Wednesday, April 14, 2004

FLIES IN AMBER

Raven and I have been in a state of suspended animation—like flies in amber—for several weeks.

Rave, I feel like Kurtz in “The Heart of Darkness”. At the end all he could say was “The horror”. And then he died.

“Sounds like Brando in “Apocalypse Now” commenting on the acting style of Dennis Hopper.”

You got it! I open the newspaper and read that 900 people—mostly women and children—were mowed down by marines in one town in Iraq. And then I read in the next headline that the US is “disappointed” that Iraqi soldiers don’t want to kill folks who are resisting. Disappointed!

Raven picks at a slab of left-over vegetarian lasagne.

“Why do they need Iraqi soldiers anyway? They have over 18,000 mercenaries there earning up to 1,000 bucks a day. Retreads from Pinochet’s DINA, from the jolly Ulster boys, the Apartheid reinforcers from South Africa, etcetera. There must be a lot more assiduous readers of Soldier of Fortune magazine out there just burning to sign up.”

Interesting choice of term, Rave: burning. Four of those soldiers of fortune were burned and hanged from trees or lampposts or something. That’s what set the marines on the massacre path this time.

“Hmmm. We could listen to “Strange Fruit”. Seems like we haven’t played “The Best of Billie Holiday” in ages.”

We haven’t played anything in ages. Too bummed out by the horror.

“What was that Robin Williams movie about radio? Ah yes: “Good Morning,
V-I-E-T-N-A-M!”

Sure smells like napalm to me, Rave. Maybe it’s time to break out Country Joe and the Fish? A blast from the past:

Well, come on all of you, big strong men,
Uncle Sam needs your help again.
He's got himself in a terrible jam
Way down yonder in Vietnam
So put down your books and pick up a gun,
We're gonna have a whole lotta fun.
And it's one, two, three,
What are we fighting for?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam;
And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! We're all gonna die.

“Yeah, a blast like C-4 plastic explosives. Or we could snicker over the transcripts from Aunt Jemima at the 9/11 hearings. Looks like she would have moved heaven and earth not to have been there.”

The truth will never be acknowledged, guy. No committee is going to state publicly that their government allowed—or paid—those crazy Saudis to crash into the Twin Towers so that Bush and his cronies could blast off on their broomsticks to take over the Middle East oil fields. The smoke from the Reichstag Fire and the wreckage from the battleship Maine were all over Ground Zero, but almost nobody had the balls to say the Bushies did it. One columnist here in Mexico caught all kinds of flak for his 9/12 piece, “The Martians Speak English”, that made a very solid logical case for the only possible culprit having been the US government.

Raven narrows is beady eyes.

“You mean justice will never be done?”

Rave, I can’t believe you’re asking that. In the world we’re living in! Or the state of Mexico we’re living in, for that matter. Where the fox is paid an obscene number of pesos to guard the henhouse!

“I know—and he builds a landing strip out back for the narcotraficantes.”

And then, when his two top cops are caught with their mitts in the cocaine jar and popped in the slammer, he fires 500 cops. So now we have 500 unemployed semi-literate delinquents roaming the streets with the weapons they didn’t turn in.

“Oh, happy day. I guess that means we won’t be going out today, right?”

I think we’ll do our bit to fight the explosion of excop crimes right here at home.

“And you said another world was possible.”

But not a better one. Apparently.