I would have neglected to remember this delightful conspiracy-based holiday and its wonderful macabre traditions if not for my pal Jason’s timely reminder. If you ask me, every conspiracy deserves commemoration in so elaborate a fashion as the Gunpowder Plot, but then I guess we’d do naught but perform bizarre rituals and go wild 24/7.
I finished Bradbury’s Death Is a Lonely Business today at work and, if not up to his early pulp standards, a damn sight better than his more recent efforts and lovely overall. The killer was who I thought it was (take my word for it, if you feel like it), but the act of seeing that name in print still came like an electric shock. As for our incumbent, I couldn’t bring myself to look at a newspaper, but heard His Holy Name spoken hundreds of times over the course of my 9 hour stint at the sushi counter. I finally read it, ineluctably, on a button, but what really did me in was hearing a person I greatly admire, and had pegged as some kind of uber-anarchist with a golden bullshit detector, declare, “We won,” and an acquaintance remark on the Democrats’ grip on the House and Senate to the effect that, “Checks and balances are important, but ultimately they slow things down. A lot more stuff will get done now.”
Yup.
For the record, I didn’t bring up the election to anyone today, except to vent to the Guatemalans upon arriving, and I didn’t tweak, though I admit to laughing maniacally in the restroom when that, “I’m so happy to be stuck with you” song came on.
Bommy Day at Whole Foods was a zombie fiesta, a nonstop conga line of willful naiveté, which presented numerous challenges to chat honestly and jocularly with folks deeply in thrall to the God Emperor without tweaking or upsetting them. Good practice for the coming months, at any rate. My only regret is that I refrained from gambling on a wide-margin win for our Lord and Savior, as I could have totally cleaned up and at least have had some fiat currency to show for my psychic trauma.
Knowing, as they say, is half the battle; putting your money where your mouth is would seem to be the other half.
It’s a clear night in Bloomfield, but clouds of genuine cataclysm loom this Samhain. I read something today portentous of this election and its aftermath in Ray Bradbury’s Death Is a Lonely Business.
“You look horrible.”
“I feel horrible. You ever think something awful is going to happen, but you don’t know what?”
“It’s called the heebie-jeebies.”
I swallowed more vodka and shivered.
“No, no. Something really terrible, closing in on you, is what I mean.”
The bartender looked over my shoulder as if he saw the ghost of the man on the train there.
“Did you bring it in with you?”
“No.”
“Then it’s not here.”
“But,” I said, “he spoke to me – one of the Furies.”
“Furies?”
“I didn’t see his face. God, I feel worse now. Good night.”
“I’ll believe in anyone or anything,” said Nikabrik, “that’ll batter these cursed Telmarine barbarians to pieces or drive them out of Narnia. Anyone or anything, Aslan or the White Witch, do you understand?”
“Silence, silence,” said Trufflehunter. “You do not know what you are saying. She was a worse enemy than Miraz and all his race.”
“Not to Dwarfs, she wasn’t,” said Nikabrik.
C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian
The Beeb blows the lid off of bigot-infested backwater Uniontown in their insightful exposé, “‘Race Question Mark’ over US town“. Ever and anon a hotbed of creepiness, Uniontown has been making hyperlocal headlines the past few months for everything from taser-toting rent-a-cops in schools to cattle mutilations. Now, it seems, on top of everything else, there are racist voters in Fayette County!
She was not well informed, but her views were clear.
“He’s from Africa or something. I don’t even know where he’s from. I know he grew up here, but he’s not from here. I think American presidents should be from America.”
This ignorant savage raises a number of good points. Is Obama, in fact, from Africa or something? Kenyan and Hawiian documents which could set the record straight have been lovingly sealed until after the election, but I’m sure the reasons for doing so are purely bureaucratic and the timing purely coincidental.
As for American presidents being from America, I recall reading something similar on some lousy piece of hate literature scrawled by slave-raping Freemasons back in the day, which is probably where this lady picked it up.
Todd Hackley, a registered Republican said he would vote for Mr McCain and had this to say on the race question:
“Race is an issue, it has to be, not that we want it to be. My thoughts are that Obama will get as many votes from the blacks, as he will not get from the whites.
“I do believe there are a lot of whites who won’t vote for him because of the colour of his skin, but I believe there are a lot of blacks who will vote for him because of his colour.”
The Beeb is not well informed, but its views are clear: if you live in rural PA (or, you know, somewhere else) and don’t vote for Obama, chances are you’re a racist. Leaving aside the how-many-grains-of-sand-constitute-a-pile-like question of how “black” Obama actually is, if the perceived race of a candidate influences your vote whatsoever, congrats on acting on your racist beliefs.
The black/white and red/blue dichotomies are tried and true divide-and-conquer tactics of the elite; combined, they are working with devastating effectiveness. Call me an anti-voter bigot, but if you caress the ol’ touchscreen this Nov. 4th, chances are you are not well informed and your views aren’t as clear as you think they are.
Yesterday (10/24) afternoon at the sushi bar, I told my pal Danny to expect Ashley Todd’s tall (6′4″) tale to implode by the end of the day. Around 8 pm, a fellow on the smoke deck said his Republican pal called with the news that Todd had confessed and quipped, “Welcome to your Barack Obama presidency.” On 10/23, Fox News VP John Moody prophesied similarly in his blog post “Moment of Truth”.
That does not mean that he has erased the mutual distrust between black and white Americans, and this incident could become a watershed event in the 11 days before the election.
If Ms. Todd’s allegations are proven accurate, some voters may revisit their support for Senator Obama, not because they are racists (with due respect to Rep. John Murtha), but because they suddenly feel they do not know enough about the Democratic nominee.
If the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain’s quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting.
For Pittsburgh, a city that has done so much to shape American history over the centuries, another moment of truth is at hand.
The truth is clearly out there, and you don’t have to be Miss Marple or Fox Mulder to figure out cui bono from this “hoax” (hint: it ain’t McCain’s deliberately doomed campaign nor the good people of Bloomfield). Alas, the Todd case grows more familiar as it grows more bizarre.
Investigators asked Todd to return to the police station today for more questioning and to help them release a composite sketch of the suspect.
When she did, police say she admitted that she made the whole thing up and that it snowballed out of control.
Todd told investigators today that she “just wanted to tell the truth” – adding that she was neither robbed, nor attacked.
“She indicated that she has prior mental problems and that she does not remember how the backward letter B got on her face,” Richard told reporters today.
Todd told police that while she did not remember how the backward “B” got on her face, she may have done it herself since she was the only one in the car.
According to police, Todd said she thought of Barack Obama when she saw the “B” in her rearview mirror.
I’m willing to entertain the notion that Todd is just a messed-up kid (i.e. “lone nut”), creeped out (as am I) by the prospect of an Obama presidency, who made some stuff up in a demented attempt to help in an unhelpable situation. Her story was so transparently bogus that, in an uncharacteristic display of restraint, Pittsburgh police didn’t just nail some random dark-skinned fellow and call it a day. So, you know, props to the cops ‘n’at.
Most folks I spoke with today want to believethat Todd was “put up to it” by McCain’s campaign (have I mentioned I work at Whole Foods?), and perhaps she was. Considering the diaphanousness of her original tale and the rapidity of its high-profile collapse, however, I doubt it.
Let’s say Todd’s alleged amnesia concerning the “B” is not evidence of mind-control programming, but just more ad-libbed ass-covering. Let’s say her dissociated bewilderment is either feigned or attributable to her vague “history of mental problems” and set aside the many historical precedents of such folks’ employment as operatives. The Todd saga might not turn out to be a straight-up PSYOP (linked to ACORN, as has been whispered about, or agents provocateur in the McCain camp or whatever) but there are enough red flags here to make those possibilities worth exploring.
On the other hand, the P-G says Todd waved a Huckabee false flag for Ron Paul and got booted from his doomed campaign back in March.
In March, Ms. Todd was asked to leave a grass-roots group of Ron Paul supporters in Brazos County, Texas, group leader Dustan Costine said. He said Ms. Todd posed as a supporter of former Arkansas governor and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee and called the local Republican committee seeking information about its campaign strategies.”She would call the opposing campaign and pretend she was on their campaign to get information,” Mr. Costine said last night. “We had to remove her because of the tactics she displayed. After that we had nothing to do with her.”
About a month earlier, he said, Ms. Todd sent an e-mail to the Ron Paul group saying her tires were slashed and that campaign paraphernalia had been stolen from her car because she supported Mr. Paul.
“She’s the type of person who wants to be recognized,” Mr. Costine said.
Sometimes a lone nut is just a lone nut, and that may well be the case with Todd. As pals never tire of reminding me, not everything is a conspiracy.
Conspiracies do abound, though, and as long as folks want to believe in something, they tend to do so. If you want to believe that backing one baloney-spouting shyster instead of another in a rigged election is doing your part, for instance, you’re not likely to ask if your part is a nonspeaking, nonpaying extra role in some megalomaniac’s apocalyptic blockbuster. For election season and ever after, we’d all do well to check our beliefs before they wreck something more valuable.
As for Bloomfield, it’s been my home and thus my favorite place on the planet for the past five years, so it irks me that something this lame drew the nation’s attention here. Aside from the occasional mugging and October Surprise (which you’ll get anywhere), Bloomfield is as peaceful and fun a community as you’re ever likely to find.
In any case, so I want to believe.
UPDATE 10-26
The Busman’s Holiday has compiled some fine stuff on the Todd case, for anyone still following it. Props to Bob Mayo and peace to yinz all.
Asked last month where I stood with regard to the candidates, I quipped, “As far away as possible,” a glib half-truth if ever I spouted one.
Despite my aversion to rocking the vote, past POTUS elections have filled me with, alternately, despondency and a kind of demented glee. I confess to have acted on this perverse tendency by attending, of my own volition, a Ron Paul rally on 08/03/07 in Mars and the Democratic Platform Committee shindig on 08/09/08 in Downtown Pittsburgh, but since then I’ve tried not to think about it and in so doing kept from tweaking.
At present, though, I’m compelled to explore (quickly and dirtily) a pervasive suspension of discernment by people I love and respect with regard to Barack Obama (even my mom is creeped out by McCain, so I shan’t waste words on The Rebel’s major malfunctions). I’m also admittedly frisky to belay a bit more into this year’s vortex, then withdraw as it accelerates, just for kicks. It’s sick, but like Dostoevsky’s unnamed narrator, I am a sick man.
Let the healing begin.
An Obamaite pounded on my door earlier to ask was I planning to vote for Obama, then was planning to vote for McCain, then was I undecided. I said, “No, I’ve decided not to vote.” She said, “A lot of people are doing that,” and I said, “So they are,” and closed the door. I could well have bid her good evening or sent her off with some ad-libbed blessing, or a brief catalogue of Obama’s wretchednesses and/or those of the voting tech and/or of electoralism itself, but, heaven help me, I was tired and desired not to contend with this poor lady further. Still, I answered her frigging questions (even though she didn’t first inquire whether I’d be willing to answer some questions) and as I reflect on this dehumanizing interaction and on a conversation today at work about the new movie W. and on Nature’s juxtaposition of McCain and Obama with two puppies in their Sept. 25 issue, I feel a knot of emotions ranging from disgust to compassion for those who’ve flung themselves (body and/or mind and/or soul) into the electoral vortex – and even for W. and the maleficent candidates themselves – beginning to fray.
Perhaps “baleful” is more apt than “maleficent” to describe folks productive of vile consequences on such vast scales, whether in Faustian service to some form of interdimensional parasite, Castanedan/Schwarzennegerian Predator, Annunaki, etc., or merely to such mundane Archons as Power-lust, Greed, or (in a spirit of extreme generosity) misguided Utopianism or a warped need to Save Things or Set Things Right, vile indeed must be these wretches’ respective existences. Perhaps Nature’s slip-up wasn’t so inadvertent, was instead a deliberate ploy to link puppy dog faces with fascist visages, inspiring compassion and paradoxically humanizing the candidates. In any case, both McCain and Obama get my compassion and forgiveness (HERE, you rotten bastards!), but I’ll be deuced if I give either one of them my mystical, magical vote.
This afternoon at the sushi bar, my pal Jae said he saw PNAC’s William Kristol on Fox News giving his two cents on the recent debate. A few hours later, a fellow my pal Danny identified as Pat Thetic of the band Anti-Flag stopped by to pick up three sushi platters, whereupon Jae informed me that Anti-Flag has a song about PNAC. Here are some of the lyrics.
Endless violence, endless hatred
Endless empire tyranny
Will you make a stand for human dignity?
Anyhow, turns out Kristol is laying it on with thickness for Obama these days.
Consider this line from PNAC’s Sept. 2000 hit “Rebuilding America’s Defenses”.
Further, the process of transformation,
even if it brings revolutionary change, is
likely to be a long one, absent some
catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a
new Pearl Harbor.
Consider Samantha Power (who resigned as a foreign policy advisor for the Obama campaign in March after calling Hillary Clinton a monster and an admirable leader in practically the same breath) hemming and hawing about withdrawing, talking ’bout maybe having some kind of change of plans as regards troop deployment, you know, in response to changing conditions on the ground and all, in January.
“You can’t make a commitment in March 2008 about what circumstances will be like in January of 2009,” she said. “He will, of course, not rely on some plan that he’s crafted as a presidential candidate or a U.S. Senator. He will rely upon a plan – an operational plan – that he pulls together in consultation with people who are on the ground to whom he doesn’t have daily access now, as a result of not being the president. So to think – it would be the height of ideology to sort of say, ‘Well, I said it, therefore I’m going to impose it on whatever reality greets me.’”
Consider Biden’s prophecy of a “generated crisis”.
Now, consider the recently-canonized Colin Powell (all that WMD stuff is water under the bridge as long as you got Barack’s back, Col!)peggingthis mysterious crisis to January 21st or 22nd.
Considering Obama’s ties to the Bilderberg Group (whether or not he actually attended the Chantilly session) and CFR, and considering his passionate vision of leisurely withdrawal from Iraq, you know, whenever, to facilitate cranking up the juice to Afghanistan’s testicles to keep the spice flowing and so forth, and considering his eloquent, diplomatic saber-rattling directed at Iran and Pakistan and Russia and China and Zembla and Neuschwabenland, backing from a PNAC founder should elicit, at best, a yawn or a roll of the old soul-windows.
If Obama is anti-war, I’m Zbigniew Brzezinski.
Despite/because of Obama’s allegedly-erstwhile predilection for tobacco, he seems to take great delight in smiting the most heavily taxed and demonized and legislated-against minority in America and plugging pharmaceutical nicotine (specifically, GlaxoSmithKline’s Nicorette). Obama also has yet to prove that he’s a natural born citizen of the US and therefore qualified to run in the first place. Barry Hussein Kosinski Castaneda Soetoro, or whatever his name is, can’t even keep his story synced with his sister’s as to which hospital he was born in. Here’s an interview with Philip J. Berg, former Deputy Attorney General of Pennsylvania, who’s bringing the legal challenge against The One of Many Names.
If the citizenship thing gets brushed under the rug now, what’s to stop Nazi robot Arnie from running for Sun King in 2012?
Nichts.
But that’s all small potatoes in the big pot of stew. What really creeps me out is that everybody from Louis Farrakhan to Conversations With God author Neale Donald Walsch to 2012 pundit William Henry is contributing to the mythopoeic patina cloaking Obama, and the rapid absorbtion of various versions into the cultural bloodstream.
Even as it tickles my esoteric g-spot, I’m obliged to give this “Barakhenaton” image the coveted 2008 Quietdown Award for Sheer Unmitigated Creepiness. Why? Like the Republicans’ sigil slanders Ganesha, the Democrats’ current poster boy has besmirched the good name of every mythic messiah-figure and two-bit huckster the world has ever known, as well as the donkeys/rails on which they respectively rode/were ridden into/out of town.
So that’s my forty silver pieces on the savior angle.
While I’ve encountered my share of Obama zealots lately, I suspect more folks figure he’s the “lesser of two evils”, which reminds me of this scene from Prince Caspian in which the dwarf Nikabrik suggests resurrecting the White Witch to fight the despotic King Miraz…
Whatever.
If you want to call someone evil, then stick their name/slogan on your body/car/lawn and/or vote for them, go for it. If you love McCain/Obama with all your might and long for one/both of them to kiss your dystopian boo-boo and make it all better, pleasant, pleasant dreams. If massaging a Third Partier into the ol’ touchscreen will assuage your aching conscience, assuage it up. If you think you can hack it and not get caught, by all means hack away. If you’re ignoring the sordid spectacle and just doing your thing, way to go, you know, depending on what your thing is. If this syntactically tortured mixed metaphor salad of a post has failed to satisfy your ravenous hunger for election-related insight and eloquence, on the other hand, fellow Pittsburgher and pal IOZ has been cranking out killer coverage since well before the primaries. Enjoy.
I’m going outside to breathe deeply.
It’s a beautiful night in Bloomfield.
UPDATE (10-25-08)
Jerome Bettis just left a message on my machine inviting me to an Obama rally on Monday, Oct. 27. I guess getting conked on the head repeatedly as part of your job is a valid excuse for such foolishness, though. Have fun at the rally, Jerome!
