The Story Continues . . . a serial enovel by Ferd Eggan 1 Welcome to Hotel Real Desert  But he never fell into the error of arresting his intellectual development by any formal acceptance of creed or system, or of mistaking, for a house in which to live, an inn that is but suitable for the sojourn of a night in which there are no stars and the moon is in travail . . 1 The Hotel Hotel is next door to a perfect metaphor for the mind, and thus for psychoanalysis. In my father's house are many mansions…To get there you have to leave somewhere else…  Outside of EuroDisney, on the road the farmers block to hold up the prices of Europroduce, is the Hotel Real Desert. Once a busy place recommended to savvy travelers ("I travel in women's undergarments, and I always feel I can let my hair down here--four stars" Michel Foucault.) offering ersatz Las Vegas vistas of bacteriostatic sand and palms over the casino, the Real Desert has in recent times had to take on the faded but patinated glamour of a residential hotel, on an inconvenient exit ramp on the freeway from Vienna to Paris. Signs read: Welcome to Hotel Real Desert! Free PsychoAnalytic Consultations! Pan-African Vegetarian Gourmandise! Last Resort Before Disney! The triumphant clucking of bouffanted small winners at the casino has all but silenced, or more accurately, is hushed by the uncomprehending sullen stares of adolescent louts sweating over video game joysticks, deafening themselves with third-rate rap in Marsailles French. 2 Le Casino Atroce Human adults learn to perceive this inherently fluid, relative domain in terms of fixed, solid objects existing within fixed structures of space and time. (a pretty Newtonian view, really) whereas the baby-child's rudimentary perceptual processes are more consistent with Einstein's relativistic discoveries.2 You sat in the casino bar, The Snivilling Sibbling (sic), one Wednesday night cooling your heels in the turbid oasis waters flowing under the barstools, as the albino bartender washed glasses and practiced flipping vodka bottles. An evil young girl pacified a colicky toddler with wine spritzers in her baby bottle. Your revulsion at the girl's ministrations to the child, at her "I Love Satan" t-shirt, her ketchup-congealed pommes frites de Liberte--or perhaps it was abreaction to the bass tones of the hip hop muzak and the screams emanating from the serial-murderer video games--overwhelmed you. You pulled the girl into a stall in the powder room and urged her to hold back on the alcohol, trying to explain that she didn't have to revenge herself on the baby. "What is she but a vessel to be filled, a flesh bubble around Lack?" the vixen asked. "And who am I, her sister or mother?" She continued in that untuned a capella vibrato that teenagers take for soulful singing these days "Momma, I tried, Momma, I couldn't stop the tide of tears, just like you I cried, The world had lied, had took away our pride, the slow, sad slide Of men that offer light girls a ride, a hookup but never a bride, Momma I'd of died. But you cared for me, shared bare necessity with me, dissed Felicity with me, preyed God above for me, .." "Stop, stop," you sobbed. "How can you say that? You're white, for Christ's sake!" With a certainty that it's better never to have been born than to be as hapless as the girl, you tied her off and injected her with a killing dose of fentanyl. As you left the bar, the little toddler was wobbling around the coffee table, the nipple of her bottle clenched in her teeth; almost no one turned from the video screens to see you on the way out. The Baby Thinks "Where'd Ana K. go?" "Is this another one of the learning experiences I am expected to undergo--to suffer? I guess the reason babies my age have millions of extra neurons is so we can learn. I suppose that as a neonate I had little choice in what happened to me and must have felt breast, warmth, wetness, fullness without clear ideas of internal vs. external origins. Do I need to repeat Lacan here cf. the symbolic stage w/Piaget's sensorimotor stage of "functional recognition;" e.g., recognition that something is "for drinking or "for wetness.." [She waddles over to the table and pulls a disposable diaper out of a Minnie Mouse tote bag. Lying on her back on the floor, she pulls off her used Pamper and replaces it with the fresh one.] "Oh, the joy of zinc ozide,!" she burbles "Although I've never seen a penis, I expect it's like carrying around a faucet. I've having a time finding the muscles to pee as it is. I'm operating the circular reflex: an outgoing impulse (e.g., leading to the contraction of a muscle) followed not mainly by the satisfaction of need, but rather by some incoming sensory impulse (e.g., in the eye, urethra, etc.)" [Pressing down the self-adhesive flaps, she sits up, bottle still in her mouth, and muses.] "Now, however, my babyhood seems to require concentrated efforts to construct myself, learning to be me seeing, hearing, talking and walking. I begin to take pleasure in operating the circular reflex 'to produce interesting spectacles.3' "Baby-sized mentations of accomplishment, frustration, satisfaction, deprivation attach themselves to the sensations and form the bases of my love, anger, etc. But the way they grow has to mean that what I will learn to call emotions are very dense mixtures of sensation and interpretation in narrative form: I feel sad because X happened. X happened because Y did Z to me or I did Z (to Y.) Someday I will know that Noam Chomsky says innate human grammar requires subject, verb, and usually object--that our human brains are wired to view and thus to talk about the world in this way--although not necessarily in this order. Here adult Freudians will be bound to object: 'Baby, you are conflating organic brain with functional mind.' I dismiss this as reifying a purely mental phenomenon; plus it's too confounding for my developmental stage. "Instead I will consider a feeling I have begun to feel now: I am sad. An explanation will arise very quickly. I feel sad because (I am sure by then I will be able to imagine some causal relationship between my body, my bottle, and the disappearance of Ana K). I'm reminded of previous times I have felt sad and I will connect them into a series by way of the synaptic corridors they pass through. The sad-ness itself will already be an explanation of a somatic sensation or mental phenomenon. Sensations are on my skin or the virtual skin, emotions are already-processed sensations or mental phenomena S/MP + (pleasure, satisfaction, warmth, i.e. security) = feeling OK. Wet diaper + disappeared person + insecurity = feeling bad [She stumbles, the bottle between her hands, held up to release the last drops.] "I have to say parenthetically that this new stuff in the bottle affects the feel of things in a big way. "Even now, my feeling OK is associated with events and people; gotta love them (or want them or hate or fear them). These associations will become progressively more elaborate as I accumulate more experience. Soon I can say 'I feel I am cold and contemptuous of others because I am afraid to experience their rejection of me,' or 'I love him because he makes me feel secure and confident and wanted.' The explanations will not particularly help in feeling better if one feels 'bad;' conversely, trying to feel 'good' will not seem to be enhanced by good explanations. I will live through years of therapists encouraging me to experience my psychic wounds, my feelings, with the idea that I can achieve a state of being in which pain can be experienced without debilitating consequences. "I will ask now, while I have extra synapses, isn't it the narrative itself that inscribes the scars on our minds, our hearts, my future razor-cut adolescent arms. I wonder if it just wouldn't be better to skip the pain altogether." [She slips, falls on her back, unconscious. Urine spreads in a pool toward the frayed electrical cord of a Mickey's Ghost Town slot machine.] 3 Rm. 1453 MonaLisa of the Desert. Gazing at the Monde de Disney parking lot, MonaLisa sits framed in her window, an ultralite cigarette in her hand, her arms supporting her gravity-afflicted breasts, once lunar melons, now barely able to plump up over the mass of her moist arms and the aluminum sill, cooling in the moonlight. Her face, the face on which the ends of the earth have come and gone, is not pensive, not secretly smiling, but cowed by the suffering she has felt and is all too sure to feel again. She has taken it on as weight; the excess of everything gradually pulled her pelvis out of tilt, her bowels out of line, her womb a little adrift. She has just returned, in fact, from the hospital where she lay under the knife for five hours while the doctors hewed away adhesions, occlusions and finally her ovaries and a pear-shaped mass of no longer definable fibrous tissue. Hers is the face of a patient, drugged out of pain and sorrow, drifting on Demerol. She felt something a few hours ago when she came to her full animal consciousness, her autonomic systems in full alarm at this latest outrage on her person. Mona believes she has nearly fulfilled her aspiration to drama-less calm. "I need to keep my head straight," Mona says to the moonlight, "no more nut-rolling on Novy or the kids." "I shall grow another breast in the middle of my chest what shall it be not like the other ones lying there those two fried eggs. in the center of my flesh I shall grow another breast rounder than a ready fist, slippery as a school of fish, sounder than stone. Call it She - Who - educates my chest. She Who. She is not my daughter, not my son I'm going to groom her with my tongue needle her senses with my pain feed her hunches with my brain, She Who defends me.4" "It's a good thing I already had my two girls," she reassures herself. The first glowed with the iridescent colors of a conch shell, of a pussy, opening all shiny pinks, golden hair and sunlit trust until Mona, sick with junkie pneumonia, had to give her up--a junkie ho would only victimize her child, they told her. Her baby's sun faded in the dark and clammy Pacific Northwest under Mona's sister's minging care. The second, now a toddler, had the better luck of being born in a prison hospital and fostered out to a former nun with money and horses and compassionate love. Mona is thrilled to have her here on a visit now, just three, unable to imagine inadequacies in parents, pleased with Mona, with herself and with the still-pink girl she has just learned is her older sister. This, then, is Mona, whose children come at great pain. Mona was driven to sobriety by the daughter once handed over to her half-sister, then taken back (at the teen daughter's insistence that Mona's sister was not a supportive--i.e. generous--parent). Poor Mona was then abandoned again when her daughter returned temporarily to her dank previous home where she became a gibbering speed freak, an auto thief, a fugitive, and generally white trash. She and her mother share one trait, an ability to recount the episodes when they were maimed and deprived of the halcyon life they believe is available to normal people. "While she's here, I have to get her head straight, too," thinks Mona, believing for a moment that she is in charge of a life, any life. 4 Rm. 1789 A Political Tract Lemmy Caution checks in. He immediately boots up his computer and hooks into the net. Routing through several nodes, he finds that a message is waiting, has been waiting for quite a while. One starless August night much like tonight, Lemmy stumbled out of the Burg Frieden in PrinzLauerBurg, then still E Berlin. Drunk, unable to move his tongue, desperately lonely, he fell into the rainy gutter. When he woke, a piece of paper was twisted in his mouth. Dried out, he read People ask, what is the nature of the revolution that we talk about. Who will it be made by, and for, and what are its goals and strategy? We are within the heartland of a world-wide monster, a country so rich from its world-wide plunder that even the crumbs doled out to the enslaved masses within its borders provide for material existence very much above the conditions of the masses of people of the world. . . All of the United Airlines Astrojets, all of the Holiday Inns, all of Hertz's automobiles, your television set, car and wardrobe already belong, to a large degree to the people of the rest of the world. 5 He's been committed ever since, a clandestine freedom fighter, autonomous, placing his devices alone or with a few other cadres, exchanging plans and ideological instruction only through safe message drops. During Vietnam, it was easier, as the Vietnamese were very astute in their description of their People's War and the centrality of the anti-colonial struggle against US imperialism. At first he exchanged tangible letters, paper signs of struggle. These new electronic messages are harder to actualize in practice, and the post-socialist world of global empire far harder to conceptualize in terms of improvement and barbarism. A while ago, this: The deaths of three friends ended our military conception of what we are doing. It took us weeks of careful talking to rediscover our roots, to remember that we had been turned on to the possibilities of revolution by denying the schools, the jobs the death relationships we were "educated" for. We went back to how we had begun living with groups of friends and fount that this revolution could leave intact the enslavement of women if women did not fight to end and change it, together . . .And marijuana and LSD and little money and awakening to the black revolution, the people of the world. 6 But tonight, for the first time in way too long, Lemmy is to meet his closest comrade. Oedipa Maas is the slinky trans revolutionary who first turned on Tania Hearst, later turning on to more productive anti-globalization struggles. Lemmy and Oedipa have not seen each other since Seattle. As he sets out the sling and the dildos, he sings, "the Prince of Stories would walk right by me.7" Perceiving the onset of hallucination from the soma, Lemmy voices an instant message into his netserver, hoping this will be sufficient political struggle for tonight, as unsure as he is about inter/intra-gender sexual relations. Laughing. Laughing. Laugh. Couldn't stop laughing. . . at my own everyday pomposity, the narrow arrogance of scholars, the impudence of the rational, the smug naiveté of words in contrast to the raw rich ever-changing panoramas that flooded my brain.8 Lemmy shuts down the computer; the door chimes, Oedipa makes her appearance. 5 My Dreams "Sauvez ce qui pleure" Paul Eluard, La Capital de Douleur A long dream of torture…my father wanted to kill Eubie, our youngest brother. My middle brother Blake and I had to protect him. After many suspenseful but mystifying clashes, everything was over--dad was dead. Our mother came in and stabbed me repeatedly and then I was transferred to two torturers…blood, piercings, exhaustion. Terror before pain, then no strong pain…Masturbated last night--ucs. Guilt? I can't let the murder of the kid happen--too much guilt if it does. . . Ethics from guilt. Conscious memories of tender care for Eubie. For the last century, the west has twisted in the meshes of a pre-lapsarian dream: if only I hadn't been psychically wounded in childhood I'd be all right, I'd have a healthy self. My dad's house had many mansions. When he died we had to empty the house and divide up his accumulations and all I got was this lousy Schadenfreude. Seven lean cows, all bowing down to me . . . No really, I dream myself flustered by urgency and loss . . .need to prevent disasters. Eubie's son wanted to ride his bike. I needed Eubie to drive me to Noe School to find a teacher who knew what I needed to know. delay, excruciating wait while the bike is put on the rack . . . I searched the tall room under the eaves, strewn with papers and junk, searching, searching for the paper with the phone number . . . calling information, getting a number, not clear whether it's the number for an operator or a direct line. . . the phone is different. . . my mother said 'nothing's changed" . . . I get hysterically angry: 'look at the numbers on the phone. Are they different or not?' 'Yes, they are,' Aunt MabelRuth admits things have changed. . . jabbering in Spanish from the roofers across the street . . . a gas-sputtering lawnmower, clattering against the sidewalk . . . I'm in my house. . . I know it's not my real house but it's my house invaded by lying hoodlums . . . who will be hurt next? . . . I think our human brains are an evolutionary accident. The difference between chimp and human brains is very significant in terms of size and--over time--has led to marked differences in cognition if not perception. The difference does not look like the results of any evolutionary pressure. The random gene changes that led to a much larger brain do not seem to offer survival advantage commensurate with the energy expenditure required to supply it. I conclude that our brain began as a genetic mishap, for no more purpose than that apportioned to any other animal, mineral or vegetable. I am kissing my brother Blake. . . now I love him . . . he reluctantly surrenders to his love for me. . . his body is beautiful, athletic, warm and welcoming . . . his mouth softly moving, thrilling, familiar . . . his baseball hands, his football legs . . I realize now that I wasn't jealous of him because Dad liked him best, but of my dad because Blake liked him more than me . . . Dad sees us kissing and me lying on top, getting ready to fuck . . .maybe it's Blake on top . . . he tells Mom . . . she tells him it's ok. . . "We shall see people engaged in attractive occupations, giving no thoughts to material wants, free from all pecuniary cares and anxieties. As women and children all work, there will be no idlers, all will earn more than they consume. Universal happiness and gaiety will reign. A unity of interests and views will arise, crime and violence disappear. There will be no individual dependence---no private servants, only maids, cooks, and so forth all working for all (when they please). Elegance and luxury will be had by all.9". 6 The Clouds Above the Real Desert Joseph in contemplation: "The Cloud of Unknowing is the cloud of electrons around the nucleus--here/not here, energy/matter-- either, depending on what's happening, the universe's rules of operation. A Joshua Tree grows even in this unreal desert, cells grow, photosynthesis, the works. The tree, as the rule of the physical universe would have it, reflects light. In the universe humans inhabit, reflecting light is a necessary result of the assemblage of matter on earth--necessary also to the survival of the tree and to its presence among other trees, rocks, animals." Pumping his harmonium, he sings: Song of the Joshua Tree that Josh is about fifteen feet tall tree tissue organized to move water from root to crown osmotic pressure, umm ..hmm, and transpiration through the leaves we are to presume that the tree knows nothing --it has no brain-- it's more primitive than "real" trees but it can repair itself, and it can react --slowly, I say, umm . hmm-- to phenomena, emergent or adverse. its cells are sensitive to the pressures (pleasures): quickening sap and warm breezes reflecting light greenly the Joshua Tree fallaciously, pathetically, likes afternoon light, likes being seen just so, just so . .umm..hmm by discriminating coyotes and quails. "I wish I knew enough to assert clearly that this Spinozan10, rather than Kantian, idea of human perception as a necessary and proportionate interaction of human body with tree, obviates any quibbling about whether or not matter is just our idea of things." [The] discernment of relatively invariant entities and processes and the creation of mental maps where the key coordinates map relatively stable things, . . may be the most practical way to be an animal on this planet--else why would we make the mistake of believing in solidity and fixity?11 "Else why do we? I want to assert that molecules, atoms, photons, electrical and chemical energy, make us see the Joshua Tree. The tree gives: it 'trees' to us. We see it: we can't help it, the rods and cones react to light, the reactions excite a few cells, then more and more. Brain studies seem to indicate that the excitations are not on/off--not digital, but analog--the neurotransmitters and electrical flow are emergent properties of the eye-brain-mind process that are modulable over an infinite range, not merely by quantifiable increments of cell firings and cell non-firings. And they are not yet coded, nor are they in language. Afterwards, apparently 500 milliseconds after, we are looking at the tree and utilizing previous neural pathways in relation to the tree. "Only then are we 'affected' by the tree, and only then do we cogitate an idea, which is coded, is in symbols, of 'tree.' No part of this is any more or less 'real' or objective. It must take active work to look at the tree: the reception of minimal sensory input is necessary not sufficient by itself to arouse attention, our eye-brain-minds select which datum is to be enriched through concentration. From there the processing must actively combine memories, previous categorizations and new data through neural connections. A particular tree becomes a tree in many contexts, as if the brain makes as many as possible available from which to draw. "And if this is true of a mere tree, a fortiori it is even more true of human interaction." …'Just as he looks now!' and I saw Lord Mellifont stand before us with his sketch-block. I took in as we met him that he appeared neither suspicious nor blank; he simply stood there, as he stood always everywhere, for the principal feature of the scene. Naturally he had no sketch to show us, but nothjng could have better rounded off our actual conception of him than the way he fell into position as we approached (…) We stayed while the exhibition went on, and the conscious profiles of the peaks might to our apprehension have been interested in his success. (…[He gave Blanche the water-colour sketch] . . ) 'He'll have to rest after this,' Blanche said, dropping her eyes on her water-colour. 'Indeed he will!' I raised mine to the window: Lord Mellifont had vanished. "He's already reabsorbed.'12 7 Suite C-3.3 Dialogue on The Anthropic Principle13 Cyril Burst and Vyvyan Lord Throbbing are seated together on a reassuringly threadbare Louix XV, mauvely gazing at the vermillion lights over the Real Aqua Swimming Pool. Cyril: I say, Vyvyan, pass me a gold-tipped cigarette, there's a dear. You know, you butch thing, many cosmologists posit different levels of universes, hoping thereby to answer questions regarding the seeming uniqueness of our own. Dr Martin Rees, of Cambridge and the Astronomer Royal, says contemplating alternate universes could help scientists distinguish which features of our own universe are fundamental and necessary and which are accidents of cosmic history. A light, pet? Vyvyan: Oh, Cyril, when you talk like this I am aflame! Stroke my hyacinth hair and tell me ours is the cosmic accident. You may randomly kiss my slim-gilt lips. Cyril: Oh, don't! . . Dr Alan Guth of MIT introduced idea of inflation in 1980. His--the most artistic--universe is getting larger, and going faster. Guth says the universe is "the ultimate free lunch." Vyvyan: I love a free lunch, if it costs someone a great deal. Let's feast on nightingales' tongues and sip absinthe. I'll call down for more music and madder wine. Cyril: Oh, fickler than Willie Hughes! I long for constants like the speed of light. Only a narrow range of settings (for these constants) is suitable for the evolution of complexity or Life as We Know It. Vyvyan: Life as What? Say it again about the multiverse. Cyril: I will not. I try continually to avoid repetition. Vyvyan: What? Cyril: I try continually . . . Oh! Ashbery! Vyvyan: Auden! Auden! . . So my dear, despite these deafening drapes, is this a lucky universe, or what? Cyril: In 1974 Dr Brandon Carter, a theoretical physicist at MIT posited "the Anthropic Principle," asseverating that these coincidences were not just luck, but were rather necessary preconditions for us to be looking at the universe. After all, we are hardly likely to discover laws that are incompatible with our own existence. Vyvyan: Our mission, Cyril: contra the laws promulgated by fundamentalists, as in Iran or the United States. Cyril: How thrillingly political of you to say so, Vyvyan my unicornus. Freeman Dyson, another physicist, once said, "The universe in some sense must have known we were coming." Vyvyan: Yep! Cyril: Dr Steven Weinberg is positively Miltonic in his comments on the universe, which he sees bubbling progeny like yeast buds. According to string theory, Dr. Hogan of Washington says, the laws of physics that we mortals experience are low-energy, 4 dimensional shadows, of sorts, of a 10- or 11-dimensional universe. cosmological constant. Ah, here's a snack; I'm ravenously puckish.. Oh! I thought you ordered carpaccio, but this is turnip tartare with nasturtium! Vyvyan: My own, economise now! And you are looking a trifle cosmological yourself. Cyril: Well, if you say so, my precious little fatty. Now, according to astronomical observations, otherwise undetectable energy--"dark energy"-- accounts for about two-thirds of the mass-energy of the universe today, outweighing matter two to one. But according to modern quantum physics, empty space should be seething with energy that would outweigh matter in the universe by far, far more, by a factor of at least 1060. Vyvyan: And what to wear in dark energy? So the speeding-up of inflation lends more energy than was thought to exist? And the cosmological constant,, a formula to account for this discrepancy, must be within ranges compatible with us! Cyril: Just, just so. And, as we know, the logical consequence of this is that we "queers" in our indolence have seen through the canard of vulgar Marxism. We live the principle that production is not the basis of human life.. Instead it is enjoyment! Fourier! Vyvyan: Ergo, my dear Cyril, what all we humans do is enjoy the impingement of this probably-unique world on us and ours on it, just like the lilies of the field. How lovely to be wanted by the entire universe, just so! 8 Suite K-347 The Mirror of Production 14 Flicking her jet beads at a bat, feeling very horny, Karen, Countess Dinesen-Youssopoff (nee Blitzen) can barely keep herself still on her twilit balcony. She is waiting for what this hotel obligingly calls "un ouvrier de santé sexuelle." Her daily meal of a strawberry and a glass of champagne long over, she smokes another opium-laced cigarette as she strokes her ropy throat. Through a geneology almost impossible to trace, Karen is the grand daughter of Prince Felix Youssopoff, the Russian queen who killed Rasputin. He made a Morganatic marriage, fled to Denmark after the Revolution and spent years intriguing with White Russians. Karen managed to recover her grandfather's Baku oil refineries and grew richer through the sale of his Rembrandts and a suit against CBS Television that proved her grandfather actually did murder the Czarina's starets.15 She reads from her commonplace book, makes a notation in her crabbed half-Cyrillic hand. "The productive-man notion of Marx 'hallucinates man's predestination for the objective transformation of the world (or for the 'production' of oneself: today's generalized humanist theme--it is no longer a question of 'being' oneself but of 'producing' oneself, from conscious activity to the primitive 'productions' of desire16". Karen dials her message machine to leave this memorandum: "B quotes Marx for whom men 'begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence…' Remember that." She asks Merle, her Maltese, "Why must man's vocation always be to distinguish himself from animals? Is man's existence an end for which he must find the means?" Sliding back the curtain on the sidelight of the door a little, Karen B critiques the notion of production of subsistence: "it is the instrumentalization of nature." She summons up Marx: 'Labor is, in the first place, a process in which both man and nature participate, and in which man of his own accord starts, regulates and controls the material re-actions between himself and nature. He opposes himself to nature as one of her own forces, setting in motion arms and legs, head and hands, the natural forces of his body, in order to appropriate nature's productions in a form adapted to his own wants.'17" "How tedious," Karen sighs. "Why can't these men see that labor is not the basis of human existence? Even Marcuse, for all his slavering after erotic freedom, says labor is grounded 'in an essential excess of human existence beyond every possible situation in which it finds itself and the world. . . [it] is necessary and eternally 'earlier' than play: it is the starting point, foundation and principle of play insofar as play is precisely a breaking off from labor and a recuperation for labor.18' But that is so wrong!" Taking her own version of luxury in an Henri III (1551-1589) straight-back wooden chair, Karen tightens her black toque and murmurs, "Marx doesn't see that in his symbolic exchanges primitive man (sic) does not gauge himself in relation to Nature. He is not aware of Necessity, a Law that takes effect only with the objectification of Nature." "Primitive 'society' does not exist as an instance apart from symbolic exchange; and this exchange never results from an 'excess' of production. It is the opposite: to the extent that these terms apply here, 'subsistence' and 'economic exchange' are the residue of symbolic exchange, a remainder.' " Impatiently re-telling her jet beads, she thinks, "survival is not a principle. We have made it one." She remembers Africa and her other lover, Jean Baudrillard, saying "For the primitives, eating, drinking, and living are first of all acts that are exchanged: if they are not exchanged, they do not occur. It is symbolic exchange, where the relation (not the 'social') is tied, and this exchange excludes any surplus: anything that cannot be exchanged or symbolically shared would break the reciprocity and institute power. Better yet, this exchange excludes all 'production.'" "Good old Jean," she sighs, "stealing from Bataille like that." The door chimes. A gorgeous young Arab rings her bell. With highly stylized sincerity, long eyelashes down, he tells Karen he is at her service. "My name is Ahmed Oedipus Ben Maas," he says, "and for me, 'work' is something other than labor…The artisan lives his work as a relation of symbolic exchange, abolishing the definition of himself as 'laborer' and the object as 'product of his labor.' " "Above all," Karen adds, lighting two of her cigarettes in the red gash of her mouth, "artisanal work is, according to etymology, 'demiurge.'" 9 Rm. 1876 Ferd on the Brain I'm on assignment, re-building the organ at the "Petit Monde" experience at Euro Disney. Oddly, though the singing children are totally animatronic, dancing and piping their tunes by virtue of computer 1s and 0s, the organ is manual (and pedal). I spend my days scrambling through forests of big and little pipes, for it is a very big organ. One Sunday evening I'm relaxing around this musty French pool, reminiscing about a day in LA in 1992 when some rich queen threw a pool party for People With AIDS up in the hills, within spitting distance of the Hollywood Sign. Boys with purple blotches all over their backs and chests played in the sunny water, while a few long-timers sat in wheelchairs, wrapped in bright blankets, wheeled mushrooms in big straw hats. It was in that pool that I met Ferd. Ferd was not the host--he had no more money than it takes to buy a used Toyota pickup--but he was the big cheese because he was the director of the PWA group bubbling on the lawn with precious-- tentative--joy in the sunshine. We all loved Ferd then. He was healthy enough to work for our benefit 16 hours a day, he was edgy enough to get our group funded at the vanguard of sexual healing as both treatment and prevention strategy. Ferd was a little like our figurehead as we breasted the waves, our sun king as he ordered the world with and for us, and a little like a social director who, under his bonhomie, was transparently terrified of friendship. He slid into the water next to me and we bobbed up and down smiling and cruising, I trying to assure myself I was still cute and attractive, Ferd called upon to concentrate so long on one person that sexual desire snuck up on him unbidden--in fact, he would later say, unpermitted in his job as director and animator of our clump of radical patients and victims, since a sexual liaison would reduce his availability to "listen, handhold, inspire, cajole, hug, solace" the others he thought in his care. That afternoon he pulled himself out of the pool with a slight turgidity visible in the folds of his floppy yellow trunks and smiled as if he expected to be back to bob some more with me. He didn't come back soon, not until after I fended off a handsome guy with really bad AZT breath, who I knew wasn't likely to take up with me anyway. He was already twice a widow of wealthier, lonelier men who left him houses and money for cosmetic surgery. I had nothing to offer but sweaty organs. "We're walking next door to look at Aldous Huxley's house," Ferd said when he came back, smelling of sunblock, lime and vodka. "Want to come along?" I did. The Huxley property, explained our host, was really just a crater as a fire had destroyed the building where Aldous wrote and took his LSD, where Laura struggled on alone until 1979. The Hollywood Sign was so close that the OOD took up most of the view on one side. Ferd started in about his acid trips. He had met Leary at Millbrook once in 67, he had done light shows at the Fillmore with Janis, Country Joe, The Incredible String Band (one of his fey favorites), Sly and the Family Stone at the Electric Circus. "I wish there was still acid to be taken," he said, "now that I'm not scared about blurting out 'I'm gay' to some straight hippie companion." "That must have happened twenty years ago," I replied. "Surely you've come to terms with all of that by now. After all, here we are all together, having fun, living proof that God doesn't punish the wicked with anything more than painful, ugly death and stigmatized suffering." "Yes, surely I should feel cheered by your reminder of how good we have it," Ferd said. "But let's don't call each other Shirley. Actually I take anti-depressants now, so I don't bother with scared or unhappy any more. "I think our consciousness should be altered, early and often." he told me, his good eye engaging mine. "We need to experience being without relation to time--escape from a conception of a forward moving series of events the most sense-rich of which felt as the present and less rich assigned to a recallable but fading past. Further, the brain's capacity to take in and re-view sensory input led to the development of neural pathways that could access and perceive or experience the occurrence of review and cogitate on the process itself. Sensory input is reviewed through the same neural pathways (or analogous or related or proximate ones) that process raw sensory input. It is unclear whether the brain always knows the difference between processing the sensory input we usually think of as perception of reality and processing the processing which, as mirrors can reflect each other, can approach infinity as sense data become perceptions, become organized ideas, become abstract categories and then categories of categories. Given what little is understood about the brain, it is not possible to say whether these processes are or are not organized in hierarchies. The brain may assign more or less attention energy, ranking by importance or immediacy or proximity or some other order--or not. "The result of all this, I think, is that humans have a brain that processes sensory and internal mental phenomena at too many levels, too often, too much, with inadequate mechanism to turn the processing off. We have brains too good for our own good; we think and abstract feelings and memories too much. This ceaseless idling is what we have learned to call our feelings, however remote the neural processing may be from somatic reactions to events perceived as happening now. Like HAL2000, our brain (and by brain I keep trying to mean all the data processing mechanisms from senses to memory to thinking) thinks what it does is real. What psychological literature and philosophy have always confounded--the subject and object and later the divided subject--become less compelling as explanation and certainly as a concept to provide a comfortable relation to 'external reality.' But the brain is best seen as actively seeking, processing and thinking at all levels simultaneously: consciousness is a trick of our brains describing us to ourselves, stringing processes and events into a self, asserting to us that the self of today is the same one as any other day, selecting data and memories to substantiate itself." "Yeah, you're right," I said. I never thought he was sexy after that. 10 Reception Desk While MonaLisa recuperates, her girlfriend Novy might fill in at the front desk. Usually dressed for her main job as Conductor on Wild Ride de M. Toad, she would be irritable in a pantsuit that barely stretches across her chest and chafes her crotch. Novy might be musing about her lover or daydreaming about her brothers. She'd not be impressed by the small bald man across the counter, signing in as Mobe 68. "Will you be needing any special attentions, Mr. Mobe 68?" "No, just be sure my car is plugged in to the charger and send up 12 bottles of Vichy water. And put Ferd in the room next to mine." "Very good, Mr. Mobe 68. And here are the keys for you and Mr. Ferd." She might think to herself that these two were pop music has-beens from 2002; she'd put them in the smelly suite on the fourth floor. "Overlooking the pool, nice views." As they walk toward the elevator, the organ grinder might come up to them and ask, "Aren't you . . .?" "Yes, I'm. Mo. . "Ferd? Remember me from Being Alive PWA parties?" "Oh yes, I remember . um. . Bill, . Aldous Huxley! And of course you recognize my boss, Mo . . ." "Never mind, just meet me upstairs. Nice, . . .Bill?" All three would look at their shoes (one pair of Pradas, two pairs of canvas sneakers) as Mobe 68 walks away. "Well, that wasn't a bit awkward. So Bill, how funny to see you here. What are you doing?" Bill might be feeling a little nonplussed himself, and may already be regretting this encounter. In an attempt to make things easier he might answer, "I'm rebuilding an organ at EuroDisney, and I'm running pretty late. Can we have a drink later and catch up?" "Of course, let's call each other. I'm up in what they call the Vice-Presidential Suite. Mo' is a great guy and more a friend than a boss, really." "Cool. Call you tonight." He'd kiss Ferd and walk quickly to the Disney shuttle outside. Mobe 68 meanwhile would have gone up, sharing the elevator with an middle-aged Black man who looks very familiar. "Are you a musician?" "I was, for a long time. Chicago Art Ensemble. Joseph is my name." "Wow! Joseph Jamaal, I saw you play in Chicago a few years ago, Your chanting and clarinet were awesome! With Leroy Jenkins doing incredible things on the violin. I'm Mobe 68." "Thanks, young man. I've heard your music too. Here to do a recording gig?" "No, man, I have no plans at all. I just travel now." At the third floor, an emaciated woman could get on carrying a Maltese with rheumy eyes and a bad underbite, as Joseph walks off, saying. "Well, here's my floor. Nice to meet you, Mobe 68, but be cool--the past is emptiness; 'here and now.'19" The woman, Countess Yousopoff-Blitzen, might not be concerned that the elevator is going up. She would know that her WTO colleagues wait for her in the Snivilling Lounge. She'd look up, expecting a mirrored ceiling, smoothing her throat and lighting a cigarette. "Excuse me, I don't think you can smoke in here," Mobe 68 objects. "Silence," Karen would croak and jab the down button. "This must be your floor. Please get out." As Mobe 68 turns his key, he could be trying to concentrate on Christian compassion and the tasks ahead of him. 11 Foucault's Nephew Come rain or shine, my custom is to go for a stroll in Disney's Idiocy of Rural Life environment every afternoon about five. I hold discussions with myself on politics, love, taste or philosophy, and let my thoughts wander in complete abandon, leaving them free to follow the first wise or foolish idea that comes along, like those young rakes we see in the Repressed Sexuality Land who run after a giddy-looking little piece with a laughing face, sparkling eye and tip-tilted nose, only to leave him for another, accosting them all, but sticking to none. If it is too cold or wet I take shelter in the American TacoBilious Café and amuse myself watching hustlers play Texas Hold-'em. One day after dinner there I was, watching a great deal but saying little and listening to as little as I could, when I was accosted by one of the weirdest characters in this Land of ours that has not been sparing of them. The notions of good and evil must be strangely muddled in his head, for the good qualities nature has given him he displays without ostentation, and the bad ones without shame. Marcel is devilishly good looking, a queer bird, and has made himself the boon companion of every rich party boy in all of EuroDisney. He comes by it honestly, as he is the "nephew" of the great Michel Foucault. He accosts me: "Hello, Mr. Philosopher. Are your thoughts consoling you in these troubling times?" I: Not much, but when I have nothing better to do I enjoy watching the players. HE: Oh, they're not here to be watched. Not at these prices! Thirty-five euros a quarter, whew! I: And how have you been keeping yourself? I heard you were hooked up with Dr. Dread who runs the Red Hanky Pavilion. No new vice squad complications there? HE: No, he's turned it into an 18+ dance floor, and it's writhing with e-trash heteroid clothes hangers. Now it's called American Idyll. I: Don't you welcome the acceptance of our kind? Imitation is sincere flattery? HE: If that's acceptance, fuck it. "If we are all part of God," as the saintly Mrs. Cresswell said, "then God must indeed be horrible.20" I can't see anything special in being queer anymore. "We're all over!" they keep screaming.. Yes, yes. We're over. We're passé and boring. Though some clueless ladies continue to sing. "queer planet." I: You however, continue pursuing "practices and pleasures?" You must have clients up the . . . HE: Up! Just to play for a brief 16-hour party. Ugh, the prep. (Marcel suddenly began to act out his words with the most extraordinary postures. ) Trimming, then shaving your balls. I fell in the bathtub the other day. I was standing on the edge, trying to see my ass to shave it, when I slipped and cracked a disc. Now my hands tingle all the time. Then there's the cleaning out. the showershot or worse, the bag. and the 10-day, 20-day runs. slammers the worst. I finally said to Dr. Dread that he was a sleazy old fairy buying muscles instead of love. He sent me to the EuroComfort Inn for 2 days and now I'm on the street again. They only let me stay at the Real Desert Hotel, and in a mildewed room they can't rent, cause my uncle once endorsed the place. I: It's no wonder you are so abandoned, Marcel For that matter, doesn't crystal just exaggerate our fundamental alone-ness in the world? HE: Mr. Philosopher, I may be tweaking, but I know my ontology. "It's understandable, but wrong, the notion that each of us is alone, imprisoned within the individual cranium, when in fact even the physical universe of matter depends on us to exist, and even more desperately the sperm and egg that make us and the genes and social conditions that shape each of us. The other is always before us, demanding that we be selves in response. It's fatuous (no, self-centered and delusional) to think we think alone. Our mythologies of lost or fractured selves gluttonize--slobber--over the illusions of sameness and difference, self and other."21 I: You know all of this is artifact of language, no? Althusser? HE: I've been interpellated more times than you can count. When I am interpellated then I am clocked, called out, made to answer to hey you, but the you I create (in response) has to answer back, has to interpellate the cop. I is always a response, not to the mirror, but to an other. All the world--Disney included, is hung up on the fears of alienation, disintegration that our dear fathers lived to feel. My own uncle! All of this is the tragedy of the last Century. WWI frightened Europe out of its class complacency and squelched important social movements. The Revolution of 1917 created a hope, and at least a pole of support for liberation of the colonies. The Great Depression frightened the world into a few Keynesian reforms, but then WWII sent all our men to war, let them kill in the company of other men, and then sent them home to individual suburban families. None of them knew how to be with women or children, so then came the baby boom. Feeding on schedule or feeding on demand, but overfeeding. And the Cold War and the Draft to Viet Nam. My own father and mother are still lost, tripping in the Algerian desert somewhere since the 60s. No wonder the 60s were aflame. Children left to crusade against racism, war, sexual oppression. Suddenly, Marcel shouts, Tim, come over here, man! I: Who is this angelic youth with white hair making toward us? HE: Timmy Tilden, nephew of Bill Tilden, tennis star of the 20s and 30s, who was imprisoned twice for sex with teenage boys, died in 1953. Poor man, his only girlfriend said he "felt things so deeply. . I never saw him with anybody who could have been his confidant. How must it be like that22?" I: Can we change our lives? HE: I hope so. She said "There must have been so many things deep within him that he could never talk about. I suppose he died of a broken heart." Anyway, Bill's younger brother hooked up with Tim's mom--she was a maid for Tracy Lord but the Tildens ran her out of Philadelphia with a film crew. A long story shortened: .her grandson, the Tilden's grand-nephew, was rescued from a homeless shelter in Hollywood and brought to France by Mr. Sithole.. . Tim's exceptional looking, but stay away. He's seventeen, falling into bad habits already : an albino black marketeer--small-time drugs, cheap diamond smuggling--he's so innocent he'll hurt you. I: And why do you have so much to say about this dangerous young man? HE: Because he's my young bud, aren't you Timmy? I take care of my red-eyed little polar bear. TIMMY: You know I hate that name! Can you get me a drink, please? HE: I'll get you all you need Tim. Come and party with a couple military studs? It's all set up, they just called on my cel. In my room tonight? Lots of favors!. On that note, I made my adieux, and strolled off to TomorrowLand. 12 Rm. 1954 Joseph and His Brother Joseph Jamaal is not completely enthused to be recognized, as he is a fugitive from US justice, accused (falsely) of complicity in Black Liberation Army killings of police in the 1970s. He is waking his employer, Siegfried Rheinfahrt, from his midmorning nap. Laying aside volumes of Lenin and Heidegger, he massages the old man's knees until he opens his ice-blue eyes. "Ja . . aah . . . In the jugness of the jug, sky and earth dwell. . ..23 "You are awake now, Herr Siegfried," Joseph says calmly. "Ahh, Joseph," he croaks. "I think I understand. Kant talks about things in the same way as Meister Eckhart and means by this term 'thing' something that is. But for Kant, that which is becomes the object of a representing that runs its course in the self-consciousness of the human ego. The thing-in-itself means for Kant: the object-in-itself. To Kant, the character of the 'in-itself' signifies that the object is an object in itself without reference to the human act of representing it, that is, without the opposing 'ob-' by which it is first of all put before this representing act. :'Thing -in-itself,' thought in a rigorously Kantian way, means an object that is no object for us, because it is supposed to stand, stay put, without a possible before; for the human representational act that encounters it.' It is very materialist, despite the awful neologisms." Joseph straightens Siegfried's sparse white hair and tells him, "The Buddha teaches that sense impressions can be understood as relationships of conscious being to being. The "categories" of Kant only interfere with this relationship. Heidegger is closer." "Ja, yes, I think so." He reads " 'This appropriating mirror-play of the simple onefold of earth and sky, divinities and mortals, we call the world. The world presences by worlding. . . ' " Joseph reads further, "'That means: the world's worlding cannot be explained by anything else nor can it be fathomed through anything else. This impossibility does not lie in the inability of our human thinking to explain and fathom n this way. Rather, the inexplicable and unfathomable character of the world's worlding lies in this, that causes and grounds remain unsuitable for the world's worlding. ' Herr Siegfried, Heidegger is saying what the Buddha says--'As soon as human cognition here calls for an explanation, it fails to transcend the world's nature, and falls short of it. The human will to explain just does not reach to the simpleness of the simple onefold of worlding'. This is pretty good dharma teaching." "Joseph my Black brother, what can an old Communist like me do with this dharma? Am I just disappointed at the end of all I believed in? Is there no revolution to be made, now?" "The wheel turns," Joseph says with compassion. He helps his patient to the bathroom, where Siegfried hopes to squeeze a few drops through his urethra. While Siegfried sits and reminisces about Trevi, Joseph replaces his books and prepares him a lunchtime fentanyl injection. "Would you like your yogurt enema before or after? I can read to you from the April Theses 24 if you like." "No, Joseph, sing for me, and play the harmonium. Sing the 'Red Thread Blues.'" The Red Thread Blues 25 The vitality of living labor Confronts the dead power of capitalist command I say autonomist theory contrasts the vitality of living labor With the dead power of capitalist command The working people historically assert their power to take the structures in their hands. Intrinsic to the capital-relation Is the class struggle of the working class Prior to and more dynamic than capitalist restructuring Is the class struggle that constitutes the working class Think of the demand for an eight-hour day; it kicked the bosses in the ass. Yes, people, productive labor Is now that which produces society itself Let's use the combination of our productive labor To sieze freedom however momentarily and redistribute wealth Autonomists say we can communicate our social inventiveness and make the world something else.   The active subject of production Is the increasingly undifferentiated working class The wellspring of change in production Is the self-autonomizing working class Beyond mere resistance are moments of freedom; they're real but then they pass. Capital's restructurings "subsume" not only the workplace But society as a whole I tell you in its processes of globalization Reproduction of labor power occupies a crucial but unacknowledged role That's why welfare moms are threatening, and they had to end the dole Guerillas moved like fish in the water Threatening to cut off resources and lands Oh yeah, in Vietnam, Guatemala and elsewhere liberation fighters Challenged resource allocation in the jungles and the sands The fall of communism, sadly, demobilized support for progressive guerilla bands. Global capital then broke down traditional village structures Marched women and children off the farm to town Tragically, capital emiseration in favela and shanty Is what happens when age-old geography breaks down But international mass migrations result in newer combinations, where resistance can abound. Husbands dead, women and children are left with "free" choices To choose between child laborers or whores A prerequisite for capitalist modernization Is a landless desperate, anomic labor force War, disease and famine, threaten to cut off food production at the source. But struggle to create ourselves as subjects Disrupts and tears apart systems of capitalist rule Despite regimes of power, humans make themselves subjects Sabotaging, rectifying, evading, the intentions of global rule Sometimes distorted and mistaken, self-creation is quite evident among youth in school. In the north abandoned plants and ruined communities Where privilege is evanescing, no longer so secure In the south devastation and dollar-a-month factories But then moments of freedom where people's relationships are less obscure Creative combinations of people are what the global dominators most fear. The points where operations can be ruptured Affirm labor's fundamental otherness from capital Let's put our hands to the points to be ruptured And assert that we are sentient like any other plants and animal We'll show the Blairs and Cheneys that their hierarchies of power can be overturned, not just disrupted! "Siegfried, did you know it's taken me years to be able to sing blues?" Joseph remembers how impatient he was in 1965, how unsophisticated Otis Spann seemed, saying on the radio, "If you don't dig the blues, you've got a hole in your soul." How Joseph and his peers wanted to move ahead, express the complexity of new feelings, of the new situation they faced. You had to respect those bluesmen, but we knew they couldn't understand what needed to be done.26 "I didn't understand, really. I was so moved by James Baldwin--the sins of our fathers. We wanted the Art Ensemble's music to go further than Ornette or Coltrane, way beyond what we thought good ol' blues could do. I wish I knew then what I've had to learn so slowly." 13 In the NightKitchen Caprice Sithole sets down her paring knife in the bowl of okra. She whistles through the gap in her front teeth as she reads from the Herald Tribune: "This is the first communiqué from the ELF Liberation Front Today, in a worldwide coordinated action, Operation Heraclitean Fire, we have burned out all the HumVee vehicles-- "hummers"-- in the Disney "parks" in Japan, California, Florida, France. These monster guzzlers turn the hydrocarbon resources of the Developing --read, super-exploited-- World into fumes of asphyxiation that linger low to the earth. We struck a blow for little people of all ages. And don't forget, "hummer" used to mean something nice." Caprice worries about her husband. "I'm happy they can't pin this on him. He's been on the job day and night since he got back." She enjoys a humorous, danger-filled marriage with Ndabaningi Sithole III. His Reverend uncle was the founder of ZAPU (1961), then ZANU (1963 with Robert Mugabe), then tried for attempted assassination of Robert Mugabe in 199627. Caprice and Neddy had to beg and borrow 100,000 zimdollars to escape from Zimbabwe, leaving their professions and the revolutionary opposition for cooking28.and managing the Hotel Real Desert. Neddy has recently returned from one of his frequent "investment opportunities," driving a fleet of trucks through the United States paying thousands of pre teens to take paper napkins from McDonald's and other fast food venues. He ships them home and to countries in Central Asia with moderate profits. Interpol is already searching for The Napkin Ring. Caprice believes they must change their activities. "The bigger profits are in sanitary napkin dispensers. Just try to get Kotex or Tampax in Harare," she counsels her husband. Neddy is not convinced; he is at work modifying and lowering electric dryers for wipe-with-your-hands countries. Their children Xoliswa and Jonah, think he is so old-fashioned. The only Zimbabweans on their minds are Stella Chiweshe29 and Oliver Mtukudzi--and sometimes Methembe Ndlovu30 and the Highlanders football team. To make downloading of their music stars easier, they wish their country back in the Commonwealth and the IMF.31 14 Valet Parking Two black HumVees bearing the World Security Operations S.A. logo pull to the curb. Two jar-headed young men, right hands inside the lapels of their black Purple Label suits, each carrying a titanium computer case handcuffed to his wrist, step out of the vehicles and survey the perimeter. From the back seat, a man with deep-set eyes, black-browed under a silver military haircut, commands them to park the cars themselves and secure them. "We are meeting with the WTO crowd in fifteen minutes. Check for digital positioning and, of course, explosives-- and shred these papers." He strides, as erect as always, to meet the manager, who is obsequiously bowing to greet the new arrival. "You are Mr. Oliver South? Would you like to go to your rooms, or shall I take you directly to the bunker room? Any papers you wish to prepare?" "It's Colonel South. (USMC, Ret.) Please get me a bottle of Absolut and some Vichy water," South curtly replies. "You may take me to the Countess." "I will personally bring your drinks, and Achmed will take you across. Achmed!" Inspecting the Arab-looking beauty through a flat green lens, South presently says, "OK. You're clean. Lead on." At age 51, South retains the body tension of a US Marine of 30, but the Christian fascist ideology of his more physical early career has been tempered by a philosophical acquiescence to his and others' weaknesses. A co-founder of WSO, South knows the World Traders are near to discharging his firm over the flaming stink at Disney. "It's a very low-intensity operation," he says to himself, "and the fanatic amateurs can hurt children lining up for rides if we don't find them fast. More than reputations are at stake. I wish it was as clear-cut as Vietnam, or even Nicaragua. . .Africans all over this place too. Our own barbarians vs theirs now!" "Get the generalissimo a bottle, " the manager tells Novy. The jarheaded men return, both on cel phones. One is seen nodding and looking in the direction of Marcel, who is also on his cel--all checking watches. 15 Party Out of Bounds As Tim walks in between sheets of black plastic, Marcel is yelling "Attention!" at the two jarheaded men from the HumVees. "Strip you maggots," Marcel barks. Tim is not sure whether he should take his own clothes off. In doubt, he sits on one of the mattresses strewn about the slippery floor. "Put these on each other, pigs," Marcel continues to shout, throwing black latex jockstraps at the naked men. "Come here, Tim," he growls. "Put these blindfolds on them and this mask on your own face. And get into those leather chaps." As Tim covers their faces, Marcel handcuffs the two and pulls chains down from the rafters. "Hook these guys up. . . Take this belt and batter their backsides while I get some hits ready to slam them up." The musty room above the garages is a storehouse for all the junk and detritus left behind over the 75 years the hotel has accepted guests. But tonight, a smeary cubicle has been put up with a staple gun,; the party space confined to the penumbra of a tall white candle, the flickering light and mysterious aroma of beeswax disorienting the jarheads. Marcel adjusts two monitors to play continuous hardcore porn to a soundtrack of Bartok and Lygeti, and strews condoms, paper towels and Crisco cans all around the mattresses on the plastic-coated floor. In a baritone of arrogated authority, he says to the men stretched before him, "We will cultivate 'the self' by means of an ascesis, an 'art of life.'" He shoots into their veins what could not be called 'good drugs,' but ones that obliterate the subject, leaving only obsessive repetitions of the impulses to stimulate nerve endings. Coughing and then moaning, the twin pigs cry out, "'Self' is not a personal identity so much as it is a relation of reflexivity, a relation of the human subject to itself in its power and its freedom. " 32 Marcel shoves Tim forward. He urges Tim into domination postures, and snaps latex gloves on his white hands. Marble white and leather black, a masked version of the empathic, equivocal Bernini angel, arrow in hand, sending St. Teresa into ecstasy, Tim shimmers in the light playing on his lubricated youthful muscles, his masculine energy rising to the rhythms of Marcel's rough power Together, they drive the men, now sobbing and vocalizing their fearful rapture, to greasy black leather slings. At Marcel's instigation, Tim utters these hypnotic words: "You have no identity here. You are only vessels for pleasure. . . something which passes from one person to another. It is not secreted by identity." Marcel speaks oracular words as his hands move in profound violation of nature's fundament: "I don't think that this movement of sexual practices has anything to do with the disclosure or the uncovering of S/M tendencies deep within our unconscious, and so on. I think that S/M is much more than that; it's the real creation of new possibilities of pleasure, which people had no idea about previously. The idea that S/M is related to a deep violence, that S/M practice is a way of liberating this violence, this aggression, is stupid. . .I think it's a kind of creation, a creative enterprise, which has as one of its main features what I call the desexualization [i.e, the 'degenitalization'] of pleasure. The idea that bodily pleasure should always come from sexual pleasure, and the idea that sexual pleasure is the root of all our possible pleasure--I think that's something quite wrong." Tim hears Marcel saying, "This is our century's only 'brand new' contribution to the sexual armamentarium. The 19th C invented myriad species of perverse sexual desire, but virtually nothing new in the way of sexual pleasure had been created for millennia. . . We delve and ravage 'the self' by hand because 'the self is a new strategic possibility. . . not because it is the seat of our personality but because it is the point of entry of the personal into history.' We perform 'the crucial work of rupture, of social and psychological disintegration, that may be necessary to permit new forms of life to come into being. but there is no guarantee that they will come into being. . . '" Over and over through the shadows of night the jarheads, recumbent like Caravaggio's St. Paul on the roadway or St. Francis receiving stigmata, grunt their bodily assent to transcendence in pleasure Volunteers 2004: A New Year's Grasping for the Politics and Jouissance of Jefferson Airplane's Volunteers, released Nov(?) 1969: Grace Slick, Paul Kantner, Marty Balin, Jorma Kaukonen, Spencer Dryden, Jack Casady We Might Be Together A few of us were together. We had almost-completely lovely times with our young bodies together ejaculating enough to clear the major toxins (leaving what were, after all, only subsidiary poisons of sexual deviation and guilt felt by some who were out of phase with cosmic duality of sex vision), , although we went out/in on long and fulfilling trips together. We had gone to places so sublime that difference was irrelevant--to us at least. We also yearned to be together with the racial Other. We could have been together. Then, we would have thought we recognized each other together. The Intellectual Origins The thought was that repression of natural impulses was a reification of the restriction to bare necessities for labor under capitalist relations of production. At first we noticed that abundance (not necessarily personal abundance, although the post-WWII/Cold War takeoff of the US economy afforded better living for much higher proportions of the US population) was not satisfying to us, although it seemed to be sufficient for our parents who had suffered serious deprivation during the Depression and then horrifying war (our fathers ignorant men thrown together in foreign lands to face death with only each other's bodies for support--while longing for the comfort of love and habit sent by the women who became our mothers in letters to unknowable islands and bivouacs). Our dads came home, moved into nuclear family houses, farther from their parents, aunts, uncles, etc than ever before, tried to live with rectitude and diligence amid rising prices and elevated standards of liveable housekeeping, tried to be husbands and fathers to uncomprehending wives and children. No wonder so many became alcoholic and silent, no wonder so many women secretly suffocated in those single-family units. Children's first exposure was to Dr. Spock's kindly strictures to feed on schedule, an agonizing commitment for parents who heard their babies' cries as echoes of their own childish deprivations and wanted to provide better for their offspring. The moms and dads capitulated to a makeshift of indulgence and vaccination, hoping for clean, healthy children who read Dick and Jane as if they were true. As we children of the baby boom grew older we had more free time than any previous generation on earth, free time to undergo the tidal waves of adolescent hormones and to read Catcher in the Rye and even On the Road in study halls, although we also memorized Pledges of Allegiance, Declarations of Independence and believed them. Then televisions began to show us vibrant Black children singing their way to jail for "freedom," and revealed a whole other America that wasn't privileged and purposeless. We were electrified by the righteousness of their new Black way and the brutality of the old segregationist intransigience. We were educated by American Bandstand to the rigors of Cold War dating, and those of us who couldn't get dates understood that we were inadequate. Our salvation came from the post-colonial British, from the Beatles who were able to repackage Black American music to our ill-formed tastes and make us happy with dancing that did not require touching. The Beatles neat appearance belied their snotty, grotty sarcastic resistance to the parts of life we agreed were uncool. And the Rolling Stones were better than greasers, almost evil but British so they couldn't beat us up. So many of us escaped to college. We suddenly found friends who did not think we were inadequate, or at least we shared inadequacy and fumbled for relief from restrictions of our behavior. We read and we shared, Revolver and Bob Dylan, and we began to grow hair, to smoke pot and to trip. Trips were dangerous explorations of cosmic reality, and they were serious, only occasionally joyous, but so revelatory as to be precious signposts of the fulfillment we thought we lacked. In the swirling hallucinations we also felt the reality of our own bodies, sweating, breathing, ingesting, eliminating, fucking--thrilling. And yet the world was going wrong. A list of what prepared for 1969-1970 The Bible Lincoln's speeches Grapes of Wrath Leaves of Grass Great Expectations Another Country poems of Wordsworth, then Keats Songs of Innocence, Songs of Experience Walden The Way of Zen The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter Pilgrim's Progress Giovanni's Room Ten Days That Shook the World Irrational Man The Stranger Black Boy The Immoralist Siddhartha Naked Lunch Vietnamese dispatches explaining imperialism and People's War Battle of Algiers Bonnie and Clyde Midnight Cowboy Lonesome Cowboys Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome Howl The Wretched of the Earth Huckleberry Finn The Second Sex Treasure Island Winnie-the-Pooh The Tibetan Book of the Dead Eisenhower's farewell speech Kennedy's inaugural The Assassinations Ond-Dimensional Man I and Thou God In Search of Man The Power Elite Autobiography of Malcolm X Mao's "On Contradiction" and "Combat Liberalism" What Is To Be Done? Democracy in America Port Huron Statement The Symposium Chicago Seed, East Village Other, SF Oracle, Berkeley Barb Paradise Now The Cockettes We were opposed--violently. Someone fantasized Armed Love--even a poster about the hippie mother and baby, the freak father with a rifle. We should be together, if only we could, the longing for uniting, the revulsion at how untogether our world was, the push to overthrow, the inability to tolerate our pain, our own pain--given to us through the unprincipled and unprecedented wealth of this empire, We had never been denied before; we called for an end to the obvious sickeningly conspicuous waste, shrieking injustice of prejudice against the Blacks, who were beautiful and sexy and mild. Our confusion when this bad was not remedied was relieved through the Communist Manifesto, made immediate and then strategic by the Vietnamese and Che, but still uneducated and heedless regarding our close-to-home contradictions of women's oppression and sexualities. The Songs33 We Can Be Together We are all outlaws in the eyes of America In order to survive we steal cheat lie forge fred hide and deal We are obscene lawless hideous dangerous dirty violent and young But we should be together Come on all you people standing around Our life's too fine to let it die and We can be together All your private property is Target for your enemy Dangerous, obscene, hideous, dirty, violent and young? We are not quite proud of ourselves. A hymn to us, an anthem to tearing down the walls we felt between ourselves, while we were aware but daunted by those walls within ourselves. Could our trips together lead us out of the brutality of wealth, consumerism,? Could, should it be war? Good Shepherd And then a step back, recusitating of Christian imagery, good shepherd, though walking through the valley of the shadow of death (the shadow, not the death) what could we be hoping for from the son of god. handsome, generous, a cross to the other shore? One for to make my heart rejoice Can't you hear my lambs a-callin Oh good shepherd Feed my sheep Stay away from the bad people, and the guns. The risking of arrogance in preaching the risking of irony, the risk of meaning, really meaning, it. The Farm Soaring, twanging, milk and cows and honey, way out in the country. Oh so good, granola and soy, cold and damp in winter, sunny and fog-free in summer--oh, late summer golden hills, a little dope if you could, living on the farm, male and female striving Hey Fredrick Way out there, you have a choice--usually--to let it be high or higher. Your contradictory humanness, body of blood, brain basket, coursing organs, a voice trying to break through to you, to you in your personal ears, crackles of sublime interference intercourse and guitar notes too complicated their screaming simplicity, electronic fuzz, Loving eyes look down on you Sheets and a pillow How old will you have to be before you Stop believing That those eyes will look down on you That way forever nobody wants to boogie, only to sit awestruck by the single notes, the ones that carry through the six realms of beings to being it goes on to mere hallucination Turn My Life Down A man asks you to look into his eyes, his borrowed moments. can he give me moments, can I give him his, oh no, he is not for me, but by miraculous means he is here for me, turning me down, When I see you next time round look into my eyes Where we'd be never could decide Borrowed moments they cannot fill the moments of our lives And wishful thinking leaves me no place to hide but so wounded that his turning down is turning towards him, nothing to say becdause he is a man among men and women, not my kind (a man among women and men) no place to hide Wooden Ships And then the hawsers creak and the wind is so strong and capable of carrying us over to the other side, everybody smiles in the same language . Who won? Let the good win, even if they won't take me Wont they take me? There are a few of us, aren't there? We are not post-yet and the berries will keep us both alive on this simple wooden platform, on these very free and easy winds, leaving you to sail toward the sun (taking off at night so as not to burn) Do I have to take a sister, can't I take a brother? Power of leaving, watch all the past die, you don't need us. Does the fleet need me, can I go? What if I'm found out? The way it's supposed to be, very free,, no--no, no-no; no, no, no--go ride the music Very free And gone NO C'MON GO RIDE THE MUSIC C'MON RIDE IT CHILD Eskimo Blue Day moving it changes its name and its game, but doesn't mean shit to that magnificent tree spreading across the eyescreen, eel swimmer fantastic, love electric glimmer, and those pecking, noodling, fingers mumbling into me, can this pleasure be taken me taken do I have strength to dance when I am alone, surrounded by the assumptions, the natural thing, but irony makes a slim space for me, in redwood If you don't mind heat in your river and Fork tongue talking from me Swim like an eel fantastic snake Take my love when it's free Electric feel with me You call it loud But the human crowd Doesn't mean shit to a tree entering the stream, too much cold in one place breaks, it's here in the trees. Is it me? A Song for All Seasons that country twang so dangerous, so hideously hellish, ironic again, materialistic, not to be believed as oracular I guess your life just ain't really that complete You know your car with which I was impressed Well I hear that it's gonna be repossessed Well I thought you had it made But you ain't even paid For the things that you've bought Since the acid test disregard those reality aspects Meadowlands Back to the fantasy of soviet power, collectivist nostalgia: if only they could have crystallized the revolutionary moment, but if only they can aid the Vietnamese, we can defeat US imperialism. Volunteers Bass necessary for revolution, gotta revolution, VOA a thrift store on mission Hey I'm dancing down the streets Got a revolution Got to revolution Ain't it amazing all the people I meet Got a revolution Got to revolution One generation got old One generation got soul This generation got no destination to hold Pick up the cry Hey now it's time for you and me . . Weather Report "People ask, what is the nature of the revolution that we talk about. Who will it be made by, and for, and what are its goals and strategy? . . Thus the loss of China and Cuba and the loss now of Vietnam not only encourages other oppressed peoples (such as the blacks) by showing what the alternative is and that it can be won, but also costs the imperialists billions of dollars which they then have to take out of the oppression of these other peoples. . . The legitimacy of the State is called into question for the first time in at least 30 years, and the anti-authoritarianism which characterizes the youth rebellion turns into rejection of the State, a refusal to be socialized into American society. . . The crisis in imperialism has brought about a breakdown in b bourgeois social forms, culture and ideology. The family falls apart, kids leave home, women begin to break out of traditional "female" and "mother" roles. . ."34 16 Achmed's Backstory In 1948, as war clouds darkened the deserts, Abra Maslow was at Petra, "Rose-Red City of Biblical Edom35," with an archeological team, measuring the girth and length of the columns of sandstone carved into the living rock by the Natabeans. Abra was the daughter of the brilliant psychiatrist Abraham Maslow, who worshiped the motherless girl--some said he set her on a pyramid above all the rest of womanhood. Her education was a strange one, based in Maslow's reading of the life of John Stuart Mill. Abra read Heraclitus in Greek and Lucretius in Latin by age five, and besides her father's German and English, she also was versed in pre-Mohammedan Arabic. Not content with degrees in Pythagorean geometry and Khwarizmi algebra,36Abra was also a famous hostess and cook. Her salon and her parties at the Dakota during the war years attracted Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead and Tallulah Bankhead, uncorking fine vintages and feasting on Abra's speciality, an international ratatouille of whole-roasted zucchini, Japanese eggplant and spicy Italian sausages alla putana37, later copied by Alice Waters for Chez Panisse. One fateful day in the blazing sun, Abra was stretching around one of the colossal stones with a tape measure seeking the Nabateans idols of the sun god Dushara, whose symbol was an uncut black stone. (Allat, the great mother goddess of Arabia, was his mother and consort.) All over Petra she had opened carved niches containing pillars or large separate monoliths representing Dushara. She was in front of the Treasury [Khazneh] when a troop of Bedouins came thundering up picturesquely on their sleek Arabian steeds. Their muskets firing, the Bedouins surrounded Abra and sent her native helpers scurrying into the dust. She, fearing for her life but resolute, rose and turned to face the crowd of swarthy men. The tallest--sensually dark and handsome-- dismounted and came in her direction, seizing her by the hand and wrapping his other arm around her waist. A scream was forced from her lips as they were pressed against the firm mouth and bulging chest of this man with magnetic dark eyes. In an instant, Abra was swept away, a captive of the Sheikh. Making from Petra for the Wadi Arabah, the Sheikh's band had a stiff climb down, unloading and loading the horses and pack mules where the trail between rock cliffs was too narrow to let them pass. There at Wadi Musa, where the rock finally opened, these wild knights of the desert paused and pitched their tents, while the erotic dancing girls undulated rhythmically. As they cooled their palates and ate their dates, the Sheikh's men knew they could not be followed, as they were the masters of their desert domain. An international incident ensued; the British Protectorate was forced to divert a key unit of men from Jerusalem to search for Abra, thereby leaving the King David Hotel unprotected. But that first night, Abra faced her captor alone on the moonlit desert. She was carried into his tent and bathed by three maidens who scented her hair with jasmine, then draped her in rich silks. She was thrown onto a divan covered in priceless rugs, right into the arms of the young Sheikh, now abluted and smelling of powerful, sweet musk--although there was also an intoxicating aroma of horse and sweat lingering at his thighs. Still determined not to collapse in fear, Abra sat up and said in archaic Arabic, "Honorable host, please treat this guest with the courtesies traditionally vouchsafed to strangers." His eyes widening, a smile brightening his sensual lips, the Sheik answered her in Oxbridge English, "You will be treated better than if you were a mere stranger. Remember how receptive to strangers they were at Sodom, which lies buried only a few leagues from here. Now I will have a kiss!" Abra, feeling it was more strategic not to resist too much, tried to turn away, but his exotic honeyed tongue darted between her lips before she was prepared. "Ohhh, please," she moaned. "Be gentle." The Sheikh emitted a low musical laugh and replied, "I am always gentle and always savage. In this case, however, since you are an agent of international petroleum prospectors, you do not deserve much gentleness in this our desert land." He pulled her roughly toward him and, grasping her wrists, extended her body across the soft rugs and lay atop her. "I am a scientist and a virtuous woman," Abra cried in Natabean, but her cries went unheeded as the moon and its caravan of stars crossed the blue desert. ". . . ." Less than a year later, the Sheikh proudly held up Achmed ben Maslow-Sheikh, his beautiful son, and named him his heir, commanding all the tribes of Bedouins to swear fealty and loyalty to him forever. As they swore their oaths, the baby's mother shot her violator, the father of her child, through the heart and was consequently set upon and butchered by the loyal Bedouins. Achmed, however, grew to manhood, (shortening his name to ben Maas), went to Oxford like his father, and --hurrying along this story-- became the chief accountant for Phillips Petroleum. He married the delicate daughter of a Greek tycoon and they had four sons and--the deglet noor of his eye--a daughter, Oedipa. Raised in historic Baghdad, the urban center of the most sophisticated Islamic country in the world, Oedipa outdistanced her girlfriends, and especially her brothers, in all games and in learning. Particularly fond of riding and polo, Oedipa was furious when at thirteen she was no longer permitted on the team. She grew rebellious, flirted with the Baathists but left them quickly, and was soon the leader of the transnational smarty set of oil-rich sons and daughters who outraged their parents with their sexual license and intellectual probing. Oedipa smouldered, knowing she must achieve self-actualization. At fifteen, after an incident at the Iraq Desert Country Day School where she was nearly violated by a US Army Baptist chaplain, Oedipa ran away to Jerusalem and became a dedicated revolutionary, had brief and fiery affairs with Edward Said and Leila Khaled, escaped to California, and joined the Wymmyn's Fyre Brygade, an anti-imperialist collective in Encino. It was from there she helped Tania to run from the bullets, and where she began her Transition, taking testosterone and pumping iron, surgically molding breasts into hard pecs. By age thirty, he was Achmed, an anti-imperialist like his grandfather, a Marxist Muslim, fighting global capitalism and sexual oppression around the world. Hated by fundamentalists, feared by global capitalists, Achmed worked in clandestinity, supporting himself as a sex worker, male or female, as the revolutionary situation demanded. Petra and Petroleum Petra sat at the crossroad of two major ancient routes, the King's Highway and the Incense Route. It was these routes which were fought over so violently between Solomon and the Edomites. The wealth gained in their control was fantastic, as witness the stories told of Solomon's Temple, etc. Its first written history is found in the Hebrew Bible; for the land about it was Mount Seir of old (now Esh Sera), home of the Horites, cave dwellers whose progenitor was Hori, the grandson of Seir (Gen.36:20). These Horites are first mentioned at the time of Abraham in connection with the subjugation of the land by Chedorlaomer. King Amaziah of Judah made war against the children of Seir and took Selah (Petra? see argument above), smiting ten thousand. "And other ten thousand left alive did the children of Judah carry away captive, and brought them unto the top of the rock, and cast them down from the top of the rock, that they all were broken in pieces" (2Chron. 25: 12). Could this "top of the rock" have been Umm el Biyara? The debate continue to rage. We know that Crusader King Baldwin I constructed at Petra a castle called Selah, the Bible name for Petra (2Ki.14:7). He was following the old idea of controlling and taking toll from the caravan routes, money being his prime objective in the Crusade. Though Crusaders constructed a fort there in the 12th century, they soon withdrew, leaving Petra to the local people. The city died out of men's memory, and the nomads used it as a hideout, living in the nearby caves, for a thousand years. 17 Poolside "A beautiful morning," says Mr. Sithole to Cyril and Vyvyan, stuffing a newspaper behind his back. He calls them over to introduce a young man in an International Male pool lounging outfit. "Mr Burst and Lord Throbbing, this is Mr. Tilden; he's learning bartending and hotel service. Tim, please help these gentlemen get comfortable at poolside." "Quelle convenance," flutes Cyril. "Handsome Timmy," fifes Vyvyan as the three head toward the pool. "Have a pleasant day, milords," says the Manager oilily, shoving Timmy after them. Cyril oboes, "Down at the far end, away from the Casino. It's quieter." Baring their leathery skin to the sun, Cyril and Vyvyan settle on chaises longues, inviting Tim Tilden to join them. He sits between them on a towel and pulls off his shirt, revealing a Hellenic marble chest upholstered in white wool. "How are you gentlemen enjoying the summer? What brings you to this godforsaken shack?" He picks thoughtlessly at a scab on his nipple. Vyvyan replies, "Oh, it's too cold down in Namibia where we live. And we're always traveling anyway--it's our work. And you? Aren't you American? "African American," says Tim. "I've lived here since I was twelve years old. See, Mrs. Sithole brought me here from Hollywood 'cause I was an orphan. My mom was in the movies and my great-great uncle was almost President; he won the popular vote in the highly-disputed Tilden-Hayes election of 1877. He was defeated in the House by radical reconstructionists, which was a good thing. I'm going to study film this year." "Oh, everyone will be so proud of you, young man,' Vyvyan tells him. Just then, a stricken policewoman rushes by carrying a scorched baby with a bottle clenched in its mouth. "Oh, the poor child!" gushes Cyril. "I must see what I can do." Pulling on his shirt, he dashes toward the front of the hotel. "Cyril has such a generous heart," Vyvyan sighs lovingly. "God knows he's kept me all these years. And I was an orphan too, from the Blitz!" "You were? I guess he can afford it." Vyvyan gaily retorts, "Oh, we live on nothing--eat like two old birds. Cyril got fantastically rich selling gentlemen's jimmys--AIDS, you know. But all the money--750 million pounds--went into the Burst-Throbbing Foundation for Wayward Boys and Girls. The BTF rescues sex-variant children all over the world. . . Well, mostly Africa and the Middle East." "Another Disney operation?" Tim sneeringly asks. "Oh no, dear, we're not Disney at all. We're the anti-Disney. . A Phalanx. . . Sunblock?" "Uh, thanks. I need it." As Vyvyan lubricates Tim's alabaster muscles, he exclaims, "What entrancing eyes! You have eyes like a Siberian Husky; underneath the red they are ice blue." "Yeah, I guess it's the albinism." Cyril bustles back to say "My stars, Vyv. That baby was nearly electrocuted in the Casino. They're searching for its mother now." "Oh Cyril, you're very flushed. Sit under the shade. Here, take a valium and calm down." "Um, can I have one too?" asks Tim as winningly as he can. "Maybe you two would like to relax upstairs with a massage? I'd better get out of the sun." "Speak up, dear boy--Cyril and I are both deaf as posts. . . Ohh, no thank you. We're meeting a nice musical artist here for lunch." 18 Mobe and the Old Boys: A Whiter Shade of Pale "Hello Uncle Vyvyan," said Mobe 68. "You look beautiful in the sun." "Oh, you dear boy! Sit here beside me. Ferdie, you sit there next to Cyril so he can feel you up. No sense fiddling with Mobie, who still thinks he's 'jam38'." " Hi, Cyril. How are you, love?" asked Mobe, kissing his uncles on both cheeks. "I'm so happy to be here and not in Ubud. We got out just before the summer Hindu surfers arrived." "What are you reading, Ferdie dear?" Cyril asked him. "Would you boys like a drink? Vyvyan, call Achmed over. Mobius, we have wonderful news! We just ran into your Aunt Karen!" "Ugh! Please don't tell her I'm here yet, Cyril. I can't take another session with the photo albums. Ferd, you better go to the desk and leave her a message." "That's right, love. And we need a few minutes tete a tete with Mobe. Be a dear and tell Achmed we'll have a Svack before lunch--the round bottle, tell him. And watercress sandwiches for four?" As Ferd walked away, Cyril bent nearer his nephew to say, "We have two exciting assignments for you! We've been so busy! Caprice, our old friend, is the cook here. Her spies have put us in communication with a Malian woman who wants to prevent her 11-year old niece from receiving FGM." "FGM? We've never intervened in FGM. We don't impose our values, Uncle Cyril." "But in this case we will, dear. The girl has a reputation for being too mannish, and her mother and father are dead set on female genital mutilation; it is going to be part of an initiation rite, accompanied by explicit teaching about the girl's role in her particular Kenyan society," Vyvyan shudders. "Apparently, the mother said, 'We are circumcised and insist on circumcising our daughters so that there is no mixing between male and female... An uncircumcised woman is put to shame by her husband, who calls her "you with the clitoris". People say she is like a man. Her organ would prick the man...' " Cyril adds, "The family is rich, they live in Nairobi, but they are said to be in despair over their daughter's 'perverted sex drive.' They had decided to forgo the ritual when the girl was eight, but now. . . This mutilation procedure will be performed by a qualified doctor in hospital under local or general anaesthetic--very humane, they claim.39" "What do you want me to do, then?" "We have the cleverest plan, dear. You will impersonate a surgeon, fake the procedure, and bring the girl and her mother here to Caprice to 'recuperate.' Then Caprice and her family will go to work convincing the mother the girl is better off being herself. Isn't that a scream!" "OK, if you want it done, then it's done. Why didn't you want Ferd to hear about it? He's cool. And he'll have to make the arrangements." "We don't know him as you do, Mobe dear. We trust your judgment. Here he is, and here's dear Achmed with the luncheon." "I left the message," Ferd reports. "Countess Karen is apparently meeting with WTO security people right now, but will be available later. What did I miss?" "I'll give you the details later, " says Mobe. "Now let's eat. We want to hear about assignment two." "A queer case, boys," Vyvyan archly says. "In Denmark, there's a seventeen-year-old boy who is being forced into a gay marriage. The child is gay, but he doesn't want to be married. His lover's parents, who are Americans from New Hampstead . . ." "New Hampshire . . ." "New Hampshire, then," . . Cyril sighs. Who knew it would come to this? I miss the old days when we musical types were merely sinful. Now the American gay people are so dreary. And liberal parents . . . Oh!" "The poor boy," says Vyvyan, gumming his watercress. "Read a little from your book, Ferdie. I loved Heraclitus at school. And no, I never met him!" Ferd reads, "It is not good for men to get what they want."B10 "To be self-controlled is the greatest excellence. And wisdom is speaking the truth and acting in knowledge in accordance with nature." B112 The world, the same for all, neither any god nor any man made, but it was always and is and will be, fire ever-living." B30 Marcus Aurelius' Meditations (VI,ii,17.2)quotes: "so Heraclitus, I think, says that even those who are asleep are workers and fellow-workers in the events of the world." "Just like us, Cyril, says Vyvyan lovingly. "After lunch let's take a nice nap. Read on, it's so stimulating, Ferd--even in English." Plato quotes Heraclitus saying . . . "every thing moves and nothing rests; you would not step twice into the same river." Cratylus 402A "We are and we are not. "The path up and the path down are one and the same, constant, ever changing. Disease makes health pleasant and good, hunger satiety, weariness rest. B114 "Combination--wholes and not-wholes, concurring differing, concordant discordant, from all things one and from one all things." B1040 19 Merle the Compassionate Bodhisattva Merle the Maltese lifts his leg to the Joshua Tree. "May this water bring health to all beings." In gratitude, the tree leaves rub pathetically. It is very old for a transplanted tree, struggling to maintain its life in a climate that is too cold and wet, then too hot and dry. It is patient in the morning sun. It tells Merle "The existence of reciprocal relationships of things implies that each tree--like me-- existing in nature makes some contribution to what the universe as a whole is, a contribution that cannot be reduced completely, perfectly and unconditionally, to the effects of any specific set or sets of other things--lie dogs-- with which I--as a tree-- am in reciprocal interconnection. And, vice versa, this also means evidently that no given thing can have a complete autonomy in its mode of being, since its basic characteristics must depend on its relationships with other things. The notion of a thing is thus seen to be an abstraction, in which it is conceptually separated from its infinite background and substructure. Actually, however, a thing does not and could not exist apart from the context from which it has thus been conceptually abstracted. And therefore the world is not made by putting together the various "things" in it, but rather, these things are only approximately what we find on analysis in certain contexts and under suitable conditions "41 Merle is not merely sentient, he is sapient: he has had many previous lives, beginning as a dung beetle in Gandhara, at the monastery where Jesus studied Theravada Buddhism. Most recently, a human healer with the Carnivale who, offered complete absorption into the infinite, was so filled with compassion that he returned to Earth as a dog. Merel's entirely legitimate, but unregistered offspring include Laika, the beautiful spacedog of Sputnik II, Petrasche (Dog of Flanders immortalized in the eponymous Disney film) and Mr. Peabody and his boy Sherman.42 Not so many years ago, after undergoing an ecstatic epiphany upon lapping up water at Lourdes, Merle was baptized by the saintly but controversial Cardinal Pirelli. As he progressed through the realms of karma, he has worked all his lives to ease suffering. He listens to the tree. Old elm that murmured in our chimney top The sweetest anthem autumn ever made And into mellow whispering calms would drop When showers fell on thy many coloured shade And when dark tempests mimic thunder made - While darkness came as it would strangle light With the black tempest of a winter night That rocked thee like a cradle in thy root - How did I love to hear the winds upbraid Thy strength without - while all within was mute. It seasoned comfort to our hearts' desire, We felt that kind protection like a friend And edged our chairs up closer to the fire, Enjoying comfort that was never penned. Old favourite tree, thou'st seen time's changes lower, Though change till now did never injure thee; For time beheld thee as her sacred dower And nature claimed thee her domestic tree. Storms came and shook thee many a weary hour, Yet stedfast to thy home thy roots have been; Summers of thirst parched round thy homely bower Till earth grew iron - still thy leaves were green. The children sought thee in thy summer shade And made their playhouse rings of stick and stone; The mavis sang and felt himself alone While in thy leaves his early nest was made, And I did feel his happiness mine own, Nought heeding that our friendship was betrayed, Friend not inanimate - though stocks and stones There are, and many formed of flesh and bones. Thou owned a language by which hearts are stirred Deeper than by a feeling clothed in word, And speakest now what's known of every tongue, Language of pity and the force of wrong. . . . - Such was thy ruin, music-making elm; The right of freedom was to injure thine: As thou wert served, so would they overwhelm In freedom's name the little that is mine.43 As he caninely muses about inter-being, he is startled by a policewoman running toward the pool and the front, carrying a baby in her arms. He says to himself, "I can tell that extinction nears for that child is near. I remember the teaching of the Enlightened One in the Kevatta (Kevaddha) Sutta:44 (The Passing Away & Re-appearance of Beings) 'With his mind thus concentrated, purified, and bright, unblemished, free from defects, pliant, malleable, steady, and attained to imperturbability, he directs and inclines it to knowledge of the passing away and re-appearance of beings. He sees -- by means of the divine eye, purified and surpassing the human -- beings passing away and re-appearing, and he discerns how they are inferior and superior, beautiful and ugly, fortunate and unfortunate in accordance with their kamma: 'These beings -- who were endowed with bad conduct of body, speech, and mind, who reviled the noble ones, held wrong views and undertook actions under the influence of wrong views -- with the break-up of the body, after death, have re-appeared in the plane of deprivation, the bad destination, the lower realms, in hell. But these beings -- who were endowed with good conduct of body, speech, and mind, who did not revile the noble ones, who held right views and undertook actions under the influence of right views -- with the break-up of the body, after death, have re-appeared in the good destinations, in the heavenly world.' Thus -- by means of the divine eye, purified and surpassing the human -- he sees beings passing away and re-appearing, and he discerns how they are inferior and superior, beautiful and ugly, fortunate and unfortunate in accordance with their kamma. Just as if there were a tall building in the central square [of a town], and a man with good eyesight standing on top of it were to see people entering a house, leaving it, walking along the street, and sitting in the central square. The thought would occur to him, 'These people are entering a house, leaving it, walking along the streets, and sitting in the central square.' In the same way -- with his mind thus concentrated, purified, and bright, unblemished, free from defects, pliant, malleable, steady, and attained to imperturbability -- the monk directs and inclines it to knowledge of the passing away and re-appearance of beings. He sees -- by means of the divine eye, purified and surpassing the human -- beings passing away and re-appearing, and he discerns how they are inferior and superior, beautiful and ugly, fortunate and unfortunate in accordance with their kamma... This, too, is called the miracle of instruction.'" Knowing he is needed, Mere follows the nurse. 20 Burn Irritated at the disappearance of her Maltese, Countess Yousoupoff-Blitzen is perhaps too caustic to Oliver South; she virtually slaps his face with a news clipping. "What is this? Are we allowing amateurs to burn our assets now? Find these anarchists and eliminate them. Read this:" Intersex Demonstration Blasts a Message PARIS, Sept. 13, 2003 Figaro-Pravda A small band of intersex activists rallied in front of the Disney School of Surgical Enhancement and Body Design on Friday, September 13, 2003 to protest a gender revision surgical procedure scheduled for an unidentified infant.  The 'Total Urogenital Sinus Surgical Procedure' was to be observed by participants of a 'Feminizing Genitoplasty and Total Urogenital Mobilization' seminar presented by the hospital. with associated surgery by Dr. Dirck Diink of the Finno-Ugric University School of Medicine.  Approximately two dozen people picketed the hospital in a peaceful effort to draw attention to what they perceive as nonconsensual genital mutilation.  Several protestors were intersexed people whose surgery as children resulted in assignment to the wrong gender.  Approximately twenty minutes before the procedure was to begin, a bomb went off in the empty surgical theater. The combined bombing and picketing efforts paid off.  Not only did Dr. Diink cancel his appearance, but the hospital also invited talks by adult survivors of early childhood surgery intended to assign an infant to one gender or the other.  Several of the protestors were intersexed people whose surgery as children resulted in assignment to the "wrong" gender.  "This action by queer, transgender and intersex activists loudly demonstrates our collective outrage at what is occurring in hospitals around the country five times a day to non-consenting children We acted to show the lies in the twisting of "Sexual Orientation" and "Gender Identity and/or Expression," Medicalization of Anatomy, and the insistence of society to place people in the binary sex model, wherein a man is a man and expresses masculine characteristics, while a woman is a woman and expresses feminine characteristics, and their sexual dichotomy exists for procreation. This model goes to the core oppression of the entire LGBTIQ community, whether one is Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex, Queer, or Questioning. " unsigned communique 21Tim and Ana K. Poolside talk about orphans has Timmy a little upset. "I shouldn't have bragged about my relatives," he thinks. "Nobody cares about who I am related to." Tim doesn't know how wrong he is. Cyril and Vyvyan care enough to have secretly financed Tim's emancipation from California Child and Family Services and brought him to Mrs. Sithole. Their B-T Foundation has liberated thousands of young gay, lesbian, transgender, intersex kids and created new lives for them. Timmy, a long way from the Hollywood Napkin Ring, has luckily forgotten much of his life on the Boulevards and the men who were kind to him only to get him in the back seat of a car. "The Sitholes are cool ," he is relieved to say almost every day. But now he's looking for his new friend, a nice but sleazy girl who's visiting her mom here. "She'll be in the Casino still. But that baby looked like . . ." Tim breaks into a run, beginning to realize something might be really wrong. He can't figure out what the baby would be doing running loose, getting hurt maybe. Skidding into the bar, he nearly collides with a Black-suited man. "Hey, you, kid! Stop right there. What are you doing here? "I work here, well sometimes. My uncle is the manager." "OK, then. " The Black suit changes his voice to a friendlier, much friendlier tone. "OK, then. Tell me what you know about a baby. Were you here a couple hours ago?" He already knows the kid was behind the bar in the late afternoon. "Yeah. If it was the same one, there was a baby here. A girl was with her, like blonde hair, a little high. Where is she? Did something happen to her?" "There's no girl here," says Black suit, his hand closing around Tim's elbow, "unless you mean those kids over at the video games." Tim pulls himself free and runs over to question two longhaired kids playing Survival of the Fittest. "Lou. . . Franky . . ou est la fille qui etait ici avec le bebe? Pense! Franky, que'est que ce que vu? "Ici? Rien. Ne vu pas rien! Laissez que nous juissons le video. Laissez nous en paix!" "Nothing, they were too zoned out to see anything," Tim tells the man in black. "I gotta find her." "We've got a lot more to worry about, kid.. By now that baby may be dead. It might be a kidnap thing. You look around for this girl if you think she knows something. And come report to me before you leave." Tim moves erratically around the casino, finding no trace except a used Pamper and a Minnie bag. He heads for the bathrooms, waits impatiently for a woman to come along to check the Dames. When no one goes in or out, he pushes the door open and walks in, bending to look in the stalls. There! A pair of jeans pulled down over fancy Pumas. It's her! "Oh, god," he sighs. "I just met up with her. She was all 'you're so white, cute, let's hook up.' . . Now she's all blue . . . and . . . dead. Police! Help!" 22 Emergency Ward: Burn Trauma: Panopticonvict From this point of view, Rusche and Kirchheimer { Punishment and Social Structures, 1939, ed.} relate the different systems of punishment with the systems of production within which they operate: thus, [. . .] the penitentiary…forced labour and the prison factory appear with the development of the mercantile economy. But the industrial system requires a free market in labour and, in the nineteenth century, the role of forced labour in the mechanisms of punishment diminishes accordingly and 'corrective' detention takes its place. [ ..] Every offense now carries within it, as a legitimate suspicion, but also as a right that may be claimed, the hyupothesis of insanity, in any case of anomaly.45 "Electrocution!" screams the EMT. "Oxygenate her, she has possible brain complications." In comes the harried ER doctor. "Where's next of kin? We have to deal with the burns now, let the brain alone." In comes the nurse. "Poor baby! At least she's not a suicide like that Korean.46" In comes a State official with an alligator purse. "We need to keep this baby under surveillance. She may be a crime victim. This child may be the victim of parental abuse, and we must interrogate her mother." "What makes you think this child even has a mother?" sneers the doctor. "I'm disgusted with your system that lets women drop babies like laundry." "Call the psychiatrist, 47 " says the alligator official. "Watch this baby!" Novy enters running, demanding to know, "What are you doing to our baby? I'm a mother.". Snuffling toward the bed comes Merle, his eye-hair standing up to clear his vision. Novy punches the only speed-dial number on her cel. "Mona, honey, it's me. I've got bad news. You need to come to Mickey's EuroDisney Emergency right now. It's the baby." She hangs up to screaming on the other end. The phone rings as Novy leans over the baby. "Try, little girl--try to live!" she gulps, not crying. Mere the Maltese runs barking around the room. " I will have to contravene natural processes of death here. This calls for the Atanatiya ritual,48a healing ceremony that primarily belongs to folk religion; it has become a ceremony purporting to fulfill, at the popular level, the socio-religious needs of the simple rural Buddhists. . I will have to utilize the primitive but colourful dances, gestures and prayers that a refined Buddhism might disdain. In this incarnation I am European- (and obedience-) trained; why, I can understand the Texaco Metropolitan Opera broadcasts without the obstacle of English translations, so my dharma would normally more resemble that of the ch'an." "In this crisis," he thinks, "with Mona Lisa and the baby, we can posit that the child has need for tovil--exorcism of evil influences. The Buddha is the chief of living beings, who include the yakkhas and other related non-human beings that figure in tovil. Although they have the power to make their victims ill in various ways -- such as by possession, gaze, etc. -- they have to leave them once propitiatory offerings of food, drink, etc., are made to them. Even the mere mention of the Buddha's virtues is enough to frighten them. Moreover, the chief of the yakkhas, Vessavana (Vesamuni), is one of the four regents of the universe (maharaja) and as such a devoted follower of the Buddha. The ordinary yakkhas that trouble human beings have to obey his commands. Thus, in all rituals connected with tovil, it is in the name of the Buddha and Vessavana that the yakkhas are commanded to obey the orders of the exorcist. And in the rich folklore that deals with tovil, there are many anecdotes that connect every ritual or character with some Buddha of the past or with some Buddhist deity." Into the room comes Timmy, staggering with the murdered Ana K. in his arms. Behind him is MonaLisa, her eyes pleading for surcease of sorrow. "Detenez ces femmes--criminelles, Magdalenes, putains-- la," dit le oficiel avec le sac de alligateur. And coming down the corridor are Oliver South and his black-suited men, briefcases at the ready. The Atanatiya Ritual Merle yips the growing crowd into silence. He knows that first one must recite the Metta, Dhajagga, and Ratana Suttas. He does so. "We will dispense with the armed guard and getting the patient to offer me a seat and go directly to the paritta, the offering of flowers and lamps to the dagaba, and the recitation by the bhikkhu (me) of a set of benedictory stanzas, called (Maha)-mangala-gatha.[24] " He summons a full assembly of the deities. Then, he barks out orders to the evil spirit to say his name. "I am the devil in the details," is heard coming from the blue lips of the baby. The compassionate Dog tenderly licks the burned face of the baby and tells the devil, firmly but respectfully, "the merits of offering incense, flowers, alms, etc. are all transferred to you; the mangala-gatha just referred to have been recited in order to appease you (pannaharatthaya: as a gift) and you should therefore leave the patient in deference to the Sangha (bhikkhusangha-garavena)." This is the dangerous point, as Merle knows well. If the spirit still refuses to leave, the deities must be informed of his obstinacy and the Atanatiya Paritta will be recited after declaring that as the spirit does not obey them, they are carrying out the order of the Buddha.49 Panting in concentration, Merle invokes the second-highest spirit of his universe, the reader. "Dear Reader, if the spirit will not leave, the baby will be left in a coma. Should the Author let her live, or leave her to vegetate?" Timmy turns toward the imagined viewers and implores us, utilizing a perhaps-inefficacious formula, "please, let her live. Say 'I believe.' Clap your hands!" A clock is heard ticking, and sands run through an hourglass, whispering suspense. The heart monitors ping ominously. Two mothers hold each other, shrieking their fear. Sunlight pours bluely through the regrettable Chagall windows. South mutters his expectation of a clean merciful death for the electrically ravaged child; she is negligible collateral, as he assumes she is already damned by the sins of her wanton mother. He is after frying bigger fish. Meanwhile, what is a devil to do? And suddenly, putti appear through the ceiling, holding a laptop, and the screen says, "You've got mail." A celestial hand reaches out to click the verdict: What, readers, will it be? 23 Digression on Shame "Mommy, I just love Shame." Brandon de Wilde in the George Stevens 1953 fillm with Alan Ladd, Jack Palance and Jean Arthur "I like the gods. I like them very much. I know exactly how they feel. Exactly." Jack Palance in the Jean-Luc Godard 1963 film Contempt, with Brigitte Bardot, Fritz Lang and Michel Piccoli George Eliot puts down her pen and sighs. Looking, as I think Virginia Woolf said (VW might have been calling the kettle beige), like "a sorrowful but brainy horse," she muses, The Nineteenth Century Novel is, aside from its aspects in verisimilitude--depiction of 'realistic' characters caught in the contradictions of ubanising capitalism--an essay in philosophical inquiry. Consider my Middlemarch, where consciousness itself was examined through the minds of Dorothea, Casaubon, Ladislaw, etc. Readers were aware, I trust, that the "stealthy convergence of human lots" arose from genetic predisposition, social conditions, and ideological (religious) conviction. I just wish I could write funny stuff too. She writes: Dear P___, I enjoyed reading your book, 50which provoked many thoughts for me. If I can now remember them, I will try to write some down. Our brains seem to work through chemical and electrical circuits that first register bodily impressions--whether presented from outside through the senses or internally from nerves monitoring the body or nerves monitoring the thought processes and memory. The mind develops as a consciousness that our brain/body is actively involved in the process of processing. The mind is somehow tricked into believing that it is continuous and identical to itself, despite the ocurrence of different sense impressions and different sentient responses at each moment of our lives. We seem to want to believe we are the same from day to day; hence, the creation of a "self" as a vessel of continuity, of identity. Of course this "self" is inflected by genetic and cultural factors: a 21st C US gay white male self is not just biological, but historical. This "self" comes to dominate our reception of input and processing of reactions--feelings and thoughts. There is some speculation that because women are subjected to much more biological change on a periodic basis, they have less investment in the rigid maintenance of a continuous self-identical "self." In any case, most of Western history explains things on the basis of continuities, individual or social, and the interruptions to continuity. Our "self" tries to hold things together in the midst of ongoing chaos by assuming continuities and asserting it can and must integrate different responses to similar and even wildly divergent processes that happen to the body and the mind. One of the ways it asserts this attempted integration is to believe the individual thoughts that pass through our minds (scientists concerned with thoughts and consciousness say a thought passes through in around 20 seconds, and that a new one occurs at least as often) are connected to each other, although they are not--in fact--connected by anything except the assertion of their connectedness. I take from this the conclusion that a desire to integrate different impressions, feelings, or impulses into a self is based on an illusory belief that it is even possible, and therefore that the attempt to integrate is always a failure. That failure results in a feeling of inadequacy that is the genetic consequence of the fact that our brains are too sophisticated for our own good. An individual human feels inadequacy (basic shame) not because he/she isn't as good as others, but because no human is capable of integrating what is not integrate-able. Nor is any human capable of reconciling autonomy vs doubt of her capabilities, love vs hate, like vs dislike, or any other thing we see as dichotomous, bifurcated, opposite--because binaries are also inadequate to contain the complex variability of situations and lead to rigid distinctions about what is inside and what is outside, what is good and what is bad, what is functional and what is dysfunctional. Human society functions through the confusion of our connections and disconnections with others and ourselves, pretending we are individual identities and creating power networks that pervade every distinction. Sexuality is one of the confusing connections/disconnections that is infused with power and powerlessness, and is--like all other processes--actually not composed of self and other, in and out, good and bad, creative and destructive, because these binaries are inadequate but just about as far as our brains can go with the delusions of continuity and self-identity. 20th-21st C gay men in the US inherit American culture and struggle with it, burdened like all other humans, with the delusion that it is possible to integrate impossibly divergent feelings, impressions, impulses, into a coherent "self." Since we can't, we feel shame. Others feel shame too, but our shame is inscribed with the dichotomies and hierarchies of masculine power in our own particular gay male way, as constructed by the social processes (gender, class, race, geographic accident) of the last several centuries. So, why not decide that shame is inevitable, that everyone feels it in her/his own body, and that therefore it is not useful to do anything with it except ilaugh at it and move on. We ignore the fact that we can't fly: we don't feel shame at not being able to overcome gravity. We do invent airplanes and banana peel jokes. We also invent philosophies, psychologies and religions that help transcend the blame and depression that are reactions to the inadequacy of the human brain. We even invent anti-depressants, most of which are pretty crude at this stage. Wild sex is one of the incommensurable feelings, bodily and social processes that sometimes breaks through the rigidities of "self" and allows us the relief of a dis-integration, of non-identity. It can't last, because our mind/body cannot continue without the assertion of identity. Ecstasy means (from Greek) outside the self. But nothing we have invented can overcome the basic problem that we can't integrate un-integrate-able differences; we want wild sex and we want domestic comfort. They can be made to coexist, but they can't be made into one stable thing. The recent history of gay sex, through sexual experimentation to the search for transcendence and blowing our minds to AIDS to post-AIDS ennui and depression is, I think, evidence of our biological and social limitations. Two 20th C gay white American men were talking together. One asked the other, "Do you smoke after intercourse?" The other replied, "I don't know, I've never looked." The Other is, of course, non-identical, different from me and different from itself. We all think poop smells, but each of us thinks our own poop actually smells pretty ok. We like its familiarity, and hope it is the same every time. We like sameness--men particularly like sameness, and they seek to be the same all the time. They also like other men because they are the same, familiar to the senses. It is possible for a man to imagine how another man feels pooping, sweating, running, eating, laughing, being hurt, being afraid. Since he seeks to integrate his contradictory impulses, he looks to other men for help and for models of how to do that. Woman must more clearly notice she is different every minute, and markedly different through the month. Man looks to woman to be different, and cannot imagine integrating her except by inserting himself into her--fearfully entering into something different, with different smells and textures, unsure he is safe. Unsure whether he is doing the right thing or inflicting harm, he tells himself this is the natural thing to do, although he would feel more secure if she was familiar like Daddy and not mysterious like Mommy. Male supremacy may be just homophobia--fear of same, not fear of homos--an misinterpretation of the safety of sameness into a demand for difference, an insistence on integration by inserting himself into Other, ruling her, it. If this were the case, our shame, the mind's conclusion that the biological incapacity of the mind to reconcile contradictory thoughts and feelings is to be interpreted as failure and inadequacy qua humanness, when in fact each human faces the same incapacity and deems her/himself a failure, may be inscribed in our "culture" as our desire for the Other to allow us an escape from the shame of being unable to do what humans by nature are not really able to do--to integrate. No blame. Perseverance furthers. The superior man (sic) thinks it's a cosmic joke. Yours truly, Mary Ann P.S. Don't worry about gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender/intersex/queer marriage. Worry about Gavin Newsom's record on housing and the homeless. GW Bush realizes that calling for a Constitutional amendment is only a dumbshow: it won't be passed by 37 1/2 states. And the NY Times is editorializing (3/8/04) that same-sex (sic) marriage is inevitable. P.P.S. Bluto, Goofy, Grouchy and Bozo were voiced by the same man, Pinto Colvig. What does that say for verisimilitude in the animated film, which is the only direct descendant of the late Novel as narrative. 24 Grand Ballroom: Mlle. DisneyWorld-Adjacent Tonight: Competition for the Crown As flames licked at every tree in the unexpected heat of late October, the Pageant of the World's Most Up-to-Date (DW-A) was staged on specially-artificed sheets of ice, with scintillating snowflakes falling intermittently to be-dew the faces of the beautiful contestants. Mlle. Corporate Flight Hails from Canton, Ohio, USA.   (Much-edited) LA Times In the last three years, Stark County, OH, which includes Canton, has lost 3,500 factory jobs, more than 10 percent of the total. Two years ago in Massillon, just west ofCanton, the lone rubber glove factory in the nation shut, moving production to Malaysia and India and throwing her father out of work. Last year, Hess Management of Austin,Tex., shut the Danner Press printing plant, costing 325 workers their jobs, and 700 steelworkers at Republic Technologies on the east end of town lost their jobs when Republic filed for bankruptcy. Thomas Briatico, president of Hoover Floorcare, based in North Canton, said all of Hoover's major competitors but one were buying their vacuum cleaners from Asia and Mexico. That foreign competition, Mr. Briatico said, has forced theaverage retail price of cleaners to drop 10 percent in two years. "It's put us at a little bit of a competitive disadvantage," he said. "In China, they pay their workers 55 cents an hour, and the easiest decision for me would be to go outsource in China. The tough decision is to stay here. I'm personally concerned about jobs leaving this country." "The truth is unless we can do something with these plants, they won't be globally competitive," said Mr. Timken, who recently stepped down as chairman of the National Association of Manufacturers. Mr. Timken said his company had been hurt by the strong dollar, China's undervalued currency and the harm that imports were causing his customers. Foreign competition was so intense, he said, that the price of manufacturing goods in the United States has fallen 4 percent in the last 10 years as the price of other goods has increased 18 percent. That, he said, has forced Timken and other manufacturers to increase productivity and reduce jobs. Mlle. Gray Market A pretty SE Asian miss from Indonesia, her headscarf made of velvet, burned into see-through floral patterns. NYT September 26, 2003 (Partly) by MARK LANDLER Hang around any schoolyard in Germany or college campus in Indonesia and it becomes clear that the recording industry's problems with the illegal online distribution of music in the United States pale beside the rampant piracy that goes on overseas. The industry's biggest hurdle may be cultural. As is the case among many young people in the United States, swapping files and burning tracks on CD's are viewed in most countries as routine, not renegade, behavior. After all, the most popular file-sharing software, KaZaA, was dreamed up by a Swede and written by three young Estonians. "I adored Leslie Cheung, but if he made 5 million or 2 million a year doesn't matter to me, honestly speaking," said our contestant, referring to the late gay Taiwanese pop star whose songs are actively swapped over the Internet. Piracy, of course, affects more than a pop star's paycheck. Sales of recorded music have plunged more steeply in several European and Asian countries than in the United States because of a combination of file sharing, home CD burning and the mass production of knock-off disks. In Germany, Europe's largest and hardest-hit market, sales have fallen by a third in the last five years. They are projected to decline another 20 percent this year, compared with a 12 percent first-half decline in the United States. These examples leave out China, where piracy exists on an entirely different scale. Nine out of 10 recordings in China are pirated, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, an umbrella group for 46 national industry organizations. File sharing appears to be as cross- cultural as any other type of piracy. The amount of swapping in a country generally correlates to the number of people who have PC's with high-speed Internet connections. That case will be no easier to make in Berlin or Bombay than it is in Boston. Consider the crowded store hidden between the curry stands and photocopying shops at Trisakti University in Jakarta, Indonesia. A sign outside advertises "Recordings! Your Favorite Songs in Cassette & CD Finished in 3-7 days." Inside, Miss GM and other students peddle "special" CD's for 12,500 Indonesian rupiah each (about $1.50). A legitimate CD bought in Jakarta's business district would cost six times that. For a little extra, customers can name 15 to 19 songs, and the shop will burn them on to a CD. Hip-hop and rhythm and blues are the most popular requests, and if the shop does not already have the song, no problem. Tonight's pageant compeitor's boyfriend ,Ferbie, will personally download it from the Internet at his father's office. "The customer is king," he said. Mlle. Illegal Market Bella hija de la familia Londoño, de Bogotá, Colombia NYT September 18, 2003 By JUAN FORERO (con unos cambios en redaccion) BOGOTÁ, Colombia, Sept. 17 - The United Nations said today that American-financed aerial eradication of Colombia's vast coca fields is starting to pay big dividends and released estimates that show the size of the crop dropping by 32 percent in the first seven months of the year. Production of coca - the main ingredient in cocaine - is increasing slightly in Peru and Bolivia. But the sizable reduction in Colombia's crop means that for the first time overall coca production in the Andes is dropping at a rapid pace. The new estimates from the United Nations Drug Control Program show that coca fields in Colombia fell to 170,430 acres on July 31 from 251,940 acres last December. At this rate, the United Nations said, Colombia's coca crop will be reduced 50 percent by the end of the year. The American Congress is debating whether to provide another $700 million in aid to Colombia on top of $2.5 billion that Washington has spent since 2000 to eradicate coca and undercut the financing source for Colombia's insurgent groups. Human rights groups frequently criticize President Álvaro Uribe, uncle of tonight's contestant, and some American congressmen have questioned the effectiveness of United States aid. The new data, though, are sure to encourage supporters of eradication. "Many people who thought this couldn't be done in the past are having to rethink their assumptions," John Walters, the White House drug policy chief, said by phone from Washington. Unlike his predecessors, Mr. Uribe in his 13 months in office has allowed American planners to use spray planes whenever and wherever they have seen fit. Mr. Londoño, in charge of Colombia's drug policy, also attributed the decline in coca production to a fall in cocaine consumption in the United States. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, occasional users dropped to three million in 2000 from six million in 1988, with a concomitant rise in retail prices. "The question is whether this will be sustainable," Srta. Londoño said, sniffing audibly. To be continued . . . 25 Grand Ballroom, cont'd. As Mlle. NP skates onto the stage, the Countess hisses to Ollie, "Just look at this. The little peasant that killed theCancun talks along with himself. You've got to prevent these things.. But all the agriculture ministers left after that suicide. We need to get at the roots of dissent. We can no longer count on AIDS alone to clear out the excess farm labor pool already. Read this! It's his daughter!" Mlle Native Produce Farming Is Korean's Life and He Ends It in Despair NYTimes, September 16, 2003 By JAMES BROOKE JANGSU, South Korea, Sept. 15 - Before Lee Kyung Hae left for Cancún on his final mission to defend South Korean farmers, he climbed a hill behind his old apple orchard here. In the quiet solitude of his former farm, he cleaned up around his wife's tomb. The big news out of Cancún this week was the breakdown in the World Trade Organization talks, as the developing nations walked out in frustration over farm subsidies. To most of the world, Mr. Lee's act may have seemed like a sideshow, the latest face of extreme antiglobalist protest,perhaps, just a final desperate measure by a disturbed man. . . Mlle. African Immigrant (1st or 2nd generation) Cyril and Vyvyan flash their passes backstage. They call over Mobe, who is to perform tonight. Handing him a black briefcase, Cyril whispers to him, "We're leaving tonight, dear. Things are getting too hot for us here. We have a flight to Kuala Lumpur. We'll stop over in Dubai; the Emir is lending us a palace for a couple nights. God knows he's gotten enough diamonds through us." "Ugh," says Vyvyan, "don't say through. So messy it was. But you get to safety as soon as you are finished here." The pair hug their nephew and hand a coded note to Caprice Sithole, who nods her understanding. The Sitholes are rooting for Mlle. AI, who came from Tanzania with her brothers and sisters. Her home village had been an experimental Fair Trade cooperative, just beginning to succeed in reversing the Green Revolution fertilizer problem, until her mother, the village head, and her aunt, the chief agronomist, died. Agence France-Presse June 30 2003 The AIDS epidemic is threatening farm output and, in turn, many people in Africa who are vulnerable to poverty and hunger, according to United Nations officials quoted in this article. "The majority of African countries worst-hit by HIV/AIDS are also those heavily reliant on agriculture," said one such official. This article indicates that about 30 million of the 42 million people with HIV/AIDS live in sub-Saharan Africa, over half of them in rural areas. Last year, 5 million more people were infected with the virus, most of them living in low-income, food-deficit countries. In most of southern Africa, up to 80% of the population depends on small-scale agriculture for food and livelihood. The Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) issued a report on HIV/AIDS in partnership with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which said AIDS had killed 7 million agricultural workers since 1985 in the 25 worst-hit African countries. The epidemic could kill 16 million more by 2020. " "Where farmers and their families fall sick, they cultivate less land and shift to less labour-intensive and less nutritious crops, agricultural productivity decreases and hunger and malnutrition are on the rise. Many children are losing their parents before learning how to farm, to prepare food and to fend for themselves..." Mlle. Developed-Nation Aristocracy of Labor Unemployment As Factory Jobs Disappear, Workers Have Few Options NYT September 13, 2003 By STEVEN GREENHOUSE 2.7 million manufacturing jobs lost nationwide in those three years, many of them because of imports. Some economists say that even with a boom all those jobs are not likely to return. Factory unemployment has snowballed into a huge social and political issue across the Midwest, after manufacturing in the region boomed in the 1990's. President Bush gave a speech about manufacturing losses on Labor Day in Ohio, and the Democratic presidential candidates are pressing the issue. A wide range of figures suggests that the economy is likely to surge, but economists predict unemployment will remain almost unchanged at nearly 6 percent through the US 2004 presidential election. Since existence creates consciousness, Mlle campaigns on the slogan, "The fabric of this society is falling apart." The Winner: Mlle. DisneyWorld Adjacent: Mlle. Prion In a fetching cowgirl evening dress, the winner weeps tears of joy and triumph, which spread among the luminary crowd. Mad Cow Disease (BSE) is thought to be caused by a mysterious organic formation called a Prion. Prions are infectious agents which (almost certainly) do not have a nucleic acid genome. It seems that a protein alone is the infectious agent. The infectious agent has been called a prion. A prion has been defined as "small proteinaceous infectious particles which resist inactivation by procedures that modify nucleic acids". The discovery that proteins alone can transmit an infectious disease has come as a considerable surprise to the scientific community. Prion diseases are often called spongiform encephalopathies because of the post mortem appearance of the brain with large vacuoles in the cortex and cerebellum. Probably most mammalian species develop these diseases. Humans are also susceptible to several prion diseases: from Alan J. Cann, Principles of Molecular Virology, 3rd ed. NY: Academic Press, A Harcourt Scjence and Technology Company 1992 26 Leaving the Hotel "The start of terror we can hardly bear51" The Hotel Real Desert is in an uproar. Mr. Sithole has just been told by Achmed that he has an emergency and must leave for the South today. Mr. Throbbing and Lord Vyvyan Burst are on the way to Dubai52. All the guests seems to be checking out at once, even the long-time resident, Herr Rheinfahrt. To make matters worse, the black suits are after Timmy and Marcel, and the suite of offices he rents to a casting company is being boxed up and vacated before his eyes. "Yes, we are relocating," says the harried casting director. "We supply the reality extras for big news shows, and we have to get to Haiti immediately. Glancing at a printout in his hand, he tells his assistant, "Forget about the Iraqi women in black! We need sixty drunken soldiers, drooling rum and shooting, two children to eviscerate, dogs to run and bark, and a couple hundred sans cullotes to run before the cameras in Gonaives at 5:30 tonight. CNN is already contracted for another twenty roadside bodies outside Port-au-Prince. Keep up, you fool! Not you, Mr. Sithole, I apologize but this is business. Our parent company, World Security Operations, insists." Turning away, he shouts into a phone, "No, the suicide bombing is off until Thursday. The woman won't go until her father gets the cash for his operation." Between Ourselves53 We were talking, about the space between our selves, and S___ asked you as we eased past a car in greasy flames on the Autobahn in the dark, "Is love the purpose of life?" He reads German lit. And you said, "There is no purpose. It's just an accident." You lied, didn't You? S___, blue, blue and golden, muscular youth, virus teeming through his body, young enough to be your son. He says he's never even fallen in love, and maybe he should, he could. And You said "Life goes on, within you and without you."   The mystery exits and sharp, dangerous turns, a growing taste for transfiguration, obliteration of self. S___ loves Mahler, undoubtedly Strauss. Heldenleben: Oh, to be really strong, to be present. And You said we could just fuck calmly, in Sein and Zeit. 27 Escape to Languedoc Lemmy and Achmed escape, flying south to Montpellier, an aspiring tourist center of 250,000 souls busily aestheticizing their decayed industrial and viniculture infrastructure. Rendez-vousing with undisclosed colleagues at the Musee Fabre, they are spirited into the Jardin des Plantes, where they spend three weeks installed in an exhibit of tableaux vivants representing stages of regional history, changing costumes every day (homme de tautavel (sic), greques/romaines, alamanii, saracens, huguenots, etc. Lumiere e Son de Histoire de Languedoc54 * 450,000 ans. AC L'homme Tautavel a vécu à côté de Languedoc dans Rousillon. Des traces de la préhistoire ont été trouvées dans Languedoc 32,500-1500 ans AC les restes des bâtiments, des tombeaux et des objets façonnés indiquent le développement de la civilisation moderne Interruption of a Different Reality All cold Gog feel cold snow outside wind blow all dark in cave All afraid Gog afraid cave bear cave protect all Gog pray on belly pray paint hand red hand on cave wall again again again hand pretty hand powerful Gog feel Magog here Magog hand pretty Magog pretty Gog pretty Smell Magog good Magog smell good All pray Goddess All eat Goddess food Paint Goddess dark center cave dark Goddess dark pray All pray dark Fire light warm All no cave bear pray pray pray pray Gog body sing Gog sing body All sing body Goddess Goddess sing Gog All love Gog love Gog paint Gog transported to another consciousness through the ecstatic chanting, where the sound enables All to transcend their fear and experience their wonder at being. Gog lack words Gog let children tell better "As do All adults, Gog envisions our People-those few hundred people he is certain are People-in communion, through the Goddess, with all the other beings, inhabiting rocks that break in useful shapes, water that cleans and cools, animals that give themselves to the people out of respect and necessity. The children speak better as they socialize more securely. The children confront the changing world around them: "We All are relieved to lay aside our fight-or-flight reflexes and to commemorate our births from out of the dark centers of the women, to feel the complexity of our love and frustration with each other, to stretch our cognition to encompass the thoughts of every entity we know." Gog read newspaper left by Fred: Star of One Million Years BC Joins Local Artists in Cave Project Flintstone Times (The All News That's Fit to Print), March 22, 30,004 BC Gog and a few dexterous others draw and paint the animals that inhabit their psychic universe, here at Grotte d'Chauvet in the future France, 30,000 years ago-before Altamira, 15,000 years before Lascaux. They fashion tools and fashion pictorial representations with perspective, use of pigment for line, shading, juxtaposition of images in complicated interactions and with both sympathetic magic and delight in the world and their own skill. Raquel Welch, the future film star of a film on our distant past, will honor Gog and other All artists at a ceremony at Chauvet Cave. (Contrary to rumor, Miss Welch will not be joined by Joan Crawford, on location nearby filming Son of Trog. This film has awakened much controversy among local shamans, who denounce it as "blasphemous: . . Only the Goddess has sons. This Trog, character should be shown worshiping Joan Crawford." Brendan Fraser, "hunk" star of Encino Man, is also unavailable.) Our community, All, is the winner of the Great Cave Communities award for 30,002. Miss Welch will present the award. We are sophisticated modern humans, able to learn and teach, conscious of our talents, trained by the environment to emphasize the overcoming of interpersonal frictions and cooperate. Perhaps there is some genetic memory of the bonobos we are related to, those great apes whose species, unlike their closest relatives the arboreal chimps, are terrestrial enough to relax and enjoy food and sex, without the environmental pressure for male hierarchies of domination. (see sidebar on production of art) from: Production and Art, by Leo Stoneberg, Ph.D., Oxbone Univ. We, the All, speak and make tools beautifully. All do not merely "produce," as in productive labor; All are fully modern but have not had to distinguish the infrastructural "labor" of acquiring and cooking food from the superstructural "leisure" of talking after eating or "ritual" of singing. It would be mistaken to see the life of All through the (Marxist) Western lens of "the production of the material necessity of life," since All linvest our prodigious cognitive and emotive skills in everything we do, and have developed complex society in which connections to each other and to the rest of the world are felt very strongly-more strongly-felt through community than through individual sensoria. Living is not easy for All: glaciers and the dangers of the hunt narrow our world; but All's painters, singers and dancers express and symbolize our cognitions in complex somatic, verbal and plastic form. It is important to note that All artists are not "representing" reality; as Gog says, "All dance in trance. Send Gog to look and mark. Gog paint allow animal to emerge from rock live with All." Gog enjoy primary (limbic) consciousness, like eat, sleep, fuck, trance Gog experience secondary (cerebral) consciousness as difficult, like plan, don't like make anxious or regretful In her award presentation, Miss Welch states, "For All, the cerebral cortex is a (relatively) newly-evolved toolset without an owner's manual, and its habit of focusing attention on the processes of feeling and cognition has brought in train the dis-ease of narrating, stitching transitory sense impressions and feelings into coherent but sometimes worrisome speculations on causation. Gog, like the others, has a legitimate fear of cave bears and cave tigers. But All tend to over-interpret dark as fearful, mentally narrating the fear threaded with memories of past attacks and predictions of possible future pain that may obscure the core brain state of efficiently living in the present. This tendency in the darkness of life is brightened by a voluntary surrender to the shared ecstasy of safety and worship of fecundity, envisioned in the shape of woman-as-Goddess. Since evidence of the need for X and Y chromosomes is invisible to them, All experience sexual contact without deducing its role in reproduction or imposing the standard of reproduction on the sexual activity. All, like the bonobos, have sex with same and other-gender partners. All see that children are born from the bodies of women. Their groups might be as matrifocal as bonobos' as well." Gog and Magog responsible for children Gag, Kag, Zag , Ig, Lig, Tig, Mog, Pog, Wog, Magug, Matug, Mawug: the future of Allkind. 28 But Deep in Holiness To: The Story Continues . . . From: Trzz@aliens.net O4-11-29,004 BC Dear TSC, Your description of Gog and Magog was noted here. Some of the views (fictionalized, I assume, by the author) were inaccurate. Please see the following actual quotations from individuals in the Chauvet Cave: "My body moves to the singing and drumming, the bone flutes, the holy waters shared, the bodies all around me in the resonating chamber of the cave." M, 44 "I come to a mental/bodily state where I embrace all of us as one, where our people feel special and right, where I and each one of us is full of light and power." F, 32 "Jagged crackles of flashes around our heads, our insides chanting audibly right out through our skins" F, 19 "A mute non-explosion when an aperture dilates in the cave wall, admitting us to the other part of the world, the part where all is alive, all we see, hear, touch, taste, smell, lift, set down, pound or caress" M, 17 "Our dead live with us in here, happily" F, 51 "All we remember and all we forgot is here before us, the deer and other meat, the bear and tiger to whom we are meat, the plants and water and rock look at us with recognition, welcome us, dotted lines of light, of power shoot from everything into me, from me into everything" M, 28 "Power of light Power of sound Powers of beings revealing their being to our eyes and ears I am not afraid of this power and the beings are not afraid of me" (gender uncertain), 30 "I can be in the darkness with light sweating out of my body, droplets hiss white circles on the cave floor as I turn, as I turn under the giant rhinos the horses rumble in the stone" F, 30 "Then absolute stillness, fires brighten, the world disappears into light" M, 29 The above are thoughts notated by myself, Trzz, an ethnobiologist from the region of Altair 4 (Krell people). I have spent 10,000 revolutions of Earth around its star watching these homo sapiens sapiens, I, Trzz herself, am immaterial, which enables me/her to eavesdrop on spoken and unspoken language, taking on such forms as lichens on cave walls, cave bear assailants on the attack, earwax of old people exchanging formulas to ward off decrepitude-whatever form necessary to record the descriptions the humans generate as they experience their ritual life. I, Trzz, believe that the humans she/I observe seek two categories of holiness. One is the state or process of transcendence, knowing the ultimate, stepping out of self, through pain, ecstasy, whatever, into a feeling of unity, wholeness, of uniting with higher levels of being. These modes of transcendence are more or less known and knowable, and can be correlated with the levels of brain/mind consciousness The other category is the recognition and embrace of Immanence, beyond epistemology, not a category of knowing, but one derived from the logic of inner and outer, self and other. I, Trzz note, "I reject the possible correlation of these two categories with the sexual division of labor among humans and ultimately with gender stereotyping. By the time of the High Paleolithic or Neolithic cultures of these caves, societies had evolved far beyond the basic divisions of child rearing and other tasks. I have witnessed the fact that women provide adequately for themselves and their children, and share the surplus, through food gathering and hunting of small, nearby animals. Given the consequent fact (as I have observed here in 30,000 BC) that social structures rather than necessity selected for hunting, I conclude that men developed hunting as a supplement, as something helpful but not usually necessary, something to do to exercise their brains and to take a more active role. Cooperation, and language, had already been established through experience of gathering, sharing and maintaining food and the health of mother-child groupings. All of these activities could be performed with the brain of a Neanderthal, as Trzz has observed among the Neanderthal groups who lived nearby the sites of the more sapient cave users. To: Trzz From: David Lewis-Williams (dlw@witwatersrand.edu) 04-12-04 Dear Trzz, I have seen your comments on this matter. Consider the following propositions: 1.The opening to immanent holiness in existence could be related to the evolution of the cerebral cortex and therefore to an unknowable knowing performed by the complex bundling of neural pathways but unavailable to consciousness. 2. The wonder felt at the "thusness" of everything might have its holy origin in the processes the brain uses to monitor its own active consciousness without transmitting them to the conscious mind. To: All Recipients From: Arnold Schopenhauer (arnieS@pessimism.com) 04-11-1886 "Life is a business whose returns are far from covering the cost. Let us merely look at it; this world of constantly needy creatures who continue for a time merely by devouring one another, pass their existence in anxiety and want, and often endure terrible affliction, until they fall at last into the arms of death." "If the world were a paradise of luxury and ease, men would either die of boredom or kill themselves. . . If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the borden of existence?" from "On the Sufferings of the World," in Complete Essays of Schopenhauer. In the world outside this fiction, the Author remembers a sacred statement tattooed on the arm of Cory Roberts-Auli (d. 1994?) , in Sanskrit, probably of Hindu origin: "Oh, beautiful one, do not withhold from me that which makes you: blood, worms, germs, flesh, phlegm, foul-smelling excretions, urine, sperm, feces and bone and everything that makes you what you are and will eventually turn to dust." While reading the above, Umberto Eco calls Ferd Eggan. "Hello, Ferd Eggan? Umberto Eco here. Fine, fine. How are the balls? Let's repeat the dialogue of my characters in Foucault's Pendulum (1988). I will be Lia, you be Casaubon (and yes, I did name him after Middlemarch.) C(FE):"The one true answer?" L(UE)"Of course. That there's nothing to understand. Synarchy is God." C: "God?" L: "Yes. Mankind can't endure the thought that the world was born by chance, by mistake, just because four brainless atoms bumped into one another on a slippery highway. So a cosmic plot has to be found-God, angels, devils. Synarchy performs the same function on a lesser scale." C: "Then I should have told him that people put bombs on trains because they're looking for God?" L:" Why not?" . . . FE: But Umberto Eco, be careful. Foucault's Pendulum, (1988) will be castigated for calling on searchers for God to put bombs on trains. UE: Impossible! That's like saying the past creates the present, when everybody knows it's the other way around! And anyway, God?? Puh-leeze! 29 Return to Reality 2004 Achmed and Lenny are hurtled back to the Museum tableaux. 600-50 ans AC établissement des colonies grecques 560 ans AC Établissement des règlements phéniciens 50 ans AC Commencement du métier romain 300 - 500 AC invasion par Alamans, vandales et Visigoths 476 Effondrement de l'empire romain 700 AD par les saracens 865 AD Formation de la Catalogne 900 -1300 AD Guerre intermittente ayant pour résultat des changements de règle. Élimination du Cathares At this point Lemmy refuses, out of historical solidarity, to impersonate bloody corpses of his favorite heretics. He spends his time drunk on excellent local wines, fantasizing a very fulfilling populist Catharism. Lemmy imagines, but Siegfried and Joseph are on the road to Cologne, once the center of heretical antinomianism: "How marvelous!" sighs Herr Rheinfahrt, transported by a medieval woodcut of the cultus of Swabian Ries. "These itinerant beghards (M) and beguines (F) were 'immoral55.' Imagine being accused of gorging on rich foods and guzzling fine wines in the houses of the rich. What a life, and very subversive, walking from town to town , spreading the word that the poor are not just future inheritors of the Kingdom of Heaven, but they can be in it right now! Tramping around, not worrying about how slow walking is compared to the bus or a car." "I'd like that," says Joseph. "And let's throw in a cult of daily bathing-as-rebaptism, to keep the lice at bay and everyone smelling better-all for greater imitation of the human/divine body of Christ. And, of course, purity of soul would put them all beyond petty medieval morality. Since the Kingdom of God can be lived in the present, there is no need for reproduction, either. Free love!" "Better yet, they indulge their urges in homosexual acts." Around a campfire in the Rhineland, your friends around you. Somebody has come into camp with a stringed instrument and is singing about Divine Love in Provencal. You put your arms around the one you love divinely. Your hands stray beneath the robe to the chest of your partner. You. I stroke your hair, your beard, your manly chest. Your scent is strong with today's sweat and the rosemary we walked through all afternoon. A kiss as your strong neck bends back to take my mouth, the sliding of your tongue and the savory taste of meat and rare pepper. Your eyes . . . Your eyes. I first wanted you because of your brook-blue eyes under black lashes, black brows, my Siberian husky man. You penetrate me with your gaze, my body shivers even here next to the fire, as your icicle eyes become your rampant sex in me . . . Siegfried sniffles as his eyes refocus on the Autobahn. "Oh, Joseph, to walk the mountains with the wandervogels again. We had such good times, until the whole thing turned Nazi." Joseph answers, in calm compassion, "Herr S., your memory is a treasure-time you can revisit. Enjoy it for what it is, without regret if you can." "Ja, mein schwartz Buddha, I love you, but sometimes that advice seems a little hard to take. I am also impressed by the ideology, the Christology of those crazy 'Free Spirits.' Back in 1400, barely escaped from the Black Death, in a severely depopulated Europe, they called themselves 'poor good youths' and 'good daughters.' They rejected the sacramental system without worrying about excommunication. They said 'I am a poor boy or girl' instead of 'I am a poor man or woman' to emphasize their humility (?) and spoke impersonally: 'it is said to you' instead of 'I say to you.' They all were 'followers (and imitators) of Christ and the Apostles,' which was a way of indicating they disdained Church hierarchies and followed their own collective mystical inspiration." Meanwhile, Lemmy and Oedipa are nearing the end of their sojourn in Montpellier. 1500 après une longue période de guerre et famine que les Français établissent control de la region 1559 Les guerres catholiques protestantes ont fini par Edict de Nantes accordant la liberté de culte 1666 Le canal du Midi a démarré 1875 Le phylloxera détruit toutes les vignes 1962 Rapatriement des colons algériens à Languedoc "Speaking of heretical views, here's one," says Achmed. "Remember the Schopenhauer line about how anyone who cares about people would think to spare future generations of the pain of living. Let's start a movement for negative population growth among affluent Westerners. Let's pledge not to have children and instead to leave some room and some oxygen for others. " Lemmy replies, "I hear the latest trend is for wealthy gay men to have babies with surrogate mothers, and then hire nannies to take care of them. Why don't they just get a dog!" "Maybe the most useful would be mass suicide in the First World, for ecological betterment." 30 Weekee Watchee: Save Sirenia Luckily for Lemmy and Achmed, Ollie South pursues leads indicating that some mysterious activity is planned for Cologne, or maybe Aachen. Taking advantage of the red herrings, A & L, boldly don the almost ostentatiously plain, rigorously but gorgeously tailored, soutanes of Old Catholic priests, carrying volumes of Lefebvre in Latin, and peregrinate by train to Rome. Surely in the Holy City, they joke Thomistically, schismatics will not be subject to an attack that might embarrass a Pontiff who, in his dotage, leans increasingly toward Tridentianism and Mariolatry. Their luck runs sour when they are spotted by agents of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the bus terminal in the Piazza del Risorgimento. They run pell mell into a café down the street from the Post Office on Via delle Grazie. Under the gaze of the Swiss Guards across the street, Lemmy and Achmed are hustled into the WC and put to the question. "We know who you are: you are atheist revolutionaries. You, Caution, are a Jew, and Achmed, you are not even a man. Why are you playing in Church doctrine," queries the sub-assistant inquisitor. "We throw ourselves on your mercy," Lemmy pleads. Just when their persecutors are about to call over a carabinero, Achmed makes a secret sign that causes the priestly crew to relent. He points to their crotches and mimes fellatio. After a period of speechless contemplation in the Spanish manner, a rodillas, L and A are absolved. Their robes are confiscated, exchanged for long-sleeved t-shirts of the Cardinal Ratzinger Fan Club ("Putting the Smackdown on Heresy since 1981") "Ever since the Holy Father started watching Gibson's Passion," an African priest named Thleeanouhee begins. . . "Every chance he gets," interrupts a young catechumen. "Ever since," repeats the father with asperity, straightening his genuinely orthodox robe, " non-canonical enthusiasm for Our Lord's suffering is chancy. Positions that were assumed, and enjoyed, intra muros-traditionally taken as compensation for irregularities that should be curtained away from stool pigeoning to the secular government-are no longer sufficient to prophylax against ex cathedra bans. "As far as the homosexual-ecclesiastical cabal is concerned, we encourage your efforts to overthrow any number of non-Christian (non-Catholic) governments; they're only temporal powers." "Keep in mind, Texas fundamentalism is not Catholic in our view," asserts one of the more chatty priests." "But we can't just let you walk around pretending to be piously in error." Sped under a Vatican escort to DaVinci, our heroes are dumped unceremoniously at curbside, but only after confessing that-if they were Catholic-they would accept Mary as an entirely human-although stupendously blessed-mediator, the holy quickening of her womb not to be taken as conferring any ultra-human status upon her. After a round of cellular calls, Lemmy and Achmed shake the dust of Rome, off on assignment in a private jet to Embry-Riddle Aeronautics University, the notorious flying school in northern Florida where the 9-11 terrorists learned to fly but not to land. From there they are driven to WeekeeWatchee, the tourist center with the famous Mermaids, now a front for Sirenia, a pagan cult bent on repopulating the Everglades with manatees. Achmed recusitates his female performance for the sake of revolutionary resistance to Sirenian crypto-fascism. He works three shows daily as an underwater dancer-diver, breathing through a tube, titted and assed as a mermaid. Through a secret channel, he is able to swim near the manatees at Blue Springs State; as many as 80 to 100 spend the winter in the warm waters. The river at the park has a fenced off area where manatees who have been nursed back from poor health are kept. They would be unable to survive if they were free, a view denied by the Sirenia group. Lemmy briefly works as a tour guide, handing out maps and brochures. Manatee Info for Kids Manatees have one type of teeth - molars. They are the type used for grinding and work well for the foods the manatees eat. The teeth in front wear down as the manatee gets older. But, new teeth form in the back of the jaw, moving forward to replace them. That tooth movement is called the "marching molars". Manatees are plant eaters. They feed on all sorts of sea plants. An average manatee may eat 100-150 pounds of food each day. They swallow sea squids or mollusks that may be attached to the seagrasses they eat. Also, sand is often mixed with the food they eat. The gritty sand wears down the teeth. Brain, eyes, ears, whiskers are some of the body parts that help the manatee sense the world. The manatee ear bones are large and their hearing is believed to be good. They make sounds under water to "talk" to each other. The sounds are like chirps, whistles, or squeaks. Most of the sounds they make are too low a frequency for humans to hear. Their eyes are small but manatees have fairly good vision. They can tell differences between sizes of objects and different colors and patterns. The manatee snout is covered with whiskers. They are sense organs, but their purpose is still not clear. It is believed that manatees are smart. To be continued . . . 31 Sirenia, cont'd. Their brain is very large and has a lot of gray matter. The gray matter is where thinking occurs. Manatees can learn tricks. Breathing: Although a manatee can stay under water for up to 20 minutes, it must come up to the surface to breathe air. When the manatee reaches the surface, you can hear the air blown out of the mouth with a big burst of air. Poof. Then you can hear the fresh air being sucked in. Manatees may live up to 60 years of age or more. The oldest manatee now living is about 50 years old. Manatees have no natural enemies. Sharks and alligators do not usually hunt them. Most premature deaths occur from cold weather and disease. Fast-moving boats usually kill several manatees every year. Fossils of manatees found in Florida's springs have been estimated to be about 45 million years old. Fossils found in other parts of the world may be as old as 60 million years. The modern manatees evolved from four-footed land mammals. Their closest living relative is the elephant. (For extra credit see footnote 1.) Sirenia is a cult with worldwide connections. Descended from certain coastal Israelite and Canaanite groups that considered Jonah the link between God and man, the Sirenians ultimate goal is to revert humans to aquatic mammals. Popiel Jonah Melville XXIII, their current AnteDiluvian (water-bearer of the prophetic seal), has initated a new phase of the Great Work in Manistique, Michigan, where an indoor EvergladeLand scientific center and tourist attraction is being built. In an upcoming episode, readers will gasp at the scope of their operations. Cleverly averting close physical examination, Achmed successfully begins to insinuate himself into the Sirenia inner circles. The mermaids are grateful that an obviously well-trained athlete listens to their aspirations and doubts with encouraging tenderness and penetration. They are also eager to help her progress in her transition to aqualife. After proving herself as a loyal novice with impressive lungs, she is sent to Manistique. Lemmy, under some suspicion after he was seen cruising on weekends around the glory hole booths at XTC Video, in Daytona Beach, is made part of a delegation to Kuala Lumpur to facilitate the smuggling of a dugong to a dentist's waiting room in Marin Co. While they are en route, we check in on Cyril and Vyvyan. Cy is supine on the floor of the Jebel Ali Free Zone mall, having fainted while arguing with Vyv all the way from Dubai Airport. "Cyril," screams Vyvyan, wake up! Oh, will someone please bring some water!" The mall security quickly bring a portable infibulator, oxygen and water, and Cyril swims slowly back to the light in this desert oasis. "Ohhh," he moans, as he recognizes Vyv. "My dear, I was in a dark grotto, like Capri, and everything smelled so astringently sea clean." Cy and Vyv had been arguing about Cyril's obsession that others think he smells bad. After an 11-hour flight from Paris, his rumpled mind confused the oliferous perspiration of bodies in the Airport and Jebel Ali with a morbid preoccupation with his own age-specific putrefaction. "Ever since Hard Day's Night Cyril has been washing, douching and perfuming like Lady Macbeth," dithers Vyvyan to the fetching but uncomprehending young guard who kneels with him at Cyril's side. "He's bonkers about being a clean old man." On the flight Cyril was seated next to a stellar American backpacker, very blue-eyed and ruddy. He inhaled the delicious acrid fragrances of the boy's armpits and crotch, with puissant bottom notes of of pee and arse, and fretted about the leaks of gas he himself was detonating on what he hoped was an unsuspecting planeload. Elaborately moving his tongue in his long drowse, he fell into the reverie mentioned earlier as his brain cells clicked on sweet scents of seawrack. Coming Soon: Protocols of the Order Sirenia, As transmitted through the Wandering Aramean from Petra to Joppa to Tarshish to Ninevah to All True Believers The Great Work of God to Restore the Divine Order The Book of Jonah Moby Dick 1 Manatees, Dugong, and Sea Cow This order of aquatic mammals contains two Recent families: Dugongidae for the genera Dugong (dugong, one species) and Hydrodamalis (Steller's sea cow, one species, extinct); and Trichechidae for the single genus Trichechus (manatees, three species). The dugong inhabits coastal regions in the tropical parts of the Old World, but some individuals go into the fresh water of estuaries and up rivers. Steller's sea cow occurred in the Bering Sea, being the only recent member of this order adapted to cold waters. Manatees live along the coast and in coastal rivers in the southeastern United States, Central America, the West Indies, northern South America, and western Africa. Sirenians are solitary, travel in pairs, or associate in groups of three to about six individuals. Generally slow and inoffensive, they spend all their life in the water. They are vegetarians and feed on various water plants. They are the only mammals that have evolved to exploit plant life in the sea margin (Anderson 1979). The ordinal name Sirenia is related to the supposed mermaidlike nursing of dugongs (thought to be the origin of the myths of the sirens) and manatees. The only reliable observations of nursing in manatees, however, have revealed that the young suckle while the mother is underwater in a horizontal position, belly downward. P. K. Anderson (1984a) reported that suckling in the dugong is somewhat similar but that the calf usually is in an inverted position. The Sirenia often are classified together with the Proboscidea and Hyracoidea in the mammalian superorder Paenungulata. The geological range of the order Sirenia is early Eocene to Recent. The earliest fossils are from Hungary and India. By the middle Eocene the order was present in southeastern North America, the West Indies, southern Europe, northern and eastern Africa, and south-central Asia, and three distinct families--the Dugongidae, Prorastomidae, and Protosirenidae--had evolved (Dawson and Krishtalka 1984; Domning, Morgan, and Ray 1982). These aquatic mammals were apparently more abundant from the Oligocene to the Pliocene than they are now. Their comparative scarcity at the present time probably results from climatic changes in the Pliocene and Pleistocene and, more recently, exploitation by humans for food, hides, and oil. The number of individual sirenians remaining in the world, perhaps 60,000, is far smaller than that of any other mammalian order.   Copyright © 1997 The Johns Hopkins University Press 32 The Baby Lives Under orders from Bikkhu Merle, the Devil in the Details rips through the Baby's chest and screeches away in brimstone and thunder to the Devil Realm. Imagine the picture:56 Timmy is shown facing the viewer, still holding the murdered Ana K. in his arms, imploring. MonaLisa57 leans over The Baby from the right of the bed, her hand on her daughter's little forehead, while Novy in the foreground stares aghast at Ana K's stiff body, almost falling out of the frame bottom right. Merle is in the foreground to the left, bathed in Caravaggiesque off-white light. The incredulous Doctor, Nurse and Alligator Purse, in a pictorial triangle middle ground left, stare dumbfounded, one at The Baby, one at Merle, and the third, the Doctor, gazes openmouthed directly into the eyes of the viewer/reader. South and his men have left for the North. Voice-over, the reader is asked again, "Should the Author let her live, or leave her to vegetate?" The putti appearing through the ceiling double-click on Mail. From: Readers of the World (row.univ.net) To: Author ferdeggan@earthlink.net Date: 5/10/04 5:48:17 PM Subject: Let Baby Live We, the readers of the world, despite ignoring repeated calls for comment, can now notify you that we have decided you should let The Baby live. Please inform us of any outcome, and we may deign to comment anew. "Now we'll see some action," hopes Novy. Merle gradually fades from the picture as the AP official moves toward him. The Doctor, alert now to his patient, exclaims, "Sacre bleu! The Baby, whom we will now call Little Nell, lives! But her body is nearly 75% destroyed by the electrical shock. I fear only her brain is functioning, and I cannot be certain all of that is intact." "Thank the Goddess of Compassion Quan Yin, she didn't have time to develop a pesky "self," comments Merle's fading bark. Novy grasps the laptop from the putti and begins an immediate search for a specialist. With MonaLisa at her side, she finally locates the most prominent specialist in body transplants. A graduate of Grenada Medical University, Dr. Sieglinde Rheinfahrt-Merdeka, has successfully performed five cutting-edge body transplants at the Hospital de Muchas Mercedes, Cd. de la Plata, Argentina, a charitable project of something called the Burst-Throbbing Foundation. 33 Terror in Cologne Lemmy imagines, but Siegfried and Joseph are on the road to Cologne, once the center of heretical antinomianism: "How marvelous!" sighs Herr Rheinfahrt, transported by a medieval woodcut of the cultus of Swabian Ries. "These itinerant beghards (M) and beguines (F) were 'immoral58.' Imagine being accused of gorging on rich foods and guzzling fine wines in the houses of the rich. What a life, and very subversive, walking from town to town , spreading the word that the poor are not just future inheritors of the Kingdom of Heaven, but they can be in it right now! Tramping around, not worrying about how slow walking is compared to the bus or a car." "I'd like that," says Joseph. "And let's throw in a cult of daily bathing-as-rebaptism, to keep the lice at bay and everyone smelling better-all for greater imitation of the human/divine body of Christ. And, of course, purity of soul would put them all beyond petty medieval morality. Since the Kingdom of God can be lived in the present, there is no need for reproduction, either. Free love!" "Better yet, they indulge their urges in homosexual acts." Around a campfire in the Rhineland, your friends around you. Somebody has come into camp with a stringed instrument and is singing about Divine Love in Provencal. You put your arms around the one you love divinely. Your hands stray beneath the robe to the chest of your partner. You. I stroke your hair, your beard, your manly chest. Your scent is strong with today's sweat and the rosemary we walked through all afternoon. A kiss as your strong neck bends back to take my mouth, the sliding of your tongue and the savory taste of meat and rare pepper. Your eyes . . . Your eyes. I first wanted you because of your brook-blue eyes under black lashes, black brows, my Siberian husky man. You penetrate me with your gaze, my body shivers even here next to the fire, as your icicle eyes become your rampant sex in me . . . Siegfried sniffles as his eyes refocus on the Autobahn. "Oh, Joseph, to walk the mountains with the wandervogels again. We had such good times, until the whole thing turned Nazi." Joseph answers, in calm compassion, "Herr S., your memory is a treasure-time you can revisit. Enjoy it for what it is, without regret if you can." "Ja, mein schwartz Buddha, I love you, but sometimes that advice seems a little hard to take. I am also impressed by the ideology, the Christology of those crazy 'Free Spirits.' Back in 1400, barely escaped from the Black Death, in a severely depopulated Europe, they called themselves 'poor good youths' and 'good daughters.' They rejected the sacramental system without worrying about excommunication. They said 'I am a poor boy or girl' instead of 'I am a poor man or woman' to emphasize their humility (?) and spoke impersonally: 'it is said to you' instead of 'I say to you.' They all were 'followers (and imitators) of Christ and the Apostles,' which was a way of indicating they disdained Church hierarchies and followed their own collective mystical inspiration." Missive from Merms 04/18/04 Mr. Egg (again): Your Latin is vulgar, to say the least.  Like something you learned on your honeymoon in your hometown.  By changing the subject from Sea Cows to vegetative infants, you missed diving beneath the surface of Sirenia's Secret Plan: "Manatee Manors" -- the Del Webb Everglade Retirement Community.   We, the" Wikka Daughters of the Working Merms of Wicky Wachee Springs(ret)" corrupted your mailing list as a warning: Stay out of shallow waters before you are grounded. Our Merm-mothers aren't retired, they are permanently beached, thanks to "Sirenia" - a MAN- atee cult who took over the Springs in the name of ecology,( actually "Human Resources" ax- men responsible for draining the Springs and the Everglades)..."Sirenia" is a land-use  subsidiary of Dell Webb Developments.  And it gets worse.  More vulgar than even your Latin could express. A landfill of human teeth is replacing 2/3 of Florida.   The delegation to Kuala Lupur to facilitate the smuggling of a dugong to a dentist's waiting room in Sausalito is our symbolic clue:  The "Great Work" in Manistique, Michigan is not just a "Marching Molars Study" sponsored by the Fluoride Foundation of Florida, to implement dental implant research --- it is a front for stem- cell research to genetically combine MANatee genes with those of "land sharks"-- to clone aquatic (cold blooded) humans who will control global stock-markets with their sonar snout-symphonies (Disguised as dreamy melodies of whale songs.)  If "Sirenia Systems, Inc." succeeds, underwater investments controlled by sound-waves sent as signals by "Homeland Security Pool and Spa Services, Inc", installed in thousands of Florida's "active adult communities",  will drown out everything else.  Especially poor old people.  The surplus seniors around the world.  The drowning world.   Meanwhile, planned communities burgeoning with groups of younger retirees will occupy Sirenia's  upscale Florida residential enclaves,  driving out future elders, who will be expected to work happily and harder at meeting raised expectations--- Old age is predicted to have more positive attributions-- such as maturity, competence, sophistication, confidence, self-reliance and power.  Above all:  HEALTH and WEALTH.   Surfing the Wave of Retirement:  Waving or Drowning? Growing old successfully will be the expected norm.  Without vigorous investments using Social Security to "grow" the Market, by 2007, Americans will ALL have inadequate financial resources. Leisure and Medical Industries, Travel, Surgery and Adult Learning are a few of the Market potentials directly affected.  The Song of Sirenia is a Sea of Senior Status. Try saying that in Latin, Dr. Egg.  Now that you know Her Secrets.  Gasp at the scope of their operations. WDWMWWS(ret) Wichita, KA 34 Terror in Cologne2 In the crypt under the cathedral at Aachen, under torture, Siegfried confesses: He knew it was the anti-depressants, the SSRIs, but he couldn't remember when he'd last enjoyed sex. He'd gotten off the plane in Havana, was met by Dionisio, and D had taken him to bed as soon as they got to 's casa particular. Dionisio, rubusto in his piel de canela, rubbed his penis against him, kissing deep as he could, and S masturbated himself to orgasm, feeling embarrassed at how long it took and how his descending balls were thrown around by the rapid and almost-painful flying grip. That was more than a year ago and he'd only jerked off a few times since. He was occasionally surprised by spacetime warps of desire. And what had love felt like? "Keep him awake all night," Ollie growls. "He's going to give up all of it!" As he thought about it now, he thought his sexual appetite had never lasted more than about fifteen minutes at a time. He'd had that fifteen minutes with a thousand men, but that had been about it-what satisfied him, as well as he could remember. The sex he first had was with himself. R___ G___ had taught him to jack off around age 13 and he'd refused to 69 with Ricky T___ and that other kid V___ because he didn't like the smell of V's crotch. Now, he confessed, the smell was his own. He had grown increasingly concerned about his own smell, worried about whether his gas leaks and pissy underwear offended others, as he was certain the tobacco odors of 2 packs per day did. "Try stripping him and leaving him in a cold shower for a while-that'll get him singing," says the man in black. He'd always had a boyish way that drew stronger protective types. He'd enjoyed that so much that he'd never learned to be anybody else. He'd always been drawn himself to the iron-willed drag queen Tanye and others who were boldly exotic. They were badges he would put on to make himself authentic/. Years of criticism and self-criticism had made him more adept at the presentation of a self as sympathetic friend to women, to Blacks and Latinos. He took seriously the generosity with which Others (especially Black women) granted him the right to exist. Race and position in a hierarchy of gender/sexuality had always been the most important markers in his sexual adventures. He was glad he'd had them but anxious when he asked-or was asked-whether he had any authentic self of his own. "We're not sure this old guy has any authentic self of his own," reported the junior black-suit to Ollie South. "He's telling us a great deal, but his guilt is hard to prove." "Never mind the proof, that's for sissies and appeals courts," South tells the interrogators. "Just keep him talking. Try the drugs." He knew by now the question had to be answered with a yes; after all, he did choose within the limitations of history and genetics. And he also knew the question and its answer taken together were a trap, sucking him into an illusory comparison of selves, reifying an idea that did him no good, and could only add to all the negative feelings of deficiency he confused himself with. He knew there is no authentic self, as there is no God, as ther is no deep reality, as Niels Bohr used to tell him.l But it was hard work to remember there is no authentic, and his political comrades and their revolutionary project had helped keep all that at only barking distance. He couldn't remember anymore what it was like to love anyone, let alone love the people. "His consciousness is clearly shattered under the yage," South was certain. "Now for the sodomizing humiliations." He wasn't sure he could remember how people talk to each other. He was always impatient with friends' recitations of their daily ins and outs-who did them wrong and how they recouped their self-regard, or not. He thought such talk was trivial and tried to not tell such tales, even to himself. It was difficult for a compulsive repeater who was used to saying over and over some phrase or song that caught in his mind. He understood now that nothing happened unless he wanted it to. The humblings must have been something he wanted, and the unhappinesses he'd thought stemmed from his deficiencies were feelings he'd obviouswly cultivated. And somehow, a few years ago, he began to take the pills and everything changed. He was no longer so sure he was an unhappy person; in fact, he felt pretty richtig most of the time and his brain was freer to think and play. If that happened because he swallowed an organic chemical it must mean his mind in its ceaseless processing must have been interpreting in a particular way, a way that he no longer had to experience. His unhappiness was an interpretation that was not necessary; he could just as well be patient and observant, mindful of how his narration of the extended recent time did not require that he feel his life was unhappy. He tried to say, "I'm doing ok, things are ok." He tried to say, "I notice that I feel down, that the world seems futile and tiring, especially in the morning." And "I notice that my mind is engaged and ticking more productively later in the day." And "I notice that I sleep a lot, and maybe that is compensation for reduced REM or deep sleep on account of sleeping pills." And ". . ." Siegfried gasps, wanting to please Ollie, "Is this honest enough?" South finds it takes very little to get S to talk, but his talk doesn't seem to identify any culprits. Ollie wants plots and conspiracies, and all he gets are the rambling self-accusations of an old man. With Joseph it is another matter. He, still considered a fugitive BLA outlaw, is subjected to all the usual tortures used on political prisoners in Leavenworth and Lexington, USA.59 35 RE: Terror in Köln June 1, 2004 Mr. Oliver South Chief of Cleansing Activations World Security Operations S.A. C/o Crypt, Aachen Cathedral Köln, Fourth German Reich Dear Mr. South: How are you? I am fine. I am a student in the seventh grade at the Parker Tyler School for the Young and Evil in Shaker Heights, Ohio, USA. My classmates and I have been reading in class about you and the old man named Mr. Siegfried Rheinfahrt. We are writing to ask you to stop torturing him and to to release Mr. Rheinfahrt and Mr. Joseph Jamal. They are good people, and you should not be abusing them. Mr. South I know you worked for the US Government in Iran and Nicaragua and now help our Brave Soldiers by questioning people in Kabul, Guantanamo and Baghdad. But you are not helping Our Cause by taking pictures of the prisoners have sex with each other. Sex should be between men and women who say "Okay, let's have sex' (with each other, I mean.) Our teacher, Father Michelin Pirelli, III, of The Absolutely Top Holiest Redeemer Reformed New Apostolic Charismatic Catholic Church, Old Latin Order, has always required that we say "Okay" before we have sex with him or go to the basement for chastisement. (By the way, it is done the right way-nuns whip the boys and priests whip the girls.) When they put The Question to us, I always answer "Yes" politely, so I get the cat o'nine tails, which feels a lot more fun than the cane. I think you should follow our example. And then let them go, because they have always said "Okay" to having sex, maybe even with each other. They might even have sex with you if you asked better. Yours truly, Temujin Genghis Khan Rabinowitz-DuBois and the whole 7th grade class at Parker Tyler School As Ollie South lets the letter drop musingly from his infected right hand, he rubs his eyes and reminds himself he hasn't washed his hands. Rinsing with water from the stoup, he wonders where this kid got information about WSA. He suspects the international zionist conspiracy, as evidenced by the next letter. Mr. O. South, White Capitalist Devil WSA Mr. South: We demand immediate cessation of sodomitical abuse perpetrated against Joseph Jamal and Siegfreed Rheinfahrt. These men are heroes of the worldwide anti-WTO libration movement and as such, even though they are innocent of all charges, will heroicly remain silent about their sabotage activities and of others they know carry them out. If you do not put these Heros on a plane immediately for Kuala Lumpur we will retaliate like you have never felt before. signed, The International Movement, totally legal supporters with ELF Copenhagen and Rio P.S. Watch out for your new Hummers in Kabul, you butt-fuck simulator! A message beeps in on South's Blackberry-powered Journada™ wireless, and South is confronted with a photo of himself naked, simulating receptive anal sex with Jamal atop the supine body of Rheinfahrt. In very large capitals, the accompanying text reads US Pull Out! Apologize to the Sodomized! Moral Is as Moral Does! "Let Jamal go," he barks to the assistant lapping his thighs. Release him drugged and well-dressed at the ramp to the Autobahn. No German will give him a ride. They'll think he's Turkish." "What about the old man?" Memory floods the synapses with a message once sung to him (by J or B or R ?): Yes, it's love I offer you and hope that you will keep. This love you see is true, from me;--but no-it is to weep, For you-pale white-cannot trust love from whom you've loved too long And yet deride with untaught pride-myh love is far too strong So what thing can I offer you? What gift is there to give? Not even dreams, or so it seems-for you refuse to live. So this I offer now to you is weak with right and wrong- Half dark, half light, half black, half white-a truly Bastard Song.60 "Rheinfahrt stays. I think he knows more than he's told us. Get the Softening Machine. I'm going to go Nova on his ass." Siegfried, as Ollie hopes, is gratified to be lubricated and piston-evacuated. In a puddle on the floor, he thankfully blurts out what he thinks his dreadful interrogator wants to know. "There is no actual conspiracy; there doesn't need to be a conspiracy. The Twelve Links of Interdependent Origination61 explain that all substance is composed of non-self substances, and therefore no deep reality behind substance is to be found. Bohr was in contact with the timeless readers of the Pali canon and he and his wife, during their three-way marathon writhing with Heisenberg, they agreed on the Copenhagen Interpretation: The world we see around us is real enough, but . . . everyday phenomena are themselves built not out of phenomena but out of an utterly different kind of being. Wernie Heisenberg told me, 'The hope that new experiments will lead us back to objective events in time and space is about as well founded as the hope of discovering the end of the world in the unexplored regions of the Antarctic.' And N. David Mermin adds, 'We now know that the moon is demonstrably not there when nobody looks.62' "In social systems," Siegfried groans out between thrusts of the Softening Machine, "Freddie Hayek tells me, '[t]his means that, though the use of spontaneous ordering forces enables us to induce the formation of an order of such a degree of complexity (namely comprising elements of such numbers, diversity and variety of conditions) as we could never master intellectually, or deliberately arrange, we will have less power over the details of such an order than we would of one which we produce by arrangement.'63" "You post-modernist Commies are all alike!" Ollie bellows. "What happened in E. Germany that turned you around like this?" "We thought Communism might be better if we stopped planning so much. Read Bakhtin on Rabelais if you really want to know. Skip Nietzsche-he was nuts." Another text message beeps in, this one from Oswald Spengler; "Give up on this you idiot! The West is dying and you ask why? NeoCon or a liberal, what are you anyway?" And Telegram for O. North From W. Reich 01/06/04 FORBID YOU USE MY MACHINE STOP STOP TORTURING MY OLD COMRADE STOP WILHELM Siegfried is left in the apse, as South and his WSA minions conclude that they are unable to conquer the old man's will. 36 Operation Good Shepherd When Timmy gets the call from his half-brother in Cleveland, he is in Oslo, having a cigarette outside the Munchmuseet in an empty park next to a freeway. He and Marcel are accompanying a Zimbabwean uncle, Mr. Sithole's cousin Plainfield, and Plainfield's lover, the pretender to the throne of Oman. After the royal wedding in Copenhagen, the High Sheik's entourage have come in their yacht, frolicking in Bergen where Kaiser Wilhelm used to park his boat, and then by private railroad car to Oslo. They all love the smiling, almost-endless summer nights glinting on blonde hair. Timmy is grateful for a few hours away from the hub-bub. The Peer Gynt Festival, the more-rational mystic's answer to Bayreuth, is his uncle's destination: thousands gather in an outdoor amphitheater to see the dance of the Mountain King and imagine themselves as hardy pre-Vikings. Timmy is more taken with the Munchmuseet and a self-portrait of Munch in a bathtub, photographed around 1892. However, his absorption in the eyes of Edvard is disrupted when he hears of the abduction. "The old German and Joseph Jamal? What happened? Are they ok?" "Herr Rheinfahrt was found at death's door under the apse at Aachen, but Joseph is still missing. We sent letters to the security company asking them to release him. He's a wanted fugitive, so we can't contact the police." "I've got to find him. He's the only one who can possibly tell me what happened to Ana K." "Yeah, the story of her previous life was just picked up by Oprah over here." "So where is Aachen? What am I gonna do?" "Get to Cologne, that's the closest city. There can't be that many blacks in Germany." Timmy is frantic. through the fog of majoun so generously provided by the Sheikh, who insists on being called Beaky ("It's short for something you'd never be able to pronounce, my dears.") Unclear about geography, he accepts his uncles' guidance and a suitcase full of opium and flies off to Cologne. Marcel stays behind; the Sheikh and his friends love to watch his fair Gallic skin get sunburned and peel. Meanwhile, Joseph is picked up by a vanful of Turks on their way to the Eau de Cologne factory with a load of bergamot oranges. "We thought you were one of us," shouts the driver over the roar of five lower gears. "What is the matter with you? You smell like a fried chicken. Is that blood?" After lengthy and difficult explanations in pidgin-German, Joseph is taken to a guestworkers' hostel in the suburbs and cleaned up. As our view goes to a medium shot, he slides his bruised limbs into a deep bath fragrant with Dawn and thyme. Little Otika, the Czech owner's beautiful daughter, offers him a deep-tissue massage, but, exhausted, he falls asleep only to be wakened two days later by Otika and Timmy Tilden. Trading two kilos of homemade Turkish Delight for Otika's silence and eight kilos for carfare, the two former Amerikans of Afrikan Descent are smuggled out of town in haste to the Danube boats in Vienna. The Sheikh's contacts, which are of course kept secret from the Turks, are waiting with a barge, equipped with a clandestine stateroom under the load, turnips on their way to a pickling factory in Yerevan. After a few days on a private island in the Black Sea, our friends are able to use new passports to fly to Dubai and join Cyril and Vyvyan. "Thank heavens you're safe," coos Vyvyan. "Cyril and I were so frightened." Thanks to the Sheiks," Cyril adds, "we are having a little reunion here-my nephew Mobe is here with his friend Ferd also. You must join us for a few weeks of thrilling caravan travel. I can't take No for an answer, as we all seem to be wanted by that dreadful mercenary, Ollie South. I've already sent a scathing letter to The Times about them!" "Oh, Cyril. You didn't say anything to me before you sent it. You know you can't spell, and they'll know where we are, you booby." "Lots you know! Mobe helped me and we posted it through St. Petersburg." "Anyway, thank you for helping us," Timmy says. "But can someone explain to me what is going on?" "All will be revealed tonight. Now eat your apricots and dates. Rest! Our little wooly lamb and our black sheep!" ". . ." As he falls asleep, Timmy wants to know: Are Cy and Vyv good gays or bad? How do they know the Sheikhs? What was going on in Oslo? What do Mobe and Ferd really do? Is Joseph a Buddhist or a terrorist? Is Ollie South a Christian or a mercenary? What about the murder of Ana K? The Baby? Herr Rheinfahrt? Why does everybody seem to know everybody else? 37 Dedicated to the Memory of Siegfried Rheinfahrt My memory is really bad. I appreciate your dedication. The thing I most can't remember is how a woman feels inside. I've felt nothing lower than my heart for years. 64 The author admits he made Siegfried Rheinfahrt up. Siegfried isn't even his real name. He was christened in St. Nicholas Church in Leipzig in 1908 as just ordinary John Jacob Jingelheimer Schmidt, but people would all shout at him. As a chorister the boy would have sung the works of the Church's most famous kappelmeister, JS Bach. He often referred to this music as the "architecture of life," meaning that Bach provided a structure for his understanding during the complex changes he was to face throughout a long and difficult. The first documentary evidence of his name change is in his membership card in Der Eigene, a physical strength group with intellectual ties to Goethe's seminal romantic novel Werther. His youthful enthusiasm for camping and nude swimming left him-although not his liaisons with English upper-class homosexuals, one of which is thinly disguised in Spender's The Temple-- as Deutschland grew darker. His thought, as recorded in his journals during his years at the University in Freiberg, was first inflamed by the cult around Stefan Georg, but far more illumined by Hesse's Journey to the East. Although his philosophical studies show his great love and aptitude for Heidegger, then professor, soon to be Rector, at Freiberg, R remembers an increasing discomfort with H's "swooning for a leader" who would throw himself and the people into the Dasein. He is said by a classmate to have urinated on the library's holograph of Also Sprach . . Disenchanted, unwilling to accept "the hysterical mystifications of right-wing graecophiles," Rheinfahrt left his studies and under the swaying of Christopher Caudwell, he joined the Communist Party in 1928. Comrades from that time equivocate, but refuse to agree to his description of himself as physically repellent; they note his honey-blond hair worn slightly too long and asking for the discipline of a good brushing, a well-developed physique and a mind quick to discern tactical opportunities in the contestations with the emerging Nazi movement. Viewers may catch a glimpse of him as he speaks to a crowd of Berliners evicted from their homes in Brecht's semi-documentary Kuhle Wampe. Unlike many of his peers, Siegfried was convinced by 1932 that the Nazis would take state power in order to save capitalism for the German bourgeoisie and its English investors. He disappeared, faking his death at the hands of Brown Shirts in a riot in Berlin, and embarked for Moscow for military and political training. Although independent corroboration is not to be had, a journal entry in 1936 makes evident that he was back in Germany, involved with a Lutheran minister whom we know only as Dietrich B___. His recollection is that "Dietrich and I worshiped with great fervor," although he smiles as if to ssay this is not to be taken seriously from a Comintern-trained atheist. It may reflect S's disquiet about his sexual proclivities: he writes a sad record of longing and vacillation in his two-year courtship of a certain Karen, a Danish psychoanalyst, and his almost immediate divorce from her after their marriage in 1938. Despite considerable effort expended by the author, no clarity as to the identity or subsequent fate of Karen can be offered here. The precipitous rejection may have been followed by more dangerous events, as Karen is said to be of Russian, perhaps Jewish, extraction. The name Siefried appears frequently after that time in the Soviet archives of clandestine operatives. Recently released and decoded, the papers indicate a leading role for Rheinfahrt in the armed resistance to the Nazis within Germany. Some scholars may denigrate the efforts and the role of the Communists in the resistance, but the prominence of Rheinfahrt is certainly the reason why he was to emerge as a major figure in the liberated Democratic Republic of Germany. What marks Rheinfahrt's activity in the Party and Government in (East) Germany is the frequent criticisms and self-criticism he underwent. Apparently R was not enthusiastic about the transfer of industrial assets to the Soviet Union, and he is probably the unnamed party leader who was sent twice for proletarian internationalist education to Moscow. He returned each time chastened but quickly involved in new controversies. During debates over development of Leipzig's huge chemical plants, R is known to have said, "We don't want to stink up our country for all future generations." He was finally sent to Lubeck on the Baltic coast, where he oversaw harbor and shipping operations. He married his cook after she sustained a cerebral infarction in 1974. Much of his writing of the time speaks fondly of Helga: My shriveling crabapple: I am fond of you. Your coffee and cigarettes smell dirty to me, And I regret that I am inadequate in love. It is not difficult to discern, hidden in this little poem, an expression of great regret that he felt himself inadequate in love. Found among the secret file of his papers is a photograph from 1973, taken on a beach, of a nude young man draped over a Trabant, a photo that he must have treasured, as he brought it with him into exile when he left Germany in 1980. He has lived in a series of residential hotels since that time, eking out his days with a faithful friend as he nears the age of 100. 39 By the shores of Gitche-Gumee65 By the shores of Gitche-Gumee By the shining, big-sea waters Stand the huts of Sy-ree-nee-yah, Freezing, rusting huts of labor. Sirenians here make marvels: They teach others to make anthrax, Send instructions internet-wards To prairie freaks and forest nutballs. Once the home of Hiawatha Now just Hiawatha High School Where the boys play steroid football And the girls get quickly pregnant, Once the home of Old Nokomis Now Nokomis Sunset Village Nursing Reverend Mud-ju-ko-vis Prophet of the coming Deluge. Mud-ju in his acid springtime Ate so many amanitas That he had a realization. Babbling brooks told him a secret: Humans were not truly worthy Rulers of the earth and skyways; They usurped the place of betters, Manatees and whales and dolphins. The Holy Bible showed the secret; God applied a test to Jonah, Sent him where he had no business Jonah tried to run away from God's inscrutable decision Got himself thrown to a seastorm. Wisdom came to Jonah only Deeply, deep inside Leviathan. In God's mightiest of creatures Jonah got Jehovah's message: Noah's flood was not effective Humans reproduced like rabbits Spreading eco-cataclysms From the ancient times to present Jonah's truth was quickly censored Masked by Moses and by Jesus. The mention of the Nile and Jordan, Baptism and wine from water Hint at secrets Mud-ju-ko-vis Learned to fathom in his trances And organic chemistry lectures At the Hiawatha High School. Amphetamines helped Prophet Mud-ju Win over big shoals of converts. Soon the Napkin Ring pre-teeners Cranked to headier trips through science Skateboard geniuses picked their pimples Over C A D design screens Searching data base collections, Of obscure heresies for wisdom. Easily they found connections: Pearl to pearl they threaded insights. Whales were first terrestrial mammals Who intelligently abandoned Dusty earth for buoyant water Freed from gravity they prospered Swimming paradise untrammeled Until humans came to hunt them Greedy for their vital essence Divine ambergris and oils. Now the oceans grew polluted Manatees were persecuted Whales were facing stark extinction. Righteousness demanded action. Mud-ju-ko-vis charged his minions: Go, disciples, simulate me Game-plans leading to the triumph Of marine mammals' command. Toiling night and day they plotted Graphs and maps of sea connections, Found deep troughs, a Northwest Passage, Researched aqua sound formation, Bubbled out communications, Listened for negotiation, Til at last, to their relief, God approved of their beliefs. Achmed-Oedipa for now-put down the illustrated pamphlet she was memorizing with little enthusiasm. "What drivel, set in what regular feet!" she exclaimed inwardly, never yielding the least outward sign of disbelief. She was well on her way to a ranking position within the undulating Sirenian orders, one where she would be privy to the deepest secret plans of the group. "I can't fish out the actual steps they are taking, besides building tourist traps with surplus submarines. What is the meaning of the turbans? I must get to the bottom of this." 40 Venison Bride becomes a prophet Born in December of 1948, Venison Bride grew up in the Cornish section of Manistique, spending most of his youth looking dreamily from the cliffs over Lake Superior, vaguely persuaded that something special was coming his way. "The Wells Fargo Wagon" always had a special poignancy for him, as did the underwear ads-no, any ads for men's clothing (few in True and Argosy but plentiful in Esquire.) He was precociously literary, having found Clifton Fadiman's Lifetime Reading Plan at age 11 in a revolving paperback display at the drugstore while awaiting his orthodontist appointment. He read all the Great Books dutifully, racing to find out how each ended, annoyed at the peculiarities of style that made Stendhal different from Balzac or Homer from Virgil. He learned from another volume in the same display that his sexual fantasies about the crew-cutted athletes in his school were not normal, and that they had a name; in fact, he was most devastated to learn that his urinary appendage had a name and a different function, and he cried in embarrassment upon learning "penis"was the accepted name for what he and his brothers were taught to call the "wetter." And "vagina" was too confounding altogether. Having no sisters, never having caught his mother without her girdle, he was not so sure where this vagina was located or what it did. Ignoring it all was by far the best course, he concluded. Venison was named by his mother, who thought her son had a "freakish, gamey look." His father, a sarcastic reformed drunk, predicted that "he'd have an odd taste, not like ordinary meat," and it was true: like all Scandinavians, his sweat was sharp and acrid, a combination of genetics and overindulgence in rutabagas and lutefisk. He exhibited only the qualities of meat from the town's frozen food locker, none of the grace or equanimity of the live animal, and had the look of one larded with strips of fat through his flesh and ready for roasting. He spent all his summer days in the woods, moving from mossy stumps to damp rocks. He liked the uprightness of the third-generation piney woods, following deer trails he would look up to the cathedrals of the forest with a longing to worship something, even the spare sunlight between the rain-laden clouds scudding over from the Lake. His reading had brought him to Alan Watts, and he imagined himself a Zen hermit, sketched with a sumi-e brush in fuzzy lines in a woody cleft between limestone walls. Far better to think of himself as a hermit in bosky seclusion than a rejected, overweight and soggy egghead. In his dreary high school, Ven felt himself isolated and befriended only his teachers, making a mentor and confessor out of a recent graduate of the heavily-Finnish Houghton Tech who taught physics and chemistry. Mr. Nuola wore his flaxen hair in a flattop and neglected to shave the fine hairs that grew at the top of his Mongolian cheekbones, rendering him more manly in Venison's eye and even less resistible in the eyes of the a-line skirted girls who gazed with confusing desire at the porcelain skin revealed in the hollow between his clavicles under starchy, not-quite-expertly ironed collars and too-narrow bow ties. Chemistry was Venison's meat. He loved making banana smells of esters and quickly moved on to more complicated organic molecules. It was a short run from there to the distillation of epinephrine from Drixan inhalers and a growing taste for perspiring, gasping conversations with his only friend, Ambrose Broussard, a very dark French Canadian, originally Indian, farmboy. Ambrose suffered from obsessive-compulsive tendencies, often walking backwards for miles to erase what had happened earlier on the same route. It was he who led Venison to the loft above the horse stalls for long heart-to-hearts and masturbation as summer rains raised the smells of damp hay and animal excretions. Ven and Amby wrote away for morning glory seeds and explored their higher consciousness with the aid of IFIF and the Native American Peyote Church, to which Ambrose had a legal claim to belong, trudging through deep snows out onto the ice crags to peer into the fluorescent blue water unfrozen underneath. It was while staring into the impossibly deep waters of Lake Superior that Venison received the first intimations of his special mission and of mankind's aquatic mammalian peers. He learned that humans were hairless because they were originally aquatic apes, able to evolve into standing bipeds with the aid of the buoyant waters of the ages when they first emerged from the arboreal ecosystems that had limited them to chimp socialities. In his speed-reading he also happened on early studies of neuro anatomy, and found himself zeroing in on the hypothalamus. (h´´pthl´ms) (KEY) , an important supervisory center in the brain, rich in ganglia, nerve fibers, and synaptic connections. It is composed of several sections called nuclei, each of which controls a specific function. The hypothalamus regulates body temperature, blood pressure, heartbeat, metabolism of fats and carbohydrates, and sugar levels in the blood. Through direct attachment to the pituitary gland, the hypothalamus also meters secretions controlling water balance and milk production in the female. The role of the hypothalamus in awareness of pleasure and pain has been well established in the laboratory. It is thought to be involved in the expression of emotions, such as fear and rage, and in sexual behaviors. Despite its numerous vital functions, the hypothalamus in humans accounts for only 1/300 of total brain weight, and is about the size of an almond.66 How exciting to think that a part of the human brain was evolved from the fish, and how plausible, looking past the gnostoc into the cold waters of the Lake, that humans would be happier if they lived there without the elaboration of aggressive behaviors exhibited by the savage boys in gym class. How much better to be without these functions and to live as the sturgeon once did in these waters. HIAWATHA'S DEPARTURE By the shore of Gitche Gumee, By the shining Big-Sea-Water, . . . Level spread the lake before him; From its bosom leaped the sturgeon, Sparkling, flashing in the sunshine; On its margin the great forest Stood reflected in the water, Every tree-top had its shadow, Motionless beneath the water.   O'er the water floating, flying, Something in the hazy distance, Something in the mists of morning, Loomed and lifted from the water, Now seemed floating, now seemed flying, Coming nearer, nearer, nearer.   Was it Shingebis the diver? Or the pelican, the Shada? Or the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah? Or the white goose, Waw-be-wawa, With the water dripping, flashing, From its glossy neck and feathers?   It was neither goose nor diver, Neither pelican nor heron, O'er the water floating, flying, Through the shining mist of morning, But a birch canoe with paddles, Rising, sinking on the water, Dripping, flashing in the sunshine; And within it came a people From the distant land of Wabun, From the farthest realms of morning Came the Black-Robe chief, the Prophet, He the Priest of Prayer, the Pale-face, With his guides and his companions.67 In an upcoming chapter: new research suggests a link between the hypothalamus and sexuality! 41 The World's Best Shopping "We can outfit any expedition here. Dubai has the world's best shopping," said Cyril to Timmy and Joseph as they walked through the marble and gold portals of Jebel Ali Free Zone. "Complete with RPGs, as you will need them heading through the Sudan, " added Mobe 68. "You have a long, but history-enriched journey to make. " "Think of yourselves as Circassian royals, kidnapped from the steppes, being carried on camels to the harem of the King of Khush. If we could hire a few strapping Mameluks that would be the ticket!" exclaimed Vyvyan. "How nice of the Canadians to make a vehicle much more comfortable than the Bradley--safer too! And Timmy will be out of the sun." "David and Bathsheba!" "What's that one with Omar Khyyam?" "Cleopatra! We're doing Egypt, not Persia, silly old pig!" "Fayyum! Let's have encaustic portraits done! Big eyes! Like Keane!" "Where are we going?" asked Tim. "Nairobi, of course," Cyril answered. "Mobe has some work to do there, so he and Ferd have to fly. We will be on safari, following the path of Stanley and Livingston. Here we are, the offices of Empire Sattelite Uplinks and Security. You remember Bikki from Oslo, don't you?" Timmy thought he recognized the pretender to the throne of Onan, changed out of his gold lame shorts, now djellaba-ed and kaffiya-ed, who greeted Cyril and Vyvyan with a firm handclasp and bow. "You can get a nice date milkshake and we'll join you at the pearl-encrusted fountain over there in a little while, Timmy dear." Whispered Vyvyan, shooing Timmy toward Akbar and Jeff's Majoun and Date Oasis next door. "And Joseph, would you be so kind as to ask the Medecins Sans Frontiers people upstairs how much food we are taking to Darfur for them? How much water, how much dry tonnage, and how many security guards we will need? We can go to El Geneina if they wish, but that area is said to be stifling under Janjaweed. Thanks ever so . . ." Suddenly, they were thrown to the ground by the Sheikh's bodyguards, who started firing their automatics at two men in black Prada suits across the way. "Get down, get down! It's WSO!" Flipping forward in the air, the Prada men came on, raking the area overhead with uranium-jacketed bullets, shattering the glass fronts of the Empire SUS offices. Mall security guards and the Sheikh's men surrounded their master, as well as Cy, Vyv and Joseph, pulling back toward the elevator to the bunker underground. A grenade rolled Prada-wards and exploded, deafening everyone and spraying expensive black microfibers through the pierced and gilded ceramic arabesque gratings at the doors of Akbar and Jeff's. Tim was struck by a portion of one WSO assailant's head. When the bloody lump rolled to the floor, Tim recognized the remaining profile from the night of sex at the Hotel Real Desert. He wondered again how all these people were connected. "Well, dears," said Bikki, "I think we had better rethink the plans." Cyril was firm. "No, it's much safer in the desert than across the Straits and through Iran to Karachi. But Timmy and Joseph, we're so sorry, but you will have to miss the safari, I think. How about this: you go back to Paris and help our friends get their daughter to Buenos Aires? The Sheik agreed, adding, "I will send a couple of men-Neddy's brothers Chesterfield and Butterfield-along just in case. As for you, my old schoolmates, mightn't it be better to make your way through Yemen and then ferry across to Djibouti?' "Oh, I had such a good weekend in Djibouti . . . years ago, of course," sighed Vyvyan in reminiscence. "Remember dear, the French fort and the French letters?" 42 Observations of the Omniscient Narrator Ferd Eggan, the author, not the character in this novel, sits naked at the computer. He finds his writing blocked. " It's always something! My eyes hurt and they're blurry." He smokes many cigarettes. He wants to write a clear exhortation to his peers: voting for Kerry is only an unpleasant first step in a genuinely worthwhile project: he wants to argue that world-historical changes require that we accede to-nay, accelerate-the decline and fall of the United States as a global power. Pulling the last puff on a Marlboro Menthol Ultra Light before the filter burns, he thinks, "My idea is complex and it's hard to make this argument coherent." He stubs out the cigarette and clicks on the draft of No Matter Who Gets Elected. "I should cut away all the digressions here," he breathes out with the thin smoke. He doesn't have much time today, as his friend Mary (a model for MonaLisa of the Desert) is coming down from the central coast and Walt, another friend, may join them for dinner. "Walt's always making plans and canceling. I always cancel too, so shut up." He looks at the draft. "I liked that little recitative by Ilia in Idomeneo.68" ILIA Dell'Asia i danni ancora troppo risento, e pur d'un grand'eroe al nome, al caso, il cor parmi commosso, e negargli i sospir ah no, non posso. Ilia Dell'Asia the damages still too much risento, and also d'un grand'eroe to the name, to the case, the cor parmi affected, and negargli the sospir ah not, I cannot. Babelfish translation service on AltaVista. Ilia I still resent the destruction of Asia, But this great hero-my heart is so moved--I cannot deny his right to live. My translation "I may be too Midwestern, too philistine, to really enjoy the slowness of that opera. I think Mozart should have speeded it up more. Is it me or what? Back to the draft." After a trip to the toilet and worry about bladder problems, he sits down and lights another cigarette. Here he looks at the draft of his argument. America, Over69 Yeah, yeah, we should act to vote out the Bush/Cheney war-mongers, but let's act for something better and bigger. Iraq is not just a waste of lives over an oilfield. Iraq is a strategic battlefield where ordinary young Americans, hoping for education and escape from the suffocation of ordinary American lives, fight young Iraqis who hope for something very similar. Inexperienced, naive fighters are pitted against each other, one side to maintain the present corporate world order and the other to replace it. And it's not a fight just between Iraqis and Americans. Global market conflicts overwhelm any national power: look at Sudan, Russia, Indonesia.70 No matter who gets elected on Nov 2, neither Kerry nor Bush will ever dare to address the most important issue: what is America? Our homeland? No, it's a military and political shield operating to dominate the global market, a market that doesn't care what ordinary Americans want. Bush and Kerry both use the rhetoric of American security and American power, but neither will admit that it's not even about this country. America as a great nation is over. We were, maybe, maybe, weighing the ideals (and the failures) of Jefferson and Lincoln and all, a country that embodied greatness once. But we are not any more.71 Hey, What Happened? We, the people who used be so productive, were lulled out of our vitality by corporate grasping and by big demand for US goods and US dollars, until the stock market took its dreadful dive in 2000-2001. Prosperity was, of course, not spread equally among us: the average income declined but corporate income skyrocketed to the top. Most American working people have clung to belief in a future that afforded a home, college for the kids, insurance even for domesticated partners--until the US economy was converted from production of goods to production of money and financial equities. That future was a little like an LA garden, all exotic plants, tended and watered by people and resources brought from across the borders. Now not just our jobs, but even our money has gone overseas-to countries that actually produce things. All America can offer is flex-time service work that only immigrants can afford to take. Even the soldiers are taking pay cuts because of outsourcing. It Looks Bad So, instead of despair over the loss of good old America, let's take a compassionate look at the whole planet: living creatures nearly ruined, cherished moral and religious ideals perverted into family values, and competing, hostile forces that nations can not control. A stronger, more secure America is a nostalgic fantasy. And we cannot expect to negotiate our way out of continual wars either, because we blindly let corporations sell our birthright for a mess of oil and silicon chips--they use up all the bargaining chips. Neither Kerry nor Bush, neither good cop nor bad cop, can pacify, let alone rectify, this mess. What do we do now? Voting out Bush and Cheney could stimulate worldwide ideals of freedom, democracy and peace. We will be more secure if we dismantle America and open the whole garden. We can fight for a global order that's fits for this earth, based on the desires we share with all people everywhere. Things worth fighting for right now: No Borders! (no border defense) Free Health Care for Everyone! (nobody will need insurance companies) Free Child Care for Everyone! (any mother or father can work and every child can feel secure) Never mind that these are utopian ideas: the demands themselves move people to realize that if these basic human needs were met then competition for scarce resources would diminish. And they can be met, abundantly, from the incalculable wealth we produce together on this earth. * * * "I hope this says something," Ferd says to himself. "I grant that it does matter whether it's an avowed fundamentalist Christian militarist or a liberal who might be more malleable on issues, but Christ Almighty! What a poop Kerry is!" He's not confident that his argument addresses what he feels is an underlying problem; he wants to show that it's ok to love this place while fighting for a new global order that does away with American superpower. It's sad, isn't it? What we love is here, in this place. Where we are alive, we learn to love the scene, the settings in which we are conscious. Unnoticed, all the people and trees and sidewalks make a place, a country, which we consider central to the experiences we have. Their centrality might be illusory; after all, what we're really attached to is our consciousness, our aliveness. But mental processes become affect, our bodies and our brains do that in this place and we call our place America. We need to find some way to keep the love, but to give up the fatal connection to power, to glory. The republic of liberty, at least the hope and the struggle for liberty that marked the best of American days, is no longer to be. We mistook our best ideals for dominance. Maybe our canny self-reliant spirit, our ready smiles and readier cash, overwhelmed what possibilities of mutual aid and sympathy we possessed early on. We leave our author here, unsure that he has moved even himself.   43 Can Oedipa Be Trusted? When last seen, Oedipa was well on her way to a ranking position within the undulating Sirenian orders, one where she would be privy to the deepest secret plans of the group. "I can't fish out the actual steps they are taking, besides building tourist traps with surplus submarines. What is the meaning of the turbans? I must get to the bottom of this." Her cel sounds with the special security ring. "Hello, mein blau engel. Set for the following cypher: Liebst du um Schoenheit1." That will decode our conversation.," says the scrambled voice she knows as the rasp of Lemmy's urgency. Clara Schumann's lieder, "Liebst du um Schoenheit," Op. 12 No. 4,plays over the phone. Liebst du um Schönheit,  (If you love for beauty, o nicht mich liebe!  oh, do not love me! Liebe die Sonne,  Love the sun, sie trägt ein gold'nes Haar!  she has golden hair! Liebst du um Jugend,  If you love for youth, o nicht mich liebe!  oh, do not love me! Liebe den Frühling,  Love the spring, der jung ist jedes Jahr!  it is young every year! Liebst du um Schätze,  If you love for treasure, o nicht mich liebe.  oh, do not love me! Liebe die Meerfrau,  Love the mermaid, sie hat viel Perlen klar.  she has many clear pearls! Liebst du um Liebe,  If you love for love, o ja, mich liebe!  oh yes, do love me! Liebe mich immer,  love me ever, dich lieb' ich immerdar.  I'll love you evermore!)72 As the sad German music of mid-Victorian renunciation73 jangles in the earphone, Lemmy's message, routed through a special cryptographic program, is made plain. "You are in grave danger. Venison is accumulating millions of dollars and thousands of recruits with the aim of taking humans back to their aquatic beginnings." "I already know that." "What you don't know is that he has convinced his followers that a part of their brain, originally evolved in fishes, was passed in a distorted way to humans, causing aggressive behavior. They are removing the hypothalami of all the Sirenia converts, with the goal of making docile workers and re-aligning human sex to periods of estrus only. " "That's impossible!" "Impossible? Look at all the Sirenians. The heads of all the converts are wrapped in white turbans, which are conveniently mistaken for Sufi mystic gear, but in fact the turbans are stylized bandages covering the trepanning scars in their foreheads which were openend to remove the offending glands." In his aquatic bunker under Manistique Bay, Venison is listening to the intercepted conversation between Oedipa and Lemmy. He has been suspicious of her since she began to show signs of what he was convinced was a male mind. She was bold, logical--nothing like the females he wanted for Sirenia. The insights he had won from his explorations of consciousness made Venison very clear about enemies: he summoned Amby and the Pride of Sirenia bodyguards. "Get that girl-if she is a girl," Venison orders. I want you to test her hypothalamus to see if she is male or female.74 We have to kill him, her or it, regardless. She's an interloper who wants to interfere with my mission. The whales will rule the world again, or my name isn't Jonah!" 44 Kenya with Mobe and Ferd Mobe and Ferd first see Nairobi from a taxi, surrounded by Masai in brilliant red cloaks trying to march from a park in downtown Nairobi to the British High Commission to highlight their rejection of colonial-era agreements that stripped them of their land. M & F are forced to flee on foot, as heavily armed police officers fire tear gas at the demonstrators and chase them for blocks. The Masai carry their traditional wooden staffs, knives and rungus, wooden clubs they use for self-defense, and picket signs. Later, at the Nairobi Hilton, they follow the story on television. "As a government, we are committed to the rule of law and the protection of private property,'' declares Amos Kimunya, the minister for lands and housing. The NY Times Marc Lacey tells viewers, over pictures of tall young African men with thin spears, "In scenes reminiscent of Zimbabwe's land seizures, angry Masai tribesmen have begun marching onto sprawling ranches held by white settlers in Kenya's lush Rift Valley and claiming the tracts as their own." [Pictures of lush land, with mountains in the background are shown, then police officers in riot gear forcibly ousting the men,] ". . whom the government calls invaders, as well as their cattle. The number of Masai arrested in recent days exceeds 100. At least one person, an elderly Masai man, has died, shot during a confrontation with the police." BBC World News tells our heroes that Kenyan officials have no intention of following Mugabe's example in Zimbabwe. Uprooting the ranchers, government officials said, would be disastrous for the economy, which relies heavily on Western assistance and on tourism, a major source of hard currency. On top of that, acceding to the Masai might encourage similar demands by the scores of other ethnic groups in Kenya, many of which have historic grievances of their own, officials added. In a special program produced by FOX News Africa, the blustery correspondent interviews wealthy Kenyan farmers. "The young warriors move in and cut the fences and bring in their cattle,'' said one white rancher, describing the recent raids in northern Laikipia. "You get between 5,000 and 10,000 head of cattle on your land.'' He called for firmer action against the trespassers, some of whom are from the related Samburu tribe. "The police need to be harsher,'' he said. "There have been too many warnings. There need to be more arrests. We need quicker, more forceful action.'' But CNN correspondents praised the government: "The government has adopted a cautious approach to land reform. A new constitution that is being drafted proposes that the long leases granted to some wealthy ranchers, some of which exceed 950 years, be reduced to 99 years. "Happy Anniversary," Mobe tells Ferd. "It seems the land controversy started this month around the 100th anniversary of an agreement reached between British colonialists and some Masai elders. The deal pushed the Masai far from their traditional turf in the Rift Valley, where a railway was being built, into reservations on far less desirable land. "Yes," replies Ferd, booting up the computer plans of the hospital they target for the rescue operation, "Signed on Aug. 15, 1904, with the illiterate Masai using thumbprints, the document said the Masai leaders 'of our own free will, decided that it is for our best interests to remove our people, flocks, and herds into definite reservations away from the railway line, and away from any land that may be thrown open to European settlement.''' Mobe asks, "Exactly what did the Masai leaders received in exchange? As the years have passed and the Masai population has grown (and more and more of Africa becomes desertified), rangeland has become more scarce and the Masai's precious cattle have had far less land on which to graze. Masai leaders say the agreement ought to be invalidated because their predecessors were clearly taken advantage of by the white settlers. Radio Free Kenya presents a voice of protest: "We're now squatters on our own land,'' said Ratik Ole Kuyana, a Masai tour guide who narrowly escaped arrest at the protest in Nairobi on Tuesday. "I'd rather spend my days in prison than see settlers spend their days enjoying my motherland. I think Mugabe was right.'' The room service porter, who is actually a local operative helping them avert the female genital mutilation scheduled for two days hence, informs M & F that, in moving onto the private land, "the Masai have not seized houses or harmed ranchers. But they have destroyed the electrical fencing that rings the properties and driven their own herds onto the land to graze." He tells them the area that has been the center of the protests is known as Laikipia, which sits just north of the Equator near the towns of Nanyuki and Isiolo. It boasts spectacular views of snowcapped Mount Kenya and more endangered mammals than any other area in East Africa, including the black rhino, Grevy's zebra and reticulated giraffe. A National Geographic magazine on the coffee table tells them, "Aggravating the current conflict is a drought that has hit parts of Kenya hard, prompting President Mwai Kibaki to declare a state of emergency recently." After the news programmes, they watch a televised debate. "Oh, no," shouts Mobe, "It's my great-great aunt Karen! If she's here that means our mission must be known to them!" Karen, representing WTO tourist interests, indicates that Kenya's fragile tourist industry has been hurt in the past by fears of insecurity. The Laikipia area is a growing tourist area, with vast private game ranches. Karen tells the viewers, "The Masai have played an essential role in Kenya's terrorism-I mean tourism--strategy. Of Kenya's 50-odd ethnic groups, the Masai, with their red tunics and traditional ways, are the best known. They perform dances at lodges across the country, in which they chant in unison and leap vertically to seemingly impossible heights. Tourists also frequently visit Masai villages that highlight their age-old way of life, in which all land is considered communal and cows are the measure of wealth-very ethnic," Karen concludes. But the Masai, who are among the poorest Kenyans, complain "We see little profit from tourism and that many of the people who dress as Masai at lodges are actually from other tribes." "We're associated with wild animals,'' complains Roselinda Soipan, a Masai lawyer who appeared in court on Tuesday to defend some of the protesters rounded up in Nairobi. "If a tourist comes to Kenya and doesn't see a Masai, it's like they didn't see an elephant or a rhino. We're human beings, and we have a right to agitate for our rights.'' We'd better hurry with our plans," says Mobe. "Our little caper is taking place against a backdrop of major global climate, social and political changes." "Well, duh," agrees Ferd. 45 Dreamy Time A dream interrupted by the wake-up call at 3 am. Ana K.'s brother, now with a golden beard, young cool glasses, accompanied by a boisterous film crew. They took up all available space. I was with comfortable friends and attractive young men in a setting like Morocco-like Gerôme's Snake Charmer: 75 blue marble arabesques, sumptuous carpets, pointed arches. "What can I give you?" he kept asking. I was incommoded because the cutest young man was with him, but looking at me through long lashes over his muscled bicep, as if to say, "isn't this actually better?" "No," I said to the brother, "things have been dreary since you got here. I came with friends to study the language and culture and now your blond crew want to bring in girls. You can give me nothing. " To Do List for Nairobi 9/29 500 ft nylon rope nebulizer w/capacity to fill operating room with drug vapor MDA NOT MDMA (no nerve damage-better hallucinogen76) Large quantities Demerol, Valium Gurney with false bottom to "disappear" recumbent figure Surgical scrubs, masks, etc. Sound system Robotic quadrupeds Visas for M, F, body in casket Car arrivals timed for 7:49 am Medivac helicopter timed for 8:37 am Mix (excerpts):Hovhanhess' Mysterious Mountain77, Messiaen's Meditations Sur le Mystere de la Sainte Trinité78, Ligeti's Clocks and Clouds79, Berio's Coro80, Lauridsen's Lux Aeterna81(pop sublimity) Subject: Daily Dharma, August 30, 2004 from Bassui Tokusho Zenji82 In a dream you may stray and lose your way home. You ask someone to show you how to return or you pray to God or Buddhas to help you, but you still can't get home. Once you rouse yourself from your dream-state, however, you find that you are in your own bed and realize that the only way you could have gotten home was to awaken yourself. This [kind of spiritual awakening] is called "return to the origin" or "rebirth in paradise." It is the kind of inner realization that can be achieved with some training. . . . You would be making a serious error, however, were you to assume that this was true enlightenment in which there is no doubt about the nature of reality. You would be like a man who having found copper gives up the desire for gold. "Showtime!" The plan is begun, 04:15 hours. 46 After a couple of days in a Cologne emergency ward . . released to the streets without papers or money, Siegfried Rheinfahrt is now derelict, homeless in the part of the Bundestadt that he least understands. He makes his way to Frankfurt and the wardrobe-sized apartment of the one person he remembers from his few visits to the West during his ascendancy in the E. German Party. He rings hesitantly on a door in the red-light district. A business card taped below the peephole reads Fraulein Doktor Klara Kaligari, chiro-podiatrie, psychoanalyse mystische sprechen mit den toden, Marxist-Leninist-Mao-tse-Tung-Thought film-regie (geliebte großartigtochter von Karla B-S, berühmte liebeskind von Clara Schumann und Johannes Brahms.) 83 To the sound of für Elise, a stooped old personage in a blonde wig totters to open the door. Peering through false eyelashes, she croaks, "Comrade Siegfried Rheinfahrt, you look like the leftovers of death warmed up in der microwave. I'm glad to see you so miserable. Come in and see me; I can lubricate and be ready in a minute. And now, really no teeth. You used to say. . . Ha! Ha-ha-ho!" Siegfried can only stagger to the greasy Biedermeyer sofa and collapse. "Can I please have ein glass von wasser?" "My, my, how you have fallen down, you euro-communist, you revisionist traitor. Putzi, give my old friend some tea," the old personage tells a young man with a video camera, sitting next to the smoking stove. "This is Rosa von Praunheim, my spiritual daughter," she tells Rheinfahrt. "Rosa, mein Putzi, meet Siegfried. This decrepit old man was once my comrade and my lover. " "Klara, we were never lovers," says Siegfried, reviving with sips of strong tea. "You knew always that I love mankind; I never could not love a man." "I am not a man!" shrieks Klara. "And anyway, Karen is not a real woman. All her executrix posing and literary pretension. " She turns to Rosa to say, "Mein sister Karen stole him and they became my adversaries." "Karen has great-grandchildren already, whom she hates and never sees," Siegfried tells her. She's busy relating publicly for the World Trade Organization now. She consults on security operations for the whole of Europe-busy shooting terrorists, I'm sure, when she's not stuppen that Kolonel South." "It's the collision of our Deutsh Stalinism and sex desire, I'm afraid," chimes in Rosa von P., pointing his camera at Rheinfahrt. "Please, Klara, can you help me? I know you use morphine, " Siegfried moans. "How I remember that day in 1953 when the workers struck in Berlin and the Party told them to stop, sighs Klara. If we now have a socialist regime, the Berlin workers reasoned, then we should no longer suffer under the weight of production quotas. When Benno Sarel recounts the revolts of the construction workers along Stalinallee and throughout Berlin, which on June 16 and 17, 1953, spread to the big factories, the workers' neighborhoods, and then the suburbs and countryside of East Germany, he emphasizes that the most important demand of the factory worker was to abolish the production quotas and destroy the structural order of command over labor in the factories. Socialism, after all, is not capitalism. 84 "We should have emphasized that socialism also means the end of bourgeois ideas of love!" "Help me, Klara," Siegfried begs. "I need morphine. Joseph is todt-dead I am so sure. I am so alone. I am abject." ----------------------------------------------------------------- Extra Credit Schumann/Brahms Assignment by Elaine Ernst Schneider May 2, 2001  http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0679745823/lessontutor http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0395891191/lessontutorSchumann (Master Musicians Series) Background: As a young man, Johannes Brahms was a close friend of Robert and Clara Schumann. They socialized publicly and Johannes was often in the Schumann home. When Robert Schumann died, Johannes continued his friendship with Clara. Clara Schumann, herself a renowned pianist, gave concerts that showcased her late husbandís work to support herself and her children. It is not known whether Johannes had always loved Clara or if the affection sprang from the relationship that grew after Robertís death. History does tell us that Brahms professed his love for Clara though they never married. For more detailed biographies of each of these classical composers, refer to: Johannes Brahms, and Robert Schumann, by Betty Fry.   Assignment Choices: 1. Write a dialogue that might have taken place between Clara and Johannes after Robertís death. Begin the conversation with Brahms confessing to Clara that he loves her. Use your imagination. Here are some questions to get you started thinking: - What might Brahms say to Clara to first open up the subject of his love for her? - Does Brahms propose marriage or is it he who never asks, rather than she who refuses? - What might have been Claraís reasons for not marrying Johannes Brahms? Was she still in love with Robert? Did Clara fear that if she married Brahms that it would be too awkward to continue concertizing with Robertís pieces? Or was there some other reason she refused Brahmsí affection? 2. Write the lyrics for a song Brahms might have written for Clara. Keep in mind that words for songs during this time period usually rhymed. 3. If you play an instrument, create an original short piece that Brahms might have written for Clara. Consider the emotions of love and how they might be conveyed through the music. Would the tempo be slow and the tone sad because love is unrequited, or might the tempo be fast and furious to show the frustration of two souls that never connect? As you begin these assignments, remember to keep in mind what was and was not ìsocially acceptableî in Johannes and Claraís day. Email your assignment to The Story Continues . . . 47 A Time for Action 04:30 hrs. Time for action in Nairobi. Ferd reaches for the remote just as Kenyan and other leading African runners are shown at the Olympic marathon. They almost always win, but this year's apparent winner, a low-ranked Brazilian, is knocked off the track by a defrocked Irish priest, impelled onto the course on a mission from God. The Kenyans are shown moving to protect each other as the tv clicks off. Voice over, through the radio in the car, on the television at the airport, in the ambulance waiting outside the hospital, we hear part of an historic speech, in honor of Kenyatta Month: "If we unite now, each and every one of us, and each tribe to another, we will cause the implementation in this country of that which the European calls democracy. True democracy has no colour distinction. It does not choose between black and white. We are here in this tremendous gathering under the K.A.U. flag to find which road leads us from darkness into democracy. In order to find it we Africans must first achieve the right to elect our own representatives. That is surely the first principle of democracy. We are the only race in Kenya which does not elect its own representatives in the Legislature and we are going to set about to rectify this situation. We feel we are dominated by a handful of others who refuse to be just. God said this is our land. Land in which we are to flourish as a people. We are not worried that other races are here with us in our country, but we insist that we are the leaders here, and what we want we insist we get. We want our cattle to get fat on our land so that our children grow up in prosperity; we do not want that fat removed to feed others. He who has ears should now hear that K.A.U. claims this land as its own gift from God and I wish those who arc black, white or brown at this meeting to know this. . . . . . Bribery and corruption is prevalent in this country, but I am not surprised. As long as a people are held down, corruption is sure to rise and the only answer to this is a policy of equality. If we work together as one, we must succeed. Jomo Kenyatta, speech at the Kenya African Union Meeting at Nyeri, July 26, 1952 Sirens scream, paramedics and nurses bustle from station to station, patients awaken from nights spent on hard chairs to request attention: early morning is always busy at a hospital. When the obviously non-African anesthesiologist and consulting surgeon enter the operating theatre, heads among those bobbing around the young patient turn briefly but see not much more than their surgical masks. The young patient is already prepped, draped with white sheeting, her knees up, feet in stirrups, sedated and monitored. Her parents, anxious for their daughter who has only just resigned herself to undergo this procedure, huddle in a corner, dressed in sterile scrubs. The older aunt of the girl holds her hand and whispers comfort in her ear, which is haloed by the white stretch cap over the hair braided close to her scalp. A Kenyan doctor nods for anesthesia, and a commanding woman dressed in white with a tall head wrap approaches the patient; initiating the ritual, she lifts a small, precise scalpel. She pauses, and quotes from her nation's most famous author. [The discourse she quotes is extended and well worth reading in Facing Mount Kenya. See the website of Female Genital Cutting Education and Networking Project where the chapter on clitoridectomy is printed in full, The Story Continues cites only short excerpts below.] INITIATION OF BOYS AND GIRLS THE CUSTOM of clitoridectomy of girls, which we are going to describe here, has been strongly attacked by a number of influential European agencies-missionary, sentimental pro-African, government, educational and medical authorities. We think it necessary to give a short historical background of the method employed by these bodies in attacking the custom of clitoridectomy of girls. [Here Jomo Kenyatta, political leader of Kenya's independence, describes the context in the integral Kikiyu culture of the custom of clitoridectomy of girls and other rituals surrounding it, as well as initiation ceremonies for boys. He makes it clear that these customs functioned to make young people part of community religious and social life and compares them to Jewish circumcision. He also makes plain the contemptuous-and contemptible-efforts of the Scottish Mission to destroy all "pagan" customs of the Kikyu people.] However, this urge for abolishing a people's social custom by force of law was not wholeheartedly accepted by the majority of the delegates in the Conference. General opinion was for education which would enable the people to choose what customs to keep and which ones they would like to get rid of. It should be pointed out here that there is a strong community of educated Gikuyu opinion in defence of this custom. In the matrimonial relation, the rite de passage [rite of passage] is the deciding factor. No proper Gikuyu would dream of marrying a girl who has not been circumcised, and vice versa. It is taboo for a Gikuyu man or woman to have sexual relations with someone who has not undergone this operation. If it happens, a man or woman must go through a ceremonial purification, korutwo thahu or gotahikio megiro-namely, ritual vomiting of the evil deeds. A few detribalised Gikuyu, while they are away from home for some years, have thought fit to denounce the custom and to marry uncircumcised girls, especially from coastal tribes, thinking that they could bring them back to their fathers' homes without offending the parents. But to their surprise they found that their fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters, following the tribal custom, are not prepared to welcome as a relative-in-law anyone who has not fulfilled the ritual qualifications for matrimony. Therefore a problem has faced these semi-detribalised Gikuyu when they wanted to return to their homeland. Their parents have demanded that if their sons wished to settle down and have the blessings of the family and the clan, they must divorce the wife married outside the rigid tribal custom and then marry a girl with the approved tribal qualifications. Failing this, they have been turned out and disinherited. [Some Aspects of the Ceremonies] . . . . Late in the afternoon an arch of banana trees and sugar-canes is built at the entrance of the homestead of the matuumo . . . .To start the race a ceremonial horn is blown. At this point the girls, who are not allowed to participate in the race, start out walking to the tree, escorted by a group of senior warriors and women singing ritual and heroic songs. When the girls are near the tree, the ceremonial horn is again sounded, this time indicating that it is time for the boys to start the race. The boys then start running in a great excitement, as though they were going to a battle. The truth is, it is really considered a sort of fight between the spirit of childhood and that of adulthood. . . . . ceremonial racing (. . .) determines the leader of that particular age-group. The one who reaches the tree first and throws his wooden spear over the tree is elected there and then as the leader and the spokesman of the age-group for life. It is believed that such a one is chosen by the will of the ancestral spirits in communication with Ngai, and is therefore highly respected. The mogumo ceremony occupies only a short time. As stated above, the boys climb the tree, break the top branches, while the girls collect leaves and twigs dropped on the ground. These are later tied into bunches and carried back to the homestead to keep the sacred fire burning the whole night and also to be used in other rituals, especially in making the initiates' beds. The songs rendered by the relatives and friends round the foot of the tree generally pertain to sexual knowledge. This is to give the initiates an opportunity of acquainting themselves with all necessary rules and regulations governing social relationship between men and women. At the completion of kunna mogumo (breaking of the sacred tree), the boys and girls are lined up according to the order of their adoption. Here a ceremony of taking the tribal oath (muuma wa anake) is conducted by the elders of the ceremonial council. The initiates promise by this oath that from this day onward they will in every respect deport themselves like adults and take an responsibilities in the welfare of the community, and that they will not lag behind whenever called upon to perform any service or duty in the protection and advancement of the tribe as a whole. Furthermore, they are made to promise never to reveal the tribal secrets, even to a member of the tribe who has not yet been initiated. . . . . The songs they sing on the homeward march are directed towards denouncing all things that are not fit and proper for any adult member of the community to do. Moreover, the phrases embodied in these songs are to encourage the initiates to become worthy and honourable members of the adult community into which they are to be graduated. . . . . At the end of the ceremony the boys and girls are free to go to their respective homes to rest until next morning. Care is taken to protect them from anything that might inflict wounds upon them, as the shedding of blood is regarded as an omen of ill luck. The initiates are guarded the whole night by senior warriors against outside interference. In every home a ceremonial doctor (mondo-mogo wa mambura) is assigned by the traditional council (njama ya kirera) to protect the initiates against any possible attacks from witchcraft and also against any temptation or enticement to indulge in sexual intercourse. . . . .[ After The Girl is Operated On] At the time of the surgical operation the girl hardly feels any pain for the simple reason that her limbs have been numbed, and the operation is over before she is conscious of it. It is only when she awakes after three or four hours of rest that she begins to realize that something has been done to her genital organ. The writer has learned this fact from several girls (relatives and close friends) who have gone through the initiation and who belong to the sane age-group with the writer. This signifies that the children have now been born again, not as the children of an individual, but of the whole tribe. The initiates address one another as "Wanyu-Wakine," which means "My tribal brother or sister." When the ceremony is completed all burst into ritual song. They bid farewell to one another and then leave the homestead under the escort of their relatives. On the arrival at their respective homes a sheep or rat is killed by the parents to welcome them home again and anoint them as new members of the community (koinokai na kohaka mwanake or moiretu maguta). At this ceremony the parents are provided with brass ear-rings, as a sign of seniority. This is done when the first-born is initiated. . . . . With such limited knowledge as they are able to acquire from their converts or from others, who invariably distort the reality of the irua in order to please them, these same missionaries pose as authorities on African customs. How often have we not heard such people saying: "We have lived in Africa for a number or years and we know the African mind well."? This, however, does not qualify them or entitle them to claim authority on sociological or anthropological questions. The African is in the best position properly to discuss and disclose the psychological background of tribal customs, such as irua, etc., and he should be given the opportunity to acquire the scientific training which will enable him to do so. This is a point which should be appreciated by well-meaning anthropologists who have bad experience in the difficulties of field-work in various parts of the world. Jomo Kenyatta85, from Facing Mount Kenya 86 48 Rabelaisian Body Matters and Flight to the Forest Primeval After manfully squeezing his nose to unseat a particularly intractable blackhead, pressing the flesh to the tearful point where he was forced to consider that the incipient rosacea there might be making the rhynodermis too thick, tougher that it had been when he was quite frequently used to squeeze in his lubricated, more comedogenic youth, Ambrose Broussard pulled down his underwear, kicked when the briefs-as they always did-caught on his moccasins, and sat down on the toilet. His buttocks seemed to hurtle past their usual resting point and collided, with little padding to diminish the impact as his flesh had gone the way of lipodystrophy, with the cold white rim of the toilet. A man alone can easily neglect to lift the seat, although Ambrose had recently replaced the unhygienic seat left behind by the previous tenant with a pristine pink one which he thought made a whimsical match with the pink tiles on the bathroom walls, yet he'd never been moved to harmonize the blue color of the floor tiles, perhaps because he'd painted above the tile wainscoting in a semi-gloss aubergine he thought was a further inspired choice. When he hit the rim, he was pleased that he was able to ejaculate "Holy Shit!" within microseconds of contact, congratulating himself on the miniscule time-lapse between pain signals and an apposite rejoinder. Having feared just this kind of undignified clapping of tender skin onto the chilly and narrow porcelain, he was wont to leave the seat down, until recently when it became redolently clear that tiny droplets of urine were deliquescing to burden the air with the fug of a public latrine. There was no completely agreeable solution except permanent vigilance. In any case, after replacing the seat and spreading his anal pore, his disappointment at the quantity and texture of the waste he pushed out was mollified only when a very organized plume of gas was emitted, followed by a much more gratifying, elongated extrusion of shit and a final firm fart that enabled the distended belly to regain some smoother roundness. The unhindered egress of his excreta permitted Ambrose a moment of reflection regarding the toilet as the biological altar where-not unlike the deep connection with Nature inherited from his Native American forebears--through autonomic muscular contractions and flexions of the organism, one performed the ritual of self-worship in which the very alimentary-eliminative tubular configuration of the human body was experienced most to resemble that of other animals--fundamentally. In fact, the coincidence of the English adverb connoting radical excavation of the underlying ground of animal life with the noun denoting the bottom part of the human body-not counting the lower extremities-entered his mind, spiced with a mild frisson of pride at the "primitive" adaptation that efficaciously coordinated involuntary peristaltic motion and voluntary bearing down and pushing to achieve evacuation. The sensation of clean unopposed extrusion, along with the bombast of flatulence and the highly parabolic presentation of urine through the manually guided penis, was pleasurable in the extreme, wreathed with smells that one could not deny were olfactory tokens of life, of healthy inward- and out-ness, although only one's own could be granted this status and exempted from the general disgust others' bodily excrescences could awaken in one if they originated from any of the rest of us. Ambrose had, like many warriors of the spirit, had occasion to taste this matter, but his palate rejected the ugly bitter flavor-so surprisingly, intolerably, different from its fetid and rich olorousness--and he concluded that, despite the alluring abjection it most theatrically might otherwise offer, coprophagia would never be his choice at the banquet table of infantile sexual fixations. Meditating on the high estimation Pascal placed on frequent and copious defecation, enjoying especially the more vernacular version of the triadic encomium to "good shoes, . . ?., and a warm place to shit" (what was that other priority he couldn't remember?), Ambrose turned his attention to more rigorous exigencies of the present situation. That is, he remembered he was entrusted by the Big Humpback Himself to bring in the suspicious Oedipa for testing. Hopping over the cold tiles, disregarding creeping neuropathic foot pain, attributable once again to what were blithely called medication side-effects, he therefore gave himself a shake, eschewed a wipe, preferring the prospect of a warm lavage, and turned on the shower, lighting a cigarette to enhance the waiting time while the hot water made its way from the distant heater to his bathroom. When all was right, he tossed his butt into the toilet and lathered and scrubbed. Ambrose Broussard knew about what were called "two-spirited" among the anthropological queers who wanted to authenticate their own proclivities and choices, and he felt a strong antipathy at the prospect of eliminating Oedipa. Moreover, his early support for his sworn blood-brother Venison's visionary schemes had diminished sharply in the last several months as the white-turbaned flocks of converts increased and Ven took on the vocal tones of incipient madness. Ambrose stalked out to his vehicle, a feul-cell equipped hybrid Hummer, roared to the edge of the compound, and swept Oedipa away with minutes to spare before the Fruit of the Sea armed security arrived. "What the fuck are you doing?" demanded Oedipa. "Let me out of here!" "The Killers are coming for you, and me too now that I'm running with you. We'll ditch this car at The Big Two-Hearted River. We'll go into the woods and walk to Seney, hop the train there." Chapter 49 Nick, Atala and Rene, Ambrose and ? "The Killers are coming for you, and me too now that I'm running with you, Ambrose told Oedipa. "We'll ditch this car at The Big Two-Hearted River. We'll go into the woods and walk to Seney, hop the train there." "That's ridiculous," Oedipa shot back. "What Killers? What for? And there is no train any more." "I mean we'll drive to Seney, through Blaney Park, and ditch the car at Seney. That's what I mean." "What are you talking about? I don't know you, and I'm not going with you anywhere. Take me back to Manistique." "Look, don't go all ignorant on me. I'm Ambrose. The Killers are Venison's Fruit of the Sea. They're after you." "Why would they be after me?" Oedipa asked. "Yeah, I wonder," Ambrose was getting impatient. "They might want to check out a Sirenia disciple who wasn't what she said she was?" When there was no answer to that, he asked, "Just who are you, anyway? You're really a guy, eh?" "No!" she retorted. "What's it to you, anyway?" "I'm sick of Venison and I'm saving your ass. That's what's it to me." They said nothing more until they stopped for food at the stoplight in Germfask. 49 The Killers The door of Henry's lunchroom opened and two men came in. They sat down at the counter. "What's yours?" George asked them. "I don't know," one of the men said. "What do you want to eat, Al?" "I don't know," said Al. "I don't know what I want to eat." Outside it was getting dark. The streetlight came on outside the window. The two men at the counter read the menu. From the other end of the counter Ambrose Broussard watched them. He had been waiting for Oedipa in the bathroom. "Fuck it, give us four fried egg sandwiches to go. We gotta go, Al." "Fuck it, ok, but I want fries." "Two fries, four fried egg sandwiches, right?" George asked. "Say, you're a pretty bright boy, eh? Yeah. And hurry up. We gotta get to Manistique fast." Al lit a cigarette. "Give me a cup of coffee now though, "he said. He turned toward Ambrose. "What's up, Chief?" he asked Ambrose. "Nothing," Ambrose picked up his mug and swallowed coffee, It was too hot but he swallowed anyway. He could feel it burning all the way down. "That's three-twenty-five," said George, wrapping the sandwiches in waxed paper. "Plus twenty five for the coffee, three-fifty." The man turned back to look at the paper bag of sandwiches. "You got quarters, Al?" Al paid and the men left. Oedipa came out from the bathroom, behind the counter opposite the door. She sat on the stool next to Ambrose. "Don't look now, don't turn around. Those guys are The Killers," Ambrose said. "We're lucky, they're Florida guys and don't know me. I bet they know what you look like, though." She took their coffee and sandwiches across to a booth. She motioned for Ambrose to sit on the same side of the booth, to make it more difficult for George the counterman to overhear. "OK, um, Ambrose," she said. Here's the deal. So, they're after me, I've gotta get to Sault Ste. Marie and across to Canada. I'll pay you to drive me there." "Nope, no, no Soo. I've got a powerboat in Deer Park. We'll go across the Lake to Batchawana Bay. And you'll pay, all right." "Whatever you want." She dropped her spoon into her coffee. "Can we leave now?" As they walked along the road to where the Hummer was hidden, Ambrose pursued his questions. "Start by getting real with me. No forked tongue with Indian!" Oedipa sighed, cleared her throat and began. "Get in, start the car. I'll be right there." As the engine turned over, the passenger door opened. Ambrose barely turned to see her. Then he heard a startling new voice. "This is real. The real is Achmed Oedipus bin Maas. I was sent here to stop Sirenia. In my laptop here is enough to send Venison-and you, if you're not straight with me-to hell." "Hey, no need for threats, ok." I'm here, right, saving your ass? I'm taking you to Canada, right?" "No, I'm saving your ass. Deer Park is out; they already know you'd go there. We're going to Newberry, and my associates will be waiting in Lake Superior Forest. Hit the road, Ambrose."   The reader is here instructed to imagine these two as if they were principal characters in Ernest Hemingway's various stories about Nick Adams, principally in In Our Time and Men Without Women. Pretend "The Killers" is modified to the present episode about the pursuit. Pretend "Big Two-Hearted River" is an idyll in the escape of Ambrose and Achmed. Since the reader is undoubtedly going to be successfully imaginative, it will be unnecessary to detail their time in the woods. Also pretend that they are Atala and Rene in the eponymous novel by Chateaubriand that helped start the romantic revolution in literature. This pretense will lend the present narrative-and, by metonymic conjunction, the romantic novel in general--a same-sex erotic charge. Last, pretend that they embody but contradict the white/non-white homo thematic of Leslie Fiedler's Love and Death in the American Novel. 50 A Delightful and Needed Diversion (provided by bloggers) Wendell and Cass, two penguins at the New York Aquarium in Coney Island, Brooklyn, live in a soap opera world of seduction and intrigue. Among the 22 male and 10 female African black-footed penguins in the aquarium's exhibit, tales of love, lust and betrayal are the norm. These birds mate for life. But given the disproportionate male-female ratio at the aquarium, some of the females flirt profusely and dump their partners for single males with better nests. Wendell and Cass, however, take no part in these cunning schemes. They have been completely devoted to each other for the last eight years. In fact, neither one of them has ever been with anyone else, says their keeper, Stephanie Mitchell. But the partnership of Wendell and Cass adds drama in another way. They're both male. That is to say, they're gay penguins. This is not unusual. "There are a lot of animals that have same-sex relations, it's just that people don't know about it," Mitchell said. "I mean, Joe Schmoe on the street is not someone who's read all sorts of biology books." One particular book is helpful in this case. Bruce Bagemihl's Biological Exuberance,87 published in 1999, documents homosexual behavior in more than 450 animal species. The list includes grizzly bears, gorillas, flamingos, owls and even several species of salmon. "The world is, indeed, teeming with homosexual, bisexual and transgendered creatures of every stripe and feather," Bagemihl writes in the first page of his book. "From the Southeastern Blueberry Bee of the United States to more than 130 different bird species worldwide, the 'birds and the bees,' literally, are queer." In New York, it's the penguins. At the Central Park Zoo, Silo and Roy, two male Chinstrap penguins, have been in an exclusive relationship for four years. Last mating season, they even fostered an egg together. "They got all excited when we gave them the egg," said Rob Gramzay, senior keeper for polar birds at the zoo. He took the egg from a young, inexperienced couple that hatched an extra and gave it to Silo and Roy. "And they did a really great job of taking care of the chick and feeding it." Of the 53 penguins in the Central Park Zoo, Silo and Roy are not the only ones that are gay. In 1997, the park had four pairs of homosexual penguins. In an effort to increase breeding, zookeepers tried to separate them by force. They failed, said Gramzay.88 * * * Elsewhere, a female ape wraps her legs around another female, "rubbing her own clitoris against her partner's while emitting screams of enjoyment." The researcher explains: It's a form of greeting behavior. Or reconciliation. Possibly food-exchange behavior. It's certainly not sex. Not lesbian sex. Not hot lesbian sex. Six bighorn rams cluster, rubbing, nuzzling and mounting each other. "Aggressosexual behavior," the biologist explains. A way of establishing dominance. They've been keeping it from us: There are homosexual and bisexual animals, ranging from charismatic megafauna like mountain gorillas to cats, dogs and guinea pigs. There are transgendered animals, transvestite animals (who adopt the behavior of the other gender but don't have sex with their own), and animals who live in bisexual triads and quartets. Bruce Bagemihl spent 10 years scouring the biological literature for data on alternative sexuality in animals to write Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity, 768 pages about exactly what goes on at "South Park's" Big Gay Al's Big Gay Animal Sanctuary. The first section discusses animal sexuality in its many forms and the ways biologists have tried to explain it away. The second section, "A Wondrous Bestiary," describes unconventional sexuality in nearly 200 mammals and birds -- orangutans, whales, warthogs, fruit bats, chaffinches.89 * * * It is a fundamental Darwinian principle that traits and behaviours cannot spread over evolutionary time if they reduce an individual's personal reproductive success. To be more precise, an imaginary species consisting only of individuals with an exclusive and life-long homosexual behaviour will be extinct in one generation. Parthenogenetic (virgin birth) species do exist in nature, they consist of 100% females, but a 100% homosexual species has never been found. Such a species cannot exist. Just as a sterile species cannot exist. What does exist in nature are species with up to 10 percent of homosexuals, according to Bagemihl. But even this is a puzzle. If those individuals do not reproduce, evolution theory predicts that the percentage in the population must decrease continuously down to a level that is produced by new mutations. But we observe more than that. So how should the excess be explained? One possibility is bisexuality, the combination of homosexual and heterosexual behaviour in the same individual. But this cannot be the answer either, because bisexual individuals will produce on average less progeny than full-time heterosexuals. So the existence is still unexplained. Bagemihl skilfully demolishes a variety of explanations for homosexuality proposed by biologists. This is one of the best, and interesting parts of his book. Probably few people have the encyclopaedic knowledge of homosexual behaviour in animals to be able to refute the variety of hypotheses to explain (away) homosexuality. In the end Bagemihl concludes, somewhat surprisingly, that homosexuality has no function, it just is. Homosexual behaviour has an intrinsic value.90 51 Can I Get A Witness (12 Nov Kenya Times) Witnesses say the girl's body levitated up toward the ceiling, 'Her knees were bent upwards, her legs still spread apart, her arms falling limp behind her, as the sterile drape slipped off and slithered to the floor,' reported a surgical nurse. "I didn't have the opportunity to make my ritual incision," commented Mrs. Adowe Kikuyu, a clan leader and indigenous medicine practitioner. "Suddenly, the ceiling parted and she went to heaven," her aunt said, sobbing. "It was a miracle-God called her to prevent my niece from going under the knife in that godless custom. I don't know what my sister and brother-in-law were thinking, to make the girl go through with such a thing in this day and age.' The doctor in charge was not available to speak with The Times." Cyril put down the Kenya Times and chortled a little in his glee. "Well, Vyv," he said, "we've done it. By now she'll be in the air heading to Paris and on her way to the Hotel Real Desert." "Caprice Sithole will make sure she's all right," added Vyvyan. "And it's time we got back there too. I hope the little baby is still alive, as we can be very helpful to her now, I think." What a happy reunion they all made back at the Hotel. Caprice prepared a magnificent meal of vegan blood-less black pudding, which their new guest found acceptable but odd, and all toasted to success. Cy and Vyv spent an hour before dinner conferring with MonaLisa and Novy, who appeared much assured by the conversation. Timmy, relieved to be home, shouted "God bless us, every one!" But not everyone was as blessed as Timmy might have wished. He learned that Herr Siegfried was still missing, presumably in Germany somewhere, and as for Joseph, well , Joseph had been unmasked as an impostor just after leaving Dubai. Apparently, an operative of World Security Operations had been transformed through complicated cosmetic surgery and planted to spy on them all,. Vyvyan said tartly, "He was discovered when he was found to have no recollection of the chord changes in 'Sophisticated Lady.' The bad news, however, is that the real Joseph has disappeared." "No, I'm afraid not," Neddy interjected. "Look at this news from Fox-Europe." There on the television was Joseph, manacled, his legs in shackles, being led off an airplane in Chicago, Illinois. The Attorney General was then shown announcing that a long-time fugitive, undoubtedly connected with international terrorism, had been caught and extradited back to face murder charges in the US. The AG thanked Mr. (formerly Colonel) Oliver South for his work in apprehending "this white-hating, cop-maiming monster." The BBC featured Kenya news as well. The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize was announced to be Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan activist who "founded an Africa-wide movement that empowered women, confronted corrupt officials and planted millions of trees in ravaged forestland. "Never mind that she thinks AIDS is a man-made plague to kill Africans," sneered Caprice. "Sadly, she's right for all the wrong reasons. "It's killing us, and the conspiracy is among the rich nations (too selfish) and the poor nations (too corrupt) to pay for medical care. And we have the Catholics and the Protestants, who can't agree on anything, united in condemning people for their sexuality. I spit on Mugabe, and Nujoma and all of those fools!" "Mama," her daughter Xoliswa cried. "It's because of the history of colonialism. Kenya and Zimbabwe have the same problem with whites robbing us of our land. And Christian values are what we need. All the Highlanders football stars are Christian now." "Ugh," Neddy grunted. "My uncle was a Reverend, but he would never have acted like Mugabe. And he would have negotiated better land deals. He's just whipping up poor farm laborers to riot because he won't fight the agribusiness giants that own all the land. Same as in Kenya." "Affairs in Zimbabwe are our task, Neddy, not the children's. They are practically French by now," said Caprice, bending her husband's elbow to bring the champagne glass to his lips again. In attempting to turn the gathering back toward festivity, she urged everyone, "Let's leave political strategies for another day. Look, we have little Timmy back, Cy and Vyv are well, our new niece was saved from cutting. And I hear there may even be hope for Little Baby Nell." "Heavens," invoked Vyvyan, "we have to appreciate our small victories and work to expand the power of the multitude. That remains our mission. I expect we'll soon hear from some friends with news of Lemmy and Achmed as well. I for one will breathe an effeminate sigh of relief when this go-round is over and we can move on to new adventures." 52 December 4 is the anniversary of the killing of Fred Hampton. Fred Hampton, chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, was killed on 12/4/1969 at the age of 21. He was one of the targets of Cointelpro, the FBI's secret counter-intelligence program. Instead of the usual chapter of The Story Continues, readers are asked to consider the following two important items. 1. The following article (excerpted from a much longer article that can be read at the url cited at the end of this excerpt) outlines some recent Federal counter-intelligence operations. newswire: Press Clipping 25-Oct-04 23:51 Legal & Judicial  | Surveillance/Harassment The new COINTELPRO author: Camille T. Taiara The feds are spying on ñ and harassing ñ political activists with a fury not seen since the 1960s. EARLY THIS MONTH the federal government launched the latest crude offensive in its so-called war on terror. Titled the October Plan, the program called for "aggressive ñ even obvious ñ surveillance" of a wide range of individuals (regardless of whether or not they're suspected of any criminal wrongdoing) until the Nov. 2 presidential election, according to an internal document leaked to the press. The plan ñ a collaboration between the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and other agencies ñ involves renewed scrutiny of mosques and interrogations of people whose national origin, religious faith, or political leanings might, in the eyes of the feds, indicate even the most far-flung relationship to "terrorism." Immigrants and others interviewed by the FBI have been "questioned about immigration status ñ theirs and others' ñ and about their political and religious views," the National Lawyers Guild's Stacey Tolchin said at an emergency press conference called by the San Francisco branch of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the Bay Area Association of Muslim Lawyers, the NLG, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California. For staffers at these organizations, responding to these kinds of crackdowns has become alarmingly routine. This is the fifth round of FBI "informal interviews" targeting immigrants based on their national origin, religion, and, increasingly, their political views. No one knows just how many have been deported as a result of the interviews or of the various dragnets conducted over the past three years. Local NLG attorney Nancy Hormachae reported that at least 13,000 people were forced into deportation hearings as the result of the notorious Special Registration program alone. And the fact that none of these campaigns has proffered a single al-Qaeda operative hasn't deterred the Bush administration a bit. So far, immigrant Muslims and those from the Middle East and Central Asia have suffered the brunt of the Bush administration's attacks on civil liberties. But as NLG immigration attorney Mark Van Der Hout told me, "Going after immigrants is just the first step towards going after U.S. citizens." Indeed, a look at the past three years shows that Attorney General John Ashcroft's offensive has widened to include a range of citizens whose only real crime is their opposition to the Bush administration's policies. The FBI comes calling President George W. Bush, Aschroft, and company have made it easier to spy on everyday citizens without probable cause of criminal activity, even allowing for the indefinite detention of Americans dubbed "enemy combatants," without charges or access to a lawyer. They've eviscerated laws meant to keep a wall between the CIA and the FBI and erected an extensive domestic-spying infrastructure, enlisting private citizens and relying on private industry to a degree never seen before. Today federal agencies are maintaining a grand total of 10 domestic watch lists. The Bush administration has shifted federal funding away from traditional law enforcement and toward domestic spying, explained John Crew, an attorney with the ACLU of Northern California specializing in police practices and surveillance issues. "A lot of this activity is, in fact, being carried out by local police working with the Joint Terrorism Task Force," he told me, explaining that those agents are considered "federalized." They report to the FBI. Local city officials ñ even local police chiefs ñ are often not aware of what these "special officers" are doing. As the Bush administration loosened professional standards for law enforcement, it simultaneously increased financial incentives for conducting surveillance, Crew continued. "To qualify for grants, [local law enforcement] must have organizations in their locale that are threats," he said. "They have to justify their own budget by amplifying the threat factor." [. . . . . elision of many examples of spying on activists] Civil liberties watchdog groups obviously worry about the chilling effect these kinds of surveillance and crackdowns have on our faltering First and Fourth Amendments. But they also insist that Ashcroft and company's approach isn't making us any safer. When law enforcement fails to distinguish between violent criminal activity and legitimate dissent ñ and when it favors collecting as much information on as many people as possible rather than useful intelligence resulting from bona fide criminal investigations ñ it's "choosing quantity over quality," Crew said. "You develop good leads by generating trust, not by disrespecting people's rights.... [And] if you're looking for a needle in a haystack, adding more hay doesn't help any." The bills that have recently passed through the House and Senate in response to the 9-11 Commission's findings, reorganizing intelligence gathering and expanding Big Brother's reach even further into our everyday lives, just promise more of the same. "It's during times of fear when civil liberties are most at risk," Crew said. Research assistance provided by A.C. Thompson. source url: http://www.sfbg.com/39/03/cover_anniversary_cointelpro.html 2. The Center for Constitutional Rights is organizing efforts to bring the US to trial for war crimes in the matter of the Abu Ghraib prisoners. Call on the German Federal Prosecutor to Investigate Rumsfeld and Other U.S. Officials for War Crimes at Abu Ghraib The Center for Constitutional Rights and four Iraqis who were tortured in U.S. custody have filed a complaint with the German Federal Prosecutor's Office against high ranking United States civilian and military commanders over the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison and elsewhere in Iraq. We are asking the German prosecutor to launch an investigation: since the U.S. government is unwilling to open an independent investigation into the responsibility of these officials for war crimes, and since the U.S. has refused to join the International Criminal Court, CCR and the Iraqi victims have brought this complaint in Germany as a court of last resort. Several of the defendants are stationed in Germany. Defendants include Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, former CIA Director George Tenet, Lt. General Ricardo S. Sanchez, Major-General Walter Wojdakowski, Brig.-General Janis Karpinski, Lt.-Colonel Jerry L. Phillabaum, Colonel Thomas M. Pappas, Lt.-Colonel Stephen L. Jordan, Major-General Geoffrey Miller, and Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone. German law allows German courts to prosecute for killing, torture, cruel and inhumane treatment, forcible transfers and sexual coercion such as occurred at Abu Ghraib. The world has seen the photographs and read the leaked "torture memos" - we are doing what is necessary when other systems of justice have failed and seeking to hold officials up the chain of command responsible for the shameful abuses that occurred. Please join our effort! The German Prosecutor has discretion to decide whether to initiate an investigation. It is critical that he hear from you so he knows that people around the world support this effort. Please go to their website http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/whatsnew/action/actionAlert2.asp and sign on to a letter to support this action. Thank you for your attention. F Chap 53 Some Convergences Achmed grabbed Ambrose at the shoulder of his coat and pulled so that they were sitting very close together, each able to look over the other's shoulder to monitor any approach. "We're here, " he whispered. "No unnecessary moves or sounds, ok? Handguns only, although I don't think we'll need them." "So what do we do now?" Ambrose asked. "We've had no lights, no radio or cel contact, and silence for the last three hours. "Yeah, pretty peaceful, eh?" He pulled off his watch and told Ambrose, "Make sure everything is turned off, no electronics, no metal, no plastic, no nothing." Achmed made a pile of all their gear, and led them about 10 meters closer toward the lake. He started to take off his left boot and whispered to Ambrose, Take off all your clothes; strip down, nude, nothing., Just lie back with your arms open." Ambrose did what he was told, but "Damn," he thought; "danger is a turn-on, but I am not going to let this guy fuck me out here-on the run, get my ass froze off or shot off." "Don't think about it, just do it," he was told. "It's snowing, it's getting dark, and it's the only way we can get picked up by the infra red sensors." Not even a minute later tracer bullets flew over them, streaking toward the lake in the thickening snowfall. "Don't get up," as if Ambrose wouldn't think of getting up, but it did cross his mind to raise his head and steal a look at Achmed, just to check on what kind of toolkit the guy was operating with. Achmed yelled now over the gunfire. and there came the very welcome sound of a camo-white Kiowa OH-58D91, lobbing rockets into the treeline as it swooped down between the unseen pursuers and our heroes A & A. In a matter of seconds, somebody had bundled up the two naked men and strapped them into the helicopter. As they rose and headed out north over Lake Superior, a parting round of rocket fire threw a humvee into the air behind them, its occupants catapulted up flaming and then down hissing in the snow. On board the Kiowa, a female in what was obviously flight gear but exhibiting no identification, wrapped Achmed and Ambrose in thermal blankets and started iv drips to rehydrate them, pushing in a dose of ativan to calm frayed nerves, but instructing them to be conscious of long, slow breaths. Satisfied with their vital signs, she left them to drift a while; both were quiet for what seemed to be quite a long time, until the same female reappeared with a clipboard and a cel phone. "Printed here is a timetable I am instructed to share with you. It details certain activities by persons you are acquainted with or that you will otherwise find relevant. The phone is programmed to put you in touch with the persons who contracted for this operation. They are waiting to speak with you." Ambrose was surprised when she handed the phone to him. When he pushed the talk button and heard a voice say his name, Ambrose was surprised again. He was talking not to Venison, whom he had expected to hear gloating after re-capturing them. Instead the voice seemed British and cheerful. "Well, well, " it said, "good Indian. I expect you wonder what has happened, and who we are who are whisking you away." "Yes, I am, " answered Ambrose. "I gather you are on Achmed's team," he said, looking over at the man who had turned the tables on him, switch-hitting; first a damsel in distress Ambrose was saving from Sirenia, now a man with powerful connections who turned around and saved Ambrose. "Yes, you could say that, " said the voice on the phone. "Achmed is a highly-skilled and very valuable asset to our team. You could say he's the David Beckham of the gender expression team." "Ok, I guess. I don't know who that is, and I don't know who you are. What is going on here? Where are we going?" "My name is Vyvyan. I'm going to leave it to Achmed to answer most of those questions. For now, I'll just say congratulations on your resourcefulness. You are safe now, in good hands I promise you. And you are going, after a few stops, to Argentina. It's summer there now, so I expect you'll enjoy it. Now will you please give the phone to Achmed? Cheerio!" From a hotel room in Torquay, Vyvyan spoke to Achmed while Cyril read from the laptop screen about a product line in unmanned airborne vehicles. "Welcome to this year's Shephard's UV North America Conference and Exhibition. Last year we reviewed Transformation in Action. This year we examine an extension of this philosophy entitled Global Persistent Surveillance (GPS). This unique and new warfighting concept underpins the massive reorganisation and new initiatives impacting both the operational and intelligence community capabilities. The nature of the threat and the tempo of operations demand a radical departure from the way we have managed information flows, shared products and provided 'actionable information' to the warfighter.  Due to the world-wide global set of threats and the new terrorist threat paradigm, GPS is a national imperative for both national and tactical intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) systems.  UAVs represent an efficient and effective solution to provide a 'cursor' over a target under any conditions and at any location.  This year we rightly focus on GPS for our conference because of the critical role UAVs will play in making GPS a successful strategy.  Again welcome to Shephard's UV North America 2004. 92ì Chap 54 Our Man in KL Medium shot: a food stand on Jl. Petaling, Chinatown night market in Kuala Lumpur. Lighting is dim, from a naked low-wattage bulb overhead. A vendor dishes spicy noodles into bowls for customers lined up on the sidewalk. A family is sitting on the ground at a low table, passing dishes around. The men wear t-shirts above their sarongs, while the women, in blouses and skirts, all wear scarves on their heads, pinned just below their chins. The camera pans slowly and reveals a man in western clothing slurping noodles . . . "Hey, what's he doing there? Go back, get that white guy out of the shot. Oh, fuck it, cut! Cut!" A continuity person rushes up to say, "I'm sorry sir. Do you speak English? Yes, well, we've rented this stand for the next two days. You'll have to eat somewhere else." He reports back to the director, Oliver Stonehenge, noted for his films RFK, Battalion and Natural Born Maimers. Stone is in a down patch of his career and is in Malaysia shooting footage for a Singapore-financed cheapie about the bombings in Bali. For reasons of tourist confidence, he has not been allowed to blow up sidewalks in Bali itself and has instead set up shop in KL. The man who was moved out of the food stall takes his bowl and moves next door to another stand. He sits down and continues to eat. Although deemed undesirable by Stonehenge, he is important to readers of this story; he is Lemmy Caution, last seen in Chapter 31. Lemmy has walked around the city all evening after an excruciating meeting with Malay Exotics, SA, Inc. at the Petronas Twin Towers. He took off his white turban about an hour ago and is now carrying it in a Starbucks Merdeka Square-KL paper bag, hoping nobody from Sirenia has followed him. He needs to clear his head after three hours in which his ostensible colleagues from the cult competed with the import-export people (actually smugglers of exotic animals and animal products) for dominance, each with the aim to manipulate the other with the most subtle and insulting deviousness. Malaysia has a complex history of conflict where the Malaysian Chinese have suffered the xenophobic odium of native Malays and the Malays have resisted the acumen and the power of the Chinese in the economic and cultural spheres, particularly under the racist colonial policies of Great Britain, policies that still rankle although more than 70% of Malaysians can claim mixed European and Asian heritage. Lemmy, who is nominally a consultant for Sirenia, has chafed at the insistence that he adopt for the duration of the contract the Sirenian strictures on costume, diet and celibacy. At today's meeting Lemmy and two female Sirenians were attempting to finalize a deal in which they would purchase a live dugong, a purchase that is illegal under Malaysian law and international protocols on the preservation of endangered species. The animal, allegedly orphaned in the wild although undoubtedly from its only remaining habitats around Gunung Kinabulu Park in Sabah. was to be paid for in ringgits, the local currency. Trading in Malaysia has become legendary for the bewildering and profitable rapidity of calculations of ringgits and yuan, dollars and now euros. If the Sirenians and not Stonehenge were writing the script: Talking-head shot, widening to shot of an office sumptuously appointed with 15th C. Chinese paintings, silk rugs, a shining conference table made of rare bohdi tree wood. The speaker, in a slightly dated Gautier epauletted mao suit, with a semi-military fragrance, is shown to be talking to three persons in white tunics and white turbans, in a scene that owes too much to orientalizing pictures like Shanghai Express and The Letter. Mr. Ibrahim Hahathir of Malay Exotics, having abandoned his opening price of 7.6 million ringgits (3.80 ringgits = 1 US dollar) is now offering to deliver the "big fishie." Hahathir: "Dear mystical friends, we understand that some unscrupulous individuals can be persuaded to bring this magnificent beast to the dock at KL for a mere 4.5 million," he says smiling, offering exquisite oolong tea to his guests. The women shake their white turbans to say no, but Lemmy accepts. Lemmy: "How can we trust these unspeakable criminals to assure us the animal is healthy?" H: "Oh, our expert veterinary staff will of course be on available to you for a thorough examination. And for a nominal cost, we can even find shippers who will cross the Pacific and bring it directly to a port on the West Coast of the US. " He hands Lemmy a tiny cup carved of rhino horn, containing a barely lip-moistening droplet of the rarest tea in the world. Lemmy takes the cup but refuses the powdered opium Mr. Hahathir offers to scoop into his cup with a repellently long fingernail on his pinky. L: "Of course, a sound animal will require very special treatment en route." One of the Sirenians, who have been expecting this ploy regarding trans-oceanic shipment, hastens to say, Sirenian: "Oh no, honored child of the eastern sea dragons, we will undertake the shipping. It's safer for us." A palpable chill passes through the room at this maladroit refusal. Mr. Hahathir, turning to his teapot, sighs, H: "I cannot countenance the remotest possibility that you and your cargo might undergo risk from the notorious pirates because of our negligence. Despite the risks a foreigner might face, we were prepared to make certain the precious creature arrived . . . alive? Script notes by Quentin Quiet-noted treatment development reader for Mirromax Films What is most visible here is the severely narrowed operational scope of the Sirenians, who suffer from too much early viewing of films depicting Wily Oriental Gentlemen (viz, the origin in English colonialism of this term). Suffice it, for the plot, to say that the Sirenians greedily offer up to US$ 2 million, knowing that a conglomerate of dentists in Marin County will pay three to see the live dugong swimming in the tank of their office. Little do they know that the Pirate Queen, a beautiful and ruthless young Malay woman (bearing a suspiciously plagiaristic similarity to a Pirate Queen in a film cribbed from a book entitled Your LIFE Story by someone else) determined to protect her heritage, will interfere with their plans. This script could be a smash: Criticality meets Ironic Distance meets Denise Darcel in Flame of Calcutta. The real question is whether Lemmy Caution's secret mission will be successful, which will require at some point that his secret mission be disclosed to the reader. 55 Skeleton Key to The Story Continues An electronic serial novel, The Story Continues . . includes fiction, poetry, parody, pastiche, pornography (n.b.) philosophy, physics, psychoanalysis, plagiarism. The story has a queer leftist orientation: stylistically it's All My Children mysteriously meet Gargantua and Pantagruel. The Story begins in The Hotel Real Desert (cf. Zizek on The Matrix), just outside of EuroDisney, where many curious and colorful characters are staying. They are Cyril Burst and Vyvyan, Lord Throbbing (cf. Wilde, Firbank) two ageing British queens who run a foundation to rescue sex-variant children; Herr Siegfried Rheinfahrt (cf. Wagner, Weil, Brecht) a former anti-Nazi communist, bureaucrat in the GDR, now a cynical addict to opiates; Joseph Jamaal, an avant-garde jazz musician, now a political exile in Europe, accused of terrorism in the US, who is Rheinfahrt's valet; Caprice and Neddy Sithole (cf. Achebe's novels), the cook and major domo of the hotel, political refugees from Zimbabwe who operate an underground network of African resistance fighters throughout the "Dark" Continent, financed by the Napkin Ring; Oedipa/us Achmed bin Maas, a transgendered, shape-shifting Iraqi whose mission is to infiltrate and destroy oppressive cults and political formations; Lemmy Caution (cf. Godard), an American alcoholic and leftist in recovery, long-time comrade of Achmed; MonaLisa and Novy, a lesbian couple with two daughters, one of whom is murdered in the first scene of The Story; Countess Karen Blitzen Yousopoff, the stick-thin aristocrat who directs public relations for the World Trade Organization and functions as a liason to many paramilitary groups; Col. Oliver South, USMC ret., a born-again Christian whose still-vital connections with power have landed him a position as the world's top anti-terrorist mercenary, head of World Security Operations, Inc, ; Tim Tilden, the great-nephew of notorious and brilliant gay tennis star of the 1920's, Big Bill Tilden, a young albino African-American adopted by the Sitholes; The Baby (once mistakenly named Little Nell-cf. Dickens), daughter of MonaLisa, who is electrocuted and lies near death, thinking thoughts about consciousness and cognitive development, a la Piaget; There are currently 54 chapters of The Story Continues. . . An archive of the whole novel so far is at The Story Continues website Each week a new chapter of the serial is emailed. If you want to read it as it should be read, just reply to this email with "I want to read" in the subject heading. You will be added to the mailing list. Readers are also invited to contribute narratives, comments on the themes and issues, or anything they like that relates to The Story Continues . . . A link on the website is provided for that purpose. 56 As the World Turns Mrs. Ima Caution 1789 Rue Marat Quebec, Quebec, Canada Cher Maman Greetings from Phuket! Happy Holidays from this paradise in Thailand. I came here the day before yesterday (day before Xmas) for a little holiday. The beach is beautiful and all people are so friendly. I can't walk down the beach in my thong without somebody yelling a cheerful "Thai boy here!" There's a cute little elephant named NingNong that carries a little girl on its back. It must be young, as it is only a little taller than its owner/trainer. The little girl has ridden every day, and says Ning Nong is her best friend. Most of the tourists here are from Europe-lots of families but a good sprinkling of singles as well. Not tawdry like Kuta, either. I am glad to be out of KL (see Chap 54) for a week or two, as my assignment there is stalled while we wait for permission to export goods. I miss you, ma cherie, but I do not regret missing the snow up in Quebec. I'll write more soon. Ton fils, Lemmy FOX News 12/28/04 Elephant saves little girl in tsunami (shot of elephant and Thai man on beach) NingNong, an asian elephant that works on the beach at Phuket is credited by a little English girl with saving her life in the tsunami. The little girl, whose name is Edwina Drood, (shot of girl) says she and NingNong had seen each other every day for the previous three weeks, and she was spending her last day on the beach yesterday before departing for home. As the wall of water crashed toward the beach, many birds and animals reacted more quickly than humans. Ning Nong apparently searched the beach, found Edwina, and carried her on his back to higher ground. (Shot of Edwina saying) "He saved me! He really loves me!" Her family have agreed to send Ning Nong and his owner/trainer Mr. Chittalongcorn 25 euros a month for care and food. (shot of dogs running on beach) This is not the only story of animal heroism here in Phuket. A dog is said to have herded a little boy who was running toward the water back to his family in the nick of time, exhibiting the shepherd instinct in his breeding. Bitta Root, reporting for Fox News Phuket from: Bröderbund Men's Shelter Frankfurt, Deutschland December 27, 2004 To: Herr Josef Jamaal Hotel Real Desert, Paris, Frankenland Dear Josef, Where are you? Are you well.? I have heard nothing from you. I am almost in prison here. I was made to suffer all the hells of detoxification from my morphine, and I miss you. I came to Frankfurt to see my old comrade, (see Chap 46) but she made me leave after two days. I had no money, no clothes, no nothing and I am desolate. I had a whole day when I thought or dreamed I lived in Köln in 1200, a member of the Brotherhood of the Free Spirit. All my dreams for the future are long gone; the fascists are rising again all over the world. The US has become the new 1000 year Reich and wants to annex Iraq, Iran, Korea, everything. Resistance is futile for an old man like me. I am so lonely. Can you please come and help me? LETTER RETURNED TO SENDER-NOT AT THIS ADDRESS -CONTACT US DEPT OF STATE FOR FURTHER INFORMATION US BOP inspected correspondence Chicago Metropolitan Correctional Center Chicago, IL, USA Addressee: Herr Siegfried Rheinfahrt Hotel Real Desert, Paris, France Inmate: Joseph Jamaal HiSec#579586 Date: December 27, 2004 Herr Rheinfahrt, I was apprehended by US Marshals and brought back to the US. (see Chap 51) I am in prison, facing charges of terrorism from 1971. You may remember that when I fled through Algeria, Eldridge Cleaver denounced me and said I never did anything to help the Black Liberation Army. But that does not satisfy the Justice Dept. There is a small committee of people supporting me, and the Populist Legal Agency is defending me. The political climate in this country has changed so much. The liberals are the most craven cowards. Can you please come and help me? LETTER RETURNED TO SENDER-NOT AT THIS ADDRESS Found in the pocket of Siegfried Rheinfahrt Brothers and Sisters, We, the last remnants of the Catharists here in Frankish lands (see Chap 29), face persecution from Bernard of Clairvaux. In particular, the women have been seized and burned as witches-all part of the male-supremacist purge of women's leadership in spreading the real, revolutionary93 news of the gospels. The dog, "saintly" Bernard, has denounced the theological position that God is immanent, insisting that God is totally transcendent and that humaan aspiration to unite with God can be fulfilled only after death. Margery Kempe and others have roundly defeated this argument, but the Church cannot face a congregation that understands The Knowledge of Good and Evil. We call on future generations to help us. In the future, we forsee a huge peasant rebellion, caused by widespread dispossession of land tilled by residents and sparked by a new reformation of religion. We also forsee an overthrow of the ancien regime and the establishment of the idea of rights inherent in each individual person. Sadly, we expect that one superpower will tie reformation theology and ficticious "rights" into a license to rule the world. Martyrdom is our only option n [Here the text is broken and nothing is legible except one phrase: CAVE AT THE POOL OF JUIQUEE JUACHAY]   Intergalactic Net Correspondence From: Trzzz, Ethnobiologist on assignment (see Chaps 27-28), Planet 4 of Sol system, spiral galaxy 37584894395A-D49485839. Esteemed Colleague(s) on Altair 4 Observation has grown problematic here at Chauvet, as compassionate commitment to the humans arises. Over the last few centuries I watch their bewilderment at the rapid growth of cerebral cortex and its integration into two hemispheres. When the hemispheres were separate, the humans took the voices in their heads to be communication from gods. Now that the two hemispheres are bridged, they are so lonely, realizing that the only voices they hear are their own. Can I bear to watch them invent power hierarchies of gender, occupation, accumulated wealth, religion or other devilments without acting to help them? Must I? What about all our ethical strictures on action ethnobiology? We cannot just watch suffering. I have decided to invest in human minds, culminating around the 6th Century BCE, a set of realizations regarding being and otherness, which should usher in a golden age of tranquility and cooperation for the next 10,000 years. Trzzz 57 Catching Up on Old Friends dear Cousin Timmy Happy Winter Solstice I have not heard from you in a long time. I was promoted to eighth grade and I left Parker Tyler School for the Young and Evil because (I think) my gym teacher cardinal Pirelli , is afraid I will blab about how he dresses up like Saint Sebastian during archery I never liked being in the basement anyway with those grisly pinups of Mr. Yukio Mishima ( Pirelli says he used to be a japanese teacher here but I think he's lying) and Mr. Derek Jarman.!!!) So Tim what are up 2? CAN I COME VISIT YOU IN JUNE??? when school is out.-- My mom says I can go anywhere -- she is busy with her new ugh! Boyfriend (dirtball) Yr cuz, Temujin Genghis Khan Rabinowitz-DuBois94 8th grade, New Age Academy Inc.* New Age Academy is a secure facility for boys and girls with ADD. We are not responsible for any actions of students undergoing Ritalin or other pharaceutical treatment. ++++++++++++++++++++ Where are they now? Paris, France (AP) Mlle. Terpsichore Prion the fetching winner of the Mlle. Disney World Competition last year at EuroDisney95, was told yesterday that she would have to submit frozen samples of her brain and organ tissue immediately to the French National Bureau de Santé. It is suspected that she contracted Mad Cow Disease (bovine encephalopathy) while employed as a milkmaid at the Disney amusement park. "But they are mechanical, miniature cows!" expostulated Mlle. Prion when contacted by our reporter. "This is obviously political persecution for my totally legal support of the ELF Liberation Front." "ELF Lib," as it is called by its adherents, is alleged to have burned 45 Hummer vehicles last year in the parking lot of EuroDisney and to have secreted a communiqué claiming their action was "Operation Heraclitean Fire," for "little people of all ages," in a toadstool in Swiss Miss Land. Mlle. Prion is an adult person of small stature, some 2'13" in height who was on daily exhibition in the Swiss Miss environment. "The woman is obviously paranoid," said Lt. Col. Oliver South (USMC ret.), the head of World Security Operations, the private firm that brought Prion to the attention of authorities. She was bound in a rug and left in the lost and found at the Gare du Nord, say unidentified agents of the Sureté. "We are grateful to Col. South," said the agents, "but we question his tactics." Found in Prion's small apartment were posters of famous "rap" musicians, including MC Solaar, Lil' Bit, Lil' Kim, as well as a letter addressed to the world music superstar Mobe 68. The letter, in part: Dear Wonderful Mobe 68, You dot'n now me, but I am your biggest fan. You should not worry about that fag (oops, sorry, my bad-I dot'n mean you).. Eminem. I mean you should make him your bitch and that would clean his clock for him. When are you going to sing in France I love you so much please send me your underware. XXXXOOOO Terpsichore Prion +++++++++++++++++++   Southeby's Auction Lot 239u837824 Reserve: 15,000 Euro A Holographic Letter from George Eliot 96 to Klara Kaligari97 15 December, 1857 Dear Laura, How delightful to have yours of October last. And how is Siegfried taking your new liason? During the meeting of the International Movement for Zion last night, I was reminded of you. Someone mentioned Husserl, who, I had forgotten, was himself a Jew but got himself baptized. I searched Ideen and wrote this in reaction: The I-Beam Husserl rightly points out that we are able to slide up and down the pole of the ego-beam at will, moving now toward the thing, now away from it to consider the act of knowing and its modalities. For example, noematically I can consider a certain cat who probably exists, but then I can turn back noetically to assess the degree of certitude that characterizes my consideration of that selfsame cat as existing (# 105). Now if we were to slide down to the point where all modalities are behind us on the noetic side of the pole, and if there we were to face the object, we would get the pure sense of the object in which its unity is given. My best to Rosa von Praunheim, that butch thing! MaryAnn +++++++++++++++++++++ message on the anwering machine of Ambrose Broussard98 "This is Ambrose. I am back in Manistique briefly. If this is a Sirenian, do not communicate with me any more. Others can leave a message but I am moving to London. My new email is abrou@merriengland.uk. ++++++++++++++++++++++ message to Ambrose "It's Cyril! Hurry, Ambrose dear, and bring all your leatherstockings and such. It is Panto season, and our young(ish) friend Ian MacKellin is playing Mrs. Twankey. We are taking you to meet him the day after you arrive. All despite being in black, mourning for poor Renata Tebaldi, truly the voice of an angel now! We'll meet your plane at Heathrow, dear. Have a safe flight." 58 If Time, Not Space; If Space, Not Time In Islington, on a rainy Sunday night in January, Cyril, Vyvyan and Ambrose emerge from the cinema, commenting on their disappointment with What the Bleep. 99 "That film100 is nothing, dear boys," says Cyril, "but an infomercial for a particular type of Buddhist thought, which has seized on quantum mechanics as an explanation for their theological concern with consciousness and the desire to shed "the ego" in order to be at home in the new construal of the universe." Willing to play the interlocutor (not unlike Alan Alda in science programs on US public television), Ambrose asks, "but don't you agree that matter is no longer to be thought of as solid and stable, and that energy is what makes the universe?" "Let's start more simply, " ripostes Cyril. "The film's expert-a chiropractor, so he undoubtedly has the scientific background to comment on this-tells us that functional MRIs show the same areas of the brain are active when looking at, say, an apple as when remembering an apple. He then says this indicates that the brain cannot tell the difference between what is real and what is only remembered. Therefore consciousness is constituting reality. That's just bad science!" Vyvyan sees his point: "First of all, the fMRI is not precise enough to show that the very same neurons are active in both cases. . And here's the car. Mind your umbrellas! "Second, if I may second your searchlight brilliance dear Vyv," adds Cyril, "the film assumes that consciousness and the brain are coterminous, congruent. That leaves out the whole rest of the body, including the eyes, the muscles that move the lenses in the eyes, the skin of the hand that might hold the apple-everything else." "Why yes, of course," muses Ambrose as the ancient Bentley coughs, sneezes and is finally underway. "That means that the assertion about consciousness constituting the world is not proven by that argument. But what about the Heisenberg101 quote-'atoms are not things'? We know from Bohr and others that the act of observation changes phenomena: observing a subatomic particle can determine either its location or its momentum, but not both. In fact, all we have are probabilities for where any given particle is prior to observation: it could be everywhere or nowhere. "Theories abound, darlings, to explain this uncertainty principle, but the purest is the Copenhagen consensus, right Cyril dear?" That there is no thing, no entity we can call matter, or energy, or reality. All we can do is ascertain probabilities, which do not definitively prove anything is anywhere. " Ambrose interjects, "For that matter, it doesn't disprove it either." Cyril is more measured. "In fairness, Bohr's formulation102 that there is no thing called reality is not the only way to see the universe. Einstein might still be right that God does not play games. David Böhm103 sees implicate order. Most scientists are agnostic on the question of whether there is a "real" universe out there independent of our observation of it." "The best that can be said is that observation (and we could stretch and call that consciousness, I guess) is implicated in every phenomenon we can observe and seemingly in every phenomenon we can theorize to explain. Think of superstring theories and the like!" "But this movie goes too far; it wants us to believe our consciousness creates reality, which is conventionally Buddhist, but it's bad Buddhist doctrine and bad science together. It's a mare's nest of post-Kantian goo that is far to keen on idealism." "Well, my Chingachgook, let us show you the good old Berkeleyan reality of an English dinner. We'll go to an Indian restaurant for a hot curry!" "Not to go on about it," replies Ambrose, "but I was confused by the discourse on addiction104 in the film. What did you think of that?" "Bah!" Vyvyan expostulates. We are told by that Elke Sommer look-alike with beautiful skin and blue eyeshadow105 that everything we like or dislike is an addiction, but if we take a hot bath, we are transformed and can throw away our anxiety medications." "They should rather have said," agrees Cyril, "that anti-depressants are a logical outcome of theories that brain chemicals and electrical connections among neurons are the seat of emotional reactions of delight and distress. Readjustment of those electro chemicals is a perfectly marvelous course to take, and even more so-a fortiori-- if consciousness is all somehow quantum-based addiction chemistry?" The Bentley pulls up on Finchley Road, in front of a popular Indian eatery, The Indologist. "Let's eat! My addicted cells (another falsehood that the cell is the basic unit of consciousness) want food and a nice drinky." 59 Queer Crimes and Gay Globalization "Look at this proposal," I said to Foucault's nephew (see Chap 11). "I'd like you to comment on my ideas for the class I am teaching at the Quan Yin Transgendered Bodhisattva Correspondence School and OnLine University, Inc, S.A." "OK," replied Marcel, but I warn you I have a perverse outlook on these topics." QUEER CRIME AND GAY GLOBALISM Much of the life of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender, genderqueer and intersex persons has been illegal, and this illegality has been a constituent factor in the development of new sub-cultures, economies and geographies. This course will examine some of the ways that non/anti-normative sexual desire has created new modes of being and responded to the Law that seeks to channel desire into acceptable activities. Prostitution, pornography, inter-generational sex, drug use, unsafe sex, sexual activity in public or private are "crimes" said to characterize "queer" life. We will attempt to look at the behaviors and beliefs of persons seeking sexual and emotional connections and their outcomes in modes of being that both create shared subjectivities and build institutions. These institutions have challenged the structures of economic and social life, with resulting transformation and incorporation into the globalization of the marketplace. Queer outlaws are followed by LGBT entrepreneurs. We will read from marxian and freudian commentators on queer desires and queer cultures, including contemporaries like Foucault, Butler, Bersani, Wittig, Beck Also, we examine the documentation of queer legality and criminality in such works as Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, Queer Diasporas, The Social Construction of a Gay Drug, Resentment, The Crystal Diary, and Macho Sluts. In addition, students will participate in original research on sexual subcultures in this city and in other parts of the world. Music, art, fashion, electronic communication and self-help (among other processes) will be considered as QLGBT strategies to create their lives and resist oppression.. Topics to be covered (partial list, needs expansion) Crime and sin Genderqueerness as crime Non-hetero marriage as crime AIDS as crime, public health as surveillance Crimes in countries, cultures outside the US Sexual tourism and gay travel business Disco and the record business Movies and tv Pharmaceutical drug therapies and patent laws Gay & lesbian jobs Disability and work under the table, Repentance strategies-AA, NA New social places, non-places on the Internet Protest movements and gay parades Techno vs. deep house Queer Punk Gender change, laws and violence Domestic violence Expulsion of queer youth Proportion of illegal stuff in economy War on Drugs impact Zoning laws "Look here, Mr. Philosopher," said Marcel. "I will give you a whole lecture on the phenomenon of Gay Crystal, about which I, as an advanced European in touch with the latest drug-resistant AIDS scare, know something from my frequent and promiscuous contacts with New Yorkers and Los Angelenos. Consider the following an outline of my talk: General use of crystal Use of crystal for sex Communication via sex lines and internet Use of crystal for clubs, etc Club scene Club fashion Advertising Health Issues "And then I will perform a disquisition on the Gay Circuit Party, touching on Employment: DJs, bartenders, dancers, waiters, actors, singers, etc. Products National centers, travel International Impact on locals Impact of locals on circuit "What do you make of that, Mr. Philosopher?" "As always, Marcel, I am impressed by your perspicuity," I had to reply. "And," added my addled friend, "I have a whole idea about the history of queer culture. How's this? Class Proposal Queer Cultures of the 60s and 70s In this multimedia course, we will examine the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender--Queer cultural efflorescence that is dated from the street riots of 1969 around the Stonewall Inn in New York. The origins of this cultural movement in Cold War economics and politics and the emergence of vibrant social movements of African-Americans, Latinos, Women and youth can be glimpsed through documentary film and the "underground" press of the times: Chicago Seed, Berkeley Barb, RAT, and East Village Other. In literary production, specifically gay male writing begins with Robert Duncan in his 1949 "Manifesto" and Ginsberg in "Howl;" both became icons to 60s gay poets. Most prominent New York poets were Frank O'Hara, James Merrill and James Schuyler. Lesbian writers like Elizabeth Bishop, Anne Sexton and Muriel Rukeyser were already well established, and were joined by feminist/bisexual Beats and emerging post-Stonewall writers like Robin Morgan and Audre Lord. In theater Gay/Lesbian/Transgender writers and performers were particularly visible. The high camp of the Theater of the Ridiculous and the anti-war hippie rock dramas of the pan-sexual Fugs will be looked at in early film and recordings of these performances, as well as films by Andy Warhol, whose decidedly "queer" Factory was the most significant cultural producer of the second half of the century. Far from the New York irony of Warhol were the poetry of Duncan, Jack Spicer, Judy Grahn and Pat Parker. The gender-smashing antics of the Cockettes in San Francisco exemplify the collectively-made, often anonymous projects that contributed to the development of the gathering as an art form--beyond the Happening lay the Be-In and drag ritual. Writer/performers and film artists necessary to understanding this aesthetic are Jack Smith, Kenneth Anger, and documentarians of demonstrations and "tribal" gatherings of groups like the Gay Liberation Front. Hundreds of new "queer" writers began their careers in the ten-year period 1969-79, a flowering made briefer by the demise of many in the AIDS epidemic beginning in 1980. "C'est admirable!" I told Marcel, anxious to depart before he began to act out the films of Warhol. I then wandered off to the Parc Luxembourg environment at EuroDisney to enjoy the animatronic birds. 1 Oscar Wilde, Picture of Dorian Gray 2 Jean Piaget, The Origins of Intelligence in the Child. Routledge and Kegan Paul. London (1956) (paraphrased) and David Bohm (q.v.) 3 Piaget 4 Judy Grahn, She Who (excerpt) in The Work of A Common Woman (Trumansburg, NY: Crossing Press) 1978. 5 Karin Ashley et. al for SDS, "You Don't Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows" New Left Notes, June 18, 1969 6 Weather Underground Organization, "New Morning-Changing Weather," (1970) 7 Velvet Underground, "I'm Set Free." The Velvet Underground (1969) 8 Timothy Leary, Flashbacks: A personal and Cultural History of an Era New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1990 9 Charles Fourier, Theory of Social Organization (New York: C. P. Somerby, 1876). 10 Benedict de Spinoza, Ethics, R.H.M. Elwes, trans., (Amherst: Prometheus Books) 1989. 11 David Bohm, The Essential David Bohm, edited by Lee Nichol (NY & London:Routledge) 2003 12 Henry James, "The Private Life" in The Figure in the Carpet and other stories (London: Penguin) 1986. 13 NYT, October 29, 2002, "A New View Of Our Universe: Only One of Many" By DENNIS OVERBYE (NYT) 14 Jean Baudrillard, The Mirror of Production, Telos Press, St. Louis, 1975 15 HRH Felix Youssoupoff, Lost Splendor, NY: Putnam, 1953. 16 Baudrillard 17 Karl Marx, Capital 18 (from "On the Concept of Labor," Telos 16 (Summer, 1973) 19 song taught to birds in Aldous Huxley's Island 20 Ronald Firbank, Vainglory 21 Ferd Eggan. Don't Block the Exits (NY: Doofus Self-Publishing) 2005 22 Peggy Wood, quoted in Frank DeFord, Big Bill Tilden: The Triumphs and the Tragedy (NY: Simon and Schuster) 1976. 23 Martin Heidegger "The Thing" a lecture from 1950 in Poetry, Launguage, Thought, (Harper & Row, New York) 1975 24 Lenin, of course. 25 Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Rosa Luxemburg, Georg Kikacs, Antonio Gramsci, C.L.R. James, Mario Tronti, Sergio Bologna, Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Antonio Negri, Selma James, trad. melody, elaboration of a 12-bar blues, ababb rhyme scheme. 26 In "Letter to Comrades" of October 15 (28), 1917, Lenin quotes an objection to immediate revolution: 'We have no majority among the people, and without this condition the uprising is hopeless . . .' Lenin retorts, "People who can say this are either distorters of the truth or pedants who want an advance guarantee that throughout the wole country the Bolshevik Party has received exactly one-half of the votes plus one, this they want at all events, without taking the least account of the real circumstances of the revolution. History has never given such a guarantee, and it is quite unable to give it in any revolution. To make such a demand is jeering at the audience, and is nothing but a cover to hide one's own flight from reality . . ." Quoted in Slavoj Zizek, ed., Revolution at the Gates (London:Verso) 2002. 27 Ndabaningi Sithole Remanded In Prison (PANA. 17 February, 1996) HARARE, Zimbabwe (PANA) - Trial of the leader of the Ndonga faction of Zimbabwe African Union ZANU (NDONGA), Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole, facing charges of plotting to assassinate President Robert Mugabe was on Saturday adjourned to April 23. The opposition leader, who is on 100,000 zimdollars (11, 000 USD) bail, is facing two charges under the Law and Order (Maintenance) Act for recruiting people to undergo military training and conspiracy to engage in sabotage. He is accused of personally picking the spot for the abortive attempt to kill President Mugabe as he passed in his motorcade on August 4 last year. 28 Peanut Butter Stew from Zimbabwe (Dovi) serves 4-6 2 medium onions, finely chopped  2 green peppers, chopped 2 tablespoons butter 1 chicken, cut into pieces 2 cloves garlic, finely sliced and crushed 3 to 4 fresh tomatoes 6 to 8 fresh okra, seeded and chopped 1 teaspoon salt & 1⁄2 teaspoon pepper  6 tablespoons smooth peanut butter 1 chili pepper or 1⁄2 teaspoon cayenne pepper  1⁄2 pound spinach or pumpkin leaves *In a large stew pot over medium heat, sauté onions in butter until golden brown. Add garlic, salt and hot peppers. *Stir for 2 or 3 minutes then add green peppers, okra and chicken. Brown the chicken. *When all the chicken pieces are brown on every side, mash tomatoes with a fork and mix them into the stew, along with about 2 cups water. Reduce heat and simmer for 5 to 10 minutes. *Thin the peanut butter with a few spoons of hot broth and add half the resulting paste to the pot. Simmer until the meat is well-cooked. *In a separate pot, boil spinach or pumpkin leaves for several minutes until tender. Drain and toss with the remainder of the peanut paste. Serve stew and greens side by side. Recipe from The Africa News Cookbook, by the Africa News Service, Inc., 1985, p. 44 29 Listen to Healing Tree: The Best of Stella Chiweshe. "Stella Rambisai Chiweshe Nekati is a woman warrior who defied the traditional gender roles of her native Zimbabwe by learning to play the mbira, a thumb piano whose ritual connection to the ancestral spirits dates back to the 15th century. More than two decades of international recording and concert performances have earned Chiweshe the title "Queen of Mbira," a distinction which led to this "best of" compilation, her first CD on a stateside label. Split between lulling unplugged tracks (for dual mbiras, vocals, and percussion) and lively worldbeat pieces (with that curious Afro-pop mix of upbeat rhythm, buoyant melody, and trenchant lyrics), the disc proffers multi-leveled music for enthusiasts of both contemporary and folkloric song forms. Cyclical motifs combine earthy singing and translucent instrumental syncopation to create a hypnotic sound of power and ancientness." review by Sam Prestianni 30 Ndlovu is now a part-time AIDS educator, who joined Ethan Zohn, the million-dollar winner of Survivor: Africa, in a prevention program called Grassroots Soccer for boys in Harare. Never mind that Mugabe thinks gay persons should be executed: in Africa, gay sex is somehow irrelevant to AIDS. 31 IMF dumps Zim (Zimbabwe Independent, Dec 5, 2003) The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Wednesday began measures to expel Zimbabwe as a member of the fund, another blow for beleaguered President Robert Mugabe already suspended from the Commonwealth. The IMF's decision-making executive board said Zimbabwe had "not actively cooperated" with the fund and had been in arrears on loan repayments since February 2001. Commonwealth on trial, by Dumisani Muleya (Zim, Independent, Dec. 5, 2003) ZIMBABWE will be directly in the firing line at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (Chogm) which opens in Abuja, Nigeria, today without President Robert Mugabe who has been barred from the summit. With political temperatures rising dramatically over Zimbabwe's suspension, the country's crisis is expected to dominate Chogm and test to the limit the 54-member organisation's mettle in dealing with issues of democracy and electoral conduct. 32 All quotations from David M. Halperin, Saint=Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography , Oxford University Press: 1995All 33 Critical-Political Comments "Regarding the Jefferson Airplane, it's important to remember the atmosphere of the times. It's important to remember 1968. In 1968, highway patrolmen opened fire on black students from South Carolina State University who were marching to protest segregation at a bowling alley. They killed 3, wounded 37. Riots began in Detroit and Newark. Robert Kennedy was assassinated. An increasingly unpopular war was raging which would eventually leave 54,000 American soldiers dead. Big Brother (the government's version) was looking over people's shoulders: a staffer on the National Security Council was responsible for monitoring every anti-Vietnam war speech in the Congressional Record. American officials were trying to put narcotic agents in the Army, even though amphetamines were widely distributed as stimulants to G.I.s. Martin Luther King, Jr. was not only wire-tapped, but harassed by the FBI with cryptic warnings and unveiled threats. When King was murdered, fires spread to within two blocks of the White House. 65,000 troops saw riot duty across the United States. Columbia University was taken over by students for six days - an action repeated across the nation during the next year. In Chicago, the 1968 Democratic presidential convention was on its way to town, but everyone was on strike - electrical workers, telephone installers, bus and taxi drivers. The convention itself would be ringed with electrified barbed wire; the security force had at its disposal flame-throwers and bazookas. Even though (because?) one in six demonstrators in Chicago may have been undercover cops, the police brutality that resulted was so extreme it changed people's political emphasis overnight. In California, Ronald Reagan would soon be warning of bloodbaths. More riots, the Weathermen bombings, the murder of students at Jackson State, the Chicago Seven conspiracy trial and much more were still to come. There was momentousness, paranoia, and danger on the national scene. Across America rednecks and warmongers were punching out people who grew their hair long. A feeling of shared oppression was widespread." A SF Chronicle of Music 34 Karin Ashley, Bill Ayers, Barnardine Dohrn, John Jacobs, Jeff Jones, Gerry Long, Howie Machtinger, Jim Mellen, Terry Robbins, Mark Rudd and Steve Tappis, "You Don't Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows" New Left Notes, June 18, 1969 35 National Geographic, 1961. Edom: (red) the name Edom was given to Esau, the first-born son of Isaac and twin brother of Jacob, when he sold his birthright to the latter for a meal of lentil pottage. The country which the Lord subsequently gave to Esau was hence called the country of Edom and his descendants were called Edomites. Esau's bitter hatred to his brother Jacob for fraudulently obtaining his blessing appears to have been inherited by his latest posterity. The Edomites peremptorily refused to permit the Israelites to pass through their land. For a period of 400 years we hear no more of the Edomites. They were then attacked and defeated by Saul and some forty years later by David. In the reign of Jehoshaphat (BC 914) the Edomites attempted to invade Israel but failed. They joined Nebuchadnezzar when that king besieged Jerusalem. For their cruelty at this time they were fearfully denounced by the later prophets. After this they settled in southern Palestine and for more than four centuries continued to prosper. But during the warlike rule of the Maccabees they were again completely subdued and even forced to conform to Jewish laws and rites and submit to the government of Jewish prefects. The Edomites were now incorporated with the Jewish nation. They were idolaters. Their habits were singular. The Horites, their predecessors in Mount Seir, were as their name implies troglodytes or dwellers in caves; and the Edomites seem to have adopted their dwellings as well as their country. Everywhere we meet with caves and grottos hewn in the soft sandstone strata. ..... Hypertext Webster Gateway (Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary) 36 Some Mathematical Founders: Yi Xing (683-727) Alcuin of York (c. 735-804) Muhammad ibn Ibrahim al-Fazari (fl. c. 771) Leo the Mathematician (c. 790-post 869) Govindaswami (c. 800-850) Mahavira (Mahaviracharya) (c. 850) Abu `Abd Allah Mohammad ibn Jabir al-Battani (Albatenius) (c. 858) Abu Nasr Muhammad ibn Muhammad Tarkhan ibn Awzalagh al-Farabi (Alpharabius) (c. 870-c. 950 Dictionary of Scientific Biography. 15 volumes. Edited by Charles Coulston Gillispie. Scribner, New York, 1970-1978, with later additions. 37 Rumors that Maslow was sodomized by her father have never been proved. 38 "Jam, n. archaic gay term for heterosexual: jam vs. fruit" The Queen's Lexicon, 39 Female genital mutilation (FGM) is the term used to refer to the removal of part, or all, of the female genitalia. The most severe form is infibulation, also known as pharaonic circumcision. An estimated 15% of all mutilations in Africa are infibulations. The procedure consists of clitoridectomy (where all, or part of, the clitoris is removed), excision (removal of all, or part of, the labia minora), and cutting of the labia majora to create raw surfaces, which are then stitched or held together in order to form a cover over the vagina when they heal. A small hole is left to allow urine and menstrual blood to escape. In some less conventional forms of infibulation, less tissue is removed and a larger opening is left. Girls undergoing the procedure have varying degrees of knowledge about what will happen to them. Sometimes the event is associated with festivities and gifts. Girls are exhorted to be brave. Where the mutilation is part of an initiation rite, the festivities may be major events for the community. Usually only women are allowed to be present. Sometimes a trained midwife will be available to give a local anaesthetic. In some cultures, girls will be told to sit beforehand in cold water, to numb the area and reduce the likelihood of bleeding. More commonly, however, no steps are taken to reduce the pain. The girl is immobilized, held, usually by older women, with her legs open. When infibulation takes place, stitches may be used to hold the two sides of the labia majora together, and the legs may be bound together for up to 40 days. Antiseptic powder may be applied, or, more usually, pastes - containing herbs, milk, eggs, ashes or dung - which are believed to facilitate healing. The girl may be taken to a specially designated place to recover where, if the mutilation has been carried out as part of an initiation ceremony, traditional teaching is imparted. Amnesty International, 1998 40 Heraclitus, 5th C BCE, became a misanthrope, leaving the city, living in the mountains off herbs and plants; all citations from Jonathan Barnes, ed. & trans., Early Greek Philosophy, 2nd revised ed. London: Penguin, 2001. 41 David Bohm. The Qualitative Nature of Infinity (1971) 42 The AKC would not recognize these as purebred offspring of Merle, as they would affect the stability of Maltese as a breed. Merle himself, transmigratory soul unbound by genetics, has personally appeared at Westminster. It is also worth noting here, by the way, that the rumors of an incestuous and bestial relationship between Peabody and Sherman (who are, after all, nephews or cousins, and not direct-line relations) are not supported by any available evidence. Readers will be aware of Peabody's seminal role in the promulgation of the postmodern theory of history, wherein the past and present cultures of all times and places are ransacked for information and entertainment. Merle has made no published comment on these views; his is a more Schopenhauer-like compassionate pessimism regarding human affairs . 43 John Clare (1793 - 1864) "The Fallen Elm" 44 To Kevatta. Translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Sutta (Teaching, in Pali) is the same as the Sanskrit word Sutra; this and many other Suttas are part of the Pali Canon, sayings attributed to Gautama Buddha, written in gold on palm leaves around the 4th C BCE and kept in Sri Lanka-- what some view as the oldest preserved books, and all agree are some of the most beautiful books in the world. 45 Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, New York, 1995, Vintage Books, Random House. 46 "Mr. Lee committed suicide to save the farmers," said An Sung Hyun, 65, a neighbor. "He sacrificed himself for farmers like me." That sentiment is echoed in a new banner that greets drivers as they enter Jangsu. "The late Lee Kyung Hae, patriot and hero, we will follow your goal," it reads. "We strongly oppose W.T.O. globalization." To protect farmers, South Korea has tariffs of over 100 percent on 142 farm products - consumers here pay about four times American prices for rice - helping support six million farmers in a nation of 47 million people. But South Korea's real money is made selling cars, ships and cellphones around the world. To keep markets open for its economy, the world's 12th largest, South Korea has recently made concessions on food imports, in bilateral talks and in preliminary negotiations in the W.T.O. With each concession, life gets a little harder for the farmers. "It is not hard to guess why he chose to terminate his life," said La Jung Han, an official in Seoul at the the Korean Advanced Farmers Federation, a group Mr. Lee headed for many years. "Probably, the main motivation was despair." It was "a despair deeply imbedded in the conditions of the farmers, the agriculture industry and the rural communities." From his wife's grave, Mr. Lee's view would have included his modest one-story brick house and his experimental 40-acre farm. In the 1970's it was an effort by a college graduate from Seoul, much commented upon, to demonstrate how farmers could survive and compete despite declining prices for their products. "Even now the land is being abandoned," An Sung Hyun, said, pointing out paddies abandoned across the valley floor. "If we import more food, more land will be abandoned." "Parents who are farming, don't want their children to do farming," he said, speaking in a room filled with farmers. "There is no hope. They cannot get any benefits from farming." "Frankly speaking, I am really, really proud of him," his daughter Goh Wun said. "Because he sacrificed himself not for himself, but for the nation." NY Times, Sept. 16, 2003. 47 "And the practice of calling on psychiatric espertise, which is widespread…means that the sentence, even if it is always formulated in terms of legal punishment, implies, more or less obscurely, judgments of normality, attributions of causality, assessments of possible changes, anticipations as to the offender's future." Foucault, ibid. 48 A.G.S. Kariyawasam. Buddhist Ceremonies and Rituals of Sri Lanka The Wheel Publication 1995 49 Ibid 50 Patrick Moore, Beyond Shame: Reclaiming the Abandoned History of Radical Gay Sexuality (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004) 51 Ranier Marie Rilke, Duino Elegies 52 Dubai March 4, 2004 By GARY MILHOLLIN and KELLY MOTZ WASHINGTON America's relations with Pakistan and several other Asian countries have been rocked by the discovery of the vast smuggling network run by the Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan. Unfortunately, one American ally at the heart of the scandal, Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, seems to be escaping punishment despite its role as the key transfer point in Dr. Khan's atomic bazaar. Why ship through Dubai? Because it may be the easiest place in the world to mask the real destination of cargo. Consider how the Malaysian government is making the case for the innocence of its manufacturing company. "No document was traced that proved" the company "delivered or exported the said components to Libya," according to the country's inspector general of police. The real destination, he said, "was outside the knowledge" of the producer. One can be certain that if the Khan ring's European suppliers are ever tracked down, they will offer a similar explanation. Dubai provides companies and governments a vital asset: automatic deniability. Its customs agency even brags that its policy on re-exporting "enables traders to transit their shipments through Dubai without any hassles." Next to Dubai's main port is the Jebel Ali free trade zone, a haven for freewheeling international companies. Our organization has documented 264 firms from Iran and 44 from rogue regimes like Syria and North Korea. 53 Poem found written on the bathroom wall in a rest stop near Bonn. 54 from Histoire de Langued'oc, prepared by a Languedoc separatist earthworks collective,, Les Cathares-Fourieristes DSLReclam 55 John Wasmod of Homburg's Tractatus contra hereticos, beckardos, lulhardos, et swestriones, 1396, quoted in Robert S. Lerner, The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages, U of Notre Dame Press, 1972. 56 [Verbal description] sins against nature in attempting to tell the ear what ought to be told to the eye. . .[Poetry proceeds] by mentioning the individual componehtsw of beauty, and these are separated from one another by time, so that time itself interposes a forgetting between them . .The poet is unable to construct that harmonic total effect which is formed . . . through conjoint presence . .one part procees out of t he other successively; the succeeding one does not arise without its predecessor dying. Quotations from L Da Vinci's Tratatto, taken from Leo Steinberg's Leonardo's Incessant Last Supper, 2001, NY: ZONE Books, p27 & n14. 57 Historia de Sancta Maria Magdalena, Iacobus de Voragine (A.D. 1230-1298) [...] Cum autem quadam die Maria Magdalena praedicaret, praedictus princeps dixit ei: "Putas posse defendere fidem, quam praedicas!" Cui illa: "Equidem illam defendere praesto sum, utpote quotidianis miraculis et praedicatione magistri mei Petri, qui Romae praesidet, roboratam." Cui princeps cum coniuge dixit: "Ecce dictis tuis per omnia obtemperare parati sumus, si a Deo, quem praedicas, nobis filium impetrabis. - "Propter hoc"' inquit Magdalena, "non remanebit." Tunc beata Maria pro ipsis Dominum exoravit, ut sibi filium concedere dignaretur. Cuius preces Dominus exaudivit et matrona illa concepit. Tunc vir eius coepit velle proficisci ad Petrum, ut probaret, si, ut Magdalena de Christo praedicaverat, sic veritas se haberet. Cui uxor dixit: "Quid est, domine! Putasne sine me proficisci! Absit. Te enim recedente recedam; te veniente veniam; te quiescente quiescam." Cui vir ait:'Non sic fiet, domina, etenim cum sis gravida et in mari sint infinita pericula, de facili periclitari posses. Domi igitur quiesces et possessionibus nostris curam impendes." Et contra illa instabat femineum nec mutans femina morem et cum lacrimis pedibus eius obvoluta, quod petebat, tandem obtinuit. Maria ergo humeris eorum signum crucis imposuit, ne eos antiquus hostis in aliquo itinere impediret. Navem igitur omnibus necessaris copiose onerantes, ceteia, quae habebant, in Mariae Magdalenae custodia relinquentes proficisci coeperunr. Iamque unius diei et noctis cursu consummato coepit nimium mare intumescere, ventus flare, ita ut omnes et maxime matrona gravida et debilis tam saeva inundatione fluctuum quassati gravissimis angustiis urgerentur, in tantum, quod in eam subito dolor partus irruit et inter angustias ventris et pressuras temporis filium parturiens exspiravit. Natus igitur puerulus palpitabat et mamillarum maternarum quaerens solacia lamentabiles dabat vagitus. Proh dolor! Et natus est infans vivus et matricida effectus. Mori eum convenit, cum non sit, qui vitae tribuat alimentum. Quid faciet peregrinus, et cum uxorem mortuam videat et puerum vagientem querulis vocibus matris mammam appetentem! Lamentabatur plurimum et dicebat: "Heu miser, quid facies! Filium habere desiderasti, et matrem cum filio perdidisti." Nautae acclamabant dicentes: "Proiciatur in mare hoc corpus, antequam insimul pereamus. Quamdiu enim nobiscum fuerit, haec quassatio non cessabit." Et cum corpus appredendissent, ut illud in mare iactarent: "Parcite" inquit peregrinus, "parcite, et si nec mihi nec matri parcere volueritis, misereamini saltem parvuli vagientis. Sinite modicum et sustinete, si forte mulier prae dolore in exstasi posita adhuc valeat respirare." Et ecce non procul a navi quidam collis apparuit. Quo viso utilius esse credidit corpus et puerulum illuc deferri, quam marinis beluis ad devorandum dari et vix a nautis prece et pretio extorsit, ut illic applicarent. Cumque illic prae duritia foveam non potuisset effodere, in secretiori parte collis, chlamyde supposita, corpus collocavit et puerulum mammis eius apponens cum lacrimis ait: "O Maria Magdalena, ad perditionis meae cumulum Massiliae applicuisti: Cur infelix admonitione tua hoc iter arripui! Petiistine Deum, ut mulier mea hac de causa conciperet et periret! Ecce enim concepit et pariendo mortem subiit. Conceptus est natus, ut pereat, cum non sit, qui enutriat. Ecce, quod prece tua obtinui, tibi enim omnia mea commendavi Deoque tuo commendo. Si potens es, memor sis animae matris, et prece tua misereatur, ne pereat natus." Tunc chlamyde sua corpus cum puero circumquaque operuit et postmodum navem conscendit. Cumque ad Petrum venisset, Petrus ei obvius fuit, qui viso signo crucis in umero suo, qui esset et unde veniret, sciscitatus est. Qui omnia sibi per ordinem narravit, cui Petrus: "Pax tibi fiat, bene venisti et utili consiiio credidisti. Nec moleste feras, si mulier tua dormit, si parvulus cum ea quiescit. Potens enim est Dominus, cui vult, dona dare, data auferre, ablata restituere, et maerorem tuum in gaudium commutare." Petrus autem ipsum in Hierosolymam duxit et omnia loca, in quibus Christus praedicavit et miracula fecit, locum etiam, in quo passus est et in quo caelos adscendit, eidem ostendit. Cumque de fide fuisset instructus diligenter a Petro, biennii spatio iam elapso navem adscendit repatriare curans. Cum igitur navigarent, Domino disponente iuxta collem, in quo corpus uxoris cum puero positum fuerat, pervenerunt. Qui prece et pretio eos ibi ad applicandum induxit. Puerulus autem ibidem a Maria Magdalena incolumis conservatus frequenter ad litus maris procedebat et ibidem, ut puerorum moris est, cum lapillis et glareis ludere solitus erat. Et, cum applicuisset, vidit puerulum more solito in litore maris cum lapillis ludentem, et quid esset, admirari non desinens, de scapha exsiliit. Quem videns parvulus, cum numquam tale quid vidisset, expavit et ad solita matris recurrens ubera occulte sub chlamyde latitabat. Peregrinus vero, ut manifestius videret, illuc accessit et puerulum pulcherrimum matris ubera sugentem invenit et accipiens puerum ait: "0 beata Maria Magdalena, quam felix essem, quam mihi cuncta prospera advenissent, si mulier respiraret et mecum repatriare valeret. Scio equidem, scio et procul dubio credo, quod tu, quae puerum dedisti et in hac rupe per biennium pavisti, poteris matrem suam prece tua pristinae restituere sanitati." Ad haec verba mulier respiravit et quasi a somno evigilans ait: "Magni meriti es, beata Maria Magdalena, et gloriosa, quae in partus mei pressuris obstetricis implevisti officium et in omnibus necessitatibus ancillae servitium explesti." Quo audito peregrinus admirans ait: "Vivisne uxor mea dilecta?" Cui illa: "Vivo equidem et nunc primo de peregrinatione, de qua et tu venisti, venio. Et sicut beatus Petrus te Hierosolymam duxit et omnia loca, in quibus Christus passus est, mortuus et sepultus, et alia plura loca ostendit, sic et ego una cum beata Maria Magdalena duce et comite vobiscum fui et conspecta memoriae commendavi." Et incipiens loca omnia, in quibus Christus passus est, et miracula, quae viderat, adeo plene explicuit, ut nec in aliquo deviaret. Tunc peregrinus recepta coniuge et puero navem laetus conscendit et paulo post Massiliae portibus applicuerunt et ingressi invenerunt beatam Mariam Magdalenam cum suis discipulis praedicantem. Et eius pedibus cum lacrimis provoluti omnia, quae iis acciderant, narraverunt et a beato Maximino sacrum baptisma susceperunt. Tunc in civitate Massiliae omnium idolorum templa destruentes Christi ecclesias construxerunt et beatum Lazarum in eiusdem civitatis episcopum unanimiter elegerunt. Tandem divino nutu ad Aquensem civitatem venerunt et populum illum ad fidem Christi per multa miracula adduxerunt. [...] 58 John Wasmod of Homburg's Tractatus contra hereticos, beckardos, lulhardos, et swestriones, 1396, quoted in Robert S. Lerner, The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages, U of Notre Dame Press, 1972. 59 >>Torture >>The United States Underground >>by Silvia Baraldini >> >>(Silvia remains under house arrest in Italy under terms of her >>repatriation as a US political prisoner) >>http://www.prisonactivist.org/pps+pows/silvia.html >> >>from Il Manifesto, May 11, 2004, p. 10 (translated) >> >> >> >>Faced with the catastrophic reality of the tortures inflicted on >>Iraqi citizens by U.S. and British occupation forces, the defense of >>the two governments has been centered on the identification of the >>"bad apples" responsible for what could otherwise be characterized >>as exceptional episodes -- episodes extraneous to the democratic >>systems of the two countries. Since The New Yorker published the >>first images, we have been inundated by interviews with inhabitants >>of the rural towns from which the soldiers accused of the torture >>originate. Full of condmenation and dismay, these interviews >>attempt to reassure us of the deep democratic sentiment that >>animates Americans. >> >>Curiously, not a single interview has appeared with that part of the >>U.S. population that would be able to testify to the torture, abuses >>of power, sexual violence and conditioning that it has personally >>suffered. I am speaking of the prisoners, both political and >>social, who have served their sentences in the special sections of >>Marion, Illinois; Florence, Colorado; Pelican Bay, California; >>Lexington, Kentucky; and Alderson, West Virginia; to name some of >>the most miserable known. If a journalist had tracked down Rafael >>Cancel Miranda, he would be able to testify that in the >>not-so-distant years of the 1970s, in the undergrounds of Marion, >>prisoners were handcuffed to walls and left for hours. Frank "Big >>Black" Smith would be able to recount how all of the prisoners of >>Attica, at the end of their rebellion, were stripped nude and forced >>to submit while members of the National Guard beat them with clubs >>and rifles, and how he, himself, an ex-football player, was forced >>to remain on his feet for interminable hours with a football held >>beneath his chin, surrounded by soldiers ready to beat him if he >>dropped it. Samuel Brown would be able to tell us about his severe >>neck injury that was purposely left untreated as a strategy for >>softening him before he was interrogated by the FBI. And Sekou >>Odinga could tell us how, after he was arrested, his chest was used >>as an ashtray by members of the task force that interrogated him. >>Alejandrina Torres would be able to tell us about himself -- a >>Puerto Rican political prisoner later pardoned by President Clinton, >>who was violated in federal prison in Phoenix, Arizona, not with a >>broomstick but with the gloved fists of a so-called nurse. Or Susan >>Rosenberg, who spent two months in the winter of 1988 without sleep >>in a cell of the special unit of Lexington Prison where the lights >>were turned on every twenty minutes, where the curtainless shower is >>observed by one of the 21 surveillance cameras of that unit, who >>experienced the humiliation of having to ask a male prison guard for >>a tampon every time she needed one. The women prisoners in Georgia >>state prison and in Dublin federal prison would be able to testify >>how in prison one can be sexually abused by the same individuals who >>are supposed to protect you. In Pelican Bay and Florence, >>journalists would find the prisons upon which Guantanamo was >>modelled. >> >> >>The reality that is inexorably emerging from Iraqi prisons should >>not surprise us. For years, Amnesty International, Human Rights >>Watch, and the American Civil Liberties Union have all denounced the >>analagous conditions that exist in special prisons in the United >>States. >> 60 Richard Bruce Nugent, Gay Rebel of the Harlem Renaissance. Thomas H. Wirth, ed. Duke U Press, 2002. 61 Ven. Khenchen Thrangu, Rinpoche, transcribed by Gaby Hollman, translated from Tibetan by Ken Holmes, Namo Buddha Seminar, Glasgow, Scotland, 1993. 62 Bohr, Heisenberg and Mermin citations from Nick Herbert, Quantum Reality Beyond the New Physics: An Excursion into Metaphysics and the Meaning of Reality, NY: Anchor Press, 1987. 63 Freidrich A. Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, vol. 1, London: Routledge, 1982. 64 All quotations from S. Rheinfahrt, My Struggles Against Fascism and Eurocommunism, as told to Joseph Jamal,. Abner Cransky, trans. Berlin: Falsus Verlag, 1994. 65 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow took this name for Lake Superior from Henry Schoolcraft, amateur ethnologist and fabulator of Menominee and Chippewa tales. 66 . 1. A subcortical group of nuclei in the forebrain which serves a. the limbic system, b. the autonomic nervous system (see FIGHT-OR-FLIGHT), and c. the endocrine system. 2. A thumbnail-sized neuro structure which organizes basic nonverbal responses, such as aggression, anger , sexuality, and fear . Evolution I. The hypothalamus has deep evolutionary roots in the chemical sense of smell Evolution II. As the forebrain's main chemical-control area, the hypothalamus regulates piscine adrenal medullae, chemical-releasing glands which, in living fish, consist of two lines of cells near the kidneys. The adrenal medullae pump adrenaline into the bloodstream, from where it effects every cell in the fish's body. ( N.B. : In humans, adrenaline speeds up body movements, strengthens muscle contractions, and energizes the activity of spinal-cord paleocircuits.) RESEARCH REPORTS: 1. Pathways involved in oral and genital functions "converge in that part of the hypothalamus in which electrical stimulation results in angry and defensive behaviour" (MacLean 1973:44). 2. In higher vertebrates, the olfactory system and the hypophysis [i.e., the pituitary gland (which is linked to the hypothalamus)] "are derived from a single patch of embryonic [neuro]ectoderm" (Stoddart 1990:13 Copyright © 1998 - 2001 (David B. Givens/Center for Nonverbal Studies) 67 H. W. Longfellow, The Song of Hiawatha 68 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Idomeneo, re di Creta. 1781. libretto by Giambattista Varesco, Los Angeles Opera, September 9, 2004. Placido Domingo, Idomeneo. Adriana Damato, Ilia. Kent Nagano, Conductor. (orig. Flanders Opera, Belgium, dir. By David McVicar) 69 Version 2, 9/11/04 (former version titled No Matter Who Wins, 9/06/04) 70 Memo to other leftists like me: read Multitude. It's irritating in its generalities and sometimes too affectless, but it helps. It helped me realize that I can't rely on old concepts like US imperialism to understand what's going on. The blame for attacks on US targets is not just on the US. The changes in the global world order are not just a super-imperialism of one super-power, but a global contestation for power between the trans-national empire of capital and what Negri and Hardt call the multitude. It makes sense out of things that can otherwise be addressed only through righteous but ignorant indignation. 71 This country, like Rome under the lesser Caesars, may send out soldiers for 400 years or so, but it will decline into a third-rate power. In its decline it will look like the England of the 20st Century, holding on to coalitions of the willing, fighting border wars continually, striking out with money and technology at competitors and friends, bewildered that others don't like us, and disappointed at our seeming failure to keep hope alive. Our overweening pride, inflated by the dollars everyone in the world clamored for, has made our vision too dim to notice that we, also like Imperial Romans or Brits, are no longer the vital, ingenious frontierspeople we liked to imagine ourselves. 72 "Liebst du um Schönheit," Clara Weick Schumann (1891-1896) setting of If you love for beauty, by Friedrich Rückert (1788-1866)  73 -Robert Schumann came to live and study with Clara Wieck's father in 1830, and asked permission to marry Clara in 1837; Wieck objected, and did all he could to prevent the wedding before Clara's 21st birthday when she would be legally able without his consent; Robert and Clara filed a lawsuit, and won, but out of spite went ahead and married the day before her birthday, September 12, 1840.  -They first lived in Leipzig where they both taught in the Conservatory there; they moved to Dresden in 1844, to Düsseldorf in 1850.  -Their children were: Marie (1841-1929), Elise (1843-1928), Julie (1845-72), Emil (1846-47), Ludwig (1848-99), Ferdinand (1849-91), Eugenie (1851-1938), Felix (1854-79).  -Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) met the Schumanns in 1853, and remained a dear friend of both while they lived. -Robert's mental health was poor, and following a suicide attempt in 1854, he was committed to the asylum at Endenich; he is said to have suffered from manic depression and psychosis.  743 Reference to scientific articles on examination of the hypothalamus, conducted by Simon LeVay, Ph.D. , who claims this organ is markedly smaller in gay males and females than in heterosexual males. LeVay supports the thesis expressed in The Man Who Would Be Queen, that there are no "true" transgenders. The author, J. Michael Bailey, a faculty member at Northwestern University in Chicago, bases his assertion on Prof. Ray Blanchard's theory of autogynephilia, a term described as love of oneself as a woman. It suggests that there are only two types of male-to-female transsexuals: homosexual transsexuals and autogynephiles. [The views of Blanchard, Bailey and LeVay have been taken up by the Christian fundamentalist right to further their eradication of transgender persons and of homosexual behaviors. Ed.] 75 Jean-Leon Gerôme (1824-1904) oil on canvas, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA, USA. 76 Lacie & Zarkov's Comparison of MDA to MDMA: "The differences from MDM(A) are striking: MDA is more hallucinogenic with noticeable closed eye imagery, is a much greater aesthetic enhancer, especially of people and of music; is more euphoric; more "drug-like", a heavier and more obviously body-involved trip. Tactile sensation is more powerful, erotic and noticeable on MDA. Physical effects are more up-front: gastric upset, pupil dilation, water retention, limbic arousal. On the whole, we find MDA a more enjoyable and interesting trip; longer lasting and more sexual/sensual. Our favorite characteristic is that one retains an interesting psychedelic ideation on MDA, rather then the feeling-oriented, but rather idealess thinking of MDM(A). 77 Alan Hovhaness (rec. 4/28/1958), Fritz Reiner, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, RCA Victor. 78 Olivier Messsiaen (rec. 1969?), Olivier Messiaen, organ, aux grandes orgues Cavaillé-Coll de l'eglise de la Sainte Trinité à Paris, Erato Recordings. 79 György Ligeti (rec. April 7-9, 2001) for 12 female voices and orchestra, Asko/Schönberg Ensemble, Reinbert de Leeup, conductor, Teldec Classics. 80 Luciano Berio (rec. 10/79), Kölner Runfunkchor, Kölner Rundfunk Sinfonie Orchester, Luciano Berio, conductor, DGG. 81 Morten Lauridsen (rec. 1998), Los Angeles Master Chorale, Salamunovich, Director), Rubeda Canis Musica. 82 Mud and Water: The Collected Teachings of Zen Master Bassui, translated by Arthur Bravermann. (2000, Wisdom Publications). 83 Robert and Clara's children were: Marie (1841-1929), Elise (1843-1928), Julie (1845-72), Emil (1846-47), Ludwig (1848-99), Ferdinand (1849-91), Eugenie (1851-1938), Felix (1854-79). -Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) met the Schumanns in 1853, and remained a dear friend of both while they lived. -Robert's mental health was poor, and following a suicide attempt in 1854, he was committed to the asylum at Endenich; he is said to have suffered from manic depression and psychosis.  -After Robert's death, Clara moved to Berlin in 1857, where she performed, taught, and edited Robert's works and letters; she was known as a champion and interpreter of the music of Schumann and Brahms, and was a direct influence on their music.  Her last home was in Frankfurt. -Brahms never married. Brahms' love for Clara was made somewhat public when he dedicated several songs to her. Clara Schumann died in 1889. Brahms attended her graveside funeral. It was a cold and damp day and Brahms caught a "chill." He died just a few months later. Was it from the chill? Or was it from a lonely heart? You decide.   84 Benno Sarel, La class ouvriere d'Allemagne orientale (1945-1958) (Paris:Editionsw ouvrieres, 1958. quoted in Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire New York: Penguin Press, 2004. 85 Jomo Kenyatta was born at Ng'enda in the Gatundu Division of Kiambu in the year 1889. As a boy, Kenyatta assisted his grandfather, who was a medicine man. Kenyatta took interest in Agikuyu culture and customs. He received his preliminary education at the Scottish Mission Center at Thogoto. He also received elementary technical education there. He was later baptized a Christian with the name of John Peter, which he changed to Johnstone. He changed his name to Jomo in 1938. He lived among Masai relatives in Narok during World War I. Here he worked as a clerk to an Asian trader. After the war, he served as a storekeeper to a European firm. At this time, he began wearing his beaded belt Kinyatta. In 1928, he published his newspaper, Muigwithania that dealt with Kikuyu culture and new farming methods. KCA sent him to England in 1929 to influence British opinion on tribal land. After touring some parts of Europe, including Russia in 1930, he returned to Kenya to fight the case on female circumcision with the Scottish Mission. He supported the independent schools. In 1931, he again went to England to present a written petition to parliament. He met Mahatma Gandhi of India in November 1932. After giving evidence before the Morris Carter Commission, he proceeded to Moscow to learn Economics but was forced to return to Britain by 1933. During the gold rush, land in Kakamega reserve was being distributed to settlers. This made Kenyatta angry and spoke about Britain's injustice. For which reason he was dubbed a communist by the British. He taught Gikuyu at the University College, London and also wrote a book on the Kikuyu language in 1937. Under Professor Malinowski, he studied Anthropology at the famous London School of Economics (LSE). In 1938, his book, Facing Mount Kenya saw the light of day. It was about Kikuyu customs. During the World War II , Kenyatta served on a farm in the United Kingdom, while owning his own farm there. He married Edna Clarke, mother of his son, Peter Magana in 1942. Along with other African leaders, including Nkrumah of Ghana, he took part in the 5th Pan-African Congress of 1945 in Manchester. On October 20, 1952, Sir Evelyn, Baring, newly appointed Governor of Kenya of two weeks, declared a state of emergency in the country. Jomo Kenyatta and other prominent leaders were arrested. His trial at Kapenguria on April 8, 1953, for managing Mau Mau, was a mockery of justice. (Contemporary opinion linked him with the Mau Mau but later research claims otherwise. From Wikipedia.org 8 Aug, 2004. ) He was sentenced to 7 years in imprison (sic) with hard labor and to indefinite restrictions thereafter. On August 21, 1961, nine years after his arrest, he was freed from all restrictions. On June 1, 1963, Mzee Kenyatta became the first Prime Minister of self-governing Kenya. At midnight on December 12, 1963, at Uhuru Stadium, amid world leaders and multitudes of people, the Kenya flag was unfurled. A new nation was born. A year later on December 12, 1964, Kenya became a Republic within the Commonwealth, with Kenyatta, as the President. Mzee Kenyatta is acclaimed from all quarters of the world as a true son of Africa, a renowned leader of vision, initiative, guidance and an international public figure of the highest caliber. Kenya under the "Baba Wa Taifa" (Father of the Nation) had enjoyed political stability, economic progress as well as agricultural, industrial and educational advances. From 1974 onwards, Mzee declared free primary education up to primary grade 4. At this stage he asked white settlers not to leave Kenya and supported reconciliation. He retained the role of prime minister after independence was declared on December 12, 1963. In 1964 he became president of the country. Kenyatta's policy was conciliatory and he kept many colonial civil servants in their old jobs. He had to ask for British troops' help against Somali revolts in the northeast and an army mutiny in Nairobi (January 1964). Some British troops remained in the country. On November 10, 1964, KADU's representatives joined the ranks of KANU, forming a single party. Kenyatta instituted relatively peaceful land reform, oversaw Kenya's joining the United Nations, and concluded trade agreements with Milton Obote's Ugandaand Julius Nyerere's Tanzania. He pursued a non-aligned foreign policy. Stability attracted foreign investment and he was an influential figure everywhere in Africa. However, his authoritarian policies drew criticism and caused dissent. (wikipedia.org) Jomo Kenyatta died on 22nd August 1978 at 3.30 A.M. in Mombasa at the age of 89 years. He was succeeded by Daniel Arap Moi. 86 " Facing Mount Kenya is a central document of the highest distinction in anthropological literature, an invaluable key to the structure of African society and the nature of the African mind Facing Mount Kenya is not only a formal study of life and death, work and play, sex and the family in one of the greatest tribes of contemporary Africa, but a work of considerable literary merit. The very sight and sound of Kikuyu tribal life presented here are at once comprehensive and intimate, and as precise as they are compassionate. Jomo Kenyatta, the grandson of a Kikuyu medicine man, was among the foremost leaders of African nationalism and one of the great men at the modern world. In the 1930's he studied at the London School of Economics and took his degree in anthropology under Bronislaw Malinowski, one result of which is this now famous account of his own Kikuyu tribe." Female Genital Cutting Education and Networking Project www.fgmnetwork.org It is important to note that Malinowski was one of the inventors of functionalist anthropology, a man, a european. His view of the actions of non-european peoples was, by force of his status as a guest in the places he studied, a laissez-faire one. It is reasonable to assume that he taught Kenyatta and other students to "understand" the function of clitoridectomy in Kikiyu culture but discouraged censorious views of such practices (e.g. those of Scottish missionaries in Kenya) on the grounds of non-intervention. Much debate has ensued over the years regarding clitoridectomy and female genital cutting. As in this excerpt from Kenyatta, the debate frequently pits live African women against tradition and yet by "defending a culture" leaves a relatively recent historical artifact in place without critique. 87 Bruce Bagemihl , Biological Exuberance. Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity. St. Martin's Press, New York, 1999, 88 Blog by Cristina Cardoze at www.rockhawk.com 89 review by Susan McCarthy at salon.com 90 review by Gert Korthof, 21 Sep 2003   (updated 24 Apr 2004) at www.wasdarwingwrong.com 91 OH-58D KIOWA WARRIOR RECONNAISSANCE/ATTACK HELICOPTER, USA The Armed OH-58D Kiowa Warrior, in service with the US Army, is supplied by Bell Helicopter Textron of Fort Worth, Texas. Around 375 Kiowas are in service and the single engine, double-bladed armed reconnaissance helicopter has been deployed in support of United States armed forces around the world including Haiti, Somalia and the Gulf of Arabia (Desert Storm and Desert Shield). In 2002, Kiowas were deployed as part of NATO's SFOR forces in Bosnia and, in 2003, 120 Kiowas were deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The primary mission of the helicopter is in the scout attack role. The helicopter can be optionally equipped to carry out transport and utility roles using equipment kits installed externally on existing hard points. A cargo carrying hook is rated to carry loads up to 2,000lb. Emergency casualty evacuation can be carried out transporting two casualties on litters (stretchers), plus over 320kg of supplies to an operating radius of more than 185km. The Kiowa can be used for insertion of up to six troops for critical point security missions. WEAPONS The OH-58D is equipped with two universal quick change weapons pylons. Each pylon can be armed with two Hellfire missiles, seven Hydra 70 rockets, two air-to-air Stinger missiles or one .50 calibre fixed forward machine gun. Mission processors control the suite of mission subsystems via a Military Standard 1553B bus. An onboard computer provides laser ranging and target location within 10m. COUNTERMEASURES The countermeasures suite includes an AN/ALQ-144 infrared jammer, radar warning receivers against pulsed and continuous wave radars and a laser warning detector. FIRE CONTROL AND OBSERVATION The distinctive Mast Mounted Sight (MMS) from Boeing, situated above the rotor blades, enables the Kiowa Warrior to operate by day and night and to engage the enemy at the maximum range of the weapon systems and with the minimum exposure of the helicopter. The mast mounted sight contains a suite of sensors which includes: a high resolution television camera for long range target detection; a thermal imaging sensor for navigation, target acquisition and designation; a laser rangefinder/designator for target location and guidance of the Hellfire missiles and designation for Copperhead artillery rounds; and a boresight assembly which provides in-flight sensor alignment. The laser rangefinder/designator is also employed for handoff to an AH-1 Cobra helicopter for TOW missile engagements. DRS Technologies is currently responsible for the contract for the sensor suite. NAVIGATION AND COMMUNICATIONS The US Army OH-58D is equipped with an attitude heading reference system (AHRS) from Litton and an integrated global positioning system and inertial navigation system, GPS/INS. A data-loading module allows the pre-mission storing of navigation waypoint data and radio frequencies. The mission equipment includes an Improved Data Modem for Digital Battlefield Communications, (IDMDBC). The communications system is based on the Have-Quick UHF and SINCGARS FM anti-jam radio. ENGINE The OH-58D Helicopter is equipped with a Model 250 485kW turbine engine from Rolls-Royce. The transmission has a transient power level of 475kW. The engine and transmission system have been upgraded to provide high performance levels in high temperature and extreme climates. (information supplied by www.army-technology.com/projects/kiowa "the website for the defense industry" 92 website: www.shephard.co.uk 93 The anachronistic use of the word revolutionary is permissible here as these Brethren and Sistren of the Free Spirit are anarchists avant la lettre. 94 see Chap 35 95 see Chap 25 96 cf. Chap 23 97 see Chap 36 98 see Chap 48 99 100 directed by William Arntz, Betsy Chasse, Mark Vicente, 2004. 101 Heisenberg's discussions moved rather freely and quickly from talk about experimental inaccuracies to epistemological or ontological issues and back again. However, ontological questions seemed to be of somewhat less interest to him. For example, there is a passage (Heisenberg, 1927, p. 197), where he discusses the idea that, behind our observational data, there might still exist a hidden reality in which quantum systems have definite values for position and momentum, unaffected by the uncertainty relations. He emphatically dismisses this conception as an unfruitful and meaningless speculation, because, as he says, the aim of physics is only to describe observable data. Similarly in the Chicago Lectures (Heisenberg 1930, p. 11) he warns against the fact that the human language permits the utterance of statements which have no empirical content at all, but nevertheless produce a picture in our imagination. He notes, "One should be especially careful in using the words 'reality', 'actually', etc., since these words very often lead to statements of the type just mentioned." So, Heisenberg also endorsed an interpretation of his relations as rejecting a reality in which particles have simultaneous definite values for position and momentum. http://www.aip.org/history/heisenberg/p08c.htm 102 Bohr denied that classical concepts could be used to attribute properties to a physical world in-itself behind the phenomena, i.e. properties different from those being observed. In contrast, classical physics rests on an idealization, he said, in the sense that it assumes that the physical world has these properties in-itself, i.e. as inherent properties, independent of their actual observation. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-copenhagen/ 103 Bohm suggests that the whole universe can be thought of as a kind of giant, flowing hologram, or holomovement, in which a total order is contained, in some implicit sense, in each region of space and time. The explicate order is a projection from higher dimensional levels of reality, and the apparent stability and solidity of the objects and entities composing it are generated and sustained by a ceaseless process of enfoldment and unfoldment, for subatomic particles are constantly dissolving into the implicate order and then recrystallizing. The quantum potential postulated in the causal interpretation corresponds to the implicate order. But Bohm suggests that the quantum potential is itself organized and guided by a superquantum potential, representing a second implicate order, or superimplicate order. Indeed he proposes that there may be an infinite series, and perhaps hierarchies, of implicate (or "generative") orders, some of which form relatively closed loops and some of which do not. Higher implicate orders organize the lower ones, which in turn influence the higher. Bohm believes that life and consciousness are enfolded deep in the generative order and are therefore present in varying degrees of unfoldment in all matter, including supposedly "inanimate" matter such as electrons or plasmas. He suggests that there is a "protointelligence" in matter, so that new evolutionary developments do not emerge in a random fashion but creatively as relatively integrated wholes from implicate levels of reality. The mystical connotations of Bohm's ideas are underlined by his remark that the implicate domain "could equally well be called Idealism, Spirit, Consciousness. The separation of the two -- matter and spirit -- is an abstraction. The ground is always one." http://www.spaceandmotion.com/Physics-David-Bohm-Holographic-Universe.htm 104 Addiction is another completely unscientific concept. usually applied in order to enforce socially approved behaviors; "addicts" and "homosexuals" are, for example, the "carriers" of AIDS. See "Epidemics of the Will," in Eve Kosovsky Sedgwick's Tendencies (Duke:1993) 105 An entity named Ramtha is channeled by JZ Knight in What the Bleep: "One of the great enigmas that scientists have studied in the last decade is Ramtha, a mystic, philosopher, master teacher and hierophant. His partnership with American woman JZ Knight, his channel, still baffles scholars." [Ed: It certainly baffles me-- see ramtha.com ]