Good Friends

A Kiss is Just a Kiss

Well, it's still the same old story I A fight for love and glory | A case of do or die

It was only fitting that MTV's Video Music Awards should celebrate its 20th anniversary with a kiss and that the kiss should be a suggestive smooch shared by Madonna and Britney Spears, as Christina Aguilera stood by leering.

USA Today

This day and age we're living in | Gives cause for apprehension | With speed and new invention | And things like fourth dimension | Yet we get a trifle weary | With Mr. Einstein's theory | So we must get down to earth at times | Relax relieve the tension

Sorry, my age is beginning to tell. This stunt by Britney Spears and Madonna intrigues me. What does it mean? What does USA Today's comment mean? Okay, I get the 'fitting' bit but surely 'tongue-tied' would have had more impact? Could the same effect be achieved by two male recording-industry manufactured superstars? Would it have the same positive effect on their album sales? What has this kiss to say of homosexual, bisexual and heterosexual 'sexual orientations'? Are they doing it because they love kids or want to make the world a better place? What does it say of the music our teenybopper kids listen to; you know, the Barbie kids not into punk, heavy metal or alternative rock? Why does this not shock or surprise me? Why do I find it sad, pathetic and in bad taste, yet strangely fascinating? Why have I a damned side more respect for Sinnead O'Connor than either of these pop singers? Why is there such a concerted drive to promote rather than accept same-sex intimacy? Why are lesbians so fucking aggressive? Are these two now officially bisexual? What's next? The movie? The live show? Is this 'just entertainment'? What do these two think of the Ten Commandments statue removal or the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq, the ongoing war in Afghanistan or the transmission of HIV-Aids? Or, for that matter, Mel Gibson's movie The Passion being slagged by the Jewish Defamation League's Special Panzer Division? Are they merely showing Muslim women how it's done? And why the hell are they called 'divas'? I'll tell you something. I think they both need a good... nah, forget it.

And no matter what the progress | Or what may yet be proved | The simple facts of life are such | They cannot be removed | You must remember this | A kiss is still a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh | The fundamental things apply | As time goes by

Herman Hupfeld | A Kiss is Just a Kiss

Madonna and Britney Spears' lusty lip-lock on MTV has set tongues wagging - and might whet the public's appetite for their music.

New York Daily News

Conflicts of Interest and Corruption

A Third World Perspective

S.A. Deputy President Zuma Comes Under Heavy Fire in Print Media



The blurring of the lines between party and government and between politics and business is something that needs to be attended to if we are to avoid the institutionalised corruption that constitutes American politics and which has seen so many countries on our continent fail to achieve progress.

Mail & Guardian

Making uKhahlamba (Drakensberg) out of a molehill. This is the government’s appraisal of a week that has rocked the country as its second-in-command, Jacob Zuma, stands accused of becoming a rent-a-deputy-president...

This is not a molehill, it is a mountain. Zuma’s approach this week is that it is a storm that will blow over — in fact, he set off for a conference on desertification in Havana, Cuba. Despite the ruling party and the government’s rallying around him, let there be no mistake: Zuma is in a political desert. He has two options: to stand down or to take the nation into his confidence, not with the blustering, obfuscatory and blanket denials he’s issued until now, but by answering the very substantial allegations made against him...

If the deputy president’s contention is that he does not owe the nation answers, then the honourable thing for him to do would be to step down. Over the past four weeks, Zuma has had no compuction about attacking the Scorpions in public and accusing them of having ulterior agendas. He now needs to move beyond those blustery defences and tell us in detail why the unit is not to be trusted. He needs to tell us why the nation should regard Shaik as a more trustworthy individual than Ngcuka. He needs to assure us — through detailed explanations of his financial situation — that he is not “owned” by anyone, as the charge sheet indicates. He needs to prove to us that decisions affecting this sovereign nation will never be unduly influenced by his alleged relationship with a defence company that has close ties to the French government.

Zuma’s image and reputation now lie in tatters. What the nation read and heard about him this week raises serious questions about whether he is presidential material — or even whether he should be in the seat he is currently occupying. He needs to take steps to restore the public’s trust in him and his office. The storm will not blow over...

The tender system, through which the state purchases goods and services from the private sector, is the locale of so much graft that it is obviously filled with holes that need to be fixed. The blurring of the lines between party and government and between politics and business is something that needs to be attended to if we are to avoid the institutionalised corruption that constitutes American politics and which has seen so many countries on our continent fail to achieve progress. more...

Background
It all started here
Zuma for sale

Howard 'hahahahaha' Dean...

Laughing his Way...

...to the U.S. presidency and the bank


'Can you spare me a dime?'

African 'campaign trail' questions from a fledgling democrat [in the non-party political sense] on the sleepless blogging tour.

Why is it that one's 'liberalism' in the United States appears to be measured by one's willingness to give a millionaire money? And how many percentage points does the candidate's popularity on the 'left' increase when that money is pledged over the Internet?

I know some Nigerians who each have ten million dollars ($10,000,000.00) to spare...

Does Howard Dean know that Niger is in Africa and not the other way round? Is he prepared to give a detailed rebuttal of Josh Frank's Counterpunch article Dean Would Rather Execute an Innocent Man, Than Let a Guilty One Walk Free?

Why does it matter that Howard Dean has a blog written by some aspiring PR spin wizards trying to make a career in the Beltway?

Why, among Africans, does Howard Dean raise the question, "Hmm..., perhaps it's a case of 'Better the devil we know...?'"

Actually, while we're about it, and as this rather jolly looking candidate seeks to take the most powerful office in the world, would someone tell this fledgling democrat [not in the party political sense], just who the hell Howard Dean is and why so-called American liberals are happy he wants them to work for him?

"When someone gets put to death for a heinous crime, I don't feel the least bit conflicted about that."

Howard Dean

Dreaming of Baghdad

The Life and Death of an Ayatollah...

...one victim among many of an illegal occupation


The Buzzard: George Bush Sr.

I see George Bush Sr., father of the President of the United States and formerly a publicly paid consultant, adviser and front man for The Carlyle Group in South Korea and Saudi Arabia [see below], had lunch with Prince Bandar Bin Sultan Bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud at the Bush family's Kennebunkport holiday home this week. The prince, who seems to exert an extraordinary hold on the Family, went on to meet his close friend and former Halliburton CEO, Dick Cheney. That Prince Bandar was meeting these eminent persons when in "out of the ordinary" circumstances, the lights went out in London and the New York Port Authority released 2,000 pages of transcripts recording the last messages to emanate from the doomed twin towers of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 [thereby drowning the rising chorus of protest at 28 pages focusing on Saudi Arabia's role in those attacks being excised from an 850-page congressional report into the attack], is surely coincidental. In the half-light of what we know to be straight, true and legal about all matters relating to companies such as Bechtel [George Schultz's outfit], Halliburton [Big Dick's] and others, surely replays of doomed voices from yesteryear are more newsworthy than the loss of British and American troops in Iraq, the rapidly escalating guerilla war that will see more American and other countries' troops committed to an illegal occupation following an illegal invasion, and the death today of Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim, a leading Iraqi Shia cleric and upwards of 75 Iraqis in an horrific bomb blast? Following hard on the heels of the loss of U.N. special envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello in... ah shit, we told you so. However, as Andrew Greeley points out in the Chicago Sun-Times, there is an upside to everything. "Faced with persistent sabotage and an increase in guerrilla violence, the Bush administration faces unpalatable options in Iraq, especially as the country approaches the beginning of the year before the election. Real imperial powers ought not to be distracted by elections. It can send more American troops, either National Guard or Reserve units, or new units drawn from recruits or eventually perhaps from a draft." Ah, yes, the d-r-a-f-t. It's the solution everyone's been waiting for. Why did nobody think of it before?

Cape Town Drivers?

Mother City Home to Iraqi WMD and Hot Sex

...as thirsty locals loot grounded U.S. container ship


Hot Sex on Table Bay Beach

Earlier this week, Capetonians, thirsting for their tequila, found a citywide shortage of their drink of choice too much to bear. Relying on intelligence supplied by local Muslim organizations and clerics, they discovered the driver of a U.S.-registered, Maersk-chartered container ship, the Sealand Express, to be cause of their woes.

For the past week, the Sealand Express has been parked on one of our local beaches. Pulled hard to the shoulder of the roadstead, the driver apparently asleep at the wheel [much like those of us who travel daily to the city in the background], the ship is loaded with 50 tons of uranium and 100,000 litres of Hot Sex tequila destined for discovery in Iraq.

Carrying more than 1,000 container's marked "Saddam's WMD", the boat veering its way around the Cape of Storms is driven by one Jeb Bush of Florida, U.S.A. "I'm going to um-Qasr," squeaked the Southern bully boy when beaten to relative sobriety by local warlords. Questioned as to whom might have forced the gibbering jellyfish to steer a boatload of nuclear junk and countless bottles of good stuff in the direction of Mesopotamia, the idiot mariner whined, "George made me do it."

Relieved of its tequila [the nearby Koeberg nuclear power station turned down the offer of uranium at bargain-basement prices: "We get our shit from Benin," said a spokesman], the Sealand Express is being hauled off the side of the road by a couple of tugs and a Dutch dredger. For my money, the Sealand Express will be around a while. I have been in touch with some friends at the Project for a New American Quagmire who appear keen to see the uranium falling into the wrong hands and are prepared to pay a heavy price.

Negotiations are under way. I will use the proceeds to get my bloody Internet connection sorted out and refloat my blog. Being a non-drinker, I'll get my hot sex a bit later tonight.

Thank you Andie Miller, Chris Locke, Lindsay [yeah, you don't know me but so what?], Frank Paynter, Shelley Powers, Gary Turner, Halley Suitt, several others [sheez, my mind is a blank] and a questionnaire described 'variously' for keeping me sane these past few days. If I had respondents' words of world-weary wit and wisdom to replicate here, I would do so without hesitation.

Note Having jump-started my Net connection and changed accounts, my e-mail address is now mgolby@telkomsa.net.

Hope's Travelling Companion

A September Song

'These precious days I'll spend with you'



They say "Drink and be merry, | Take the bull by the horns." | I keep seeing visions of you, a lily among thorns | Everything looks a little far away to me

Bob Dylan | Someone's Got a Hold of My Heart

Hope is one of the last things to die. When all else fails, backfires, dissolves, does not happen, collapses, wastes away, goes wrong, or breaks, hope sustains us. It is a remarkable attribute or property, mutating through optimism, anticipation and other forms. When the going gets rough, it manifests as blind faith.

It's a waste of time.

It is to despair that hope owes its resilience. Despair is hope's traveling companion. When hope fades into the dark spaces of our souls, despair willingly takes its place. Despair is deceptive, playing the role of hope's mortician. I don't buy despair's twisted logic. It might wear a top hat and morning coat but, generally, it does a pretty poor job of convincing me of hope's demise.

Then again, sometimes it performs well, playing hope to hell and gone as it swamps my being with its leaden message, "There is no hope." At times, I believe it. And that's where I've been these past few weeks; arguing with despair or, as its travelling companion likes to call it, "no hope".

I had watched, waited, ignored, endured, hidden, manipulated, bent, clicked, right-clicked, patched, scrolled up and down, and even rebooted. It had had no effect. Hope had, to put it colloquially, had enough.

It died.

Gettin' harder and harder to recognize the trap | Too much information about nothin' | Too much educated rap | It's just like you told me, just like you said it would be

At some time between the last theft, outburst, depravity, assault, or scream-rage-anger-fear-frustration kick [or perhaps it was the overdose or the carving of the leg], hope quietly packed its bags and left.

Blood chokes hope. Too much blood drowns it.

Just got back from a city of powder blue skies | Everybody thinks with their stomach | There's plenty of spies | Every street is crooked, they just wind around till they disappear



But it’s a long, long while from May to December | And the days grow short when you reach September. | The autumn weather turns the leaves to flame | And I haven’t got the time for the waiting game.

I checked out too [although, obviously, here I am, back where I belong]. I went down to the siding and waited for a train that never came. I could hear the music of its wheels fading along distant tracks.

It grew dark.

Later, I was sitting in a pub drinking blood when despair walked in and sat down opposite me. It removed its hat and ordered a cup of blood. Its eyes were empty and it smelt of the incense they used to bless my aunt's coffin at her funeral last week.

Despair's skin was grey, its face studious but skeletal, and it had no teeth. It drank its blood.

"You're screwed," it said. Flatly.

I was too depressed to answer.

"You never ask for advice. Why don't you write to somebody?"

I stared at the void of meaning.

"I don't feel like it."

"Why not? It'll cheer you up."

"How'd you know?"

"I'm hope's travelling companion. Sorry. I was hope's travelling companion. Hope's dead, you know."

"I'm beginning to accept that."

I hear the hot-blooded singer | On the bandstand croon | September Song, Memphis in June | While they're beating the devil out of a guy who's wearing a flaming red wig

When we commit someone to God's care, the priest walks around the coffin, sprinkling it with Holy Water. It signifies a circle made complete. I saw no circle. Despair ordered more blood.

"There was nothing you could do, you know?"

Its voice was not flat; it was without substance. It reminded me of nothing, a disembodied emptiness.

"Look, if we all felt that way, we wouldn't get very far. We try..."

"...and fail."

"Yes, but so what?"

"You end up drinking with me. It's inevitable, I swear. Want another? It's on the house."

"No thanks, I'm driving."

I sniggered.

"Mr. Funny Guy. Always Mr. Funny Guy." There was an unpleasant edge creeping into the voice of despair. It ordered two more doubles. Blood covered the table.

"Somebody has to lighten things up," I said, adopting despair's flat monotone. "Hoagy Carmichael says '...there’s nothing like old Memphis in June'.

"That's crap and you know it."

"Yeah, I do but..."

I felt an argument coming on. It was a good feeling, a sign of life at the fringe of my self. As she had always been. Well, most of the time...



Oh, the days dwindle down to precious few; | September, November. | And these few precious days I’ll spend with you. | These precious days I’ll spend with you.

Peter, Paul & Mary | September Song

Despair wasn't falling for it.

"Yeah, but no matter how much you joke about it, I get to have the final say."

I straightened up, leant forward, put my elbows in the blood and glared at it. "So? Are you proud of that?"

"No."

Despair sounded ashamed, human, almost like a little kid. My anger dissipated immediately. My question did not. I pointed to the graphic at the top of this post.

"So tell me. What could I have done? I clicked, filed, saved, resized, tried all the effects on the menu and combinations of all of them. Nothing. She still looks drab and she still stares out of the same bloody window."

The pub's decor was 'medieval cheap'. Wooden tables, straw on the floor, banners, flags and old weapons on the stone walls. I saw a halyard and thought of the Happy Tutor. He'd appreciate one of those, I thought. I made a note to pinch it and send it to him for Christmas.

I added, "Persephone sleeps... sort of. Well, if she doesn't, at least I have some clue. I know what she's up to. She's balanced."



Madame Butterfly, she lulls me to sleep | Like an ancient river | So wide and deep | She said, "Be easy, baby, ain't nothin' worth stealin' here"

Despair sighed. It seemed old, tired. It knocked back the blood in his cup and motioned to the poster above.

"There was nothing you could do. The girl in the first picture's a painting. So's Butterfly. She's fixed. She was as she is, is as she is, and will be as she now is. Persephone's something else and you know what pressure you put on women when you set them up like that. It's tough, but that's life. The light in the picture and poster? Well..."

Its voice trailed off. It looked around the dark room. The pub was full of people but nobody was there. Despair looked me in the eye.

"You'll have to ask Persephone about the light. Look, I'll tell you something. I'm not meant to tell people this. It's not part of the script but you seem a nice enough dope to me."

"What?"

Despair leant forward. Its breath smelt like death. Its whisper was a rattle. It rasped.

"Nothing lasts forever. Not even godesses."

I been to Babylon | I gotta confess | I can still hear that voice crying in the wilderness | What looks large from a distance, close up is never that big

Despair stood up as though aware it had admitted to something awful, wrapped its cloak around its gaunt frame and strode out of the room, through the door and into the night.

It started to rain. The barman cranked up the radio and Lord Randall floated through old swing doors, across the slick road and rose to an empty sky.

A thin scarlet mist began to fall.

Never could learn to drink that blood and call it wine | Never could learn to look at your face and call it mine.

Bob Dylan | Someone's Got a Hold of My Heart

al-Carlyle

Profiting from Terror

Illegal invasion and occupation made sound business sense



"Terrorism may use religion as a disguise, but terrorism violates every religion and every standard of decency and morality."

George W. Bush Christian Fundamentalist

On Friday May 16, 2003, the Dutch magazine programme, Tegenlicht, aired an investigative insert, De Ijzeren Driehoek, on Washington-based private-equity merchant bank, The Carlyle Group. Featuring Dan Briody, author of The Iron Triangle: Inside the Secret World of the Carlyle Group, and Tim Shorrock of The Nation, Tegenlicht interviews Charles Lewis of the Center for Public Integrity and Carlyle Group co-founder and former Marriott director Steve Norris.

The 48-minute RealPlayer documentary shows the mechanisms The Carlyle Group uses to dominate a world where wars are markets and people are worth only as much as they able or willing to further the interests of a fast-growing military-industrial elite. It ultimately raises the rather lame question, "Do we have a conflict of interests at work in global politics or do we have a new way of doing business?"

Briody, author of the provocative January 2002 Red Herring article Carlyle's Way offers background. Not subject to SEC rulings, Carlyle operates under a cloak of secrecy and is now the world's 11th or twelfth largest defense contractor, enjoying a multi-billion dollar annual turnover, "obscenely high profit margins" and controlling interests in many major defense, aerospace, communications and infrastructure firms in Asia, North America, Europe and the Middle East.

Bolstered by huge profits made off its sale of aerospace company Fairchild, Carlyle began operating in government-regulated industries, using former serving politicians as its front men. It has made its investors and those who work for it extremely wealthy. As Carlyle defense expert Frank Finelli points out at a select presentation, Carlyle's business is now to garner the largest slice of the US DoD's $380bn budget "pie".

Describing his 25 years working on every side of "The Iron Triangle" as "a lot of fun", Finelli and his business buddies are into what Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against, a military-industrial complex so large and powerful it directly influences the politics of war.

Briody takes center stage and introduces Steve Norris, whose statements openly back the reporter's contentions. Founded by Norris and former Carter aide David Rubenstein, Carlyle epitomises everything against which Eisenhower warned. To those operating at the confluence of big business, defense and politics, war is an excellent investment offering high returns.

With Norris and Rubenstein at the helm, Carlyle perfected its investment strategies. Its export of WMD and wholesale death to the highest bidder is now "the way things are around here".

Carlyle critic, Democratic congresswoman and conspiracy theorist Cynthia McKinney relates her run-in with Carlyle following criticism of the Bush administration's ignoring a defense panel review's rejection of United Defense Industries' Crusader missile [United Defense Industries is a Carlyle company]. Next up is the Center for Public Integrity's Charles Lewis, who recounts Carlyle's rebuttal of his criticism of Bush Sr., supposedly a fine and decent man.

A new Mafia, far more powerful than those serving it, i.e. the United States federal government, its defense apparatus, and the countries in which Carlyle operates, holds the world in the palms of its bloodstained hands. Nowhere is this 'super government' more evident than in the horror engulfing the Middle East, Asia and Africa. Yet, in two years of Cheney favouring Halliburton, a similar time considering the implications of Carlyle and similar companies' revolving door policies, and more than enough time to sweep the likes of Enron under the carpet, Americans have remained unmoved. Most see no conflicts of interest.

"...the Good Lord didn't see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratically elected regimes friendly to the United States. Occasionally we have to operate in places where, all things considered, one would normally not choose to go. But, we go where the business is."

Dick Cheney Blasphemer

Now that Americans have been told by their politicians that they are illegally occupying Iraq because it seems like a good way to spend upwards of $5bn monthly, it is this myopia, rather than any marriage of converging conveniences, that is the greatest problem facing Americans today.

The size and scope of Carlyle's investments and operations are what make it so dangerous. It owes its success to former Reagan Secretary of Defense and long-time Rumsfeld friend Frank Carlucci. Carlucci, capitalising on policies he set while in office, took Carlyle into the defense industry. Its fortunes boosted by the Gulf War, Carlucci brought on board [among others] George Bush Sr., James Baker III, Arthur Levitt of the SEC, Richard Darman, former White House budget director, William Kennard of the FCC, former British Prime Minister John Major, former Bundesbank chief Karl Otto Pohl, Eberhard Kuenheim of BMW, former Philippines president Fidel Ramos, and the former leaders of Thailand [Anand Panyarachun] and South Korea.

It is here that the value of Tegenlicht's insert kicks in. Not satisfied with using their knowledge to predict global trends, the politicians waiting their next term on Capitol Hill earn their place on Carlyle's payroll by dictating those trends.

"I haven't been involved in a lot of venture deals where the participation of a president mattered that much."

Jack Biddle Novak Biddle Venture Partners

No civilised country would tolerate the close relationship Carlyle and, by practical extension, United States' president George W. Bush, enjoy with the Saudi royal family and its cohorts in terror, repression and murder. The behaviour of those setting the agenda of our global future is unconscionable at best and downright evil when taken at face value.

The documentary is thoroughly researched, well presented, and carries no trace of the conspiratorial. The facts speak for themselves. Sowing death, destruction and terror about the globe, George W. Bush and his power-crazed sidekicks, supporters and collaborators are everything they pretend others to be; namely, global terrorists bent on furthering selfish interests.

Returning to Tegenlicht's rather lame question, "Do we have a conflict of interests at work in global politics or do we have a new way of doing business?", I'd answer it with another. "Knowing the criminals running the United States are using conflicts of interest and a new way of doing business to their advantage, why the hell is the silence so deafening?"

"We're determined, as well, not to let murderers decide the future of the Middle East."

George W. Bush International Terrorist

If you're unable to view the Tegenlicht documentary, Carlyle's Way is essential reading. Alternatively, listen to Briody's NPR interview. While Tegenlicht offers a comprehensive rundown of the shadowy organisation's interests and front men, it is in Dutch. Here in Reality offers much the same information, as well as links to articles on Carlyle's nefarious business practices. Once past the gaudy banners at CarlyleGroup.Net, more detailed articles, including Tim Shorrock's Crony Capitalism Goes Global, give a thorough rundown on what should be common knowledge.

My interest in the subject is, of course, purely academic.

"Carlyle will always have to defend itself and will never be able to convince certain people that they aren't capable of forging murky backroom deals. George Bush's father does profit when the Carlyle Group profits, but to make the leap that the president would base decisions on that is to say that the president is corrupt."

David Snow Editor: PrivateEquityCentral.net

Indeed.

Batteries Not Included

Toy Story Too

Bush Doll Shades Tom Hanks and Big Apple


"More effective than the real thing," say analysts

"Bring 'em on," says Big George as Iraqis offer tips to stay cool. "It was Canada." But Greg Palast has other ideas and, unlike the Elite Force Aviator flying the Oval Office by the seat of his raggedy ass, he offers facts to back them up.

I can tell you all about the ne'er-do-wells that put out our lights tonight. I came up against these characters -- the Niagara Mohawk Power Company -- some years back. You see, before I was a journalist, I worked for a living, as an investigator of corporate racketeers. In the 1980s, "NiMo" built a nuclear plant, Nine Mile Point, a brutally costly piece of hot junk for which NiMo and its partner companies charged billions to New York State's electricity ratepayers.

To pull off this grand theft by kilowatt, the NiMo-led consortium fabricated cost and schedule reports, then performed a Harry Potter job on the account books. In 1988, I showed a jury a memo from an executive from one partner, Long Island Lighting, giving a lesson to a NiMo honcho on how to lie to government regulators. The jury ordered LILCO to pay $4.3 billion and, ultimately, put them out of business.

And that's why, if you're in the Northeast, you're reading this by candlelight tonight. Here's what happened. After LILCO was hammered by the law, after government regulators slammed Niagara Mohawk and dozens of other book-cooking, document-doctoring utility companies all over America with fines and penalties totaling in the tens of billions of dollars, the industry leaders got together to swear never to break the regulations again. Their plan was not to follow the rules, but to ELIMINATE the rules. They called it "deregulation."

more...

Sorting the Men from the Boys

Father Christopher's Story or...

How a crack-brained, Boulder-based lunatic became my spiritual adviser


The Bombing of the Jesus Bunker [October 2002]

I frequently cite Father Christopher, Chris Locke and RageBoy. For some reason, they are often confused for the same person. I understand that most of you Web-sotted, Ritalin-drunk retards are incapable of stringing together thought processes lasting longer than three seconds, but I cannot understand how three such distinct characters can be mistaken for each other.

In this short post, I hope to clarify matters for the idiots among you.

First, Father Christopher and RageBoy are dead. Chris Locke has still to get there. He's doing well, but he has a way to go yet. If we are to give at least one of these three people a fair shot at life, Locke is the only really viable option [unless some of you are into resurrection and other heavy shit]. To affirm and clarify Locke's existence, it is necessay to confirm the deaths and muddled lives of those with whom he is sometimes confused, Father Christopher and RageBoy.

Let's get to it...

I have experienced some stress of late and, although I will again start taking my tablets, to now I have relied heavily on the services of my spiritual adviser, Father Christopher. Father Christopher, a one-time high-flying IT and AI marketing whizz-kid, writer and raconteur, was blown to bits in the devastating October 9, 2002 bombing of the Boulder-based Jesus Bunker [see graphic above].

Now positioned close to des sources he is, colloquially speaking, ideally placed to serve as my spiritual adviser. I've had to fire AKMA from this high-paying and prestigious position. AKMA nevertheless remains a close and cherished friend. He understands my spiritual needs and knows that, if I am to fulfil my task here on earth, I need assistance from people in positions of undue influence.

As for Chris Locke, he has never forgiven me for the raid on the Jesus Bunker, during which PorridgeBoy and I snatched Fetchin' Gretchen and Halley the Comet from Father Christopher's lascivious clutches.

But Locke and I are professionals and hard men to boot. Locke is an eminent author and authority on the female form [if not content]. He is also the world's pre-eminent thinker on matters pertaining to psychiatry, a discipline in which I have a keen interest, and he is a former controlling shareholder in Starbucks, Barnes & Noble and the one-time demented chattering doll of Boulder, RageBoy.


RageBoy's demise [photographed with a timer by Marek J at right]

Locke sold his share in RageBoy when the short-order ventriloquist's dummy and sex toy met his end as a suicide bomber at the 2003 Boulder New Age Expo and Spiritual Healing Fair. Owing to his use of wooden dentures, positive identification was impossible, but independent corroboration of his demise and incineration was proffered by Dr. Phil McGraw, the disgraced former psychologist, clinician and bumboy to the stars, whom I caught coming out of Locke's office after a bloody good rogering [Oprah was next in line].

"You didn't blog RageBoy's death," he muttered reproachfully.

"Did too."

"Didn't."

"Says who?"

"Me. Look at your archives. Where is it? I paid you a fortune."

"Fuck you, Phil. Give me more."

"Locke just did that. I'm outa here."


PorridgeBoy's last EKG

The desiccation of the demented dwarf of Boulder happened during a tough time and, although I wrote up the report, it remains unpublished [I frequently stumble across strange posts and wonder where the hell they come from].

I probably had good reasons for not publishing notice of RageBoy's death, but none of them matter now.

A third death affriming Locke's existence is that of the loathed, reviled and much-hated PorridgeBoy, scourge of the BlogWorld and all things staid, stodgy and nice. He was a close friend of our bunker-basement psychiatrist. Locke has yet to get over PorridgeBoy's betrayal of him and the circumstances of his heroic death.

If you refer to the map above, you will see that PorridgeBoy, a long-time mercenary and subscriber to Soldier of Fortune, Time and Reader's Digest, came to grief while leading the SAS from Denver International for the final October assault on the Jesus Bunker.

So, there you have it. As strong as Locke's conflicing emotions might be, he is alive and well and struggling to find life in Boulder, Colorado. I employ him for his psychiatric services and expertise and all those associated with him, bar the nubile young blondes he has staffing his refurbished HQ outside Boulder, are dead.

As for the blondes, it should be noted that I am happily married and can take only cursory interest in meeting their various and sometimes surprising needs. I leave it to my lieutenant, Special Forces Operative Colonel Frank 'Fang' Paynter, to care for them, a task he performs most satisfactorily.

Now, I'd better duck out and find those bloody tablets before the bombing restarts.

Manon Des Sources

Justice is a Gypsy...

...and life a film in the making


'But my heart is telling me...'

I can hear the turning of the key | I've been deceived by the clown inside of me. | I thought that he was righteous but he's vain | Oh, something's a-telling me I wear the ball and chain.

My patron saint is a-fighting with a ghost | He's always off somewhere when I need him most. | The Spanish moon is rising on the hill | But my heart is a-tellin' me I love ya still.

I come back to the town from the flaming moon | I see you in the streets, I begin to swoon. | I love to see you dress before the mirror | Won't you let me in your room one time 'fore I finally disappear?

Everybody's wearing a disguise | To hide what they've got left behind their eyes. | But me, I can't cover what I am | Wherever the children go I'll follow them.

Jean Cadoret de Florette [Gérard Depardieu] is a fool, a dreamer and a city slicker become Provencal carnation farmer on family land. He loves his wife and daughter, works hard, puts science to work for him, and sees the good in other people. Hence author Marcel Pagnol [1953], writer Gerard Brach and director Claude Berri's portrayal of him in Jean de Florette as a hunchback, a man deformed by shouldering the sins of the world. His neighbour, César 'Papet' Soubyeran [Yves Montand], coveting his water and given to modern business practices, is a conniving sod with a miserable nephew, Ugolin [Daniel Auteuil]. Cadoret's land enjoys a goodly supply of water but Soubyeran, with the avarice and indifferent greed of the common empire builder, blocks the ancient spring rising on the hunchback's farm, seeking his destruction before he is able to exploit the Luberon land he loves. Under the watchful eye of Jean Cadoret's young daughter, Manon [Ernestine Mazurowna], they succeed.

Recently, I've been wondering why I love my wife as I do. She suffers Borderline Personality Disorder, abuses alcohol, cuts herself with razorblades to cheer herself when down and, generally, does things arse about face. And she does all these things sporadically. More, she refuses to accept the medical services available to her, a symptom of the disorder as defined by any psychiatric publication you care to consult. Mind you, with around 1,000 South Africans dying of AIDS each day, it's surprising we have any medical services [or people to run them].

Yeah, that's for another time. I have strong views on the AIDS issue. Running countries is an ugly business, but the AIDS debacle is as ugly as it gets.

But more about me. The mental, physical and emotional cost of maintaining a family of family of five on an unqualified person's salary in an atmosphere of unmanageable madness is enormous. The day-to-day details are everything one reads in every 'survivor' book picked off the shelves holding the Top 10 bestsellers of the moment. I'm not getting younger but, despite South Africa's lack of institutionalised civic structures, society offers many ways out of such difficult relationships.

You'll find these 'outs' on the same bestsellers, all written by thrice-married divorcees with what my son politely calls 'issues'. These ways are not my ways. Yet, if I look at the Bigger Picture, that painted by the books and the considered thoughts of countless thoughtful people, I must admit to sometimes feeling considerable guilt at struggling, with every ounce of will I can muster, to sustain my 'dysfunctional' brood.

Quite sane and fully functional myself, I am comfortable with dysfunction. In fact, when all is said and done, I'm something of a professional. You'll find definitions of dysfunction in all the above-mentioned bestsellers and a fair whack of textbooks too. In fact, anybody you ask will give you a good idea what goes into making up structurally unsound relationships, family units and societies. They'll then tell you to sue for divorce. Immediately.

Ah hell, screw sanity. I'm dysfunctional, my wife's dysfunctional, we stand to raise a dysfunctional family and I'm happy with that. My son's does extraordinarily well and my elder daughter's aiming for As in her final school year. My younger daughter doesn't attend school very often, but they don't teach much there anymore and she always excels. If that's dysfunction, so be it.

So what holds it all together? One thing the books and the considered advice all too frequently fail to address is the power and nature of love. I've been learning about love recently. It's a tough course.

Over the past few months, I've been pushed to not one, but many walls. Being pushed to the wall means being squeezed of all resources and told to deliver the goods... and then some. At such times, the feeling is similar to being told of the death of someone close to you. For a short while, you move beyond despair and lose all hope of being able to cope � with anything. When I'm pushed to the wall, the blogger in me detaches and watches my response and all eventual outcomes.

To put it in medical terms, I become, to a degree, dissociated. I think this part of me does this because it knows that any rough time is transient, momentary, and short lived. It knows that life, like a good movie, goes on.

My wife, who now knows something about her condition, uses the bulletin boards, hogging my time on the Internet. She does not like her predicament, but she is powerless before it. Yet, unlike me, she has not yet been forced to give in or give up. She battles on.

I've watched others fighting alcoholism and BPD on the Web, in AA, therapy, rehabs and just about any place you care to mention. One thing that has struck me most forcibly about these people is that they are not the symptoms of whatever is reducing their lives to bomb craters of dysfunction.

They remain the people they were when those symptoms arrived.

Granted, the people I relate to tend to fall into a certain personality type, but that doesn't increase or diminish their courage. Nor does their abundance or lack of any personality trait detract from the super-human effort needed to smash or drag themselves from one volatile day to the next.

Chris Locke has elaborated on the deeper meaning of the title of his next book, No Love Lost. I'm pleased Locke has turned his avuncular pen, acerbic humour and adequate reasonable giant intellect to the granular rather than the particulate.

Were he to have sought whatever it is he holds in store for us in the uncertain state of Schrödinger's Cat, I'd not be as keen to read the views of a person whose writing entrances me as much as it drives others to distraction.

That said, Locke is one to cover all his bases, and so we are treated to a little lecture on the dual meaning of 'no love lost'.

If we allowed the physicists to have their way with us, we'd all end up as energy operating in fields. Science tells us there is nothing else. As 'energy operating in fields' constitutes 'something' as opposed to 'nothing', and as it is all we have, 'nothing' is beyond our comprehension. Using the simplified version of the physicists' Bible, Locke describes love in much the same way as physicists do energy.

Bend, fold, spindle, crush, blast, burn or deep freeze it, love does not go away. It can manifestly change, blossom, mutate, grow, decrease, flower, explode, hide, or die but it does not disappear. Love is definitely 'something' and there is always enough to go round.

Considering Jean de Florette, Bob Dylan's lyrics, my dysfunctional life, Chris Locke's forthcoming book and the nature of love, I could not help but be reminded of the following:

The quarks and leptons are the primary actors in the cosmic 3-D movie, and like real actors, these particles interact among themselves. Understanding the interactions took physicists most of this century; but today they understand them rather well. Using high-energy accelerators which probe matter, physicists found that the complexity of the world disappears at tiny distances, and the interaction between quantum particles becomes simple and falls into symmetrical patterns. A simple picture of reality emerged with the realisation that the complicated interactions among quarks and leptons are in fact mediated by a definite set of quantum particles called gluons. As the name implies, gluons cause quantum particles to stick to one another – gluons are the glue that holds the world together.

The Cosmic Code Heinz R Pagels 1983 Michael Joseph Ltd. p231

Well yes, as if I needed to point that one out. Sorry, but perhaps I needed to hear it. Love is like gluons. It holds us together. If anybody has a better definition [beyond St. Paul's over-traded thesis], please drop me a mail using the link at the top of this page.

For now though, with Jean de Florette having been done in, Bob Dylan wearing his heart on his sleeve, Chris Locke writing a new book and my wife and I being held together by a dead French farmer and an unknown number of love bead's, lets move on to the second film.


'I love ya but you're strange...'

I march in the parade of liberty | But as long as I love you I'm not free. | How long must I suffer such abuse | Won't you let me see you smile one time before I turn you loose?

I've given up the game, I've got to leave, | The pot of gold is only make-believe. | The treasure can't be found by men who search | Whose gods are dead and whose queens are in the church.

We sat in an empty theater and we kissed, | I asked ya please to cross me off-a your list. | My head tells me it's time to make a change | But my heart is telling me I love ya but you're strange.

One more time at midnight, near the wall | Take off your heavy make-up and your shawl. | Won't you descend from the throne, from where you sit? | Let me feel your love one more time before I abandon it.

Bob Dylan | Abandoned Love

Ten years later, in Manon des Sources, we find Jean de Florette's daughter, Manon [Emmanuelle Béart], a mountain girl shepherding goats on her father's land in the Luberon. Unrecognised by César and Ugolin Soubyeran, the men responsible for her father's death and dispossessed by their murderous deceit, she uncovers the two farming magnates' duplicity and the source of the spring blocked by them. With quiet resolve, she exploits César's guilt and plays off his nephew's hopeless love of her against the affections of a stranger. Reclaiming her birthright, Manon reveals their roles in Jean de Florette's death. In a devastating final twist, César is found to be her father and both De Florette's and his lands fall into Manon's hands, lending due weight to the origin of her name in manouche [gypsy], manqué [shortage], manoeuvrier [manipulator], and manoir [manor or house]. Although she is the spring from which justice flows, the circumstances surrounding Manon's birth cast her as the source of all that which has gone before. The most memorable, beautifully photographed film diptych I've seen, Jean de Florette / Manon des Sources reflects life without compromise, showing justice's double-edged sword cutting through woolly notions of right and wrong. No matter how good these films, they remain representations of life, photographic frames passed before our eyes in a manner mimicking movement or justice's inevitability. Back in the can, they revert to frozen images; stolen moments carefully choreographed and spliced to a righteous dance we view at will. Justice is not inevitable, but when it does put in an appearance, it usually cuts both ways. The truth of Claude Berri's films lies in the unerring message that none of us is innocent.

So where is the Bigger Picture painted for us by the Top 10 authors, the textbooks and most made-for-TV soaps? Is it in the movie, our appreciation of it as a parable to include in the stories of our lives, in the universality of its meaning, its message mirrored in so much that we see about us, or in the minds of those who put it together? Or is the Bigger Picture dependent on who we are as we watch the film, that succession of images scrolling before our eyes?

Is each not tied to the other? Does the Bigger Picture not grow from the image to the movie to the screen to the viewer to life and everything beyond? Can it not be that the Bigger Picture is encapsulated in a single frame taken from a single cut of a particular scene?

If I look about me, is it unreasonable for me to suppose that my life forms a small part of a greater whole, the meaning of which is incomprehensible to me? Am I not a frame in the movie of life? Is it unreasonable to assume I constitute but one image in the mind of a director making a movie I have yet to appreciate?

If I look at the images mirrored in this entry, and once I get past the seemingly immediate and arresting presence of Emmanuelle Béart, I am lost in my recollection of the films, my imagined reality of the hills of the Luberon, my readings of Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence, Tojours Provence and Hotel Pastis, the light and colour of the Impressionists, etc.

The image, or the immediate, takes me beyond where I am or who I am and this is so of every in-the-world, real-life situation.

Am I wrong, incorrect or stupid in not seeing in, for example, my wife taking a razor to her arm, the person she is, the world she means to me, the possibility of what she can become, those times and things and moments we have shared and will share, the strength, vision and hope of my family, the potential of every human being to overcome any adversity, the beauty of the unpredictable being so utterly predictable and a sense of wonder at one day being able to view the director's cut?

I think not.

Ah yes, fatalism. I am subjecting myself to the clearest possible example of the odious Grand Narrative. Whether I frame these opinions in terms of myth, legend, stories, film or religion, I am relinquishing my hold on my right, responsibility and freedom to choose.

It's a cop out.

Again, I think not. Pushed to the wall, I find [as I have found throughout my life] that, if justice is not, choice and its consequences are inevitable. More often that not, my choice, which is to love my wife despite the restrictions it appears to place on her life, my life and those of my children, is only wrong when it does not suit the grand narratives or fictions constituting the lives of others. My life does not fit the movies in which they believe themselves to have title roles.

I'd rather not walk out on the whole shebang and, with my brilliant intellect, disarming charm and devastating wit, cut a swathe through life that leads to personal fame, fortune and a succession of relationships with beautiful, intelligent and witty young women pursuing careers benefiting society at large [ho ho, I've always loved that one].

Is your life a movie or do you merely choose to view it as such? Is your life a film or do you star in the Bigger Picture? Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

The physicists tell us gluons came first. Frankly, I'm inclined to believe them.

We are all in the movie; it is the only show in town. It is not clear where the dramatic action is leading or if the movie has a plot or a director. As a physicist my interest is in how the scenery for this 3-D movie is constructed, what its parts are, and how the machinery works.

The Cosmic Code Heinz R Pagels 1983 Michael Joseph Ltd. p231

On Friday morning, my wife handed me a card she uses to buy alcohol. I took it, broke it, turfed it into the dustbin and thought, "Well, that's a positive sign." On Friday evening, she showed me vicious bruises marring her arm and chest. She was mugged on Monday or Tuesday but had decided not to tell me about it. She'd successfully hidden the bruises for four days.

I was not surprised she'd been mugged. We live in South Africa. Everybody gets mugged. Well, I don't but you know me. It's that suicidal glint in the eyes that gets to them. No, I was surprised she'd decided to hide her mugging from me and equally surprised at her reasons for doing so.

Had we moved two steps forward and one back or one forward and two back?

Whether ships or planes go down, embassies or Humvees loaded with American troops go up, the rebels move in or Charles Taylor moves out, I know what will occupy my mind for the next day or two. She's far more important to me than war or peace, famine or disease, shock or awe, politicians or blogging. She's my wife and I love her.

Call it or me what you like. Invoke gluons, fatalism, 3-D cosmic movies, irresponsibility or choice. It doesn't matter. I call it love and, as Locke puts it, after 24 years, there's No Love Lost.

Yeah, Bubba, I'm in your movie too.

Manon's story, whether we see it in a single frame or as part of a stunning filmic diptych, plays to our desire to see justice done. What goes around comes around, doesn't it? Doesn't it? Everybody says it does.

The message I take from these films is that relationships, be they insipid and boring or passionate and volatile, are better than partnerships. Where people's lives are intertwined, there is no right or wrong way and no good or bad way determining the individual's innocence or guilt. Nor can we foresee the outcome of single scenes forming part of an as yet unfinished story.

We have to wait until the whole thing's cobbled together before we can all sit back and watch it together. We'll then be in a position to judge its worth. I think, as Pagels surmises, we'll find that although we all go through it alone, we're all in it together...

...and that means sticking to those we love, through thick and thin.

Oh where ha'e ye been...

Lord Randall my son?

The voice of the voiceless


'...ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken'

"Oh where ha'e ye been, Lord Randall my son?
O where ha'e ye been, my handsome young man?"
"I ha'e been to the wild wood: mother make my bed soon,
For I'm weary wi' hunting, and fain wald lie down."

"Where gat ye your dinner, Lord Randall my son?"
Where gat ye your dinner, my handsome young man?"
"I dined wi' my true love; mother make my bed soon,
For I'm weary wi' hunting, and fain wald lie down."

Ah well, here I am. I'd no idea the figures would add up this way, but they have. I played my cards close to my chest but, somewhere, I've miscalculated. How does Annie put it? Yeah, "It's a thin line between love and hate."

Heh... listen to those words...

The sweetest woman in the world could be the meanest woman in the world,
You can make her be that way.
She might be holding something in
That's really gonna hurt you one of these fine days.

Kinda reminds me of my old friend, Jack Fate.

You know, I once knew a woman who looked like you,
She wanted a whole man, not just a half,
She used to call me sweet daddy when I was only a child,
You kind of remind me of her when you laugh.

What's a sweetheart like you doing in a dump like this?

Indeed.

I take another look. The cards don't lie. Or change face. They stare back at me.

Busted.

What does one do in such a situation? You deal with it, I suppose. I've done so up to now and we've always come through.

What the fuck. These things are meat and drink to me. I am, after all, a professional and a hard man to boot.

You close down, sell everything, move into the bunker and wait for the fallout to clear.

What could be simpler?

A lot, I guess. It's all a gamble.

The stench of booze hangs heavy in the slow air and fresh blood smears the floor...

A sweetheart like you....

You been to hell, baby? You looked down the barrel of a big gun? You taken as little as you can? You found others haven't a clue? You found them forever holding it against you?

You want to ask yourself those questions and think about them before allowing that poison to drip from your tongue?

No, it's not a question. It's a demand.

There's a knock at the door.

Damn. As if I need this.

I move to the door... but don't open it.

"Hello."

"Mike."

"Hey, how're you?"

Shit, there is no way he'd be able to handle this. I've seen it many times but, like so many, he lives in another world. Yeah, all I get to see are dark eyes. Hollow eyes, actually, the dead-eye sockets of real-world ghosts...


'She wanted a whole man, not just a half...'

"What gat ye to your dinner, Lord Randall my son?
What gat ye to your dinner, my handsome young man?"
"I gat eels boiled in broo: mother make my bed soon,
For I'm weary wi' hunting, and fain wald lie down."

"What became of your bloodhounds, Lord Randall my son?
What became of your bloodhounds, my handsome young man?"
"O they swelled and they died: mother make my bed soon,
For I'm weary wi' hunting, and fain wald lie down."

"Drop five-hundred feet now, son. You have to fly under the radar. These bastards will blow us away without second thought."

Ah, shut the fuck up. I know every radar installation from here to eternity. I've flown beneath the range and scope of each one so often they know I don't exist. Don't tell me how to fly beneath the radar.

I drop five-hundred feet. Blood spatters the glass. He wipes away the sweat and breathes more easily. Some colour returns to his face.

"Sorry, I know you've been here..."

"Don't worry about it. Really."

"Thanks."

Anyway, what the hell.

I take my case to a Higher Authority.

Marek is at the door. He giggles as I walk past so I knee him in the groin, rip the placard from around his neck, read it and, in front of those rushing past, scream at him.

"What's this, you mad fucking Polack bastard? Unemployed. Wife and four children to feed. Please help. God bless. For Christ's sake, Marek, get a grip on yourself. You got a drink?"

He shakes his head. "I do have a potato."

It makes two shots of vodka.

"Where's the man?" I ask him.

He looks confused, glancing at the doorway I'm about to enter and at the street.

"Our man, Marek." I belt him across the back of his head.

"Out stalking, you deranged scum," he spits back at me, nursing the fresh welt marring his shaved head. "Looking for girls."

He calms down, looks me in the eye. "Screw you, anyway. The lights of the land of plenty are gonna shine on the truth some day, my friend, but you ain't gonna see them."

I ram him up against the wall and, holding him to it by jamming my forearm against his throat, rifle his pockets. Two more potatoes. Marek falls to the sidewalk, his clown costume intact.

I knock back the potatoes and walk through the imposing doors.

"You're a saint, Marek," I call back at the crazed Pole. "When they finally let you in up there, toss me a coupla spuds, would ya?"

He grins.

"You dumb bastard," he shouts.

"Yeah, you too. We're joined at the hip."

They tell me the cards are good. Well, they are from their point of view but, Jesus, as far as I'm concerned, they couldn't look uglier. I'll have to ante up. I could murder them all but I kill the idea instead.

Yeah, when Lady Luck's running against... nah, she smiles; it's plain luck or fish that run.

Outside, I stand on the sidewalk, waiting for a miracle.

It's raining. The barman across the road has cranked up the radio and I grab snatches of Lord Randall floating through old swing doors, across the slick road and above the hiss of fast-moving traffic.

A thin scarlet mist falls.


Here Comes Uncle Ernie

"O I fear ye are poisoned, Lord Randall my son!
O I fear ye are poisoned, my handsome young man?"
"O yes I am poisoned: mother make my bed soon,
For I'm sick at the heart, and I fain wald lie down."

He's not too shocked by the mess. After we clean up the blood, wash down the walls and dispose of the evidence, he sits outside, on a chair in the sunny garden, reading the weekend paper. I sit inside and watch the Grand Prix, cursing Lady Luck.

Later, we're standing on the other side of the road watching the cars go by. Although shaken, he discusses the possibility of buying himself a Mercedes.

The sun is out and it's warm.

God, the other night I had some strange dreams, but they can keep.

I phone my spiritual adviser, Father Christopher.

Why the hell he keeps cropping up, I don't know. It's starting to piss me off.

Anyway, I want some answers.

"Monastery."

"Forgive me father..."

"Fuck off, Golby."

"Yeah well, fuck you too. Listen, Father, I'm really fucked."

"Fish fucked frugally."

"You heard that one?"

"What?"

"Fish-free truly."

"Yeah, of course..."

"Where's it from? I want to know. It's been in my head for years but I don't where it comes from. It was supposed to be some kinda Zen koan thing..."

"Yeah, yeah, I dunno. What you want?"

"I'm fucked, Father."

"Yes, my son, I know that, you know that, we all fucking know it, but I'll tell you what's new."

"Eh?"

"Well, I can't do anything for your fucked-ness but I can at least give you the good news."

"What?"

"Your ordination papers have come through."

[The tape blurs at this point. Graphics and sound quality are low. We can make out that the conversation continues. Golby is pleased that he has been ordained a priest in the Church of Rage. There are vague references to vestal virgins, sacrifices, matters of a pornographic nature and several lurid photographs, but nothing that has any bearing on this particular story. It as if the tape is being crudely doctored. It clears abruptly.]

"So what does this all mean?"

"You're in Heaven, Bunkie. Get used to it."

Heaven? It's a cross between a casino and a Days Inn but, with the poet rotting in the real world and purgatory threatening an exercise bike, heaven is as good as it gets. As Brother Steven puts it:

The building, heaven, goes on as far as the eye can see, into the clouds. In the lobby in the morning an enormously long white tablecloth appears, with coffee and one lemon Danish, which renews itself endlessly. Angels are everywhere, dancing.

Oh, shit, I think to myself.

There's only one step down from here, baby, | It's called the land of permanent bliss.

I am stunned. I look at the receiver, feeling giddy. The floor becomes fluid, sticky. Suddenly, I feel the rage surge through the floor and well up into me, flooding my being, drowning the world, choking my heart and making my eyes bleed.

My words seethe down the line, reminding me of the hiss of the cars, the reddening blush of the welt on Marek's head, the sibilant white noise of the running tape and the slow, spreading pool of blood.

"Listen to me, you dumb little nickel-and-dime, dollar-a-day rent whore," I bawl at the Good Father Christopher, "There Is No Way Things Are."

I float up, up, up...

...bathed in a white light...

...shapes, people, hints of voices...

...relatives, people from a past I know but do not remember...

The banging at the door is insistent.

"Open the fucking door or I'll blow the lock off."

It sounds like a kid. I open it.


Officer Cartman knocks
on Heaven's door

"There's a time and a place for everything," says Officer Cartman, idly smacking the head of his baton into the palm of his right hand. "For now, you will respect my authoritaaay."

The blood becomes a river flowing to the sea.

I decide to follow it. Under a Vanilla Sky.

I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it | I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it, | I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin', | I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin', | I saw a white ladder all covered with water, | I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken, | I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children, | And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, | And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Bob Dylan | A Hard Rain's A-Gonna fall

Note

With thanks to RageBoy, Stephen Prickett, Jack Fate, Officer Eric Cartman and John Polkingthorne's t-shirt. Marek too, if he hasn't already returned to Heaven where, as Mark Woods pointed out some time ago, Jesus and Barthelme finally come together.