Friday, June 20, 2003

IMPEACH THE BASTARDS II

Raven and I have been watching with great interest the incandescent bulbs lighting up above people’s heads who have finally realized that they were suckered into accepting and supporting the invasion of the sovereign country, Iraq—an invasion that is still going on, with daily deaths from confrontations between Iraquis trying to defend THEIR country and U.S. soldiers who’ve been brainwashed into believing they’re back in—where?—Indiana?

It warms our hearts to see folks finally demanding a bipartisan congressional committee to investigate the machinations/manipulations/manufacturing of evidence and just plain lies (we come from the country and we know manure when we see it) strung together by the petrocriminals of the Bush Gang in order to get their hands—er, drills—into the second largest petroleum reserves on the planet.

“After that investigation shows just how guilty those guys are, do you think that people will look at the invasion of Afghanistan and be able to muster up enough historical memory to connect 9/11 with the Reichstag Fire?” Raven clamps his beak into a rye cracker.

A wry question from the rye cracker monster, huh? I’d like to hope so, Rave. I really would. But you have to remember that the bulbs that we’ve been seeing begin to give off some light are nowhere near the majority. In most of the bulbs there still beats the heart of darkness.

“Wretched analogy. It would be better to say still persists the peristalsis of stupidity.”

You’re too sensitive to images of darkness, and you’re getting too far out, guy—too close to Poe’s “detestable” putrescence from “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar.”

“Poe! Of course. A saint of my devotion. Or maybe I am the saint of his devotion? A second-class saint though—all he had me say was “Nevermore”. Not even “One day at a time.”

Ouch, Rave. I fear we’re heading into a fog of alcoholic imagery.

“He WAS an alcoholic.” Raven unwraps another little packet of rye.

Poe? I suppose so. It didn’t seem to hurt his writing, though.

“I was talking about Bush. The leader of the Gang. The born-again bonehead who—as we indicated a few months back—should be impeached.”

Who would—in fact—do better falling off a barstool in Texas.

“Both of them would do better.” Raven lies down on the windowsill, ready for a snooze in the sun.

Bush and Poe?

I had a terrible feeling—even before I finished my question—that I had been had.

“Of course not.” Raven closes one eye. “Bush and the horse he rode in on.”

To the bar in Texas.

“To the Oval Office. It’s high time they cleaned out the manure in there.”

Raven closes the other eye, and a discreet snore begins to escape from his beak.


Monday, June 16, 2003

DUELING BANJOS

Raven is in conspicuously bad humor this morning. Both of us despise rain, but he takes every drop as a personal insult.

Gee, guy, try to cheer up. We have to think about more important stuff than the weather.

Raven sniffs. “I think I am getting a cold. And you—who spent almost the whole day DRY in bed yesterday—you could show a little more sensitivity to your fellow creatures.”

I wasn’t just loafing, Rave. I was suffering the slings and arrows of my dental adventure of Saturday. Well, the aftermath of anesthesia, anyway. Now I remember why it had been 10 years since I last put myself in the hands of a dentist.

“I wish I could identify with you. Maybe teeth weren’t such an evolutionary bargain after all.” Raven looks down his beak in the mirror. “I don’t have tonsils, either.”

Rave, you are way ahead of the pack by anybody’s standards. I am reading a piece by Charley Reese. My friend Maryanne forwards me his stuff regularly—he is always a breath of fresh air, or at least a breath of common sense. I think you’ll appreciate that he agrees with you about the lack of evolutionary progress by the human race. Listen:


“It's too bad we can't force political leaders to settle their quarrels personally with pistols or swords. If that were their only choice, then most conflicts would be settled by negotiations. But instead, political leaders have the power to spend the lives of the nation's youth as if these precious lives were just another appropriation in the budget.

There is nothing I can do about it, but I don't like it. I suspect the human race has not changed appreciably since the cave man's days. Men have always settled conflicts with force and violence, and I suspect they will right up to the point where they wipe the human race off the face of the Earth.

If there is such a thing as evolution, it ain't working, at least as far as the human brain is concerned.”

“I told you so. Humans are an embarrassment to the animal kingdom—weak, conflictive, INSENSITIVE TO THEIR FELLOW CREATURES.”

Okay, I get the message. What would you like me to do to make you feel better?

“How about a cup of tea, for starters? With a smidge of Broncolin dumped into it. And—let’s see—soft-boiled eggs and toast and maybe some slices of papaya with a little lime juice dribbled over them and….

”Too bad we live at the end of the earth, Rave—sounds like a trip to the breakfast buffet at the Caracas Hilton is in order for you.

“Too far to fly in my tender condition. I guess I will just have to depend on your kindness….

”Blanche Dubois, in the flesh—er, feathers. Just what I needed.