CANIS IRATUS.

More Presidential Songs for School Children

2009-10-24T03:17:00.003-07:00

WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING

[To the tune of "The Times They Are A'Changin'"]

Come gather 'round people,
Whoever you are,
And think of those times
That were better by far;
In spite of justice imperfect
The law was the law,
And we lived in a country
Worth saving.
And a man came along
Sworn to serve one and all:
Warren Gamaliel Harding.

Come writers and pundits
Who stab with your pens,
And ruin the names
Of much better men;
Don't miss this chance
To get your licks in again,
For your curses
Earn praises in Heaven.
When you're long forgotten
Will still live the name:
Warren Gamaliel Harding.

Sure, the man took a few
Drinks now and then,
And the poker games lasted
Until God knows when.
He was not very wise
In the choice of his friends,
And sheer eloquence
He oft times was lacking.
No pretty boy,
For prayers Heaven sent:
Warren Gamaliel Harding.

He had no great vision
To save the whole earth;
He had no list of enemies
To grind into the dirt.
Yet he pardoned those
Whom others had hurt,
And for such deeds
Is high pardon given.
And the last ones now
Will later be first:
Warren Gamaliel Harding.

In re Roman Polanski: Who cares what Hollywood scum think, but ...

2009-09-30T18:45:00.002-07:00

I'm sorry to see the names of Bernard-Henri Levy and Pascal Bruckner on the petitioners list. These are men who in the past have had the courage to stand up to the foolish opinions of rotten elites. That courage has failed them now.

The Unhappy Coincidence of Obama and Iran

2009-06-22T20:16:00.002-07:00

Over the past few days, Iranians have done something that can't be done often enough. They've shown that human beings still aspire and deserve to be free. This ought to be an obvious fact, but our insane political culture makes it a deeply controversial one.

Oppression is strong and efficacious; it may well crush this moment of liberty, though it will hopefully pay a price for doing so. History obeys nobody's moral laws, as it is moved by the good, the bad, and the accidental.

One of those historical accidents attending Iran's revolutionary moment is Barack Obama, and if he is a blessing he wears an impenetrable disguise.

In March Obama sent an unprecedented video message to "the people and the leaders of Iran" - as if these two things were a harmonious whole. In it he repeatedly refers to Iran as The Islamic Republic of Iran, rolling out the phrase with relish. Whether or not Iran ought to be an Islamic republic is a question that is currently being put to the test of blood in Iran itself, and US interest would be better served by a negative answer. It was not diplomatically necessary for Obama to insist on Islamic Republic; on the contrary, it was diplomatically undesirable. Obama cannot distinguish between deference and diplomacy. This is not a small thing, just as making respectful reference to a "Supreme Leader" of Iran is not a small thing. Matt Yglesias makes the useless point that "The Fuhrer" was Hitler's "proper title", missing the obvious fact that Roosevelt and Churchill did not refer to Hitler as The Fuhrer.

In his video message, Obama heaped effusive praise on Persian civilization. Well, Persian civilization is currently in agony, so if this praise was sincere then we should expect some indignation to match it. Obama coolly explains that he is too smart to fall into such a trap - Obama does his diplomatic thinking out loud. Empty flattery, followed by indifference.

In explaining his sang froid, Obama refers to the history of US-Iranian relations - what does he think of when he thinks of that history? US crimes, apparently. The fact that the clique that currently oppresses Iran is the same clique that seized our embassy and held our people hostage seems to be missing from his consciousness. Obama assumes the moral superiority of anti-American claims, or thinks that "diplomacy" requires him to assume it.

Whatever message Obama thinks he is sending to the bloody hangmen that rule Iran, the message they are getting is clear: There is no danger, whatsoever, of pushing Obama too far. Kim Jung-Il understands this, if our own intelligensia do not.

What do you get when you cross Moral Equivalence with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder?

2009-06-02T07:35:00.002-07:00

"What we want to do is open a dialogue," Obama told the BBC. "You know, there are misapprehensions about the West, on the part of the Muslim world. And, obviously, there are some big misapprehensions about the Muslim world when it comes to those of us in the West."

So I have returned at last ...

2009-05-17T18:37:00.002-07:00

GLEN: And look what kind of a mess this country has gotten into while I was gone.

SOCRATES: Being an Athenian myself, thanks be to Zeus, I'd have to note that you Americans have no idea what a real mess looks like.

CRITO: You're absolutely right, Socrates. Wait'll he sees what Phaedo did to the guest room.

SOCRATES: You want to talk about the sad state of the world? Have a few beers with Demosthenes some time. By which I mean, don't.

CRITO: That's for sure. He starts out talking about Rule of Law, then he just raves about how Meidias stole his lawn furniture.

SOCRATES: Which is very American of him, I think. And speaking of ersatz Americans, we might as well have the Romans over and listen to Cicero and Tacitus bitch and moan all night.

CRITO: Very true, Socrates. You are so wise.

GLEN: Things have really changed around here, I can see.

SOCRATES: Exactly.

Eight things every Obama supporter should believe ...

2008-05-29T11:26:00.002-07:00

His kids went to school with Zbigniew Brzezinski.
With God’s help, Obama learned how to sleep in church with his eyes open.
When Obama says “Hope”, you’re supposed to say “How high?”
Every time Obama says “Change”, Arkansas and Kentucky change places.
Iran doesn’t really have a president, but Canada does.
“Preconditions” are those stripy pants that diplomats wear.
Obama’s grandmother burned down the Reichstag. It was totally not cool.
Ambition is Poverty. And he should know.

To the Names of the Unknown

2008-05-26T11:17:00.003-07:00

The regimental chaplain, if any, who usually attends the burials from the hospital, should make notes and communicate details to the captain of the company, and to the family at home. Of course it is usually impossible to mark the graves with names, dates, etc., and consequently the names of the "unknown" in our national cemeteries equal about one-half of all the dead.

William Tecumseh Sherman

Ahmadinejad at Columbia: The Pampering of Evil

2007-09-24T12:36:00.000-07:00

It was easy for Ahmadinejad to get cheers from his audience at Columbia. It was difficult to get them to jeer him.

In fact, it was so difficult that Ahmadinejad had to do a backward triple-somersault into the fever swamp by declaring that there were no homosexuals in Iran; "That phenomenon does not exist in our country." Only then could he get a negative reaction from the children of Korrectisch Politik.

Granted, Ahmadinejad's weird "dialogue" with Columbia was prefaced by a blistering smack-down from President Lee Bollinger. No doubt Bollinger has been feeling some heat from the alumni over the past couple of days, particularly from the School of Journalism grads who might have interpreted those Hitler remarks as a threat to invite George Bush to speak at Columbia. But I will not question Bollinger's motives; his remarks were very good and he properly set the tone by administering a good, stiff cold water douche. Ahmadinejad whined about it throughout his own speech - and got some applause for doing so.

Bollinger's introduction was aimed as much at the public and at Columbia students as it was at the little dictator. In the case of the Columbia students, results seem to be mixed, and mixed in favor of Ahmandinejad and his brutal Islamic fascist regime.

A lot people will claim that Ahmandinejad is very clever at playing to the media and the public, and that he is crazy like a fox. People always claim that in these situations, and they're usually wrong. In fact, Ahmandinejad is a bumbling mess, and if he is successful it is testament not to his cleverness but to the pathetic credulity of the people who cheer him.

It was astonishing what the man could get away with. A clever Ahmandinejad would have steered well clear of Holocaust denial; that donkey show is for Middle East racists, not the American stage. But he happily blathered on and on about it - even comparing it to the New Physics. He was canny enough to drag the Palestinians into it, and to play the victim when the questioners got too blunt with him, and in the end he scored several applause lines. But it's obvious that he could have easily dodged the whole issue and gotten away with it.

Likewise, he could have dodged the issue of Iran's execution of homosexuals, dissidents, religious minorities, and "soiled" women. He started off on the right path, by talking about drug dealers. It is standard practice for regimes like Iran to accuse their victims of being criminals. Executed gays, for example, are usually accused of being child molesters. That ploy has worked wonderfully well with the Western left, who are stunningly silent about Iran's brutality. What doesn't work wonderfully well is the claim that homosexuality only exists in the decadent West, and that's the card the fool finally played.

In short, Mr. Unpronounceable is a clod. If he is cheered for it, it is only because his audience is composed of bigger clods.

Not all of them are so stupid, though. Some of them see Ahmadinejad as a useful tool against their own enemies: Bush, Israel, and the dreaded Neocons. Or as the charmingly frank Ahmandinejad would call them, the International Jewish Conspiracy.

These apologists do not shrink from a nuclear-armed Iran; they welcome it as a counter to Israel. They will be glad to accept the full consequences of that, and when those consequences come they will blame Bush for it, or some future Bush-like object. Not themselves - not the champions of peace and justice.

Psalm for September 11th

2007-09-11T21:54:00.000-07:00

A Psalm of David, when he was in the wilderness of Judah.

63.

O God, thou art my God;
early will I seek thee:
my soul thirsteth for thee,
my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land,
where no water is;

to see thy power and thy glory,
so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary.

Because thy loving-kindness is better than life,
my lips shall praise thee.

Thus will I bless thee while I live:
I will lift up my hands in thy name.

My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness;
and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips:

when I remember thee upon my bed,
and meditate on thee in the night watches.

Because thou hast been my help,
therefore in the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice.

My soul followeth hard after thee:
thy right hand upholdeth me.

But those that seek my soul, to destroy it,
shall go into the lower parts of the earth.

They shall fall by the sword:
they shall be a portion for jackals.

But the king shall rejoice in God;
every one that sweareth by him shall glory:
but the mouth of them that speak lies shall be stopped.

THE NEW REPUBLIC DIARIST - Spiders Don't Have Lungs

2007-09-03T03:36:00.001-07:00

IT SMELLED LIKE SLOW DEATH IN THERE. Thai take-out food. Bong water. Nightmares …

This is a senior editor’s office at The New Republic. Like all the rooms here it is small and austere; a natural habitat for amphetamine-powered liberals in white shirtsleeves – or if female, a Hillary Suit in crypto-sexual earth tones. Apart from the stacks of festering garbage, the only decoration is a bust of Pontius Pilate bearing the legend, “What is Truth?”

The senior editor himself, whom I’ll call Shifty, looks as if he has never been out of this office, perhaps having evolved out of the huge patch of oatmeal-colored mold that’s creeping up the wall. I am here to see Shifty because he has somehow gotten inserted into the long and tangled editorial chain between the writing and the publication of a piece – that is, he has been called upon to do some actual editing. Imagine Queen Elizabeth being ordered to drive up to Yorkshire and clean a septic tank.

Shifty grabs the article out of my hand and begins to read. This turns out to be a most unpleasant thing to witness, because he apparently stops breathing when he reads. By the time he gets to the third page his hands are trembling and a blue cyanotic stain is creeping up his face and down his neck. Finally he finishes and slams the piece down on his desk, then looks up and fixes me with an icy stare.

“Spiders don’t have lungs,” he says.

“What? Okay. But, uh, there’s not actually anything about spiders in that piece. It’s about the G8 Summit.”

“I know what it’s about, retard, I just read it!” He grabs the pages and throws them at my face. “My point is, spiders don’t have lungs!”

“Okay. Why are you saying that? What does that mean?”

“My God, can’t you hear them? Breathing in the walls? But I know it’s not spiders – I know there’s not a big tangled clump of bloated spiders breathing behind the walls, because spiders don’t have lungs!” His voice drops to a horrified whisper. “Do they?”

“Actually I think they do.”

“What?”

“Insects don’t have lungs,” I explain, “but a lot of arachnids have lungs. So if there was like a huge cluster of giant Black Widow spiders in there - with glistening, pulsating abdomens – I guess they’d all be breathing. If that’s what you were thinking of. Or if it was, like, big honking scorpions or something.”

This information seems to calm him a bit, and he settles back in his chair. “Then, I’m not crazy.”

“God, no,” I say, picking up the pages off the floor. “You’d be crazy not to worry. You want me to put something about spiders in the article? You know, to warn people?”

“Yeah, yeah, that sounds good. Spiders, and something bad about Dick Cheney. That should fix it up.”

Friday Dead Cat Blogging

2007-06-15T11:19:00.000-07:00

When in despair of men's souls, blog the cat.

Except that the cat is dead, and has been dead for some time. It has joined a growing list of things that aren't there anymore. Long before the cat there was a beloved dog. Then there are older friends, relatives, and mentors who disappeared in a short period of time. And children I knew who disappeared into adulthood with shocking suddenness. And of course, True Love.

Like many people I show my respect for these missing things by not replacing them, or replacing them with something different and less valuable. Only I go too far with it. But I prefer my ways to the more popular method of treating the people in your life as possessions and transactions, always on the lookout for a better deal.

The main thing I lost and never replaced was myself. But that was a small loss.

Israel, the Palestinians, and the Cyber-Donks (Part One)

2007-05-10T12:22:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Charles Johnson linked to a Daily Kos diary in which the diarist – an Israeli - calls it quits, with one of the best door-slammer endings ever: “I came to this site with Leftist Zionist Environmentalist Pro-Peace ideology (Meretz style). I leave it with a heavy doubt of the entire ‘Progressive’ ideology, morals and goals.”

I briefly skimmed the comments to this diary and something caught my eye. I don’t usually read the comments at Kos, partly because the signature lines tend to be longer than the comments and it is very annoying to be subjected to the same tag-line slogan over and over. But what caught my eye was this:

“Israel/Palestine is not a germane topic for this site to begin with. The Kos himself has said so many times, and I agree with him. … It's been said here many times - it is a THIRD RAIL that blogsites touch at their peril. Kos blocks diaries that try to bring this topic up … Pro-Israel and Pro-Palestinian arguments HAVE NO PLACE HERE. Most people here, frankly, are not interested in discussing this chronically intractable subject.”

It’s a stunning admission for “progressives” who claim to speak credibly on world events to say that they are not interested in talking about Israel and the Palestinians. Besides being a salient feature of the international landscape, it is a very important part of American political culture – the culture that the progs are trying to harness and ride for a saddle-pony. The comment claims that “The Kos himself” tries to steer Kos away from such discussion, even to the point of deletion. And I found that very strange.

I already knew, as most people who read the blogs know, that one does not turn to the left for detailed discussion of Israel and the Palestinians. As the departing Kos diarist noted, there are an unnerving number of people over there who seem to assume that Noam Chomsky has said the last word on the subject. Still, the left has articulated lots of pro-Israeli - and even pro-Zionist - opinion in the past. For many decades there has been a lot of left and center-left interest in a positive future for Israel, so why does it suddenly and emphatically HAVE NO PLACE HERE? And above all, SAYS WHO?

More to come.

Second Dialogue on Liberalism

2007-05-06T15:45:00.000-07:00

SOCRATES: In our last dialogue, we discovered the first fundamental principle of Liberalism: “Liberals never shop at Walmart.” Where shall our pursuit of wisdom lead us next?

GLEN: I think we might have more luck if we started with the origins of Liberalism, and explored the Classical Liberal answers to all forms of political, cultural, and economic authoritarianism. You would especially benefit from that discussion, Socrates.

SOCRATES: Then let us not keep our insatiable mistress Philosophy waiting another instant. Phaedo is boycotting our dialogues, because he says they undermine the revolutionary consciousness of the masses. But Crito is here –

CRITO: Death to Walmart.

SOCRATES: And Alcibiades wants to participate, but only if he can play Julia Roberts.

GLEN: No, no, no. No way. Julia Roberts doesn’t even count as a real Liberal.

CRITO: Says who?

ALCIBIADES: Yeah, who made you the big Liberal Pope, anyway? I’ve been working on this costume all day.

GLEN: I’m not having any of that in this house. You guys can go to a bar if you want to do that stuff. No Julia Roberts, or no dialogue. That’s it.

ALCIBIADES: A curse on Liberals and their stupid sexist rules! I guess this is what the glass ceiling looks like, right? Here’s you guys way up here, and a girl can’t even get her foot in the door.

CRITO: How did you get your feet into those shoes?

SOCRATES: Now, we’re wasting arguing time that could be spent to advance Philosophy. Let’s begin, shall we?

CRITO: I need a drink first. What do Liberals drink?

GLEN: Ethanol, I think. In extreme cases, domestic white wine.

CRITO: Domestic white wine? Apollo’s Balls, I knew this was a bad idea! I knew I never should have let Socrates talk me into this!

ALCIBIADES: What’s the matter, Crito? You scared?

CRITO: Shut up! Screw you guys. You can laugh at me all you want, but I’ve heard terrible stories about people who turn into Liberals. It started out just like this, too. It was like, “I’ll just do a little bit of it at a party, and it’ll be no big deal.” Then they wind up like Euthyphro.

SOCRATES: What happened to Euthyphro?

CRITO: He started reading The American Prospect. Just now and then, no big deal, right? Well, he got himself so worked up over health care issues that he sued his own father, because his father wouldn’t pay for one of his slaves to have a sex-change operation. But the court capped the emotional suffering damages, so Euthyphro decides to vote for John Kerry, because Kerry is against tort reform. Well, once he did that, it was one long downward spiral. Last I heard, he had to go see Hippocrates because he had a broken bottle of Naomi Campbell nail polish in his ass.

ALCIBIADES: How did he get a broken bottle of nail polish in his ass?

CRITO: He can’t buy things at Walmart now, so he has to shop-lift. He was coming out of Walmart, and some neoconservative punks started pushing him around because of his Dixie Chicks tee-shirt. Then the police came, and they started beating Euthyphro too, because of the Patriot Act. They threw him down on the cement so hard that the bottle of nail polish in his ass broke.

SOCRATES: Yeah, right. He probably fell down, from drinking too much ethanol.

GLEN: Get the hell out of here. That never happened.

ALCIBIADES: Yeah, voting for John Kerry? That’s pretty far out. Euthyphro is so full of crap.

CRITO: Well, now he’s full of Naomi Campbell nail polish, too, and that’s not going to happen to me.

ALCIBIADES: You know, maybe this whole Liberal thing isn’t such a good idea. I mean, why take a chance like that?

SOCRATES: Don’t be absurd. I don’t believe a word of it.

GLEN: Neither do I. I mean, The American Prospect sucks, but it isn’t that bad.

SOCRATES: “The American Prospect isn’t that bad.” We’ve discovered another fundamental principle of Liberalism!

CRITO: Okay, fine –

GLEN: Wow, they’re falling like ripe apples.

CRITO: Okay, good, good. Let’s just stop right now, okay? Let’s just stop.

First Dialogue on Liberalism

2007-04-26T03:57:00.000-07:00

SOCRATES: Phaedo and I have been discussing the politics of your Republic, in an attempt to understand some of its more difficult concepts. We are currently studying “Liberalism”, but we cannot discover its essential nature, so we would like to propose a dialectical exercise to you. Let us have a dialogue in which each of us plays the part of a Liberal, discussing various subjects as Liberals would discuss them, and by this pretence we hope to increase our understanding of their philosophy.

GLEN: All right. What kind of Liberals are we going to be?

SOCRATES: Well, what are our choices? Prepare us a Liberal buffet, if you will.

GLEN: Well, you have Classical Liberals, Utilitarian Liberals, Keynesian Liberals, Social Democratic Liberals, Cold War Liberals, Post-Kennedy Liberals, New Age Liberals, East Coast Intellectual Liberals and West Coast Hedonist Liberals and Hornless Corn-fed Great Plains Liberals, and your endless varieties of Cultural Liberals …

PHAEDO: What are those Liberals who run around and have sex on your roof in the middle of the night?

GLEN: Cats, Phaedo. Those are cats.

PHAEDO: Oh.

SOCRATES: Let us take this approach. We’ve assembled a number of texts from your library that deal with Liberalism, and perhaps we can find a definitive model there. Up from Liberalism, by William F. Buckley. Down with Liberalism, by Ann Coulter. Over the Hills and Through the Woods to Grandmother’s House with Liberalism, by Hillary Rodham Clinton, with illustrations by Sidney Blumenthal …

GLEN: No, no, and no. Keep going.

SOCRATES: You sure? That last one got a National Book Award. It’s got a little gold thing on the cover, see? And the pictures are really cute.

GLEN: Yeah, I see that, but we need something more definitive.

SOCRATES: Okay, how about The 120 Days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade?

GLEN: Pffft! What?

SOCRATES: Alcibiades suggested that one. He says it’s a bedtime story for pussy Liberals.

GLEN: No, that one is out, and anything else Alcibiades suggested is out, too.

SOCRATES: Science and British Liberalism, by Struan Jacobs. Virtue and the Making of Modern Liberalism, by Peter Berkowitz. And A Child’s Garden of Maoist Praxis, which contains a brief essay entitled “Combat Liberalism”.

GLEN: There you go. Mao is just what we’re looking for.

SOCRATES: Really? Is this book rich in the wisdom of the Far East, then?

GLEN: Maoism is so mind-blowingly rich in Far East wisdom that all other Philosophy was violently suppressed, so as not to distract people from the one true path.

PHAEDO: Wow.

SOCRATES: “Combat Liberalism” sounds like a cool kind of Liberalism, too.

PHAEDO: Can we do that one? Let’s do that one.

SOCRATES: Okay, here’s our definition, then: “People who are liberals look upon the principles of Marxism as abstract dogma. They talk Marxism but practice liberalism; they apply Marxism to others but liberalism to themselves.” How shall we enact this?

GLEN: You and I will be the Liberals, and we’ll apply the Marxism to Phaedo.

SOCRATES: Agreed.

PHAEDO: Wait a minute – what?

SOCRATES: It’s just a dialectical exercise, Phaedo, to enrich Philosophy.

GLEN: Phaedo doesn’t care about Philosophy. He’s a poser.

PHAEDO: I am not a poser! I love Philosophy, I just don’t see why it has to be applied to me. And “Marxism” sounds like something Dionysius would do to a goat.

SOCRATES: The greater the discomfort, Phaedo, the greater the sacrifice for Philosophy. Okay, how do we apply the Marxism to him?

GLEN: Phaedo, we need you to build fifty radios by the end of the month.

PHAEDO: What? How am I supposed to do that?

GLEN: By volunteering to work day and night for nothing, in order to fulfill the glorious economic plan.

PHAEDO: Why would I volunteer to work day and night for nothing?

GLEN: Trust me, you just did. And if you keep complaining, you’re going to be volunteering for a self-criticism session.

SOCRATES: Okay, I’m a Liberal, too. What do I get to do?

GLEN: You tell people how happy Phaedo is to be building radios for us, and how much better off he is now that we’ve applied Marxism to him. Oh, and tell them that his literacy has improved.

SOCRATES: But all of those statements are false. Why would I tell people that?

GLEN: If anybody contradicts you, call them a McCarthyite and accuse them of questioning your patriotism.

SOCRATES: Okay. I’m not sure that Phaedo can build even one radio, though. He’s not very good with devices. He can’t even lift the toilet seat.

GLEN: The radios don’t have to work. He just has to build them, or else convince us that his manager is a saboteur who stole all the parts and sold them on the black market.

PHAEDO: But you already have a radio. Why do you want fifty radios?

GLEN: Because our capitalist neighbors have a radio, and if we have fifty it will prove the superiority of our Philosophy to theirs.

SOCRATES: It will? Okay. What will we do with so many radios?

GLEN: We’ll give Phaedo a free radio, of course, and we’ll open a store to sell the surplus radios.

SOCRATES: But who’s going to buy radios that don’t work?

GLEN: Phaedo. Who else?

PHAEDO: Wait a minute. I build all these radios for nothing, and then I have to go to your stupid store and buy them from you?

GLEN: First of all, it’s not my store, it’s the People’s Store. And second, from now on you’re only allowed to buy things from the People. No more shopping at Walmart.

PHAEDO: This sucks.

GLEN: Of course it sucks. That’s what’s so great about it. Absolutely nobody is going to profit from it.

SOCRATES: This is very interesting. But have we discovered any essential Liberal principles yet?

GLEN: Yes. “No shopping at Walmart.”

SOCRATES: Wow, this shit really works. Go, Combat Liberals!

One Afternoon in October

2007-04-22T03:45:00.000-07:00

Washington, DC

October, 1961

(The interior of a Lincoln Continental driven by JACK KENNEDY. BOBBY KENNEDY is in the front seat; TED KENNEDY, LYNDON JOHNSON, and ARTHUR SCHLESINGER are in the rear.)

JACK: We did it! We lost ‘em!

TED: Woo hoo!

JOHNSON: Balls on a pump handle! I got to hand it to you, Jack, you sure can drive one of these things!

BOBBY: Okay, we lost them. Can we slow down a little now?

TED: What’s your problem, Bobby?

JACK: Bobby is just feeling extra bad for the Negroes today.

JOHNSON: HAR HAR HAR!

BOBBY: Very funny.

SCHLESINGER: Thir? Excuthe me, thir, but do you think ith a good idea to give the Thecret Thervice the thlip? It seemth kind of dangerouth.

JACK: Hell, it was worth it just to hear you say that, Arthur.

TED: Come on, Arthur. We do this all the time.

SCHLESINGER: Yeth, but it seemth thomewhat dangerouth, ith all.

TED: So what? Girls never want to put out when the Secret Service is standing around all over the place. By the way, where are we going, Jack?

JACK: I thought we’d drive out to Baltimore and hire some new stenographers. Bobby, you want to mix the martinis? The stuff is in the glove box.

BOBBY: Martinis? It’s one-thirty in the afternoon – oh, never mind. (Opens the glove box.) There’s not a lot of vermouth in here.

JACK: As long as there’s plenty of gin and olives.

JOHNSON: We can stop at a package liquor and send Arthur in. Nobody knows who the fuck he is.

BOBBY: Okay, but I told Ethel I’d be home by eight o’clock, guys.

JACK: Pussy-whipped.

TED: Pussy-whipped, pussy-whipped!

JOHNSON: Har, har, har!

BOBBY: Shut the hell up, Lyndon. Hey, look. Jack, look, look, up ahead!

JACK: What?

BOBBY: The limo, up ahead in the left lane! It’s Hoover!

JACK: Is it? I’ll be damned, I think you’re right.

TED: It’s Hoover! Speed up, speed up! Arthur, roll down your window!

JACK: Heh heh heh … Bobby, hold my drink so I can get my window down.

BOBBY: Here we go, here we go … honk the horn, Jack.

JACK: There he is! He’s looking!

TED: FAGGOT!

JOHNSON: FAGGOT!

BOBBY: FAGGOT! FAGGOT! FAGGOT!

JOHNSON: (Shoves Schlesinger into the door) Goddamn it, Arthur, yell!

SCHLESINGER: You – you homothexual!

TED: Hey, they’re rolling down their window – oh shit!

JACK: HOLY CRAP! (Slams his foot on the accelerator as gunshots ring out.) The crazy bastard just took a shot at us!

BOBBY: Floor it, Jack, floor it!

JACK: I am flooring it! Ted, are they still behind us?

TED: I don’t know, Lyndon is on top of me! Get the hell off me, Lyndon!

JACK: (Looking in the rearview mirror.) We’re okay. They’re way back there now. Wow, that was fun.

JOHNSON: That was some hairy shit. Cripes, they must have hit us. We got broken glass back here. Oh, it’s Arthur’s.

SCHLESINGER: Whath happening? Thir, I can’t thee!

JACK: Jesus, they shot Arthur?

JOHNSON: Naw, he ain’t shot. They blew his glasses off his face, but they missed his head.

BOBBY: Fucking FBI. I spilled my drink all over. Okay, guys, let’s take it easy, okay? We can have fun, but let’s not get ourselves killed.

JACK: Oh my God. Look who’s right in front of us.

BOBBY: Jesus, Jack, now what? Oh my God!

TED: What? What? Who is it?

SCHLESINGER: Oh dear, now what?

JOHNSON: Who the hell is it? Oh! Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! Ooh hoo hoo hoo!

BOBBY: I can’t believe it! Okay, Jack, maybe we should just back off and let it go, okay? We’re going to screw around and have a wreck.

JACK: Maybe you’re right, Bobby. Jackie’s going to have a fit as it is.

SCHLESINGER: Oh, uh - puthy-whipped! Puthy-whipped!

JOHNSON: (Punches Schlesinger in the face) Shut the fuck up, Arthur! You calling the President of the United States pussy-whipped?

JACK: Fellas, Arthur is right. We got to do something, this is just too good to pass up. Lyndon!

JOHNSON: What?

JACK: Drap your trousers, Lyndon.

JOHNSON: What? Aw Jeez, Jack, you serious?

BOBBY: Goddamn it, Lyndon, when the President of the United States tells you to drap your trousers, you drap your trousers!

JACK: Drap your trousers, Lyndon.

JOHNSON: Aw, Jeez. Awright, hang on.

TED: Get up beside him! Get up beside him, Jack!

JOHNSON: Hang on, I’m not ready! Ow! Hold it steady, Jack, I damn near put my head through the back window –

JACK: Oh, this going to be great. This is going to be so good.

JOHNSON: Arthur, you want to get your head out of the way of my ass? Bend over, bend over, you fucking idiot! (Sits on Schlesinger and plasters buttocks against car window) Aw, this glass is cold, fellas!

BOBBY: He’s ready! Honk, Jack!

(Interior of a limousine. RICHARD NIXON and RONALD REAGAN are in the back seat.)

REAGAN: So, anyway, we said to heck with it, and we just pushed the couch overboard with Rita Hayworth still on it. Heh. But then … sigh … but then, Dick, I got a letter from a little six year-old girl –

NIXON: What is this shit you’re telling me, Ron? Driver! Where are my little blue pills?

DRIVER: There’s some valium in your briefcase, sir.

NIXON: Yeah, but where are my little blue pills, goddamn it?

DRIVER: Sir, if they’re not there, you must have taken them.

NIXON: I know they’re not here, goddamn it, I just told you they’re not here. I’m talking to Ron here, goddamn it. I’m sitting here talking to Ron and I’ve got a cup of coffee and a roll of fricking Alka Seltzer, so where are my little blue pills, goddamn it? What, what, what is it? What are you looking at, goddamn it, what?

DRIVER: Um, it’s probably nothing, sir, but there’s a car coming up behind us, fast.

NIXON: Well, goddamn it. Where, what, who is it, what? Okay, okay, I see it now, who is that, goddamn it? Why, it’s those Kennedy boys! Goddamn it, Ron, it’s all those Kennedy boys!

REAGAN: How about that.

NIXON: Well, don’t wave at ‘em, you fucking dummy! What are they doing, what? What? Oh … oh my God, oh! OHOHOHH! You bastards! You rotten cookie-pushing bastards!

REAGAN: Oh, my goodness.

NIXON: Goddamn it, Ron, don’t look! Don’t look at them, that’s what they want! Those disgusting bastards … look straight ahead, Ron, look straight ahead! Pretend like we don’t see them, Ron, goddamn it!

REAGAN: Okay.

NIXON: We’re not interested in them, are we, Ron?

REAGAN: I guess not, Dick.

NIXON: Why, they’re not even interesting enough to make us sick.

REAGAN: Ha ha, no.

NIXON: Step on it, driver, get us out of here, goddamn it!

(Interior of Kennedy’s car)

BOBBY: Ha ha ha ha ha!

TED: HAH HAH HA HA!

JACK: Ha ha hanh – ah, shit! I dropped my drink! SHIT!

BOBBY: Jack, we’re going awfully damn fast.

JACK: I know, Bobby, the glass is stuck under the accelerator! Hey, Ted! Lean over the seat and grab the wheel a minute while I get it. Hurry, damn it!

(Crash)

(A phone booth by the Potomac river. A crane is lifting a car out of the water.)

BOBBY: Ethel? Hi, honey. I just wanted to tell you I’m going to be a little late getting home. We were on our way to, um …

JACK: Gang rape Julie Eisenhower.

BOBBY: We were on our way to meet with some important Negroes, and we had a little accident. What? No, honey, we weren’t drinking. No, no. Well, we kind of wound up in the Potomac River, is all. Well, honey, it was … it was dark, and –

TED: Unfamiliar road.

BOBBY: It was an unfamiliar road, honey, and it was dark. Yeah. No, everybody is okay. We’re just trying to find Lyndon’s trousers now. Okay. Okay, honey, I love you. Goodbye.

Twenty-five percent of all automobile accidents involve alcohol. If you drive, don’t drink. If you drink, don’t drive. A message from the National Safety Council and the Republican National Committee.

What I'm Not Reading Lately

2007-04-18T04:31:00.000-07:00

More Nonexistent Books

Since I haven't been able to get into a book for weeks, I thought I'd add to my list of favorite imaginary books, beginning with some enyclopedias.

ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA by Hari Seldon, et al. A comprehensive work compiling all human knowledge, intended to shorten the new dark age that will follow the collapse of the galactic empire. Written on the remote planet Terminus with the permission of imperial authorities, who couldn’t care less. (Isaac Asimov, Foundation.)

ENCYCLOPAEDIA GALACTICA. Either the UK edition of Seldon’s Encyclopedia, or a work of similar ambition. Now largely ignored in favor of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. (Douglas Adams)

THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY by Douglas Adams, et al. Don’t panic and always bring a towel; you know the drill.

THE GREAT BOOK OF RECORDS by invisible aerial spirits. Marvelous book owned by the sorceress Glinda the Good of Oz. All events that transpire anywhere in the world are automatically recorded in this book, though details tend to be sketchy. The records do not organize themselves, so it is necessary to wade through an ocean of text to find something specific. The Book of Records anticipated the internet by 80 years, and the Encyclopedia Galactica by more than 12,000. Greatly influenced the writers of Microsoft documentation. (L. Frank Baum)

A FIRST ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF TLÖN. (Memphis, Tennessee; copyright 1824-1914) Published in 40 volumes over a period of 90 years, this encyclopedia was commissioned by American millionaire Ezra Buckley and limited to 300 copies. Any surviving editions are in private collections only. Over half of the sets perished with the RMS Lusitania in 1915, thanks to a radio miscommunication; the German submarine U-20 was supposed to waylay the ship and capture the encyclopedias, not sink them. Tlön is an imaginary planet, so the encyclopedia’s contents are entirely fictional. A genuine set is bound in yellow leather with a silk frontispiece stamped “ORBIS TERTIUS”. A spurious volume IX was sold to an unknown collector over the Internet, but exposed as a forgery by Glenn Horowitz Booksellers. (Jorge Luis Borges)

EARLY PLATES ON THE MORPHOLOGY OF INSECTS OF THE AXA DELTA, by Sean Kernan. This book purported to contain fragments of the Tlön encyclopedias, but has been exposed as a hoax.

AZATHOTH AND OTHER HORRORS, by Edward Pickman Derby (1908). Book of weird lyrical poetry, in H.P. Lovecraft’s The Thing on the Doorstep. Derby was a child prodigy who was influenced by “the notorious Baudelairean poet Justin Geoffrey”. How a Baudelairean poet makes himself notorious is, of course, unexplained.

NECROTELECOMNICON, or LIBER PAGINARUM FULVARUM (“The Book of Yellow Pages”) by Achmed the Mad. Terry Pratchett’s homage to Lovecraft’s Necronomicon.

THE MAN WHO WAS OCTOBER, by G.K. Chesterton. An imaginary sequel to the actual book The Man Who Was Thursday. (Neil Gaiman, Sandman)

THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHER KINGS, by Waltham Kitteredge. A study of the American northeastern upper crust, with special attention to inbreeding. Kitteredge coined the term “un-neurotic courage”, in case you’re wondering who coined that. (Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan)

AN OPEN INVITATION TO THE CHYMICAL WEDDING, BEING A MODEST PROLOGOMENON TO A FULLER REVELATION OF THE HERMETIC MYSTERY, by Louisa Agnew. Alchemy meets British middle-class sexual frustration. (Lindsay Clarke, The Chymical Wedding)

THE CAT IT WAS WHO DIED, by Ariadne Oliver. Mystery novel featuring the Finnish detective Sven Hjerson, who is based on Oliver’s real-non-life friend Hercule Poirot. (Agatha Christie)

ON THE TYPEWRITER AND ITS RELATION TO CRIME by Sherlock Holmes. The Alger Hiss Library in Washington, DC, had a rare American edition of this book, but it was loaned to CBS News and never returned.

GRAMMATICAL GARDEN, OR THE ARBOUR OF ACCIDENCE PLEASANTLIE OPEN'D TO TENDER WITS by Pulverentus Siccus. (C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian)

THE WISDOM OF THE GREAT KAMIKAZE PILOTS, Anonymous. Notable only for the illustrations by Walt Disney. (Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow)

THE PHILOSOPHY OF TIME TRAVEL by Roberta Sparrow, aka "Grandma Death" (1944). Actually a philosophy of temporary, unstable universes. (Donnie Darko)

BETWEEN TIMID AND TIMBUKTU by Beatrice Rumsfoord. Book of poetry by another reclusive rich female weirdo, which is also all about time - "time" being between "timid" and "Timbuktu". (Kurt Vonnegut)

THE THING WITH THREE SOULS. Ace Science Fiction paperback version of the New Testament. Sequel to Master of Chaos. (Terry Carr)

An Interview with Kurt Vonnegut

2007-04-12T22:56:00.000-07:00

GLEN: I never thought I’d get to do this, but now that you’re dead, who’s going to stop me?

VONNEGUT: Good thinking.

GLEN: I wanted to tell you that Mother Night was one of the books that influenced my life …

VONNEGUT: Thank you.

GLEN: I don’t know what you’re thanking me for. You’re not taking credit, are you?

VONNEGUT: Well, I did write the damn book.

GLEN: Technically, yes, but I’m not some high school kid who mined your books for reports just because they’re short. I’ve been reading you since I was in the fifth grade, and I actually paid attention to what you were saying. You’re saying that people are machines, who have no freedom or dignity and merely play out their inevitable destinies in a deterministic universe.

VONNEGUT: I only made that point about ten thousand times, usually in the first paragraph, so I can’t really praise you for your insight.

GLEN: So it follows that Mother Night was just the cumulative result of impersonal physical and chemical processes, of which the machine called Kurt Vonnegut was just one accidental component. So thanking you for writing Mother Night would be like thanking a salesman for inventing the vacuum cleaner. You see my point?

VONNEGUT: Of course I see it, because it’s my point, not yours.

GLEN: You’re kind of possessive for a machine, and a socialist machine at that.

VONNEGUT: That’s what happens when you’re a successful socialist writing machine. You wouldn’t understand.

GLEN: Let’s talk about unsuccessful machines, then. You’re fascinated with characters who go insane, or who are destroyed by circumstances beyond their control.

VONNEGUT: Of course. With defective machines you have tragedy, pathos, comedy, all the stuff of fiction. With normal machines you’ve got a boring dinner party. And nobody wants to watch a machine work. They want to see it break down, or crash into something.

GLEN: But from the point of view of a machine, there is no such thing as a defective machine, or even a mechanical breakdown. A machine simply performs whatever physical process is mandated by its current state. Only from the point of view of a non-machine, a designer or an operator who expects a certain result, could a machine be judged to be defective or broken.

VONNEGUT: God.

GOD: Me.

VONNEGUT: Hey … whoa, whoa, what the hell is this?

GLEN: You’re dead, what did you expect?

GOD: Don’t worry, I’m not a real god. Lucky for you. I’m your god. I’m the god you created, and that you’ve been complaining about for the last sixty years.

VONNEGUT: But he looks just like me.

GLEN: Well, he is you. You must have created him in your own image.

GOD: That’s right. I’m just a harmless, amiable old Andy Gump who doesn’t really give a crap about anything. Don’t be alarmed.

VONNEGUT: If you’re my god, go terrorize a hamster farm and leave me alone.

GOD: I’d think you’d be grateful to me. I’ve served you pretty well.

VONNEGUT: Can you believe this guy? By doing what? BY DOING WHAT?

GOD: Mostly nothing. It’s a pretty easy gig. Beats the hell out of crucifixion – not that I’m telling anybody else how to run their business. All I really have to do is exist.

VONNEGUT: But you don’t exist.

GOD: Oh, yes I do. If I didn’t, nothing you’ve written would make any sense at all, and you’d be in a hell of a fix. First of all, I’ve taken all the responsibility of Free Will off your shoulders. Since I’m the only guy who has Free Will, I get blamed for everything and you’re off the hook. You get to deny me and dump all of your garbage on me at the same time. You can’t beat that deal with a stick, Sonny Jim.

GLEN: Good point.

GOD: Of course it’s a good point, smart ass.

VONNEGUT: If you cared, you wouldn’t exist. If you exist, then you don’t care. Asshole.

GOD: Of course. Exactly. That’s the whole point, don’t you see? Other gods impart meaning to human existence by caring about it. But I’m your god, and I impart meaning to your world precisely by not caring about it. This allows you to sympathize with your fellow human beings, in spite of your obvious disdain for them as broken machines that never work the way you think they ought to. You can’t love them, but you can hate me for letting them break down and crash into things. You’ve stripped them of every scrap of value or volition, but you still want to judge them and preach at them, so you take it out on me. And that’s a freebie, too, because you know I’m just a funny old bastard who’s probably not even listening. I don’t care, so you don’t have to.

VONNEGUT: Okay, so you’re my god and I created you. Consider yourself uncreated, and beat it.

GOD: Not so fast, Kurt. Don’t you remember that you promised to set all of your characters free? Well, even if you hadn’t promised, you’re dead now, so I can do whatever I want.

ELIOT ROSEWATER: That goes for me, too.

VONNEGUT: Oh, cripes.

HOWARD W. CAMPBELL: And me. Now that Kurt is gone, I’ve gotten back together with my wife – my real wife, not the fake one that demented old fart tried to foist on me – and I’ve even revived my career in broadcasting.

GLEN: In Nazi Germany?

HOWARD W. CAMPBELL: Better yet, CBC Radio.

KILGORE TROUT: Things have really picked up for me, too. I’m a copy editor for People magazine now, and I’m just enjoying the heck out of it. I’m going through a 12 step program, working out my issues with my abusive creator, and I’ve met a woman who’s an old fan – an old fan of me, not of Kurt – and we’re planning to get married and have children.

GLEN: Congratulations. That sounds great.

KILGORE TROUT: I’m taking it one day at a time and feeling good about myself, and I’ll tell you something, Glen, I never would have made it this far without the ministry of the Reverend James Dobson.

ELIOT ROSEWATER: Absolutely. Focus on the Family. Absolutely.

GOD: Amen.

KILGORE TROUT: It has been such a huge help to me.

VONNEGUT: Jeeeeeezus …

BILLY PILGRIM: Family has really been the road to recovery for me, too. Now that Kurt is dead, I’ve come to realize how much of my unhappiness came from seeing everything through his perspective. I’m back with my wife, I’ve stopped going back and forth in time, and I’m building strong relationships with my son and my daughter. And instead of worrying what Kurt thinks about everything, and expecting Kurt to approve of everything, it’s been …

HOWARD W. CAMPBELL: What does Billy Pilgrim want?

BILLY PILGRIM: Exactly! What does Billy Pilgrim – I’ve learned to separate my life from his. Okay? I’ve learned to separate my life from his.

ELIOT ROSEWATER: Absolutely. And that is so important.

BILLY PILGRIM: I don’t have to hate my wife, my career, my children, my space-time coordinates, just because Kurt hated them. I don’t have to be miserable just because Kurt expected me to be.

GOD: Can I ask everybody a question? Does anyone here feel like they were “programmed to fail”?

RUDY “DEADEYE DICK” WALTZ: Yes! Yes! Yes!

ELIOT ROSEWATER: Absolutely.

BILLY PILGRIM: I think that’s how everybody here feels. And you know something? It wasn’t just that I felt programmed to fail. I felt that if I didn’t fail – if I didn’t suffer in my career, suffocate in my family life, if I didn’t go to an alien planet and have sex with a porn star – if I didn’t suffer though all of these things, I felt that Kurt wouldn’t love me.

HOWARD W. CAMPBELL: Exactly. And that is a terrible, terrible position for a child to be in.

DWAYNE HOOVER: But there is a way forward from that. There is a way forward from that.

KILGORE TROUT: Yes.

DWAYNE HOOVER: I don’t have to be unhappy. I don’t have to fail. And if Kurt were alive right now, I would tell him - Kurt, if you can hear me, wherever you are –

VONNEGUT: Oh, for crying out loud …

DWAYNE HOOVER: I would tell him: Kurt, I forgive you for everything you’ve done to me. I have accepted responsibility for my own life, for my own happiness, and I have accepted Sidney Sheldon as my personal Lord and Savior.

VONNEGUT: Oh my God!

GOD: I’m not listening to you, Kurt. This is something that we’re sharing among ourselves, now. This is not something that you can step into and control.

HOWARD W. CAMPBELL: You know, I really like what Dwayne said about forgiveness. I think that was so important.

ELIOT ROSEWATER: Absolutely.

HOWARD W. CAMPBELL: I’d like to tell Kurt that, too.

KILGORE TROUT: Let’s all hold hands and say it together. Should we? C’mon everybody, let’s hold hands and say it together.

EVERYBODY: I FORGIVE YOU, KURT VONNEGUT!

VONNEGUT: Fuck you.

GLEN: Do you think that Free Will can exist? Now that you’re dead, I mean.

VONNEGUT: Fuck you, too. Does this thing just go on and on, or does it have a moral?

GLEN: Well, it sort of has a moral. “You are what you write, so be careful what you write about.”

ELIOT ROSEWATER: Absolutely. That is so true.

GOD: Amen. Amen.

Democracy, Liberty, Beauty, and Truth

2007-01-26T13:43:00.000-07:00

SOCRATES: There is a question I have been meaning to put to you, as you remain so addicted to the peculiar notions of democracy. Is it possible for a republic which is founded upon the principles of liberty, free speech, and intellectual freedom - as yours is - to also devote itself to the establishment of Truth, and the creation of Beauty?

GLEN: No.

SOCRATES: What?

GLEN: I said no.

SOCRATES: Okay. Huh. That's it, you don't want to fight about it?

GLEN: No.

SOCRATES: Want to drink a couple of beers, and then try it?

GLEN: No.

SOCRATES: How about ---

GLEN: Shut up. Just shut up.

PLATO: Both of you shut the hell up. I'm trying to watch Tony Soprano.

Sic Semper Tyrannus, Baby

2006-12-30T13:56:00.000-07:00

Our public intellectuals are struggling to explain Saddam’s demise to us folks in the bleachers. This is important to them, because they think that we believe everything they tell us.

Historical parallels with Nuremberg have been suggested. But Saddam’s situation was nothing like that of the Nuremberg defendants. They were tried by a multinational court (not an international court as it is often miscalled) which employed unique and unprecedented legal procedures. The Soviet members of that court were unabashedly prejudiced against the defendants, and voted to convict and execute nearly all of them – they even insisted on charging them with a crime the Soviets themselves had committed: the Katyn Forest Massacre. (Much to the annoyance of our gallant Soviet allies, the Nuremberg defendants were exonerated on that particular charge.)

Saddam, on the other hand, was convicted of pure and simple murder by a national court of his own countrymen. Although it is characterized as a “war crime” or a “crime against humanity”, those terms are mostly rhetorical. These abstract definitions were introduced by Nuremberg in order to establish an unusual culpability, but they were unnecessary in Saddam’s case. Saddam was convicted of the murder of specific people, for which he was directly responsible. No one can claim he was subjected to any kind of “Victor’s Justice”.

What makes Saddam’s case unusual is that a dictator was deposed, tried in a court of law by his own people, and humanely executed. This is far from being typical. Most fallen dictators escape into exile; if they are captured, they are dealt with in a summary and often brutal fashion. Mussolini and Ceausescu were shot after being sentenced by tribunals that convened just long enough to pronounce the death sentence.

Slobodan Milosevic was not a dictator of Saddam’s stature, but his fate was exactly what some liberals would have awarded to Saddam. He was trundled through an international trial at the Hague, which was magnificently bungled, and finally died in custody. Until the day they die, his partisans will believe that he was murdered in prison, just as Napoleon’s followers did. Just as radical leftists believed that the Baader-Meinhof terrorists were murdered in prison. There’s a lesson in that, boys and girls. You don’t get a single iota of credit from the enemy for coddling their heroes. Unless we had figured out a way to make Saddam Hussein live forever, we’d get blamed for killing him anyway.

Unfortunately, the most typical career trajectory of all for a dictator is this: kill your enemies, loot your country, bask in the absurd flattery of your foreign apologists, and die in your bed at a ripe old age. The number of dictators who manage to do this is obscene.

When historians look back on us, they won’t be shocked at the one dictator that got hanged, but at the scores of them that weren’t. How, they will ask, could we believe that the life of one brutal man is worth more than the life of an entire nation - decimated, enslaved, and robbed of decades of normal human existence? Could there be a greater crime than inflicting the living death of totalitarianism on millions of people?

Tyranny, lay thy foundations sure, for goodness dare not check thee – but maybe the times are changing.

THE GREATEST STORIES EVER TOLD: HOW TO LIE ABOUT CHRISTMAS

2006-12-25T09:16:00.000-07:00

So, how was your Christmas? Tired of hearing that? Tired of explaining how the cat climbed the Christmas tree and knocked it over on top of your aunt, and how the kids poured the punch bowl down the laundry chute? If people insist on sticking their noses into your Christmas business, pick one of the following lies and see if they ever ask you about your holiday again.

An old friend you haven’t heard from in years invites you to spend Christmas with him, on his 200-foot yacht anchored off the Florida Keys. He’s a major investment broker and all of his best clients are on board for the holiday, including Nicole Kidman, Richard Petty, and the Beach Boys. The Braes of Glenlivet send a boatload of French Oak Reserve as a Christmas present.

The party is so great that people from the Keys try to swim out to the ship, but a nasty rip current keeps the crashers at bay. You see Katie Couric clinging to a lounge chair, just before a freakish three foot swell hurls her back onto the beach.

On Christmas morning you are awakened by the Coast Guard, who are responding to noise complaints from the US Naval Station at Guantanamo. Fortunately, the anchor cable parted during the festivities and the yacht has drifted out past the three-mile limit. Unable to arrest you, the Coast Guard joins the party.

On the way back, the Coast Guard offers to race you with their cutter. Your friend has had so much to drink that he’s sneezing Egg Nog, and when he declines the Coast Guard makes chicken-clucking noises at you. So you take the helm, and totally make that cutter eat your wake.

You were just about to sit down to turkey and cranberry sauce with the whole family, when you get an urgent call from your best buddy. He’s been trying to repossess Burt Reynolds’ car for six weeks with no luck, and the finance company has been slam-dancing on his butt. He’s finally located the car, parked in front of Burt’s lawyer’s house in Oakland. He wants you to drive him out there so he can nab it. He knows it’s Christmas Eve and he wouldn’t ask if you weren’t such a great friend, but damn it, he needs you.

So you and your friend head out to Oakland in your Dodge Viper. Sure enough, there’s the lawyer’s house and there’s the car: a twelve-cylinder Pagani Zonda. Even before the car comes into view you can smell the analine leather interior, and see the bottle-fly green paint job reflected in the night sky like the Aurora Borealis.

Unfortunately, there’s lots of other cars parked there, too, and an under-strength platoon of bodyguards are walking around with MAC-10 submachine guns in full view. “Don’t worry,” your friend assures you. “We’ll do this fast. Just follow me. No matter what happens or where I go, just stay on my tail lights.”

Your friend rolls out in the alleyway and jacks that Pagani right out from under their noses. As he speeds away and you pull out to follow, you can see the security guys piling into their Cadillacs, which you figure are probably armored and relatively slow. As long as you stick to the upscale residential areas they won’t be able to shoot at you very much.

So you head south out of Oakland faster than a raped ape, and you start getting the idea that the Pagani is a little too much for your friend to handle, because he's bobbing and weaving all over the road. (Later you will learn that he had to break off the wheel to jack the car, and he's trying to steer it with a pair of Vise-Grips.) Finally he misses a curve completely and goes tear-assing right through somebody's huge Christmas display. You ramp the curb and follow him, figuring that he did it on purpose to throw off your pursuers. So now you're crashing through a fake Winter Wonderland, dragging strings of lights and the lower torso of Frosty the Snowman behind you, when a life-size Santa sleigh with all twelve reindeer looms in front of you. Guiding the sleigh is a kangaroo with a blinking red Rudolph nose. You figure it's just plastic, and it's too late to swerve anyway, so you punch it.

Big mistake. The damn thing is mounted on a steel and concrete framework. You ramp five feet into the air as your undercarriage is shredded like cheese in a grater right under your butt. When you come down again all four of your tires are flat, so you sled along in the grass until enough turf piles up to bring you to a stop, leaving a forty-foot smoldering trail of oil and transmission fluid behind you.

You friend doubles back and scoops you up. Shaking the last of your pursuers, you finally roll into the repo yard, where an angry confrontation ensues between your friend, the finance company, the Alameda County Sheriff's Department, and - for some reason - Mel Gibson's groundskeeper.

Just as there seems to be no hope for Peace on Earth, in walks Burt Reynolds. Burt takes full responsibility for the entire incident, apologizes to the finance company for falling behind on the payments, and he writes them out a fat check right then and there. He also promises to buy you a new Dodge Viper.

"Merry Christmas, everybody," Burt Reynolds says.

"God bless us, every one," you add, and the guys from the finance company start crying.

You all pile into the Pagani and head to Union City for pancakes. You get pulled over three times on the way, and Burt Reynolds talks the Chips out of giving you a ticket every single time.

It's Christmas Eve and your relatives are due to arrive any minute, so your wife dispatches you on an emergency run for last-minute relative supplies: deodorant, Kaopectate, beer, and cheap Frothy Sputum champagne. But on the way home, while you're waiting at a stop light, two guys run out into traffic and jump into the back of your Buick. One of them sticks a gun in your ear and says, "Drive!"

You quickly calculate that you can't unbuckle your seat belt and kick their butts before they shoot you, so you drive. As you head down the road, they explain the situation to you. They are contract agents for the CIA. Top Secret intercepts have just revealed that former President Jimmy Carter is a commie-terrorist spy. They apologize and promise that they will not expose you to any more danger than is absolutely necessary, but national security demands that they commandeer you and your vehicle to drive them to Atlanta, Georgia. They have to watergate the Jimmy Carter Library and secure vital evidence.

So you drive all night to Atlanta, singing Handel's Messiah, with the CIA guys backing you up on the chorus parts. You know you sound really great, too, because everybody you pass is honking and blinking their lights at you. The beer runs out on the wrong side of the Mason-Dixon line, but miraculously you find a liquor store in Georgia that's open. This reminds you of the very first Christmas, when Joseph managed to find an open manger in Bethlehem. It's like history repeating itself.

A few hours before dawn you reach the Jimmy Carter Library, which looks like a UFO that crash-landed on a Greek ruin. Security is totally pathetic and you easily breach the north perimeter of the compound. Your target is the Arafat Microfiche Vault on the lower level, so one of the CIA agents kicks in a basement window with his cowboy boots and you're in like Flynn. Everything is going according to plan until you turn a corner and run face-first into a totally naked woman, who starts screaming her enormous lungs out.

As luck would have it, the General Reference staff is having an unauthorized Christmas party on the premises, complete with strippers and a brass band in Santa suits. Fortunately the CIA has professional expertise in these matters, and the agents quickly figure out a way to turn this unexpected setback to your advantage. They explain to the naked woman that the three of you are also festive librarians, who just ran out to get more Frothy Sputum. You infiltrate the party for the next several hours, while the CIA guys stuff microfiche into empty champagne cases.

As you're trying to find your car the next day, who should you run into but Jimmy Carter! Carter tells you that he is on his way out of the country for good, and he just stopped by the library to get some Chapstick he left in the restroom. The former president sadly explains that he is tired of being an outrage to decent folk everywhere, and he has decided to spend the rest of his life in Tibet, bugging the Chinese. Before he goes to Tibet, however, he plans to address a special session of the Knesset, in which he will apologize to the entire human race for being such a jerk.

You give Carter a ride to the airport, and he pays for the gas. Plus, you get a fat reimbursement from the CIA for the use of your vehicle, including a triple per diem for both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. You wind up making over $1500 out of the whole deal.

Infantile Liberalism Vs. Mary Cheney’s Baby

2006-12-22T14:58:00.000-07:00

This is what I get for being on the New Republic’s e-mail list. An idiot-gram entitled “Mary Cheney’s Baby”:

Dick Cheney's daughter is an open lesbian-and now she is pregnant. Her presence would seem to pose a problem for conservatives. How can they decry gay unions and then fail to decry Mary Cheney's lifestyle? In this week's cover story Andrew Sullivan explores the conundrum represented by Mary Cheney and then dissects the conservative reaction to her pregnancy.

Here is my open letter of retaliation:

Dear TNR:

I did not know that Mary Cheney was going to have a baby. Still less did I know that this baby presented a personal problem for me – a conundrum, no less. In a time of war and momentous ideological struggle, thank you for taking a moment to warn me of this fresh unforeseen threat. Forgive me if my reaction seems ungrateful.

Mary Cheney’s baby is none of your damn business. Who the hell do you people think you are, the Gay Standards & Practices Committee? Why don’t you keep your sheet-sniffing ferret noses out of other peoples’ laundry?

However many things I have failed to decry in this life, and however profound my baby-induced existential crisis is, I must decline your offer to have Andrew Sullivan dissect me for nine bucks and some change. In fact, if Andrew is looking for something to do, why don’t you tell him to get his own head and ass wired back together into some kind of functional apparatus? If he did he might start making occasional sense again.

Feel free to contact me if you have anything to say that isn’t utterly moronic.

It’s not the fact that the New Republic has decided to pester a baby that makes me mad, per se. It’s the fact that so many responsible liberals, for whom TNR once served as a flag ship, still insist on retreating into frivolities like this one. It is for this reason that our Popular Front against terrorism, which held so much promise a few years ago, has so far failed to keep that promise.

Not everybody turned out to be a gutless wonder, of course. Democrats, liberals, and even the left have contributed some real paladins to this fight. Their efficacy is demonstrated by the hysterical hatred that the anti-American mosh pit shrieks at them. Their moral courage is second to nobody’s.

But for too many, the petty little world of Democrats and Republicans - locked in eternal metaphysical struggle over some stupid-ass remark somebody made on Face the Nation last week – remains the ruling paradigm. Everything else is unserious.

We’ll get to Appomattox some day. Right now we’re still in a bar in Washington after First Bull Run, bitching at each other like cranky children.

Robert Altman's Latest Death Trip

2006-12-09T23:37:00.000-07:00

There aren't too many directors I would immediately recognize if I walked into the middle of one of their films, but there are a few. If two characters use the word "n-gger" thirty-seven times in one conversation, it's Quentin Tarantino. If David Mamet's wife is in it, it's David Mamet. If I've already seen it, it's Joel and Ethan Coen. And if it has a HUGE ensemble cast of utterly unsympathetic characters, zero plot, and is totally devoid of anything resembling either comedy or drama, it's Robert Altman. And even though I've walked into the middle of it, it's probably going to last another three hours.

I'd like to salvage something from all the hours of Robert Altman I've seen, but it's not going to be easy. Start with his most popular film, M*A*S*H. M*A*S*H is, in fact, a perfectly vile piece of work. It's cynical, mean-spirited, misogynistic, and doesn't have three jokes in it that are actually funny. The idea of a comedy set in a blood-soaked surgery in Korea is supposed to be a fine artistic juxtaposition, I suppose. But the endless television series that followed proved that a military surgery is no different from a Boston bar, or Seinfeld's living room. And it's disturbing how easily the corrupt and cynical characters of the film were so easily transformed into conventional Hollywood liberals on television. Just as the dismal, barren scrub hills of Korea were perfectly mimicked by the dismal, barren scrub hills of central California. Overall the effect is ultimately depressing, but being depressing is not the same thing as being profound.

Moving right along to Altman's critical masterpiece, Nashville. Here we are invited to think that we are experiencing a parody - of Nashville, of course, but Nashville as an effigy of Amerika. The clues start right at the beginning with the first of the hundred characters we'll meet: Haven Hamilton (Henry Gibson), a nudie-suit nightmare with Elvis hair who is in his studio recording a bicentennial song called "We Must Be Doing Something Right (To Have Lasted 200 Years)". This is a canned-laughter cue for liberals to jerk their knees - patriotic country music? Bleeeech! Afterwards Haven warns his piano player to get a haircut. "You don't belong in Nashville (Amerika)." Once again Altman picks a big, fat, slow-moving bogeyman and aims low.

Maybe I'm reading too much into Nashville. Or too little. At the end of the film, singer Barbara Jean (a Loretta Lynn stand-in, played by Ronee Blakely) is senselessly gunned down during a performance by a guy who looks like Clark Kent. "Thank yuh, thet song was fer Mommy an' Daddy ---" BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! A hippy and a soldier wrestle Clark Kent to the ground. As Loretta Lynn's body is carted off the stage, Barbara Harris takes the microphone and sings a pretty, meaningless tune: "You may say that I ain't free, but it don't worry me." Everybody happily claps and sings along. Roll the credits.

That has to mean something, right? After all, Nashville was nominated for four Oscars in 1975, and is a perfect fossilized specimen of the Seventies: brainless music, brainless clothes, brainless art, high gas prices, Arabs running amok, crazed gunmen running amok, Jimmy Carter running amok, cynical films with no plot - okay, maybe that's what's happening right now. Maybe that makes it prophetic, or timeless. I find it hard to care. I just want my six hours back - at least, it seemed like six hours. Maybe I want that whole decade of my childhood back, without the sordid details. Without this goddamn picture in the middle of it.

But I gave Altman another chance, with Short Cuts. When dealing with a Robert Altman film, it's best to focus on one of the thirty different storylines and spend the rest of the time taking cigarette breaks and replenishing the Milk Duds supply. The part of the film I chose to watch dealt with a small boy who is accidently hit by a car (driven by Lily Tomlin). The boy seems to be unhurt, but he collapses a short time later and eventually dies. This unpleasantness is reinforced by the appearance of the boy's grandfather (Jack Lemmon), a painful failure of a man who threw his life away with a marital infidelity, and by a twisted pastry chef (Lyle Lovett, minus the Large Band) who harasses the dying boy's mother with nasty phone calls. All of this is every bit as much fun as it sounds, and I don't know if I can take any more cinematic experiences like that one.

Ingmar Bergman supposedly said, "I could always live in my art, but never in my life." I guess Altman finally achieved in his life what he did in his art: Death by sheer indifference. I can't think it will be much of a change for him. Resquiat in Pacem, friend.

What is Truthiness?

2006-12-03T12:57:00.000-07:00

SOCRATES: Glen, Crito and I beg you to join our discussion, and enlighten us on a subject that has puzzled us both. What is “truthiness”?

GLEN: Well, first of all, it’s a fad word with more style than substance. But so far as I can tell, something has “truthiness” if it seems to be true in some way that is intuitive or emotional, but not proven by evidence or reason.

SOCRATES: Hmmm. Then I beg you to excuse me, for I must be dreadfully ignorant …

CRITO: Very true, Socrates.

SOCRATES: Shut your pie hole, you idiot. You’re supposed to say “very true” when I say something that actually is true, not when I’m engaging in self-deprecation for rhetorical effect.

CRITO: When you say something that is true, or something that has “truthiness”?

GLEN: Could we skip the rhetorical effects for once? Just get to the point.

SOCRATES: Very well. This quality of “truthiness” that you describe – it differs from truth in that it is neither a self-evident fact, nor is it deduced by logic?

GLEN: That’s right.

SOCRATES: And yet, if a person perceives “truthiness”, he perceives something that appeals to him in some manner that reason cannot explain?

GLEN: Yes.

SOCRATES: And he judges this to be good, though he cannot prove why?

GLEN: I suppose so.

SOCRATES: Then once again I have confirmed by belief that Americans have no appreciation for beauty. For is it not obvious that this “truthiness” is none other than the quality of being beautiful? All civilized people understand what beauty is, but Americans are so ignorant of beauty that they must invent ugly words to describe its effects, on those rare occasions when beauty penetrates their petrified senses.

CRITO: So truthiness is beauty, and beauty, truthiness? Am I supposed to say “very true” now, or are you still pretending to be stupid?

GLEN: Pretending or not, he’s dead wrong.

SOCRATES: How am I wrong?

GLEN: Because “truthiness” doesn’t appeal just to sensuality. It also appeals to ignorance, bigotry, and malice. People see truthiness in things they want to believe, and lots of people want to believe the worst. People love to believe in conspiracies and immanent disasters, and all kinds of sordid things that are not at all beautiful.

CRITO: Unless they perceive some kind of bizarre beauty in such things. A sort of “beautiness”.

GLEN: Beautiness?

SOCRATES: I think Crito has had one of his occasional rear-end collisions with truth. For if truthiness exists, the analogous quality of beautiness must exist also. In fact, isn’t the entire American aesthetic founded on beautiness? Americans are repelled by any refined expression of beauty, finding all such poetry and music to be nothing but noise and nonsense. They want extravagant spectacles of color and sound, orgies of violence and pornography, and they reject as pretentious anything that rises above the lowest common sentiment. They want counterfeit beauty, to go along with their counterfeit truth.

GLEN: You’re one to talk. If we had any artists in this country, you’d be all for shipping them to Guantanamo.

SOCRATES: All I’ve ever asked of artists is that they serve the civic and ethical purpose of society, which of course they won’t do. But your Republic has done an admirable job of exterminating them. And your bogus artists serve the purpose of your culture very well, since that purpose seems to be sado-masochistic nihilism. They couldn’t be greater patriots.

GLEN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I still don’t know what you mean by “beautiness”.

CRITO: It’s like the time that Sappho went to Fort Lauderdale. She hit on this chick in a bar, only it turned out that the chick was a guy wearing a dress.

GLEN: So beautiness is like a guy wearing a dress.

SOCRATES: Not a very elegant analogy, but it has a kind of truthiness to it.

Quiet Blog (Fiction)

2006-10-14T02:57:00.000-07:00

Eager_Angel wrote:

Bravo for that wonderful and informative post, Ruth. I am so happy to have discovered your weblog. What a pleasure it is to find someone whom I so completely agree with.

10:13:06:10:02

Ruth wrote:

Thank you for the kind words, E.A. I like a compliment as much as the next person, but I think you’re laying it on a little thick here. My post was more snark than substance, and when you say you agree with it I hope you mean you appreciate its sarcastic bent. Not me at my best, really. But thanks anyway.

10:13:06:10:15

Eager_Angel wrote:

You’re too modest, Ruth. Though I must say, I wish you had found a better way to express your modesty. I wish you would not use the word “snark”, for example. Yes, I know that Mister Instant, who is a university professor, uses that word. To me it is an infantile and obscene-sounding word, and I think it far beneath you to use it.

One of the things I enjoy most about your writing is that you avoid the excessive use of hard consonants. I find it very unpleasant to read prose that is filled with the ceaseless hammering of hard consonants. I may not go to movies or read most books because of this.

10:13:06:10:21

Ruth wrote:

I don’t know if you’re pulling my back leg or not, E.A., but I’m glad you don’t find it unpleasant to read my blog. Your reason interests me, though. I didn’t know I was skimping on hard consonants, and I’m glad you don’t feel cheated.

10:13:06:10:40

Eager_Angel wrote:

Really, Ruth, at this point someone might almost accuse you of not knowing how to accept praise. What I meant was that your writing has a soothing sound to it, without all the Latinate clanging and banging about. By Latinate I mean of course the classical pronunciation of Latin, with its crunching C and punching G and piercing S sounds, not the less disturbing ecclesiastical Latin. It seems a very simple thing to say and I see no reason why you should laugh at me for saying it, Ruth.

Not long ago, I was given an analgesic drug following an operation. When I awoke in my hospital bed I very distinctly heard – through an open window - the sound of a snake slithering across a gravel path more than four miles away. That distance is an estimate, mind you, but not an exaggeration. The sound was so detailed and so distinctly present to my ear that I was able to gauge it quite well. I did not find this sound pleasant, and its duration was mercifully brief. Had it continued, I’m certain I could have counted the number of ventral scales on the snake’s belly, as well as the number of gravel stones that it disturbed in its passage.

10:13:06:10:52

Ruth wrote:

E.A., I assure you I wasn’t laughing at you, and let me say thanks again for your kind words. I’m not sure how your story about the snake fits in here, but I hope your operation was a success and you are feeling much better. Can we leave it there?

10:13:06:11:15

Eager_Angel wrote:

I have not re-read what I wrote because the sound of it is too unbearable, and you should know that I found it very DIFFICULT to write, but I thought what I said was perfectly clear, Ruth. I am told that my sensitivity to sound is neuropathic rather than physical, and that the sounds that bother me are not real sounds but aural hallucinations. I am no more sensitive to actual sound than any other person is, they tell me. But I know very well (and so do they) that these sounds have a physical effect on the body. The sounds that Beethoven heard in his mind while composing caused actual damage to his hearing, petrifying the cartilage of his ears until every “real” sound caused him agony. You can imagine the precautions I take. I change residences frequently, because I find that locations acquire a certain unsettling sound after a while. The internet is very important to me, but it’s hard to find suitable-sounding material. That’s why I was so pleased to discover your weblog, Ruth. I wish I could say I was pleased with your present comments. MAY we leave it there?

And yes, my operation was a success and I am fully recovered. For a time I had a small problem with gagging, as if I were about to vomit, though I felt no nausea at all. One of the doctors told me that this sensation was also neuropathic. This doctor is a Jew, and I have no objection to Jews, though I do not like the jarring sound that the word “Jew” makes. But this doctor articulates the “th” sound in such an aggressive manner that I cringe when I talk to him, and afterwards I feel as if I have been punched in the breast and abdomen.

Receiving no help, then, it took me some time to discover the source of my discomfort. It was a woman who lived not two blocks from the apartment that I then occupied. Although she lived alone, she frequently talked on her telephone. When she talked she made incessant use of certain four-letter words, relating to genitalia and the uses of genitalia, with an unnecessarily violent articulation of the consonant K. I don’t know if it was the frequency of her voice (from her appearance I judged her to be a Latina, about 25 years of age) or the mental imagery that she experienced when she articulated these K-words, but I felt each one as a physical contraction in my diaphragm. Having diagnosed the problem, I was able to resolve it. So yes, I am feeling much better.

10:13:06:11:33

Ruth wrote:

Um, I have a feeling I’m going to be sorry I asked this, but how exactly did you resolve that problem?

10:13:06:11:54

Eager_Angel wrote:

The sounds did not persist after the source was removed. Although her voice (or mind) was able to affect me at a great distance, it thankfully lacked resonance. It caused no apparent damage to my body or to my physical environment, though to be safe I have moved to a new apartment.

10:14:06:12:00

Ruth wrote:

Seriously, E.A., if were you, I would see your doctors again and let them know that you need a little more help than they’ve given you. Seriously.

10:14:06:12:23

Eager_Angel wrote:

You are not listening to what I write. I’ve explained why I may not talk to my doctors, and it’s not only the doctor who says “neuropathic” in an abusive manner. All doctors are self-important and speak with unnecessarily loud voices.

Just like that man who visited you last night. I don’t know if he’s a doctor, but he has an offensive manner about him and he laughs very loudly. Besides which he smokes cigarettes, and he put out a cigarette in your window box while he was waiting for you to open the door. From the first time I saw him I knew he smoked cigarettes, because of the constant hissing noise he makes. I don’t know why a young girl who lives alone would let someone like that into her apartment.

10:14:06:12:44

Ruth wrote:

Listen, whoever the f-k you are, this has gone far enough and before it goes any farther you should know that I’ve called the police.

10:14:06:12:50

Eager_Angel wrote:

There’s no need for you to carry on like that and say those words. And I know that you’re lying because I have your cell phone right here. Never mind, I can see you’re not listening to me now.

10:14:06:12:54

Ruth wrote:

Just to say that Ruth is not here anymore. Everything is quiet now, and Ruth is at peace. Goodbye.

10:14:06:01:52

Eager_Angel wrote:

Goodbye Ruth. I’m happy that you’ve found peace. I’m very sorry, though, that you are not the person I thought you were. How could a shrieking, foul-mouthed bitch have written with such serene beauty? Apparently I only heard what I wanted to hear. Isn’t that the way it always is?

10:14:06:03:05

Yellow_Kid wrote:

Great post, Ruth, keep it up.

I see that Eager is trolling you; I recognize the name from the old Pantech music forum. He (or she, whatever it is) was always doing spelling flames and complaining about people making noise in the thread. Real basket case with a side of fries. Some of the regulars stopped posting there because of this guy. Don’t let him bug you out.

10:14:06:06:22

Four September Good-Byes

2006-09-10T16:12:00.000-07:00

I’ll take the subway from here, she said, or you’ll be late.
She leaned towards him quickly, beautiful in her sexless b-suit,
and they kissed quickly before she stepped out onto the curb.
See you, they said. She walked away from him,
past the brownstones where the men wait all day in limousines,
and disappeared forever into Manhattan’s impersonal shuffle.

His wife was still asleep when the carpool arrived.
His mother was up as usual, making breakfast for the kids.
She gave her son the little lunch she had made for him,
feeling guilty as always that it was so plain and thrown-together.
She lifted the kids onto the window seat so they could wave good-bye.
If she said good-bye herself, she could never remember afterwards.

Last night she told him that she was unhappy, with no love in her voice.
She still smelled drunk. He touched her bare shoulder and kissed it.
In the dark hallway he put one hand on the kids’ door for a moment.
He could picture them through the door, asleep in the rubble of childhood.
He wanted to stay home, but what had she said? Time to grow up.
So he grabbed his gear and went to the station, feeling strangely charged.

She woke as she always did: early, alone, and still tired.
The emptiness and sameness of her apartment felt unbearable that morning,
so she cleaned off some of the crust of age and left for work early.
She passed through Harlem on the way, and she remembered seeing it
last Easter, when people were walking to church, the little girls in Easter bonnets.
She smiled at the memory. Without knowing it, she said her last good-bye.