Thursday, September 23, 2004

DAYS OF WRATH

Raven is outraged.

“Look at this asshole, Bush, defending his illegal war in the UN! Doesn’t that guy ever feel shame?”

I don’t know, Rave. Shame is one of the principal roots of alcoholism, so he must have felt it at one time or other.

“He must have drowned it in alcohol, you mean. And here he is again, refusing to contribute to the fun to eliminate world hunger. Chirac says 110 countries are party to the program, and that soon there may be 150. Only the US is against it. Another shameful posture.”

Rave, don’t drink anymore coffee this morning. You’re at risk for a strroke.

“If I weren’t a bird I’d be smoking cigarettes, too. What the hell!”

I see: birds can do coffee, but doing cigarettes is shameful.

“Something like that, yes. Another US hostage was beheaded in Iraq. A British hostage is begging for his life in a video. But for Bush, everything is hunky dory.”

That’s a term I haven’t heard in awhile. What else is new and exciting in the world?

Raven changes pages in Internet.

“Hugo Chavez didn’t go the new York City to give his speech at the UN because something was wrong with one of his plane’s engines. Here he is in fatigues on the Colombian border. Don’t worry, I’ll print out the photo for you. And La Jornada says the world will explode if Bush is elected, perdon—re-elected.”

Close, but no cigar. The Mayan prophecies say that the world won’t explode for another 7 or 8 years.

“Maybe the calendrical correlations from the Mayan to the Gregorian calendar are off by just a feather—that could easily create a 3 or 4 year difference.”

You might be right, my fine feathered friend. I was reading something about the End of the World—or the Coming of the Messiah—being behind the Israeli’s mad campaign to blow up the Middle East.

“We need to put on that CD that has the ‘Dies Irae’, don’t you think? Remember when the people were all biting the dust from the Black Plague in that Bergmann film, ‘The Seventh Seal’, and they paraded around in the towns scourging themselves and singing the ‘Dies Irae’?

I remember that very well, Rave. The knight returning from battling Arabs in the Crusades was playing chess with Death. That film is in my Top Ten. I also remember all too well singing the ‘Dies Irae’ in the hot, stinky choir loft of St. Andrew’s church every time somebody paid for a Requiem mass. Days of wrath. You’ve got something. They are here. A Requiem for the planet is in order.

“Days of Wrath are a logical reaction to the action of ‘Shock and Awe’. Or whatever the Pentagon called the Iraq invasion. The whole thing sticks in my craw like a piece of rotten meat.”

Nice breakfast imagery. Is that a plot to get your beak around the last of my hash-browned potatoes?

“Never even crossed my mind.”

I’ll bet. At least you have a mind TO cross. Crossing Bush’s mind would be like setting off across the Sahara—with no camel, and no oasis in sight.

“Since you brought it up, I wouldn’t mind taking just a peck or two at those potatoes. After all, the world could explode any minute.”

I give up. Peck all of them.

“You’re a peach.”

Don’t push it. This could be MY day of wrath.