Category: Uncategorized

February is the adjectivest month

Influenza stalks Paradise this month. The health department has finally admitted that the flu status is “widespread,” and the emergency rooms are filling up with wheezing patients and the news crews that love them.

The worst of our influenza season falls in this half-Spring every year. The season see-saws between bright sunny butterfly-and-hummingbird days and windblown drizzle under grey. This has got to be harder on the butterflies but we hate it too. Be consistent! we yell and wave our tiny fists at whichever sky we’ve got that day.

Either I’m getting the influenza myself or it’s just postmodern anxiety. Exhaustion and dissociation are associated with both conditions, so the differential will be made with a thermometer before I go to bed.

Have you ever met a ghost of yourself? I met one today, and it’s been a few years. I saw myself as a very young child — like the one in the icon for this entry — playing on the floor in this house. The tile was different then, and because at close range each tile looked like a city block, I was driving a little Matchbox car along the street with my hand. No doubt there were vrooming noises. At one point in the journey the car encountered a furniture leg and whacked to a stop. Instead of going around, I just kept whacking the little toy car against the wood until some adult told me to knock it off.

And tonight I saw that kid in the dining room.

Maybe it’s the influenza.

GOOD MORNING.

I have no means to myself express how my brain feels right now, so I’m going to let my friend Karl-Heinz Stockhausen speak for me. With helicopters, a string quartet, and ululating.

And so to bed, at 5 am! Exit stage right pursued by bees.

I know the adjective “Orwellian” is used too much

But sometimes you need to drag it out. This time it’s  the BBC news trying to choke down the latest buffet of insanity from our military in Iraq:

IRAQ ‘REVERSE SURGE’ PLAYS ON U.S. MINDS

There are a few gems, but this one stands out for me:

“US commanders are reluctant to allow the backward momentum of the reverse-surge process to merge seamlessly into a wholesale withdrawal of American forces“

What the hell does that mean? Mostly, it means that they don’t really want to pull the troops out yet. Or maybe ever. So the pull-out of troops is now a “reverse surge” and since the “surge” was a “good thing” this means we should be really careful and probably not do it! And we don’t want it to “merge seamlessly” into an actual withdrawal. In other words, because we’re not “surging” we should not leave for an undetermined time, because that would be, well, bad. Got  it?

This is that rare and beautiful news story in which every single item is a lie. An easy way to fix it up would be to replace each paragraph with this: “There is blood everywhere and no plan.”

I’ll  sell t-shirts! Meanwhile, as Orwell put it, “The fascist octopus has sung its swan song, and the jackboot  is in the melting pot.”

GO READ HIM NOW and every week from now on, so you can understand the weird stuff in the news. It’s a short little essay and people forget how important it  is.

A Late Decree in the Matter of the Feast of St. Valentine

WHEREAS, the Feast of St. Valentine has repeatedly proven offensive or inconvenient to the majority of the American People;

WHEREAS, the Feast of St. Valentine has been demonstrably debased by unseemly commercialism and rapacious greed;

WHEREAS, all attempts to celebrate the Feast of St. Valentine in the common way debase the true arts of love;

WHEREAS, the above factors in combination have continued to cause strife, discomfort and misery in the Greater Portion of the American People;

WHEREAS, the activities surrounding the Feast of St. Valentine debase and shame the American People;

AND WHEREAS, a more appropriate and honorable claim to that day exists;

NOW, THEREFORE, we decree that the celebration of the Feast of St. Valentine be hereby ABOLISHED;

AND WE FURTHER ORDER that the Fourteenth Day of February each year be rededicated to the celebration of the birth of Joshua, Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico, who, by the grace of God, ruled his people wisely and well for more than twenty years.

via boutell by kfringe at http://kfringe.livejournal.com/282716.html