October 9, 2009

the coiled line from my ear is a smoky wiggle stretching to infinity, a great gulf fixed between me and thee (I pray thee, reset thy modem), all hours stretched to tension, eyes all replaced by bare gray walls, my soul is cold liver on a plate ma'am, take, eat, this is my body. And the Lord God of your fathers is a god of war; you may now plead for your life, and live here forever.

the bitter muse at my ear (o whisper in my dreams, be I never alone) finds it unacceptable (you are lush with sex when you pout so) that the lines in the walls -she can hear them crossing crucified and she wants a credit- are fucked. And the LORD our god is a jealous god; all sacrifices must enter single file.

the shimmering grey waxy everything is the weight of a mountain, crushing all beneath it. the left of my head is the voices of Hell, confusion afraid and crying; the right is a void, a thousand paper dragons blown away in a mist (youth is a precious gem, and the mountain crushes all before it), for the lord of the gods is an old and foolish god, and nothing can stand before the man in shadow.

the grass withers, the flower fades, the strength of man is swept away by nothing at all and forgotten (like some idiot thing that says i cannot die I CANNOT die). Dark spans where had been everything (ambition pride lust envy) remain, and gibbering beasts see and do not remember. and the lord our god is a consuming fire, hang your head and cry for what is lost lost lost

The wire in my ear speaks again, and prayers rise to heaven like incense (Uzziah was struck with leprosy for his presumption). Smoke stings my eyes, and there is only clarity; for all eternity, this is all that ever was, and this is A-O-K. For our god is a god of love, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

Thank you for calling, how can we bleed for you today?

I had some business in Atlanta, and headed in to take care of it. Part of Atlanta I was goin' to is near where they built all that Olympics carryin' on, and all the streets are one-way. Scares the dickens out of you the first time y' turn into four lanes of speeding traffic, but it becomes a simple annoyance after a while.

Sure enough, there were some fellers makin' a movie, and the Atlanta PD had the roads partially blocked off so all the cranes and fellers with microphones on sticks can poke em in. They took the little Chinese feller who sells beer and cigarettes on the corner and made it look like he sells vegetables. Took their vegetables with em after and all.

So I walk past two fellers having a cigarette with more "CREW" badges around their neck on strings than a Kenny Chesney roadie, and say:

"Ya crash the cars yet?>
"Huh?" he asks.
"Have. You. Crashed. The. Cars. Yet. Did I miss it?"
"What cars?"
"The cars y'r fixin' to crash. Raced the cars yet?"
"Huh?"
"Where are you all doin' the ravine jumpin' scenes?"
"What are you talkin about, mister?"
"Oh come on son, you're makin' a movie in the South and there's no cars crashin? Bet you next thing there's gonna be no chimpanzee in this movie, neither."
"Chimpanzee?"
"Or orangutan. Come on, son. Clint Eastwood feller always had him a chimpanzee. Blowin' raspberries, givin' cops the finger and carryin' on."

Now, this young feller was confused and very very earnest. Looked like one of them fellers from the Blair Witch thing. But the other guy he was smokin' with had clearly seen Cannonball Run, Smokey and the Bandit and all them Southern films from the late 70s and early 80s and was crackin' up somethin' fierce. I suggested a few titles to watch to get the chimp reference and he chimed in a Tony Danza picture I'd never heard of.

Young feller tries to get back into the conversation: "It's a teevee show, not a movie, mister."

"Well that rightly explains everything" I says, tip my cowboy hat, and start walkin' back to the truck.

So Saint Obama gets the Nobel Peace Prize. Care to expand on the why, anyone?

I mean, what's he done, seriously, that's concretely made the world a more peaceful place? What wars or oppression has he actually brought to an end? Solved the conflict in Palestine, has he? Ended the genocide in Darfur, has he? Put the boot into China until they leave Tibet alone, has he? Ended the military dictatorship and associated ethnic cleansing in Burma, has he? I mean, I don't see him exactly racing to pull the troops out of Afghanistan or Iraq, for that matter.

I await a list of appropriate deeds by return of node. Sources are required. "Giving hope" does not count. Seriously. To get a Nobel Prize for anything else you have to actually make the world a better place or discover something really significant. You can't get a Nobel Prize for Chemistry for inspiring people to become chemists, you have to go and discover magic acid or something. You can't get a Nobel Prize for Literature for writing a bestseller, you have to write something that brings something new to the table. Why, then, can you get a Nobel Peace Prize simply for being charismatic and popular? SENSE IS NOT MADE BY THIS. It's almost as bad as how Al Gore got the prize in 2007 for making a shitty film that plays fast and loose with the facts.

On the other hand, though, I wouldn't be surprised if the Republicans are rubbing their hands with glee, as come 2012 it'll give them more ammunition to play the "get rid of the overrated sodbox" card so they can get their man in.