David Brooks has written a piece of shit opinion piece that calls Obama's balls into question, vis a vis his willingness to order the killing of more brown people far, far away, and to sacrifice lives to do it. Brooks is a war-monger, and since his having been breathtakingly wrong about Iraq was not enough to have his soap box taken away, he continues to inject his sickly venom onto the pages of the New York Times. Shame on them, shame on him. Seriously, this crap is indefensible.

The Bad Magician sold a silver throne to the homunculus of god. It caused grease to drip out of the various mouths. It encouraged mercury up the river and into the land cavity and was unborn. The hermes vat was serene with urine and the Last King of America sat in something very much like eggs. "Can you time an egg?" asked the King. "In time," said whatever it was that was rotting in his throat. "In time."

The Bad Magician is not coming back. The Bad Magician is gone. Asleep, asunder, a dreamer in the forest; needles are the floor. How does something that was not alive become dead? Only in the dark. Forever.

The Bad Magician fell in the dark forever. While he fell he could not see, it didn't matter. He could not hear--nothing to hear. He falls and he falls and he falls. He falls where Alice died. He falls where Sisyphus struggles in vain. He falls. And no one sees. When it is time for time to vanish, the water runs on rocks and birds laugh.

The Bad Magician is gone, but something stirred. Something ran. Something came for him, at the edge of nowhere. The Wolves came. The Wolves came and The Bad Magician could fall no longer. Some things just are. The Bad Magician lands in the Great White North. He lands in the Snow. He looks into the blinding light. He hears the engine. The Bad Magician dies everywhere all at once.

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Old Knucklehead, aka Mortaljivester/mjs

I wrote a really long and amazing post about this blog and why I won't be posting at Correntewire any more. I'm sure it would have won awards and cured the sick and lame. We'll never know for sure because I hit some fucking button I shouldn't have and my efforts vanished into the ether. Heh-heh. Suffice it to say that you, dear reader, have been spared a long and meandering journey through the past thirty-three or so months since I was kindly invited to join these wonderful people here. Right now my neck and right shoulder ache, and the dogs have to pee, and I got-got-got no time.

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Perhaps they will still be available come November...

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Image by mjs, taken in Hawthorne District, Portland, Oregon

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We have become torturers and bullies who buy products from torturers and bullies. How's that shrimp cocktail tasting?

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A Love Letter to America’s Mesopotamian Friend With Benefits

I found this letter buried beneath John Ashcroft's Water Wiggle in a trunk in the basement. I wonder if we forgot to mail it? Gonna have to go get some stamps...*

mjs

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Dear Snuggle Pumpers,

Look, baby, you know I love you. Your belly full of oil, your eyes full of desire, your swarthy swarthiness--I wanted you in the worst way, which is the best way I want things. When I want something, I take it, and I slap it around and punch it and go to town, you know what I mean? And I wanted you, baby. You. It was always you. Well, since the internal combustion engine anyway…

I knocked you off your feet, and then picked you up by your feet, and then I dropped you…I admit I dropped you--but I picked you up again, and then, admittedly, dropped you once more, oh, but darn it, I just kept on picking you up. And dropping you. It was all good fun...at first. I slapped your thighs but good and gained the golden hall without so much as a titty-tickle and wham! came off like Speed Racer--it was good. Damn good. Get the bleach out good. Emission accomplished good. Jack-off in the shower while visualizing Max Boot good, now-that-I-think-about-it-good.

And remember when I found your daddy and got his buddies to fuck his ass up something fierce so we could be together, just you and me and some contractors? And then it was mostly just you and me (and the contractors, but what can you do?) and a future filled with flying carpets and easy money and then...oh, criminey, but I went soft. I'll admit it. I went soft like a White House reporter full of cocktail weenies and Swedish vodka. Yeah, that soft.

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Surely, McCain's advisers have ever been friends to Rohan and the King...

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A Sunday Sermon to enlighten us all!

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Via Crooks and Liars comes this YouTube of Reverend Michael Pfleger giving a FAWKS interviewer a brief tutorial on what is what and why what is what is what it is.

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Imagine Ben Stein's Ethics
(a parody of John Lennon's Imagine and as such is protected by the blah-blah-blah...)

Imagine Ben Stein's ethics
They're easy to deny
No good faith above him
Below it he will lie
The banality of evil
Stealing all away

Imagine there's no science
So many people do
Nothing to study or wonder
The end of seeking truth
Imagine all the country
Dumber than a post...

What do you cling to when you cling?
What stirs you up and makes you sing?
Did the Liberty Bell make freedom ring?
What do you cling to, when you cling?

What do you do when reason fails?
What takes the wind out of your sails?
Did your blood run cold, did you turn pale?
What do you do when reason fails?

Jason Beghe, a Scientologist for fourteen years, speaks his mind about his disdain for Scientology. Like raising the number of missions in Catch-22, Jason contends that Scientology moves the bar on one of its most elusive goals: being "clear." To be fair, if Judeo-Christianity first popped up in the 1950s it would be hard-pressed to declare spiritual hegemony, here in the United States or anywhere else. Literal interpretations of mythological constructs don't perform well in front of cameras or microphones, except as theater, and even then you have to buy your own popcorn...  Read more…

Geoff Davis "doesn't want that boy near the button..."

Seems he thinks Barack Obama might not blow shit up fast enough. Perhaps Mr. Davis is worried that Obama's mojo isn't up to nuclear snuff porn...

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MSNBC* has some footage up of a panel discussion about race. Without judging the relative merits of those who share their views, I was struck by two things: one, we're still fucking up the children who so many of us say must be cherished, and two, the negative issues of race and ethnicity will not vanish without a whole lot of work. Perhaps they never will, but that is no excuse to not address these issues and attempt to build a better world "for the children."

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*A brief commercial precedes the discussion footage. Render unto Caesar his wee taste...

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It's fairly simple: old, governmentally approved ways of testing many cosmetic products, including Botox, involve the wholesale, and arguably unnecessary slaughter of animals.

Be ye man or woman, know the ramifications of what you do, and consider making a choice that brings less suffering into the world instead of more.

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I went to a post office this week near where I now live in Portland, Oregon. There were two clerks working, and no one was ahead of me. Soon, another customer queued behind me. One of the clerks, upon finishing a transaction, put up a "next window, please" sign, then quickly turned and walked away. Perhaps because the clerk never even looked up before leaving, the customer behind me muttered 'great. can you believe this stuff?'

Lords in the Rubble
(sung to the tune of Paul Simon's Boy in the Bubble)

It was a blown day
And the press was bleating
And braying on a tv news show
It was a fight night
A gathering of new widows
A psalm at the end of marriage
No choir but ready to go
These are the ways of military blunders
This is the end of it all
The way they hammered hollows in our old soul
The lives they took from us all
The way we went off to a violent invasion
The crying of the mourners who say bye
These are the days of military blunders
And don’t sigh, baby, don’t sigh
Don’t sigh

protesting is a sacred right
in light of day or dark of night
those who would control us all
are they who truly fear a fall
let all know no heart can fail
that smiles at a wagging tail

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