I've ever witnessed in corporate life.

But sensing how people in the auditorium were slurping up the familiar pablum of how America overcame adversity and won the day, yet again, I saw immediately -- clearly, crystaline -- how it is that America takes going to war so lightly. How there is almost a feeling of the Olympic Games come earlier among those who support warmakers. America starts wars seeking more Battles of the Bulge so that these stories can then be used to motivate corporate zombies to slay the dragons that keep their bosses from getting ever richer. War is the ultimate sport because it requires no athletic skill. You don't have to learn the tedious technique of vaulting over a bar set 18 feet in the air, using nothing more than arms and legs and a long pole. There is no shot to be put in war. In the case of the war in Iraq, there is no boring strategy to be adhered to. No thinking in war. Just run and grunt and shoot and hope not to be shot.

Of all the images emanating from Iraq, there seems to be no Battle of the Bulge forthcoming. There is Abu Ghraib, there is Mission Accomplished, there is the hellish sprial into mayhem. The warmongs ask, "How can this be happening?" I ask, "How could you not see this coming?"

I'm not psychic and have no access to an oracle, but to me it was pretty elementary.

You've got George W. Bush -- silver-spooned-leaden-brained progeny of corporate and political criminals. He is propped up by a sordid viper's nest of moralists and following the 2000 presidential election, literally becomes a squatter in the White House. He does not win the election, but is handed it by the Supreme Court. Handed it like his plum spot in the Champagne Corps during the Vietnam War, handed to him like every job in his life and every cent of venture capital or sack of money to rescue whatever company he was strangling to death at the moment. The man is as inarticulate as a carburetor. And I don't think it was any mistake that it was specifically George W. Bush -- dullard son of George H.W. and the Silver Douchebag. He had the Bush name, but more importantly no mind to comprehend the ugliness and treachery ahead of him. Doubtless the people propping up W. knew he would go down in history as the worst of America's presidents. The man's name would become an obscenity even before he completed his second ill-gotten term in office. They knew that his brow would never furrow above his too-close-together eyes with the question of what was happening around him.

This is not to let George W. off the hook for his administration. He's as culpable for the horrors he has wrought as Pol Pot or Stalin. W. thinks in a child's scrawl of hierogliphic Christian jibberish. And he truly embodies the "banality of evil."

A dozen years ago I wrote a one-page short story titled Interview with the Devil as a reaction to the ideas in our culture that evil, evil men, and even the devil (if such an entity exists) is not an urbane, educated, sophisticated personage who knows what wine to drink with what meal, who listens to classical music and reads Proust. The Hannibal Lechter of the retched film Hannibal is absolutely not my vision of evil. My idea of evil is that of a malicious dullard who amuses himself by pulling the wings off of flies.

He is the truck left in neutral that rolls over a child.

Even his once rabid supporters have lost heart and faith in him. The articleNeo Culpa in Vanity Fair is a stark window onto the twisted souls who aided and abetted W. in his push to "liberate" Iraq:

Kenneth Adelman, a lifelong neocon activist and Pentagon insider who served on the Defense Policy Board until 2005, wrote a famous op-ed article in The Washington Post in February 2002, arguing: "I believe demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk." Now he says, "I just presumed that what I considered to be the most competent national-security team since Truman was indeed going to be competent. They turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the post-war era. Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional."

Worse yet is:

Kenneth Adelman: "The most dispiriting and awful moment of the whole administration was the day that Bush gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to [former C.I.A. director] George Tenet, General Tommy Franks, and [Coalition Provisional Authority chief] Jerry [Paul] Bremer—three of the most incompetent people who've ever served in such key spots. And they get the highest civilian honor a president can bestow on anyone! That was the day I checked out of this administration. It was then I thought, There's no seriousness here, these are not serious people. If he had been serious, the president would have realized that those three are each directly responsible for the disaster of Iraq."

And then there is Attorney General Alberto Gonzales lamenting during his visit to Spain recently that the world is unfairly frowning upon modern day America:

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday he believes some of the U.S. actions in its war on terror have done damage to the image of the United States abroad, particularly its commitment to the rule of law.

The U.S. has drawn criticism around the world for the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq, its treatment of detainees and secret renditions of terrorism suspects to clandestine prisons in allied countries where they are allegedly tortured.

"The notion that the United States does not fully support the rule of law is one I find very disappointing," Gonzales told reporters, especially given that President Bush "believes the Unites States is the leader, is a beacon of hope in the world and it's important that our actions should reflect a total commitment to the rule of law."

He blamed the country's deteriorating image on misunderstanding in Europe about what the U.S. is doing to fight terrorism.

Uh, no.

No, it's the CIA prisons, it's Guantanamo Bay, it's Abu Ghraib, it's Jose Padilla, it's the PATRIOT Acts I & II, it's the dilution of the Geneva Convention, it's the arrogance, the unthinkingness, the violence -- the goddamnable violence -- that has the world looking at America and wondering, "Have you gone fucking crazy?"

So, the neocons' surety has cut and run and another America election looms. I wonder how many years it will take for the political parties to put away their advertisements and settle down to the true competition in an American election -- the Republican blackbox hackers against the Democrat blackbox hackers.

The Root of All Evil

British scientist Richard Dawkins made a two-part documentary titled The Root of All Evil? in which he looks at religion -- particularly fundamentalist religion -- as possibly being evil, or, more like a predatory virus corrupting and warping our world, rather than making it a better place.

What came through in a number of the interviews Dawkins conducted with zealous adherents to Christianity, Judaism and Islam, is that some people -- more than we'd care to realize -- follow society's laws and refrain from such things as murder and stealing, only because they fear hell, or that they have a holy book that expressly forbids such actions (though usually condones such actions in selective, abitrary cases).

Reader of this blog, why do you not murder? Why do you not steal or maim people?

I'm pretty much an atheist, and believe adherence to any religious text -- any single text of any kind, really -- is a sign of fear in a person, a sign weakness; it is that person clutching to irrationality because they cannot face rational reality.

I don't murder people because murder is wrong. How do I know murder is wrong? What tells me murder is wrong? The notion of it just feels wrong. Sure, I get angry with people, frustrated and mortally disappointed, but the idea of actually murdering the person who fires such feelings in me is not something that enters my mind.

I'm aware that murder exists. If I were being attacked, or my family was in danger, I would take my shillelagh and flog the gray matter out of any miscreant's head. Self-defense is not murder. Allowing yourself to be murdered is as irrational as committing murder. Any fool knows this.

To kill someone because they believe something I don't believe is utterly ridiculous. A mindset that embraces such thinking cannot even be called primitive, but truly other.

Stealing? Well, I'd hate it someone stole from me. Yeah, I'm an atheist but I can certainly appreciate the wisdom in the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." I also believe that people reap what they sew. But generally, I don't steal because it's wrong. The same intangible something that tells me murder is wrong tells me stealing is wrong, too. When there is some object that I really want and cannot afford, I save my money and wait to buy it. Not because I'm virtuous or afraid of jail or hell, but because for the most part, I like how our society works.

If you actually wanted to commit crimes, you would likely go uncaught and unpunished. A police officer once wrote to me after reading one of my books. He and I met for coffee and had a great chat. He told me that if people saw how close to actual anarchy our city streets were, no one would sleep at night. He said that the only thing keeping us from sinking into a complete lawless free-for-all is that most people simply choose to obey the laws.

So, what keeps you in line? Fear? Virtue?

Addendum

An O, so interesting postscript to Richard Dawkins' documentary is that he interviewed evangelist Ted Haggard regarding Haggard's views on evolution vs. creationism. Haggard did his phoney-smiling-best to appear magnanimous while indulging Dawkins' admission to being an atheist, then did his furrowed-brow-best to appear forthright when chiding Dawkins to not be arrogant in his views. Of course footage from Haggard's sermons was predictably interwoven showing him literally dictating to his flock what to think and what drone back to him in response to his rhetorical questions during services.

With regard to the accusations made against Haggard, he has gone from completely denying that he carried on a three-year homosexual relationship with a male prostitute, and that he imbibed methamphetamines to now admitting the male prostitute gave him a massage and that he, Haggard, purchased methamphetamines from him -- which he then threw away.

I wish that Haggard would just own up to his own evolution and be whatever it is that he is. If he's homosexual, cool, be homosexual. If he's straight and strays, that's between him and his family. But if he is going to posture as some kind of moral compass for his community and literally preach at his flock how to live, he might consider getting his own shit together first.

At the end of the day Haggard proves my belief that these conservative moral titans have multifarious skeletons in their closets. They make the attempt to set themselves above those around them and dictate codes of morality they themselves cannot live up to. They are hypocrites to the core, screeching about family values and "character" during every goddamned election. Meanwhile, they have neither.

So, Ted Haggard, Godspeed my publicly flayed man. You're reaping what you have sewed.

I hope the man addresses the log in his own eye and stops making a career out of tending to specks in the eyes of others.

Pryvett in Upfront Magazine

"Mean Old Man" -- Not a Denier

O, the price one pays every once in a while being available online, having one's name and work and sense of humor "out there." The other day some girl on MySpace, whose avator is a set of huge (not unlovely) tits crammed into a tight T-shirt that proclaims "Brunette's Have More Fun," wrote me a message containing a one line question: "Are you a Holocaust denier?"

I have been asked odd and insulting questions over the years, in person and online, but I must confess that no other matched this for shock-value or caliber. The person asking was not among my Friends' list, not someone with whom I'd even exchanged email. Just this random note rolling into in my Inbox asking if I'm one of the crazies of this world who denies one of the most gargantuan and horrible events of the 20th Century.

I'm not a Holocaust denier. I'm no great historian, but I've never read or seen any credible critique of the version of history that tells us 6,000,000 Jews (20 million people in total) were methodically slaughtered by the Nazis in concentration camps. If anything, my reading has focused on the travesty of justice with how so many infamous Nazi war criminals escaped to South America, and elsewhere. For instance, the notorious Martin Bormann escaped Germany with the aid of the Vatican. He was issued a Vatican visa, which allowed him to escape Europe and justice. I read in one book called The List about how many Nazi war criminals settled in America and in Canada. One Nazi was said to have settled in Windsor, Ontario, my hometown! I was horrified.

Das Korrespondence:

No Subject in the subject heading box

Are you a holocaust denier?

My reply:

You have spectacular tits.

Her reply:

are you? and thanks.

My reply:

No, I'm not a holocaust denier. What in the name of god would make you ask a complete stranger such a question? Looking for kindred spirits? You'll find none here.

Her reply:

No. I'm a Jew. There was something on your profile that lead me to believe that.

My reply:

OK, jokes and sarcasm and cynicism aside, what in the world did you read in my profile that would lead you to think I'm a Holocaust denier? I'm genuinely curious. Only a few weeks ago was I contacted by an Auchwitz survivor and I was not only encouraging him to write a book about his experiences, I was offering my services (free) to write and publish the work. The pervasive, destructive amnesia in our world is a suffocating bubble in which every manner of horror occurs.

Please do indicate what you read in my profile that gave you pause. No more sarcastic remarks out of me.

Best,
Matt

Her reply:

Mean old man.

My reply:

Oh, for fuck's sake you're referring to that Lenny Bruce photograph I have. You goddamned ignoramus! He was a Jewish comedian and had that newspaper specially made. Christ-in-a-handcart, get some goddamned culture! Holy shit, I'd thought you were some neo-Nazi slut recruiting. Take a course on satire, learn what humor and hyperbole are all about. Better yet, disconnect from the Internet, this ain't the place for the irony impaired. And you are most certainly impaired!

Now that I have this sorted out, please fuck off!

Signed,
Not Mel Gibson
Her reply:

You're very nasty. I know who Lenny Bruce is. Asshole.

My reply:

Go fuck yourself and get the Jewish Defense League after someone else's ass. You go around being some idiotic crusader. Christ, talk to someone who survived the Holocaust and see how your wretched self-righteousness rates. You're a fucking idiot who is not fit for adult conversation. Go fuck around with your iPod or learn to douche or something constructive. Anything, just keep the fuck away from anyone who knows how to think. There are too many pilons on the road as it is.

Fuck you.

That's about the gist of our interchange.

Man, Lenny Bruce once said, "There's nothing sadder than an aging hipster."

I say, "There is nothing more awful than an un-entertaining crazy person."

The power in Lenny's faked newspaper headline is that the absurdity of it causes a momentary laugh, which is quickly overtaken by the haunting realization of the calculated slaughter perpetrated by the Nazis -- while at the same time satirizing the escaped Nazis' hiding place (stating it in such baldfaced terms; "We don't know where they're hiding" becomes as empty as "I was just following orders"), and taking a shot at all those in a position of power who did nothing with the knowledge. I think it's a very powerful photograph and a very poignant statement. It's a stick in the eye to Holocaust deniers, not a call to arms.

But there is no subtlety left in this world. Peoples' idea of subtlety is ripping wet farts in elevators. Crass and base. No wonder this image was lost on a lost youth.

Ms. Chickenlittle

The other day I found an interesting article on the Guerrilla News Network titled What the Military Commissions Act of 2006 means for you. I posted it on the bulletin board on MySpace and received the following note:

From Ms. Chickenlittle (not her real name):

I know, since Bush is such an asshole, why don't we light torches and storm the White House as though it were the god-damned Bastille? All you are doing is exacerbating tension regarding issues we have access to. Honestly, being informed: good. Freaking people out when they can't change it until next election: pointless. If Clinton can get impeached and stay in office, I'm sure Bush can do it, too. In 2 years, other people are going to run for office and everyone will also have their minds made up as soon as the "who's running" announcement is made. Until then, you need to do a week at Disney before you die from a stroke or anyeurism.

My reply:

Thanks for your concern, but I'm quite happy how I am. Isn't it suffocating living with your head stuck so far beneath the sand? If you call that happiness, I'll believe you, but I won't imitate you.

From Ms. Chickenlittle:

My head is above ground, thank you. I just think that human beings wouldn't be so crabby and fight all of the time if everyone just calmed down. I'm not saying that what you've posted isn't true, but really, what can be done? We can impeach the guy, but he can still keep working. He's only got 2 years left and then some person who will piss us all off some other way will take over. Why get everyone all riled up about something they have no control over? As I said; being informed: good. Getting one's panties in a wad: pointless. I guess after people go through/see so much BS some of us become activists and the rest just prefer to stay away from the Drama Llama.
Oh, the health advisory is actually because I've been on anxiety and blood pressure meds since shortly after 9/11. I had to make CNN and FOX News unavailable on my usual TiVo list as they torture us with news at work. This whole ordeal: terrorists, war, and gov't has everyone's blood pressure going through the roof. I believe I peaked at 167/113 before meds. Possibly why I'm on all of this medication and getting counseling is because I have had access to information dated years before 9/11 confirming all suspicions the Bush administration had about the WMD's. Yes, Saddam had the damned things. Yes, I know where he's hidden them. No, I cannot tell you because I signed legally binding documents to forbid me to tell anyone how I know, where the stuff is now, indicators that told me, etc. Could everything have been executed better? Oh, yes. Does rehashing the past constantly change that? No. Will it change anyone's vote when it's time? I doubt it. So many people are so jaded with the mud slinging and controversy that goes on during elections and even other times that if they do show up at the polls, they vote for "whomever the Democrat is" or whatever their affiliation. They know what the Democrats stand for, but not really what the candidate stands for. If we remove labels, we can get a clearer picture and get the public more engaged in their political support system. It would also do away with that pesky electoral college that keeps screwing everything up.

But there I go rambling. I guess that means I need to go take something and go to bed.

You have fun ruffling feathers because we always need feather rufflers! Just don't get pecked...

BTW, I'm editing a work that details the whole anxiety thing... If you're interested...it may even give you some fodder.
;)

My reply:

No one will deter me from writing or posting what I feel like writing or posting.

Clearly, you are the person who has anxiety issues.

Flail away at me all you like, you're the one who chose to read my posting. Rather than suggesting I cease and desist, maybe you should be more responsible about not exposing yourself to things that upset you. My post's title is pretty clear and pretty accurate as to the contents it contains. I did not title it "Chocolate Cake" in order to trick people like you into reading it.

So, get hold of yourself and point your frenetic energies toward something and someone else.

We live in a shameful time.

I once did a paper on the McCarthy witch-hunts of the 1950s and recall sitting back, amazed, thinking, What was wrong with people back then? That everyone could just roll over and let some shifty-eyed sheister with a heckler's self-confidence grab the country by the ears and lower its face to his crotch. I realize shit like this has always gone on, but if my reading was correct, Joe McCarthy didn't even accidentally uncover a single actual Communist during his wretched crusade. To my complete and disgusted amazement we are back to that time. We've even got Anne Coulter and her bizarre book in praise of ole Tailgunner Joe. But worse, we have this lapdog media chasing its tail, and worse yet, we have ghoulish cheerleaders like Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and however many other clowns are stuffed into that car marked "Conservative Media Gravy Train" watching everything that made their country great going over the edge of a cliff, and all they can do is cut down the people trying call attention to the makings of a very real disaster.

More than a month ago, journalist Mike Ruppert fled the United States. He runs the "From the Wilderness" Web site where he and a dedicated staff cover an astonishing range of issues. Mike was once a member of the LAPD, but was chased out with threats (and actions) against his life when he went public about CIA attempting to recruit him to aid in programs that were importing large quantities of illegal drugs into LA, and America at large. In early July of this year the offices of "From the Wilderness" were buglarized. Check out the pictures and read the accompanying article. These offices were not ransacked by teenagers who'd drunk too much Red Bull.

So, I will not cease and desist. I have no illusions of accomplishing anything other than telling people about a few news items they may not have read. I enjoy it when I do the same on other blogs.

BushCo peddles fear like Richard Simmons with his Deal-a-Meal. And I'm not buying it.

Windows 3, Ubuntu 0 -- However, Freespire Wins the Day

My adventures with the Linux flavor Ubuntu continued this week. The tagline for this abomination is "linux for human beings." I love the self-deprecating lowercase "L" on "linux" at the beginning of that. It says to me, "Hey man, we don't take ourselves seriously!" And they surely don't.

Ubuntu may be for human beings, and I have a few ideas that Ubuntu is free to use in any promotional materials:

"Ubuntu: Linux for people who don't mind getting kicked in the nuts"

Ubuntu: Not enough anger in your life?"

"Ubuntu: Remember what the angry mob did to Mussolini? That's what our operating system will do to your mind"

And on and on.

Jokes aside, I truly believe that Dell computers are somehow Linux-impervious. My first attempt at Ubuntu was on my desktop PC. This week I attempted installing it on my laptop -- both are Dells.

So, angst-ridden and gnashing my teeth, I flung myself into an Internet search. Exotic porn might have been the best choice, but I found myself investigating other flavors of Linux. I'd heard of Red Hat and Kubuntu. Surely there must be others. And there were.

You know how it is with Internet searches -- fives seconds after landing on a kickass, enlightening page, I had no idea how I got there. This page listed at least two dozen flavors of Linux. I scanned the list and saw something called Freespire. It's a sort of spin-off or inspired-by Linspire, which is... well, I didn't know.

Viewing the copious Freespire screenshots won me over to almost believing in a Christian god once again. There were screenshots, even, of the install process. The install screens looked like they were designed for human beings.

So, I downloaded Freespire and installed it on my laptop. And the goddamned fucking cocksucker actually installed. I was dumbfounded. And I've been working with it since about Wednesday. I'm on the Web right now on my laptop, blogging away like a free man. I've configured my printer to work on this, and have even edited and FTP'd my Web site with Linux tools.

I had heard even from adherents of Ubuntu that installing software on Linux machines is not the simple "click-click-click" process we enjoy on PCs. The Linux programmer-moles still try to make code-munchers out of us all. But Freespire has this great feature called CNR, which stands for "Click N Run." It's like a free online store where you can search for software, and the CNR interface actually installs it on your machine for you.

I did, however, try my hand at some old school software installation. I went to the Command Line and installed Flash Player 7. And it worked.

So, while I still condemn Linux hardcores for their arrogance and detachment from other keyboarding mammals, I applaud the good folks at Freespire Who Got It Right! I'm thrilled with this operating system. I can honestly say that anyone who seeks a genuine workable alternative to Apple and Microsoft products, Freespire is worth trying. It may not be for everyone, but I am unequivocal in my endorsement of this OS. I've been having a blast using ever since I installed it.

Recommended software:

* OpenOffice Word Processor (check it out -- there's even a Windows version -- at www.openoffice.org)
* BlueFish Editor (HTML editor)
* gFTP

9/11: Parade of Ghouls

Matthew 8:18 - 22 -- 18 When Jesus saw the crowd around him, he gave orders to cross to the other side of the lake. 19 Then a teacher of the law came to him and said, "Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go." 20 Jesus replied, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head." 21 Another disciple said to him, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father." 22 But Jesus told him, "Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead."

George W. Bush showing up in New York, the Pentagon, and that lonesome field in Pennsylvania today was all proof I need to know that the old crime novel adage "The criminal always returns to the scene of the crime" is still true.

A day hasn't passed in the last five years when I haven't heard the date "September 11th." Mourn the victims? Yes. But so many are yet alive.

And so are the culprits behind the 9/11.

From the NeoCon's Cookbook: "Genesis 4:9 - 12 -- 9 And Jehovah said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: am I my brother's keeper? 10 And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground."

The blood of the world's first murder victim cried out for justice. The blood of all victims cries out for justice -- even that of the poor souls who perished on 9/11. They are owed much more than the hollow tributes of our corpse - chewer corporate media and necrophiliac politicians. Much more.

From WantToKnow.info

1996 – 2001: Federal authorities are aware for years before 9/11 that suspected terrorists with ties to Osama bin Laden are receiving flight training at schools in the US and abroad. One convicted terrorist confesses that his planned role in a terror attack was to crash a plane into CIA headquarters. [Washington Post, 9/23/01, CBS, 5/30/02, more]

1996–2001: On multiple occasions spies give detailed reports on bin Laden's location. Each time, the CIA director or top White House officials prevent bin Laden's elimination. [Los Angeles Times, 12/5/04, New York Times, 12/30/01, more]

2000–2001: 15 of the 19 hijackers fail to fill in visa documents properly in Saudi Arabia. Only six are interviewed. All 15 should have been denied entry to the US. [Washington Post, 10/22/02, ABC, 10/23/02] Two top Republican senators say if State Department personnel had merely followed the law, 9/11 would not have happened. [AP, 12/18/02, more]

2000–2001: The military conducts exercises simulating hijacked airliners used as weapons to crash into targets causing mass casualties. One target is the World Trade Center (WTC), another the Pentagon. Yet after 9/11, over and over the White House and security officials say they’re shocked that terrorists hijacked airliners and crashed them into landmark buildings. [USA Today, 4/19/04, Military District of Washington, 11/3/00, New York Times, 10/3/01, more]

Jan 2001: After the Nov 2000 elections, US intelligence agencies are told to "back off" investigating the bin Ladens and Saudi royals. There have always been constraints on investigating Saudi Arabians. [BBC, 11/6/01, more]

Spring 2001: A series of military and governmental policy documents is released that seek to legitimize the use of US military force in the pursuit of oil and gas. One advocates presidential subterfuge and hiding the reasons for warfare "as a necessity for mobilizing public support." [Sydney Morning Herald, 12/26/02, more]

May 2001: For the third time, US security chiefs reject Sudan’s offer of thick files on bin Laden and al - Qaeda. A senior CIA source calls it "the worst single intelligence failure in the business." [Guardian, 9/30/01, more]

June - Aug 2001:  German intelligence warns the CIA that Middle Eastern terrorists are training for hijackings and targeting American interests. Russian President Vladimir Putin alerts the US of suicide pilots training for attacks on US targets. In late July, a Taliban emissary warns the US that bin Laden is planning a huge attack on American soil. In August, Israel warns of an imminent Al Qaeda attack. [Fox News, 5/17/02, Independent, 9/7/02, more]

July 4 - 14, 2001: Bin Laden reportedly receives kidney treatment from Canadian - trained Dr. Callaway at the American Hospital in Dubai. Dr. Callaway declines to comment. During his stay, bin Laden is allegedly visited by one or two CIA agents. [Guardian, 11/1/01, Sydney Morning Herald, 10/31/01, London Times 11/1/01, UPI, 11/1/01, more]

July 26, 2001: Attorney General Ashcroft stops flying commercial airlines due to a threat assessment. [CBS, 7/26/01] In May 2002, Ashcroft walks out of his office rather than answer questions about it. [Fox News/AP, 5/16/02, more]

Aug 6, 2001: President Bush receives an intelligence briefing warning that bin Laden might be planning to hijack commercial airliners. Titled "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US," the briefing specifically mentions the WTC. Yet Bush later claims it "said nothing about an attack on America." [Washington Post, 4/12/04, Briefing, 8/6/01, more]

Aug 27, 2001: An FBI supervisor says he’s trying to keep a hijacker from "flying a plane into the WTC." [Senate Report (Hill #2), 10/17/02] Headquarters chastises him for notifying the CIA. [Time, 5/21/02, more]

Sept 10, 2001: A number of top Pentagon brass suddenly cancel travel plans for the next morning, apparently because of security concerns. Why isn't this news spread widely? [Newsweek, 9/13/01, Newsweek, 9/24/01, more]

Sept 11, 2001: Data recovery experts extract data from 32 damaged WTC computer drives. The data reveals a surge in financial transactions shortly before the attacks. Illegal transfers of over $100 million may have been made through WTC computer systems immediately before and during the 9/11 disaster. [Reuters, 12/18/01, CNN, 12/20/01, more]

Sept 11, 2001: Described as a bizarre coincidence, a US intelligence agency was set for an exercise on Sept 11 at 9 AM in which an aircraft would crash into one of its buildings near Washington, DC. [USA Today/AP, 8/22/02, more]

Sept 11, 2001: Hours after the attacks, a "shadow government" is formed. Key congressional leaders say they didn’t know this government - in - waiting had been established. [CBS, 3/2/02, Washington Post, 3/2/02, more]

Sept 11, 2001: Six air traffic controllers who dealt with two of the hijacked airliners make a tape recording describing the events within hours of the attacks. The tape is never turned over to the FBI. It is later illegally destroyed by a supervisor without anyone making a transcript or even listening to it. [Washington Post, 5/6/04, New York Times, 5/6/04]

Sept 13 - 19, 2001: Bin Laden's family is taken under FBI supervision to a secret assembly point. They leave the country by private plane when airports reopen days after the attacks. [New York Times, 9/30/01, Boston Globe, 9/20/01, more]

Sept 15 - 16, 2001: Several of the 9/11 hijackers, including lead hijacker Mohamed Atta, may have had training at secure US military installations. [Newsweek, 9/15/01, Washington Post, 9/16/01, New York Times, 9/15/01, more]

Sept 20, 2001: Several 9/11 hijackers later mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report turn up alive. Alleged 9/11 pilot Waleed Al Shehri, on seeing his name and photograph, says that he is alive. Abdulaziz Alomari states the name and date of birth are his, but he's alive and his passport was stolen. [London Times, 9/20/01, BBC, 9/23/01, more]

Dec 2001 - Feb 2002: The US engineers the rise to power of two former Unocal Oil employees: Hamid Karzai, the interim president of Afghanistan, and Zalmay Khalizad, the US envoy. The big American bases created in the Afghan war are identical to the route of the projected oil pipeline. [Chicago Tribune, 3/18/02, more]

May 17, 2002: Dan Rather says that he and other journalists haven't been properly investigating since 9/11. He graphically describes the pressures to conform that built up after the attacks. [Guardian, 5/17/02, more]

May 23, 2002: President Bush says he is opposed to establishing an independent commission to probe 9/11. [CBS, 5/23/02] Vice President Cheney earlier opposed any public hearings on 9/11. [Newsweek, 2/4/02, more]

May 30, 2002: FBI Agent Wright formally accuses the FBI of deliberately curtailing investigations that might have prevented 9/11. He is threatened with retribution if he talks to Congress about this. [Fox News, 5/30/02, more]

July 22, 2004: The 9/11 Commission Report is published. It fails to mention that a year before the attacks a secret Pentagon project had identified four 9/11 hijackers, including leader Mohamed Atta. The Commission spokesperson initially states members were not informed of this, but later acknowledges they were. [New York Times, 8/11/05, more]

2004 - 2005: A growing number of top government officials and public leaders express disbelief in the official story of 9/11. 100 prominent leaders and 40 9/11 family members sign a statement calling for an unbiased inquiry into evidence suggesting high - level government officials may have deliberately allowed the attacks to occur. [Various Publications]

Aug 9, 2006: A book by 9/11 Commission chairmen Kean and Hamilton outlines repeated deceptions by the Pentagon and FAA, including the timelines of Flights 77 and 93. CNN News: "The fact that the government would...perpetuate the lie suggests that we need a full investigation of what is going on." [CNN, 8/9/06 , MSNBC/AP, 8/4/06, more]

EBKAC: Windows 2, Linux 0

Do you remember when Coca Cola changed its formula in the 1980s and released "New Coke"? The new product was a disaster and served to renew the consuming public's lust and devotion to "Classic Coke." I've since heard, and have no trouble believing, that this was a calculated move on the part of Coca Cola. For this reason I now believe that Microsoft is, in fact, the creator of Linux.

It makes perfect sense. There's been growing disillusionment with MS for years, and its reputation for bringing to market unfinished products and letting its users do the Q/A that Microsoft should be doing, is set in stone. So, one day Bill Gates assembled his team of gargoyles and put the question before them, "We can either begin creating quality products or we can simply frighten the computing public into never leaving us. Which will it be?" Since Microsoft is incapable of creating products that work as advertised, Gates and his team of gargoyles decided to make an alternative operating system to Windows, and called it Linux (because computer names that have an "x" in them are somehow viewed as oldschool and aboveboard).

So, the Microsoft Intelligence Unit located some rube in Finland named Linus Torvald, who seemed capable of only shrugging and smiling during interviews, and made his the improbable face behind "Linux." Linux was then released, with a cover story that is truly a 180-degree diversion from the Microsoft story -- it's all open source, developers from around the world worked on this because of their passion for computing, not for money, blah blah blah. And thus Linux and its various "flavors" came into being.

"Hey man," I hear a granola-intense voice call out from the balcony, "what about all the people who are using Linux? Are you saying they all work for Microsoft?"

Not at all. I have no doubt there are computer users who have actually gotten some vintage of Linux to work on their machines. I once had a girlfriend who's father's car had some weird glitch to the engine where if you drove a little too fast or a little too slowly, some valve would close, rendering the car immobile. The valve could only be opened with a pen or screwdriver and then the car would suddenly work again. My girlfriend's dad explained the whole thing to me, once, and it made absolutely no sense. He was already reluctant to lend his car to his daughter, and this weirdism with the vehicle put us off entirely asking. Yet he drove the car with no trouble.

I'm an experienced computer user. I started this week with a perfectly serviceable and fully functioning desktop computer -- and a strange, now unaccountable, desire to try switch to Linux. After attempting to install Linux on this desktop computer, I now end this week with a completely smoked desktop, and an unworkable strain of Linux sort of installed on it. Clearly, magic was needed. I do not possess magic. I hardly possess anything approaching luck. Now I have a Dell paperweight on my desk, and have to connect my virginal laptop computer to the Web in order to write this blog.

Years ago I worked at a software company where the techs had a term for what I've just experienced with this foray into Linux: EBKAC. It stands for "error between keyboard and chair." Meaning, the problem is with the user, not the software.

Maybe I will market my own open source, granola-smelling operating system and called it "EBKAC for Human Beings, Man".

Windows vs. Linux -- Windows 1, Linux 0

The Internet itself has put the lie to the old saying, "Eight hundred monkeys typing on eight hundred typewriters for eight hundred years would inevitably produce the works of Shakespeare." No, we just have faster Web connections courtesy of pornography.

And now Linux, specifically its flavor Ubuntu, has put the lie to "eight hundred programmers typing on eight hundred keyboards..." They can't seem to make an install process that won't lead a user to a psychotic breakdown.

The background:

I hate computers. I love writing, but I hate cajoling and jerry-rigging and going through the Five Stages of Grief everyday with my desktop PC just so I can blog and write books. This, however, is what I must do. Because I use Microsoft Windows as my operating system. There was a time in the 1990s when I was an Apple user, but after calling the 800 Helpline number for Apple Canada and getting a recorded message saying the number is unlisted by request of its owner, I switched to Windows. And I've been sorry ever since.

So, after some investigation and much coveting of Apple's new line of computers, I learned that Linux might be the answer for me. Particularly, I had heard very promising things about Ubuntu, one of the many flavors of Linux. Tonight I attempted to install Ubuntu -- with no success.

What went wrong? What did I have trouble with? I have no goddamned idea.

I went to the Ubuntu Web site and downloaded the installation disc to a CD on my machine. I then restarted my PC, hit F12 very quickly, and made my computer boot up with the Ubuntu CD. When the slick, vacant Ubuntu desktop appeared after a few minutes, there was absolutely no instruction on what the user was to do next. Not being an idiot, I double-clicked the "install" icon figuring that was how one installed the operating system. After double-clicking the icon, my pointer turned into some kind of circular zoetrope-type thing that I guessed was Linux's version of the Windows hourglass or Apple's wristwatch, which signaled the program was working. Well, my CD-ROM whirred like a champ, and shit-all seemed to occur on my screen. Eventually the circle-time-passing-indicator disappeared. Just when I thought about restarting my machine, a box slowly assembled on my screen, which turned out to be the Ubuntu install interface. It staggered along, finally asking me to select the default language for the operating system. I did so and clicked the Forward button. Again, nothing seemed to happen. After leaving the room and coming back half an hour later there was the second of six screens staring out at my office -- choose my location on planet earth so Linux could better serve me. It just hung there, never fully loading. I left it go for an hour. It never loaded.

For all the dramatic crowing about "open source" applications, I'm uncertain that I see the point.

After two more increasingly frustrating tries, I finally restarted my machine and let it boot up in Windows. After slugging away with Linux for the better part of three hours, my Windows applications seem lightning fast.

Which leads me to the nightmare question -- Are Microsoft products actually superior? They can't be. I've had too many problems with them, too many crashes. Microsoft treats its customers like unpaid quality assurance testers, notorously shipping products way too early, and thus having to issue patch after patch after goddamned patch. All the while peoples' machines are getting smoked by viruses sneaking in through vulnerabilities everyone but Microsoft technicians seem able to find.

And don't even get me started on the abomination that is Internet Explorer.

But what the hell is up with Linux? I'm grossly disheartened by the experience this evening. I've seen Linus Torvald on 60 Minutes and have read every scrap of Linus and open source propaganda I could get my hands on. After programmers around the world have worked on this operating system for years this is the best they can create?

At this point, an electric typewriter is starting to look very appealing to me. At least it has that oldschool Zen about it.

Randham Acts is finally released

Canadian orders click here

Fact: My 321-page suspense novel Randham Acts is now available!

Excerpts:

Prologue & Chapter 1

Chapter 19

Chapter 45

Try out the BlockBuster™

Synopsis: "After receiving his latest rejection letter from a fiction magazine, aspiring writer Hugh Longford purchases The BlockBuster™ plot generation software, which analyzes fiction and suggests ways to "punch up" storylines. Soon, Longford consults the BlockBuster™ about real-life problems, including a miserable co-worker who makes his job unbearable and a "ball busting" history exam threatening to derail his university career. Meanwhile, the mother of his girlfriend suffers a catastrophic nervous breakdown suggesting she might be capable of violence."

Commentary: One of my all-time favorite films is the documentary Hearts of Darkness about the making of Francis Ford Coppola's masterpiece Apocalypse Now. For anyone who believes in the ivory tower of inspiration and the sweatless creation of true art, Hearts of Darkness will shatter all of your illusions. By Coppola's own admission, he and his crew were out in the Philippine jungle with too much money, too much equipment, too much freedom, and slowly they went insane. At one point in the documentary when the production of Apocalypse Now appeared doomed by a typhoon, Martin Sheen's heart attack, Marlon Brando's shifting whims, and countless other festering problems, the interviewer asked Coppola if he ever thought about quitting the film. To which Francis Ford Coppola regarded the interviewer as though he was crazy, and said, "What? How do I quit from myself?"

And so, after 15 years and rejections from every major and minor publishing company in North America and England, my agreement with a small press publisher to finally see my novel, Randham Acts published has fallen through. The novel is too long, my demands too many, time continues to run along unflinching, money is short. Once again, I am pacing the floor of my office, a bloodied, bashed manuscript in my hands, and my hopes feeling like the Edmond Fitzgerald. But this time. This time. Fuck it. I am going to publish the novel myself, unabashedly. The films I have always loved best were born of such struggle, and ultimately produced and financed by their directors. So many of my favorite novels were the products of maniacal, unrewarded travail. More than a few of my heroes spent time in mental institutions. Many more of my heroes committed suicide.

So, I am going to treat my book like a faltering independent film. This novel has haunted me since I was twenty years old. I've spent as much time trying to forget all about it, as I have writing it. Times, years ago, as I was still developing my craft, the premise just seemed so far out of my grasp. To do justice to the idea, I had to dig so much deeper than I felt capable of doing. After putting the novel away for a few years, I unearthed it. With hundreds more books and films banging around in my consciousness since the last time I looked at it, and years more living under my belt, I took another stab at the novel. The unclimbable heights were suddenly manageable. The unbudging corners into which I'd written myself suddenly had ways out of them. More to the point, the characters came alive. After so many years of knowing my main character by one name, he finally informed me that his name was Hugh Longford. His girlfriend was Stephanie Sayer, and the quantum map of their lives and myriad collisions and near-misses of fate and circumstance finally pieced itself together.

Review of James Joyce's Ulysses

James Joyce's novel Ulysses has quite the reputation, being deemed obscene, unreadable, brilliant, and considered by some to be the greatest novel of the 20th century. For years, the novel stood on my bookshelf, untouched, imposing as a brick from an ancient citadel. Having taken a course on Irish writers years ago at university, I was more than a little put off by the sense of proprietorship professors felt about Joyce. Ulysses was like a conquest they sought not to share, frightening off simple readers with endless blather about classical and religious allusions; building the novel into some mythic literary mountain that they, alone, had conquered, and only fellow worthy would conquer. I have no interest in hearing how Joyce mimicks or mirrors Homer's The Odyssey with Ulysses. I have never read Homer, nor do I ever intend to. I care nothing for the religious subtext of Ulysses either. James Joyce was educated by Jesuits, so it stands to reason he was filled up to his eyeballs with Roman Catholicism. I actually find Joyce's frequent interjections of Latin from the Catholic mass into the more mundane sections of the novel to be lightweight pretention.

I don't seek to conquer novels, only to read them. The scholarly smokescreen kept me from Ulysses long enough, so on Bloom's Day 2006 I took the novel down from my shelf and tried once again to read it.

I don't know what the breakthrough was this time around, but after five days and more than 300 pages of the novel under my belt, I found Joyce's masterpiece to be a vertible page-turner.

Call me a literary Phillistine, but I am interested only in the primary text of Ulysses. I'm interested in its story, characters, the language of its narrative, Joyce's continually brilliant and entertaining turns of phrase, his use of dialogue, and his experiments with stream-of-consciousness prose. On all of these counts, Ulysses is a marvel. Its rendering of Dublin, Ireland is three-dimensional. My favorite episode in the novel was Episode 12, "Cyclops," and its ill-tempered narrator; a wonderful and engrossing evocation of Irish vernacular:

The figure seated on a large boulder at the foot of a round tower was that of a broadshouldered deepchested stronglimbed frankeyed redhaired freely freckled shaggybearded wide-mouthed largenosed longheaded deepvoiced barekneed brawnyhanded hairylegged ruddyfaced sinewyarmed hero. From shoulder to shoulder he measured several ells and his rocklike mountainous knees were covered, as was likewise the rest of his body wherever visible, with a strong growth of tawny prickly hair in hue and toughness similar to the mountain gorse (Ulex Europeus). The widewinged nostrils, from which bristles of the same tawny hue projected, were of such capaciousness that within their cavernous obscurity the field-lark might easily have lodged her nest. The eyes in which a tear and a smile strove ever for the mastery were of the dimensions of a goodsized cauliflower. A powerful current of warm breath issued at regular intervals from the profound cavity of his mouth while in rhythmic resonance the loud strong hale reverberations of his formidable heart thundered rumblingly causing the ground, the summit of the lofty tower and the still loftier walls of the cave to vibrate and tremble.

To start at the start, and to air my own prejudices, I must confess that I hate Stephen Dedalus, main character of Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and who shares central character status in Ulysses with the much more interesting Leopold Bloom. Straight off, I dislike Joyce giving Stephen such a heavy-handed name: Dedalus. I don't even know who Dedalus was in classical mythology, though it would be easy enough to search the Internet for an answer. I'm just going to state my ignorance flat out. And if the boring, self-absorbed, unpleasant, morose Stephen Dedalus is an "artist" of any sort, let us all mourn art. Stephen is just the dull, pedantic, self-congratulatory academic who drove me to distraction when I was at university, for whom an education is more a means by which to prove the ignorance of everyone around him, rather than a search for his own enlightenment. The continual mocking strings of Latin Stephen mutters throughout the novel, blessing people and situations readers of the day would believe ought not be blessed is a tiresome device whose shock-value dissipated long ago. As mentioned above, yes, I understand James Joyce was educated by Jesuits and took his revenge upon them in his fiction everafter. I get it. This once radical mocking of the Church is but a minor ripple in the story to today's reader.

That out of the way, I will now profess my love for Leopold Bloom. Maybe it's because he's an amiable, educated bumbler married to the minx, Mrs. Marion Tweedy (Molly Bloom), professional vocalist and not-so-covert adulteress. Bloom enters the novel making breakfast for his wife, Molly, who is still in bed, while thinking about the funeral he is to attend later in the morning for an old friend, one Patrick Dignam. The approach of the funeral does not dampen Bloom's mood, however. After serving Molly her breakfast and enjoying a sauteed kidney, himself, Bloom heads out to the "jakes" in the backyard -- an outhouse -- where he sits reading a newspaper, thinking:

Might manage a sketch. By Mr and Mrs L. M. Bloom. Invent a story for some proverb which? Time I used to try jotting down on my cuff what she said dressing. Dislike dressing together. Nicked myself shaving. Biting her nether Hip, hooking the placket of her skirt. Timing her. 9.15. Did Roberts pay you yet? 9.20. What had Gretta Conroy on? 9.23. What possessed me to buy this comb? 9.24. I'm swelled after that cabbage. A speck of dust on the patent leather of her boot.

On the way to Paddy Dignam's funeral, Bloom shares a carriage with Simon Dedalus -- Stephen's father -- along with a Martin Cunningham and a Mr. Power. During the ride to the cemetery, Blooms spots Stephen Dedalus, saying to Stephen's father, "There's a friend of yours gone by, Dedalus..." Simon Dedalus asks "Was that Mulligan cad with him?" before going on to say:

"He's in with a lowdown crowd," Mr Dedalus snarled. "That Mulligan is a contaminated bloody doubledyed ruffian by all accounts. His name stinks all over Dublin. But with the help of God and His blessed mother I'll make it my business to write a letter one of these days to his mother or his aunt or whatever she is that will open her eyes as wide as a gate. I'll tickle his catastrophe, believe you me.... I won't have her bastard of a nephew ruin my son."

At the cemetery, following the burial, Bloom spots a man wearing a brown macintosh, whom he does not recognize: "Now who is that lankylooking galoot over there in the macintosh? Now who is he I'd like to know? Now, I'd give a trifle to know who he is. Always someone turns up you never dreamt of. A fellow could live on his lonesome all his life. Yes, he could. Still he'd have to get someone to sod him after he died though he could dig his own grave. We all do. Only man buries. No ants too. First thing strikes anybody. Bury the dead. Say Robinson Crusoe was true to life. Well then Friday buried him. Every Friday buries a Thursday if you come to look at it." This mysterious figure is never identified, but recurs throughout to very interesting effect.

Much as I personally dislike the character of Stephen Dedalus, I must concede that Joyce attributes some wonderful, mocking lines to him. This, for instance, satirizing the Catholic Church's "Apostles' Creed": "They believe in rod, the scourger almighty, creator of hell upon earth, and in Jacky Tar, the son of a gun, who was conceived of an unholy boast, born of the fighting navy, suffered under rump and dozen, was scarified, flayed and curried, yelled like bloody hell, the third day he arose again from the bed, steered into haven, sitteth on the beamend till further orders whence he shall come to drudge for a living and be paid." This, however, does not redeem Stephen from his dull, pedantic arrogance. In fact, he lectures friends laboriously about Shakespeare's Hamlet in the middle of the book; a most tiresome, windy monologue. I skimmed most of it and skipped the last of it.

It seems to me that James Joyce sought to to write an Andy-Warhol-esque movie in Ulysses. This is not as farfetched as it might seem. James Joyce was an admirer of cinema and even opened the first movie theatre in Ireland. His prose in Ulysses is unmistakably cinematic and the rolling stream-of-consciousness of his characters is its voice-over. As Andy Warhol sought to document every aspect of his characters' lives -- the mundane, scatalogical, sexual, narcotic, etc. -- so, too, does Joyce document every moment of his Stephen Dedalus' and Leopold Bloom's lives in this one day in Dublin City, Ireland.

What about the naughty bits that had censors so up-in-arms when the novel was first published? They abound, to be sure. There is Leopold Bloom in the jakes in Episode 4 wiping himself with an advertisement he rips from the newspaper he reads while moving his bowels. There is Episode 14 in which Leopold Bloom stands by the seaside watching lovely teenaged Gerty MacDowell as she leans back on the rock she sits upon, giving him peaks at her crotch. Bloom masturbates to climax ogling her. And of course there is Molly Bloom's mesmerizing soliloquy in Episode 18 through which she speaks very frankly about sex, adultery, and womanhood. Episode 18 is among the most poetic, erotic prose I've ever read.

What about the difficult bits that have put off casual readers and aroused academics? For me, one of the most difficult sections of the novel was the opening episode with "[s]tately Buck Mulligan" mocking the Catholic eucharist as he prepared to shave. Between Mulligan's buffoonery and Stephen Dedalus' sullen introspection, I found the prose at the novel's opening particularly hardgoing. Episode 11 begins with some very odd prose:

BRONZE BY GOLD HEARD THE HOOFIRONS, STEELYRINING IMPERthnthn thnthnthn.

Chips, picking chips off rocky thumbnail, chips. Horrid! And gold flushed more.

A husky fifenote blew.

Blew. Blue bloom is on the

Gold pinnacled hair.

A jumping rose on satiny breasts of satin, rose of Castille.

Trilling, trilling: I dolores.

Peep! Who's in the... peepofgold?

Tink cried to bronze in pity.

And a call, pure, long and throbbing. Longindying call.

Decoy. Soft word. But look! The bright stars fade. O rose! Notes chirruping answer. Castille. The morn is breaking.

Jingle jingle jaunted jingling.

Coin rang. Clock clacked.

This is where I find Joyce at his most cinematic, interspersing narrative, dialogue with setting down on the page the actual phonetic sounds of things. In this case, the sounds of music being played. Episode 14 is written in varying modes of old English, starting with Chaucer-esque prose moving into a Carlysle-esque style. This is was among the most difficult episodes to get through, with such prose as:

Universally that person's acumen is esteemed very little perceptive concerning whatsoever matters are being held as most profitable by mortals with sapience endowed to be studied who is ignorant of that which the most in doctrine erudite and certainly by reason of that in them high mind's ornament deserving of veneration constantly maintain when by general consent they affirm that other circumstances being equal by no exterior splendour is the prosperity of a nation more efficaciously asserted than by the measure of how far forward may have progressed the tribute of its solicitude for that proliferent continuance which of evils the original if it be absent when fortunately present constitutes the certain sign of omnipollent nature's incorrupted benefaction.

It's not near as fearsome as anything in Finnegan's Wake -- a truly, uncontestably unreadable novel -- but it's dense enough to cause the reader some real pain.

Episode 15 is composed as a play, taking the reader into "Nighttown" with a drunken Stephen and his guardian, Bloom. This episode veers into the fantastical as Bloom jousts with his guilty conscience over his own daliances or near-daliances with servant girls, prostitutes, former girlfriends and friends' wives. Seeing the 1967 film Ulysses was quite helpful to me in visualizing all that happened in this episode. Once the readers gets the gist of what is happening in Episode 15, it's surprisingly comic.

For help getting through the difficult episodes, I turned to Stuart Gilbert's James Joyce's Ulysses: A Study, consulting it as a quick reference, rather than reading it through cover to cover. This, along with the film Ulysses went a long way toward making the novel much more accessible to me.

In one of the more enjoyable moments, the reader is treated to one of Stephen's better paraphrasings of catechism: "He Who Himself begot middler the Holy Ghost and Himself sent Himself, Agenbuyer, between Himself and others, Who, put upon by His friends, stripped and whipped, was nailed like bat to barndoor, starved on crosstree, Who let Him bury, stood up, harrowed hell, fared into heaven and there these nineteen hundred years sitteth on the right hand side of His Own Self but yet shall come in the latter day to doom the quick and the dead when all of the quick shall be dead already."

And Bloom at his most amiable and interesting:

Devil of a job it was collecting accounts of those convents. Tranquilla convent. That was a nice nun there, really sweet face. Wimple suited her small head. Sister? Sister? I am sure she was crossed in love by her eyes. Very hard to bargain with that sort of woman. I disturbed her at her devotions that morning. But glad to communicate with the outside world. Our great day, she said. Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Sweet name too: caramel. She knew, I think she knew by the way she. If she had married she would have changed. I suppose they really were short of money. Fried everything in the best butter all the same. No lard for them. My heart's broke eating dripping. They like buttering themselves in and out. Molly tasting it, her veil up. Sister? Pat Claffey, the pawnbroker's daughter. It was a nun they say invented barbed wire.

And Joyce is never better than when he evokes the true voice of Dublin, as he does in Episode 12 when Bloom enters a pub hoping to find Martin Cunningham. When he sees Cunningham is not there, Bloom goes out looking for him. The patrons, however, believe Bloom has actually gone to collect winnings on a 20-1 horse named Throwaway, leading the one patron known as "Citizen" to observe about Bloom: "Courthouse my eye and your pockets hanging down with gold and silver. Mean bloody scut. Stand us a drink itself. Devil a sweet fear! There's a jew for you! All for number one. Cute as a shithouse rat. Hundred to five."

Or, in Episode 13 when Bloom observes -- while masturbating to the sight of Gerty MacDowell -- "Still there's destiny in it, falling in love. Have their own secrets between them. Chaps that would go to the dogs if some woman didn't take them in hand. Then little chits of girls, height of a shilling in coppers, with little hubbies. As God made them he matched them. Sometimes children turn out well enough. Twice nought makes one."

There is no question that Ulysses is a tremendous challenge to read and understand. I don't how pleased or repulsed Joyce would be to learn of how many academics have made whole careers out of his novel of the everyday. But if this review does nothing else, it should emphasize the point that Ulysses is not the inaccessible, rarified work that academics would have us believe. Yes, it is complex. Yes, it can be obscure in places. But there are more entertaining, readable, hilarious passage in the novel than I ever imagined until I read the book. One that I found particularly funny occurs in Episode 6 in which Bloom ponders how people could truly preserve physical memories of the dead: "Besides how could you remember everybody? Eyes, walk, voice. Well, the voice, yes: gramophone. Have a gramophone in every grave or keep it in the house. After dinner on a Sunday. Put on poor old greatgrandfather Kraahraark! Hellohellohello amawfullyglad kraark awfullygladaseeragain hellohello amarawf kopthsth. Remind you of the voice like the photograph reminds you of the face. Otherwise you couldn't remember the face after fifteen years, say."

If for no other reason, Ulysses is a must-read because James Joyce so perfectly captures the Irish -- the great speakers of English in the world -- in their natural environs, making the language sing like a musical instrument.

Very highly recommended.

The Jackal Sleeps Tonight -- No more days for Kenneth Lay

Somewhere a news conference should be convened and a framed picture of Kenneth Lay, former Enron Vampire in Chief, held aloft at the podium announcing, "We got him."

Kenneth Lay, a thief of unbounded gall, died today. Personally, I believe he faked his death in order to avoid serving time in jail after being found guilty of massive fraud in the Enron debacle. What proof do I have? None, besides the man himself. Ken Lay widely demonstrated himself to be a liar, a thief, a fraud, a cannibal, a necrophiliac grave-robber. Although he and his wife made grand claims of being financially wiped out by the fall of Enron, who believes that?

No, I believe Ken Lay faked his death, threw a dollars at a coroner to falsify a death certificate, and will now live out the remainder of his ill-gotten days with his ill-gotten gains in a place at the far end of the reach of cable television and high-speed Internet.

If his wife remains in the United States, she should be jailed in Lay's place. If a man running for office dies and his wife can take his seat in Congress or the Senate or the Governor's mansion, surely Mrs. Kenneth Lay should serve her husband's jail sentence.

No amount of acrimonious prose can even begin to articulate the crimes of Kenneth Lay. I've never risen higher in a company than being underling to the lowest person on the totem pole. So when I read about the executive looting of Enron during its collapse, and how ordinary employees were encouraged (cowed) into purchasing as much Enron stock as they could afford -- only to be unable to sell off that stock when the suits in the ivory tower capsized the joint -- I knew which side of the issue I fell on. Seeing on the news a retired janitor a few years ago, who had miraculously built his 401K account up to more than a million dollars, only to have that account worth less than $9,000 after the Enron jackals had their way with the money. That is Ken Lay's legacy. He would steal the glass eye out of your head. He'd build a nest in your ear and then charge you rent. He was as wretched a human being as this troubled world can produce.

Watching Ken Lay's denials on television as he testified before Congress about the mess he and Jackal Skilling had created with their cadre of yes-men, was a clinic in perjury and the very definition of "going through the motions." From my seat on the bleachers, I've always figured the stock market was a scam. Enron proved the truth of that belief beyond any shadow of a doubt.

I can hear someone in the balcony shouting down, "Hey! Whatever happened to 'guilty until proven innocent'?!"

Well, Ken Lay went on trial for his crimes and he was found guilty.

So, Kenny-Boy has gone the great lemonade stand in the sky to steal coins out of St. Peter's couch. I don't, however, believe Kenneth "Grave-Robbing Swine" Lay is dead. Until I see a framed photograph of his dead face held above the head of someone announcing "We got him", I'll be watching for supermarket tabloid sightings of that pole cat emanating from Maui or Pango Pango or Jackson Hole.

Irony Impairment: Conservative Rock Songs? Yeah, Right!

Have you seen this abomination Rockin' the Right: The 50 greatest conservative rock songs? Some conservative guy made an unintentionally comic attempt at cool by writing an article about how some of the best rock 'n' roll songs have conservative interpretations. Here is my response to the author:

Conservative rock songs? How blind and irony-impaired are you? Every decent rock song ever written was written against everything you believe in; everything you are. "Won't Get Fooled Again" mocks you. U2's "Gloria"? You war-mongering conservatives think you have anything in common with Jesus Christ? Just because you cloak your neuroses, vices, insanity, and megalomania with "God" and "Jesus" and "Christ," doesn't mean that's anything but a sad, empty, horrifically inappropriate reference on your part. Yeah, the Beatles wrong "Taxman" for a president who hands tax cuts to the wealthiest citizens during a time of war. And "Revolution" isn't about the exact type of tyranny peddled and perfected by the George W. Bush white house?

I've always known conservatives live with their heads permanently up their asses, but your list of conservative rock songs is one of the most laughable, pathetic attempts at humanizing the horror that is your belief system that I've ever witnessed.

Stick to stealing elections. Leave music to people who have souls.

Here are some suggested lyrics for an actual conservative rock song:

"I did hear of one reference to you, at the Cabinet meeting yesterday. I wasn't there, but I heard someone commented that the press was sure beating up on Mike Brown, to which the president replied, 'I'd rather they beat up on him than me or Chertoff.'"

Now that's rockin' conservativism!

Remembrance of John Ditsky, friend, mentor, poet, professor

The news of John Ditsky's death came to me with a distinct Ditskian lack of drama: A friend sent an email message saying our beloved writing teacher had passed away on Monday, May 15. No other details. As vague and understated as the man himself.

In the English Department course calender for the University of Windsor, I once read that John Ditsky's poetry had received over 1,400 acceptances. An amazing number. That wording always intrigued me; sort of rankled me in its lack of specificity. I had always meant to joke with John, saying, "Did you write two poems that were each accepted 700 times?" but never got around to it. Maybe he wrote one poem that was accepted 1,400 times -- a feat much more difficult (albeit bizarre) than writing and publishing 1,400 poems.

If not for that entry in the course calender, I might not have known John wrote at all. He never spoke of his work, and dodged questions about it. He taught writing -- or rather, oversaw a creative writing seminar -- and American literature. Once in a writing class a poet -- with a tenuous grasp of her native language -- tried conveying the ecstacy a character experienced when she "had" an orgasm. As the rest of us jousted with the gnarled language of the poem, John, in his typically understated, darkly comic way, informed the poet that people do not have orgasms, they achieve orgasm. He said that in 1991, and I made a mental note of that fact.

John was a tall, maddeningly thin man -- at least to me who packed on the pounds slamming pints and jamming back sandwiches at the campus pub -- with the most improbably deep voice. He spoke softly so I never experienced the full power of his voice, though I imagined it powerful enough to easily break a man's ribcage. Although he had an excellent sense of humor, John was slow to laugh. His natural shyness coupled with his intensely introspective nature often left uncomfortable silences in the midst of conversations. But his laugh existed. I had heard it. And it was a prize: part bellow, part bear-roar, and wholly capable of expressing without words just how much he enjoyed a good joke or bon mot.

One morning in the Department of English a fellow grad student was explaining to me and John about the lagging attendance numbers in the Expository Writing classes she (and I) taught. My classmate said she resorted to threatening her students with deducting 1% from their final grades for every class missed without a valid excuse. To which I said, "If I could do the math, I'd threaten like that, too." There was a momentary pause as John slowly smiled, and then filled the hallway with his sonorous laugh.

There was an afternoon when John gathered with about a dozen of his students at the campus pub before an English Department party. We drank pitchers of beer, played songs on the coin-laden jukebox, and vied for John's attention. His conversation was sometimes sparse, answering lengthy questions with a single word. At one point someone mentioned hearing in the news that NBA star, A.C. Green had publicly admitted to being a virgin. In the hush during which everyone digested this morsel of news, I feigned disbelief and said with all of the gullibility I could muster, "But he played for the Los Angeles Lakers!" My statement was greeted with derision and people explaining to me that one could play for the Los Angeles Lakers and still be a virgin... Then John laughed. He got it. And slowly, so did everyone else.

John's academic specialty was the work of John Steinbeck. I had heard from numerous people that John was, in fact, one of the foremost Steinbeck scholars in the world. In one of my creative writing journals (a course requirement submitted quarterly for grading) I asked John what exactly was it about Steinbeck's writing style that made him so great. John wrote back, "I never said Steinbeck was a great writer." Vintage Ditsky. I mulled that one over for... well, until this day.

For all of his personal awkwardness and vague remarks that were the hallmarks of chats with John, he was a man of incredible good humor and encouragement. It was a quiet encouragement, but it was there, and it was steadier and more reliable than more vocal forms with which I've been in contact since my days in the English Department. I took two writing courses with John and a number of American literature classes. I was one of the few students who missed few classes. Unfortunately, I don't think I was the friend to John that he was to me. I never raised my hand once in his classes -- or any of my other classes. Convinced I would only utter the painfully, ridiculously obvious about any given subject, I sat back and took notes, and contributed nothing. Even when hollow silence followed one of John's questions in class, I sat there feeling his pain, but doing nothing to relieve it. I can't remember if I ever offered him a cop-out or apology or an explanation for this. Had I been in his shoes, I'd have wondered just what the hell was wrong with me. But it was never an issue with John.

He was kind enough to have me over to his home in Detroit a few times, showing me his massive book and record collections. It took years, but he owned hardback editions of nearly every one of his favorite books -- and there were thousands of them. As for his records, they were an intimidating presence in his sitting room where we retired to drink cans of Milwaukee's Finest. When I noticed the gray metal card catalog on the shelf, I asked John if he kept the albums in alphabetical order, or by genre. He seemed puzzled and said, "No, they're organized by serial number." And he was serious.

John generously read and commented on every piece of writing I ever gave to him -- and I submitted thousands of pages of writing for his perusal. I never had a feeling that he much cared for what I wrote, but I valued his opinions, which always centered on concrete problems in the writing. His advice was sound and helpful. As second reader on my masters thesis, John used his question time during my defense to make a statement about how much he enjoyed my work. Of all the times and places he could have done that, he chose the absolutely perfect, most meaningful venue. He ended his statement with an embarrassed laugh and said, "Well, there's a fan letter for you."

After graduation, I remained in touch with John via letters. I typed mine on a word processor and he composed his on an electric typewriter. No matter what I asked him in my letters, I never got more than a couple of paragraphs out of him. But, being a poet, those paragraphs resonated until his next letter arrived -- and usually beyond that. At some point I stopped writing. I know it was me because John was as reliable as clockwork -- if you sent him a letter, you got one in return. So, I still owe him one.

John Ditsky was a good friend and an invaluable mentor to me. He tolerated my foibles, silently beared my hangovers, listened to my bluster, vitriol and sad antics, and never held any of it against me. John's death is a violent shock to my heart's neighborhood. I had no idea he was ill; have no idea what brought about his death. But I'm damned sad that he's gone.

Stephen Colbert's brilliant monologue and dreadful press secretary audition

It's really quite fitting and funny that the objects of Stephen Colbert's brilliant monologue at the White House Correspondents' Dinner simply will not concede that he was funny. The media, neo-cons, and all around establishment have been telling us that "black is white" "up is down" and "wrong is right" from a position of power for the past six years. Of course they're now saying that Stephen Colbert wasn't funny. The reason speaks more about Colbert's detractors, and pinata-shattered targets, than Colbert as a comic and satirist.

Colbert eviscerated Washington's sacred cows at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. One after another, he lobbed verbal hand grenades at George W. Bush, as the Oval Office squatter looked on with the grim face of a barroom tough guy past his prime. A bully who's all bull now. Colbert interspersed his onslaught on BushCo by lashing its enablers -- the lethargic, flaccid, gutless lapdog press. One of the most stinging moments came when Colbert said:

But, listen, let's review the rules. Here's how it works: the president makes decisions. He's the Decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put 'em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know - fiction!

Of course these self-important, self-congratulatory-masturbatory sycophants gaped at Colbert in offended-distended silence. And there were laughs. The exact kind of laughs any real comedian wants to hear -- the reluctant bursts of repressed laughter one might hear in church or funerals or anywhere laughter is not permitted. Laughter that breaks through. Those are the laughs I relish.

And we've got people like Richard Cohen at once trumpeting their "hey, I'm a funny guy!" credentials, while in the next breath dismissing Colbert's monologue as missing the mark. No, Richard Cohen, et al, are simply, inadvertantly revealing their allegiance to the sacred cows. Of course they didn't laugh. Of course they won't admit to Colbert being sniper-precise in his attack. Richard Cohen was probably expecting Jay "Dorrito-shucking-asshole" Leno to lead the cheers for BushCo. Sorry Richard.

One thing I can't figure is when Colbert played his "news conference audition tape." It was an audio tape [CORRECTION: The audition tape was, in fact, video, but I thought it was audio because C-SPAN did not direct their camera at the screen, but focused on George W. Bush], not video, and it was interminable. Sure, it was great hearing psuedo reporters asking "Why did we go into Iraq?" and Helen Thomas' nail-'em-to-the-floor question, "Your decision to invade Iraq has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis, wounds to Americans and Iraqis for a lifetime. Every reason given, publicly at least, has turned out not to be true. My question is, why did you really want to go to war?" But overall the audition tape was too damned long, too many sound gags that didn't translate. The only thing I can figure is that after his brilliant monologue why he would make such a misstep. I think it was calculated. The entire time the tape played the C-SPAN camera was pointed at George W. Bush. Bush looked as though he was approached by a poor person, so sour and bewildered and blinking was his expression. I think Colbert was simply twisting the knife he had so deftly placed in the center of Bush's nervous system. He wanted to see if Bush would get up and walk out. Bush didn't, so he had to listen to all the question he never wanted to hear the first time around.

Colbert was damned funny. His performance was one of the bravest, most biting satirical attacks I've ever seen or heard. He made all the right heads roll.

Must See Documentary on 9/11 -- LOOSE CHANGE 2ND EDITION

MUST SEE DOCUMENTARY: Loose Change: 2nd Edition

Considering the myriad varying opinions about whether or not Stephen Colbert was "funny" at the recent White House Correspondents' Dinner (he was dead-on funny and sniper-precise in his delivery and content), ideas about what really happened on September 11, 2001 in New York City and Washington and Pennsylvania, are exponentially divergent. I watched the WTC towers fall in real-time from an office in Southfield, Michigan; my nervous went incandescent with horror at the sight.

Having read widely on the subject of 9/11 and having viewed several documentaries expounding upon different theories or aspects of those attacks, I'm familiar with much of the current thinking (pro and con to the "official" version of events). Still, this documentary revealed details I had never before heard. Such as:

* graphically demonstrates with computer models some of the "war games" coincidentally scheduled on 9/11 that diverted military resources away from NYC and Washtington, D.C.

* visual comparisons of the damage to the Pentagon on 9/11 with airplane wreckage from Texas on November 22, 2004 when a private jet intended to pick up George Bush senior flew so low that it, too, struck lamp posts before crashing. Although the situations are very similar, the amount of wreckage and physical damage to surrounding landscape are not remotely the same.

* FBI Director Robert Mueller's admission (of which I had never heard) that authorities really had no proof or concrete idea about the identities of the alleged highjackers who overtook the doomed planes on 9/11.

* eight and-a-half minutes into the film a telephone interview with Hunter S. Thompson plays as footage of the damage to the WTC is shown. I own more of Thompson's book than any other contemporary author. I've seen him interviewed numerous times, and am loath to admit that I usually found him very disappointing, sometimes to the point of incoherency. However, he is sharp and bang-on during this interview. In fact, I didn't realize it was Thompson's voice (distinct though it was) until a full minute after the interview commenced.

* not only reports of a secondary explosion at the Pentagon, but actual film footage of a fireball coming from the damaged area of the Pentagon following the initial attack.

* satellite photos of the Pentagon four days before the attack show white markings on the front lawn marking the almost exact trajectory of whatever hit the building on 9/11.

* most startling are the copious transcripts of firefighters radio transmissions from within the WTC on 9/11 describing explosions going off within the building after the planes crashed into it.

* comparisons of other steel frame buildings that suffered catastrophic fires, burning for hours on end, which did not collapse. One of these comparisons involved the plane that struck the Empire State Building in 1945, and how limited, contained, and minor its damage was to the building.

* Letter from Kevin Ryan of Underwriters Laboratories (who underwrote the insurance on the WTC buildings) stated clearly and unequivically that the steel components in the WTC were certified to "ASTM E119" -- writing, "... I think we can all agree that even under-fireproofed steel will not melt until reaching red-hot temperatures of nearly 3000F. Why Dr. Brown would imply that 2000F would melt the high-grade steel used in those buildings makes no sense at all. This story just does not add up..." Days after writing this letter, Kevin Ryan was fired from his job.

* interview with Willie Rodriguez, janitor in the WTC for 20 years, in which he describes an explosion occurring deep in the lower levels of the WTC just before the first plane hit.

* the most startling information, for me, were the reports that Flight 93 -- supposed to have crashed in Shanksville PA -- is known to have actually landed in Cleveland OH, at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport under the pretext of a bomb-threat aboard. The 200 passengers were evacuated from the plane and taken to an empty NASA building nearby on the airport's premises. What happened to them from there, no one knows -- other than the fact that none of them are alive today.

* also, the Flight 93 plane was spotted at Chicago's O'Hare Airport in 2003 by flight attendant David Freedman of United Airlines who kept track of all the planes on which he worked.

What impressed me most about this documentary is that its maker does not grasp at straws. When he comes upon an unanswered question, he states it as such. He does not guess, does not venture outlandish theories. He puts the onus where it belongs -- on the Bush administration to provide the information that is still required in order to shed light onto the areas of 9/11 that remain shrouded in mystery and inconsistency

There's no question this documentary will no sway everyone. Maybe it is only preaching to the choir. However, for anyone willing to listen to a rationally wrought, soberly presented set of facts and questions, set aside what you think you know about the 9/11 attacks and the issues of forewarning and involvement, and watch this documentary. If you know something the documentarian doesn't know, tell him. I think he's willing to listen. As it stands, 9/11 is the Kennedy Assassination of this generation. The 9/11 Report is its Warren Commission Report. The tattered old catch-all veil of "national security" needs to be swept aside in this case and the truth come to light and the perpetrators and planners of this obscenity prosecuted. The war in Afghanistan and Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, and the PATRIOT Act have been the direct result of the 9/11 attacks. Who has benefited more substantially from these events? Osama Bin Laden or George W. Bush? We sure don't hear Halliburton screaming for justice for those killed in 9/11.

Bereft Lehind -- Evangelical Christian action cinema

Bereft Lehind -- Left Behind II Evangelical Christian action cinema: Ed Wood Meets L. Ron Hubbard

Last summer I was given a copy of Kirk Cameron's magnum opus Left Behind II by a person starting a video mail order business. Having never heard of the Left Behind book series, I was morbidly fascinated to see what an evangelical Christian action movie looked like (in much the same way I was once curious to see what the genitalia of a hermaphrodite looked like -- a fleeting curiosity that I would have been much better off not satisfying).

The two men pictured here (who are clearly in love with one another) are (left) Tim LaHaye -- a sort of Christian Liberace -- and (right) Jerry B. Jenkins, who will likely one day be selling Quaker oats on TV to all of us.

The hermaphroditic genatalia... sorry, the evangelical Christian action movie seems to have been constructed in much the same way the Bible was written -- with little attention to creating consistency in detail, and having no respect for the intelligence of its audience. You see, in Left Behind, the Rapture occurred, leaving the earth littered with millions of sets of empty clothes on air planes, offices, in vehicles on the street -- everywhere. More Dockers and striped Polo shirts than God himself could count.

Also, it appears that only the litterers of the world were left behind -- the movie sets stream with garbage in every direction. Cleanliness is next to godliness! Anyhow, the proprietors of the empty clothes were, of course, whisked to heaven because, of course, we live in the End Times. Although every other generation of Christians who believed they lived in the End Times were wrong, Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins are not wrong.

So, the Book of Revelations is finally stretching its legs, finally getting its pyro show underway. Following the Rapture comes the sequel Left Behind II, which picks up the action a week after the Big Day of Empty Clothing. These people "left behind" weren't "right with God" so they're stuck on earth, still in their clothes, but are told by some passage in the Bible that they'll have a second crack at heaven. Good thing, too, because Kirk Cameron's (Buck Williams) onscreen girlfriend, Chloe, is hot!

More importantly, however, is that following the Rapture comes the rise of the anti-Christ. This personage takes the tired, Cold War form of Nicolae Carpathia. Yeah, this guy with the horrible Russian accent leads the U.N. and subtly spouts patently unChristian platitudes about seeking world peace, ending war and hunger, and ending religious intolerance: in other words, eradicating the pillars of Christianity. This monster must die! The evangelical authors of this mess are more than a little ridiculous in their longing gaze back to the good ole Moscow-hating days of the 1980s when evangelical nut Ronald Regan seemed poised to hurry the apocalyptic-pyrotechnics with a few nukes aimed at the Kremlin. As if the blue-helmeted U.N. could ever overrun America and lull the world to sleep with a "false" peace! What a perfectly Christian term: "false peace." It has no meaning whatsoever.

Anyhow, after much "real world" talk about God, and a lot of easy running around and globe-trotting on bad sets, Buck Williams, star reporter for the Global News Network converts a leading Jewish scholar to Christianity, and foils the anti-Christ by getting the new Jew-for-Jesus to proclaim on worldwide television that Jesus Christ meets all of the criteria in "ancient texts" describing the messiah.

One of the most nauseating moments in this thoroughly nauseating film came about twenty-four minutes in when "Chris," the skeptical friend of Rayford Steele -- manly Christian man, airline pilot, who is struggling with his faith since his wife and son were removed, nude, from this world -- storms out of a church service, unimpressed with the airy talk about God. When Chris tells his friend Rayford that he, Chris, believes himself to be a good person, Buck Williams swings into action. "According to whose standards?" Williams intones and then begins quoting the Ten Commandments. "If a person who murders is a murderer, what is a person who lies?" Williams asks, ensnaring his prey and oozing pungent self-righteousness through my TV screen. Chris reluctantly accepts that because he has lied in his life that he's a liar. He's also stolen -- something small, he concedes -- so he's a thief. And of course he's lusted after women, so he's an adulterer at heart. Yeah, ole Buck Williams took that son of a bitch to task. By God's standards, Chris is a piece of shit. The result of this realization? Chris goes home and within three minutes of screen time is contemplating suicide, sloppily spinning a revolver around on his coffee table -- in his messy apartment (cleanliness is next to godliness).

All the while, through the film, people are "coming to Christ" in the most easy, superficial ways. So, so realistic. Everyone prays with their hands clasped together and their brows furrowed with ecstatic intensity. And there isn't the least bit of consistency regarding what tasks and situations the characters will tackle for themselves and those they will leave to the will of God. "It's in God's hands," more than a few characters sigh weightily. If it's in God's hands, then why doesn't everyone just go back to bed? Are they suffering the sin of pride and believing they are capable of doing something God cannot? The film is a shoe stuck in a huge wad of theological gum.

In the end, the Devil is defeated and the convoluted predictions of the Bible come true, and Buck Williams struts down the aisle of a packed, candle-lit church at the film's conclusion -- with skeptic, Chris, singing his heart out; filled with faith! -- in the midst of the sort of hackneyed awful music that drove me from the church so many years ago. He's a conquering hero in Dockers.

Man, if this is the realm of the saved, please book me another table in the afterlife.