It is too constricting to say that you must always think outside the box; whether you are thinking inside or outside the box, you are still letting the box dictate your thoughts, are you not? What you are not acknowledging
is the honest fact that “the box” itself is figmentary, illusory. And as long as one continues to act in reaction to this perceived set of dictates, one cannot be truly original in thought.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Colonization
Contrary to the honeyed words of gentlemen, this Age of Empire is a pestilence upon every continent and soul, through colonization manifest or implied.
Rich men from stone buildings wade blindly through the penniless on their way to the opera, at leisure
after a day spent plotting wars across the seas; and though these gentlemen are excellent at imposing a world order, they are equally adept at colonizing the women who maintain their homes.
All the while their attention is turned outwards, and all the while we plot from within. Discontent with the complex machinations of the imperialist state, we build a system of co-operation and autonomy. Fed up with the hunger about us, we glean and tax the rich. Tired of playing master or servant, we work only as friends and lovers.
And when approached by the newspapers, how they look at us queerly when we tell them with open hearts, “Death to the Empire! No longer will we cower; we are all nobility! Your colonization of our bodies and hearts is an act of war!”
Rich men from stone buildings wade blindly through the penniless on their way to the opera, at leisure
after a day spent plotting wars across the seas; and though these gentlemen are excellent at imposing a world order, they are equally adept at colonizing the women who maintain their homes.
All the while their attention is turned outwards, and all the while we plot from within. Discontent with the complex machinations of the imperialist state, we build a system of co-operation and autonomy. Fed up with the hunger about us, we glean and tax the rich. Tired of playing master or servant, we work only as friends and lovers.
And when approached by the newspapers, how they look at us queerly when we tell them with open hearts, “Death to the Empire! No longer will we cower; we are all nobility! Your colonization of our bodies and hearts is an act of war!”
Friday, June 15, 2007
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Saturday, June 09, 2007
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
THE SPOOKY JAPANESE GIRL IS THERE FOR YOU.
- - - -
You lose your credit card
... and call the company, but no one answers—and that hissing noise? The Japanese girl ghost. You say "Hello?" three times. Then she hangs up. You shiver ... What's that? A replacement card. In your wallet.
You're on a date
... and trying too hard. You drop a knife, and there she is, underneath a table—pale arms, red dress, long black hair covering her face. You jump back. Your date says that you look like you've seen a ghost. You try to laugh, but can't. Your date thinks you're a complicated man, a man haunted by a dark, interesting past. And you are. You are haunted by your past—also by the ghost of a Japanese schoolgirl.
You're at the gym
... and slacking. You think you'll do 15 minutes on the treadmill, then call it a day. But you look up and the spooky Japanese ghost is on CNN complaining about broken borders and how no one cares about the middle class. You run for a full half-hour, fueled by righteous indignation.
You're at home
... and it's late, you're tired, and none of the light bulbs you've just replaced are working right: they flicker, they cast shadows that look like people or birds or household appliances. You're in bed, the TV tuned to static because you were so angry about the war on the middle class that you canceled your cable, and you're looking at the ceiling. The Japanese ghost crawls from one corner to the next. Her hair still covers her face. She moves in bizarre, halting steps, crawling to every lamp in your house and adjusting every bulb until the bedroom is bathed in a soothing glow. You sleep and forget to turn off the lights. The spooky Japanese ghost does it for you, then vanishes, never to appear again. Years later, you're walking down the street and spot a small distant figure in a red dress, and you run to her and—never mind, it's someone else. She's gone, you miss her, but ghosts move on: They can't hang around all day. They've got things to do.
You lose your credit card
... and call the company, but no one answers—and that hissing noise? The Japanese girl ghost. You say "Hello?" three times. Then she hangs up. You shiver ... What's that? A replacement card. In your wallet.
You're on a date
... and trying too hard. You drop a knife, and there she is, underneath a table—pale arms, red dress, long black hair covering her face. You jump back. Your date says that you look like you've seen a ghost. You try to laugh, but can't. Your date thinks you're a complicated man, a man haunted by a dark, interesting past. And you are. You are haunted by your past—also by the ghost of a Japanese schoolgirl.
You're at the gym
... and slacking. You think you'll do 15 minutes on the treadmill, then call it a day. But you look up and the spooky Japanese ghost is on CNN complaining about broken borders and how no one cares about the middle class. You run for a full half-hour, fueled by righteous indignation.
You're at home
... and it's late, you're tired, and none of the light bulbs you've just replaced are working right: they flicker, they cast shadows that look like people or birds or household appliances. You're in bed, the TV tuned to static because you were so angry about the war on the middle class that you canceled your cable, and you're looking at the ceiling. The Japanese ghost crawls from one corner to the next. Her hair still covers her face. She moves in bizarre, halting steps, crawling to every lamp in your house and adjusting every bulb until the bedroom is bathed in a soothing glow. You sleep and forget to turn off the lights. The spooky Japanese ghost does it for you, then vanishes, never to appear again. Years later, you're walking down the street and spot a small distant figure in a red dress, and you run to her and—never mind, it's someone else. She's gone, you miss her, but ghosts move on: They can't hang around all day. They've got things to do.
The State of Affairs
Four hundred thousand deaths every year—and growing. From smoking, I mean. Deaths from smoking. Nearly half a million people are dying from smoking-related things every year. Americans, that is. I'm talking about half a million Americans. I don't have the numbers of smoking-related deaths in other countries. But 400,000 Americans dying from smoking every year: that's bad. And I am not exactly sure what we should do about it.
Global warming is the biggest threat facing the globe today. Second-biggest threat. Terrorism, then global warming. Or maybe the reverse. At any rate, I will mention that teen pregnancy is also on the rise. Some people consider that a threat. Me, I'm not so sure that's a threat. My mother had me when she was 19, and on purpose. So that was not such a bad thing. Make love, not war, right? To an extent.
The point is: The globe is heating up, terrorists are trying to rule the world, and babies keep popping out of teenage girls. All of these things should be addressed. At some point, we will also need to figure out what to do about DVD pirating.
Christina Williams is a typical high-school freshman on the outskirts of Pittsburgh. She is captain of the cheerleading squad, an active member of the French Club, and just beginning to learn tae kwon do. Christina has a steady boyfriend who loves her, for the most part, and a weekend job serving ice cream at the local Scoops. She hopes to go into law or real estate when she grows up, and recently organized a highly successful bake sale to raise awareness of France.
Christina Williams doesn't have health insurance.
As for Iraq: I must say I'm a little torn on this issue. I can sort of see all sides of the argument. Do we increase troops or begin to withdraw? Do we set a deadline or play it by ear? I don't really have an answer. If we increase troops, then that equals more Americans fighting what some might consider a hopeless war. If we withdraw now, then we will leave an extraordinary mess behind us. Setting a deadline seems pretty pointless. But if we play it by ear, then we might not feel any sense of urgency.
The whole thing is nothing short of a complete disaster. Yikes!!
When exactly did the Catholic Church become such an enormous institution? Don't get me wrong. I admire religion, but this particular one seems a tad too organized—and large. That being said, I will admit that I sort of like this current pope. Having said that, I should mention that I don't like him very much. He tends to say some pretty outrageous things. Though I do admire his chutzpah.
Dolphins keep getting snared in nets meant for tuna, but I wouldn't exactly advise a ban on tuna. There is no point in throwing out the baby with the bathwater—although maybe there is. However, a tuna ban seems pretty implausible. A lot of people really enjoy tuna fish.
What is the deal with these immigrants?
I would love to hear my readers' feedback. Most of what I write depends on what inspires me. And you, the readership, inspire me. So please send any comments, thoughts, questions, or concerns my way. I look forward to reading them.
Please send only positive feedback. I get anxious.
Global warming is the biggest threat facing the globe today. Second-biggest threat. Terrorism, then global warming. Or maybe the reverse. At any rate, I will mention that teen pregnancy is also on the rise. Some people consider that a threat. Me, I'm not so sure that's a threat. My mother had me when she was 19, and on purpose. So that was not such a bad thing. Make love, not war, right? To an extent.
The point is: The globe is heating up, terrorists are trying to rule the world, and babies keep popping out of teenage girls. All of these things should be addressed. At some point, we will also need to figure out what to do about DVD pirating.
Christina Williams is a typical high-school freshman on the outskirts of Pittsburgh. She is captain of the cheerleading squad, an active member of the French Club, and just beginning to learn tae kwon do. Christina has a steady boyfriend who loves her, for the most part, and a weekend job serving ice cream at the local Scoops. She hopes to go into law or real estate when she grows up, and recently organized a highly successful bake sale to raise awareness of France.
Christina Williams doesn't have health insurance.
As for Iraq: I must say I'm a little torn on this issue. I can sort of see all sides of the argument. Do we increase troops or begin to withdraw? Do we set a deadline or play it by ear? I don't really have an answer. If we increase troops, then that equals more Americans fighting what some might consider a hopeless war. If we withdraw now, then we will leave an extraordinary mess behind us. Setting a deadline seems pretty pointless. But if we play it by ear, then we might not feel any sense of urgency.
The whole thing is nothing short of a complete disaster. Yikes!!
When exactly did the Catholic Church become such an enormous institution? Don't get me wrong. I admire religion, but this particular one seems a tad too organized—and large. That being said, I will admit that I sort of like this current pope. Having said that, I should mention that I don't like him very much. He tends to say some pretty outrageous things. Though I do admire his chutzpah.
Dolphins keep getting snared in nets meant for tuna, but I wouldn't exactly advise a ban on tuna. There is no point in throwing out the baby with the bathwater—although maybe there is. However, a tuna ban seems pretty implausible. A lot of people really enjoy tuna fish.
What is the deal with these immigrants?
I would love to hear my readers' feedback. Most of what I write depends on what inspires me. And you, the readership, inspire me. So please send any comments, thoughts, questions, or concerns my way. I look forward to reading them.
Please send only positive feedback. I get anxious.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
The 300 were gay
Last week, The United States' top military officer, General Peter Pace, came out against gays in the military. "I believe that homosexual acts between individuals are immoral," he said, "and that we should not condone immoral acts."
Note to General Pace: Some of the fiercest fighters in military history were gay.
Anyone with a college-level knowledge of Greek history should know that the Spartan Army -- that same Spartan Army celebrated in Warner Bros.' "300" -- was not only a largely gay force, but encouraged homosexual relations among soldiers. Usually, such romance concerned an older mentor and a younger boy.
Wikipedia:
The lover was responsible for the boy's training...The Spartans, claims Athenaeus, sacrificed to Eros (the god of love) before every battle: "Thus the Lacedaemonians (i.e. Spartans) offer preliminary sacrifices to Eros before the troops are drawn up in battle-line, because they think that their safe return and victory depend upon the friendship of the men drawn up."
Now, to state the obvious, we're not condoning sex between men and boys (just as we're not encouraging the abandonment of weak babies in the wilderness, another Spartan societal norm). But to General Pace's point, not only is homosexuality in the military not a bad thing, it was the cornerstone of one of the most powerful fighting forces ever known.
Of course, this historical detail did not make it into Warner Bros.' "300." But that's not what bothered many gay bloggers.
Writing on After Elton.com prior to the film's release, Joe Palmer and François Peneaud say the real issue isn't that these same-sex practices weren't recognized in the film. They understand that "This is an action-adventure comic and movie aimed at young straight men, meant to pile up book sales and box-office cash by piling up dead bodies as graphically and artistically as possible."
The real problem is the inversion of historical fact.
After Elton:
Hot, shirtless, muscle-bound actors aside...gay history has been erased from 300 and replaced with negative stereotypes.
The first is the way the (evil) Persian king Xerxes is portrayed in the graphic novel. Continuing a shameful tradition of Persians as perverts, Miller gives us a king who's all piercings and useless fashion accessories, his head and faced shaved, combining to create an air of effeminacy. In comparison, (Spartan King) Leonidas is hypermasculine and appears to be stereotypically straight, with broad shoulders and a full beard and mustache.
As seen in this photo taken from 300 promotional materials, Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) is a jewel-clad effete sporting what appear to be manicured nails and plucked eyebrows. His hands, adorned with gold rings on every finger, lie suggestively on the shoulders of King Leonidas (Gerard Butler), a hirsute, rough-hewn man who looks every bit the opposite of Xerxes.
Funny then that, as Deadline Hollywood Daily's Nikki Finke reported yesterday, "one of the biggest audiences for Warner Bros.' 300 is gay men."
Why?
Even with negative stereotypes and no explicit gay sex scenes, shirtless, violent men with "8-pack abs" are "Yummy," she says.
Note to General Pace: Some of the fiercest fighters in military history were gay.
Anyone with a college-level knowledge of Greek history should know that the Spartan Army -- that same Spartan Army celebrated in Warner Bros.' "300" -- was not only a largely gay force, but encouraged homosexual relations among soldiers. Usually, such romance concerned an older mentor and a younger boy.
Wikipedia:
The lover was responsible for the boy's training...The Spartans, claims Athenaeus, sacrificed to Eros (the god of love) before every battle: "Thus the Lacedaemonians (i.e. Spartans) offer preliminary sacrifices to Eros before the troops are drawn up in battle-line, because they think that their safe return and victory depend upon the friendship of the men drawn up."
Now, to state the obvious, we're not condoning sex between men and boys (just as we're not encouraging the abandonment of weak babies in the wilderness, another Spartan societal norm). But to General Pace's point, not only is homosexuality in the military not a bad thing, it was the cornerstone of one of the most powerful fighting forces ever known.
Of course, this historical detail did not make it into Warner Bros.' "300." But that's not what bothered many gay bloggers.
Writing on After Elton.com prior to the film's release, Joe Palmer and François Peneaud say the real issue isn't that these same-sex practices weren't recognized in the film. They understand that "This is an action-adventure comic and movie aimed at young straight men, meant to pile up book sales and box-office cash by piling up dead bodies as graphically and artistically as possible."
The real problem is the inversion of historical fact.
After Elton:
Hot, shirtless, muscle-bound actors aside...gay history has been erased from 300 and replaced with negative stereotypes.
The first is the way the (evil) Persian king Xerxes is portrayed in the graphic novel. Continuing a shameful tradition of Persians as perverts, Miller gives us a king who's all piercings and useless fashion accessories, his head and faced shaved, combining to create an air of effeminacy. In comparison, (Spartan King) Leonidas is hypermasculine and appears to be stereotypically straight, with broad shoulders and a full beard and mustache.
As seen in this photo taken from 300 promotional materials, Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) is a jewel-clad effete sporting what appear to be manicured nails and plucked eyebrows. His hands, adorned with gold rings on every finger, lie suggestively on the shoulders of King Leonidas (Gerard Butler), a hirsute, rough-hewn man who looks every bit the opposite of Xerxes.
Funny then that, as Deadline Hollywood Daily's Nikki Finke reported yesterday, "one of the biggest audiences for Warner Bros.' 300 is gay men."
Why?
Even with negative stereotypes and no explicit gay sex scenes, shirtless, violent men with "8-pack abs" are "Yummy," she says.
Friday, March 16, 2007
Romeo and Juliet Beyotch, Sophemore Cheerleader
- - - -
Verona High's evening study hall.
ROMEO: Her eyes in heaven
Would through the airy region stream so bright
That birds would sing and think it were not night.
See how she leans her cheek upon her hand!
O, that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek!
JULIET: Shut up, retard. You get near my cheek and I'll rip your airy region out.
ROMEO: She speaks.
O, speak again, bright angel, for thou art
As glorious to this night, being o'er my head,
As is a wingèd messenger of heaven ...
JULIET: I said shut up, retard. You smell like Doritos. And do you mind sitting a little further away? I can feel your stupid Dorito breath on my face.
ROMEO: Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this?
JULIET: Listen, Creepoid, my older brother's a linebacker on the varsity squad—and he just loves to beat up the creepoids that bother me.
ROMEO: I take thee at thy word!
JULIET: I know you: Hienkles, right? Your sister's a bitch. Did you know that, Nacho Breath? You're related to a walrus-faced ho sack.
ROMEO: My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself
Because it is an enemy to thee.
Had I it written, I would tear the word.
JULIET: Whatevs. Don't you play tuba in the stupid jazz band, or something even gayer, like the oboe?
ROMEO: Neither, fair maid, if either thee dislike.
JULIET: You're weirding me out, Cheese 'Stache. And you better not be the sicko that's been peeking into my bedroom window—my dad and brothers are going to crunch the cookies out of that guy.
ROMEO: Thy kinsmen are no stop to me.
JULIET: OK. Let me just explain something: My older brother benches, like, 325—in his sleep. With the flu. Plus, my dad has a collection of crazy-sharp Japanese swords that he got from the emperor or somebody. Like 15 of them.
ROMEO: Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye
Than 20 of their swords.
JULIET: My brothers are going to shit honey over this. You know it's tough playing the oboe with broken thumbs, don't you?
ROMEO: My life were better ended by their hate
Than death proroguèd, wanting of thy love.
JULIET: Jeez, could your fingernails be any longer? You disgust me. Go away.
ROMEO: Wert thou as far
As that vast shore washed with the farthest sea,
I should adventure for such merchandise.
JULIET: Shut up. And why is your hair so greasy? God, you're grosser than a bag of bear shit. Go tell Blake to come over here. And move to where I can't smell your corn chips and hair juice.
ROMEO: O, wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?
JULIET: Seriously, what do you want to leave me alone?
ROMEO: Th' exchange of thy love's faithful vow for mine.
JULIET: OK ... Fine.
I ...
I ... love you.
... Not.
God, you're so stupid and gross.
You dumb oboe player.
ROMEO: Wouldst thou withdraw it? For what purpose, love?
JULIET: Because your fingers are orange,
And you smell like fake cheese.
How many bags of Doritos did you eat? Like 10?
Oh, my God! Are you crying?
What are you crying for, you stupid baby?
Hey, Blake! Blake, listen:
Hienkles sounds just like a blubbering walrus.
Arrf, arrf, arrf.
Arrf, arrf, arrf.
OK, that's enough—
It's not really funny anymore.
Jeez, you know, even for a stalker, you're really emotional. Now here: shut up and do my civics homework.
ROMEO: O blessèd, blessèd night! I am afeard,
Being in night, all this is but a dream,
Too flattering-sweet to be substantial.
JULIET: I said shut up, retard.
Exeunt.
Verona High's evening study hall.
ROMEO: Her eyes in heaven
Would through the airy region stream so bright
That birds would sing and think it were not night.
See how she leans her cheek upon her hand!
O, that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek!
JULIET: Shut up, retard. You get near my cheek and I'll rip your airy region out.
ROMEO: She speaks.
O, speak again, bright angel, for thou art
As glorious to this night, being o'er my head,
As is a wingèd messenger of heaven ...
JULIET: I said shut up, retard. You smell like Doritos. And do you mind sitting a little further away? I can feel your stupid Dorito breath on my face.
ROMEO: Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this?
JULIET: Listen, Creepoid, my older brother's a linebacker on the varsity squad—and he just loves to beat up the creepoids that bother me.
ROMEO: I take thee at thy word!
JULIET: I know you: Hienkles, right? Your sister's a bitch. Did you know that, Nacho Breath? You're related to a walrus-faced ho sack.
ROMEO: My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself
Because it is an enemy to thee.
Had I it written, I would tear the word.
JULIET: Whatevs. Don't you play tuba in the stupid jazz band, or something even gayer, like the oboe?
ROMEO: Neither, fair maid, if either thee dislike.
JULIET: You're weirding me out, Cheese 'Stache. And you better not be the sicko that's been peeking into my bedroom window—my dad and brothers are going to crunch the cookies out of that guy.
ROMEO: Thy kinsmen are no stop to me.
JULIET: OK. Let me just explain something: My older brother benches, like, 325—in his sleep. With the flu. Plus, my dad has a collection of crazy-sharp Japanese swords that he got from the emperor or somebody. Like 15 of them.
ROMEO: Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye
Than 20 of their swords.
JULIET: My brothers are going to shit honey over this. You know it's tough playing the oboe with broken thumbs, don't you?
ROMEO: My life were better ended by their hate
Than death proroguèd, wanting of thy love.
JULIET: Jeez, could your fingernails be any longer? You disgust me. Go away.
ROMEO: Wert thou as far
As that vast shore washed with the farthest sea,
I should adventure for such merchandise.
JULIET: Shut up. And why is your hair so greasy? God, you're grosser than a bag of bear shit. Go tell Blake to come over here. And move to where I can't smell your corn chips and hair juice.
ROMEO: O, wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?
JULIET: Seriously, what do you want to leave me alone?
ROMEO: Th' exchange of thy love's faithful vow for mine.
JULIET: OK ... Fine.
I ...
I ... love you.
... Not.
God, you're so stupid and gross.
You dumb oboe player.
ROMEO: Wouldst thou withdraw it? For what purpose, love?
JULIET: Because your fingers are orange,
And you smell like fake cheese.
How many bags of Doritos did you eat? Like 10?
Oh, my God! Are you crying?
What are you crying for, you stupid baby?
Hey, Blake! Blake, listen:
Hienkles sounds just like a blubbering walrus.
Arrf, arrf, arrf.
Arrf, arrf, arrf.
OK, that's enough—
It's not really funny anymore.
Jeez, you know, even for a stalker, you're really emotional. Now here: shut up and do my civics homework.
ROMEO: O blessèd, blessèd night! I am afeard,
Being in night, all this is but a dream,
Too flattering-sweet to be substantial.
JULIET: I said shut up, retard.
Exeunt.
Jane Eyre runs for president.
- - - -
I am challenged at the Iowa caucuses to endorse gay marriage as a sacred institution. Of course I believe it, but how can they make me say so when they know the political cost it will exact? Hot tears of rage stream down my scarlet face.
In New Hampshire, I endure the grandiose posturing of Chris Matthews so I can get an interview on MSNBC. What a blowhard the man is! Who, man or woman, would not find his pompous questions exasperating? I curl my fists into tiny balls beneath the interview table.
There comes a time, dear reader, when a woman of high conscience must make her feelings plain. Today, in Ohio, I came out strongly for government support of stem-cell research.
I am for an increase in the minimum wage. I believe the government should negotiate with pharmaceutical companies to lower the cost of prescription drugs. I am curious as to why there are not more books of quality in the nation's public libraries. I have taken fewer liberties on the campaign trail than others have, surely, but this small conservatism is a wise choice for a woman of my stature in a fight to gain the highest office in the land.
Reader, take this information and hold it to your heart. It is between us. I am in love with the person who will likely be my running mate, the future vice president. He is a young senator from Illinois with a handsome countenance, the most remarkable pedigree, and an unfortunate middle name. What ever shall I do!
I am determined not to allow Senator McCain, of the state of Arizona, to escape responsibility for the abandonment of his principles. My campaign has released a list of talking points. The main theme is that McCain will say anything to get elected.
We are in the "swing" states. Curious nomenclature these Americans use. I sometimes think language is not their strong suit. Plans for the convention are coming along. My senator looks well before the crowds. Handsome, sure of himself, and quite tall. I do quite like him. We make a pair.
In other matters, a midnight rendezvous with the young senator has left me flushed. So dizzy was I, it's a wonder I made it back to my room. Today, I could barely keep my mind on my stump speech. The campaign is in constant motion. Everything is a blur. Our consultants tell us Georgia and Florida are well in hand.
In South Carolina, my nemesis McCain makes an issue of my lack of military service. He appears oblivious to the fact that 19th-century English women were prohibited from military service. So I ask him, "If I have no military experience, what fault is that of mine?" Does he not see the injustice of his charge, at least as it relates to me? Truly, a young woman of courage has few friends in this world.
The papers today have released a secret the senator and I have shared, and our advisers fear it imperils our campaign. The senator and I, it has been revealed, both speak French, and sometimes converse in that language. What of it? Is this all the opposition has? I have told my senator not to worry. Common sense will, in the end, prevail.
Dear reader, it has been a whirlwind! Never have I known any task to be so arduous, or so prolonged. But New York has put us over the top. To my mind, this is just according to plan. The young senator and I may now plan our convention. The event will be more a coronation than a nomination, but such is the trend, and I see no harm in following it.
There will be time enough for change, dear reader. Fret not about your little Jane.
Oh, we are to win, dear reader, we are to win! I can sense it in my heart. McCain is too old. The campaign has scarcely begun and already he is faltering. We're up by three points, and our lead can only grow. It is a new era in American politics. The permanent Republican majority is truly cooked, and I will be the first 19th-century Victorian woman president. Imagine!
I can already see myself, with my hand upon the Bible that will be held by Chief Justice Roberts, which is unfortunate, but what can one do? They can't be fired. Still, the image appeals, and beyond it I can see the bright future my young senator and I, and our country, will share. An increase in the minimum wage. Lower prices for prescription drugs. An end to the horrid occupation of Iraq. Finally, and thank God.
We are like a lamp atop the tall mast of a ship, the senator and I, and the American people are the wind that fills our sails. I am so fortunate to have been a good speech writer. The senator and I are quite a team. We have been blessed with the mercy of heaven, a strong political mandate, and a majority in both houses.
He is like the country he loves so much: towering, confident, not always as articulate as you would expect. He should probably run for the office himself someday. But, until then, I shall lead them both, my love and my country, for as long as they will let me, and when they put their collective arm around me I shall be their prop and their guide
I am challenged at the Iowa caucuses to endorse gay marriage as a sacred institution. Of course I believe it, but how can they make me say so when they know the political cost it will exact? Hot tears of rage stream down my scarlet face.
In New Hampshire, I endure the grandiose posturing of Chris Matthews so I can get an interview on MSNBC. What a blowhard the man is! Who, man or woman, would not find his pompous questions exasperating? I curl my fists into tiny balls beneath the interview table.
There comes a time, dear reader, when a woman of high conscience must make her feelings plain. Today, in Ohio, I came out strongly for government support of stem-cell research.
I am for an increase in the minimum wage. I believe the government should negotiate with pharmaceutical companies to lower the cost of prescription drugs. I am curious as to why there are not more books of quality in the nation's public libraries. I have taken fewer liberties on the campaign trail than others have, surely, but this small conservatism is a wise choice for a woman of my stature in a fight to gain the highest office in the land.
Reader, take this information and hold it to your heart. It is between us. I am in love with the person who will likely be my running mate, the future vice president. He is a young senator from Illinois with a handsome countenance, the most remarkable pedigree, and an unfortunate middle name. What ever shall I do!
I am determined not to allow Senator McCain, of the state of Arizona, to escape responsibility for the abandonment of his principles. My campaign has released a list of talking points. The main theme is that McCain will say anything to get elected.
We are in the "swing" states. Curious nomenclature these Americans use. I sometimes think language is not their strong suit. Plans for the convention are coming along. My senator looks well before the crowds. Handsome, sure of himself, and quite tall. I do quite like him. We make a pair.
In other matters, a midnight rendezvous with the young senator has left me flushed. So dizzy was I, it's a wonder I made it back to my room. Today, I could barely keep my mind on my stump speech. The campaign is in constant motion. Everything is a blur. Our consultants tell us Georgia and Florida are well in hand.
In South Carolina, my nemesis McCain makes an issue of my lack of military service. He appears oblivious to the fact that 19th-century English women were prohibited from military service. So I ask him, "If I have no military experience, what fault is that of mine?" Does he not see the injustice of his charge, at least as it relates to me? Truly, a young woman of courage has few friends in this world.
The papers today have released a secret the senator and I have shared, and our advisers fear it imperils our campaign. The senator and I, it has been revealed, both speak French, and sometimes converse in that language. What of it? Is this all the opposition has? I have told my senator not to worry. Common sense will, in the end, prevail.
Dear reader, it has been a whirlwind! Never have I known any task to be so arduous, or so prolonged. But New York has put us over the top. To my mind, this is just according to plan. The young senator and I may now plan our convention. The event will be more a coronation than a nomination, but such is the trend, and I see no harm in following it.
There will be time enough for change, dear reader. Fret not about your little Jane.
Oh, we are to win, dear reader, we are to win! I can sense it in my heart. McCain is too old. The campaign has scarcely begun and already he is faltering. We're up by three points, and our lead can only grow. It is a new era in American politics. The permanent Republican majority is truly cooked, and I will be the first 19th-century Victorian woman president. Imagine!
I can already see myself, with my hand upon the Bible that will be held by Chief Justice Roberts, which is unfortunate, but what can one do? They can't be fired. Still, the image appeals, and beyond it I can see the bright future my young senator and I, and our country, will share. An increase in the minimum wage. Lower prices for prescription drugs. An end to the horrid occupation of Iraq. Finally, and thank God.
We are like a lamp atop the tall mast of a ship, the senator and I, and the American people are the wind that fills our sails. I am so fortunate to have been a good speech writer. The senator and I are quite a team. We have been blessed with the mercy of heaven, a strong political mandate, and a majority in both houses.
He is like the country he loves so much: towering, confident, not always as articulate as you would expect. He should probably run for the office himself someday. But, until then, I shall lead them both, my love and my country, for as long as they will let me, and when they put their collective arm around me I shall be their prop and their guide
Hot pick-up line, needs work.
If you were a new breed of chili pepper, you would be shiny and exotic and have nice smooth skin, and I would slice you in half and remove your stem but keep the inner ribbing and seeds (where the heat of the pepper is concentrated), which would prove to be a huge mistake, for I would mince you and add you to the ground turkey mixture that I'd be cooking and using as the filling for my low-fat baked empanadas, and I'd take one taste and immediately regret not researching the Scoville rating of you-as-a-pepper (which would somehow rank higher than pure capsaicin), and I'd begin to sweat and tear because you are so damn hot, and you'd think I was gross and had some sort of glandular problem, and I'd take the knife I used to slice you in your chili form and I'd plunge that knife into my heart because I couldn't bear it if you found me repulsive.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Activist Larry Kramer Calls for New "Gay Army" in Speech Marking ACT UP's 20th Anniversary -- Towleroad for modern gay men,
WE ARE NOT CRUMBS; WE MUST NOT ACCEPT CRUMBS
Remarks on the occasion of the 20th Anniversary of ACT UP,
NY Lesbian and Gay Community Center,
March 13, 9007
By Larry Kramer
Rodger McFarlane, Eric Sawyer, Jim Eigo, Peter Staley, Troy Masters, Mark Harrington, David Webster, Jeremy Waldron, and Hannah Arendt contributed to the following remarks.
One day AIDS came along. It happened fast. Almost every man I was friendly with died. Eric still talks about his first boyfriend, 180 pounds, 28 years old, former college athlete, who became a 119 pound bag of bones covered in purple splotches in months. Many of us will always have memories like this that we can never escape.
Out of this came ACT UP. We grew to have chapters and affinity groups and spin-offs and affiliations all over the world. Hundreds of men and women once met weekly in New York City alone. Every single treatment against HIV is out there because of activists who forced these drugs out of the system, out of the labs, out of the pharmaceutical companies, out of the government, into the world. It is an achievement unlike any other in the history of the world. All gay men and women must let ourselves feel colossally proud of"
Remarks on the occasion of the 20th Anniversary of ACT UP,
NY Lesbian and Gay Community Center,
March 13, 9007
By Larry Kramer
Rodger McFarlane, Eric Sawyer, Jim Eigo, Peter Staley, Troy Masters, Mark Harrington, David Webster, Jeremy Waldron, and Hannah Arendt contributed to the following remarks.
One day AIDS came along. It happened fast. Almost every man I was friendly with died. Eric still talks about his first boyfriend, 180 pounds, 28 years old, former college athlete, who became a 119 pound bag of bones covered in purple splotches in months. Many of us will always have memories like this that we can never escape.
Out of this came ACT UP. We grew to have chapters and affinity groups and spin-offs and affiliations all over the world. Hundreds of men and women once met weekly in New York City alone. Every single treatment against HIV is out there because of activists who forced these drugs out of the system, out of the labs, out of the pharmaceutical companies, out of the government, into the world. It is an achievement unlike any other in the history of the world. All gay men and women must let ourselves feel colossally proud of"
General Pace's Remarks Ignite National Debate on Gays in Military
Former Republican Senator Alan Simpson has come out against the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy in a Washington Post editorial criticizing recent comments by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace, who said that "homosexuality is immoral" and gays hould not be allowed to serve openly.
Alan_simpsonHere's an excerpt from Simpson's op-ed:
"In World War II, a British mathematician named Alan Turing led the effort to crack the Nazis' communication code. He mastered the complex German enciphering machine, helping to save the world, and his work laid the basis for modern computer science. Does it matter that Turing was gay? This week, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said that homosexuality is "immoral" and that the ban on open service should therefore not be changed. Would Pace call Turing "immoral"?
Since 1993, I have had the rich satisfaction of knowing and working with many openly gay and lesbian Americans, and I have come to realize that "gay" is an artificial category when it comes to measuring a man or woman's on-the-job performance or commitment to shared goals. It says little about the person. Our differences and prejudices pale next to our historic challenge."
Good for Simpson. Incidentally, plenty of people did call Turing "immoral" at the time, and he killed himself with a cyanide apple a year after being convicted of "gross indecency" after it was discovered he was in a homosexual relationship. Following that conviction he was ordered to undergo hormone therapy or go to prison.
According to Pentagon figures released Tuesday, the number of gays discharged from the military dropped significantly in 2006: "According to preliminary Pentagon data, 612 homosexuals were discharged in fiscal 2006, fewer than half the 1,227 discharged in 2001. On average, more than 1,000 service members were discharged each year from 1997 to 2001 -- but in the past five years that number has fallen below 730." Critics have charged the U.S. Military with hypocrisy for retaining its gay and lesbian servicement simply because it needs them in a time of war.
Meanwhile, some at the Pentagon — Undersecretary of Defense David Chu to be precise — are suggesting that any national debate on gays in the military will undermine the war on terror.
Said Slate's Nathaniel Frank: "This is an astonishing claim for Chu to make—that not only must gays conceal their homosexuality to protect unit cohesion, but the entire country must avoid discussing homosexuality or else it will undermine the war effort. By this reasoning, we should ban discussion of whether to increase troops in Iraq and prohibit an inquiry into conditions at Walter Reed."
More as it develops.
UPDATE: Presidential hopeful Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) today applauded General Pace's remarks, casting his vote on the side of the bigots. Said Brownback in a circulated letter: "The question is whether personal moral beliefs should disqualify an individual from positions of leadership in the U.S. military? We think not. General Pace’s recent remarks do not deserve the criticism they have received. In fact, we applaud General Pace for maintaining a personal commitment to moral principles."
Alan_simpsonHere's an excerpt from Simpson's op-ed:
"In World War II, a British mathematician named Alan Turing led the effort to crack the Nazis' communication code. He mastered the complex German enciphering machine, helping to save the world, and his work laid the basis for modern computer science. Does it matter that Turing was gay? This week, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said that homosexuality is "immoral" and that the ban on open service should therefore not be changed. Would Pace call Turing "immoral"?
Since 1993, I have had the rich satisfaction of knowing and working with many openly gay and lesbian Americans, and I have come to realize that "gay" is an artificial category when it comes to measuring a man or woman's on-the-job performance or commitment to shared goals. It says little about the person. Our differences and prejudices pale next to our historic challenge."
Good for Simpson. Incidentally, plenty of people did call Turing "immoral" at the time, and he killed himself with a cyanide apple a year after being convicted of "gross indecency" after it was discovered he was in a homosexual relationship. Following that conviction he was ordered to undergo hormone therapy or go to prison.
According to Pentagon figures released Tuesday, the number of gays discharged from the military dropped significantly in 2006: "According to preliminary Pentagon data, 612 homosexuals were discharged in fiscal 2006, fewer than half the 1,227 discharged in 2001. On average, more than 1,000 service members were discharged each year from 1997 to 2001 -- but in the past five years that number has fallen below 730." Critics have charged the U.S. Military with hypocrisy for retaining its gay and lesbian servicement simply because it needs them in a time of war.
Meanwhile, some at the Pentagon — Undersecretary of Defense David Chu to be precise — are suggesting that any national debate on gays in the military will undermine the war on terror.
Said Slate's Nathaniel Frank: "This is an astonishing claim for Chu to make—that not only must gays conceal their homosexuality to protect unit cohesion, but the entire country must avoid discussing homosexuality or else it will undermine the war effort. By this reasoning, we should ban discussion of whether to increase troops in Iraq and prohibit an inquiry into conditions at Walter Reed."
More as it develops.
UPDATE: Presidential hopeful Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) today applauded General Pace's remarks, casting his vote on the side of the bigots. Said Brownback in a circulated letter: "The question is whether personal moral beliefs should disqualify an individual from positions of leadership in the U.S. military? We think not. General Pace’s recent remarks do not deserve the criticism they have received. In fact, we applaud General Pace for maintaining a personal commitment to moral principles."
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Faggot PR
Faggot PR
A quick primer for hets on how to treat us fags.
At the end of this column I’m going into rehab. So if I offend you faggots while you’re reading it, there’s no point in getting all pissy, because I’m playing the “get out of bad PR free” card right up front.
I’m planning on choosing the facility with the highest doctor-to-celebrity ratio. No B-listers. I’m thinking more Mel Gibson than Mark Foley. However, I’ll avoid the clinic treating Isaiah Washington because that would be—to use Sharon Stone’s word—absurd.
Sharon thinks it’s absurd for Isaiah to be getting counseling for calling his Grey’s Anatomy costar T.R. Knight Patrick Dempsey’s “little faggot.” “Please,” Sharon explained to the New York Post, “I call all my gay friends ‘big fags.’ ”
Obviously, Sharon doesn’t understand the distinction between how she treats her own personal fags and Isaiah’s method of domesticating faggots. It’s a common mistake among fag owners, which is why I’m devoting this space to clarifying, once and for all, the proper manner for heterosexuals to address their faggots. Perhaps you should post this advice on your refrigerator or in your office cubicle to help your heterosexual masters understand you a little better:
The Care and Handling of Today’s Faggot, Or Some of Your Best Friends Are Fags
You are a heterosexual. And most heterosexuals, like Sharon, have a difficult time telling their faggots apart. So you group them together in a herd—your “gay friends.” You should not be ashamed of this because you are normal and your faggots are not. It may help to think of them as the amuse bouches in your life. But if we examine more closely how Sharon salutes her fags, we’ll learn why Sharon became an Out 100 cover girl and Isaiah wound up groveling to his faggot in order to save his job. You see, Sharon refers to her faggots as “big fags,” while Isaiah calls his fag a “little faggot.”
In general, fags don’t mind being considered larger than life. They’re flamboyant by nature. But they bristle when addressed in the diminutive, as in “You little fag.” The exception to this rule is when addressing a faggot who is, in fact, overweight. Do not call even the most minimally paunchy fag a big fag. Ever. “Big ol’ faggot,” is, ironically, wholly acceptable to your faggot since fags have no sense of their own aging. The word old is incomprehensible to them. Some scholars have postured that it’s actually inaudible, at least in Abercrombie stores.
Also common in some areas of our great nation is the greeting “You dirty little faggot.” This is especially vexing for your fags. They are, after all, a very meticulous species and will begin to self-loathe if their hygiene is called into question. Same with “motherfucking faggot.” Given his unnaturally close relationship with his domineering mother, you can understand why this might be considered inappropriate.
Heterosexuals under the age of 21 may use the words faggot, gay, or queer in whatever manner they wish because everything on the planet is “so fucking gay” to them and every one of their friends, gay or normal, is a stupid-ass queer.
It should be noted that if your faggot happens to be a lesbian, you should probably not slur around them at all. Dykes cannot distinguish the subtle differences between slurs because they are too busy being stridently militant and avoiding the right man.
Always appropriate is the greeting “You goddamn fucking faggot.” Even your savviest fag cannot dispute that God does, in fact, damn fags and that all they ever do is fuck, occasionally breaking to cut your hair. If for some reason your fag takes exception to this moniker and appears on Ellen to denounce your good name, feel free to beat your faggot about the head and torso while yelling “Goddamn fucking faggot” because you’ve watched your fair share of pride parades, and all those fucking faggots seem to really get off on being spanked and whipped. In fact, you might as well invite your friends to join you in the violence because everyone knows faggots love orgies, and, after all, no one can upbraid you because you’re only beating up one faggot, and many of your other best friends are still gay, and you’re a little drunk, and you sort of vaguely remember a creepy priest, and you’re going into rehab anyway.
Let me be the first to apologize for this column. I can neither defend nor explain my behavior. Your complaints will be forwarded to me. I’ll read them between spa treatments.
A quick primer for hets on how to treat us fags.
At the end of this column I’m going into rehab. So if I offend you faggots while you’re reading it, there’s no point in getting all pissy, because I’m playing the “get out of bad PR free” card right up front.
I’m planning on choosing the facility with the highest doctor-to-celebrity ratio. No B-listers. I’m thinking more Mel Gibson than Mark Foley. However, I’ll avoid the clinic treating Isaiah Washington because that would be—to use Sharon Stone’s word—absurd.
Sharon thinks it’s absurd for Isaiah to be getting counseling for calling his Grey’s Anatomy costar T.R. Knight Patrick Dempsey’s “little faggot.” “Please,” Sharon explained to the New York Post, “I call all my gay friends ‘big fags.’ ”
Obviously, Sharon doesn’t understand the distinction between how she treats her own personal fags and Isaiah’s method of domesticating faggots. It’s a common mistake among fag owners, which is why I’m devoting this space to clarifying, once and for all, the proper manner for heterosexuals to address their faggots. Perhaps you should post this advice on your refrigerator or in your office cubicle to help your heterosexual masters understand you a little better:
The Care and Handling of Today’s Faggot, Or Some of Your Best Friends Are Fags
You are a heterosexual. And most heterosexuals, like Sharon, have a difficult time telling their faggots apart. So you group them together in a herd—your “gay friends.” You should not be ashamed of this because you are normal and your faggots are not. It may help to think of them as the amuse bouches in your life. But if we examine more closely how Sharon salutes her fags, we’ll learn why Sharon became an Out 100 cover girl and Isaiah wound up groveling to his faggot in order to save his job. You see, Sharon refers to her faggots as “big fags,” while Isaiah calls his fag a “little faggot.”
In general, fags don’t mind being considered larger than life. They’re flamboyant by nature. But they bristle when addressed in the diminutive, as in “You little fag.” The exception to this rule is when addressing a faggot who is, in fact, overweight. Do not call even the most minimally paunchy fag a big fag. Ever. “Big ol’ faggot,” is, ironically, wholly acceptable to your faggot since fags have no sense of their own aging. The word old is incomprehensible to them. Some scholars have postured that it’s actually inaudible, at least in Abercrombie stores.
Also common in some areas of our great nation is the greeting “You dirty little faggot.” This is especially vexing for your fags. They are, after all, a very meticulous species and will begin to self-loathe if their hygiene is called into question. Same with “motherfucking faggot.” Given his unnaturally close relationship with his domineering mother, you can understand why this might be considered inappropriate.
Heterosexuals under the age of 21 may use the words faggot, gay, or queer in whatever manner they wish because everything on the planet is “so fucking gay” to them and every one of their friends, gay or normal, is a stupid-ass queer.
It should be noted that if your faggot happens to be a lesbian, you should probably not slur around them at all. Dykes cannot distinguish the subtle differences between slurs because they are too busy being stridently militant and avoiding the right man.
Always appropriate is the greeting “You goddamn fucking faggot.” Even your savviest fag cannot dispute that God does, in fact, damn fags and that all they ever do is fuck, occasionally breaking to cut your hair. If for some reason your fag takes exception to this moniker and appears on Ellen to denounce your good name, feel free to beat your faggot about the head and torso while yelling “Goddamn fucking faggot” because you’ve watched your fair share of pride parades, and all those fucking faggots seem to really get off on being spanked and whipped. In fact, you might as well invite your friends to join you in the violence because everyone knows faggots love orgies, and, after all, no one can upbraid you because you’re only beating up one faggot, and many of your other best friends are still gay, and you’re a little drunk, and you sort of vaguely remember a creepy priest, and you’re going into rehab anyway.
Let me be the first to apologize for this column. I can neither defend nor explain my behavior. Your complaints will be forwarded to me. I’ll read them between spa treatments.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Thursday, February 01, 2007
Praise the lord! pass the lube.
"An Indiana senate committee voted 7-4 to ban same-sex marriage today. Protesters singing 'We Shall Overcome' were promptly ejected from the room. God bless America."
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Dick!
Delusional is far too mild a word to describe Dick Cheney. Delusional doesn’t begin to capture the profound, transcendental one-flew-over daftness of the man.
Has anyone in the history of the United States ever been so singularly wrong and misguided about such phenomenally important events and continued to insist he’s right in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary?
It requires an exquisite kind of lunacy to spend hundreds of billions destroying America’s reputation in the world, exhausting the U.S. military, failing to catch Osama, enhancing Iran’s power in the Middle East and sending American kids to train and arm Iraqi forces so they can work against American interests.
Only someone with an inspired alienation from reality could, under the guise of exorcising the trauma of Vietnam, replicate the trauma of Vietnam.
You must have a real talent for derangement to stay wrong every step of the way, to remain in complete denial about Iraq’s civil war, to have a total misunderstanding of Arab culture, to be completely oblivious to the American mood and to be absolutely blind to how democracy works.
In a democracy, when you run a campaign that panders to homophobia by attacking gay marriage and then your lesbian daughter writes a book about politics and decides to have a baby with her partner, you cannot tell Wolf Blitzer he’s “out of line” when he gingerly raises the hypocrisy of your position.
Has anyone in the history of the United States ever been so singularly wrong and misguided about such phenomenally important events and continued to insist he’s right in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary?
It requires an exquisite kind of lunacy to spend hundreds of billions destroying America’s reputation in the world, exhausting the U.S. military, failing to catch Osama, enhancing Iran’s power in the Middle East and sending American kids to train and arm Iraqi forces so they can work against American interests.
Only someone with an inspired alienation from reality could, under the guise of exorcising the trauma of Vietnam, replicate the trauma of Vietnam.
You must have a real talent for derangement to stay wrong every step of the way, to remain in complete denial about Iraq’s civil war, to have a total misunderstanding of Arab culture, to be completely oblivious to the American mood and to be absolutely blind to how democracy works.
In a democracy, when you run a campaign that panders to homophobia by attacking gay marriage and then your lesbian daughter writes a book about politics and decides to have a baby with her partner, you cannot tell Wolf Blitzer he’s “out of line” when he gingerly raises the hypocrisy of your position.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Friday, January 12, 2007
Some Entirely Realistic Suggestions Following the Failures of the Quixotic "War on Drugs" and "War on Terror."
The War on Meter Maids
The War on Unpaired Socks
The War on Late DVD Rental Fees
The War on Teaspoons Left in the Sink
The War on Declaring Wars on Stateless Individuals and Ideologies Whose Very Nature Precludes There Ever Being an End to Said Conflicts
The War on Breeders
The War on Unpaired Socks
The War on Late DVD Rental Fees
The War on Teaspoons Left in the Sink
The War on Declaring Wars on Stateless Individuals and Ideologies Whose Very Nature Precludes There Ever Being an End to Said Conflicts
The War on Breeders
SITUATIONS IN WHICH I WOULD BE WILLING TO DIE A PREMATURE DEATH.
1.
I am the head of an organized-crime family. Many years ago, I had to order the murder of my best friend for business purposes, and I have been racked with guilt ever since. Unbeknownst to me, he had a son, who spent the next 30 years building a rival family and dreaming of revenge. He invites me to a sit-down, at which he reveals his identity and shoots me in the chest. My guilt now relieved by this poetic justice, I smile and whisper, "I'm glad it was you," as a single tear rolls down his cheek.
2.
I am stricken with an illness that is painless but terminal. I spend the remaining two years of my life imparting my wisdom to an old friend, who then writes a best-selling book about it. Critics agree that the book is much better than Tuesdays With Morrie, with all the poignancy but none of the insufferably schmaltzy prose.
3.
I am an evil villain whose plan for world conquest has been foiled by my longtime arch-nemesis, a handsome and resourceful government agent who is currently chasing me up a steep mountain. When we reach the top, I raise my hands and offer my surrender. As he approaches, I remind him that, in his obsessive quest to stop me, he has caused the deaths of hundreds of innocents. He was willing to do anything and hurt anyone to get what he wanted, I tell him, and, in that way, had he not become the same as me? As if to prove the point, we simultaneously reach for hidden knives and stab each other in the chest. As we both sink to our knees, I can see in his eyes that he appreciates the irony.
4.
The same as above, except I am the government agent. I appreciate the irony.
5.
Brendan Fraser offers to sleep with me, on the admittedly strange condition that he gets to kill me afterward. I immediately accept, and it is totally worth it.
6.
I have been unjustly accused of murder by a corrupt prosecutor. Everyone knows that the trial is rigged and that I am not guilty, but no one speaks up, and I am sentenced to death. At my execution, which for some reason is nationally broadcast, I am asked if I have any last words. With quiet dignity, I give a powerful speech about how the real murderer is Society, for allowing an innocent man to die. I am executed anyway, but everyone agrees that they've learned an important lesson, and my birthday remains a national holiday.
7.
I am a soldier stationed in Iraq, on a special mission to protect the president during one of his surprise visits to Baghdad. As I walk alongside him, I notice an IED a few feet away, and immediately realize it's about to detonate. I hurl my body in front of the president, just in time to absorb the brunt of the explosion. As I lie on the ground, my blood draining out of numerous wounds, the president, with tears in his eyes, asks me if there's anything he can do to repay me for my sacrifice. I softly whisper, "Tell the world what a terrible mistake this war was," and then I die, leaving him with an uncomfortable PR dilemma.
I am the head of an organized-crime family. Many years ago, I had to order the murder of my best friend for business purposes, and I have been racked with guilt ever since. Unbeknownst to me, he had a son, who spent the next 30 years building a rival family and dreaming of revenge. He invites me to a sit-down, at which he reveals his identity and shoots me in the chest. My guilt now relieved by this poetic justice, I smile and whisper, "I'm glad it was you," as a single tear rolls down his cheek.
2.
I am stricken with an illness that is painless but terminal. I spend the remaining two years of my life imparting my wisdom to an old friend, who then writes a best-selling book about it. Critics agree that the book is much better than Tuesdays With Morrie, with all the poignancy but none of the insufferably schmaltzy prose.
3.
I am an evil villain whose plan for world conquest has been foiled by my longtime arch-nemesis, a handsome and resourceful government agent who is currently chasing me up a steep mountain. When we reach the top, I raise my hands and offer my surrender. As he approaches, I remind him that, in his obsessive quest to stop me, he has caused the deaths of hundreds of innocents. He was willing to do anything and hurt anyone to get what he wanted, I tell him, and, in that way, had he not become the same as me? As if to prove the point, we simultaneously reach for hidden knives and stab each other in the chest. As we both sink to our knees, I can see in his eyes that he appreciates the irony.
4.
The same as above, except I am the government agent. I appreciate the irony.
5.
Brendan Fraser offers to sleep with me, on the admittedly strange condition that he gets to kill me afterward. I immediately accept, and it is totally worth it.
6.
I have been unjustly accused of murder by a corrupt prosecutor. Everyone knows that the trial is rigged and that I am not guilty, but no one speaks up, and I am sentenced to death. At my execution, which for some reason is nationally broadcast, I am asked if I have any last words. With quiet dignity, I give a powerful speech about how the real murderer is Society, for allowing an innocent man to die. I am executed anyway, but everyone agrees that they've learned an important lesson, and my birthday remains a national holiday.
7.
I am a soldier stationed in Iraq, on a special mission to protect the president during one of his surprise visits to Baghdad. As I walk alongside him, I notice an IED a few feet away, and immediately realize it's about to detonate. I hurl my body in front of the president, just in time to absorb the brunt of the explosion. As I lie on the ground, my blood draining out of numerous wounds, the president, with tears in his eyes, asks me if there's anything he can do to repay me for my sacrifice. I softly whisper, "Tell the world what a terrible mistake this war was," and then I die, leaving him with an uncomfortable PR dilemma.
Monday, November 27, 2006
NU WAVE BAD HAIR DAY
CHARACTERS
Suzanne Aspera: Our Hero
Mimi: Suzanne’s ex-best friend
Andrea: Judas-type Teenybopper
Kit-Katatonic: Gender Fuck on Acid
The entire play takes place on a cross-town city bus.
Andrea: My summer was so amazing.
Mimi: Yeah, that’s good. Good.
Andrea: I went to third.
Mimi: Base?
Andrea: You know. (She holds two fingers together and licks between them).
Mimi: Wow.
Andrea: Yeah. It was intense. I think I had an Origasm.
Mimi: Uh, that’s nice.
Andrea: And you?
Mimi: Ok.
Andrea: You’re always so boring.
Mimi: uh … Cooper died.
Andrea: Cooper?
Mimi: Yeah.
Andrea: The kitten? I’m sorry.
Mimi: Uh huh.
Andrea: What happened?
Mimi: She dropped her catnip behind the radiator.
Andrea: Oh.
Mimi: And then she went after it.
Andrea: Uh huh.
Mimi: And her skull was too big to drop through.
Andrea: Her head?
Mimi: Yeah, she hung herself.
Andrea: That’s too bad.
Mimi: Yeah.
Andrea: How did you find her?
Mimi: It wasn’t difficult.
Andrea: What do you mean?
Mimi: Remember that early frost?
Andrea: In August?
Mimi: It dropped below 15 degrees.
Andrea: Yeah.
Mimi: I had my window open.
Andrea: So?
Mimi: The radiator went into overdrive. Oh god, the smell.
Andrea: Cooper cooked?
Mimi: Yeah.
Andrea: Hair.
Mimi: She must have made a jump from the sill to behind the radiator…and then the rest of her body fell through, if only her head wasn’t so big! When I found her the tongue was all dried up, a stale piece of chewing gum… I picked her up and it cracked off…like it was perforated.
Andrea: The head?
Mimi: Tongue.
Andrea: Shhhh! Shhhh! Here comes that Bimbo, Suzanne Aspera. You remember to play it cool, ok?
--Bus stop
Suzanne boom-baa-baas on the bus. Kit Kat gets on behind her.
Suzanne: (Primping her hair) Good morning!
Mimi: She looks doped. She’s talking to herself.
Andrea: Her pants barely cover her ankles.
Mimi: Water weight.
Andrea: Can you catch down syndrome? I think she’s on the wrong bus. The retard bus comes at 9:20.
Suzanne: I’m not autistic.
Mimi: Just ugly.
Suzanne: Takes one to know one, right? HA! Meems, its me.
Mimi: Who?
Suzanne: Suze.
Mimi: Soothes? What?
Suzanne: Suzanne Aspera.
Mimi: You’ve gotten fatter.
Andrea: Yeah. Much.
Suzanne: Check out my hair. Monique did it.
Mimi: Tell me your not living with that cosmozoologist.
Suzanne: Tologist.
Andrea: Whatever. She did that?
Mimi: Frightening.
Suzanne: Who’s your homeroom? I have your books
Mimi: Sorry?
Suzanne: VC Andrews. They were crazy.
Mimi: You can keep them.
Suzanne: Gee, really? Thanks! So, which homeroom?
Mimi: I don’t have one this year.
Suzanne: Everyone HAS one.
Andrea: Like assholes.
Mimi: Listen, Suzanne. You live with that mulatto woman and you’re father is a drunk.
Andrea: Right!
Suzanne: Mulatto?
Mimi: You heard me. My mother told me all about it.
Suzanne: What the fuck is this?
Andrea: Go on. Tell her.
Mimi: I can’t be seen engaging in heated conversation with a fat cow rocking feathered bangs and that 3 year old outfit. For Christ’s sake I’m 16 now and I’m trying to find a boyfriend. You’ve friggin’ got a banana-clip!
Andrea: What she’s trying to say is this: Everyone thinks you’re a cheap lezzy whore.
Suzanne: Oh. Is that all?
Mimi: Did you hear something?
Andrea: Not a peep.
Suzanne: I thought you were my friends.
Kit-Kat (butting in, wild eyed and on drugs): Damn, life may be a long dark corridor but you don’t have to be shitty. Come here, girl. Let’s go to the back of the bus.
Suzanne: Leave me alone. Don’t touch me.
Bus Driver (offstage voice): Hey you guys sit down back there. Move on back.
Andrea: Who’s your reject friend, Suzanne? You two make quite a couple.
Kit-Kat: Shut your hole, teenybopper. Wanna get cut?
Mimi: Ewww.
Suzanne: I don’t know him.
Kit-Kat (to Andrea): Don’t try to fuck with me, Glenda good witch snot face.
Suzanne: Relax, man. Are you OK?
Kit-Kat: I’m better than okay, baby. I’m Kit-Katatonic. Enchante!
Suzanne: Are you in a band?
Kit-Kat: A band of one. Touring a post-apocalyptic trance land. Sniffing vibrations -killing tragedy - living the lies inside my thighs, baby. Petit mortician est moi. Voulez vous matrice avec moi? Ce soir.
Suzanne: I don’t speak French.
Kit-Kat: Something’s missing from the mise-en-scene – the body and ass of Christ.
Suzanne: What is that. (reads) VCR head cleaner?
Kit-Kat: You’ll like it, I swear… it’ll clean your head.
Suzanne: But I’m not a VCR.
Kit-Kat: We are all VCRs, princess. Recording the panoply of horrors and playing it back for the innocents. Here, just take a sniff and I’ll fix your make up.
Suzanne: Oh, ok. *Cough* Uh. Oh. Umm. I just…uh, I pooped my pants. Omigod. I’m so embarrassed.
Kit-Kat: (sniffs popper) I don’t smell anything. Take another hit.
Suzanne: Wow. Ok. Uhm,
Kit-Kat: Ok, lets get started.
Suzanne: But, I just got a makeover?
Kit-Kat: Oh, Honey!
Suzanne: For the first day of school.
Kit-Kat: You’re kidding, right sweetie?
Suzanne: No - Dad’s girlfriend did it.
Kit-Kat: Who?
Suzanee: Monique…She won first place at the Barbizon cotillion.
Kit-Kat: Now it makes sense.
Suzanne: What?
Kit-Kat: My purpose. I’ll reclaim that prize.
Suzanne: Huh?
Kit-Kat: No offense but that tramp Monique ain’t got no vision.
Suzanee: You know her?
Kit-Kat: She was in my class. That girl’s so conservative. She your mother?
Suzanne: Step-mom…or, Dad’s girlfriend.
Kit-Kat: Figures. She can’t see the inner beauty ‘cuz there’s too much complicated relationshit goin’ on between y’all. I’ll do the correctivity.
Suzanne: Um…
Kit-Kat: (grabs her arm) I thought you wanted it to be different. I can help you. Don’t you understand?
Suzanne: Understand what?
Kit-Kat: That Monique is one of those girls who sit at the front of the bus and point fingers.
Suzanne: But, it took forever to get my bangs right.
Kit-Kat: Take another hit and this time breathe real deep.
Suzanne: *cough *cough, That stings.
Kit-Kat: What-choo got, cosmetics-wise?
Suzanne: Just some lip gloss and blue mascara, ‘s all.
(Suzanne passes her purse to Kit-Kat, who starts rummaging through bag)
Kit-Kat: An eyebrow pencil? Keepin’ this from me? (He pulls it out and examines the tip)
Suzanne: Oh yeah, that too. It doesn’t match my hair.
Kit-Kat: Hush now. It’s time for your close-up.
Suzanne: Ouch. That hurts.
Kit-Kat: For the pain… (rummages through bag, pulls out small plastic baggie) Open up for window pain. One for you and two for me.
Suzanne: Is there strychnine in it? I heard it causes cancer, like Shasta.
Kit-Kat: This LSD was smuggled out of Timothy Leary’s house in the talking asshole of a Manson family member. This is counter-culture concentrate.
Suzanne: This thwat Eigh sid?
Kit-Kat: Leave it on your tongue until I say so. Now where did I put my black grease paint stick?
(Kit-Kat begins the transformation of Suzanne into Princess VCR)
Mimi: Oh my god, what is going on back there?
Andrea: He’s giving her fleas, crabs and lice all at the same time.
Mimi: She looks so out of it.
Andrea: I can’t wait to tell Steph and Raina before first period. They are so gonna FLIP!
Mimi: Maybe we should do something.
Andrea: Are you kidding? She was asking for it.
Mimi: Maybe we were a little too hard on her?
Andrea: Who, Blimpie?
Mimi: I mean, the trauma of losing Cooper is still with me.
Andrea: Grow up. The passing of your cat is emblematic of your maturity. The kitten needed to go. For God’s sake, you get your period now…You can’t be hanging out with fat lezzy mustachioed cows, ok? You do want a boyfriend, correct?
Mimi: I suppose so.
Andrea: Good. Let’s move back a few seats to hear what’s going on.
Mimi: I’m not snooping.
Andrea: Oh yeah? I wish I had some popcorn.
Mimi: You’re perverse.
Andrea: Shut the fuck up. We’re in high school and you’ve not done your homework.
(As Andrea sneaks back a few rows…the audible cries and squeals from Kit Kat and Princess VCR grow more intense. They work up into a crescendo of delight and POOF).
Kit-Kat: I am pleased to present…
(Music starts as Kit-Kat finishes this triumphant announcement…princess VCR looks like a cross between Bridgid Polk and the bride of Frankenstein. Her hair has severely peaked spikes and other possibly dangerous features.)
Kit-Kat: What’s her name? Pah-rinse-cess! How’s it spelt? Vee Cee aaaarR!
Suzanne: Uh, yeah!
Kit-Kat: Work, gurhl. Go’on. Work it out.
Suzanne: Like this?
Kit-Kat: Uh – huh. What’s her name?
Suzanne: Princess.
Kit-Kat: How’s it spelt?
Suzanne: VCR!
(They repeat this chant as these next few lines are exchanged between Mimi and Andrea).
Andrea: Meems! MEEEMS!!! Are you seeing this? I told you! Definite popcorn material. It’s like a makeover for satanic teenage prostitutes on Donahue! Ha!
Mimi: SHHHHH!!!!
Andrea: And you know what else? I think she crapped her pants! It smells like a fucking diaper back here! HA HA!
Kit-Kat: You got somethin’ to say, Missy?
Andrea: Yeah. There isn’t a lavatory on this bus so you’ll have to carry that log out with you.
Kit-Kat: Shut it, ho! (matter of fact) I’ll cut you.
Andrea: What’d you do to her? She looks like a burn victim.
Suzanne: You’re just scared cause I look better than you, Farrah Fawcett. How are the 70’s?
Andrea: (gasping) Charlie’s Angels is better than night of the living dead, Suzanne.
Mimi: Maybe I can help out,
Suzanne: You can’t touch this.
Kit-Kat: Tell ‘em, Girl.
Suzanne: I’m not interested in getting fucked painfully and hashing out the details with a witches brew crew, and I’m not into working out my herky technique with the rest of the squad, either. Fuck the two of you, I’m beyond this Aryan trash heap of suburban mores. I’ve got hair, and I’m headin’ to the city.
Andrea: See, I told you she’s a dyke.
Mimi: She’s obviously in pain. We need to support her.
Andrea: Are you kidding?
Suzanne: You’re bleeding heart shtick won’t work, either, Mimi. I’ll jujitsu you with my split ends.
Kit-Kat: For real. I’ve seen them. They’ve cut diamonds.
Suzanne: I have tried so hard. I have permed, teased, feathered and for what?. So I can look like you? Why should I? You’re at the bottom of the scrap heap, Andrea and I have a flamethrower between my legs. So burn baby, burn. This “fat lezzy” is you’re worst nightmare. Can’t you tell how punk fucking rock my pussy smells?
Kit-Kat: Damn princess, I can smell it. (hits popper)
Andrea: All I can smell is a little bitch who crapped her pants.
Suzanne: I’ve taken your shit for years, Andrea, Here take some of mine (pulls shit from pants and smears it all over Andrea’s face and hair. Kit-Kat and Mimi are aghast)
Andrea: (crumpling in shock) Ohmigod, (gags) I can’t believe you just did that. (starts crying)
Mimi: Why are you being so mean to us? We’re your friends, Suzanne. Don’t be evil.
Suzanne: I will have no part in your morality ploys, Mimi. Your evil is a construct to control me. Evil is when you force me into believing your shit hole life philosophy. I will not believe anymore. I will be more.
Mimi: I’m going to tell the bus driver to stop.
Kit-Kat: Princess, don’t make a scene. Chill out - it’s just the acid kicking in.
Suzanne: I will not chill out, sit down or step off. I am sophomore Godzilla.
Kit-Kat Ok okay…. I AM with you. A rear gunner. Princess VCR, lead the way.
Andrea (crying and sputtering): Fuck you Suzy Q, fat bitch lezzie whore. I curse you. May you never know the happiness of a condoned marriage. I curse you with the marginalized representation you deserve.
Suzanne: This reification of hetero norms will be your quicksand.
Andrea: Whatever, Suzanne. You’re goin’ down.
Mimi: Wait.
Suzanne: For what?
Mimi: I’m sorry. Don’t do this.
Suzanne: I don’t think so.
Mimi: For realz. I’ve been manipulated by the patriarchy. Andrea is a brainwasher, and I was one of the washed. We’re lost already.
Suzanne: You see my hair?
Mimi: Yes.
Suzanne: You want to feel it.
Mimi: Silky-smooth? Do you use Prell?
Suzanne: You tell me. Ha!
(Suzanne attacks Mimi with her bangs and other shellacked hair features. It is obviously violent, a rape. Andrea attacks Kit-Kat and is overpowered. Lights strobe)
Kit-Kat: Hair hath such fury when its scorned.
Mimi: Wait!
Suzanne: No way.
Andrea: Fuck you queers. Bring it!
Mimi: Ow. That hurts.
Kit-Kat: Damn girl you’re dirty.
Suzanne: That’s right.
Kit-Kat: You okay up there, Princess .
Mimi: I’m bleeding.
Suzanne: And I’m just getting started..
Kit-Kat: Next stop. CNN. Mister Bus Driver, we’re gonna be on television.
(struggle continues as strobe lights slow to off)
End of play.
Suzanne Aspera: Our Hero
Mimi: Suzanne’s ex-best friend
Andrea: Judas-type Teenybopper
Kit-Katatonic: Gender Fuck on Acid
The entire play takes place on a cross-town city bus.
Andrea: My summer was so amazing.
Mimi: Yeah, that’s good. Good.
Andrea: I went to third.
Mimi: Base?
Andrea: You know. (She holds two fingers together and licks between them).
Mimi: Wow.
Andrea: Yeah. It was intense. I think I had an Origasm.
Mimi: Uh, that’s nice.
Andrea: And you?
Mimi: Ok.
Andrea: You’re always so boring.
Mimi: uh … Cooper died.
Andrea: Cooper?
Mimi: Yeah.
Andrea: The kitten? I’m sorry.
Mimi: Uh huh.
Andrea: What happened?
Mimi: She dropped her catnip behind the radiator.
Andrea: Oh.
Mimi: And then she went after it.
Andrea: Uh huh.
Mimi: And her skull was too big to drop through.
Andrea: Her head?
Mimi: Yeah, she hung herself.
Andrea: That’s too bad.
Mimi: Yeah.
Andrea: How did you find her?
Mimi: It wasn’t difficult.
Andrea: What do you mean?
Mimi: Remember that early frost?
Andrea: In August?
Mimi: It dropped below 15 degrees.
Andrea: Yeah.
Mimi: I had my window open.
Andrea: So?
Mimi: The radiator went into overdrive. Oh god, the smell.
Andrea: Cooper cooked?
Mimi: Yeah.
Andrea: Hair.
Mimi: She must have made a jump from the sill to behind the radiator…and then the rest of her body fell through, if only her head wasn’t so big! When I found her the tongue was all dried up, a stale piece of chewing gum… I picked her up and it cracked off…like it was perforated.
Andrea: The head?
Mimi: Tongue.
Andrea: Shhhh! Shhhh! Here comes that Bimbo, Suzanne Aspera. You remember to play it cool, ok?
--Bus stop
Suzanne boom-baa-baas on the bus. Kit Kat gets on behind her.
Suzanne: (Primping her hair) Good morning!
Mimi: She looks doped. She’s talking to herself.
Andrea: Her pants barely cover her ankles.
Mimi: Water weight.
Andrea: Can you catch down syndrome? I think she’s on the wrong bus. The retard bus comes at 9:20.
Suzanne: I’m not autistic.
Mimi: Just ugly.
Suzanne: Takes one to know one, right? HA! Meems, its me.
Mimi: Who?
Suzanne: Suze.
Mimi: Soothes? What?
Suzanne: Suzanne Aspera.
Mimi: You’ve gotten fatter.
Andrea: Yeah. Much.
Suzanne: Check out my hair. Monique did it.
Mimi: Tell me your not living with that cosmozoologist.
Suzanne: Tologist.
Andrea: Whatever. She did that?
Mimi: Frightening.
Suzanne: Who’s your homeroom? I have your books
Mimi: Sorry?
Suzanne: VC Andrews. They were crazy.
Mimi: You can keep them.
Suzanne: Gee, really? Thanks! So, which homeroom?
Mimi: I don’t have one this year.
Suzanne: Everyone HAS one.
Andrea: Like assholes.
Mimi: Listen, Suzanne. You live with that mulatto woman and you’re father is a drunk.
Andrea: Right!
Suzanne: Mulatto?
Mimi: You heard me. My mother told me all about it.
Suzanne: What the fuck is this?
Andrea: Go on. Tell her.
Mimi: I can’t be seen engaging in heated conversation with a fat cow rocking feathered bangs and that 3 year old outfit. For Christ’s sake I’m 16 now and I’m trying to find a boyfriend. You’ve friggin’ got a banana-clip!
Andrea: What she’s trying to say is this: Everyone thinks you’re a cheap lezzy whore.
Suzanne: Oh. Is that all?
Mimi: Did you hear something?
Andrea: Not a peep.
Suzanne: I thought you were my friends.
Kit-Kat (butting in, wild eyed and on drugs): Damn, life may be a long dark corridor but you don’t have to be shitty. Come here, girl. Let’s go to the back of the bus.
Suzanne: Leave me alone. Don’t touch me.
Bus Driver (offstage voice): Hey you guys sit down back there. Move on back.
Andrea: Who’s your reject friend, Suzanne? You two make quite a couple.
Kit-Kat: Shut your hole, teenybopper. Wanna get cut?
Mimi: Ewww.
Suzanne: I don’t know him.
Kit-Kat (to Andrea): Don’t try to fuck with me, Glenda good witch snot face.
Suzanne: Relax, man. Are you OK?
Kit-Kat: I’m better than okay, baby. I’m Kit-Katatonic. Enchante!
Suzanne: Are you in a band?
Kit-Kat: A band of one. Touring a post-apocalyptic trance land. Sniffing vibrations -killing tragedy - living the lies inside my thighs, baby. Petit mortician est moi. Voulez vous matrice avec moi? Ce soir.
Suzanne: I don’t speak French.
Kit-Kat: Something’s missing from the mise-en-scene – the body and ass of Christ.
Suzanne: What is that. (reads) VCR head cleaner?
Kit-Kat: You’ll like it, I swear… it’ll clean your head.
Suzanne: But I’m not a VCR.
Kit-Kat: We are all VCRs, princess. Recording the panoply of horrors and playing it back for the innocents. Here, just take a sniff and I’ll fix your make up.
Suzanne: Oh, ok. *Cough* Uh. Oh. Umm. I just…uh, I pooped my pants. Omigod. I’m so embarrassed.
Kit-Kat: (sniffs popper) I don’t smell anything. Take another hit.
Suzanne: Wow. Ok. Uhm,
Kit-Kat: Ok, lets get started.
Suzanne: But, I just got a makeover?
Kit-Kat: Oh, Honey!
Suzanne: For the first day of school.
Kit-Kat: You’re kidding, right sweetie?
Suzanne: No - Dad’s girlfriend did it.
Kit-Kat: Who?
Suzanee: Monique…She won first place at the Barbizon cotillion.
Kit-Kat: Now it makes sense.
Suzanne: What?
Kit-Kat: My purpose. I’ll reclaim that prize.
Suzanne: Huh?
Kit-Kat: No offense but that tramp Monique ain’t got no vision.
Suzanee: You know her?
Kit-Kat: She was in my class. That girl’s so conservative. She your mother?
Suzanne: Step-mom…or, Dad’s girlfriend.
Kit-Kat: Figures. She can’t see the inner beauty ‘cuz there’s too much complicated relationshit goin’ on between y’all. I’ll do the correctivity.
Suzanne: Um…
Kit-Kat: (grabs her arm) I thought you wanted it to be different. I can help you. Don’t you understand?
Suzanne: Understand what?
Kit-Kat: That Monique is one of those girls who sit at the front of the bus and point fingers.
Suzanne: But, it took forever to get my bangs right.
Kit-Kat: Take another hit and this time breathe real deep.
Suzanne: *cough *cough, That stings.
Kit-Kat: What-choo got, cosmetics-wise?
Suzanne: Just some lip gloss and blue mascara, ‘s all.
(Suzanne passes her purse to Kit-Kat, who starts rummaging through bag)
Kit-Kat: An eyebrow pencil? Keepin’ this from me? (He pulls it out and examines the tip)
Suzanne: Oh yeah, that too. It doesn’t match my hair.
Kit-Kat: Hush now. It’s time for your close-up.
Suzanne: Ouch. That hurts.
Kit-Kat: For the pain… (rummages through bag, pulls out small plastic baggie) Open up for window pain. One for you and two for me.
Suzanne: Is there strychnine in it? I heard it causes cancer, like Shasta.
Kit-Kat: This LSD was smuggled out of Timothy Leary’s house in the talking asshole of a Manson family member. This is counter-culture concentrate.
Suzanne: This thwat Eigh sid?
Kit-Kat: Leave it on your tongue until I say so. Now where did I put my black grease paint stick?
(Kit-Kat begins the transformation of Suzanne into Princess VCR)
Mimi: Oh my god, what is going on back there?
Andrea: He’s giving her fleas, crabs and lice all at the same time.
Mimi: She looks so out of it.
Andrea: I can’t wait to tell Steph and Raina before first period. They are so gonna FLIP!
Mimi: Maybe we should do something.
Andrea: Are you kidding? She was asking for it.
Mimi: Maybe we were a little too hard on her?
Andrea: Who, Blimpie?
Mimi: I mean, the trauma of losing Cooper is still with me.
Andrea: Grow up. The passing of your cat is emblematic of your maturity. The kitten needed to go. For God’s sake, you get your period now…You can’t be hanging out with fat lezzy mustachioed cows, ok? You do want a boyfriend, correct?
Mimi: I suppose so.
Andrea: Good. Let’s move back a few seats to hear what’s going on.
Mimi: I’m not snooping.
Andrea: Oh yeah? I wish I had some popcorn.
Mimi: You’re perverse.
Andrea: Shut the fuck up. We’re in high school and you’ve not done your homework.
(As Andrea sneaks back a few rows…the audible cries and squeals from Kit Kat and Princess VCR grow more intense. They work up into a crescendo of delight and POOF).
Kit-Kat: I am pleased to present…
(Music starts as Kit-Kat finishes this triumphant announcement…princess VCR looks like a cross between Bridgid Polk and the bride of Frankenstein. Her hair has severely peaked spikes and other possibly dangerous features.)
Kit-Kat: What’s her name? Pah-rinse-cess! How’s it spelt? Vee Cee aaaarR!
Suzanne: Uh, yeah!
Kit-Kat: Work, gurhl. Go’on. Work it out.
Suzanne: Like this?
Kit-Kat: Uh – huh. What’s her name?
Suzanne: Princess.
Kit-Kat: How’s it spelt?
Suzanne: VCR!
(They repeat this chant as these next few lines are exchanged between Mimi and Andrea).
Andrea: Meems! MEEEMS!!! Are you seeing this? I told you! Definite popcorn material. It’s like a makeover for satanic teenage prostitutes on Donahue! Ha!
Mimi: SHHHHH!!!!
Andrea: And you know what else? I think she crapped her pants! It smells like a fucking diaper back here! HA HA!
Kit-Kat: You got somethin’ to say, Missy?
Andrea: Yeah. There isn’t a lavatory on this bus so you’ll have to carry that log out with you.
Kit-Kat: Shut it, ho! (matter of fact) I’ll cut you.
Andrea: What’d you do to her? She looks like a burn victim.
Suzanne: You’re just scared cause I look better than you, Farrah Fawcett. How are the 70’s?
Andrea: (gasping) Charlie’s Angels is better than night of the living dead, Suzanne.
Mimi: Maybe I can help out,
Suzanne: You can’t touch this.
Kit-Kat: Tell ‘em, Girl.
Suzanne: I’m not interested in getting fucked painfully and hashing out the details with a witches brew crew, and I’m not into working out my herky technique with the rest of the squad, either. Fuck the two of you, I’m beyond this Aryan trash heap of suburban mores. I’ve got hair, and I’m headin’ to the city.
Andrea: See, I told you she’s a dyke.
Mimi: She’s obviously in pain. We need to support her.
Andrea: Are you kidding?
Suzanne: You’re bleeding heart shtick won’t work, either, Mimi. I’ll jujitsu you with my split ends.
Kit-Kat: For real. I’ve seen them. They’ve cut diamonds.
Suzanne: I have tried so hard. I have permed, teased, feathered and for what?. So I can look like you? Why should I? You’re at the bottom of the scrap heap, Andrea and I have a flamethrower between my legs. So burn baby, burn. This “fat lezzy” is you’re worst nightmare. Can’t you tell how punk fucking rock my pussy smells?
Kit-Kat: Damn princess, I can smell it. (hits popper)
Andrea: All I can smell is a little bitch who crapped her pants.
Suzanne: I’ve taken your shit for years, Andrea, Here take some of mine (pulls shit from pants and smears it all over Andrea’s face and hair. Kit-Kat and Mimi are aghast)
Andrea: (crumpling in shock) Ohmigod, (gags) I can’t believe you just did that. (starts crying)
Mimi: Why are you being so mean to us? We’re your friends, Suzanne. Don’t be evil.
Suzanne: I will have no part in your morality ploys, Mimi. Your evil is a construct to control me. Evil is when you force me into believing your shit hole life philosophy. I will not believe anymore. I will be more.
Mimi: I’m going to tell the bus driver to stop.
Kit-Kat: Princess, don’t make a scene. Chill out - it’s just the acid kicking in.
Suzanne: I will not chill out, sit down or step off. I am sophomore Godzilla.
Kit-Kat Ok okay…. I AM with you. A rear gunner. Princess VCR, lead the way.
Andrea (crying and sputtering): Fuck you Suzy Q, fat bitch lezzie whore. I curse you. May you never know the happiness of a condoned marriage. I curse you with the marginalized representation you deserve.
Suzanne: This reification of hetero norms will be your quicksand.
Andrea: Whatever, Suzanne. You’re goin’ down.
Mimi: Wait.
Suzanne: For what?
Mimi: I’m sorry. Don’t do this.
Suzanne: I don’t think so.
Mimi: For realz. I’ve been manipulated by the patriarchy. Andrea is a brainwasher, and I was one of the washed. We’re lost already.
Suzanne: You see my hair?
Mimi: Yes.
Suzanne: You want to feel it.
Mimi: Silky-smooth? Do you use Prell?
Suzanne: You tell me. Ha!
(Suzanne attacks Mimi with her bangs and other shellacked hair features. It is obviously violent, a rape. Andrea attacks Kit-Kat and is overpowered. Lights strobe)
Kit-Kat: Hair hath such fury when its scorned.
Mimi: Wait!
Suzanne: No way.
Andrea: Fuck you queers. Bring it!
Mimi: Ow. That hurts.
Kit-Kat: Damn girl you’re dirty.
Suzanne: That’s right.
Kit-Kat: You okay up there, Princess .
Mimi: I’m bleeding.
Suzanne: And I’m just getting started..
Kit-Kat: Next stop. CNN. Mister Bus Driver, we’re gonna be on television.
(struggle continues as strobe lights slow to off)
End of play.
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
H²O: Joycian
its slow erosions of peninsulas and islands, its persistent formation of homothetic islands, peninsulas and downwardtending promontories: its alluvial deposits: its weight and volume and density: its imperturbability in lagoons and highland tarns: its gradation of colours in the torrid and temperate and frigid zones: its vehicular ramifications in continental lakecontained streams and confluent oceanflowing rivers with their tributaries and transoceanic currents, gulfstream, north and south equatorial courses: its violence in seaquakes, waterspouts, Artesian wells, eruptions, torrents, eddies, freshets, spates, groundswells, watersheds, waterpartings, geysers, cataracts, whirlpools, maelstroms, inundations, deluges, cloudbursts: its vast circumterrestrial ahorizontal curve: its secrecy in springs and latent humidity, revealed by rhabdomantic or hygrometric instruments and exemplified by the well by the hole in the wall at Ashtown gate, saturation of air, distillation of dew: the simplicity of its composition, two constituent parts of hydrogen with one constituent part of oxygen: its healing virtues: its buoyancy in the waters of the Dead Sea: its persevering penetrativeness in runnels, gullies, inadequate dams, leaks on shipboard: its properties for cleansing, quenching thirst and fire, nourishing vegetation: its infallibility as paradigm and paragon: its metamorphoses as vapour, mist, cloud, rain, sleet, snow, hail: its strength in rigid hydrants: its variety of forms in loughs and bays and gulfs and bights and guts and lagoons and atolls and archipelagos and sounds and fjords and minches and tidal estuaries and arms of sea: its solidity in glaciers, icebergs, icefloes: its docility in working hydraulic millwheels, turbines, dynamos, electric power stations, bleachworks, tanneries, scutchmills: its utility in canals, rivers, if navigable, floating and graving docks: its potentiality derivable from harnessed tides or watercourses falling from level to level: its submarine fauna and flora (anacoustic, photophobe), numerically, if not literally, the inhabitants of the globe: its ubiquity as constituting 90 percent of the human body: the noxiousness of its effluvia in lacustrine marshes, pestilential fens, faded flowerwater, stagnant pools in the waning moon
Thursday, November 16, 2006
After Pat’s Birthday
After Pat’s Birthday
Posted on Oct 19, 2006
By Kevin Tillman
Editor’s note: Kevin Tillman joined the Army with his brother Pat in 2002, and they served together in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pat was killed in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004. Kevin, who was discharged in 2005, has written a powerful, must-read document.
It is Pat’s birthday on November 6, and elections are the day after. It gets me thinking about a conversation I had with Pat before we joined the military. He spoke about the risks with signing the papers. How once we committed, we were at the mercy of the American leadership and the American people. How we could be thrown in a direction not of our volition. How fighting as a soldier would leave us without a voice… until we got out.
Much has happened since we handed over our voice:
Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that can’t be called a civil war even though it is. Something like that.
Somehow our elected leaders were subverting international law and humanity by setting up secret prisons around the world, secretly kidnapping people, secretly holding them indefinitely, secretly not charging them with anything, secretly torturing them. Somehow that overt policy of torture became the fault of a few “bad apples” in the military.
Somehow back at home, support for the soldiers meant having a five-year-old kindergartener scribble a picture with crayons and send it overseas, or slapping stickers on cars, or lobbying Congress for an extra pad in a helmet. It’s interesting that a soldier on his third or fourth tour should care about a drawing from a five-year-old; or a faded sticker on a car as his friends die around him; or an extra pad in a helmet, as if it will protect him when an IED throws his vehicle 50 feet into the air as his body comes apart and his skin melts to the seat.
Somehow the more soldiers that die, the more legitimate the illegal invasion becomes.
Somehow American leadership, whose only credit is lying to its people and illegally invading a nation, has been allowed to steal the courage, virtue and honor of its soldiers on the ground.
Somehow those afraid to fight an illegal invasion decades ago are allowed to send soldiers to die for an illegal invasion they started.
Somehow faking character, virtue and strength is tolerated.
Somehow profiting from tragedy and horror is tolerated.
Somehow the death of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people is tolerated.
Somehow subversion of the Bill of Rights and The Constitution is tolerated.
Somehow suspension of Habeas Corpus is supposed to keep this country safe.
Somehow torture is tolerated.
Somehow lying is tolerated.
Somehow reason is being discarded for faith, dogma, and nonsense.
Somehow American leadership managed to create a more dangerous world.
Somehow a narrative is more important than reality.
Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is.
Somehow the most reasonable, trusted and respected country in the world has become one of the most irrational, belligerent, feared, and distrusted countries in the world.
Somehow being politically informed, diligent, and skeptical has been replaced by apathy through active ignorance.
Somehow the same incompetent, narcissistic, virtue-less, vacuous, malicious criminals are still in charge of this country.
Somehow this is tolerated.
Somehow nobody is accountable for this.
In a democracy, the policy of the leaders is the policy of the people. So don’t be shocked when our grandkids bury much of this generation as traitors to the nation, to the world and to humanity. Most likely, they will come to know that “somehow” was nurtured by fear, insecurity and indifference, leaving the country vulnerable to unchecked, unchallenged parasites.
Luckily this country is still a democracy. People still have a voice. People still can take action. It can start after Pat’s birthday.
Brother and Friend of Pat Tillman,
Kevin Tillman
Monday, November 06, 2006
The Firm Desire
- - - -
I have a firm desire, and I enter
Unbending, driven deeply, hard as nail.
What lies! Such gossip has plundered my soul—
But since I cannot bear this flimsy rod,
I'll play the flute until it cries uncle
In secret, before his closet-chamber.
I go softly limp before that chamber
Where conquering men can never enter;
The bedroom guard, both angels and uncles,
Dissolve pride—even to the fingernail—
Of suitors, stiff like boys before the rod.
Such fears of not being his, in my soul!
At least in bodied flesh, if not in soul,
Let him hide me, once, in that chamber!
Let wounds the heart embraced not spare the rod!
Servant to his secrets, I should enter!
Now bind me close to him—as flesh to nail—
And heed no warnings from friend or uncle.
Even the sweet comrade of my uncle
I never loved so well—with all my soul.
The quick between his finger and his nail,
So would I be, and press into his chamber.
And molded to its will, love would enter
This heart, this soldier with a tender rod.
Since syrup last flowed from a withered rod,
And Adam fathered nephew and uncle,
Never has love blossomed so! Now enter
My heart, and dwell in neither flesh nor soul,
But where he lives—in each street, each chamber
That bears me, Father, to the Sacred Nail.
At last, veil bloodied by the caulking nail!
My heart holds him, as bark to sapling-rod.
My dizzying tower's joy, his chamber
Where no love for father, friend, or uncle
Remains—only Heaven's sweet-doubled soul
In spooning's cup, where I slowly enter.
Andre spouts song, of nail crying, "uncle!"
By grace of he who claims the rod's bent soul,
To all! Unchamber his praise, and enter!
I have a firm desire, and I enter
Unbending, driven deeply, hard as nail.
What lies! Such gossip has plundered my soul—
But since I cannot bear this flimsy rod,
I'll play the flute until it cries uncle
In secret, before his closet-chamber.
I go softly limp before that chamber
Where conquering men can never enter;
The bedroom guard, both angels and uncles,
Dissolve pride—even to the fingernail—
Of suitors, stiff like boys before the rod.
Such fears of not being his, in my soul!
At least in bodied flesh, if not in soul,
Let him hide me, once, in that chamber!
Let wounds the heart embraced not spare the rod!
Servant to his secrets, I should enter!
Now bind me close to him—as flesh to nail—
And heed no warnings from friend or uncle.
Even the sweet comrade of my uncle
I never loved so well—with all my soul.
The quick between his finger and his nail,
So would I be, and press into his chamber.
And molded to its will, love would enter
This heart, this soldier with a tender rod.
Since syrup last flowed from a withered rod,
And Adam fathered nephew and uncle,
Never has love blossomed so! Now enter
My heart, and dwell in neither flesh nor soul,
But where he lives—in each street, each chamber
That bears me, Father, to the Sacred Nail.
At last, veil bloodied by the caulking nail!
My heart holds him, as bark to sapling-rod.
My dizzying tower's joy, his chamber
Where no love for father, friend, or uncle
Remains—only Heaven's sweet-doubled soul
In spooning's cup, where I slowly enter.
Andre spouts song, of nail crying, "uncle!"
By grace of he who claims the rod's bent soul,
To all! Unchamber his praise, and enter!
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