One Too Many

(Note from chiseven: I recieved this essay in a blood-stained envelope stuffed with childish cut-outs of all parties mentioned below along with some naked pictures of Bea Arthur for good measure. And there was this letter which I have taken the liberty of transcribing as best as I could decipher the scrawled manic prose of my comrade Grand Marquis. His suffering should be a lesson to us all...)

You may find this hard to believe, but I am through with politics.
Recently, I gorged myself at the trough of liberal websites, forums,
manifestos and blogged conspiracy theories until I was blue in the face. I
shoveled the sweet hope into my mind that revolution was afoot. I absorbed
all that cobalt electricity around the Scooter Libby / Carl Rove / Dick
Cheney investigation reveling in the Tom Delay arrest, excited from the
Harriet Miers flop. Like a capacitor in a camera before the flash, my whole
essence carried with it a barely audible high-pitched whine as the tension
grew.

In the closing days of October, I salivated for the political tide to turn
like the Aspens in Libby's not-so-cryptic note to his dear Judith. That
wonkish stupor took hold of me deeply...primally. I wanted the literal
skeletons in this "Administration's" closet to be outed like their symbolic
Halloween counterparts, emerging from the attics and dusty boxes for the
country's annual celebration of death.

Reality turned to delusion and Fitzgerald transmogrified from a special
investigator into a scythe carrying harbinger of the inevitable. "Reap,
reap, reap" I chanted. Things were getting out of hand. I had trouble
staying on task at work; my home life became a blue wasteland of
anti-administration hate mongering. Utterly obsessed even my dreams were
permeated by that icy rage. This was going to be the big one. I prayed for
those animals to be subjected to the ravages of a hurricane or three, an
insurgent uprising, manipulated intelligence, terrible flood, bankruptcy,
tornado, earthquake, etc. etc. etc. I became that which I so desperately
hate: a fanatic and I didn't give a damn. Bring 'em down from their ivory
tower so the masses can rip them apart and then leave the mangled bodies
propped up against the white house fence, limbs akimbo and leaking as a
brutal message to the next resident to always remember who they serve. I
was a vicious creature ready to slash, burn, kill and maim and when the
great moment came...
I blacked out.

Mrs. Marquis found me a few days later bloody knuckled and wondering in the streets
covered in blue paint, clothes ripped like Bruce Banner's after an
"episode". She scooped me up, took me home, unplugged all the TV's, and
computers, hid the cell phones, cancelled the newspaper delivery and kept me
locked in the bedroom while I fought the good fight against my addiction.

The hell that ensued took my mind to the precipice of madness.

In the aftermath of that event I regained my perspective and acknowledged my
mistakes. Though I still wish Bush & Co. to be annihilated alpha and omega
style, to hope for this to happen via the nuclear option is lunacy, or even
worse "republican". I hate these bastards, but my fantasy cure might be
worse than the disease. America is a resilient host to the cancer in
Washington, but above all costs I do not wish to see the nation weakened any
more. The good news is that it seems that perhaps the disease has reached
its zenith and that a slow recovery might ensue. My fever has broken but it
has cost me politics. I cannot and will not become that beast again.

So I hereby retire from politics.

I will still chat around the water cooler, grouse under my breath, and vote for the lesser of evils, but I will not become fanatical again. It's funny, but I think that this is what Dub
must have felt like as he accomplished the only real success of his life, the abandonment of alcohol. You're mad at yourself for letting things get out of hand and acquiesce to the solution, but you’re still fucking pissed you can't go back.
Dub's a dry drunk and now I'm a wet wonk.

And Now For Something Completely Different

Having given in to William's not so subtle advances, Francis Bacon found himself swept away on an amorous wave of man on man Victorian action. Little did he know that his new lover and bard o' the ages was at work on yet another art imitation of life, imitation of art, type-o-thing.

Under the open roof the Globe, terrible passions of the scribe and scrub were exchanged. Haley’s comet eyed this encounter on its 76 year close encounter with the earth and sun. Her vaporous robe pressed close to those snowy bosoms on that fateful night in 1607. William caught sight of this cosmic interloper as Francis finally slaked his wretched thirst.

"Me thinks we've been discovered" gasped Billy.

"Oh dear, what will 'Lizabeth make of this unnatural union?"

Billy S. turned to his latest conquest and reminded him of the queen’s fatal insomnia a few years back, and habit of fornicating with stallions of all breeds. Francis let out a long sigh in reverie of his late bull dike queen, with whom he had begun his sexual plunder many years ago.

A long and awkward silence descended upon the two, both thinking back on mistakes of their past, and both realizing that this was perhaps the worst of them all. William Shakespeare was 46 years old, Francis Bacon was 45, their patron queen dead for 4 years now, their lives both in decline.

An exchange of weary looks between the two said it all. This tryst would have to be forgotten by both. Only the comet would know their secret, and she wasn't due back for some time. The grim realization of their mortality and the evident decay of the Elizabethan era hit them like the death of disco hit Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager. Their lives were never to be the same their Studio 54 was over.

Billy, never saw Francis again after that night. He produced his last truly autonomous play, The Tempest, and then fell to the lecherous hands of ghost writers and co writers as his late career withered.

Francis went on to devote himself wholly to advancing the work of the freemasons, but never again found happiness.

In 1986 Haley's Comet returned to Earth. I was six. Having never heard of William S. or Francis B. her long and meaningless diatribe meant nothing to me at the time. My mother thought it strange that a child would pretend to talk to a comet, but again I was not a normal child. It seems that the comet likes to pry in on the "down low" lives of histories important characters. She is after all the gossip queen of the ort cloud, you know. Can't be sure why she divulged her historical voyeurism to a six year old, maybe she thought I'd forget, I did….most of it any how.

I only recently remembered that tell all story about WS and FB. The juicy details of Ronald Reagan and Saddam Hussein are more vivid, but that's another story.

Yo Joe!!!!

Last night I proceeded to get massively drunk and talk about the origins of life in the universe as well as on Earth with a couple of buddies and a total stranger. I've got to stop doing this. Talk of panspermia, humanity's lonely existence, and inevitable shifting of the solar "green zone" grew louder and more obnoxious, as most of these types of drunken debates do. At about 1:30 am I had decided that our summit on life in the universe had reached loggerhead. We were no closer to finding an answer to these great questions than when we started. I casually excused myself and collapsed in an alcoholic heap in the bed.

Perhaps I was visited by our cosmic progenitors in my sleep because I awoke this morning with a real sense of perspective on our global predicament and a true understanding of why I am never going to drink Budweiser again. While driving to work, medicinal tomato juice in hand, the knowledge of that alien master race awoke in my bleary mind. The radio mentioned something about Iraq or the terrorist threat and I began to get sentimental.

Why sentimental? I think that I was still a little punchy from last night’s bender or something because I kept thinking about GI Joe. Duke, Shipwreck, Lady Jay, Snake Eyes, Cobra Commander, Serpentor, Destro all went swirling around in the old melon, mixing with the alien intelligence and the radio's warbling account of atrocities in the sandbox. I got to work and this mélange of bizarre thoughts began to congeal, like the jelly on outside of a block of Spam.

Just as I was about to make sense of all these idiotic elements the Budweiser made its move. I think that maybe the beer was the alien life form that attacked my in my sleep that night, and now having run its course, it was time for it to leave. I soon found myself doubled over, choking on noxious gases as the demons were expelled, so to speak. I'll spare you the details, but this momentary distraction gave the gelatinous idea time to set and finally I understood why I felt nostalgic or sentimental this morning whilst listening to descriptions of carnage and death.

Modern political thought has really taken the wrong approach to understanding why we are embroiled with the terrorists. Contemplating why it this type of shit happens if worthless. Understanding what terrorism is, is really powerful. The beauty of the situation is that is has already been fully explored by 80's children cartoon shows. What we have today is a thinly veiled rehashing of the basic premise of GI Joe. It goes something like this:

GI Joes are the "good guys", they shoot red bullets. Cobra is a well-funded, organized army of terrorists lead by a charismatic leader with questionable morals. Cobra's minions shoot blue bullets therefore making them the "bad guys". These two opposing forces battle, but nothing ever finds resolution. The series just goes on, until the kiddies get tired, the ratings drop, or Thundercats comes on which ever comes first.

The point is since we have outfitted these terrorists with their training (thanks, Don Rumsfeld), weapons (blue bullets), and cause (kill whitey) we should take the final step and outfit them with blue uniforms and close the loop. Al Queda is sort of a catchy name, but COBRA is much better. Maybe they could spell it AL KOBRA, K for Koran, but I digress. They can build a base in a swamp or something and finally have a center, like boystown or the YMCA; a place to get together and act out all their homoerotic fantasies. They used to have Abu Gharib (sp), oh wait those were OUR fantasies, my bad.

What I'm getting at is that Dub needs to do the "hard work" and get these hooligans on board. Once they are all in uniform, Osama is sporting a shiny new reflective face shield, and they have their swamp base the whole situation improves, the ratings go up. The GI Joes will then know who to shoot and a fair fight can commence. I envision television drones filming the highly stylized battles and broadcasting the whole affair around the globe. Instant media bonanza, America can re-coop some cost of the war and a generation of children can watch GI Joe again.

We are so close to achieving this goal and I know Americans can get behind this thing, it's like the space program: expensive, frivolous, exciting, and damn entertaining. I think the whole dry reporting of the war is gonna go the way of the dodo pretty soon, it just doesn't sell enough fruit roll-ups and British Knights during the commercial breaks, but GI Joe II will.

Anyhoo, I just thought you intrepid thinkers might want to review this revolutionary idea before I present it at the UN this afternoon. I'm very optimistic that it will be accepted, and if its not then fuck the UN. America can go it alone, we've done it before.

By the way, do you guys remember the magical growing sword used by the leader of the Thundercats? Was that phallic or what! Where's the FCC when you need them?

Jinn and Tonic

Not to bore you with more dream imagery, but I had another strange image push itself up from the jinn the other night. I cannot remember details or plot of the dream but I have a distinct memory of wearing a suit of armor that began to rust before my eyes. Like the tin man, I rusted into position. I remember desiring oil.

I'm not sure why, but lately I have been intrigued by these bizarre images, fascinated by where my mind is gathering them from, and always perplexed at the combinations of seemingly dissonant themes. One night the dreams are soothing, the next they are troubling. Some are memorable while others leave only an emotional after glow, like the green phantoms in your eyes after a flash bulb fires....there, but not there.

I plugged the core images into several "dream dictionaries" on the Internet to find common descriptions. My search for armor yielded this:

"To dream that you are wearing an armor, symbolizes your defense mechanisms and your ways of shielding yourself from things that may hurt you."

I also searched for metal, because the material seemed more pertinent than the purpose in the dream, and I got this:

"To see metal in your dream, signifies strength and character. It may also symbolize the inhumane side of society."

For rust I was returned:

"To see rust forming on iron or tin, signifies neglect or old age. It is also indicative of depressing surroundings, characterized by a decline in fortune and false friends."

and for oil:

"To see oil in your dream, suggests a need to have thing run more smoothly. You may need to show more love and compassion in your life."

Now, these online dream dictionaries are probably not compiled from vast tomes of psychological data, but a symbol is a symbol none the less. In this little exercise I can select several key ideas that have been percolating in my mind lately. Most are concerned with the direction of our little world, and even more specifically, our little nation. Armor=defense / protection, Metal= strength and inhumanity, Rust= decline and neglect, Oil= a desire for compassion and love.

As an American, albeit a young one, I have become increasingly worried about a deep backsliding in our attitudes. Religious fundamentalism is wringing God right out of the religions, be they Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, or Jane. Nationalism is bleeding its volatile fractions into this misguided religious fervor working to undo secular governance, no thanks to opportunist power grabbers at home and the world around. The result seems to me, is a world that is increasingly devoid of subtlety, and charm. Foot stomping and fist pounding seem to be the rule of the day, black and white, right and wrong. I'm no academic, but it seems to me that life is rarely this or that, but rather an interesting blending of several factors that make up reality.

Perhaps it was my realization of these conspiring -isms that persuaded my to don the armor of my dream, to protect my soft existence from the brutality looming in the distance. By sheathing my body in metal, or as the dream dictionary distills it strength and inhumanity, I am protected from the growing danger of a polarized /compassionless world, but made susceptible to rust which threatens to entomb me in the armor. I find it ironic that my desire for salvation manifested as oil, undeniably an integral player in the building global tension.

In reflection I view the armor as a crutch, a sign of moral weakness or uncertainty, which subsequently doomed me to a tiny world comprised only of myself. I will try in the future to manipulate my dreams in manner that portrays a braver reality; shuck the armor for something classier, a fine suit possibly. I believe that the world is loosing its dignity by making prejudice politically savvy. Dignity is important to our existence as a species that is more that animal. I hope America realizes this before we "concentrate" the gays for their sexuality, bludgeon the Muslims with democracy, pander away our environment to the almighty dollar, and in general self destruct again under a world of heavy handed dictators.

Another distinct possibility is that I am ignorant of most of human history and that these episodes of mutual destruction and human suffering are unchangeable traits that cannot be mitigated. To me, this is a sad and frankly cowardly way to address the situations at hand, but may be the way things really are. So for now I'll continue to float along in my powerless bubble of dissatisfaction with the direction our little globe is moving and hope that we can come to our senses.

#2

At the request of Chi-Seven I will attempt to revive the long dormant and decaying Memory Hole with a series of E-mail messages I have produced. Although, I'm not sure why it matters because as far as I know not a single other living soul has visited this site. Well enough said, Enjoy.



So I am at work this morning shuffling papers acting like I know whatI'm doing and surprisingly getting some work done when I decided to get acup of coffee to perk the ol' grand marquis up.

I got up and made a pot of coffee poured myself a cup and resumed mydaily toil. I entered into a zen-like state of productivity hammering out alot of crap that I had set aside for a crucial hyperproductive morning, like today. I finished my coffee in the course of an hour or so. Sipping andslurping watching my mind and body complete these items I had procrastinated overfor several days. It was glorious.

As I tied up the final loose end in my collection of the "forgotten" I simultaneouly acknowledged the call of nature. Maybe I'm alone here,but coffee has a colonic purging effect on me. So I finished up and waltzed towards the men's room for the daily constitutional. A grin began to form on my face as I passed the offices of my co-workers, little did theyknow what pain I was about to unleash into the world. At any rate, I soon found myself seated and reading the news paper, paroosing the incidents reports when my eyes momentarily lost focus and a great shifting of hidden pressures within my internal organs produced a garbled moan deep within the core of my being.

At that specific moment a singular thought flashed in my mind "I'm Getting Paid For This!"

Time and space distorted around me as I temporarily transmogrified into a cosmic ass cannon. The shock wave flexed the walls, the lights flickerd as I released putrid electromagnetic energies previously unknown to science. Seismometers in Berkley sent their needles skittering off the page as these terrible forces were sent through the porcelin deep into the mantle ofthe Earth. As sound is rather slow compared to these other types of energyI braced myself calmly for the impending thunderclap of pneumatic pressure and ass cheeks.

In my youth, a group of Babtist fundamentalists got a hold of my pliable young mind and hammered into it stories of the second comming of christ. Among other nightmares they clearly described that the moment God will whisk up the pious and saved he will blow on a great horn that could be heard by every soul on the planet be they good or evil. This is the only context in which I can properly explain the sound that was produced in the culmination of this fecal journey.

In the aftermath remained seated like buddah, eyes open as only slits, all knowing grin plastered on my dome listening to the remnants of that collosal sound reverberate through the mountain canyons to the east. After amoment of total consciousness and inner peace I tidied up, opened up the bathroom door which subsequently fell off its hinges and resumed my daily routine.

Co-workers eventually picked their jaws up off the ground. I calmly explained to them the I was in fact a mortal man and that I could not cure leoprocy or turn water to wine. They took it pretty hard, but all remembered their place in the world after a few hours.

I just thought I'd share that little moment with you all.

Pantera and the Preternatural

I must admit that the frequency of my listening to speedmetal has dwindled to a pathetic pace. Its almost as bad as my postings on this much neglected message board. This being said, I recieved a stern reminder of my youthful rage in a dream the other night.

To set the stage, imagine me in whatever fashion you wish. I'll give you a minute to conjure a godlike physique, long flowing main of golden hair, toga, throne upon a high mountain and the sort. Now imagine that I am sleeping peacefully in the bed of an average mortal. You should now have a mundane image of a man snoring lightly in his bed. Got it, OK. Now I want you to move in close to his head and listen carefully.........You should now be able to detect the faint thump of kick drums and the screech of 10,000 watts of amplified guitar solos radiating from my resting dome piece.

Now enter into my dream. It's me and Chi-seven, a long time knower of all things metal, and we are cruising around the pavillion of an outdoor ampitheater, not unlike one north of Indianapolis. Excitement exudes from our every pore as none other than Pantera is headlining this venue. We mingle through the black leather and nose rings of the crowd assuming a terrific position at the front of a barrier which holds the crowd back from a moat that seperates the masses from the stage. A cigarette is flicked by some unknown concert-goer which ignites the surface of the water. A flaming most spewing acrid black smoke now boils in front of us, the crowd explodes with cries of ultimate satisfaction.

Cue the lights, feel the thump of a double kick drum, know the sound of Dimebag's idle strings throbbing, waiting for the first note. Chi and I throw up a mandatory sign-of-the-beast hand gesture and it begins.

Here is where things get wierd. Pantera kicks out a song that begins "In the time of Dragons, we were kings". The lyrics are not as they should be, the speed metal take no prisoners kill or be killed, vibe is replaced by a 80's hair band screamer sound. Chi and I give each other a puzzled look. This is not what we came to see. This is farce. We crane our necks searching for others who have spotted this egregious breech of contract between fans and rock stars. No one cares. Nobody gives a shit.

We grow disillusioned with this musical forgery and receed into the shadows to consult some green provisions and reappraise the situation. After several more minutes of this terrible sound we have made no headway on why this situation is so off. Cut to the stage, the band is now aboard a huge pirate ship sailing on the burning moat, but still belting out generic 80's screamer rock.

Having reached loggerhead Chi and I decide to cut our losses and leave these turkeys to their tripe. As we head toward the exit Chi darts behind a tee shirt booth and is not seen again. Like a evil minion or witch of the neither world he has melded with the shadows to strike down those who brought this production to the light of day, no doubt. He always was a sucker for vengance, especially when duped out of precious concert monies. I exit through the gates and walk alone down a deserted road searching for the metal of my past. Jaded and inconsolable a great rage builds within.

The I wake, no longer a teenage puke in search of screeching metal licks, but retain the feeling of dissapointment all the same. Perhaps, Frued would have something to say, but he's dead.

New Beck Video

The memory-hole has been cold lately.
Let's heat it back up with the latest Beck video.
Hell Yes.
Turn up your speakers at work so your boss can hear.
*out*