Americans don’t live here any longer

What’s Become of Americans?

By Paul Craig Roberts

03/22/06 "LewRockwell" -- -- Imagine knocking on America’s door and being told, "Americans don’t live here any longer. They have gone away."

But isn’t that what we are hearing, that Americans have gone away? Alan Shore told us so on ABC’s Boston Legal on March 14:

When the weapons of mass destruction thing turned out not to be true, I expected the American people to rise up. They didn't.

Then, when the Abu Ghraib torture thing surfaced and it was revealed that our government participated in rendition, a practice where we kidnap people and turn them over to régimes who specialize in torture, I was sure then the American people would be heard from. We stood mute.

Then came the news that we jailed thousands of so-called terrorist suspects, locked them up without the right to a trial or even the right to confront their accusers. Certainly, we would never stand for that. We did.

And now, it's been discovered the executive branch has been conducting massive, illegal, domestic surveillance on its own citizens. You and me. And I at least consoled myself that finally, finally the American people will have had enough. Evidently, we haven't.

In fact, if the people of this country have spoken, the message is we're okay with it all. Torture, warrantless search and seizure, illegal wiretappings, prison without a fair trial or any trial, war on false pretenses. We, as a citizenry, are apparently not offended.

There are no demonstrations on college campuses. In fact, there's no clear indication that young people even seem to notice. . . .

The Secret Service can now declare free speech zones to contain, control and, in effect, criminalize protest. Stop for a second and try to fathom that. At a presidential rally, parade or appearance, if you have on a supportive t-shirt, you can be there. If you’re wearing or carrying something in protest, you can be removed.

This! In the United States of America.

Readers tell me that Americans don’t live here any more. They ask what responsible American citizenry would put up with the trashing of the Bill of Rights and the separation of powers, with wars based on deception, and with pathological liars in control of their government? One reader recently wrote that he believes that "no element of the U.S. government has been left untainted" by the lies and manipulations that have driven away accountability. So-called leaders, he wrote, "talk a great story of American pride and patriotism," but in their hands patriotism is merely a device for "cynical manipulation and fraud."

The Bush regime acknowledges that 30,000 Iraqi civilians, largely women and children, have been killed as a result of Bush’s invasion. Others who have looked at civilian casualties with greater attention have come up with numbers three to six times as large. The Johns Hopkins study accounted for 98,000 civilian deaths. Patrick Cockburn, using more sophisticated statistical analysis, concluded that 180,000 Iraqis died as a result of Bush’s invasion. The former prime minister Iyad Allawi says that Iraqi sectarian violence alone is claiming 50–60 deaths per day, or 18,000–22,000 annually, a figure that could quickly worsen.

Some were killed by “smart bombs” that weren’t very smart and dropped on hospitals, schools, and weddings. Others were mistaken for resistance fighters and killed. Still others were killed by spooked, trigger-happy U.S. troops. And many died due to the breakdown of the Iraqi health system.

Now comes a report in the online edition of Time magazine that U.S. Marines went on a rampage in the village of Haditha and deliberately slaughtered 15 unarmed Iraqis in their homes. The Iraqis were still in their bed clothes, and 10 of the 15 were women and children.

The Marines turned in a false report that the civilians were killed by an insurgent bomb. But the evidence of wanton carnage was too powerful. Pressed by Time’s collection of evidence, U.S. military officials in Baghdad opened an investigation. Time reports that "according to military officials, the inquiry acknowledged that, contrary to the military’s initial report, the 15 civilians killed on Nov. 19 died at the hands of the Marines, not the insurgents. The military announced last week that the matter has been handed over to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, which will conduct a criminal investigation."

If this story is true, under Donald Rumsfeld and George Bush’s leadership, proud and honorable U.S. Marines have degenerated into the Waffen SS. Those of us raised on John Wayne war movies find this very hard to take.

A fish rots from the head. Clearly, deception in the Oval Office is corrupting the U.S. military. One reader reported that on March 19 his local PBS station aired a program which discussed the deaths of two young American soldiers in friendly fire incidents similar to Pat Tillman’s death. In each case, he reports, "elements within the military falsified reports and attempted to shift blame to either enemy combatants or allied (Polish) forces."

The neocons have yet to tell us the real reason for their assault on Iraq, which has so far produced 20,000 dead, maimed, and wounded U.S. soldiers, between 30,000 and 180,000 (and rising) dead Iraqis, and demoralized U.S. Marines to the point that they commit atrocities on women and children.

Would real Americans accept these blows for the sake of an undeclared agenda? Perhaps it is true that Americans don’t live here any longer.

Dr. Roberts is Chairman of the Institute for Political Economy and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. He is a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, former contributing editor for National Review, and a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury.

Deflated "Dr. Howdy" the SPAMMER cries "Uncle!"

Part I

See if you can follow this chain of events:

* SPAMMER "Dr. Howdy" posts on my blog -- where any and all opinions (except those from exposed SPAMMERS) are welcome

* Soon after SPAMMER "Dr. Howdy" posts here I receive an onslaught of SPAM from SPAMMER "Dr. Howdy"

* I write to "Dr. Howdy" asking to be taken off his emailing list. I hate the kind of stuff with which he fills his "newsletters"

* Nothing happens; SPAM from "Dr. Howdy" continues to arrive

* I visit "Dr. Howdy"'s convoluted laugh-at-the-SPAM-victim unsubscribe page and find that the so-called information I require to get off his list is not in the email newsletter he sends to me

* SPAM continues to arrive from "Dr. Howdy"

* One too many items of SPAM arrives from "Dr. Howdy" and I vociferously communicate my displeasure to him. To which "Dr. Howdy" makes no offer to unsubscribe me, but weirdly informs me that someone else signed me up for his newsletter (something I am going to pursue and investigate with Yahoo! Groups until I'm satisfied)

* I ask "Dr. Howdy" the SPAMMER to identify who signed me up for his lame newsletter -- no reply about this; a hollow pantomime of "ethics," no doubt

* I write a blog posting here unmasking "Dr. Howdy" as a SPAMMER -- squishy blind things that dwell beneath rocks hate it when they are exposed to the light

* "Dr. Howdy" posts on my blog, contrite, tail-between-his-knocked-knees, saying, "Hey man, what's the problem? Anyone can unsubscribe from my newsletter any time." This is an outright lie -- if it were that easy, I would not have had to go to all of the trouble of unmasking "Dr. Howdy" as the SPAMMER he is

"Dr. Howdy" and his kind (i.e. SPAMMERS who scoop peoples' email addresses without their knowledge or permission and then plague these unsuspecting victims with SPAM) are not welcome inside the hotdog factory.

After numerous verbal squirts of Murphy's Oil Soap on "Dr. Howdy" via his blog, hoping simply to get my point across that I want him to leave me alone, he sulks and skulks around here, whining like some wounded thing. When, in fact, he has proven to have the resilience and soul of a cockroach. I'm not fooled.

So let this put "shut" to this miserable situation.

P.S. Howdy -- my readers are not only well familiar with my use of bad language, it's often applauded. Posting an edited version of one of my missives to you in the Comments section of a posting will shock no one.

Catch a SPAMMER By the Toe... Dr. Howdy of "Thought & Spam" Fame, You're Going Down

I have caught a live, active SPAMMER and his name is alternately "Dr. Howdy" or "Professor Howdy".

Interested in telling an honest-to-God spammer how you feel about such people and their chosen method of spending their spare time? Contact this puss-filled miscreant at the following: http://www.blogger.com/profile/5577144 (emailnewspaper@charter.net).

This cretin has been in my life for about three or four months now. One day he posted on my blog, the next day came this plague of unwanted email newsletters purporting to be of a "humorous" nature. They're not. They're lamer than the lamest "office humor" that used to cripple fax machines. Since the first rancid missive, I have attempted to get myself off this myopic jerk's emailing list. Today I received the last spam I'm willing to receive from this jackass, Dr. Howdy. As of this evening, Dr. Howdy is going down.

2 of 116 comments on the supposed "unsubscribe" page of the Dr. Howdy Lame-O Web site:

Your unsubscribe information is idiotic and makes absolutely no sense. My 11 year old brother could probably make a more technologically sophisticated blog and newsletter than this one. I have tried repeatedly over the last year to get off this email list. I guarantee that I WILL find a way to report you to some sort of Yahoo internet authority if I recieve anymore of your "i am hilarious and jesus loves you" crap in my inbox. I am way too busy to try to sift through all the howdy garbage I receive in my inbox daily. If I ever come across a college student who knows about and actually enjoys this email, I will be sure to punch them in the face.

Also:

Howdy is okay....it's the horrendeous amount of terrible spam I've been getting lately that I can trace directly back to Howdy's email /blogs. Shame on YOU!

Dr. Howdy the SPAMMER's reply:

Oh you found me out.
I knew I should have
been content with just
causing the earthquake
in Pakistan as well as
Hurricanes Katrina
& Rita, but just last
month I decided why
not cause one of my
faithful readers since
Apr 2, 2004 to start
receiving lots of SPAM.
Oh, you found me
out.

Actually in reality, I was
offered $1.5 million for
your e-mail address by
a Spammer. So now I'm
rich and you have to live
with SPAM!!!

Now you have discovered
the real reason for 'T & H'
and why I spend 70 hrs./week
for the last 8 years in sending
out this publication to well
over 2 million folks.

Fortunately for everyone
else's sake, I don't plan to
sell their addresses because
now I'm filthy rich...

Very Sorry,
Howdy

Getting a mental picture of this idiot? His email address is emailnewspaper@charter.net.

After a few cutting messages from me today, Dr. Howdy the SPAMMER informed me that someone else was kind enough to sign me up for this daily detritus. Yes, someone signed me up for this crap without my permission. Someone who obviously knows me well and knows how much I relish gum-on-the-shoe Internet humor. And Yahoo! Groups is more than glad to be this SPAMMER's enabler. I guess Yahoo! is too busy turning information over to Chinese authorities for the jailing of journalists to be bothered sending out verification email messages when someone signs up for one of its groups' newsletters. And it's not like Dr. Howdy the SPAMMER is going to request permission because who would give it? No one. The newsletters are the most infantile, thoughtless garbage you can (or can't) imagine. Makes the pizza parlor fliers you get in the mail seem like literature -- at least the pizza fliers have coupons! As for unsubscribing, Dr. Howdy the SPAMMER refers people to his ridiculous, convoluted page, which is quite obviously a joke on anyone seeking to unsubscribe.

So, just for starters, the moment I'm finished with this post I'm going to report Dr. Howdy the SPAMMER to Blogger.com and Yahoo! Groups, that wretched outfit that makes signing people up without their permission for such newsletters possible in the first place.

Let's see what Blogger.com thinks about this scumbag using its free service as an online "base of operations" for finding victims for his SPAM. And let's see if Yahoo! can bother its ass to reply to the multiple complaints I have sent in regarding its very lax and irresponsible monitoring of who signs up for its newsgroups.

I hate spammers.

Update 03/11/2006:

No big surprise, but it seems our nefarious "Dr. Howdy" is a liar as well as a SPAMMER. I have contacted everyone in my email address book and no one claims responsibility for signing me up for "Dr. Howdy's" SPAM. Unlike "Dr. Howdy," I deal with honest, truthful people. I imagine lowly "Dr. Howdy" SPAMMING me and his many other victims on a wireless laptop, holed up in a decrepit toilet stall in a fetid, forgotten MENS room in some abandoned rail or bus station. "Dr. Howdy" doubtless deals only with liars and thieves, addicts, cross dressers, and child molesters. His word is not to be taken.

However, on the off-, off-, off-chance a syllable of truth has entered "Dr. Howdy"'s vocabulary, I have demanded he provide me the email address of the brain damaged person who signed me up for his vomitous newsletter. So far, no reply on this. It's impossible to imagine "Dr. Howdy" objecting on anything approaching ethical grounds. What ethics? This moron is a SPAMMER. And given the high tech production value of his "newsletter", he can no doubt lay his hands on the email address of the ignoramus who signed me up for his drek.

Incidental History - My Childhood Home Goes Up For Sale

After 40 years living at the same address, my parents are selling their home. As Thomas Wolfe wrote in his essay "The Return:" "I was a child here."

My family had a large console television in the basement; the only TV in the house until I was about ten. My father was a elementary school principal and sometimes brought home a tiny black and white television on weekends. We set it on the stereo cabinet in the living room for my younger brother and I to watch Wonder Woman and The Incredible Hulk and Delta House (the shortlived TV spinoff of Animal House) while my parents watched their shows in the basement. It was on that small black and white set that I saw Animal House when it was broadcast on network TV for the first time. The film had the effect on me that the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel has on most adults: It was a revelation. After seeing John Belushi's legendary scene in the Faber College cafeteria, ludicrously loading up his tray, stuffing whole sandwiches, Jell-O platters, and hamburgers into his mouth, my eating habits forever changed. During lunches, I stuffed whole peanut butter and jam sandwiches into my mouth, to the shrieks and confusion of my mother. How I missed choking to death, I'll never know.

Beyond the right-hand upper floor window was my bedroom in which I wrote my first song with I was twelve. I had been playing guitar with more passion than expertise for about two years by that point. After creeping through the age-old Standard Guitar Method series, which had me plucking dissonant notes for months on end, I revelled in strumming full chords. Around this time I saw Woodstock for the first time and sought to emulate Richie Havens' bombastic strumming style. Having no ear for learning to play songs just by listening to them, I practiced my chord-changes and slowly learned to combine them in ways that sounded good to me. All laborious key-of-G, but it was a like a door on the universe opened a crack through which I made my own contact with the invisible hand that guides creativity.

I was the only oldest sibling among my friends. All my buddies had older brothers, some of whom were as much as a decade older, and from these surly, impatient older brothers we learned about music (among many other sordid subjects). Detroit FM radio was all we listened to: 101.1 WRIF, 98.7 WLLZ, and a slew of other here-today-gone-tomorrow stations. While so many people today are revealing their closet-affinity for 1980s music -- all the techno-pop crap that made absolutely no impression on me -- my friends and I listened to the best of 1980s rock 'n' roll: Billy Squire, the J. Geils Band, The Cars, Jefferson Starship, Aldo Nova, The Romantics, Rush, .38 Special, Bitter Sweet Alley. The first cassette I ever purchased was The Rolling Stones' Tattoo You in the music department of Zeller's in the Ambassador Mall in 1981, when I was ten. When the Stones came to Detroit during that tour, months later, it was like a visitation from Moses or Ezekiel; someone from On High. The eldest brother of my friends next door actually saw the Stones at Cobo Hall in Detroit. Afterward, I looked at him as though he had been to the top of Mount Sinai and had the soot from a burning bush on his cheeks and forehead.

By the time I was twelve I had an ancient black and white television in my bedroom; yellowed plastic faceplate, the entire set bolted to a frail wheeled stand. It stood at the foot of my bed. Those were the days before my family had Cable. Still, that TV pulled in a decent number of Canadian and Michigan stations. However, there were only two UHF stations that mattered to me: WKBD Channel 50 and Channel 56, Detroit Public Television. Channel 50 filled me with reruns of Sanford & Son, Happy Days, Three's Company, CHiPs. But most importantly there was the Channel 50 Eight O'Clock Movie, which played every modern classic film imaginable: The Deer Hunter (uncut), Marathon Man, Coming Home, Taxi Driver, Sleeper, and dozens and dozens of other films that shaped or warped me into the person I am today.

The highlights of all this television-watching came every night at 10:30 on Channel 50 in the form of The Odd Couple, starring Tony Randall and Jack Klugman. Then at 11 p.m. came a double shot of The Twilight Zone. At midnight were Comedy Classics, which alternated between Three Stooges films and Laurel & Hardy.

On Saturday nights, it was Channel 56 at 10 p.m. to watch Monty Python's Flying Circus, which was followed by a local music video show called The Beat. I cannot overstate the importance of The Beat on my life. Hosted by longtime Detroit DJ, Doug Podell, the show was simulcast on 98.7 FM, allowing me to tape the music from the show on cassette. It was on The Beat -- a makeshift production with all the showy frills of early public access television -- I first saw U2's video for "A Sort of a Homecoming", and on which I saw the newly unearthed footage of Jim Morrison and The Doors performing "Love Me Two Times" in Europe from 1968. Jim Morrison was among my first cultural titans -- whether deservedly so, or not, I'm still deciding -- and by that night in 1983 I had only ever seen black and white photographs of him; heard the radio tracks from Doors' albums on WRIF. Seeing actual footage of Morrison and the Doors was like being handed the Shroud of Turin for personal inspection. It might sound strange in this age where we can't escape music videos or tiresome celebrities, but at that time there was such a dearth of Doors' material outside the official canon of ordinary album releases and the very rare magazine article. I videotaped that performance of "Love Me Two Times" and watched it until I had memorized every frame of it. Soon after came release of the video constructed around the Doors' performance of Van Morrison's song "Gloria," which was also a minor seismic event in my life.

The basement of the house was finished around the time I was born. As a kid, I was avid about cartoons and cartooning. My parents were kind enough to buy me a desk where I worked on drawings and comic strips. By the time I entered high school, my interests had shifted to music and would soon shift further to fiction writing. It was down in that basement, with my levithan tape cassette collection at my side, my portable radio/tape deck next to it, that I began writing. Within months of composing my short story I tried my hand at novel writing and made the disovery that writing a novel was more than simply writing a lot of words. Armed with an IBM clone PC and a Panasonic dot matrix printer, I churned out the pages day after day, submitting stories to Weird Tales, Story, Amazing Stories, Haunts, and countless other journals and magazines. Every single one of those stories rejected as quickly as the mail would allow.

It was there in the basement, in 1990, that I first began writing a story called "The Block Buster", which soon expanded into a novel-length idea. My first genuine crack at the story spanned 184 pages. My second draft came out to 464 pages. Years passed, I tinkered with draft after draft of the novel, changing the title to "Bad Moon Rising," and then finally to Randham Acts. All the while I had other projects on-the-go, and eventually got to a point where I tried simply forgetting about Randham Acts. But the story persisted and I eventually completed what felt like the definitive draft, which I submitted to Better Non Sequitur, a small press publisher in San Diego, California. The night I received the email saying BNS accepted Randham Acts, the decade and-a-half I'd spent writing the novel seemed to accordion into a surreal blur of notes and drafts that lost all detail.

And so that house on Cameron Avenue is up for sale. I was a child there. I first heard music there, read my first book there. The feeling I have about it resembles what I experienced when losing girlfriends in my youth -- terminally ordinary. The consolation is that "ordinary" is not at all a bad state of being in which to exist. That ordinary house on that ordinary street on the west side of Windsor, Ontario provided me all I needed with regard to inspiration, environment, atmosphere, mood, color, texture, not to mention shelter. I'll miss the old house. As it watches my folks pack up and leave in the next few months, the house will doubtlessly be left knowing it had been lived in.

Who Would Have Guessed? An Interesting News Day

• Secrecy surrounds a camp worse than Guantanamo



• Clark's 10 groundbreaking Oscar films



• Bush in India: Just Not Welcome



• An apocalyptic new book by a young novelist



• The Soldiers Speak. Will President Bush Listen?



• Mayerthorpe



• Women, believed to be suspects in Mexico murders, deny involvement



• Sudan man forced to 'marry' goat

Office Lit -- The "Beowulf" of the 21st Century

Stephen King rightly wonders in his non-fiction book On Writing why so many readers enjoy his stories involving jobs and places of work. As a person who despises corporate life, yet enjoys office-satire stories, I concur that this is a strange phenomenon.

After working a surreal year at a company called Engineering Animation, which was bought up by Unigraphics Solutions soon after I was hired, and ultimately swallowed by E.D.S. -- which led to my blessed lay-off -- I was inspired to write my own office farce, Der Komplex. My unnamed protagonist muddles through the same hyperbaric-chamber-environment I encountered at E.A.I., where there was no defined job description, no real workload, no tangible responsibilities, no measurable results; nothing but an unpleasant tingling at the top of the head that throbbed like a warning beacon.

Bill Vitanyi's slim novel Kyuboria is a first rate office satire. It follows the exploits of State employee Clint Palmer, a programmer who seeks to open and run his own business. This far-off dream suddenly seems attainable when he reads of a government sponsored grant offered to people fired from the I.T. industry (if such a grant existed, I would be eligible for it three times over). However, Clint soon learns that getting fired from his job is not so easy. In fact, it's virtually impossible. Comedy and painfully-rendered-reality ensue.

My own surreal experiences in I.T. did not end with my lay-off from E.A.I. After nine months of job hunting, I landed a technical writing job with a company in Dexter, Michigan. The company was called Creative Solutions, and I remember feeling a rush of excitement as I sought out its Web site, wondering what sort of work went on there (yeah, sorry HR wonks, I don't just "multi" submit my resumes, I mega submit, so I never have much idea -- in total -- where I've sent my C.V.s). Did they do digital animation? Innovative Web marketing? Magazine work?

Turned out Creative Solutions created and sold accounting software. My twelve-month tenure there saw me steeped in the United States Internal Revenue Service tax code. Although my colleagues were a wonderful, incongruously creative bunch, the job had me doing the devil's own busy-work. All of which was bookended by a 106-mile daily commute. The pay was good; there was even profit sharing. But the brass tacks of the job itself was like something from a nightmare: so deadly, so mercilessly boring was it that I could not concentrate on my tasks for even a few minutes without glazing over. After crashing my car, one morning, into the rear end of a tractor trailer United States Postal vehicle, I somehow managed to find a job in my own hometown.

Enter McIll. That's not the name of the company, but it's close enough. McIll designed and created computer- and Web-based training products. The job, as described to me by a recruiter, sounded terrific. The company was on the rebound from having been bought up by a larger corporation, virtually gutted, nearly eviscerated, before the larger corporation sold the place back to the two guys who had started McIll years before. It was a great local story.

And then the owners plunged a blood-guttered dagger into the side of the place -- they hired a consultant.

I'll never forget this battered, waify woman introducing herself to the company -- about fifty employees at this time -- referring to herself as, among other things, a "life coach" and corporate consultant. She met with each employee individually, and I was stunned to find during my meeting that the woman appeared barely able to read. All employees had to fill out forms about what changes they wanted to see implemented in the company. She read mine in front of me with a finger under the line she read, and her lips moving, her whispered voice stumbling over every other word.

And so the process of turning a modern, cool office space into an I.T. Wal-Mart. The dim, dark-painted upper floor where I was stationed was repainted, everyone relocated to the mainfloor where fluorescent hell beams blazed above all day long. The designers who needed to work in dim confines wore sunglasses to combat the glare. The staff was corralled into a mass of desks in an open room, reminiscent of the hangar-sized office filled with typists in the early portion of Saving Private Ryan. Right out of the Tragically Hip's "My Music at Work" video.

A grotesque woman from Chicago with a dubious PhD was hired to act as smiling, soothing taskmaster. She struck me as the type who could hand out termination papers in a Christmas card. Her helmeted hair style echoed the old advertisement line "... hair is for protection..." She stalked around the office in her power suits and assailed us over the telephone from her "home office." And soon after the "life coach" consultant went her giddy way -- doubtless literally laughing all the way to the bank -- the helmet frau instituted a domino-fall run of firings. I was among the first wave and one of the very few who actually deserved termination.

From McIll I went to Hewlett-Packard in Dearborn, Michigan. Another hyperbaric chamber; an ant-hole filled with consultants. I remember they were all named "Bill." How painfully apt, because that's all they did: bill, bill, bill the company. Three months of that and my madness meter was nearly blown.

My forays into office life have been as fantastical and surreal as any Grimm Brothers story. The array of fractured personalities, along with the unaccountably cool folk, encountered in these enchanted forests defy description. Kindred souls met in the fog by copier, in the mist of the kitchennette, in the dungeon of the conference room. Our eyes met. Our senses of humor tickled one another. Then we disappeared from one another.

And it's heartening and entertaining to see that people are telling the stories of this strange land. Max Barry is now out with Company and maybe I will one day get beyond my traumas to complete my office-novel-in-progress Swimming Under Water.

Following my absolute last venture into office-life, I wrote Geek Barn as my farewell to that brain-damaged, soul-perforating purgatory.

Good Show, Sex Pistols

The Sex Pistols have opted out on appearing at their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Their response:

"It's my parade and I'll cry if I want to!" -- Protestant marchers are not welcome in Dublin, Ireland

By SHAWN POGATCHNIK, Associated Press Writer - February 25, 2006 - DUBLIN, Ireland - Several hundred Irish Republican Army supporters attacked police in Dublin on Saturday to protest an unprecedented parade through the capital by Protestants from Northern Ireland.

In scenes rare for the Republic of Ireland, protesters hurled bottles, bricks, concrete blocks and fireworks at police officers trying to clear the hostile crowd from Dublin's most famous boulevard, O'Connell Street.

If a person can only express himself by throwing a brick (or, a wheelbarrow, for that matter), then he has nothing to say. I do not side with the rock/brick/bottle-throwers who protested the "unprecedented parade through the capital by Protestants from Northern Ireland"; "a Love Ulster rally involving Orangemen and relatives of IRA murder victims". But this does not keep me from recognizing the Love Ulster members as pure and simple shit-disturbers. What empty lives these pruned orange bastards must lead when the pillar of their lives are these incendiary marches.

In 1999, the site of this parade and ensuing melee was my neighborhood. I lived in an apartment over the Spar on Westmoreland Street, on the other side of the O'Connell Bridge from where this fracas erupted. It is no place for a parade other than the brilliant St. Patrick's Day parade that will occur next month.

I'm reading much about the clash and how these poor, put-upon Prostestants meekly called off their parade, but I'm not reading why these people sought to march in central Dublin. Yes, we must condemn the violence that resulted, but will someone please answer why this march was planned in the capital city?

Democratic Unionist Party "lawmaker" Jeffrey Donaldson claims it was outside agitators who ignited the violence. I definitely group Love Ulster into this category.

During the two years I lived in Dublin, Ireland in the late 1990s, I found the city and country to be among the most civilized, pleasant and lovely places I've ever known. I walked nearly every neighborhood of Dublin City, some dodgier than others, and never had any trouble. I don't romanticize the Dirty Old Town; a city with that population has its problems. Whenever I saw the stirrings or making of "trouble", I shifted gears, changed directions, and moved to safer ground. But the city is not a tinderbox of sectarian hatred. The people I knew there really couldn't care less about mafia-like factions in the north, whether it be the bullet-headed IRA or the delusional royal imperialists.

I know Irish Catholic Republicans who live in the town of Crossmaglen in County Armagh. I have witnessed firsthand the intimidation tactics the British forces there use on the citizenry of aged farmers and families, flying their helicopters menacingly low over their rooftops. The afternoon I saw this happen -- in 1995 -- I raised my camera to photograph the oddity. The friend I was with nearly knocked the camera out of my hand, saying the British troops would likely shoot my face off if they caught me photographing them.

The British forces in Crossmaglen mercilessly harassed the populace there with random, violent searches of peoples' homes in the middle of the night. The soldiers used the butts of their machine guns to break up the peoples' dishes. They once poisoned the beloved dog of a farmer I know there. Soon after that poisoning, the British forces one night landed their helicopter in this farmer's yard and burst into his home. After breaking all of his dishes, the farmer had had enough. He fought back, taking the heavily armed soldiers by surprise, and using nothing but his fists and righteous indignation, he throttled half a dozen of them before finally being subdued. He was arrested on the spot and taken away in the helicopter. He was taken to a dungeon-like holding cell, stripped naked and left in the dank darkness. The judge who presided over his case saw how unrestrained and in the wrong the British troops who brought him in had been that the judge simply found the farmer guilty of "disrespecting the Queen's uniform" when he beat up the soldiers. He was given a small fine and released.

The IRA is widely viewed for what it is -- a mafia of unemployed thugs who fraudulently use "Republicanism" and "Irish Independence" as a ruse for raising money abroad. IRA members usually live in unaccountably lavish style and are woefully responsible for so much violence that is visited upon their countrymen -- either perpetrating it themselves (Omagh bombing; Robert McCartney who was stabbed and kicked to death by a gang that included at least three members of the IRA) or bringing it upon them with their own acts of violence against the royal imperialists in the region.

The Irish "troubles" as they exist today occur within a few blighted blocks of Belfast; in squalid, thug-infested, gnacker-ridden ghettos.

So, the Protestants of northern Ireland brought their damnable marching to Dublin City. Love Ulster has no right to march down O'Connell Street. They're peas-in-a-pod with their brick-throwing adversaries -- where one goes, so follows the other.

What a sad day for Dublin and for all people who love that city.

Editorial by Brendan O'Connor in the Sunday Independent: In case anyone had forgotten, violence is what republicans do

LEST you had been lulled into thinking republicans were all about chicks in mini-skirts and equality, we all got a good reminder yesterday what they're all about. Every schoolchild in the country and every Provo-suckered yuppie radical should have been brought into O'Connell Street to witness the aftermath of the battle of Dublin yesterday and been told: "Always remember, this is what they do and this is what they do best."

It was the kind of thing you'd expect in the Middle East, or in France. It was the kind of thing we like to think we're too civilised for in this country. It was the kind of thing you'd expect to see in Northern Ireland.

It was the kind of thing, don't forget, that the people of that state have lived with for nearly 40 years. And now it's down here too.

And let's not scurry to blame the people who've been repaving O'Connell Street for what seems like a decade now. Let's not blame the people who left that street like a building site, or a rioter's dream. We can't stop leaving building blocks lying around in case someone might pick them up and throw them at the cops. Should we ban glass bottles as well? They are the kind of precautions you need to take in a mad house.

It is republicanism, the violent tradition of republicanism, and indeed republicanism's reverence for violence, that allowed what happened yesterday to happen. They tore apart our town, they tried to kill our cops, they ripped our fire engines to bits. They attacked the heart of this country and the very people we trust to protect that heart and it is Irish republicanism's twisted morality that made this acceptable.

And let's not be fooled into thinking that this was about politics in any real way. This was about the sectarianism that is at the heart of republicanism in this country. This is about a group of people who would deny another group the very right to exist. This is about one tradition's heartfelt need to wipe out another tradition, to ethnically cleanse Irish unionists and Protestants and everything they believe in.

On this occasion they wouldn't even allow them to remember their dead. Republicans killed the people that were to be remembered on Saturday's march and as if that wasn't enough they shat all over their memory again this weekend. We should be disgusted at ourselves for allowing this culture to thrive, disgusted at what some of us have become, no more than animals. We should remember too that no matter how much peace they talk, republicans at their heart will do whatever is necessary, shamelessly so, to deny minorities their right to exist.

I met a foreigner on O'Connell Street. He asked me what had happened, and I told him, half ashamed.

"It's just like Iraq where I am from," he said. "People talk a lot about democracy and then do things like this. Because up here," he said, motioning to his head, "they never change. Ireland has been free for 80 years now but still nothing changes." It was a depressing thought.

Of course, he wasn't the only foreigner around. This happened in the heart of tourism country. This didn't happen in some kind of no go area. It kicked off next to Ireland's premier shopping street and moved on to even more salubrious and central areas of town.

And all the tourists were there - watching, horrified. Because everybody loves the Irish, after all. Nobody thinks we'd attack our own cops and attack other people just for being different or for disagreeing with us. But some of us did.

Republicans disgraced us internationally on Saturday. And you know what the most embarrassing thing is? The Orangemen got on their buses and quietly went home while we tore our city asunder. And they're supposed to be the crazy ones.


February 26 Letter to the Editor by Matt St. Amand: Brendan O'Connor writes at the end of his editorial about the February 25th riot in central Dublin: "The Orangemen got on their buses and quietly went home while we tore our city asunder" as though the Love Ulster marchers had nothing to do with the fracas that ensued. I have no respect for rock- and bottle-throwers -- if a person can only express himself by heaving a wheelbarrow at a police line, that person has nothing to say that I have time to hear. However, the damnable incendiary marching tradition of the North is just as much to blame for Saturday's melee. Marching Orangemen is a provocative sight. Everyone knows it, particularly the Orangemen. So, to characterize those Orangemen as "quietly" fleeing the rabid Republicans falsely casts them as blameless victims. Having lived above the Spar on Westmoreland Street for a year in the 1990s, I know the area in which this riot took place intimiately. I was saddned and angered reading what happened on O'Connell Street yesterday. Maybe outside agitators are to blame for much of the violence, however, the marchers of Love Ulster are plenty culpable for what took place. Why wouldn't they gathering at Trinity College or organize a rally in Phoenix Park? No, they are not satisifed until they've ruined the busiest day of commerce in the busiest city in Ireland by halting traffic and grinding everything to a stop with a march. Condemnation should be heaped upon the Republican rock-throwers, but the Orangemen of Love Ulster ought to be taken to task for organizing this unprecedented march in Dublin. Because everyone knows the Orangemen do not march to the beat of drums, but to the beat of gnashing teeth, to the beat of riots.

Update:

Read what a peace-loving northern Irish chick has to say about this posting -- which she evidently didn't read too closely.

My reply to said-chick: "I see my opinion has been as welcomed by you as those Love Ulster folks were welcomed in Dublin. Your attitude is just as much a part of the problem as marching and rock-throwing. There is not a single dot of hatred in my blog entry about the marches that were interrupted by violence in Dublin on Saturday, only the question why the Orangemen aren't being taken to task for provoking the violence that ensued. They are just as culpable for what happened. You would make a wonderful honorary right-wing American with your ability to slant my views and use your own venom to accuse me of hatred. My opinion is as valid as yours, and possibly more civilized.

"I would put my experience in Dublin up against yours any day of the week."

New G.O.P. Fundraising Strategy

From CNN.com: Harry Whittington on being "peppered" with birdshot by Dick Cheney -- "My family and I are deeply sorry for all that Vice President Cheney and his family have had to go through this week..."

That's like the World Trade Center buildings apologizing to those hijacked airplanes. This is the world in which we live. Embrace it.

The American Republican Party has, and they're opening the field to creative fundraising. Rather than attending a boring $1,000-a-plate fundraisers, the G.O.P. will now allow contributors to give $1,000, $10,000 and $100,000 gifts in exchange for being "peppered" with birdshot by either the George W. Bush or Dick Cheney. Since it's such an honor for this to happen -- obviously Harry Whittington is embarrassed and contrite because he has so far paid Dick Cheney or the G.O.P. no money for his peppering -- this will be added to the Republican Party fundraising handbook. Let's hope as many Republican contributors as possible avail of this new way to give.

Contribution Scale:

• $1,000 donation to the G.O.P. -- contributor will be peppered in shins and feet


• $10,000 donation to G.O.P. -- contributor will be peppered in rear thighs and buttocks


• $100,000 donation -- contributor will be peppered in chest, shoulder and choice of which side of face

Some precision shooting may be performed by Secret Service personnel under the supervision of George W. or Dick Cheney, or their proxies and designates.

Film Critics, Why Do You Mine For Diamonds in a Garbage Dump?

Why do film critics of every mainstream media outlet continue to review the garbage spewed by Hollywood? I could understand this if CNN or USAToday were paid money by Hollywood film production companies to review their latest coiled piles of linked sausage. After years of working in video stores I was convinced the thumbs of Siskel & Ebert were for hire. Yeah, yeah, I've heard Roger Ebert's lame defense of why he's given a "thumbs up" on some pretty wretched fluff -- and I'm not buying it.

The latest Hollywood abominations I've seen reviewed star Steve Martin and Harrison Ford, but it doesn't really matter who the star of the moment is. Actors we've all come to enjoy and rely up (for their judgment in the work they choose, as well as their performances) are lining up to star in "celebrity welfare" projects. Need some examples? Look at Richard Gere or John Travolta's career choices in the last decade. I nearly wept when I saw Robert DeNiro star in Analyze That, sequel to the landmark comedy (ha!) Analyze This. DeNiro spent the first half of his career defining what brilliant acting was all about, and has spent the second half of his career destroying that reputation.

All the while there are some enormously talented, ingenius independent filmmakers who go completely unnoticed. These ignored filmmakers are not creating remote, high-brow art films involving sad clows in black and white. These original voices possess original visions and are creating fascinating, compelling work in virtual obscurity.

Update 02/17/2006:

I've enjoyed no greater discovery than that of contemporary Canadian cinema. For so long, we were saddled and harassed with "classics" like Goin' Down the Road and The Million Dollar Hockey Puck that we all watched more out of guilt and obligation than actual enjoyment. Well, there are some incredibly talented Canadian filmmakers plying their craft, and producing work that every serious film buff must seek out:

• Finding Electra by Chris Pickle, a hilarious film about a loser-guy who enjoys being a stripper's boyfriend, but is soon dropped by her. The film documents his attempts to win her back.


• How it All Went Down by Sylvio Pollio, a riveting drama based on a true story. Apparently Pollio had gone to film school with a guy who was a former drug dealer, who went back to dealing drugs in order to raise funds for a movie project. He thinks he can keep "the life" from swallowing him and his art whole, but his actions set his karma into a full tailspin.


• Waydowntown by Gary Burns is a slick, smart, surreal comedy about a group of friends who work in a large office/mall complex who make a bet to see who can last a month without setting foot outside. I usually hate "bet" movies, but this film has so many genius, quirky moments and insights that it won me over immediately. Actress Marya Delver is mesmerizingly gorgeous in this film.


• Treed Murray is a fantastic "one room" thriller in which "Murray", a business man, is cornered in a public park by a gang of thugs one afternoon. He escapes them by climbing a tree. After thwarting their initial attempts to get him down from his perch, Murray and the gang have an extended opportunity to engage one another in dialogue, analyzing, insulting, and gaining insight into the other.


• Bar None by Mark Tuit, this is a hilarious, though rough-around-the-edges, indie film about a night in a Vancouver bar from the perspective of the bar staff. Mark Cunningham's script is excellent, and most of the performances are fabulous. Shot in black and white, the film has a great look, as well.


• American Beer about four young Canadians on a roadtrip in the western U.S.A. is saved by its script, which is very funny and thoroughly unpredictable. The great setback with this film is that it's rife with horrible acting. However, the story and comedy are more than sufficient to make up for that.


• The Cube trilogy should not be missed by any fans of futuristic/realistic science fiction. The story of these three films centers around a futuristic prison in the form of a seemingly endless maze of rooms, some of which are booby-trapped. The occupants of the cube have no idea whey they are there, and in most cases, don't even know their own identities. All three films in this series are highly recommended. Each has its flaws, but the scripts and performances more than outweigh any limitations posed by bland, anonymous setting.


• Vinyl is an engrossing documentary by Alan Zweig about album collectors. By turns hilarious, poignant and informative, Zweig talks about his own obsession with collecting and interviews more than a few fascinating characters who have their own unique philosophies guiding their acquisitions.


• Jesus Christ Vampire Killer by Lee Demarbre is a "rough-around-the-edges" gem that is as funny as its title leads the perspective viewer to believe. The writing is solid and innovative, the performances are -- for the most part -- very competent,a nd the story is surprisingly involved and well wrought. Superficial as it might sound, the actresses in this film are startingly pretty.

There is Brad Anderson director of the 2001 surreal, psychological thriller Session 9 and his 2004 dark, dream-like pscyhological drama The Machinist, which is actually titled Maquinista, El because he had to go to Spain in order to make the film. Neither film is perfect. Both rely on "trick" endings that work to varying degrees. However, each film is rich in story and character, mood and atmosphere. These films were not shot by a Hollywood myopic whose idea of cinematography is ensuring the lense cap is off the camera. Both films occur in raw, unsettling landscapes -- the first in an abandoned asylum in which a team of professional hazardous materials handlers are hired to clean out the asbestos; the second occurring in the grim, dreary confines of a machine shop, and the equally bleak life of a mentally deteriorating machinst. Neither film cops out, neither film treads familiar, easy territory. Neither film is without its problems, but both strive for emotional, psychological heights (or depths) and the effort in both cases are admirable at least and mesmerizing at most.

There is John Maybury's 2005 psychological thriller The Jacket. The film stars Adrien Brody, Keira Knightley, Kris Kristofferson, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Kelly Lynch. Until very recently, I had not heard word-one about this film -- and I'm plugged into these things. Like the work of Brad Anderson, The Jacket strives for some pretty lofty objectives and does not achieve them all. But the effort is a brilliantly conceived, wonderfully executed dark film that takes on subjects like war, regret, and time-travel -- all to fantastic effect. The film is not perfect, but it was made with passion, and the aspects that it gets right far outweigh any elements that come off as underdone.

There is Shane Carruth's Primer; an independent film masterpiece that tackles the subject of time-travel in the most credible fashion I have ever seen. The performances and dialogue are bang-on. Although the explanations of how the time-travel works are somewhat difficult to follow, the visuals are excellent, and the storyline is more than enough to carry the audience along. It's a great ride, but who has heard of this film? Who has seen it?

As Hollywood continues to cough out the "remake of the month" every few weeks, I've turned to the Orient for my horror film fix. Hollywood has attempted to remake Japanese horror films, two of the notable efforts being The Ring and The Grudge. The Japanese originals are superior on all counts, though The Ring was a worthy try. I have recently watched Gin gwai otherwise known as The Eye, Yogen (The Premonition) and Pon (Phone), all of which are visually stunning, driven by excellent stories, excellent performances, and all which scared the royal hell out of me.

The Thai action film Ong-bak is first rate entertainment. Nothing like Tony Jaa has been seen in cinema since Bruce Lee.

For more lighthearted fair, which does not insult one's intelligence, there is the compilation DVD that comes with Issue 19 of Paste Magazine, which features the following independent short films:

• Hilarious short comedy titled Moved directed by Jim Issa and Scott Ippolitu


• Animated short comedy titled Dear, Sweet Emma directed by John Cernak


• Very moving short film called Wow & Flutter directed by Gary Lundgren


• Funny short titled Ten directed by Scott Smith


• Short, smart comedy titled Love Math directed by Kent Carpenter Zambrana


• Excellent, hilarious documentary short titled Found in America directed by Scott Patterson


• Heady animation titled A Plan directed by Tom Schroeder


• Fascinating short music documentary titled Matisyahu directed by David Baugnon


• Harrowing short film titled Silent Years directed by James Sereno


• Dramatic short Giving Her Away directed by Andrew Stanfield


• Surreal short titled Facechasers directed by Gabriel Judet Weinshel

There is no excuse beyond laziness, narrowness, or financial inducement for mainstream media to encourage the slockmeisters in Hollywood to churn out their detritus by reviewing said-detritus. Even bad reviews are publicity. That the Sundance Film Festival opened this year with a Jennifer Aniston film was both disheartening and completely unnecessary. If any film festival or media outlet claims independence from Hollywood bribery, then why are they not ferreting out films like those listed above?

Paste Magazine does an outstanding job of this, and even has a very short spot on CNN Headline News. Clips of Paste's Headline News recommendations are included on its most recent sampler CD. It's interesting watching the intros made by the Headline News talking-stiffs, warning the enfeebled, quivering audience that what they are about to see and hear falls "just below the mainstream," followed by quick assurance that the whitebread suits In Control have vetted and pronounced "safe" this otherwise radical material. Read "radical" as anything smacking of intelligence or originality.

Let Hollywood continue to wander its lightless, uncharted way. Let it continue its celebrity welfare programs. But devote some real time and attention to the art that's being created by talented, innovative independent filmmakers. Reviewers, when you feel compelled to start a reveiw by wondering aloud why a particular film was made at all (Slate's tagline today "Why, Why, Why Remake the Pink Panther?" comes to mind), maybe you should question why you are reviewing that film in the first place.

The Beancounter Brigade -- Somehow these rotters always win

Is this the conduct of a country that's winning a war?

Army demanded $700 from city man who was wounded

Rebrook said he tried to get a battalion commander to sign a waiver on the battle armor, but the officer declined. Rebrook was told he’d have to supply statements from witnesses to verify the body armor was taken from him and burned.

“There’s a complete lack of empathy from senior officers who don’t know what it’s like to be a combat soldier on the ground,” Rebrook said. “There’s a whole lot of people who don’t want to help you. They’re more concerned with process than product.”

Update 02/08/2005

Army blasted over soldier’s body armor

Update 02/09/2005

Hurt soldier billed for gear to be repaid

CNN.com: "Muslim anger on cartoons spreads" - So, what the hell, here's mine, too

Bonus Tracks:

• Jesse of Nazareth
  
  
• The Devil gave man religion to keep him away from God
  
  
• C.E.O. Stands For "Cheat Every One"
  
  

The Indictment Reads Thus

From the suicide note of a soldier who served in Iraq and returned home:

"Talk show hosts like Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and so many others act like they know all about war; then they refuse to give any creadence to soldiers like me who have been to war and seen the brutality of war. These guys are nothing but WEAK SPINELESS COWARDS hiding behind microphones while soldiers come home and are losing everything they have."

In Memory of Specialist Doug Barber

Now that Xmas is Over, Roll Out the Bogeyman

A couple of weeks after the 9/11 attacks, Condeleeza Rice said that she would very soon present the evidence that led the Bush administration to conclude that Osama Bin Laden was the culprit. She never did so. Other than the corporate-owned media parroting the unproven conclusion that "Osama did it! Osama did it!' I have never encountered anything approaching proof that Osama Bin Laden was behind the 9/11 attacks. I'm not advancing the notion that he didn't plan and execute it. I'm saying that I've never seen any proof of his involvement.

Considering the United States' response to those attacks, one would think there'd be reams of proof that Osama Bin Laden (and Saddam Hussein, according to Dick Cheney) was behind those attacks. And with Iraq and Afghanistan being remolded into the image of George W. Bush's failed businesses from the 1970s and '80's, the following quotes are interesting:

From Crossing the Rubicon by Mike Ruppert:

"George W. Bush on September 13, 2001: The most important thing for us is to find Osama bin Laden. It's our number one priority, and we will not rest until we find him."

"George W. Bush on March 13, 2002: I don't know where he is. I have no idea, and I really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority."

The fact that George W. Bush contradicted himself is proof only that he spoke on March 13, 2002. W.'s supporters have their hearts, souls, and wallets behind him regardless, but for those who do their own thinking, W.'s shift after six months shows his famous attention-span running out on America's supposed #1 Enemy.

And now that enemy has apparently resurfaced. With a tape.

You know, if I had a problem with a neighbor's dog shitting on my lawn, and I planned to avenge myself by scooping up all that dog shit into a paper bag and lighting it on fire on my neighbor's stoop, I wouldn't send an audio tape to him ahead of time speaking of such things. It, you know, sorta, well, ruins the element of surprise. Osama Bin Laden operates on a slightly larger stage with his supposed and alleged antics, so I'm not all that convinced this tape didn't come from some recording studio in the bowels of the CIA.

Another point to consider -- the 9/11 attacks have enormously benefited the Bush administration and their military-industrial-complex comrades, while at the same time marginalizing Osama Bin Laden in the Arab world. Maybe someone in the Arab world has the proof of Osama's involvement. Maybe they would share it.

One thing about which there is reams of proof is that Osama Bin Laden was and is a CIA "asset." The connection runs heavily through Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). So, rather than following the corporate-owned media down the rabbit hole of unproven fear and shell-game reporting, I think anyone who is concerned about this latest cassette tape by Osama Bin Laden should simply called the CIA and ask if their community is safe. Because the CIA and other U.S. agencies (ATF, FBI, etc.) are not against the use of American citizens as "human shields." They, of course, don't use the term "human shields," but they do needlessly locate their offices in civilian occupied buildings -- such as the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, or the WTC towers in New York up to September 11, 2001 -- endangering the lives of people who have nothing to do with America's cancerous military-industrial-complex.

Osama Bin Laden making threats on a tape is like the puppet on George W. Bush's right hand threatening the well-being of the puppet on his left hand.

Is the Failure of Imagination fortune wheel going to be spun again so early into the new year?

The Curse of Human Frailty

Although the start of 2006 (I've already ditched my Timist membership) saw me complete work on three short screenplays -- a 15-minute mocumentary, a 7-minute mock commercial, and a 25-minute short film -- the new year feels like it's begun with an anchor-thud. By some elaborate, mysterious (even to me) tap dance, I continue managing to eschew the growing legion of bear-trap-bill-collectors who are the curse on the other end of my telephone's every ring. MasterCard started my day off today; 9:04 a.m. some wind-up CSR with the nasally affectation of a telephone operator out of I Love Lucy called. She's called before, I presume, because when I tell her I wasn't me, she asked if I was my brother. I hung up at that point, confused and rankled by the metaphysics implied by her question.

An hour later I reaped what I'd sewn with comments I sent along to a magazine editor the evening before. My latest article was an advertorial for a client selling time on these 25th century thermal massage beds in his wellness center. He had some technical corrections for my article, I added them, but the editor claimed he could not find them in my article -- we're talking about eight words in total; an utter needle in the haystack of the entire magazine's copy. But I had to make some remark in my reply about "the blind bastard" editing the magazine. Well, the blind bastard called me soon after MasterCard telling me he didn't need my snarky remarks in email. My response? I "Xavier-ized" the man. Christ, I spend so much time and energy honing my vocabularly and my "way" with words, only to tell some guy I've never met before (but who sounded like a cool guy, just the same) to basically Fuck Off. I later apologized, but only after my atomic sense of shame rose in me like spiritual vomit. We eventually spoke on the phone and everything was straightened out, but I had to think, Gosh, why is my approach to life "All Vitriol, All the Time!"?

The other night a friend and I made a lunge for better karma by driving 90 minutes out of Windsor, Ontario to the town of Wallaceburg, "Home of Wambo." I haven't the slightest idea what in the name of God "Wambo" is, but I feared he/it lurked in the shadows between the video store and the McDonald's on the main strip. We went there to help out as stage-hands for a dress rehearsale of their production of Stephen King's Misery.

As an aside, the drive was actually a lot of fun. My buddy and I headed out to the boondocks of the area -- Tilbury, Chatham -- and stopped at one of those roadside rest stops so my friend could jam down a KFC heart-stopper (my only tepid concession to "heathfulness" is not eating fastfood; I love the taste of it, and would gain a hundred pounds by next month were I to fall off the wagon.)

After quaffing down his ventricle-busting dinner, we headed off into the Ontario night -- unseasonably warm, thank goodness; I'd actually gone for a long and enjoyable bicycle ride earlier in the day -- and followed the convoluted meandering Mapquest directions to Wallaceburg. Man, we drove through literally the ass-end of nowhere. Not since driving across the Canadian prairies in the late 1980s had I seen such vast nothingness -- and this at night, only to heighten the "lost in the space" sensation prickling my latent agorophobia. There is now no question in my mind that Mapquest is a subsidiary of one of the major oil companies. That's the only way to explain the long-way-around directions the Web site offers.

Driving past all those farmhouses with single lights glowing in the windows, I wondered if the government of Canada even knew those people lived there, if they paid taxes, if even God had them in His address book. After passing MacDougall's Drain -- yes, that famous drain! -- and following County Road 43 past 29, and cutting back to Claymore Road, Electric Road, Baldoon Road, and I-don't-know-whatall, we passed through a town called Oungah. I shit you not. Oungah. Then a short time later we came upon the "Welcome to Wallaceburg" sign that informed us about the residency of one Wambo.

Quite a trek. I have a nostalgic thing for backwater towns, burgs, and muncipalities. This drive really tickled my yen.

Our friend, whom I'll call MIKE, is starring in Misery and hearing he and the crew were shorthanded (this was the night of their first dress rehearsal; occurring two nights before the play's opening). They needed a couple of stage-hands to run out props to the stage at various times, or bring props backstage, so my buddy and I made the jaunt to help out. MIKE performed in the play in Windsor last October and I was blown away by how well the story played on stage, and how well he and his co-star, ANNIE WILKES, brought their characters to life. So, they took the play on the road and Wallaceburg is familiar -- actually home -- territory to MIKE.

Let me say here and now that I have a newfound, deeply held respect for the time and effort and skill that go on behind the scenes of any play. I'm a wretched stage-hand, wandering onto the darkened stage at the wrong times, crashing into the actors, grabbing the wrong props -- one of which was a six-inch butcher's knife.

This anecdote fits into my meditation on human frailty because the rehearsal didn't go well. The actors were super, but most of the technical aspects surrounding their performance went very badly. The wretchedness of my stage-hand impression was heightened by a lack of "glow tape" on the stage floor that might have guided my cloven-hooved steps in the devil's-sphincter-darkness between scenes. Things like this always happen before productions; it's a process of working out the bugs and miscues and all of that. But my friend MIKE rightly voiced his gargantuan expletive-laden frustration (he and I get along so well because he is no shrinking lilly) about the foul-ups because they were only coming to light TWO DAYS BEFORE THE SHOW. It seems the technical crew were pretty lax (fuck it, lazy, they were lazy) about getting their acts together, and ate up the actors' rehearsal time with their putzing around during the last few weeks.

By the end of the performance MIKE was vilified in front of the skeleton crew for his boisteriousness. Maybe I'm a terrible friend, but I sat by silently as it occurred. Man, nothing burns my ass more than seeing the guy who's only crime is speaking the truth having his ass handed to him. Tonight's the opening night of Misery in Wallaceburg. If MIKE doesn't lose his shit, it'll be a great performance. He and his co-star have the talent and presence and timing to ad-lib through any technical flub.

Let's hope the Curse of Wambo doesn't befall them.

I once heard it noted that people get angry with others when they see flashes of themselves in them. I've always dismissed this as deflectionist crap. But after my embarrassing performance on the telephone with the magazine editor, I'm wondering if this might not possess some truth. Fact is, I come from a long tradition of miserable grouches. My family in Ireland goes back more than 950 years -- St. Patrick once walked across my family's farm in County Kildare. My maternal grandfather was a formal member International Order of Old Bastards. He once told a Catholic priest to "Fuck off." And God help you if you were a Royal Imperialist shooting your mouth off about Lady Thatcher. So, the cosmic stew that is my gene pool is electric with rankled impatience. I used to fight against it. Which led me to drinking more than twenty ounces of whiskey a day for a couple of years, culminating in a surreal eight-day hospital stay in 1997. So, I'm claiming powerlessness over crossbow temper? Claiming that "I was just following orders!" from my genetic make-up? Horseshit. This is the reason why I don't listen to Dr. Joy Brown or watch Dr. Phil on TV -- I can't stand hearing the mewlings of disaffected people dodging Melbatoast blame for their uninspired quirks and lapses.

I am cursed, as are we all, with human frailty. Which has really shrunk my hopes and notions of heaven. I see no Shangri-La beyond this world, but can only hope for a place filled with plastic-wrapped furniture, an all-day buffet, where there are no light bills or property taxes to pay.

The Bard of Jolly Crescent

All Part of the Same Day for the "Timist"

To show that I'm not culturally insensitive, I wish all visitors to this blog a Happy New Year, even though I, myself, do not believe in the concept of time, and thus find all mentions of this quaint and superstitious "new year" offensive, if not a little humorous. So, happy new year.

Again, for the Plebeian minds that need "time" to keep track of their lives, this blog has hit upon its first "anniversary." In that time I've posted 126 entries. More is on the way.

For now, I link to a guest blog I made on the ever-genial Going Postal With Pryvett Rodgers where I discuss, under Pryvett Rodgers' tutelage, the recent musing of the German Cannibal.

And this holiday tidbit from England, where the British Automobile Association (AA) "told the family of a member who collapsed [and died] at the wheel that it could not recover his car because his death meant his membership had lapsed."

Happy Merry Xmas

Call of the "Timist": "Down with 'Happy New Year'"

I am a timist. Mentions of "new year" or "Happy New Year" offend me. I don't believe in time, don't believe in the turning of this bogus "calendar". The sun rises and sets on a single day. Time, as you know it, is a solar/lunar event that has been misinterpreted for millennia. I'm sick of the media ignoring my beliefs.

Merry Xmas from the Fortean Times - "The Last Wild Man"

From Fortean Times: BEHIND SANTA'S GENIAL SMILE LIES A 70,000 YEAR OLD ANIMIST TRADITION OF A BEAST MAN PHYLLIS SIEFKER UNMASKS THE ULTIMATE BEDROOM INVADER.

As the Christmas season engulfs us, Santa Claus, Father Christmas, and their international counterparts beam at us from every medium, hawking earthly treasures to delight our loved ones.

As we watch this portly figure entice us with baubles, we are witnessing the last remnant of the oldest sacred figure that exists, for Santa's past is full of ancient mysteries, with a depth few imagined. In the Middle Ages he was a Wild Man, a beast-man who jousted with knights in Merrie Olde England and dashed through Germanic streets during Carnival, frightening children and adults alike. In the Sixth Century, he was a beast-god so powerful that Pope Gregory the Great chose him to be Christianity's poster child for evil – the cloven-hoofed, goatish devil figure that persists even today. For millennia before that, he was worshiped as a god whose annual death was a necessity for life on earth itself.

Tracking the elusive Jolly Old Elf's history involved a labyrinthine journey that would make Daedalus proud. The search began with 19th century gift givers in America, Britain, and Germany. These gift givers appeared at end-of-year celebrations, but didn't travel alone; they were accompanied by a predictable entourage, no matter what country they trod. Santa's companions invariably included a Bessy – a man dressed as a woman – and assorted merrymakers dressed in goat or bear skins or wearing goat or bear masks. The other characters varied; usually there was a comic doctor and often an archer. Of course, America's Christmas Man wasn't called Santa at the time; he gained that name in the mid-1800s. First, he was Pelznichol, or Nicholas in Furs; in Nova Scotia he was the Janney; in Trinidad he was Papa Bois; in Great Britain he was Yule until Ben Johnson christened him Father Christmas in his 1616 Christmas Masque. His names were as varied as the communities he both terrorized and blessed.

The Wild Man's motley crew went door-to-door, demanding entry. After the raucous group was welcomed, they acted out an odd play – the leader, who dressed in goat or bear skins, argued with another character or with the woman figure. He was killed, the woman lamented, and the doctor comically resuscitated him, or he spontaneously revived, declaring he wasn't dead after all. Before the troupe left to visit the next house, they demanded gifts. This might sound somewhat familiar; today's Halloween trick-or-treaters carry on a juvenile version of the original visit – going house to house, demanding gifts and treats. In the bygone adult festival, the troupe gave its blessing and shared fruits of the land with the inhabitants, or wreaked havoc and cursed the homes if they weren't well received.

This invasion didn't take place at only at Yuletide; in Germany, Carnival signaled the Wild Man's wild rush into town in the Schembartlauf (run of bearded men). In other countries, the wild run usually ended winter's reign, but no matter what the time of year or what country, there were arresting similarities. In the 18th century, an emerging breed of "folklorists" noted these similarities and began to record these festivals and theorize about their origins. Jacob Grimm made a herculean effort to record Germany's folk customs before they disappeared, and scholars in Great Britain managed to accumulate some of the most extensive collection of local rituals. These rituals encompass a wide range of mumming activities with the ever-present Fool, an offspring of the Wild Man and precursor of Father Christmas.

Those who study and categorize Britain's mumming rituals sort them into three main types – the wooing ceremony, which includes Plough Monday peregrinations, the sword play, and the Saint George Play. All have a death and resurrection; of course this death and resurrection in historical festivals is a comic one, but these activities are remnants of a more serious death – the death of the Wild Man, the beast-god who was responsible for life on earth.

Richard Bernheimer pieced together the basic fertility ritual from which these plays derive in his book Wild Men in the Middle Ages. In that ritual, a town's young unmarried men went to the woods to hunt the Wild Man or stir him from his cave. The largest and strongest of the men dressed in animal skins and horns to play the role of the Wild Man. He was captured, chained, and dragged back to the village. Since he was, after all, a Wild Man, he had torn up a tree or two to drag with him, showing his power; in the village these trees became the May Pole and the Yule Log. Because he was a god of the elements of nature – thunder and lightning – the villagers fired guns and beat drums to herald his arrival.

Chains dangling from his body, the Wild Man and his companions made a mad dash into town, frightening and beating bystanders; one of the devices he used to beat villagers was a giant phallus, his symbol as a fertility god. In the village square, he mated with a village wench (or wild woman, if one was available), then was killed by an archer. He revived or was replaced by a son. The mood was bedlam; the humor as course as it comes; and everyone was both excited and terrified.

Folklorists who debated the origins of these holiday activities were delighted when world traveler and Renaissance man R. M. Dawkins happened upon a fairly untouched version of this ritual in the Balkans in 1906. In this festival, large, blackened, humpbacked goat-men shambled through the village with bells around their waists and ankles. The leader carried a huge phallus; another carried a crossbow. An old woman carried a doll in a basket. As they went from house to house, the phallic goat-man pounded the phallus on the door and demanded money. In the course of the parade, the baby grew to manhood quite suddenly and demanded a bride. When she was supplied, the pair copulated, the archer shot the newly satisfied groom, the bride grieved, and the goat man revived. After receiving a gift from the homes where they performed, the paraders dragged a plough through the village.

This discovery was Nirvana for folklorists – they found all the elements of the mumming plays; the Fool was in his original beast form; the death and execution were enacted amorally. In later plays, the Fool or beast-man is often killed by a young groom because he "makes a pass at" the Woman, and narrators explain the behavior with a comic script. In the Balkan version, the inhabitants didn't need a verbal explanation; the ritual had been part of their lives for centuries. Only in more recent times did the master of ceremonies or narrator emerge.

This Balkan festival was the finest modern discovery yet of the ancient rite of the god's birth, sacred marriage, death, and sacrifice for his people. Better yet, it was found in Greece. Scholars concluded that the hundreds of versions peppering Europe could be traced to the great goat-god Dionysus. After all, the Dionysian rites gave birth to modern theater; even the word tragedy means goat song. Under this diffusionist scenario, Dionysus and his counterparts Adonis and Bacchus spread throughout Europe with spread of the Roman Empire.

This conclusion reflected a myopic flaw in many prehistorians' thinking–that everything emanated from the Mediterranean, the "cradle of civilization." But we find these rituals in the Arctic Circle among people neither the Romans nor the Catholics found worth their time to conquer or even visit in those days. There, among the Lapps, the Vogul, and the Gilyaks some of the purist, most ancient rituals continued. We also find the ceremonies among the enigmatic Ainu, the aboriginal Japanese.

Among these Arctic peoples and the Ainu we discover the original "storyline" of the ritual that found its way to ancient Japan, Russia, Western and Northern Europe, and the Mediterranean. In these ceremonies, the Master of the Mountain sends his gods to his people as a bear to keep them from starving. In the ceremony, the people rouse the hibernating beast in its cave, and the best marksman ritually executes it with an arrow. They prepare and mount the skin and skull in a certain manner, then share the god's bounty in a feast.

In a ceremony of gratitude and honor the hunters re-enact a tale of the bear's life – how it found a mate and bore an offspring, then was killed by an archer. The people thank the bear for its gift of life and send the emissary's spirit back to the gods, until it returns next year. Here we find the arrow, the mating, the sacrifice and rebirth, and the other accouterments we find in today's mumming plays – even the ivy-crowned head.

How old is this ritual of bear and goat worship that found its way to areas as widespread as the Mediterranean and the Arctic Circle? There is evidence this bear sacrifice was carried out more than 50,000 years ago; early 20th-century German excavatons of the Wild Man's Cave and other caves in the High Alps discovered altars to the bear with bearskins and skulls ritually treated exactly as the Arctic peoples treated them.

Anthropologist Josepn Campbell and invesfigating anthropologists made the connection between these ancient finds and the arctic rituals and dated them to about 70,000 BC.

Of course. Homo sapiens sapiens - modern humans - weren’t around then; Neanderthals performed these ancient rituals. Later archaeological excavations reveal Neanderthas sacrificed in the same manner as the bears. The question inevitably arises whether the original Wild Man was a Neanderthal, perhaps performing a bear ritual.

The history of the death and resurrection of the beast-god that sired Santa is older than Greece, even older than modern humans. It was a ceremony of death and resurrection, of life and fertility, carried on by an ancient aboriginal people - called elves or fairies by later settlers - and adopted by these settlers, who replaced them and continued the sacred rituals throughout Europe.

Of course, burgeoning Christianity vigorously fought to suppress this widespread "pagan" ritual, but it persisted. In response, the church used the Wild Man’s form to depict its Satan. Under pressure from Christianity, villagers, holding to their old festivals while adopting the new Christian religion, managed to keep the old Wild Man alive by transforming him. In village festivals he became the Fool; in this role he strode at the front of his old troupe as master of ceremonies, the outspoken comic who introduced the troupe and made fun of local citizens and mores. In this role he evolved into the symbol of Christmas in America, Great Britain, Sweden, Norway, and Germany. This fur-clad fool and social commentator took yet another direction in Italy, where, as Harlequin, he evolved from Medieval Devil to a primary figure in the commedia dell’arte and became a standard character in French and British Christmases. In all, the Wild Man adapted in almost infinite ways under pressures from Church, State, and the varying influences of civilisation.

In many areas, the beast-man changed little, and today the ancient festivals persist in places the great past tides of civilisation barely lapped. The hair-covered Chlaus yodel in Urnasch, Switzerland; the beast-masked Narren leap through Black Forest villages; the King of the Puck Fair is hoisted in Killorglin, Ireland; the blackened, goat-bearded berika romp in Georgia; the Perchta runners re-enact a death and resurrection ritual on the fields of Austria. The Ainu ritually enact their sacred ritual for tourists. The Paper Boys romp in Marshfield, Gloucestershire, and Crookham, and, in Grenoside, the sword dancing team ritually "executes" their captain.

Germany’s carnival elements also live on in the well-known Christmas poem A Visit from Saint Nicholas, which begins: "‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house..." There we see the old troupe preserved as reindeer: Dasher, Dancer, and Prancer are the raucous, high-stepping, hair-clad dancers that signalled the start of Carnival; Vixen is the Wild Woman; Cupid is the archer who ended the god’s life; Comet the sleigh of one of the Wild Man’s versions - the Wild Hunter; Donder and Blitzen (thunder and lightning) are the hallmarks of the Wild Man’s dominion over nature.

In some instances the Wild Man survives as a famous folk figure - in fact, some of our best known folk characters trace their origin to this original mystery. In Britain, he became Robin Goodfellow or Puck, celebrated by Shakespeare; Goodfellow’s cousin Robin Hood began life as Wood, a name for the Wild Man. In the Black Forest, the Pied Piper of Hamelin re-enacts poet Robert Browning’s version of the ancient mystery.

And, of course, there’s Santa Claus. As the ancient beast-god of old, he continues to bring bounty and promise to us each year, despite seemingly insurmountable odds. Gods, religions, nations and even hominid species have risen and fallen while he somehow persists. No wonder he winks as he sips his Coca-Cola.