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A Century Is Nothing A Century Is Nothing
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Subject to Change Subject to Change
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Ice girl in Banlung Ice girl in Banlung
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Entries in Satire (35)

Saturday
Apr032010

Priests Fool with boys

Greetings,

(Editor's note. Due to extreme pressure from conservative groups, abused children and hysterical media corporations involving the Catholic Church scandals revealing deep dark secrets, here is an excerpt from the vaguely popular epic, A Century Is Nothing.)

“May we resume our deliberations now?” said a pedophile priest with a Big Unit mobile attached to his ear. He listened to a long distance confession from Boston. Not wanting to make an ass of himself in public, he knew he’d face felony charges when they found his big hand had been on the little hand. 

 He’d knew he’d never make Cardinal being a stool pigeon without a prosthetic leg to stand on. He whispered to the congregation. “We have to make plans for the conquest. The heathen are massing their calvary as we speak, as we procrastinate on these most important matters of church and state.” 

They were in rapture and supported his religious ideology. A woman named Faith based her initiative in him.

Worm Hole, a mathematician, manipulated division tables on a child’s place mat covered with carnivores from a cereal box high in fiber. He created a series of black holes to explore their gravitational pull. Space, to him, was more beautiful and more mysterious than Time. 

“And now we’re here,” he said pointing to a small blue marble floating on a universal map. “Did you know the amazing thing is how many people don’t know it or get it?” 

“Yes,” said a knight errant, “and there are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on all the earth’s beaches. Try putting that into your hourglass!” Everybody laughed except Bumsfeld and his buddy Dicky Chainsaw from Why O Ming.

Some knights spinning around the round table predicted the campaign might end by spring. They didn’t know what year so they surmised seasons. 

Veterans, children and women knew it’d be years if not decades. Someone had to take the fall. Someone had to clean leaves clogging rivers of tears out of the way. Seasons were theirs for the taking. It was a crap shoot and they all knew it. 

The dice man played his hand. “Snake eyes!” he shouted and the room became quieter than a field of mass graves where children played with unexploded ordnance. 

“We hit a Blue Cross building yesterday,” a psychotic coalition general said. “Was it red or blue, I can’t remember. You know how confusing things get in war.”

“Oh no,” said the priest, “not another cross to bear.”

At the word bear the mathematician looked up from his predator place mat in horror. A huge Alaskan brown bear with red fire in his eyes charged out of the forest carrying a decapitated wildlife ranger. 

“We have a situation,” radioed a Cobra helicopter pilot circling the grizzly scene.
“You have permission to fire,” crackled his radio. 

He pressed his magic red button. A $50 million dollar Hellfire Tomahawk Missile blasted the beast to kingdom come.

“We’re saved!” yelled gangs of orphan children. They gutted the beast immediately with their knives and daggers salvaging every part of the animal. A kid named Export packed the testicles in Ice-9 for shipment to a Hong Kong pharmacy. 

Easy money.

Authorities arrived and took the priest away for questioning after numerous children accused him of sexual abuse. He requested to speak with someone at the Holy See.

“We’ll see what we can do,” said a member of the Vatican SWAT team busy preventing anguished angry parents from strangling him with his rosary.

“Crucify the hypocrite!” yelled the high masses.

Priests in crisis management modus operandus looked at new cardinal points on their compass. They needed a new direction, an alibi. 

“Roast him over an open friar,” sobbed a sacred heart mother of all prattle battles.
“Rest in Peace,” sang a choir of angels.
“Let him write a check,” a banker said. 
“There’ll be a penalty for early withdrawals,” drawled a teller selling used condoms.

“Any causalities?” queried a Foreign Legion officer just back from the North African front where he was shortlisted as MIA. He’d hitched a ride with a camel caravan across Oman heading to southern Iraqi marshlands.

“Friendly fire wiped out a few of our forces which is to be expected,” reported an analyst. “Some journalists, photographers and an Italian intelligence agent bit the bullet so to speak. They’ve filed their final report. Wrong coordinates I’d suggest. They’ll be embedded forever. We also have unconfirmed reports that local Iraqi and Afghan hospitals are overwhelmed with dead, dying, mangled, amputees, grieving mothers and widows. 500,000 and rising.”

“So it goes,” said a historian turning their hourglass over watching Sands Of Time fall in love with gravity.

“We suspect they are executing their own,” a common house junior minion added. “Meanwhile, we’ve bombed beans, rice, blankets, cooking oil, water treatment facilities, power plants and oil refineries. The price of crude is escalating as members of OPEC agree to disagree. Over $50 a barrel by now. Any sheik maintaining four wives has to keep pumping. Basic staples went through the roof at the fire sale. The cost of staples are driven by supply and demand.”

“Humanitarian aid is a noble casualty for the price of peace,” said an officer from a Rio slum waiting for extradition on mass murder charges. “Politically cheaper than body bags.” 

“Those are back ordered,” said a supply clerk from Kansas City with an 8th grade education. “77,000 body bags were shipped to a southern Italian military installation before we invaded with the intention to occupy. Boxes of imported democracy lie stranded offshore of drained Basra marshes. Pallets of democracy on trucks are melting in desert heat along the road from Damascus and Kuwait.”

“We can’t wait. We’re screwed,” said a two-faced selected Fascist president from O-Zone. “They bought the ranch and I’m moving to Argentina a.s.a.p.”

“No we’re not,” whined a minimum wage slave. “When the factories are finished making more precision weapons of mass destruction, recycled petroleum products for happy meals and flags, they will reconfigure their machines and production quotas.”

“May I speak?” requested a poet. 

“If you must,“ replied an officer long in the canine tooth buffing his medals with Brasso.

The poet tuned his Arabic oud instrument of mass distraction.

Parts were back ordered 
including body bags
their future called for heavy lifting
 
heavy duty cleaning materials
manipulation of material 
inside entropy
 
Refugees streamed into screaming 
broadband media found work 
in multinational international conglomerates
 
manufacturing sectors grinded poverty 
constructing their dream for export
 
Near the door to their cave of hunger 
at refugee camps 
they blended barley seeds 
with leaves of grass for delicious breads

“Ingenious,” said a literary critic from The Times. “Uses language in free imaginary and metaphorical ways. Gives it a goof feel.”

“We’ve allocated a percentage to Asian sweat shops,” said a textile importer. “To be specific, China, Thailand, Saipan, Malaysia, Burma and Cambodia - where one-third of the 14 million people make less than 56¢ a day - and Laotian factory slaves are working overtime. They have absolutely no choice in the matter and a buck a day is a hell of a deal. Once the feds and W.T.O. leave us alone we should realize a handsome profit when all is said and done.”

“That’s nothing,” said an analyst, “it’s a two prong effort. We construct air bases and military installations to control Middle East air space and two, we let American corporations buy all the Iraqi assets. We’re sitting on vast oil fields. Sweetmeat.”

“Perfect,” said the V.P. “Where’s my cut?” staring at a fleischer dripping blood.

A security advisor spoke. “Last March we launched the largest psychological operations in our 225 year history. We have 11 Psychological Operations Companies with 1,000 PSYOP personnel working to sway Iraqis and Afghans to join the rebuilding effort.”

“Are the PSYOP leaflets proving effective?” asked Colonel Sanderson with extra crispy clipped wings on his shoulders. He was molting. “We want them to see the democratic side of our occupation and walk on the bright side of life.”

“It's a fine line, but propaganda is more based on untruth,” said a philosopher.

End of transmission.

Metta.

 

Saturday
Mar062010

How's this compare to where you've been?

Greetings,

That's the question three fat white guys discuss at a garden restaurant on a breezy Saturday. They were dropped off by a van. They meet friends.

One wealthy self assured Arab man with forehead sunglasses and his tall sleek jaguar girlfriend in tight jeans, tighter top and rattling high heels. Her feet are small and beautiful. Coiffeur hair. Originally, "inner part of the helmet." She leaves half her noodles. A Frenchman and his pregnant wife. She laughs a lot.

The weekend escape exercise from the capital. The three amigos booked rooms for their Cambodian honeys coming down from Phnom Penh and now they're drinking beer. The waft of suds and distinct European body odor drifts along the river. Intelligent life on Earth is a rumor.

The answer? "Now we've got women," said one man.

Sounds like a history story about a group of seafaring men who raided a Mediterranean city. They kidnapped all the women. The city men were pissed off and raided another coastal town, kidnapping all the women there. This is how war started. Revenge baby.

One day the women were asked about this event. "No," they said. "We weren't kidnapped. We went willingly."

No squeeze, no please.

This is a five minute free writing exercise. Keep your hand moving. The birds are singing. 

I live at Orchid. Orchid is important because I love orchids. They have many yellow and purple orchids growing, hanging, from planters. I feel great with orchids. I am a traveling gardener with unlimited potentials. Plural.

I remember many orchids in Indonesia. They were cheap. I decorated the front porch with multiple colorful orchids - red, orange, purple, white, and yellow in clay pots with a charcoal base. Orchids took me to the mountains to see my wild friends. (5 minutes)

At 7:30 a.m. the Orchid restaurant is filled with the smell of burning fires from refuse, plastic bags, and organic material. German travelers spit out their harsh dictatorial guttural sense of determination. It is harsh. They are planning to invade, to provoke a war to justify their extreme greed for land and slaves.

Teutonic tongues mix with screeching Khmer tongues. Question. What is louder than a group of Khmer people? Answer. Another group of Khmer people.

Babbling comparisons display firm purpose. They establish their memory-fiction with a drunken slow administrative tone. A singing bird says, "Good-bye, I'm taking wing. The sky is my refuge from description. The divine details create uncertainty in my grand plan."

Khmer children bleed water.

ROUGE: a rainbow with the smell of laughing birds, clouds and rivers. Milling around.

Thank you for your attention.

Metta.

The Temple of Literature, Ha Noi.

Warrior statue, ink. Xiamen, China.

Sunday
Jan172010

Feel with camera

Greetings,

How many tourists see only through their camera? Millions. They feel the experience of 8th century artistic splendor with only their cameras, these cold impersonal little tools. Their entire experience is defined by their camera. It's not about knowing, understanding the people, culture, food, art, music, and language. It's about feeling with a camera.

They've learned through hard fast lessons to trust the machine. It is their weapon against mediocrity and boredom and shallow emptiness. They don't comprehend the intricacies of the machine. They believe it can and will save them. The machine controls them. They gratefully accept this reality.

They press optical machines against their faces, piercing retinas, flickering lids. Point and shoot. They lower the device and stare with hard lost eyes at the image, their memory. They judge it. Evaluate. DELETE!

Shoot again. Point. Shoot. Delete. Repeat. A snapshot. Snap a shot. Preserve this moment forever. Quick! They must go. They must move to the next great big thing. They are in a hurry. The tuk-tuk driver is impatient. He wants more money for his time. He waited when they slept. He waited when they stuffed eggs, watermelon and soft bread into tired faces. They ate like animals. They point and shoot. They delete.

Hurry! They have no time to see with their obscurity. This loss, this sense of amnesia envelops them. It is a dark cloud of forgetting. They remember to forget. 

They are on a Homeric quest of infinite proportions and infinite magnitude. 

Their memory card is full. They attach electrodes to a cerebral cortex and press, ever so lightly, the Down Loadswitch. Memories of Apsara dancers, elephants, monkeys, celestial deities flicker and play on a screen behind their eyes.

Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of compassion smiles.

Metta. 

Interior, Banteay Srei, 9th C. 

Wednesday
Dec092009

Chinese kids Take the stairs

Greetings,

Yes, it's true, this passionate desire for pressure to pass exams in Chinese schools resulted in millions of children dying today in a stampede to escape their teachers after evening class. Stare at the stairs. 

-It was raining, said the authorities. Blame the rain.

-The rain had nothing to do with it, said a survivor, age 10. It was a death trap.

Chinese educational tools.

The provincial education party leader was fired. The principal of the school was fired. The parents of dead children can't do a thing because they are willing victims of the system. They have absolutely no power. How can the system fire parents? They have no idea how we run the institution. We brainwash the students and their parents.

-Mandatory study from 6:00 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. seven days a week, said the system.

-This is your DUTY as parents, said the system.

-As students, your DUTY is to pass the exams. 60 is heaven. 59 is hell. Learning is secondary. 

-We have developed safe and secure schools for your children, said the system. Look at our safety record. Look at the substandard construction materials and cost-cutting measures we have implemented to save money. Look at the bribery and corruption we've developed and nurtured to manipulate everyone from the bottom to to the top to create the finest, safest educational facilities in the entire world. We pay everyone off. 

-As you know from our long history the value of human life is worthless, said the system.

 

-Our rigid educational safety standards includes spotless bathrooms, expansive sports halls where students are required to sing silly patriotic songs about the motherland, dining halls where they eat the same mass produced rice and stringy green soggy vegetables day after day, dorm rooms where we pack 8-10 students into rat cages, an empty useless library and lots of slippery tiled stairs which, in the event of a fire, panic, epidemic, plague, tornado, hurricane, typhoon, and earthquakes - remember Sichuan and the shoddy buildings that killed 8,000 kids - become death traps. 

If you protest the death of your child because of our negligence we will:

  1. evict you from your home
  2. remove you from your plush paper pushing bureaucratic job
  3. send you to a re-education labor camp on another planet
  4. make you pay a fine
  5. hunt you down

Your teacher loves you.

 

The school, to prevent disorder and broken social harmony by distraught parents grieving over the unfortunate and unforeseen death of their young children, will hold a one minute of silence memorial tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. in honor of our loyal and patriotic students who perished in the latest tragedy in their pursuit of good grades and academic excellence.

May their untimely death serve as a reminder to all of us to remain vigilant and steadfast in our common purpose of command and control procedures.

Thank you for your attention.

Metta.

Saturday
Dec052009

clean your ears day

Greetings,

Today and everyday is International Clean Your Ears Day.

It's a big deal considering ears are so small and portable. They go everywhere you go.

The first time I had my ears physically deep cleaned was in China. A woman at the empty opera place in Chengdu one Saturday morning. I watched her doing men sitting in bamboo chairs. Her tools and instruments were clean and disinfected. Scaling, probing, curling out the wax, cotton swabs soaked in liquid. I wrote about it in 2004.

It's a great feeling. BUZZ!

WHAT?

Today was another opportunity to get the old ears cleaned. Bliss baby.

I've located a street barber here in Saigon. He's on the corner of Noise & Confusion, a main drag through the heart of a swirling mass of mobile humanity. Beep-beep.

His place is an example of real bare bones marketplace essentials. He has a very small corner of a cement area surrounded by a wire fence with a gap on the sidewalk. One old comfortable broken barber chair, a lopsided table with a mirror. On the table are his ancient well used tools; blades in cheap paper, electric trimmer, a straight razor, comb, and brush.

Cut black hair spills out of a green plastic bag near the gutter waiting for someone to collect and recycle it. Makes good stuffing. 

 

The aural chambers sing. The ear cleaning procedure removed this debris and clutter:

  1. cycle of cycles
  2. incessant trajectory of love and passion
  3. bird songs
  4. laughing children
  5. crying, whining, screaming children (many over 25)
  6. heart broken lovers
  7. distraught wandering tourists
  8. dancing fools (you are a fool whether you dance or not, so you may as well dance)
  9. distracted kind idiots yelling at high decibel levels
  10. minstrels
  11. singers, dancers, hustlers
  12. motorcycle cowboys, hookers, massage parlor slaves, rice slaves, wage slaves
  13. laughing slaves
  14. lonely philistine Filipinos in exile from martial law and massacres hanging out in a park bothering travelers, talking about the weather and shoes and jewellery on sale at discount stores
  15. bored frustrated wives and their husbands
  16. unemployed vagrants, misfits, derelicts, amputees, homeless, and orphans
  17. nutritional experts and particle collider scientists
  18. fortune tellers and assorted prototype aliens filled with monetary motivations and clear intentions
  19. visions of a supreme creator laughing at all of us
  20. people who say, "I don't have a hearing problem. I have a listening problem." 
  21. your choice. All for $2.77.

What? Open ears, open mind.

Metta.

 

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