The Writer's Almanac, a daily antedote to existential crisis

I wrote recently about Hemingway. Below is a story about the author, summed up well by Garrison Keller's The Writer's Almanac, I'd been meaning to share. Added are a few other excerpts.


The Writer's Almanac for July 21, 2009

Hemingway said, 'The writer's job is to tell the truth.' In A Moveable Feast, he wrote: 'I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, `Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.' So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say.'

There's a legend that Ernest Hemingway was once challenged to create a six-word story, and he said, 'For sale: baby shoes, never worn.' Inspired by this, an online magazine invited readers to submit their own six-word memoirs, a collection of which was published by Harper Collins in 2008 as Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure. Six-word memoirs include: 'All I ever wanted was more' and 'Moments of transcendence, intervals of yearning' and 'They called. I answered. Wrong number.'


Never pretend
to be a unicorn
by sticking a plunger on your head

"Advice to Young Poets" by Martín Espada, from The Republic of Poetry. (c) W.W. Norton & Company, 2008.


Here's part of another recent day's Almanac, from July 13, 2009

Hislop once said: 'Satire is the bringing to ridicule of vice, folly, and humbug. All the negatives imply a set of positives. Certainly in this country, you only go round saying, 'that's wrong, that's corrupt' if you have some feeling that it should be better than that. People say, 'You satirists attack everything.' Well, we don't, actually. That's the whole point.'


Money is such a treat.
It takes up so little space.
It takes no more ink
for the bank to print $9,998
than to print $1,001.
It flows, electronically;
it does not gather dust.
Like water, it (dis)solves everything.
Oceanic, it is yet as lucid
as a mountain pool; the depositor
can see clear to the sandy bottom.
It is ubiquitous and under pressure, yet
pennies don't drip from faucets.
Money is so tidy, so neat.
It is freedom in action: when you
give a twenty-buck bill to the cabbie,
you don't tell him how to spend it.
He can blow it on coke,
for all you care. All you care
about is your change. No wonder
the ex-Communists are dizzy. In
the old Soviet Union
there was nothing to buy,
nothing to spend. It was freedom
of a kind, but not our kind. We need
money, the dull electric thrill
when the automatic teller spits out
the disposable receipt.

"Money" by John Updike, from Americana and Other Poems. (c) Alfred A. Knopf, 2001.

Farewell, Sweet Ditz

Palin’s out! Though I will miss her press conferences (see below)—more like a microphone and a few parkas, but hey.

"Let me state my reasons in plain English without any sports analogies: I'm resigning because I feel I can be a more effective leader operating from the sidelines. I'm no bench warmer," she added.

The above is from Robert Lanham, or FreeWilliamsburg fame, writing for the The Huffington Post.

Here’s her last day in office spent handing out hot-dogs. See? You just can’t makeup gems like that.

Still, it’s some of the best news in a while. I don’t think (hope to hell not) she’s leaving to parley into something else political. She’s kind of leaving her state hanging, even most. How is that helpful, as she puts it? Of course she blames the “media” for making her job impossible—like she didn’t give them more than enough ammo. Republicans aren’t being supportive. (Even they can smell blood in the water, perhaps. Scandal anyone? I think (hope) she’s leaving abruptly due to some close to being found out dirty secret. I say let her keep it, as long as she agrees to stay out of politics and the lower 49.




I haven’t read the whole thing, but this is supposed to be the complete Palin in one place.

Here’s another example of her douche-y-ness, from a little ways back.

Gov. Sarah Palin (R) announced last month that she would reject nearly half of the $930 million Alaska was to receive from the stimulus package on education, health care, and labor. But after calling the stimulus "an unsustainable, debt-ridden package of funds," Palin has now decided to accept the vast majority of the package…

Wait, one more douche-bag Republican who decided to do a little posturing before caving in on the stimulus. Don’t they think the flip-flop would cancel-out any bonus points from standing up to Obama?

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R) also recently backed down from his standoff with the White House over his desire to reject stimulus funding.

Yes, that Mark Sanford. This was before the “went hiking the Appalachians” scandal. Douche.

What a Dick & Bogart's North Korean Blowout

I recently watched the infamous Nixon interview (Is it redundant to call something Nixon infamous?). Not the movie of the play based on the interview, but the original.

There’s no way Nixon could be a politician now. His speech, mannerisms, and sweaty odd-looking face would be enough to make people not vote for him—besides the crap that comes out of his mouth, not limited to the stuff Hitchens writes below.

I’ve heard it plenty before that even in his first loss to Kennedy in ‘60 was due to the discrepancy in their TV images, that Jack knew how to work it and Dick didn’t. But supposedly that must have been countered by the time he won two in a row. Whatever coaching they did, wouldn’t be enough today. The sweating thing especially: in old movies I’ve seen, there are these incredibly sweaty guys, sometimes the main character—think Carl Malden or Gene Hackman. Unless they’re in the jungle or playing sports (or having sex) stars don’t sweat, not naturally and thus uncontrolled. But just that face, too. That shit is old school.

---

Hitchens on Richard Nixon from his column at Slate.com:

The impressive thing is that even in the smallest details, the obsessive nastiness and criminality of the bigger picture is further delineated. The foulness of Nixon's mind was not "compartmentalized" between one issue and another. For example, like most "family values" Republicans, he was distressed by the Supreme Court's finding in Roe v. Wade. But, like almost anybody, he could imagine an exception where abortion might be excusable or even desirable. "There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white. Or a rape." The association of ideas between the first mental picture and the second one is so clear as to be—if it were not so hideous—pathetically laughable in an individual, and really quite alarming in a president of the United States.

As so often, his remarks about black Americans are crude and often sexual, while his innuendoes about his Jewish fellow citizens are more sinister. And, as ever, the worst interludes of anti-Semitism occur when Nixon is chatting to his friend Billy Graham. This time—February 1973—the two cronies are discussing Jewish opposition to the evangelical Campus Crusade movement. What the Jews don't seem to get, observes Nixon, is that they bring dislike on themselves. Why, just look at the record—disliked in Spain, disliked even in Germany. It could be America next. "What I really think is deep down in this country, there is a lot of anti-Semitism, and all this is going to do is stir it up." To this aperçu (incidentally suggesting that anti-Semitism "in this country" is not located all that "deep down," since it's being vented in the Oval Office), he adds, "It may be they have a death wish. You know that's been the problem with our Jewish friends for centuries."

---

Here's my impression and paraphrasing of Hitchens at a talk/interview he gave recently. I found the video at this pretty cool site: FORA.tv (thanks Allan).

(I know this poster is Chinese, but as close as I can get. Relax.)

Attempting, what he thinks an impossible task, to describe what life is like inside contemporary North Korea, Christopher Hitchens, after already likening the nation to that of George Orwell’s 1984, draws one contrast. While there is no mention of religion in the book, the state having taken the place of all things, the purported irreligious communistic country, North Korea, is, rather, similar to a particular western faith: Christianity. The president, the country’s founder, and his son, the current leader of the commi-esque party and the military, not president, are fused into one identity. Only, the president has been dead fifteen years. Hitchens quips, “It’s only one short of a trinity.”

Apparently, he's almost here. Won't that be a lot of fun. Actually, though, I feel better now that I know, like most heirs apparent of even anti-western countries, he was educated in liberal European schools. Sure, know your enemy. But now matter how careful and restrictive, they will encounter more people and things that counter the homegrown isolationist tendency.



Just look at what Europe did to Bogey.

Recess

Fuck it, I’m gonna open this thing up. I was reminded that if you’re going to bother to say it, then you might as well shout it. Shout it out loud. Okay, Kiss was the original, but I heard it said in relation to writing, recently—and it wasn't about coming out, either (although I suppose it would encompass that, too, but alas not here). And since I like to consider my self a poly-aesthete, then I’ll put my output where my mouth is—er, make that creativity, or something, where my mouth is.

Yeah, so, in this spirit, here’s a short story I wrote recently about a little boy who can’t sleep.

Recess

Ben’s tired, but not his brain. Head hums like the big, old computers at school, used only when newer, better ones weren’t working; the pushing, pulling spin of warm air through ancient-dust caked vents: cobwebbed dartboards forgotten in basements. Inside closed eyes glare TV screens. Eyes opened again. Better just to look into the dark. Spastic legs kick-off sheets, soon wrapped again, as Egyptian mummies. Ben saw a museum exhibit of a pharaoh in his tomb, hidden deep in a pyramid, surrounded by a lot of stuff. Food, water and even pets were buried in the tomb with the pharaoh. Why would he need these things when he’s dead? All is uncomfortable and nothing seems to work right.

Earlier, Ben escaped from recess. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to go outside with the rest of the kids. It was just—well, his stomach hurt. He hadn’t felt like eating breakfast or much lunch. What he was able to shove down was barely warm and unrecognizable. Just before the end of lunch, he went to the bathroom. When he was done, instead of making a left and going back to the cafeteria, he took a right, and walked towards the double-doors at the end of the hall—flat, cold black cheeks below a pair of thin glass eyes crisscrossed with wire, each a lower eyelid: sets of curved, hanging arms holding dull metal bars. Above the doorway a light-box never lit read “Emergency Exit Only, Alarm Will Sound.” Ben had never heard it go off before. He opened one of the doors, waited a couple of seconds, and walked out onto the loading dock behind the cafeteria. Ben could hear the school janitor talking on the other side of the big garbage cans.

Ben likes the janitor. He has a small hoop earring in each ear, a jerry-curl and cool tattoos. The janitor, or School Superintendent, like it’s painted on the parking space filled by his sparkly-blue van, is the coolest adult at school. He gets to wear a uniform with his name on it: “Mean” Joe Green. That’s what all the kids call him, and, just like the jolly-green giant, he towers over them.

The janitor was talking to one of the lunch-ladies about things Ben was used to hearing grownups talk about: their jobs, their kids, and money. But he was cussing, too, which Ben wasn’t used to hearing from adults, at least not in real life—they cussed all the time on cable. “Mean” Joe was talking about a “big mess” that “poor folk” had to “clean up.” What big mess? Was the janitor poor? Ben heard him say Wall Street. Wasn’t that where his dad works? Recently, Ben’s dad had been picking him up from school, something his mom had usually done. He thought he heard the lunch-lady say, “stalks.” Like beanstalks? Hopefully they were having beans for lunch tomorrow. No, she said “stocks,” like socks. Ben didn’t know what stocks were, but they sounded familiar too. His heart beat loudly in his ears. The janitor wasn’t being nice at all. Sick and hungry at the same time, his stomach still hurt. Making sure the door didn’t slam shut behind him, Ben went back inside. He ran down the hallway towards the playground, the blacktop, and recess.

A week late, but who's counting?

July 4th 2009. Louis Armstrong on the radio. It’s his birthday too.

Reading The Great Gatsby, again. Jonathan Franzen on NPR says he revisits the book every year or two. I’ve always leaned toward This Side of Paradise, though Gatsby is possibly, as the people on the radio had been proposing, the American Novel. More true lately, with the rise and fall of big things. The stock market, gangsters, bond-traders, “self-made” people, indulgence, arrogance, and tragedy shared, or not.

A good story tendrilled to today, Gatsby props up American myths to stand or fall against the winds of human frailty and liability. The land of opportunity; to do what? Somewhere to re-invent yourself, start over. That’s kind of what Agniezska, my friend, recently-citizened, whose validity I gladly vouched for to the proper authorities, said. Besides the, perhaps, more common conflation of “opportunity” and money-making, she says, to leave all you’ve known and what’s been expected of you can too be a compelling a reason to come to America.

I’ve decided to stay put today. I’m staying on the block. Not as much action as I would expect, but it’s still early. 1:52 pm.

A Louis classic is playing, a slower romantic one. He’s singing something about giving him your lips. “A Kiss to Build a Dream On,” that’s the Armstrong title.

On the corner of Gates and Marcy, the next cross street up from here at Monroe, stands the Louis Armstrong Public Houses. I wonder if anyone over there is listening to this sweet, indulgent daylong-plus retrospective of the erstwhile jazzman. It’s one of the least attractive, though they’re still common, places I’ve seen in Bed-Stuy; at least that’s within spitting distance of my place and sometimes crossed in normal route.

Firecrackers and some small fireworks have been going off for days. Today there are more, gladly. Just a bit rebellion, and not just for the metaphor of artillery, fireworks that fit well with the underlying ethos of the day: don’t tell us what to do. A silly law easily broken, a way to, more than just let off work-a-day-steam by indulging in ritual, convenient and relatively safe. We need this. For America, born of rebellious teenage-logic—like, the battle of attrition—law breaking for the sake of it, anti-authoritarianism just because, is part of its creation myth.

Triangulated by a milk-mouthed jazz radio voice, car stereos throbbing whoomps, and the tinny jangle of tiny speakers in windows turned street-ward, I woke up from a nap. Then a new theme is introduced: the ice cream man’s Scottish-jig-something-or-other-ditty playing on and on, and forever; just beneath, an aftertaste of subtle but substantial lawnmower-roar of the truck’s refrigeration.

Black Power-fists exchanged for Barack Obama portraiture on t-shirts, the now iconic image made by a white man of a man half-white. Beneath the shirt still angry, but anger more stilled, more patient and, perhaps, more optimistic; perhaps there’s more reason to be.

Fountains of silver and orange fill front steps of brownstones, whistle-crack. Night has come. Whistle-boom. The sun has gone. Whistle-crackle-fizzle. Darkness only broken up occasionally by—crash, like metal doors thrown off rooftops onto sidewalks below.

Thunder? Or the low rumble of far dark sky disturbed. Pop, pop: go the smaller firecrackers kids get to set off.

Momentary anarchy. Insurgent ritual. Rebellion distilled.


Yes, that's an Hassidic cop.

Re-edit of Spring, you bastard

As opposed to fakin' the funk, and just going back to edit or update the previous post, I thought I'd include you in the "creative" process. So, here is my new (final) version of this poem. Happy 4th of July.

Spring, you bastard:
Give it up already.
Calendar summer has nearly begun,
and you're still here.
Cool and blustery,
no hint of humidity--
though we will curse it when there is.

Perhaps I spoke too soon.

Like so much else,
we like you when you're gone,
want you when you're
fleeting,
retreating.
The way
New Yorkers want
nothing more than to escape—
till we do, then can't wait
to return to
your sweltering
embrace,
your suffocating
comfort,
your painful
familiarity.

For years now,
you've had barely a week,
sliding from winter to summer
graceless as the city itself.
So maybe you're not a bastard,
born of slovenly winter
and wandering summer.
Maybe, finally, like a
phoenix born from the ashes of fall,
summer grants winter custodial rights,
and brief spring, you
come for
court ordered visitation.



Interestingly similar shape as the graph I posted with the original version of the poem, showing that more people now believe global warming is not man made. Seems at odds with this graph above in some way. Hm.

The Fonzi Scale

Perhaps a reaction to my economics schooling, I’ve had the habit lately of thinking about things quantitatively. Recently, when two friends—yes, still have a few—were talking about the pot consumption; e.g., how much they need, want, can afford, and my brain started graphing consumer demand curves, morphing with the discussion.

So, from this inclination, I give you the Fozi Scale. Pretty much a rip—off of the +/- point system that The City Paper’s of D.C. and Philadelphia use to score how well (or not) their cities are doing, Newsweek’s up, down, and horizontal arrows.

Please forgive the more than usual reliance on The Economist, my inputs have narrowed lately. I’ll try to do better.

Thumbs Up:

--India’s government announced that it wanted to withdraw troops from the inhabited areas it controls in the divided region of Kashmir. Hundreds of thousands of troops are stationed in Kashmir, which has suffered two decades of insurgency. –The Economist

--Peru’s government said it would repeal two decrees facilitating investment in the Amazon jungle, after two months of protests in which 24 police and perhaps 30 Indians died. Yehude Simon, the prime minister, said he would resign once calm was restored. –The Economist

--A judge allowed a civil lawsuit to proceed against John Yoo, an official in the Bush administration who helped form policy on the treatment of suspected terrorist detainees. José Padilla, an American citizen who has been sentenced on terror conspiracy charges, is suing Mr Yoo for $1 and for an admission that his incarceration as an enemy combatant was unconstitutional. –The Economist

--Russia’s Supreme Court ordered a retrial of three men acquitted of being accomplices in the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, a crusading journalist whom Vladimir Putin described as a “marginal” figure. None of the men are accused of the actual killing. –The Economist

--Al Franken (yes, from SNL) finally declared Minnesota’s newest Senator by the State Supreme Court. Democrats now have a filibuster-free majority of 60 in the Senate. Kinda.

--Mark Sanford, the Republican governor of South Carolina, caused a stir when he disappeared for five days. His staff said he had gone hiking in the Appalachians. In fact, Mr Sanford had been in Argentina. On his return he admitted to an extramarital affair with a woman there. –The Economist

It’s just really funny: Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, the NPR show, has coined the phrase “gone hiking in the Appalachians,” meaning “I’m leaving town unannounced to shack up with my infidelity.”


Thumbs Down:

--In Northern Ireland more than 100 Romanians, mostly Roma (gypsies), fled their homes in south Belfast after a spate of racist attacks. The deputy first minister, Martin McGuinness, called the attacks a “totally shameful episode”. –The Economist


Splitting the Difference:

--Iran’s Revolution-revolution; crazy good, crazy scary.

But: Neda Agha-Soltan—the beautiful woman shot and killed in front of her father, completely caught on video, in the aftermath of Iran’s presumably fraudulent presidential election. If you want to cry while wanting to throw up, you can catch it on YouTube. It’s really haunting me.


--Mr Obama signed an order that extends benefits to the same-sex partners of federal employees.

But: Health insurance is not included, provoking more criticism from gay groups that the president is not fulfilling his promises to them. –The Economist

--“Public Option” part of American universal health-care; to soon to tell if either it’s any good or if it will fly. From what I’ve heard, though, it still seems tied to work or pay-roll taxes: what about unemployed?

But: Single payer health-care option for health-care reform is off the table, according to the administration.

Happy Fathre's Day (where applicable)

little men

Assurances for little men
Come sometimes from their fathers.
Soft or stern, convincingly
Lifts heads and clouds that bother.
Still,
If fortune’s shadow’s looming long,
And numbers grow too large,
little men, they too can rise to
Give comfort to their fathers.


This piece is related to a short story I wrote for the previously mentioned writing class. It is about a little boy's understanding of his father and family's financial troubles. Luckily, this is fiction that does not come from personal experience. Though the picture above does fit into my childhood memory.

Spring, you bastard.

The following was inspired by the previous post's Hemingway excerpt--and this ridiculous season we've been in. This was written for the Creative Writing class I'm currently taking, and will be posting a few others as well. Enjoy.

Spring, you bastard:
Give it up already.
Calendar summer is nearly here,
and yet you still are.
Cool and blustery,
no hint of humidity--
though, surely, I will curse it when it is.
So, perhaps I spoke too soon,
dear season.
As with so much else,
we like you when you're gone,
we want you when you're fleeting,
retreating.
The way a New Yorker wants
nothing more than escape--
until they do, then can't wait,
to return to your sweltering
embrace,
your suffocating
comfort,
your painful familiarity.

For many years now, spring,
you've had barely a week here,
sliding from winter to summer with
the gracelessness of the city itself.
So maybe you're not a bastard;
a child born of slovenly winter and elusive summer.
Maybe, finally, a phoenix born of the ashes of fall,
when summer gives way to winter's custodial rights,
and you, spring, however brief,
come to us for a court demanded visitation.

The False Spring

"...I could never be lonely along the river. With so many trees in the city, you could see the spring coming each day until a night of warm air wind would bring it suddenly one morning. Sometimes the heavy cold rains would beat it back so that it would seem that it would never come and you were losing a season out of your life. This was the only truly sad time in [insert your city here--Hem's was Paris] because it was unnatural. You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was though a young person had died for no reason.

In those days, though, the spring always came finally but it was frightening that it had nearly failed."

-Ernest Hemingway

I've had this feeling about NYC, lately. Though somewhat different, as it's more that a long spring is holding up the beginning of summer, the sentiment remains. It's always seemed to me that we don't even have much of a spring, maybe a week; it usually goes straight from freezing winter to sweating summer. Not this year.

Pretty sweet, huh? Obviously, I think so. Came across this piece when skipping through the books of Hemingway's I have. This is from A Moveable Feast--memoirs of his younger days as an aspiring and then somewhat famous writer, after WWI. His novel The Sun Also Rises, as well, is about this era in his life. I recommend more the latter than the former.

Right, so as you've noticed, I haven't been on here much in the last few months. Suffice it to say, between finally getting back on a routine with school stuff and the fact that I haven't had the internet at home for a while, I just haven't been able to or really had the desire. Don't worry, I don't love you any less.

Stupid, stupid conservatives.

I was raised on the supposed stupidity of liberals and the glory of the conservative movement, born in the 70’s and a child of the 80’s. But as I age so does the conviction that, although there might have been some truth to that reality (while Clinton didn’t help, the sex-capades-impeachment was a early warning signal of the neo-con-absurdity to come), it certainly isn’t the case anymore. In fairness to conservatives whom I respect (family members included), this is mostly in regards to the rise and proliferation of the conservative media.

Cases in point:

Fox front man Bill O'Reilly was beside himself over the handshake, indignantly claiming that former President Richard Nixon never met with Chinese leader Mao Zedong. Perhaps O'Reilly would benefit from a refresher in Political History 101, because it's a well-established fact that Nixon met with Mao in 1972, a point Keith Olbermann drove home in naming O'Reilly "Worst Person" on Thursday for his historically challenged comment.

Conservative leader and radio host Rush Limbaugh asserted, "If you look at what we are calling torture, you have to laugh," said that "if somebody can be water-tortured six times a day, then it isn't torture," and claimed that "appeasers" have "water[ed] down" definition of torture like "NOW gang" did with definition of domestic violence.

County Fair, the official Media Matters blog, last week called out the conservative Washington Times for its bizarre, fact-free editorial that claimed President Obama's job approval ratings were "in the basement" and that he was historically unpopular. True Alice-in-Wonderland stuff since recent polling data suggest the exact opposite about the president's popularity. Well, it took a whole week, but the Times finally walked back that nonsense retracting the entire editorial noting, "We hereby retract our April 28 editorial 'Barack's in the basement' because we misapplied several polling comparisons of various presidents after their first 100 days in office." That's being generous when you consider the entire piece was completely made up.

[W]hen Gov. John Baldacci (D) signed a marriage equality law, Maine became the fifth state to allow legal same-sex marriage. On the Christian Broadcasting Network today, Pat Robertson responded by claiming that the “ultimate conclusion” of legalizing same-sex marriage would be the legalization of polygamy, bestiality, child molestation and pedophilia. “You mark my words, this is just the beginning in a long downward slide in relation to all the things that we consider to be abhorrent,” said Robertson.

Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Rush Limbaugh Show guest host Mark Steyn criticized the president as an elitist because he ordered a burger with "spicy mustard" or "Dijon mustard." Hannity claimed that Obama ordered a "fancy burger" with a "very special condiment," while Steyn asserted Obama is trying "to enlighten us" through his order. Ingraham asked of Obama: "What kind of man orders a cheeseburger without ketchup but Dijon mustard? ... The guy orders a cheeseburger without ketchup? What is that?" In their discussions of Obama's burger order, Hannity, Ingraham, and Steyn all referenced a Grey Poupon commercial featuring actors portraying wealthy British men expressing desire for the mustard.

David Feherty, in an essay for a Dallas magazine wrote, "From my own experience visiting the troops in the Middle East, I can tell you this, though: despite how the conflict has been portrayed by our glorious media, if you gave any U.S. soldier a gun with two bullets in it, and he found himself in an elevator with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Osama bin Laden, there's a good chance that Nancy Pelosi would get shot twice, and Harry Reid and bin Laden would be strangled to death."

As Olbermann has explained, the point would not be to watch Hannity suffer. Rather, it would be to prove to him — and perhaps his viewers — that waterboarding is in fact “cruel, inhuman” torture — that it is what an adviser on terrorism to the departments of Homeland Security, Special Operations, and Intelligence called “slow-motion suffocation.”

Indeed, the 2005 torture memo written by Steven Bradbury required the CIA to have a tracheotomy kit on hand to revive a detainee who had effectively drowned:

[A] detainee could suffer spasms of the larynx that would prevent him from breathing even when the application of water is stopped and the detainee is returned to an upright position. In the event of such spasms, a qualified physician would immediately intervene to address the problem, and, if necessary, the intervening physician would perform a tracheotomy. …we are informed that the necessary emergency medical equipment is always present - although not visible to the detainee — during any application of the waterboard.

A footnote to the memo warns, “for reasons of physical fatigue or psychological resignation, the subject may simply give up, allowing excessive filling of the airways,” and “aggressive medical intervention” may be required to restore breathing. And yet Hannity continues to insist, “It’s not drowning.”

Indeed, the fact that conservatives and the Task Force in particular feel the need to lie about the history and traditions surrounding the NDP [National Day of Prayer—ew!] suggests that they are less concerned with promoting prayer in America than they are with taking every possible opportunity to “slam Obama” for political gain.

I wish it were true that Obama was in some way—any way—anti-religious, but unfortunately that’s just not the case. In fact, as I suggested about Bobby Jindal’s necessary conversion to an Anglo-religion, so too did Obama need the sanctification and protection of J.C. to win the White House. Half black? Sure. Absentee father? Well, OK. Muslim absentee father? Ummm… Community organizer. What’s that? But (god forbid) had Obama ever waiver in his devotion to some imaginary Father and his ghost-Son—not to be confused with “Ghost-Dad,” the ridiculously horrible Bill Cosby movie—he could have forgotten about the presidency.

Why? Because the equally ridiculously horrible reality in this country, indeed most the world, is that, even as religion slowly ebbs from humanity and even the transgendered get civil rights, atheism remains a pox in our houses.

Gunmen, and Coptics, and Musilms--oh my!

Gunmen killed 44 people at a wedding party in south-east Turkey. Some claimed the assailants were from a militia that had helped Turkish troops fight Kurdish separatists.

Kill Bill re-dux? Uneasily reminiscent of the Quentin Tarantino movie in which an entire wedding party, pastor and his wife included, is gunned down during the rehearsal. The only survivor, ironically, was the intended target, the very pregnant Uma Thurman—so much for virginal white.

She had made the mistake of trying to go straight, leaving behind her assassin’s career, as well as boss and lover, Bill. He caught up with Uma just as she was about to ceremonially cut the last tie. Of course, as one is never completely done with one’s messy past, she reverts (had she really ever changed?) to her former profession, hunting down former colleagues who took part in the slaughter, attempting to Kill her way back to Bill.

Speaking of irony:

Antasari Azhar, the head of Indonesia’s anti-corruption agency, was arrested as a suspect in the murder of a prominent businessman killed in a drive-by shooting in March.

Ironical? Or maybe this was part of his job; like Geitner busting a cap in the CEO of AIG’s ass. (Update: apparently, as he wined on 60 Minutes the other night, said CEO says he’s not to blame. Perhaps not as much as he’s been getting, anyway. Boo-hoo, biotch.

Egypt’s government ordered all the country’s 250,000 pigs slaughtered in response to the outbreak of swine flu, even though the disease has not yet reached Egypt and international health officials say eating properly cooked pork is safe. That upset the country’s 6m-plus Coptic Christians, who own most of the pigs.

So, Egypt, how does it feel to be the only country in the world to react to the possible pandemic with an utterly useless and arcane measure? How could this be, we ask, our collective head shaken in disbelief? Egypt is a relatively, progressive and modern country, for the area anyway, we say.

Well, let’s look at that. It’s a precarious thing to be a purportedly secular government in one of the most militantly Islamic parts of the world. Like Jordan, and a few other secular police-states in the region, Egypt’s modern history has been that of the military/strong-man-rule’s need quell or pacify populist rage in the form of Islamic fundamentalism. To the extent that the government will concede to Islamic leader’s social agenda, such as sharia law, and foreign policy issues, like Israel, the less brute force is needed to retain control of the country. Indeed, the first time an Egyptian made a deal for peace with Israel, he was shot down for his trouble.

Of course, much of this rage is not only utilized but fomented by the government. In what can be an exercise in head-spin, the interests and counter-interests of the regime, as it pertains to the vocal Muslim population, is integral to understanding the politics of not only Egypt and much of the region. 

A perceived threat to Islam, when co-opted by the government, becomes an enemy of the state, and thus an existential threat to the country. By linking the fate of the regime with that of a given religion, repression is accepted by the public as a necessary form of social control. (Excepting for historical revolutionary anomalies, like the reformation or America, this is why religion is necessarily conservative.) This boot on your face (see Orwell) is only there to protect from the other guy down the road (or from another country) who wouldn’t be half as nice about it.

In fairness to the dictators of the Middle East, this relationship is neither endemic to their part of the world, nor is it anything new. To varying degrees, this political use of religion is as old as history itself. It could be argued, as I am inclined to, that religion and politics evolved congruently out of the same desire for power.

Did the witch doctor truly believe the neighboring tribe evil spirits, or did he simply understand the necessary motivation for his warriors to treat their counter-parts inhumanly in what was really a competition for resources? Did the different Popes really think the Crusades a solution for the safe pilgrimage to the Holy Land for Europeans, or were spices, silk and empire on their mind?

We can only imagine what fragmented sentences spun round the heads of the previous administration in this country.

Indeed, the fact that conservatives and the Task Force in particular feel the need to lie about the history and traditions surrounding the NDP suggests that they are less concerned with promoting prayer in America than they are with taking every possible opportunity to “slam Obama” for political gain.

I wish it were true that Obama was in some way—any way—anti-religious, but unfortunately that’s just not the case. In fact, as I suggested about Bobby Jindal’s necessary conversion to an Anglo-religion, so too did Obama need the sanctification and protection of J.C. to win the White House. Half black? Sure. Absentee father? Well, OK. Muslim absentee father? Ummm… Community organizer. What’s that? But (god forbid) had Obama ever waiver in his devotion to some imaginary Father and his ghost-Son—not to be confused with “Ghost-Dad,” the ridiculously horrible Bill Cosby movie—he could have forgotten about the presidency.

Why? Because the equally ridiculously horrible reality in this country, indeed most the world, is that, even as religion slowly ebbs from humanity and even the transgendered get civil rights, atheism remains a pox in our houses.