GimpBlog

The Profit

2007-10-02T16:56:00.000-07:00

“Am I a prophet or what?” Asked Sir Gimp one fine autumnal afternoon.

“What?” asked the Lovely One.

“I said, am I a prophet, or what? Don't be alarmed. I'm simply asking myself a rhetorical question.”

“Oh, I see. Well, are you? A prophet?”

“Am I? Perhaps...yes...perhaps I am.”

“How so? You do have the beard, and a cane with which you can part the waters. But you really do need that extra little pizazz to qualify for prophet status.”

“I do? You mean my diabetic Jewish ancestry isn't enough?”

“No...I don't think so.”

“How about the ability to predict the future. With stunning accuracy?”

“Well, that would do it, it think. What d'ya got?”

“Two years ago to this very day (Sept. 19), I made a prediction that has just come true.”

“Oh yeah? Just what might that happen to be?”

“I predicted on this very blog that one day Dowd, Friedman, Krugman et all would receive a “get out of jail free” card. And today they did.

"I don't understand? Explain please."

Sir Gimp heaved a heavy sigh. "Two years ago some bright spark on the New York Times decided that they could make a lot of loot by putting their columnists inside a lock box (or jail) and charging a subscription fee of about 50 bucks per year to read their missives. Many of us in the Internet community felt betrayed. We looked upon the New York Times as “America's newspaper.” I was so pissed that I wrote an email to the Times and posted it in the Gimpblog. Let's see....” Sir Gimp makes a few clicks with his mouse and locates the famous blog entry he wrote two years ago.

I am referring, of course, to your new policy of only letting wealthy people have access to important writings from Friedman, Dowd, Krugman, etc. If one can't afford $200 a year for a paper subscription or $50.00 for online reading, than one is out of luck. You are putting your columnists in a "lock box" that will take these great writers out of the public eye and reserve their works for only those who can pay....Do you plan to change your slogan from "all the news that fits" to "all the news you can afford?" So much for a public service.

...What does this denote for journalism? Rather, Jennings, Brokow, are gone as well. Is this the tipping point for the “old media.” Will Times readers now increasingly turn to the Internet blogs for their news? I know I will.

“Yeah,I remember that. You held a wake called the 'Day the Newspaper Died.' The Times new 'economic model' was a big topic in the blogging community.”

“Yeah, but do you also remember how crazy it was? During the last few years, the take from subscriptions to the newsprint version had been significantly declining as readers flocked to the Internet in droves. So what did the Times braniacs come up with? A strategy to drive away Internet readers. By putting a lockbox around their most read columnists and other premium features, they hoped to grow rich on the $50 per year subscription fee for their premium content which they called Times Select.”

The Lovely One could hardly contain herself, the excitement of this unfolding drama had kept her riveted on the edge of her proverbial seat and she unconsciously began biting her fingernails, something she hadn't done since she was hippie wannabe trying to hitch a ride to Height-Asbury in the late '60's.

“So what happened?”

“Until today, no one knew. The Times staff kept the result of their new “business model” to themselves. But the prophets in the blogging community, including yours truly, predicted the utter and abject failure of this “new business model.” I for one encouraged all recipients of the Gimp International Newsletter, Propeller Head Gazette, to boycott both the Times print and online editions and to bookmark the Huffington Post, a new progressive online journal. And today we the the blogging prophets of the digital era were supremely vindicated. Even the bean counters in the shrinking Times offices had joined the revolution. The old soul stirring battle cry, “Free Huey!” had become “Free Content!”

Here's what the Times had to say about this capitulation of the old guard:

The Times said the project had met expectations, drawing 227,000 paying subscribers — out of 787,000 over all — and generating about $10 million a year in revenue.

“But our projections for growth on that paid subscriber base were low, compared to the growth of online advertising,” said Vivian L. Schiller, senior vice president and general manager of the site, NYTimes.com.

What changed, The Times said, was that many more readers started coming to the site from search engines and links on other sites instead of coming directly to NYTimes.com. These indirect readers, unable to get access to articles behind the pay wall and less likely to pay subscription fees than the more loyal direct users, were seen as opportunities for more page views and increased advertising revenue.

“What wasn’t anticipated was the explosion in how much of our traffic would be generated by Google, by Yahoo and some others,” Ms. Schiller said.

An “Aha!” moment shattered the Lovely One's hypnotic trance. “Well duh! I get it” she said, jumping up and down and almost wetting her pants. “I really get it! The business model failed. They only got about one in five readers to susbscribe, and who knows how many readers they lost.”

“Yeah, and now I hear that Dowd, Krugman and Friedman have formed a singing group called The Paper Tigers and just released a YouTube video of Puff the Magic Dragon. Bloggers rule! Free content rules!” declared our impish gimp as he propellers began a victory spin. “Take a look a the Times latest ad:

“Now you'll excuse me. I have to write an article announcing our victory in the next issue of Propeller Head Gazette, coming soon to an inbox near you!

2007-09-18T16:18:00.000-07:00

Dominoes, Anyone?

The concentration was intense. The sweat was pouring off his brow. Steam was beginning to rise out his ears and his propellers were without movement. He saw a move and hoped that she wouldn't make it first. What could produce such deadly concentration in our intrepid Sir Gimp? A world crises, market crash, famine? No my friends, none of these. It was an old parlor game. Not Monopoly, Scrabble or even Go Fish. Nor was it chess, the classic game of concentration. It was dominoes, one of the world's older games, developed in China about 1,000 years ago. Having lost repeatedly in Scrabble, Sir Gimp was determined to win at dominoes.

Fear not, dear reader, Sir Gimp was no dummy at dominoes, having twice read the classic work, “Dominoes for Dummies.” But as the Lovely One triumphantly placed her next domino on the table, his hopes for victory began to crumble.

He now realized that he might lose this game unless he could come up with a really great move...but try as he might, no great move seemed forthcoming. Then he remembered the Ultimate Strategic Move (USM) from the last chapter of his Dummy book. The USM stated that when all appeared lost, create a diversion! Something to take your opponents mind off a potentially winning strategy. But...how to do it? Bait and switch. That was it! It was an old trick but it almost always worked.

As he stared blankly at the played dominoes, from the depths of his twisted catacombs, a phrase began reverberating...domino effect, domino effect.... His reverie was abruptly interrupted by the Lovely One calling, “Hello! Anybody home? I've been waiting for almost ten minutes for you to make a move. While I was waiting I made tea and crackers for us.”

Sir Gimp gazed at her with a glazed look in his eyes. Suddenly he said, “Do you remember Vietnam?”

“Vietnam? What on earth are you talking about? That online class on the Sixties that you're taking?”

“No. Dominoes,” he said. “I'm talking about dominoes and the War in Vietnam.”

“What?”

“Don't you remember? Why did we go into Vietnam?”

“Well, I, uh, not really sure.”

“We went to keep Southeast Asia from falling in the hands of the Communists. Here's what the Wikipedia has to say.”

He flipped up the lid of his ever present laptop computer and after a few mouse clicks began to read:

The domino theory was a mid-20th century foreign policy theory, promoted by the government of the United States, that speculated that if one land in a region came under the influence of communism, then the surrounding countries would follow in a domino effect. The domino effect suggests that some change, small in itself, will cause a similar change nearby, which then will cause another similar change, and so on in linear sequence, by analogy to a falling row of dominoes standing on end. The domino theory was used by successive United States administrations during the Cold War to justify American intervention around the world.

“OK. So what?”

“What do you mean, so what? This is how we continue to justify our ongoing rampant imperialism. It's déjà vu all over again. Remember the “Iron Curtain?”

“Yeah, I think so. It was a boundary which symbolically, ideologically, and physically divided Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II until the end of the Cold War, roughly 1945 to 1991.”

“You got that right. Well, now we have a new version and it's called...for $50,000 name the new version of the Iron Curtain. You have sixty seconds. Go!”

The Lovely One stumble and stammers “I...um...let me see...paper tiger...no...Maginot Line...no...”

Buzz. Buzz.

“Sorry, time's up. And the answer is...Shi'ite Crescent!”

“What the devil is that?”

Sir Gimp reads again from the Wikipedia:

...a recent geo-political term used to describe a region of the Middle East where the majority population is Shi'a, or where there is a strong Shi'a minority in the population. It has been used to describe the potential for cooperation among these areas in Middle Eastern politics...The nations where Shi'a Muslims form a dominant majority are Azerbaijan, Iran, Bahrain, Yemen and Iraq, a plurality in Lebanon and large minorities in Turkey, Pakistan, India and Syria. The shape of these countries put together does in fact resemble a crescent moon or a half moon.

“Now, why does this matter. I'll tell you why. Now that just about everyone knows that the occupation of Iraq has been a foreign policy disaster of epic proportions, there is a movement afoot to salvage the wreck that is Iraq by using an old sales tactic.”

“And what would that be,” asks the Lovely One?

“Ye old 'bait and switch'. One of the oldest tricks in the book. You see, we can salvage the Iraq debacle by shifting our attention to the 'real enemy', good ol' Iran. It's their fault that we can't win in Iraq. And if we lose in Iraq, then the domino theory conveniently comes back into play. See?”

Sir Gimp picked up eight dominoes and stacked them up next to each other. He pushed one over, knocking it into the next one. That one fell into the next one, and in a flash all the dominoes were knocked down.

“Now you see the domino effect, literally, my dear. We must bomb Iran into the stone age to prevent the domino effect from creating the Shi'ia Crescent; thereby making the world unsafe for democracy and big oil. End of history lesson.”

Sir Gimp, paused, exhausted from his passionate recitation of history. He gazed at the table with the scattered dominoes and the ruined domino game. “Time to start a new game,” he said. He took a sip of tea, munched on a cracker and asked with a twinkle in his eye, “Dominoes, anyone?”

Unquestioned Answers

2006-09-08T17:42:00.000-07:00

From the Santa Cruz Metro Sept 6-13

Nonconspiracy theorist David Ray Griffin takes aim at the official 9/11 story

By Steve Bhaerman

ABOUT 10 years ago, I was asked to perform comedy at a conference I quickly dubbed "the Paranoids Conference." Each presenter had a dark tale to tell of abductions, drug running, assassinations and other nefarious horrors too terrible to mention. There were whispers of government agents in our midst, so when it was my turn to perform, I said I was with the CIA. I paused while the audience gasped. "That's the Comedians Institute of America." It got a laugh, but no amount of laughter could counterbalance the toxicity of the atmosphere. I couldn't wait to leave.

Fast-forward to a sunny Sunday afternoon early last year when I found myself in Santa Rosa's Church of the Rose to hear Dr. David Ray Griffin, author of a book on the 9/11 attacks called The New Pearl Harbor, as well as The 9-11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions. Griffin, a soft-spoken retired professor of theology with sandy, graying hair, proceeded to calmly and quietly dismantle the official 9/11 story. The room was filled to standing with people of all ages, many of whom attended the church. As Griffin made his case for how the official story could never have happened the way they said it did, I looked around me. Everyone was riveted, and yet I could detect no fear, no paranoia in the room.

People were hearing his message—the essentials of which are that our government likely knew about or had something to do with the 9/11 attacks—and yet there was something about his delivery that was reassuring. I've heard David Ray Griffin twice since then, once at a small gathering of world government advocates, the other time at the prestigious Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. Each event had a similar ambiEnce: a calm, thoughtful, scholarly presentation without the least hint of sensationalism or personal glory.

Whatever one's assumption of what a "conspiracy theorist" is like, David Ray Griffin doesn't fit the mold, perhaps because he's really a nonconspiracy theorist. While he methodically deconstructs the official story, he doesn't spin his own alternative yarn to fill the vacuum. Instead, he allows audience members to draw their own conclusions. As for conspiracy theories, he explains, "the official story is itself a conspiracy theory. As the accepted 'conspiracy theory' goes, a cadre of Al Qaeda operatives conspired to hijack four jetliners, did so undetected and were able to complete their mission with no interception or even interference from the best-prepared air force on the face of the earth."'

Even more unusual, Griffin says, "the crime was solved immediately, and the official story was in place before the day of the attack was over. Within 48 hours, our president stood at the National Cathedral surrounded by Billy Graham, a cardinal, a rabbi and an imam, and used this religious setting to declare a holy war on terror."

If we were to contrast the smoothness of the post-9/11 operation with the aftermath of Katrina, we are left with the question: How can a president so inept in one setting have been so "ept" in another?

False Flags

While Griffin professes no formulated alternative theory of what did happen, he offers a clue in the title of his first book. A New Pearl Harbor refers to a passage in a document called Project for the New American Century—the neocons' blueprint for what they call "pax Americana"—which says that for the American people to accept the overt military mission of creating security through world domination, a "new Pearl Harbor" would be needed. Griffin believes that the 9/11 attacks were just that.

This is a pretty serious—and horrific—assertion to make: that the leaders of our country would see fit to sacrifice some 3,000 civilians so that we could launch a pre-emptive attack on a perceived enemy. And yet, Griffin is quick to point out, our history is rife with just such incidents, from the "remember the Maine" boosterism preceding the Spanish-American war to the Gulf of Tonkin lie that launched U.S. involvement in Vietnam to the Pearl Harbor attacks themselves. Indeed, recent scholarship on Pearl Harbor suggests that President Roosevelt knew of the attack plan in advance and even purposely provoked the Japanese, because he knew it was the only way we could join the war against Germany. This in itself offers a dicey moral dilemma: Is it justified to sacrifice thousands of lives to save millions of lives?

During the Cold War, two more chilling examples of so-called false flag operations have come to light. (False flag operations are covert situations conducted by governments or other organizations that are designed to appear as if they are being carried out by other entities.) In his recent book, NATO's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe, Dr. Daniele Ganser, a senior researcher at the Center for Security Studies, Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, reports that NATO, guided by the CIA, supported terrorist attacks on civilians in various European countries to discredit the left and create fear on the part of the populace.

In Italy, right-wing terrorists, supplied by a secret army (named "Gladio," Latin for "sword"), carried out bomb attacks in public places, blamed them on the Italian left and were thereafter protected from prosecution by the military secret service. As right-wing terrorist Vincenzo Vinciguerra explains in Ganser's book, "The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state to ask for greater security."

In our own country during the early '60s, the Joint Chiefs of Staff under the command of Gen. Lyman Lemnitzer came up with a similar plan to provoke an attack on Cuba. According to NSA myth-buster James Bamford in his 2001 Random House publication Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency, the Joint Chiefs called for undercover operation of terror within the United States that included plans for "innocent people to be shot on American streets; for boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami and elsewhere. People would be framed for bombings they did not commit; planes would be hijacked. Using phony evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro, thus giving Lemnitzer and his cabal the excuse, as well as the public and international backing, they needed to launch their war."

President John F. Kennedy nixed the plan immediately, and it was never put into action. But it did have the approval of top military brass, and with the right president—or the wrong one—it could very well have come about.

In the aftermath of 9/11, Griffin initially dismissed any speculation that the attacks could have been an inside job. "I subscribed to the 'blowback' theory," Griffin says. "After generations of exploitation and interference by Western powers, these people had such fury that they had to lash out any way they could."

At the time, Griffin, who was close to retirement from his position at Claremont School of Theology, was working on a book on global democracy. In the wake of 9/11, he decided that he needed a special chapter on U.S. imperialism. He worked on that chapter for over a year before he came to the view that 9/11 was an inside job. "As much as I knew about prior false flag operations, as much as I knew or thought I knew about the nefariousness of the current regime, my first take was not even the Bush administration could or would do such a thing."

Three Different Stories

It wasn't until a colleague sent Griffin an email with Paul Thompson's timeline—an exact, minute-by-minute accounting of the events of Sept. 11 based entirely on mainstream media accounts—that he changed his mind. "The most glaring anomaly," Griffin now says, "was that none of the hijacked planes were intercepted, even though all of them would have been, had standard procedure been followed."

According to Gen. Ralph Eberhart, head of North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), from the time the FAA senses something is wrong, it takes about a minute to contact NORAD, after which NORAD, Eberhart says, can scramble fighter jets "within a matter of minutes to anywhere in the United States." So what happened on that morning?

The government has given three conflicting answers to this question.

Since a full 32 minutes elapsed between the time the first hijacked airliner was detected and the time it crashed into the World Trade Center, it initially appeared that "stand down" orders must have been issued to suspend standard procedures. Indeed, the first reports from both NORAD and Gen. Richard Myers, the acting chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, indicated that no jets were scrambled until after the Pentagon was hit at 9:38am.

By Sept. 13, however, the original story had morphed into an explanation that "the planes were scrambled but arrived too late." The delays were blamed on the FAA, said to have been slow in notifying NORAD. If that were the case, Griffin points out, it was strange indeed that no FAA personnel were fired or even cited for the breakdown in procedures and the resulting disaster. (Griffin notes, moreover, that the FAA flawlessly handled—on the same day—the unprecedented task of grounding thousands of domestic flights.)

Meanwhile, Griffin reports, transportation secretary Norman Mineta testified that at 9:20am—about 18 minutes before the Pentagon was hit, allegedly by Flight 77—he went down to the shelter conference room under the White House. According to Mineta, a young man walked in and said to the vice president, "The plane is 50 miles out," and later, "The plane is 30 miles out." When the young man reported, "The plane is 10 miles out," he also asked the vice president, "Do the orders still stand?"

"Of course the orders still stand," Cheney is alleged to have replied. "Have you heard anything to the contrary?"

When Mineta was asked by the 9/11 Commission how long after he arrived the conversation occurred, Mineta said, "Probably about five or six minutes," which would have placed it around 9:25 or 9:26am. However, in the final version of the story, The 9/11 Commission Report maintained that no one in our government knew about the approaching aircraft until 9:36am, too late to shoot it down. How did the Commission deal with this apparent contradiction? Like just about every other piece of testimony that conflicted with the official story, Griffin avers, they ignored it.

"With regard to the question 'Do the orders still stand?'" Griffin says, "Mineta seemed to assume those orders were to shoot the plane down. But really, the young man's question makes sense only if the orders were to do something unexpected—that is, not to shoot the plane down."

So what did happen? Whodunnit?

Again, Griffin prefers to focus on the circumstantial framework for examining the evidence. "You have a suspect who changes his story three times. Does this make him more or less suspicious?"

Collective Evil

Of course, the top echelon of leaders in this country aren't exactly your usual run-of-the-lineup perps—which, according to Griffin, is why those who've pointed fingers at the emperor's bare buttocks in this case have been marginalized like a bunch of tinfoil-headed kooks. No argument about this. I've asked a number of savvy authors and commentators why they haven't taken on the unanswered questions and unquestioned answers around 9/11. Their answers have been pretty much the same: It's just too big a stretch for most Americans to believe their own government could have had anything to do with it. However, in an exceedingly underreported Zogby poll done just last month, 42 percent of adults polled believe the U. S. government and the 9/11 Commission "concealed or refused to investigate critical evidence" that contradicts the official explanation of the attacks.

Perhaps what these reluctant commentators really meant is that they would be committing career suicide by questioning the official story. So why and how is David Ray Griffin different? And why is he spending his retirement traveling around the country writing and talking about something that conventional wisdom insists people don't want to hear?

Perhaps it has something to do with Griffin's background in "process theology." Process theology is specifically designed to answer such post-Holocaust questions as, How could a loving God have allowed such a thing to happen? Griffin has written or co-authored a dozen books and articles on the subject, and roughly the answer is this: We, as creations of the Creator, have free will to choose how and what we create in this life. This very often results in what we call "evil." On the other hand, our greatest power as human beings is to bring that loving God to earth by creating good instead.

To those who assert "God is dead," process theology says no, Griffin reasons. The loving God is alive in our thoughts and words and deeds. God doesn't intervene to set things right unilaterally. Rather, that spirit—through us—embodies divine love. In other words, the world changes—if we change it. Divine power, he says, is "persuasive, not controlling."

While Griffin's faith may be deep, it certainly isn't narrow. He recently edited a book called Deep Religious Pluralism.

"I've written two books on the problem of evil, so I've been dealing with the topic for a long time," Griffin says. "Frankly, as soon as I saw the evidence that 9/11 was an inside job, I wasn't surprised. I had studied the rise of Nazism and the Holocaust, the Japanese butchery of the Chinese in Manchuria, our use of nuclear weapons in Japan in spite of their imminent surrender. I've seen the depth of evil in collective situations. It's an old, old story, and this is just the latest chapter. Once the nation-state announces it is threatened, everything else gets pushed to the back burner. That's what we're seeing now."

Griffin's intention just over three years ago was to write an article for Harper's on what he then believed to be "foreknowledge and thwarted intelligence." But the more he saw evidence that the attacks were likely orchestrated by our own government, the more he felt a book was needed. Since none of the American investigators had been able to get a book published at that time, Griffin figured that as a published author he had a better chance.

But it was far from automatic. Richard Falk, a Princeton professor of international law and practice, had personally recommended Griffin's book to several publishers. Every one of them turned it down. "Not for us," said one rejection tersely. At dinner one night, Falk suggested Interlink Books, a tiny publisher that had published a recent book of his. Interlink took the book, but only because of a quirky coincidence. The editor was dubious. But knowing Griffin was a theologian, she asked her father, a minister, if he'd ever heard of the guy. "David Ray Griffin?" said her father. "I have all of his books!"

And so, in 2004, the book got published. But you'd never learn this from mainstream magazines and newspapers, which have yet to publish a review of The New Pearl Harbor, which has sold over 100,000 copies. Nor will you see him on mainstream TV, which has yet to invite him to appear.

Griffin seems unperturbed by this, and points out that each week and each month the alternative account of 9/11 gains wider credence. Is he afraid? Does he feel in danger? "Well," he jokes, "there are two possibilities. Either they leave me alone, or they take me out. If they leave me alone, I get to enjoy my old age and write my systematic theology. If they take me out, my 9/11 books go right to the top of the New York Times bestseller list. So it's a win-win situation."

More seriously, he points to his Christian faith (Disciples of Christ is his own background), and says that Christian history is full of examples of the faithful who stuck their necks out for the truth. "If we who believe in everlasting life fear death," he says, "what does that say about our faith?"

Myth-Informed?

Other than standing for his faith, what does Griffin hope to accomplish by exposing the 9/11 story as a lie? As an advocate for a worldwide democratic order, he sees this story as an example of "governmental lawlessness" so egregious that its exposure could call into question the continuation of the present system with its "anarchical competition between nation states." First, however, people must be willing to think the unthinkable, and to be willing to look at the evidence that it is our own nation that has become the evil empire.

This is a formidable barrier to cross. Ever since the notion of the "Big Lie" was first put forth to describe the tactics of the Third Reich, it has become a cliché that the bigger the lie, the harder it is for people to see the truth. This is especially so when the official version takes on the status of what theologian Griffin calls "sacred myth."

"The 'truth' of the official 9/11 story," explains Griffin, "must be taken on faith. It is not a matter of debate or even discussion. Anyone who brings up anything that contradicts the official story is either ignored or denounced as a conspiracy nut.

"However," he continues, "when the official account of 9/11 is stripped of its halo and treated simply as a theory rather than an unquestionable dogma, it cannot be defended as the best theory to account for the relevant facts. When challenges to it are not treated as blasphemy, it can easily be seen to not correspond with reality."

And so David Ray Griffin continues to make presentations, do interviews and get his version of the truth to "break the soundless barrier." With Falk, John B. Cobb Jr. and Catherine Keller, Griffin co-authored the just-published anthology The American Empire and the Commonwealth of God: A Political, Economic, Religious Statement. His own contribution portrays the 9/11 attacks as orchestrated to promote the American empire. Publishing in July is his newest book, Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11: A Call to Reflection and Action.

His hope? That enough Americans wake up and call for a reinvestigation, and that those who know more will feel safe enough to come forward. But first, he says, we Americans must muster the will and courage to face the situation squarely in the face.

As a postscript to my interview with David Ray Griffin, I am reminded of a March 30 article by journalist Doug Thompson published on OpEdNews.com. In it, Thompson recalls a 1981 encounter with the late John Connally, the former governor of Texas who was wounded in the Kennedy assassination. In an unguarded moment, Thompson asked Connally, "Do you think Lee Harvey Oswald fired the gun that killed Kennedy?"

"Absolutely not," Connally said. "I do not, for one second, believe the conclusions of the Warren Commission."

"So why not speak out?" Thompson asked.

"I will never speak out publicly about what I believe," Connally replied, "because I love this country and we needed closure at the time."

Now here we are more than 40 years after that devastating perpetration and we have to wonder, how well did "closure" serve us? As we see daily the fruits of self-serving secrecy and unchecked power, it might be time for some disclosure instead.

America Held Hostage

2006-07-20T23:36:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,

I have been very busy trying to get a handle on what is really going in the Middle East. After much study and reasearch, the article below is the best, deepest, and most complete explanation I've found. It is written by Justin Raimondo editor of the web site, Antiwar.com. I know it is a long article, but if you read only one article, this would be the one. On the eve of the coming ground invasion of Lebenon by Israel, let's send our love and hope to the people in this troubled region and pray for an immediate cease fire.

And don't forget Iraq. While the Israel/Lebanon conflict is grabbing all the headlines, our little Iraq escapde has erupted into a full scale civil war, with over 6,000 killed in May and June alone.

Peace,

Sir Gimp

-----------------------------------------------

July 21, 2006

America Held Hostage
It's day 10 – and Israel is still threatening the lives of 25,000 Americans in Lebanon

by Justin Raimondo

The Israelis are dropping leaflets, as well as bombs, over Beirut. Aside from warnings to stay away from Hezbollah facilities, this little missive stands out:

"We all know from the experience of the past few days the massive strength of Israel and its readiness to use this power against the terrorist elements.

"The saying goes: those who sleep in graveyards have nightmares."

With all of Lebanon becoming one big killing field, the Israelis should be the last ones talking about graveyards and who sleeps in them. As of Wednesday, "at least 300 people, mostly Lebanese civilians, and including 29 Israelis, had died in the fighting." One thousand Lebanese wounded, and half a million refugees.

What's interesting about this screed, however, is the preening, bullying tone. Note the "massive power" trope and the taunting reminder that the assault has only gone on for a "few days" – the clear implication being that it could go on much longer. Wednesday the story was that the Bush administration would give the Israelis a week to degrade Hezbollah's military capability, and then they'd send Condi in to patch things up.

Thursday morning, however, as the bird sings outside my window, I awake to the news that the IDF is insisting on two weeks. In two weeks, they'll be saying a month more – and the Americans will start to get antsy. The Arab killer regimes that back the bashing of Hezbollah are fidgeting nervously as pictures of the slaughter are beamed around the world: the Egyptians, for one, are reportedly furious that Bush refuses to endorse calls for a cease-fire. Any other American president would have long ago made such a pronouncement and fulfilled America's mediating role, in line with our status as the predominant power in the region.

But not this president. This is all about Israel, and not the U.S., as the dominating power in the Middle East. Bush's indifference to American interests and craven appeasement of the Israelis has led him to stand helplessly by as Israeli fighter jets paid for by American taxpayers drop U.S.-made ordnance on American citizens. There are 25,000 U.S. nationals in Lebanon, for all intents and purposes held hostage by the IDF. Instead of taking the Israelis to task for putting Americans at risk – without warning, and without apology – George W. Bush gave them the green light to keep up the bombing and the blockade for as long as they can get away with it.

The scandal over the reimbursement demanded by the State Department for rescuing U.S. citizens trapped in Lebanon will pale as Americans realize why it took so long to even begin the difficult task of getting our people out of there safely. Garance Franke-Ruta reports the outrageous truth on the American Prospect's weblog:

"A reliable source tells me that the reason the United States has been so slow in evacuating its citizens from Lebanon is that the public diplomacy (i.e., P.R.) issues raised by evacuating under Israeli assault are so complicated. Individuals within the State Department, I am told, have been reluctant to create an impression that the Israeli assault on Lebanon is as bad as it is or that civilian U.S. citizens are being threatened by U.S. ally Israel. If a conflict this severe had broken out in, say, Indonesia, the American embassy would have been shut down the next day and its personnel and families rapidly brought to safety. That's how things normally work. (See Laura Rozen on the evacuation from Albania here.) In this case, however, the diplomatic message sent by shutting down the U.S. embassy in the face of Israeli bombing would have contradicted the U.S. government message of support for the Israeli mission against Hezbollah terrorists, which, when added to the general concern within lower-level diplomatic circles about ever creating a Fall of Saigon-style visual for the news media, have led the Americans to be slower than they could have been about getting U.S. citizens out of harm's way."

In my last column, I likened the slowness of the American response to the federal government's hapless efforts to deal with the effects of Hurricane Katrina, a comparison made by many others. However, the Lebanese disaster is much worse than what happened in New Orleans and environs. This isn't incompetence: the U.S. government made a conscious decision to delay the rescue mission to avoid embarrassing the Israelis. The Bush administration can always be counted on to put Israel first – ahead even of the welfare and very lives of American citizens.

When it comes to kowtowing before the Israel lobby, however, Congress outdoes the executive branch by several degrees of servility. Pat Buchanan was exactly right when he described Congress as "Israeli-occupied territory." A resolution giving unconditional support to Israel passed the Senate unanimously: and, in the House, a similar measure passed overwhelmingly. Not that everyone who voted for it is proud of his or her vote: in the negotiations leading to the introduction of the resolution by the Republicans, Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) pledged to vote for the resolution and speak on its behalf, but refused to be a co-sponsor. Or, as Roll Call put it, she refused to "attach her name to it." Does she really imagine this kind of obfuscation is going to provide adequate cover on her left flank? The antiwar faction of her party, large and growing, is already on to her brand of warmongering, and she knows it. In any case, it takes a special kind of cowardice to slither around the issue with such snake-like alacrity.

The Democrats are competing with the GOP to see who can praise the Israeli blitzkrieg in the most obsequiously extravagant terms. Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid made a fire-breathing speech in favor the resolution, Hillary Clinton declared her "unreserved support" for the invasion, and even Russ Feingold, ostensibly the antiwar candidate among the Democratic presidential wannabes, averred:

"I stand firmly with the people of Israel and their government as they defend themselves against these outrageous attacks. What we have done by becoming mired in Iraq, and by deciding to change the balance of power in that region, is enable Iran and Syria to be much more open in tormenting Israel, the United States, and our allies."

That is gibberish. The "defense" of Israel hardly requires the bombing of northern Lebanon, including the Christian areas and the civilian infrastructure. The Israelis are even hitting the barracks of the Lebanese army – the very army the Israelis are demanding must police southern Lebanon and prevent Hezbollah attacks. Israel's goal has nothing to do with getting any soldiers back: it's all about the dissolution of a Parliament where Hezbollah's representatives sit, and the division of the country. Forget the "Cedar Revolution" – touted by Bush and the neocons as indisputable evidence of a "democratic wave" supposedly sweeping the region as the direct result of Iraq's "liberation." The Israelis have decided that the government brought to power in the "Beirut spring" must fall, and that is the end of that.

As for Syria, it has never been weaker, which is precisely why the Israelis are now engineering a provocation. It is also hard to believe the presence of 130,000 U.S. troops nearby emboldens either Syria or Iran to "torment" anybody, except, perhaps, their own people.

If anyone is being tormented, it is the Syrians, who have bent over backwards to cooperate with the Americans in the war on al-Qaeda and assiduously tried to avoid any conflict with Washington. To no avail: Israel's enemies are our enemies. President Assad was recently given a sign of things to come when Israeli jets buzzed his summer palace. The Iranians, too, have signaled their willingness to negotiate, yet the U.S. is openly embarking on a campaign to fund a Chalabi-like "democratic" opposition, consisting of monarchists, Communist cultists, and job-seekers.

Baghdad – Beirut – Damascus – Tehran: get on board the "regime change" train and fasten your seat belt. Because it doesn't matter how sick unto death the American public is of the neocons' wars. They will get one after the other anyway, in rapid succession. This is due to the unprecedented power of "the Lobby" – as Professor John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt term it in their now-famous Harvard University study of Israel's fifth column in the U.S.

This is Israel's war, for the moment, but already the outline of a scheme to drag us in is taking shape, with calls for an "international force" to supplant the Israeli invaders, to be stationed in a buffer zone on the Lebanese-Israeli border. Not a UN force, however, but a "multinational" one, presumably made up mostly of Americans, Brits, and probably the French. It's possible they could recruit from among the motley crew of Sunni Arab autocrats who have turned on their Lebanese "brothers" and left them to twist slowly in the wind: the Saudis, the Egyptians, and the Jordanians, who have all joined Israel in assigning the blame for this war on Hezbollah.

This would gather all the elements of a broad anti-Shia alliance in one place, and lay the foundations for future action – in Syria, perhaps, where a confrontation is looming, and ultimately in Iran, the real target of the regime-changers.

The narrative of this war is being carefully articulated: it is, we are told, a "proxy war" being waged by Hezbollah, which the conspiracy theorists insist is merely an Iranian instrument. According to this view, Hassan Nasrallah is merely Mahmoud Ahmadinejad writ small.

To begin with, Hezbollah is a nationalist organization, with the requisite Islamist veneer. It was created not by Iran but by the Israelis themselves, in 1982, when they foolishly invaded the first time – and provoked a reaction that eventually drove the IDF out of southern Lebanon. This fantasy that Hezbollah consists of remote-controlled robots operated by the mullahs of Tehran is convenient for the purposes of war propaganda, but the reality is a bit more complex.

Yet even if we accept the simplistic Israeli-neocon view of Hezbollah as merely Iranian-run automatons, their proposed course of action still fails to make much sense. The logic of the neocon argument, applied to Iraq, would require us to turn our guns on the very government we are pledged to defend against the insurgency. The principal elements of Iraq's democratically elected Shi'ite coalition –including the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the Badr Corps (SCIRI's militia), and the Da'wa party – were funded by Tehran and given sanctuary on Iranian soil during the years of Ba'athist rule. Are they, too, cat's-paws of Tehran?

Most Americans don't want U.S. troops to return to Lebanon – perhaps they remember what happened the last time. If the question is put as Israel versus Hezbollah, then, according to this CNN poll, 57 percent are more sympathetic to Israel, while 20 percent disdain taking sides and 4 percent are pro-Hezbollah. One suspects, however, if asked to choose between Israel and Lebanon, quite a different result would be forthcoming. In any event, 47 percent disapprove of the way President Bush is handling the crisis, with 43 percent approving – and 31 percent saying Israel's military response to the kidnapping of its soldiers went too far. As pictures of the devastation wrought by the Israeli military machine capture the brutal reality of Israel's exercise in "self-defense," this number is bound to go higher.

Yet the momentum of the burgeoning conflict may sideline public opinion and give impetus to the War Party's ambitious plans. As the rescue mission got belatedly underway, and American troops set foot on Lebanese soil for the first time since the ill-fated 1980s incursion, the chances of the U.S. getting roped into this snake-pit were quadrupled. Those Marines will be a magnet for every nutball "militia" and provocateur – a tripwire just waiting to be triggered.

Which leads us to wonder if this, perhaps, wasn't built into the calculations that went into the making of this war.

No one believes the official pretext for the invasion – the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah – and it is well-known that plans for the operation were ready to be taken off the shelf well before the incident. On Meet the Press the other day, Tim Russert asked NBC's Martin Fletcher if the Israelis had been looking for an opportunity to attack Hezbollah and took the first one that came along. Fletcher's answer was illuminating:

"I think so very strongly. I mean, they've never – they'll never say that publicly, but don't forget that when Israel left – ended their occupation of south Lebanon in the year 2000, the deal was that the Lebanese army would go in and police the border. Well, they never did that. Instead, Hezbollah moved in with all those rockets, and ever since then, about – for that last five years, Israel's been planning what to do, how to fight Hezbollah, how to destroy them. So this is, this is not a quick reaction to a kidnapping, it's the implementation of a plan Israel's been working on for five years with very specific targets. They call it a work plan. They're going step by step."

Step 1 – Seize a pretext, any pretext, to goose-step into Lebanon.

Step 2 – Simultaneously denounce Syrian influence and a hidden "spy network" supposedly still remaining in Lebanon – this in spite of the recent bust-up of a Mossad cell by Lebanese intelligence, which had been responsible for several assassinations.

Step 3 – Restart the Lebanese civil war – and drag Syria into it.

Step 4 – Engage the enemy on two fronts:

A. Diplomatically, in the United Nations, by imposing sanctions on Iran and demanding inspections of its nuclear facilities. This long drawn-out ritual is meant largely for American and European consumption – to convince world opinion that every possible avenue for a peaceful settlement has been explored, before the second front is opened up.

B. Militarily, in Lebanon, and beyond. Bashar al-Assad is a pincer movement away from being deposed. A right hook from U.S.-occupied Iraq and a left from the Israelis would knock out the last remaining Ba'athists and open up a veritable Pandora's box of ethnic and religious conflicts long masked by the dictatorship of the Assads.

Step 5 – On to Tehran!

The hijacking of American foreign policy by a small but influential cadre of neoconservatives is no secret, nor is it a deep mystery that they have the president's ear. Whether the sound of their whispered advice will drown out the plaintive cries of ordinary Americans, who are hardly in the mood for yet another "cakewalk," is not yet known. In the case of George W. Bush, however, it is always best to count on him living up to one's worst expectations.

2006-06-21T16:55:00.000-07:00

Rain, Rain, Go Away ( Olly olly oxen free !)

“I’m so sick of this neverending rain. I think I’m turning into a mushroom. Yuk!” Sir Gimp’s lament was not without reason. It had been setting records all over the Bay, raining for five straight weeks, setting records everywhere. The very hills had become soggy remains of their former selves. Arks were built in record numbers as a good Plan B. Just in case the big one hits. Well, maybe not really two of every kind but still enough to keep things moving.

Sir Gimp and the Lovely Donna Jean were attempting breakfast in the fogged in, endlessly dripping, precipitation capitol of the Universe. It was dark, and it was dank, and it was wet everywhere. This was supposed to be Spring, the time of renewal, the time of Resurrection, and the time to bite the ears off the chocolate bunny and not admit it. But instead of a glorious spring, it was beginning to look like a wake, a funeral for the Easter Bunny and all things good and hopeful.

“You haven’t posted a new blog entry for quite a while. What’s the matter? Writer’s block? This glorious Spring weather got you down?”

The Lovely One starts skipping in a circle around the breakfast table singing “Rain, rain, go away, come again another day.”

“Now stop that! You’re gonna make rain even more!”

She changes the song and skips faster singing:

It's raining, it's pouring;
The old man is snoring.
He went to bed and he
Bumped his head
And he couldn't get up in the morning.

At that very moment there was a flash of lightening and the deep roll of thunder.

“There, see what you’ve done! You’ve angered the rain gods. Now it’s raining even harder than ever.”

“Hey, I’ve got and idea. We can play hide and seek. And you’re it!”

She “tags” him on the back and “hides” under the table. Sir Gimp decides to play along and goes into a nearby closet, puts his hands over his eyes, turns his back to the room and sings:

Rain rain stay all day
Never let us out to play
Rain rain stay all night
Soaking wet we’re such a fright

Then he shouts “olly olly oxen free!”

Upon hearing the magic incantation, the Lovely One comes out from her hiding place under the table and Sir Gimp flings open the closet door. They gently collide as they race to the “alee alee in free” spot in the center of the room. But instead of colliding, they open their arms at the last moment and end up in a large, passionate hug, filled with laughter.

Riiing...riing...riing. The incessant ringing interrupted their frolicking laughter. The Lovely One makes it to the phone just in time. “Hello. OK. Just a minute. Here dear. It’s for you. It’s Serious B...and its serious.” She hands the phone to her husband.

“Hope it’s nothing serious,” he jokes.

“Serious! Of course it’s serious!,” she says. “Why else would I be calling you at 2:00 AM?”

“Oh, I can think of lots of reasons—maybe you’re lonely?” he asks?

“Oh, I’m lonely alright. That’s why I’m coming over.”

“Now?”

“Right now.”

“How long ‘till you get here?”

“About...ten seconds.”

“Ten seconds?”

“Yeah...OK. Three...two...open your door...now!”

Sir Gimp opens the door and beholds Serious B in all her resplendent glory, cell phone to her ear.

“Gotcha!” she says as leaps through the door way, capturing Sir Gimp in a bear hug.

“OK, OK. I surrender,” he says.

In a few minutes Serious B, the Lovely One and our esteemed propeller head are situated in the sitting room relaxing with a late night tea service of Darjeeling tea, cheese and crumpets.

“Whatever is so urgent that it couldn’t wait until tomorrow?” asks Sir Gimp.

“Do you know what today is?” queries the Serious One.

“Monday. Early Monday morning, to be exact,” he replies.

“Well...duh? Yeah, I know it’s Monday morning. But do you know the date?”

Our intrepid nerd removes his glasses, holds his watch up to his face, presses a button on the side of the watch, lets his arm fall back to his side, puts his glasses back on and says, “June 12. So?”

“It’s been exactly three months since your last posting. Three months. Everyone is worried about you. I’m getting email from all over the world. Your fans are sick with worry. And I can’t hold them off any longer. They want to know, and I want to know...what’s up? Why the long song silence? I’ve heard of writer’s block, but this is ridiculous.

We’ve all been patient up to know, with your pneumonia, grimacing, shaking, edema, diabetic neuropathy, marinated brain cells, high blood pressure, etc., etc., etc. But the time has come. I’ve been able to keep them at bay with the occasional press release about the progress you’ve been making on your Rainbow Warrior novel, but the dam is about to burst. They need something, and they need it now!”

“Well, it may relieve your worried little mind to know that I may have many things, but I don’t have writer’s block.”

“Well, what is it then? Why have you been silent for so long. Is it the novel? The price of gasoline? What is it? Just tell us...please.”

“It’s a lot simpler...I don’t have any thing to say.”

Serious B and the Lovely One exchange glances. “Don’t have anything to say? How is that possible?” they ask in unison.

“It’s all been said. All been done before. And now with the Zombie Sleeping Sickness spreading like fire around the country, it wouldn’t matter even if I did.”

“Oh, c’mon now. Your whole life has been dedicated to the idea that things matter. What’s the matter with you?” said the Serious One.

“Nothing’s the matter with me! It’s the people in this country. Their freedom’s have been snatched from right under their noses and what to they do? Go shopping,” replied Sir Gimp in disgust.

“It just doesn't matter any more. The Zombie Sleeping Sickness reigns supreme.”

“How so?” queries the Serious One.

“For example,” says the Gimpish one. “I could tell you that Zarqawi wasn’t killed in the recent attack. How could a man survive two 500 hundred pound bombs on a simple Iraqi home. All the other inhabitants of the house were blown to smithereens. Oh, but not our boy Zarqawi. But since they only showed his head, who knows? Most likely he was captured, killed, drugged or whatever, weeks or months before, ‘put on ice’ so to speak, for just the right moment. Which happened to somehow, mysteriously, coincide with the announcement of the completion of the Iraqi cabinet, which somehow mysteriously coincided with Herr Bush’s ‘sudden’ surprise trip to Fortress America inside the Green Zone (which by the way, is anything but green).

And what if I told you that all this talk about Iraq being a “sovereign state” is just so much hogwash? The fact that Herr Bush could show up inside the bowels of Baghdad without the Prime Minister even knowing about until a minute or two before, shows what kind of sovereignty there is in Iraq. Zero. Zilch. A country that has no control over its own airspace can hardly be considered to be a sovereign nation. Truth is, the security situation is so bad that Uncle Sam is mighty a-feared to supply the Iraqi army with any planes with which it could defend itself or (maybe, just maybe) fly one of those bombers over the Green Zone and ‘accidentally’ let loose a few of those 500 pound babies.

And what if I told you that the Yanks have no plans to leave Babylon any time soon...that they were building an embassy bigger than the Vatican, (the Vatican for Christ’s sake), costing half a billion dollars? Sound like a country that plans to stand down? Plus four other "permanent" bases for which the U.S. has gained ‘special rights’ to the land these basis are built on, insuring that they're subject to US, not Iraqi law. A little bit of U. S. sovereignty inside the cradle of civilization, eh?

I could go on, and on, and on...but what’s the use? It just doesn’t matter. In much the same way that it didn’t matter to the German populace that the government was systematically busy enacting the ‘final solution’ on millions of potential trouble makers who posed a threat to their National Security. Didn’t matter to them then, and it doesn’t matter to us now. So just between you and me, I’ve had it. Finis. Kaput.”

“So, does this mean the end of your blog? Your literary career?" asked Serious B.

"Could be," said our dear propeller head. "Could be."

The End?

Guantanamo Joe from Kokomo

2006-03-30T14:53:00.000-08:00

Sir Gimp and the Lovely One were ensconced in their Library, early one dark and gloomy evening.

“He Invited you back?” she asked. “Why, that’s...simply...outrageous!”

At the cry of ‘outrageous’, they broke into hysterical laughter that lasted a good eight minutes or so.

(Editor’s Note: If you haven’t read the previous post, Where’s the Outrage?, then you probably have no idea why these two folks are laughing. If you want to play catchup, click here to read Where’s the Outrage?)

“Yeah, not only did he invite me back, but he said our show was one of the highest viewed of all his shows,” Sir Gimp explained.

“Don’t you find it a bit odd that one of the most watched news show is a comedy? A comedy?” she asked.

“I don’t find it odd one itsy bitsy teensy weensy little bit. Y’know why? Because that’s where the truth is. It’s is in that psychedelic nanosecond where you drop your ego and experience for a itsy bitsy teensy weensy instant, the great cosmic truth of life--that life is a big joke and that the joke’s on you.

The joker is wild, y’know. Really wild. For a brief instant, we see the connectiveness and the love that binds this universe. We step back and see that all the world’s a stage, and that we are merely players. And then we go deeper and realize that its not about getting the most toys and winning, it’s about playing the game.

When you see that you’re not really the doer, then it hits you—that blinding instant of deepest metaphysical zen awakening, when the yang and the yin of your consciousness is so perfectly balanced that you can’t contain the full impact of its contradiction—and so your body and mind go into that spasm we humorously call ‘laughter.’ That’s why I think that comedy is the best vehicle for a news show. Laughter is the abode of truth.”

“Wow! And they really want you back for another show? Sri Gimp and his Laughing Monks! Why, its a guaranteed laugh riot!”

Once again the Lovely Duo broke into a fit of outrageous laughter. Eventually they calmed down and began to address the more practical concerns facing them.

“Well,” said the Lovely One, “we better get packed. Oh, and don't forget to call Comedy Central and confirm our travel arrangements.

“Good idea. Now just where did I put the phone....?

* * * * * * * * * *

Two days later in the New York studio of Comedy Central’s, The Daily Show featuring Jon Stewart.

Jon and Sir Gimp are huddled in his pre-show office.

Jon seemed a bit upset as he queried Sir Gimp. “Now you’re telling me you’ve brought a guest--with no advance notice? I mean I like you and all Sir Gimp, but this is taking a few liberties, you know?”

“I know Jon, but honestly, it couldn’t be helped. I didn’t know until the last minute. It was touch and go right down to the wire. This guy could get killed if we didn’t do things by the book. His lawyers were afraid for his safety.”

Jon seemed even for him, a bit astounded. “Afraid for his safety? What? Is he some kind of criminal or something?”

Sir Gimp paused thoughtfully for a moment and then said, “No, not a criminal exactly, more like...a...terrorist.”

“A terrorist? Don’t tell me you’ve got Osama for a guest on my show! That’s just too much.”

“Hey, don’t have a cow, man! It’s not Osama. It’s Guantanamo Joe from Kokomo.”

“Who?” asked Jon incredulously.

Sir Gimp replied with exaggerated slowness, “Guan-tan-amo Joe from Ko-ko-mo.”

“Sir Gimp, I don’t want to offend anyone here, but if you don’t mind my asking, what kind of name is that?”

“Canadian, Jon.

“I’m sorry, but it doesn’t sound Canadian to me.”

“You’re too smart for me, Jon. It’s not really a Canadian name per se. It’s the code name that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police gave him. He’s in their protection program.

“Oh, now I get it. You’ve brought me an international terrorist, wanted by the Mounties who just stopped by to have a little chat with us this evening. Not bad, Mr. Gimp, not bad. But I do need to tell you I think you’ve got the wrong show. This isn’t Extreme Makeover for International Terrorists. This is Comedy Central. The Daily Show. My show. And it’s a comedy.”

Jon stares at Sir Gimp. Sir Gimp stares at Jon.

Finally Jon starts to crack a smile. “You had me fooled for a minute there. What you really mean to say is that this Kokomo Joe guy is from Monty Python’s Extreme Makeover comedy hour?”

“Not exactly. Here’s the story. I got a call in the middle of the night asking me if I wanted to strike a blow for freedom. Naturally, I said ‘yes, who wouldn’t?’ Once I assured them of my patriotism, they asked me if I could take a very special guest with me onto your show tomorrow night. I figured you wouldn’t mind. But due to the nature of the guest, I couldn’t ask you ahead of time, for security reasons. Now, its perfectly OK with me if you don’t want him to appear. I can tell him “no go”, and just read another poem from my best selling book, What the Hell Do I Know and When Did I Know It?

“Well what does Guantanamo Joe want to talk about?”

“He wants to talk about his time at Gitmo. Are you up for that? After all, this is a comedy show, right?”

“Right. Comedy Show. OK. Let’s bring him on.”

“Great, I’ll let the Mounties know.”

* * * * * * * * * *

Jon introduces Sir Gimp and they talk about his book and how sales increased since his last appearance on the show when he read his poem Where’s the Outrage?. And then Guantanamo Joe was introduced.

Jon: Ladies and gentlemen, we have a special guest tonight. Let’s give a warm American welcome for Guantanamo Joe, from somewhere in Canada. And let’s also give a warm round of applause for his Mountie handlers whose motto is “Don’t leave home without us.”

Jon: Welcome.

Guantanamo Joe: Hey, Mr. Jon. Is that right, I say ‘hey!’ Is that proper greeting? And then you say ‘hey!’ back?

Jon: Yeah. That’s right. Then I say ‘hey!’ back to you.

GJ: Well, then, go ahead and say it.

Jon: Say what?

GJ: Hey! Say hey back!

Jon: Oh, say hey back to you! Now I get it! Hey!

GJ: Hey! (They give each other a ‘high five.’)

Jon: Well now that we’ve got that taken care of. How do I say this?...What was it like?

GJ: What like?

Jon: You know...being there. In Gitmo?

GJ: I got where I could dig it, y’know?

Jon: Dig it? Where’d you learn to talk like that?

GJ: From the guards, Mr. Jon. From the guards. They teach us American.

Jon: The guards taught you English? When did they have time to do that?

GJ: Well, y’know Mr. Jon. Well, I guess you don’t know. But it’s a pretty boring place.

Jon: Boring. You found Gitmo boring?

GJ: How you say it ? Right now, bro?

Jon: Oh, you mean ‘right on, bro?’

GJ: Yeah. Right on! Very boring place. I don’t recommend it.

Jon: I don’t guess you would. What made it so boring?

GJ: Nothing to do. It’s not even Cuba, for Christ’s sake. It’s a teeny weeny nowhere’s ville island. No chicks, no movies, no nothin’.

Jon: How did you spend your time?

GJ: Being bored out my skull, man. I told you, it’s very, very, boring. Except for the interrogations, and they even got boring after a few years. You can only take the electric shocks so long, Jon. Day after day, Mr. Jon. And the beatings. And no sleep for weeks. And those horrible ‘heavy metal’ howlings that they try call music. What an affront to the senses. And then Mr. Jon, you know what happens?

Jon: No. I don’t. What happens.

GJ: It’s a miracle. A miracle happens.

Jon: What, Joe? What kind of miracle?

GJ: One day, about halfway into my third year, I was set free.

Jon: How were you set free?

GJ: I didn’t care any more. I just didn’t care. And then I was free. Even when they’d hook me up to the wires, I just didn’t care. I became really, really, mellow. And then I grew to like the place. The best thing about Gitmo is how safe I felt.

Jon: What do you mean, how safe you felt?

GJ: I knew that I didn’t have to worry about terrorism any more.

Jon: How can that be? You’re surrounded by terrorists there? Why you’re even a terrorist.

GJ: Ah, but that’s precisely where you’re wrong, Jon. There’s no terrorists at Gitmo.

Jon: No terrorists at Gitmo? Don’t play the fool with me. If there’s no terrorists there, where are they?

Sir Gimp: Let me jump in here Jon, if I may. No one knows where the terrorists are. Well, almost no one. It’s classified, Jon. We’ve been told that the ‘worst of the worst’ are at Gitmo. But it’s not true. The detainees call Gitmo ‘Fantasy Island’ because it’s all just full of mistakes. The real terrorists suspects are sent to those special ‘black cell’ rendition sites that Seymour Hersh wrote about in the New Yorker. We’ll never hear about who’s there or what’s happened to them.

Folks like Joe were just the mistakes. You know, unlucky ones who got sold into a kind of limbo slavery. Only five percent of Gitmo detainees were captured by U.S. soldiers. The rest were turned in by informants who were paid a ransom of five to ten thousand dollars for each body they turned in. Like the old bounty hunters in the wild west.

Only ten of these detainees were ever charged with anything. The rest just sit there and rot because the military is too damn proud to admit that they screwed up big time. That’s why after three, four years no charges have been brought and they’ve not been allowed to see a lawyer. Cause they’re innocent and the government well knows it. If they let them go they’ll be hit with so many lawsuits that it would be the biggest scandal the military’s ever known.

Excuse me Jon, but the Mounties are telling me that it’s time for Joe to be moving on. He can’t stay too long in one place.

Jon: Thanks Sir Gimp. And Guantanamo Joe from Kokomo, I pray that you continue to live in interesting times. Goodnight, everyone.

The End

Where’s the Outrage?

2006-03-05T18:46:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Comedy Central’s, The Daily Show. I’m Jon Stewart. Let’s give a big round of applause for our guest tonight, Sir Gimp, renowned author and disabled veteran of the metaphysical wars. Tonight he will read a poem from his new book of poetry, What the hell do I know and I when did I know it? Sir Gimp, your book is selling quite well. Especially for poetry, which has not been very popular in recent years.

“Yes Jon, I’ve been fortunate. But it’s more than luck, Jon, despite what Woody says in his new film Matchpoint. You see, poetry has to speak to the real stuff of people’s lives. It’s been locked in the ivy tower much too long. Dylan broke the mold, but he didn’t take it far enough; he had to hide what he said in song lyrics. That’s why he went electric. He didn’t give a shit--oh sorry Jon. Can we say that on the air?”

“Not to worry, Sir Gimp. We’re on cable.”

“Great! Now what was I saying? Oh yeah. Dylan didn’t give a shit about folk rock, or wanting to be Elvis or any of that BS. He just wanted to camouflage his lyrics with sound and an acoustic guitar and harmonica just didn’t cut it. You could hear his lyrics too clearly. Notice that his popularity took off when he went electric and nobody had any idea what he was saying. But that’s a topic for another show, Jon.”

“OK. Let’s get down to the business at hand.”

“You see, Jon. That’s where I’m different from Bobby. I don’t try to hide my poetry behind an onslaught of sound. My poetry is bare naked, right on the page with no fig leaves, nothing to hide. That’s why people like it.”

“What are you going to read tonight?”

“I’m going to read a poem called Where’s the Outrage?”

“OK. Go for it.”

Sir Gimp begins to read:

Outraged?

Of course I’m outraged!

Why? Because there’s no bloody outrage, that’s why.

I’m fuming mad. Perhaps even howling mad.

I’ve seen the best minds of my generation sucked into a propaganda machine that seemingly knows no values or limits. And when the machine spits them out on the other side, wasted, used, and exhausted; they are like the walking dead--soulless, drifting in a barren wasteland with no hope for the future.

Truth has become a commodity now, sold to the highest bidder.

There is no more journalism, only promotion.

On an endless series of “talk shows” people shamelessly promote their books, movies, toilet bowl cleaner, sugar loaded breakfast cereals, and other endlessly fascinating items bearing true witness to the end of civilization as we once knew it.

And yet there’s no outrage.

We just seem to go on, and on, and on, as if everything is just hunky dory.

Executed the third death row inmate this week? Oh that’s so cool.

Just discovered that corruption in Washingto DC is much more widespread than previously imagined. Didja hear that dude, worse than imagined? Wow, gotta love it!

Twenty five percent of all soldiers who return from Iraq have severe mental problems. Severe mental problems? Wowza. And thery’re letting ‘em walk around in broad daylight? Get outta here!

And then there’s torture.

Gotta love it.

Geneva Conventions? Is that a chocolate bar from the Swiss Alps?

Quick Quiz.

Question: When is torture not torture?

Answer: When we’re doing it to them.

Then it’s legal. Then it’s moral. Then it’s OK by the Geneva Conventions.

Question: When is torture really torture.

Answer: When they’re doing it to “our boys.”

Then it’s illegal. Then it’s immoral. Then it’s prohibited by the Geneva Conventions. Then it’s not a chocolate bar.

Then and only then is there outrage.

Then and only then.

Bush sells nukes to India and pours blood on Gandhi’s grave.

Where’s the outrage?

Patriot act delayed then approved. Liberty sacrificed on the Altar of False Security, the Golden Calf of our time.

The Lame Duck Democrats just nod their heads and quack “aye”, and the die is cast.

Poor “give me liberty or give me death” Patrick Henry. He wouldn’t have signed the Patriot Act.

And he would have shot dead any of the traitors that did.

Bush says spying on Americans is good for America and what’s good for America is good for Halliburton. And so it is written.

Law, what law? “I don’t need any stinkin’ law. I’m the Emperor, God’s chosen one and I will do what I goddamn please until our victory is accomplished.

I have a dream. I will lead the people to the promised land and we will win the war on terror.”

War on terror? What war on terror? There can be no war on terror. Terrorism is a tactic, not a country. Not an army. It is everywhere and nowhere. How can you beat an “enemy” that is nowhere? You can’t.

He's a real nowhere Man,
Sitting in his Nowhere Land,
Making all his nowhere plans
for nobody.

But we can have have perpetual war for perpetual peace.

Be afraid.

Be VERY afraid.

Where’s the outrage?

Video tape emerges showing that the drowning of New Orleans was predicted ahead of time. Poor old “Brownie”, crying in the wilderness like John the Baptist and crucified like the carpenter from Nazereth.

Just as Nero fiddled while Rome went up in flames, the Boy Wonder played guitar while New Orleans sank.

Where’s the outrage?

Would you buy a used drug program from this man?

“And do I have a deal for you. With my plan, I can change the price or the drugs at anytime, or remove them if I choose.

And if your drugs become too expensive or not available, tough titties. And we will not negotiate prices. The drug companies must set the price to ensure that obscene prophets continue.

Drugs aren’t good for you anyway. They will lead to the harder stuff and destroy the moral fabric of this country. And this, my friend, absolutely must not, cannot, and will not be tolerated. It would be an outrage.”

Sir Gimp sank back into his chair, exhausted.

The audience was silent, stunned. No clapping, no booing, no nothing.

Sir Gimp took a gulp from his trusty water bottle, looked straight into the eye of the camera and quietly asked, “Where’s the outrage?”

The End

Paper Napkins Redux: Life Imitates Art

2006-02-07T11:26:00.000-08:00

And the hits just keep on comin’. Yessiree. The day after King George’s State of the Onion speech (you have to peel back many, many, layers to get to the truth), the Tory party approved another big hit on some of their fave rave targets: the poor, the ill, seniors and the disenfranchised. How’d they do it? I’m glad you asked.

Using BushSpeak ( where what you say is the reverse of what you mean and do) they just passed a 40 billion “deficit reduction act.” It passed by an overwhelming two votes, 216 to 214 in the House. In December, the companion bill in the Senate passed by one vote: the tie-breaking vote of Reichstag Vice General Richard Cheney.

So as result of a whopping total of three votes, once again the Torries have attempted to “balance the budget on the backs of the poor.”

But you guessed it. There’s more to this than meets the eye. When it comes to the Holy Tax Cuts, where are the “Deficit Hawks?” Not to be found, I guarantee it. In fact, it is their sworn Christian duty to make sure that the deficit increases. And true to form, they have continued ensuring that the Nobility is taken care of. The House did this by passing a $56 billion dollar tax cut . When the the Senate version passes, the two bills would result in adding $16 billion dollars to the federal deficit.

Do’ ya get it my friends? They’ll get some PR by passing a “deficit reduction” bill and then make it up with the Holy Tax Cuts. See, this way the deficit can keep on growing until the Torries’ Great Wet Dream is realized: bankrupting the US Government and ending the “welfare state.” They’ll take away funds from students, seniors, and very low income folks so it can be doled out to the Nobility.

And yes, this was foretold by that sage and prophet, Sir Gimp, in his “fictional” short story Paper Napkins, recently published on this very blogsite. In case you haven’t read it or can’t remember, Paper Napkins describes a society in which people are discarded into the Dustbin Of History when there yearly earnings fall below the prescribed limit. The story seemed to be a case of Life imitating Art. And we all know that the prophecy of a true seer must be fulfilled. And so we bear collective witness to the following:

Ironically, yea, shall we say “prophetically?”, a comment found on the Huffington Post website stated:

[These are] The acts of trully fake christians. Face it they would like people [to] die as soon as they can't work.

I assume that they didn’t read “Paper Napkins” before they wrote their comment. And another incisive remark was found in the Comment section of “Paper Napkins” on this very blogsite:

So prophetic! .... This sounds like a Republican's answer to welfare.

But not to worry. At least one Republican has a conscience. Here’s a surprising confessional from Republican senator V. Voinovich (R-Ohio), "I do not know how anyone can say with a straight face that when we voted to cut spending in December to help achieve deficit reductions, we can now turn around a short while later to provide tax cuts that exceed or cancel out the reduction in spending...We cannot afford these tax cuts."

And true to form, Democrats blasted the White House and Republicans for allowing states to reduce Medicaid coverage and boost fees for Medicaid programs for the poor and disabled at the same time the president is calling for making permanent tax cuts for wealthy Americans.

But surprisingly enough, the tax cuts that we “can’t afford”, are on their way to being passed as part of the new budget that sets a new record at (pull up a chair...you better sit down for this one) almost half a trillion dollars. Let me say it again...HALF A TRILLION DOLLARS. And that, my friends, is a lot of food stamps.

And we must remember that our MBA King (for reasons known only to Karl Rove and other Black Magicians), doesn’t include the cost of our wars in the budget. Can you guess why? Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the latest estimates of all the total coasts of the Iraq and Afghan wars will come out to a cool TWO TRILLION. That’s TWO TRILLION smackeroonees!

So you see, next to the war costs, our half trillion budget is a mere trifling. Can’t even get a rise out of that any more. But two trillion, well that’s something I can wrap my arms around. A trillion here, a trillion there...and pretty soon we’re talkin’ real money.

We can’t even conceive how many greenbacks that is. Remember that a trillion is a thousand billion. So that’s what...two thousand billion?

Just to help you out here, one trillion seconds of ordinary clock time equals 31,546 years.

Six trillion seconds equals 189,276 years.

Federal law limits the amount of debt the U.S. Treasury may carry, and the current amount – a whopping $7.4 trillion – has been reached once again by the Empire. Not to worry, though. Our team in Washington has just raised the debt ceiling to 9 trillion, just in case....

Oh, and did I mention that the feds borrow roughly $1 billion every day to pay the bills?

Long live the Empire! All hail King George! With this kind of fiscal irresponsibility, we’ll all heading for the Dustbin of History at a ripe young age, as was foretold in Paper Napkins. And so it is written....

The End

Paper Napkins

2006-01-26T09:02:00.000-08:00

Fiction by Sir Gimp

“It’s too bad that we didn’t do better in the market,” he said, pulling her closer.

“It’s alright, dear,” she said hoping to comfort him. “These things happen.”

“Are you ready to go?”

“Almost. I’ll still need a little more time to wrap things up. A few more phone calls, a few more emails. That sort of thing. How about you?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be. One’s never really ready, y’know.”

“Yes, I know. But I don’t mind. No use in crying over the inevitable.”

“But if we’d only kept a little better eye on things. Sold some stock even a month or two sooner, we’d have bought some time.”

“That’s just it. What good is buying more time? A few months here, a few months there. I’d just as soon have it over.”

“Well, you’ll be getting your wish soon enough now, won’t you?”

Long pause.

“I guess so. One more walk around the place in morning, before we go?”

“OK. Our last waltz, so to speak.”

“I like that. Our last waltz. You always were a romantic in the end.”

“Yeah, in the end.”

They spent the last few hours of the evening putting their things in order. Tonight would be their last night together. It would also be the last night of their lives. Tomorrow, Tom and Sarah would be rendered redundant and taken to Dust Bin of History. The journey would last about half a day, including the final preparations. Although arrangements had been made with their two sons to pick up any loose ends, they would not be with them on their final journey. What would be the point? For the younger generation, it was no big deal. Just a fact of life. Nothing to worry about or fear. For Tom and Sarah’s generation, it still took some getting used to. And although neither of them would admit it, they were not as prepared as they would like to be.

Oh, their affairs were all in order, all right. But there was something about the matter-of-factness of it all that still troubled them. One was expected to just do it. No remorse, no regret. Perhaps if they had committed a crime, maybe even a murder, it would be easier. Then at least they would feel that they deserved it. That there was some justification for it. But this way, it was so goddamn civilized. So polite. A smile here, some good wishes there. All in all, a rather straight forward affair.

* * * * * * * * * *

The class period on Civic Duty was coming to an end. “Are there any questions?” Ms. Campbell asked.

Emmy Lou raised her hand.

“Yes Emmy Lou, what is it?”

“I understand why we do it, but something still bothers me about it.”

“And what would that be?”

“I don’t know how to say it without seeming old fashioned,” said Emmy Lou.

“That’s why we have this course on Civic Duty. So you can get all your questions answered.”

“Well, it’s just that...and I know what you’re going to say...but...it just seems kind of unfair, you know?”

“What seems unfair? Everyone is treated the same. There’s no favoritism or discrimination.” Ms Campbell paused for a moment and looked out the window. For a second her thoughts drifted to another time when things were done differently... but then her awareness snapped back to the present.

“Believe me, it’s much better than the old way. Really it is. You don’t want to see them hanging around in their so-called golden years, rotting away with nothing to look forward to, draining society to a breaking point. There’s no civic pride in becoming useless and obsolete, is there?”

“No, I guess not. But it seems so weird. One day you’re useful, the next day you’re not. Bam! Just like that. Disposable as paper napkins.”

“You have to remember, that we’re a consumer society. Consumption is what has made us the greatest nation there ever has been. Once your buying power drops below the legal limit, then it’s time for the Dust Bin. You’re no longer capable of doing your Civic Duty. You know that, don’t you Emmy Lou?”

“Yeah, of course I know it...But still.”

“But still what?

“Nothing. Never mind.”

“We’ll have our Civic Duty mid-term next Tuesday, open book. That’s all for today.”

The End

Silent Night -- Part II

2006-01-15T19:43:00.000-08:00

Our story so far: click here for Silent Night -- Part I

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“What was weird, Sarah? What was so weird?”

A look of fear and uncertainty slowly came over Sarah’s face.

“Just tell me, from the beginning, what you saw.”

“Well, they brought us into the witness chamber at about 11:30. We all sat down on these seats with a view of the death chamber. There were about twenty of us. Some were family of the victim. Some were guards. Others were officials like the warden and the coroner. And a few reporters.

They brought him in at about 11:45. He was very peaceful with a look that was almost a smile. Not a ‘ha ha’ kind of smile. But a smile of deep peace and contentment. I sure don’t know how he could be so peaceful when he knew he was going to die. They said he refused his last meal, because he didn’t want to carry any extra baggage when he got to the “other side.”

Then they asked him if he wanted the priest to bless him or say any final words. He said that he didn’t want to hear anything from any “prison priest.” When they asked him if he had any final words, he said, “You’re going to kill an innocent man. Father forgive them them for they know not what they do.”

That really spooked me out because that’s just what He said.

“He said?” asked Jeff.

“Jesus,” she said softly. “It’s what Jesus said when they nailed him to the cross.”

“Then Cookie said, ‘God bless you all,’ and got the real peaceful look again. Then they made a phone call to see if the Governor was going to pardon him or delay killing him. The warden hung up the phone and looked at all of us and said, ‘It’s time’.”

They had him sort of tied down, laying on a table. They taped his mouth so he couldn’t talk anymore or scream, I guess. Then it got really creepy. I mean really creepy.”

“What happened Sarah? What was so creepy?”

“They went over to him and got ready to put a needle in him. But before they could, He appeared.”

“Who appeared?”

“Jesus. Jesus appeared. Right in front of us. The guy with the needle was totally freaked out and he almost fainted. The warden and a guard caught him just as he started to fall. He couldn’t stand up so they set him down on the floor. The guards all had their guns out but the warden said, ‘Easy boys, easy. Don’t shoot. Easy now.’

No one could believe what they were seeing. Jesus was like floating above Cookie’s table. Just floating in the air. And you could sort of see right through him. We were all just so freaked out. The warden started walking towards Jesus and Cookie. But then he stopped when Jesus spoke.

“Jesus spoke to you? What did he say?”

He said that speech that he gave on the mountain. When he fed all the people.

“You mean the Sermon on the Mount?”

“Yeah, well maybe. I’m not sure what its called.”

“That’s OK. Do you remember what he said?”

“I took pretty good notes.”

“Did you bring your notes?”

“Right here,” Sarah said pointing to a notepad on the table.

“Can you read your notes to me, Sarah?”

“Yeah. OK.”

Sarah began reading her notes.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to them.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to them.”

Sarah stopped reading and looked hard at Jeff, wondering if he thinks she’s crazy.

“What happened, then Sarah?” asked Jeff.

Fear began creeping over Sarah’s face. “You promised,” she said. “You promised not to laugh at me.”

“I’m not going to laugh Sarah. I promise. What happened next?”

“When Jesus finished his prayer, he held out his hands like this, over Cookie’s body on the table. Then there was a light that seemed to come from his hands. The light got stronger and stronger, until I couldn’t see Jesus or Cookie. Then the light got dimmer and dimmer. And Jesus was gone! And so was Cookie. Just gone.”

Jeff stared at Sarah without saying a word. Finally he said, “Excuse me. What do you mean gone, Sarah?”

“Just...gone. Like not there.”

“Well...OK. What happened next?”

“Nobody moved or said anything for...maybe five minutes. I think we were all in shock or something. Then the guards pulled out their guns while the warden and the coroner crept towards the table where Cookie was. The coroner cautiously moved his hands over the table, and then walked around the table, like he was trying to see if Cookie was still there. Then the warden nodded to the guards and they moved in, pointing their guns like you see on TV. After about fifteen minutes of searching, they huddled with the warden and coroner. The warden made a phone call from his cell phone, and in about ten or fifteen minutes the FBI showed up with a SWAT team. When the priest saw the SWAT team arrive, he shouted ‘Lord have mercy!’ and some of our group shouted ‘Amen!’ I didn’t say it with the group. I was too scared to say anything.

Then they took us into small rooms and searched each of us. I sure don’t know what they were looking for. I mean nobody committed a crime or anything. After we were searched we were interviewed. They took each of us into a private room and sat us down. They told us about our rights and turned on a video camera and asked us a bunch of questions. Then we went back into the witness chamber and waited.

Nobody said a word while we waited. We didn’t know what to say even if we could talk. When we were all together, someone from the FBI and the warden told us that something ‘irregular’ happened and they were looking into it. A guy from the newspaper asked the coroner if Cookie was dead. The coroner looked at the reporter like he was crazy. Then the warden said, ‘everyone stay calm. Until we figure out what happened to Cookie, the D.A. has put a gag order on all of you. That means you can’t talk about this to anyone. And I mean anyone. Do you all understand? Not a word to your husband, wife, son, daughter, co-worker or anyone else. If anyone breaks the gag order, you will all be arrested and jailed. Any questions?’

No one said a word. We were all terrified. We didn’t know what happened to Cookie and we sure didn’t know if Jesus was real or what. I think everyone saw him, but I don’t know for sure, because we couldn’t talk about it.”

Sarah was breathing hard and her pupils were dilated. Jeff went to get another round of espresso for both of them, giving Sarah a few minutes to calm down and to give himself some badly needed time to think.

“Her story is simply fantastic,” he thought. If it is true, it would certainly explain why it took so long for them to come out, why the coroner didn’t announce the time of death, and why they were so quiet when they did come out. And this Jesus stuff. Mass hallucination? Some kind of high-tech projection device? Or a real Christmas miracle?

Jeff returned with more espressos and a puzzled look.

“Well, am I crazy?” Sarah asked.

“No. Of course not. You’re not crazy Sarah.”

“Then what happened, Jeff? Please tell me what happened. I’m so scared.”

“Sarah, I sure as hell don’t know what to make of this. But I do know this—what you saw, you saw. That is your truth. And no one can take that away from you.

“But what was it? Was Jesus really there? What happened to Cookie?”

“Look for all I know, aliens came and abducted Cookie.”

Sarah’s frightened look spoke volumes. “Really? Aliens?”

“Just kidding Sarah, just kidding. The law requires the coroner to state the time of death after an execution. Since no time of death was announced, I think we can safely assume that no death took place. But what really did happen, we may never know.

The senses are tricky. From our perspective, it looks like the sun revolves around the earth, but through science we learn that it’s really the earth that revolves around the sun. But you’d never know from direct observation. We must balance what we learn from our senses with what we learn from our intellect, from observation and reason, and from what our emotional and intuitive centers tell us. Only then can we begin to arrive at something we can call ‘truth.’”

Jeff’s cell phone rang. “Jeff here. Oh, hello Robert. Yes, I’ve been meeting with some of them. But I’ve got bad news for you. No one is talking. I can’t get a word out of any one. They all seem afraid of something, probably breaking the gag order. None of them want to go to jail. Yeah, I know. But that’s how it is.”

The End

Silent Night -- Part I

2006-01-10T14:59:00.000-08:00

It was a chilly, Christmas eve night. The crowd was growing restless and cold. It had been more than an hour and still no word. How much longer? What could have happened? The media were also growing increasingly impatient. The crowd had been singing carols for hours and were just wailing into a spirited version of Silent Night.

Silent Night

Holy Night

All is calm

All is bright

Round yon virgin

Mother and child

Holy Infant so tender and mild

Sleep in...

Jeff’s cell phone rang impatiently.

“Jeff, what the hell is going on there?”

“We don’t know, Robert. We just don’t know. You know the drill. Nobody says nothin’ until they give the word. And for now, the word is that there isn't any.”

“Well, let me know the minute something happens. We're holding open the last five minutes for some live coverage, and it better be good. We need to see something.”

“I'll let you know the minute anything happens,” Jeff replied. “But have a backup, just in case.”

“Of course,” Robert replied. “We always do. Jeff, are you alright? Is there something you're not telling me?”

“There's just a weird feeling in the air,” sighed Jeff. “I guess we're all stressed out here because it's taking so long. Should have been over in half an hour, forty five minutes, tops. And as you're fully aware, its been an hour and fifteen minutes and nothing, absolutely nothing, is happening. I don't mean to be insensitive, but how long can it take for one man to die? It just feels like something's gone wrong.”

“We'll be standing by. But we can't hold the spot open much longer,” warned Robert. We may have to do a Katrina follow-up piece instead.

The sudden dial tone startled Jeff as Robert hung up. He'd been on the “death row” beat for years, and nothing like this had ever happened. This one was cut and dry. Sure, the guy claimed innocence and refused to show any remorse or misgiving. But a lot of 'em say that they're innocent. Sometimes he believed them, sometimes he didn't. This time it was harder. Charley “Cookie” Wong had changed quite a bit since coming to the “farm.” He'd found salvation through good works and been a positive influence among many of the other death row inmates. He even wrote a book warning young gang wannabes to change their ways before it was too late. But he never admitted to being guilty. Eighteen years later and he still insisted on his innocence.

Jeff had only interviewed him a few times, and he had to admit that Cookie was convincing. But Jeff was careful, and cynical as well. You had to be, to keep your sanity. Oh, they could be real tearjerkers, all right. When he felt he was losing his objectivity, he'd just do a story about the victims. Then he'd become enveloped in their suffering, in their loss. And that would make him feel better. Jeff wasn't sure how he felt about capital punishment. With all this DNA checking, it was harder to make a mistake. That was the thing that bothered him most. The finality of it. There was no way to undo, to recover from a mistake. And mistakes most certainly had been made. The Governor of Illinois was so concerned that he released all of the inmates from death row right before he left office. He said that too many mistakes had been made, too many innocent lives had been lost. And he didn't want that on his conscience.

Jeff began pacing relentlessly and looking at his watch every minute or two. And then he felt it. From deep inside he knew. They were coming out now. He slowly looked up, towards where they would exit the building and begin the long procession down the sidewalk towards the parking lot and the media circus. If he stretched his neck he could see them coming out the door of the detention center. He saw the crowd begin to swell and move. He was right. They were coming now. But it wasn’t good. The mood was hard to describe. It wasn’t the usual mix of the somber, the triumphant, and the defeated. It was something that he hadn’t experienced in all his years on the “death row” beat. It was a mixture of fear and shock. He felt that something had gone wrong. Terribly wrong.

Suddenly Robert remembered his promise to Jeff. He hit Jeff’s number on his cell. “Jeff, it’s me.”

“Well what the hell’s happening? We’re out of time!” screamed Robert.

“I don’t know,” Jeff replied.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” hammered Robert.

“It’s really weird Bob. Really weird. They’re coming out now but no one is saying a word. There’s been no announcement of the time of death or anything.”

“Well, what are they saying?”

“That’s just it Bob. They aren’t saying anything.”

“They aren’t saying anything? I’ve never heard...Well, what’s the mood like?”

“I can’t say for sure, but it smells like fear, or shock— something I can’t quite put my finger on.”

“Jeff, we can’t wait any longer. I’m gonna have to go with with the Katrina piece. Call me when you figure out what the hell is going on.” Robert was gone, leaving Jeff holding the phone in a state of shock himself.

One Week Later....

Jeff and Robert are sitting in Robert’s office, having coffee.

“It’s just the damnedest thing. No one is talking. A full week later and we don’t know any more than we did on the day of the execution,” said Robert.

“Alleged execution. Alleged. There’s been no coroner’s report. We don’t know if old Cookie is dead or alive. Maybe the ‘execution’ went awry and he’s in some vegetative brain-fried state. It happens sometimes. They fry but they don’t die.

“Well, this is just ridiculous. There’s got to be a way to get someone to talk. Gag order or no gag order. Call everyone who was there that day. Someone’s got to be willing to talk. Hell, if something really bad happened, somebody might even be dying to talk.”

Jeff spent the next few days calling everyone who was a witness that night. He sensed fear and apprehension in some, and others would simply hang up as soon as he identified himself as a news reporter for WGXL TV. But there were two or three that told him to call back, they might be ready to talk if the right conditions could be met.

He picked one of the three and dialed her number. Busy. He tried the second one on the list, a Sarah Steinman.

“Hello, this is Jeff Hanson from WGXL TV. May I speak with Sarah, please.”

“This is she.”

“Sarah, I’m calling all the witnesses of Charley “Cookie” Wong’s execution.”

“Why?” asked Sarah. “Want do you want?”

“I want to know what happened that night, and I was hoping we could meet somewhere and talk about it.”

“You know there’s a gag order on, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do. But I was hoping that we could talk about it anyway. Off the record, of course.”

“Off the record? What exactly does that mean?”

“It means that no one will ever know what you tell me.”

“No one?”

“That’s right. Not a single soul.”

There is lengthy pause.

“And who are you again?”

“Jeff Roberts from Channel 5 news.”

“Oh, I watch that all the time. It’s not as good as Channel 7, but it’s OK. I like the weather reports on your channel.”

“Yeah, Cathy does a great weather show. How about it? Can we talk about this?”

“Off the record? Really? For sure?”

“For sure. I promise. You have my word.”

“Well, OK, I guess. I really would like to talk to someone about it.”

“Great.”

Jeff and Sarah agreed to meet at a coffee house downtown. It was Sarah’s favorite hangout.

Twenty minutes later Jeff arrived at the Java Joint. A light rain was falling and the night air was warmish and fresh. Once inside the Joint, he had no trouble spotting Sarah. She was wearing a light blue blouse and sunglasses. He walked slowly to the booth she was in, wiping the rain from his hair as he approached her.

“Sarah?” Sarah Barnes?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Jeff Hanson from Channel 5 news. May I sit down?”

“OK. But do you have some ID?”

Jeff pulled out his ID badge from his left pants pocket.

“I’ve seen you on the news. I mean as a reporter.”

“Great. OK if I sit down?”

“Sure. Please. Want some coffee? The espresso's really good here.”

“Very good. I’ll go order one. Can I get you anything?”

“How about a biscotti?”

“You got it.”

A few minutes later Jeff returned with a plateful of biscotti and his espresso.

“Thanks for coming out to meet with me, Sarah.”

“You’re welcome.”

Sarah stirred her half empty espresso and stared into her cup. She dunked a biscotti into her coffee and munched on it absentmindedly. Jeff stared at the rain, lost in the silver patterns glistening on the window. After a long pause, he spoke.

“What happened that night, Sarah? I’ve been on the ‘death watch’ for many years and I’ve never seen anything like that night. Usually its over in half an hour, forty five minutes, tops. But this time it was almost an hour and a half. And then, when you guys finally came out, no one said a word. Usually the coroner announce’s the time of death to all the media people. But no one said a word. It’s been a week now, and still no one’s talking. Nada. Zip.”

Jeff looks straight into Sarah’s eyes, hoping to penetrate that place in her that holds the truth about that night.

“Sarah, tell me what happened.”

“Off the record? Promise?”

“Promise. Completely, totally, officially, off the record. Scout’s honor.”

Sarah gave an embarrassed laugh at the Scout’s honor bit. For a moment she saw Jeff standing at attention in his Scout uniform, campfire blazing in the background.

“You won’t laugh or make fun of me, will you?”

“You have my word. Why would I make fun of you?”

“Because of what happened. You might not believe me.”

“Sarah. Look at me. I will believe you. Understand? I truly will believe you.”

“OK. But it was just so weird. So very weird.”

TO BE CONTINUED

Mary Jane Strikes Again

2006-01-03T17:42:00.000-08:00

“Now what is it?” asked the Lovely One, showing more than just a bit of consternation in her voice. “Your propellers are going crazy and there’s so much smoke coming out of your ears and nose that I can hardly see, much less breathe!”

Sir Gimp was beside himself with excitement. “They did it, they did it!” he said swaying from side to side while bouncing up and down (well, as much as a gimp like him can bounce up and down, which is to say not very much).

“They did what?” queried the Lovely One.

“They got those suckers, and got ‘em good!” said Sir Gimp.

“Calm down, calm down. What suckers? Who got whom?”

“I’ll explain. Just give me a minute. This is a big one.”

“Let me make you some tea and crackers,” she said.

“OK. That sounds good. Boy this is just so great. So great.”

Sir Gimp plopped down down in his chair and began shuffling through a pile of printouts from the Internet. In a few minutes his reading was interrupted by the arrival of his tea and crackers.

“Oh, thanks,” he said.

“You’re welcome. Now what’s the big news?”

“Number eleven. Rhode Island became the eleventh state to legalize medical marijuana. And only the third to do it via a law enacted by a state legislature. Here, read this,”

On January 3, 2006, in an unmistakable signal to Congress that the states are demanding change, the Rhode Island General Assembly overwhelmingly overrode the governor's veto of the Marijuana Policy Project's bill to protect medical marijuana patients from arrest -- making Rhode Island the 11th medical marijuana state.

The legislature sent the bill to Gov. Donald Carcieri (R) on June 28. He vetoed it on June 29 -- despite overwhelming support from the public and the state's leading medical organizations ... and despite the landslide votes of 30-0 in the Senate and 52-10 in the House. On January 3, 2006, more than the required three-fifths of each chamber voted to override the veto, enacting the bill into law.

The legislature's action is a strong retort to Congress, which on June 15 voted down federal protections for medical marijuana patients by 161-264. This sweeping victory sends a powerful signal to Congress that more and more states will be pushing back until Congress feels obligated to change federal law.

MPP fought hard to pass the law, deploying a massive grassroots mobilization that swamped state legislators' offices with postcards, phone calls, and e-mails from constituents and blanketed the airwaves with hard-hitting TV ads. MPP also obtained endorsements for the bill from the Rhode Island Medical Society, Rhode Island Nurses Association, and AIDS Project Rhode Island.

Rhode Island is only the third state to enact a medical marijuana law via the legislative process, and the first to do so after a governor's veto. Of the 10 states that have enacted similar laws allowing seriously ill patients to use medical marijuana with their doctor's recommendation -- Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington -- all but Hawaii's and Vermont's laws were enacted through ballot initiatives. The bill allows patients suffering from serious illnesses -- including AIDS, cancer, multiple sclerosis, and others -- and their caretakers to possess and grow medical marijuana for personal use, with the approval of a doctor.

“Isn’t that great? Now we have eleven out of fifty states. That’s over 20% of the country. It’s happening, I tell you! It’s happening. Pretty soon Congress won’t be able to resist the force of this tsunami.”

“That is great news! I’m really happy for all those suffering in Rhode Island. Now, they can get the treatment that they need.”

“Yeah,” said our famous propeller head. “It is good news—very good news. But we’ve still got a long way to go. Check this out.”

The Lovely One leaned over her husbands shoulder and read the following by Garrison Keillor of Prairie Home Companion fame:

The cruelty of the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 is stark indeed, as are the sentencing guidelines that impose mandatory minimum sentences for minor drug possession -- guidelines in the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act that sailed through Congress without benefit of public hearings, drafted before an election by Democrats afraid to be labeled "soft on drugs."

As a result, a marijuana grower can land in prison for life without parole while a murderer might be in for eight years. No rational person can defend this; it is a Dostoeyskian nightmare, and it exists only because politicians fled in the face of danger.

That includes Bill Clinton, under whose administration the prosecution of Americans for marijuana went up hugely, so that now there are more folks in prison for marijuana than for violent crimes. More than for manslaughter or rape. This only makes sense in the fantasy world of Washington, where perception counts for more than reality. To an old Democrat, who takes a ground view of politics -- What is the actual effect of this action on the lives of real people? -- it is a foul tragedy that makes you feel guilty about enjoying your freedom.

...I don't dare visit Sandstone Federal Prison here in Minnesota for fear of what I'd see there: People who chose marijuana, a more benign drug than alcohol, and got caught in the religious war that we Democrats in a weak moment signed onto. God help us if we form alliance with such bullies as would destroy a kid's life for raising cannabis plants.

“As you know, I’d probably be dead by now or on some comatose medication (which is another form of death). So I’m grateful, really grateful, to be living in a state that allows me to have my medicine without the legal hassles and fear that most US citizens still have to deal with. And I owe a great debt to organizations like the Marijuana Policy Project who are working so tirelessly to get the laws changed in state after state. That’s one reason why I made the marijuana issue part of my new novel, Quarantine: Night of the Illuminati. In fact, I couldn’t have written that novel or even this blog entry without my dear friend Mary Jane.”

And with that little tribute, Sir Gimp gimped off to work on his novel, while the Lovely One just smiled and thanked God for her husband’s ongoing affair with Mary Jane.

Happy Xmas, War is Over

2005-12-22T10:44:00.000-08:00

As this year of our Lord 2005 draws to a close, I want to thank you all for being part of my life this year. As some of you might know, this month is the first anniversary of my ten day hospitalization and near death experience. Looking back a year later, how do I feel? As Bob Dylan said when someone asked him how he was doing after his hospitalization a few years back, he said, “Any day above ground is a good day.” I suppose I can agree with him on that one.

On the down side, the shaking and grimacing is still with me all the time. My only recourse and relief is Mary Jane and her assorted companions. Some days the suffering is so acute that it seems like I took a wrong turn last year when I decided to linger on this earthly plane for a bit longer. I still feel that I’m living a Jekyll and Hyde life, either grimacing and shaking, or marinating my mind, so I won’t grimace and shake. Not good choices, to be sure.

On the plus side of the ledger, this was the year I started the GimpBlog and wrote the first draft of my novel (Quaratine: Night of the Illuminati) in thirty days. I also found a good therapist and started using an insulin pump instead of taking shots three times a day.

Many days, I’m glad to be “above ground” and continue pursuing my life’s work: making lemonade out of lemons. (Unless I miss my guess, it’s probably your life’s work too.)

Once again, I had a good summer, with a divine week at the SRF yearly convocation, a trip to see my good friend Bill in Colorado, and a wonderful SRF weekend retreat in Los Altos. I’ve been confined to my sanctuary/studio most of the time, due to my very limited driving and walking ability.

On the political front, the “second term curse” is starting to unravel the “evil doers” in the White House and Congress, with indictments and investigations putting many of the “good ole boys” on the run. Not that they haven’t continued their looting and plundering of the middle class and the poor, they have. But slowly and surely the American Zombies are starting to rub the sleep out of their eyes and are beginning to heed the cry “sleepers awake.”

An emboldened Congress is starting to fight back saying no more torture, no more renditions, no more spying.

And then, as always, there’s Iraq. Oh yes, Iraq. Remember that one? The President has even acknowledged that things may not be going exactly perfectly as he argues for “staying the course” in You-Know-Where as he blindly, lemming-like, heads off the edge of the cliff into the deep, dark abyss below.

It looks like his illegal, immoral invasion is about to produce a neocon’s worst nightmare. After all this blood, suffering, death, and enormous financial cost (one day of the war’s expenditures could pay for higher education for 17,000 Americans) what have they wrought? The new Islamic State of Iraq where Islamic law will rule the land. As stated in the UK newspaper, The Independent:

The election marks the final shipwreck of American and British hopes of establishing a pro-Western secular democracy in a united Iraq.

Islamic fundamentalist movements are ever more powerful in both the Sunni and Shia communities. Ghassan Attiyah, an Iraqi commentator, said: "In two and a half years Bush has succeeded in creating two new Talibans in Iraq."

...The break-up of Iraq has been brought closer by the election. The great majority of people who went to the polls voted as Shia, Sunni or Kurds - and not as Iraqis. The forces pulling Iraq apart are stronger than those holding it together. The election, billed by Mr Bush and Mr Blair as the birth of a new Iraqi state may in fact prove to be its funeral.

And so it goes. But we can’t forget “Brownie, New Orleans and FEMA’s dismal performance.

...That Bush waited five days before visiting the Gulf following Katrina. And that once he got there, he joked about his hard-partying days, congratulated Mike Brown on doing a "heck of a job," and promised to rebuild Trent Lott’s house.

...That about 40 percent of Mississippi's National Guard and 35 percent of Louisiana's -- a combined total of roughly 6,000 troops -- were unable to help out after the storm because they were in Iraq.

That the first round of Katrina cleanup and reconstruction contracts went to that old gang from Baghdad: Halliburton, Bechtel, Fluor, and the Shaw Group.

The Post-Katrina Quote Hall of Shame:

“I don’t think anyone anticipated the breach of levees” -- G. W. Bush

"Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?" -- Tom DeLay to young evacuees in the Astrodome

“This is working very well for them.” -- Former First Lady Barbara Bush on Katrina evacuees

And finally, this year marks the 25^th anniversary of the murder of John Winston Lennon.

His outspoken frankness, his ability to take risks for art’s sake and for the betterment of humanity, still serve as a inspiration and a comfort to millions around the globe.

The title of this blog entry is intended as a tribute to John and Yoko’s work for peace. As this year comes to a close, his message is as vital (if not more so today) as it was those many years ago when he asked us to imagine that the war could be over if we would just give peace a chance. We’re trying, God knows we’re trying.

Happy Xmas (WAR IS OVER)

Words and music by John Lennon

So this is Xmas
And what have you done
Another year over
And a new one just begun
And so this is Xmas
I hope you have fun
The near and the dear one
The old and the young

A very Merry Xmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear

And so this is Xmas
For weak and for strong
For rich and the poor ones
The world is so wrong
And so happy Xmas
For black and for white
For yellow and red ones
Let's stop all the fight

A very Merry Xmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear

And so this is Xmas
And what have we done
Another year over
A new one just begun
And so happy Xmas
We hope you have fun
The near and the dear one
The old and the young

A very Merry Xmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear
War is over, if you want it
War is over now

Quarantine--Novel Excerpt #3: Bike Anywhere and Pillow Cuddles

2005-11-30T12:39:00.000-08:00

The big screen slowly rose back into place and the meeting continued. President Bush sleepily awoke crying “Laura, Laura, I heard something about Denver. Did I miss the Bronco's game?"

Vice President Cheney: It's OK Mr. President. Laura's not here. And no, you didn't miss the game.

President Bush: Well then, what's all this fuss about Denver?

Secretary of State Rice: It's nothing Mr. President. Go back to sleep. We'll wake you when its time.

President Bush: Time for what?

Secretary of State Rice: Your speech on national TV about the quarantining of Denver.

President Bush: Why are we doing that? Are they protesting the war or something?

Mr. Rumsfeld: Not to worry, George. How would you like to go on a bike ride now. Or do you want to sleep some more?

President Bush: Oh, good idea, Rummy. Yeah, I think a bike ride would be a good thing right about now.

Mr. Rumsfeld: Great. The secret service will take you down to the new indoor bike trail.

President Bush: There's a new bike trail? Hot diggity? Where is it?

Secretary of State Rice: The Vice President was good enough to donate his underground bunker system to your “Ride Anywhere” bike program. He knows that you are the most physically fit president in modern times and he wants to make sure you stay that way. So the twenty miles of his underground bunker hideaway has been made into a state-of-the-art bike trail, replete with Secret Service cameras along the entire trail. And your heart rate, miles pedaled, and calories burned will all be tracked automatically by the Pentagon's super computer. You will be provided with charts and statistics comparing each and every bike workout you go on and stats comparing other presidents such as Clinton, Nixon, Carter, etc. Don't worry, we already know that your stats are the best.

And Vice President, I'm pleased to announce that a new undisclosed location for your underground bunker is completed. Now that you so generously donated your old underground digs to the President's “Ride Anywhere” program, we had to provide you with a new location. And thanks to massive donations from Haliburton, your new digs have been upgraded to a zero tolerance hideway with state of the art everything, including a top secret “cloaking device” and version 1.02b of the really top secret and very, very, classified transporter technology. Currently it's only been tested with inanimate objects such as coffee mugs and bagels, but soon the first tests on small animals will begin. We're confident that these new digs will be to your liking.

There is one caveat, Vice President. No one, and I mean no one, will know where you are. Not the “boy”, not Mrs. Cheney, and not even your hunting partners. We don't even know where it is. This is so undisclosed that not even the Secret Service will know where you are. I will give a hint, sir. It is not even in the U.S. or its territories. You will be taken there by the next generation of our unmanned probe planes. You can only get out by using the complex serious of codes that were inserted in your cortex when you had your most recent implant. So I'm afraid that this time you really will be on your own. But its for the safety and security of both your person and this great country of ours. God bless America.

All in unison: God bless America.

President Bush in another off topic outburst: But those recent polls are very discouraging. They say I've got the lowest ratings of any second term president in the modern world.

Vice President Cheney: George, George. You're doing it again! You're confusing your political stats with your workout stats. Try to get it straight.

President Bush: I am trying. I am.

Secretary of State Rice whispers to General Price: He's trying my patience, that's for sure.

President Bush: You all know I'm trying right? But remember. It's hard work. It's hard, hard work.

Mr. Rumsfeld: Yes, Mr. President. We're very aware of how hard it is for you. And how hard you work. That's why we let you sleep during these boring meetings. Why should you have to sit and attend a meeting when you could be cuddling your pillow or riding your bike?

President Bush: Exactly, Don, Exactly. Why, in God's name why?

Secretary of State Rice: Mr. President, remember our agreement. You won't take the name of the Lord in vain.

President Bush: But I thought that agreement only applied in public, not in the War Room where I'm among friends.

Secretary of State Rice: You're right, Mr. President. That was our original agreement. But after they heard you muttering profanities on Air Force One after your latest poll results came out, we made a new agreement. Don't you remember?

President Bush: Oh, sorry. Now I remember. No profanities anywhere, anytime, except when I'm alone with Laura in the Master Bedroom.

Secretary of State Rice: Good Mr. President, very good! Remember your base. They can write all the steamy, racey, erotic novels they want. But you Mr. President, you must be an example of the noble and Christian leader of the Free World.

Vice President Cheney: Have a good ride, Mr. President.

Mr. President: Uh, Dick, before I go for my ride, can I ask a question?

Vice President Cheney: (Hiding his annoyance at the the question) Yes, Mr. President. Of course you can ask a question. After all, according to the constitution of this great land of ours, we serve at your pleasure.

President Bush: Well, it is my pleasure. And here is my question. If I have to be so careful and watch my language everywhere except when in the War Room...

Vice President Cheney: That's the bedroom sir, the bedroom, not the War Room.

President Bush: Yeah, that's right the bedroom. The bedroom. Got to try and remember that, don't I Dick?

Vice President Cheney: That's right, Mr. President. You do. What's your question, Mr. President?

Mr. President: If I have to be so good and watch my language, how come those other guys and gals in my base don't have to be so careful? How come they can get away with it?

Mr. Rove perks up with this question.

Mr. Rove: What do you mean, George?

Mr. President: Well, it's like this Karl. When I was riding my exercise bike the other day, I put on an audio book with the latest issue of the New Yorker. And I heard about some trashy novels written by members of my base.

Secretary of State Rice: Here it is. I have it with me. (She reads the following:)

Libby has a lot to live up to as a conservative author of erotic fiction. As an article in SPY magazine pointed out in 1988, from Safire (“[She] finally came to him in the bed and shouted ‘Arragghrrorwr!’ in his ear, bit his neck, plunged her head between his legs and devoured him”) to Buckley (“I’d rather do this with you than play cards”) to Liddy (“T’sa Li froze, her lips still enclosing Rand’s glans . . .”) to Ehrlichman (“ ‘It felt like a little tongue’ ”) to O’Reilly (“Okay, Shannon Michaels, off with those pants”), extracurricular creative writing has long been an outlet for ideas that might not fly at, say, the National Prayer Breakfast. In one of Lynne Cheney’s books, a Republican vice-president dies of a heart attack while having sex with his mistress.

The group is momentarily stunned. An embarrassed silence hangs over the group. Vice President Cheney slinks way down in his chair and hides behind the latest issue of Kristol's Weekly Standard.

Secretary of State Rice continues: Oh but there's more:

It took Libby more than twenty years to write “The Apprentice,” which is set in a remote Japanese province in the winter of 1903. The book is brimming with quasi-political intrigue and antique locutions—“The girl who wore the cloak of yellow fur”; “one wore backward a European hat”—that make the phrase a “former Hill staffer,” by comparison, seem straightforward.

Like his predecessors, Libby does not shy from the scatological. The narrative makes generous mention of lice, snot, drunkenness, bad breath, torture, urine, “turds,” armpits, arm hair, neck hair, pubic hair, pus, boils, and blood (regular and menstrual). One passage goes, “At length he walked around to the deer’s head and, reaching into his pants, struggled for a moment and then pulled out his penis. He began to piss in the snow just in front of the deer’s nostrils.”

Mr. President: How come they can say and write these trashy novels and I can't even curse in the War Room? What's up with that, guys? You know how hard I work and if I want to blow off a little steam from all my hard work, why not? Why can they write this stuff and I can't even get in a curse or two in edgewise? Uh, guys, why? And that stuff about Lynne writing about a vice-president dying while having trashy sex with a mistress? Does Dick know? Did you know about this Dick?

Vice President Cheney answers his cell phone and says “Excuse me please. There's an important call about the Denver situation,” as he walks out of the room.

Quarantine--Novel Excerpt # 2: Red Herrings and the Da Vinci Code

2005-11-21T11:11:00.000-08:00

The meeting with Dan Brown took place as arranged by the Gimp Brigade. It was via a video conference link since neither party had time to travel to the other’s current location. Due to the time differences between London and Surf City, the meeting was held just past midnight in Surf City.

Sir Gimp: Hello, Mr. Brown.

Brown: How are you?

Sir Gimp: Not too bad for a gimp, if you know what I mean.

Brown: I think I do. What’s on your mind today?

Sir Gimp: I’m trying to connect the dots between some pretty strange data points.

Brown: As you may well know, I’m no stranger to strange data points. What are we talking about here?

Sir Gimp: Quarantine, Skull and Bones, and the Illuminati.

Dan Brown: Wow. The Holy Trinity of tough stuff.

Sir Gimp: Really? How so?

Dan Brown: You’ve read my stuff about the Illuminati in my book Angels and Demons?

Sir Gimp: Well...er...it’s one of my wife’s favorite books.

Dan Brown: I see. You haven’t read it then?

Sir Gimp: No, not really.

Dan Brown: Don’t equivicate with me. I’m a big boy now. It won’t hurt my feelings.

Sir Gimp: Well, I wanted to read it. I’ve heard so much about....

Dan Brown: Yeah, I know. Everybody’s heard about that damn Da Vinci Code. That’s what you were going to say, right?

Sir Gimp: Yeah, I guess I was. That book is so famous.

Dan Brown: Yeah, too famous if you ask me.

Sir Gimp: What do you mean?

Dan Brown: Is this off the record?

Sir Gimp: You bet.

Dan Brown: And is the line secure?

Sir Gimp: Absolutely. When I asked the Gimp Brigade to set up this video link, they knew that this was a Level One. All of our Level One links feature the latest MI6 data encryption technologies.

Dan Brown: Good. After Israel, those MI6 guys are the best.

Sir Gimp: Now how is it that your book the Da Vinci Code is “too famous?”

Dan Brown: The truth is, Angels and Demons is the real Da Vinci Code.

Sir Gimp: What? Did I hear you right? The real Da Vinci Code is Angels and Demons.

Dan Brown: Yes. You heard me right. I only wrote the Da Vinci Code as a red herring.

Sir Gimp: Red herring? But...

Dan Brown: You probably know that a red herring is a diversion intended to distract attention from the real issue. This technique is often used in the mystery thriller genre. The author describes a set of events that seem to point to a particular suspect while drawing attention away from the real criminal.

Sir Gimp: So how is...

Dan Brown: Give me a moment to explain! Angles and Demons is an artful blend of fact and fiction. When Angels and Demons was published, there were certain codes existing in the manuscript that were upon later examination decided to be too transparent and could potententially be damaging.

Sir Gimp: You’re kidding. Damaging to who? The Catholic Church? The citizens of Italy. Who, Dan, who?

Dan Brown: Calm down man. Calm down. I bet your propellers are already in high gear. I can’t answer your “who?” questions until you know something about the book. Since you haven’t read it, here’s a brief summary:

The book features Harvard symbologist, Robert Langdon, as he tries to stop the Illuminati, a legendary secret society, from destroying the Vatican City with the newly-discovered power of antimatter.

CERN researcher, Leonardo Vetra, is found murdered in his secured, private quarters at the research facility. On his chest is branded a symbol — the word "Illuminati", formed as an ambigram. After researching the Internet, Director Maximillian Kohler contacts Professor Langdon, an expert on the Illuminati who has written a book on the subject, and requests his assistance in uncovering the murderer.

What Langdon discovers at the murder scene frightens him: the symbol appears to be authentic, and the legendary secret society, long thought to be defunct, seems to have resurfaced. The Illuminati has also appropriated CERN's supply of antimatter, the ultimate weapon, and has its sights on fulfilling a centuries-old dream: to destroy Vatican City.

Time runs short as Langdon and Vetra's adopted daughter, Vittoria, race to stop not only the Vatican's destruction, but to save the life of four cardinals who have been kidnapped by a deadly assassin.

If you’d have read both books, you would see that there are startling similarities between the two. Here are just a few:

The protagonist, Robert Langdon, unravels a trail of mystical, ancient clues which leads to his discovering the truth about a legendary, secret society and its relationship to the Vatican.

Maximilian Kohler and Bezu Fache are portrayed in such a way that the reader would suspect them to have masterminded the killings until the revelation takes place.

There are two prominent cripples in the books: Maximilian Kohler and Sir Leigh Teabing. Both use this to their advantage by bringing revolvers to meetings with the camerlengo or Langdon/Niveau, respectively, and escaping metal detectors because of their conditions.

Langdon and the female protagonist end the story with the implication of a sexual relationship.

In both, a message is written on papyrus based paper. This is later destroyed when the paper comes in contact with water.

The female characters have a father and daughter relationship with the characters assasinated at the beginning of the book.

Sir Gimp: My God. I don’t mean to be insulting Dan, but it’s like the same book written twice.

Dan Brown: Perhaps now you can begin to understand. It would be too easy for certain “interests” as we say, to read between the lines and discover things that should not, for the good of the world, be discovered. So I had to rewrite the book and write those codes out and plant other codes that would deliberately lead those interests in the wrong direction.

Sir Gimp: Which would really be the right direction.

Dan Brown: Exactly! Now do you see how the Da Vinci Code is a red herring?

Sir Gimp: I’m beginning to get the picture!

Dan Brown: So where Angels and Demons talks about the Illuminati, I replaced that term with Opus Dei. But its deeper, much deeper. The codes that were indvertantly put in Angels and Demons, were not just names like Illuminati. The names of towns, directions to particular places, even descriptions of certain buildings and food menus, all contained codes that had to be removed.

Now I was really attached to the basic story of Angels and Demons, so I couldn’t just kill it. One night after that, I had a dream, and in that dream a solution presented itself.

Sir Gimp: What was that?

Dan Brown: To rewrite the story, keeping the basics but adding enough esoteric and exoteric codes to send the readers in a completely different direction. So I made a deal with the publisher. They were to promote the rewrite (which eventually became the Da Vinci Code) in such a way that it would become a runaway bestseller, selling over 36 million copies (as of August 2005). Once the book became a huge hit, I began to relax. Everyone was off and running, chasing the new (false) codes all over the globe and the internet. An entire cottage industry was built up around the book. I was able to relax, feeling that the secrets of Angels and Demons and my life were safe.

Sir Gimp: Your life?

At this point something happened and the video transmission suddenly ended.

Sir Gimp was taken off balance. He was quite surprised by Dan Brown’s red herring story, but couldn’t help but wonder if that itself was a red herring. It wouldn’t be unlike Dan to pull something like that. It was part of the Da Vinci Code’s appeal; this blurring of the line between fiction and “reality.” Sir Gimp’s own writing had been criticized for the same reason. There were times that even Sir Gimp could not make these distinctions between his “real” life and his writing.

Quarantine: Novel Excerpt #1

2005-11-08T12:55:00.000-08:00

Place: The White House Situation Room

Time: Now

Mr. Rove: But what about our Base? There's gonna be a revolt in the Party when they see this!

Chief of Staff Addington: Don't have a cow, Karl. We've got this covered. Condi, call in our operative.

Condi calls picks up the phone and almost instantly, Judy Miller enters the room. Several jaws drop in shock and awe as Ms. Miller takes a seat.

Chief of Staff Addington: Judy, can you explain our plan?

Judy Miller: Yes sir. I'm going to leak some “classified info” to the New York Times and the Boston Globe. This info will describe a forth coming “makeover” of administration's second term into a New Progressive party which will be able to pull a huge amount of moderate and progressive Democrats and Republicans. Mr. Rove has calculated this will give us a two thirds majority in both the House and the Senate in the 2008 elections. Aside from making mincemeat out Ms. Clinton, it will be the end of the two-party system that we've known and loathed all these years.

Mr. Rove: You got it, Judy. This will be the culmination and grand triumph of all our hard work and planning all these years.

President Bush shouts out without looking up from his Gameboy: It's hard work, I tell you. It's hard, hard work.

President Bush's comment is ignored by all as Mr. Rove continues.

Mr. Rove: I have it under good authority that the Base will buy into this plan once they see how it will be planting the seeds for the final take over of the country via the New Progressive Party. To make it seem authentic and lock in the moderate and progressive elements of both parties, as part of our “Party Makeover,” we will jettison the Republican name and logo.

Chief of Staff Addington: We know this is a bit extreme, that's why we've arranged to appear on the premier of a new show “Extreme Political Makeover” starting up on the FOX channel. Future episodes will feature, Syria, Iran, Venezuelan, Germany, France, etc. until every country in made over in our image—the image of a new, modern, compassionate and progressive world political party.

Mr. Rove: You see, in this Internet Age, having national parties are so yesterday. In this era of globalization, what we need, what we want, and what will shall have, is a global party whose goal in nothing less than TOTAL WORLD DOMINATION! TOTAL DOMINATION, DO YOU HEAR ME. TOTAL. TOTAL.

At this incendiary outburst of pure political passion, everyone jumps to their feet and shouts: Long live Rove! Heil Rove. Heil Rove!

The Fog of Family

2005-10-25T02:09:00.000-07:00

Harold Pinter recently received the Nobel prize for literature. He is a British playwright and is also an ardent peace activist, strongly opposing his country's involvement in the invasion and occupation of Iraq. It is probably just a coincidence, but during the week he received the Nobel prize, a document was given to us (the publishers of this GimpBlog) purporting to be an unpublished play of Mr. Pinter. In honor of his recent award, we would like make a portion of this amazing document available to the faithful readers of this blog. And so, here we have for the first time, a section of Pinter's unpublished play from 1964, The Fog of Family. One of Mr. Pinter's trademarks has been the periods of silence between words and sentences. This play makes skillful use of these long, often unbearable pauses, which cause both actors and audience no end of discomfort.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

FOG OF FAMILY

A play in three acts by Harold Pinter

CAST OF CHARACTERS

The Emerson family:

Mr. and Mrs. Emerson

Number One Son Ralph

Number Two Son Stephen

Number One Daughter LauraLee.

There is also dog and a parakeet.

THE SETTING

A suburban dining room, somewhere on the coast. The time is now, or maybe later. A senior couple (the Emersons) is sitting at the dining table. Five places are set. A TV is on low, no one is watching it. The Emerson children are due in for Thanksgiving.

ACT I, SCENE 1 A FEW DAYS BEFORE THANKSGIVING

Mr. Emerson: Fog sure is comin' in thick tonight.

Mrs. Emerson: Very thick. Can't hardly see. (pause)

Mr. Emerson: Hope they'll be able to find the place. Fog's so damn thick. Maybe they won't be able to find it.

Mrs. Emerson: (pause) Yeah. Fog's so thick. Think they'll like it?

Mr. Emerson: (pause) Like what, the fog? (pause) No, I don't think they'll like it. (pause)

Mrs. Emerson: No, not the fog. Of course they won't like it. I mean the dinner. Will they like it?

Mr. Emerson: Don't know. They might. (pause) What is it?

Mrs. Emerson: What is what?

Mr. Emerson: (pause) What do you mean, what is what? (pause) The dinner. What's for dinner?

Mrs. Emerson: (longer pause) Tonight? We had green beans, steak, fried potatoes. But you didn't have any desert.

Mr. Emerson: No. Not tonight. No desert. Why?

Mrs. Emerson: I don't know. (pause) Maybe you didn't feel like it.

Mr. Emerson: Doesn't matter if I felt like it or not. Tell me what's for dinner, and (pause) then and only then can I tell you (pause) if I think they'll like it.

Mrs. Emerson: OK. (pause) What do you want to know?

Mr. Emerson: Well...what are we having for Thanksgiving dinner?

Mrs. Emerson: Oh. Thanksgiving. We're having tofurkee, potatoes, creamed spinach, uncreamed spinach, carrots with the skins left on (that's for Number Two Son Stephen, he likes 'em that way, you know) and some pumpkin pie with raspberry flavored (all natural) tofu yogurt. You agreed to this last week.

Mr. Emerson: I did? (pause) What's with all this tofu jerkey?

Mrs. Emerson: Tofurkee, you mean. We're trying to make everyone happy. A little something for everyone, you know.

Mr. Emerson: Yeah. (pause) Except me. Why can't we have some real turkey and have have some of that tofuyou stuff too? Works for me.

Mrs. Emerson: Well, it doesn't work for them. (pause) She won't have anything to do with a dead bird on the table. She's still doing that animal rights stuff.

Mr. Emerson: It’s that California air. Makes ‘em crazy. (pause) Never heard of not eating turkey on Thanksgiving. Gotta have turkey. That’s what its all about.

Mrs. Emerson: (pause) Well, she didn’t eat it last year either. Or the year before. (pause) It’s not exactly new for her. She does have her principles (pause) and sticks to them. Gotta give her credit for that, at least.

Mr. Emerson: At least. Yeah. Let’s give her that (pause) at least.

ACT II, SCENE 1 THANKSGIVING DINNER

Ralph: Pass the potatoes, please.

Mrs. Emerson: More potatoes? (pause) Are you sure you want more potatoes? You’re bustin’ out of your clothes now. Why add fuel to the fire?

LauraLee: Leave him alone! (pause) He knows what he should eat. For Christ’s sake, he’s 35 years old!

Mrs. Emerson: (pause) Now don’t start bringing religion into this. Lord knows we got enough goin’ on here without bringing Christ and the angels into this.

Mr. Emerson: (pause) You’re one to talk. I suppose you think you know what to eat. You and that toffuyou turkey.

LauraLee: That’s tofu, Dad. Tofu.

Mr. Emerson: Could’a fooled me. (pause) Seems to have made a fool out you, anyway.

Stephen: Hey! Don’t call your only daughter a fool! Have some respect, will ya.

LauraLee: It’s OK. I’m used to it. He can’t give what he doesn’t have.

Mr. Emerson: (pause) And what is it that I don’t have, exactly?

Mrs. Emerson: Who wants some hot, delicious pumpkin pie? We have dairy and non dairy versions. And even soy strawberry yogurt for topping. But we also have non-soy (regular) strawberry yogurt. So something to make everyone happy. (pause) Yes, so everyone can be happy now, can’t they?

ACT III, SCENE I THE MORNING AFTER

Mrs. Emerson has taken Mr. Emerson to a medical appointment. The “kids” are having coffee and tea, sitting around the table. This is the “kids” last meal together, the morning after Thanksgiving dinner.

Stephen: It was good seeing you all again.

Ralph: Yeah. Really great.

LauraLee: We should do this more often.

Stephen and Ralph: Yeah, let’s do it with just us three. We haven’t done that in years.

LauraLee: When would be a good time? (pause) We’re all so busy now. And with you two in New York and me in Berkley, we’re not as close as we used to be.

Stephen: No, (pause) not as close.

Ralph: Yeah, well its hard. We’re all different people now. Not the same as we used to be.

LauraLee: Not the same. Not the same at all. (pause) My divorce and miscarriage, your illness Ralph, and your being without work for so long Stephen.

Ralph: What about my illness? You think it’s something I asked for? (pause) You think its fun to live like this? Do you? (pause) Think I like it? (pause) Well, I don’t! I hate it! I hate it! I can’t take it anymore?

LauraLee: Calm down! Calm down.

Ralph: Easy for you to say. You’re healthy enough, even with your miscarriage.

LauraLee: At least you’re still married. You’ve got that.

Ralph: (pause) Married but doomed. How many years do I have left? Five, maybe ten if I’m lucky. (pause) Or unlucky. Just depends on how you look at it, doesn’t it?

Stephen: Well you both have work, don’t you. Try being out of work for a few years. (pause) See how you like that! Think I like having to borrow from mom and dad and both of you? I’m such a goddamn loser. Loser. (pause) Just a big fat goddamn loser.

Stephen breaks down in hysterical sobs.

Ralph: C’mon Stephen. It’s OK. Things will improve.

LauraLee: Hey Stevie boy. Come here, big guy.

LaureLee cradles Stephen in her arms as his sobs continue unabated. Then LauraLee starts weeping, gently, rocking Stephen in her arms.

At this point, Ralph can’t hold back any longer and joins the communal sobfest, whispering quietly, “I’m dying, I’m dying. Somebody please help me, please please help me!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Editor: Sorry folks, but that’s all that we are allowed to reprint. You can purchase Fog of Family at Amazon.com or most quality booksellers. The publishers of the GimpBlog extend their gratitude to the Pinter Estate for their kind permission in publishing this dramatic excerpt.

Sleepers Awake!

2005-10-05T23:20:00.000-07:00

Announcer Amy Goodbar:

Welcome back to Pacific Media, Sir Gimp.

Sir Gimp:

Well, Amy thank you. It’s really something special to be on your show.

Amy:

That was quite a wake you held. It was a sad day indeed, mourning the death of the New York Times. I hear you received quite a lot of comments on your blog about the wake.

SG:

That’s right. It stirred up some good thinking. I like that. I held the wake because it was the right thing to do. In it’s silent, sorrowful way, it was a both a recognition and a protest. A recognition that a once great newspaper had finally bit the dust. And it was also a protest, wishing that somehow we could slow or halt that demise.

Amy:

Something good may come of it. There’s this interesting bit of news from Editor and Publisher. It reads:

Is Maureen Dowd boycotting the new pay-for-play TimesSelect plan at The New York Times? Despite promises from the newspaper that its high-profile columnists--now hidden behind a pay wall on the Web--would provide bonus content and services at the site, Dowd so far has offered nothing original, beyond her twice-weekly print column.

This stands in stark contrast to her colleagues, Frank Rich, Bob Herbert, Thomas Friedman, David Brooks, Paul Krugman, Nicholas Kristof, and John Tierney.

Others, for example, provide a list of “What I'm Reading.” Special video interviews with many of them are available on their pages. Many have posted favorite Web sites, ranging from Juancole to Drudge. But nothing from Dowd, who is rumored to be against the pay plan, which severely limits online audience. Columnists once dominated the Web site's "most e-mailed" list, but no longer.

Many of the bloggers seem to think that this is the dying gasp of a very desperate newspaper. What’s your response?

SG:

They are desperate. And they are dying. As a poet once said, “he not busy being born, is busy dying.”

Amy:

That’s Bob Dylan, isn’t it?

SG:

‘It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)’. Yeah a really really great song. Not very well known, but great just the same.

Amy:

So why are they not busy being born?

SG:

They have lost the ability to regenerate themselves. They have lost much of their much vaunted ‘moral integrity’. Why they think that putting their columnists in a ‘lock box’ is going to increase either their readership or relevancy is beyond me. They used to aspire to be the voice of the nation. Now they’re just the voice of the corporate bean counters. And they’re ain’t much pizazz in bean counter land.

If Ms. Dowd is protesting the TimesSelect lock box by not making videos and giving out her favorite recipes, or favorite movies, I think that’s just great. But if she’s really protesting the TimesSelect program, why doesn’t she just go all the way and cancel her contract and write for a paper that won’t lock out thirty per cent of her readers? Now that would be a real protest.

Amy:

Aside from holding the wake, did you have anything to do with her protest?

SG: Not really. I found out about it the same way you did, from a newspaper. But, she was the only TimesSelect writer to whom I sent an email asking how she felt writing in a ‘lock box’. Who knows? Maybe I got through to her.

Amy:

Maybe you did Sir Gimp. Maybe you did. Well folks. That’s all we have time for today. This is Amy Goodbar from Pacific Media saying goodnight and wishing you a pleasant tomorrow.

Let the Looting Begin

2005-09-30T11:09:00.000-07:00

Sir Gimp and the Lovely One were at the kitchen table, she beading away as usual, and he, absentmindedly pulling on his beard while perusing his chaotic collection of magazines, newspapers, and metaphysical books.

“You know,” Sir Gimp suddenly announced, “when they captured Saddam Hussein, they made a big deal about it and predicted the end of the insurgency. At that time Howard Dean said that he ‘didn’t feel any safer’ and they jumped all over him for being a traitor. Turns out he was right. As the insurgency continued with increasing violence, and as the recent London Train bombings underscored, we weren’t any safer and we had no right to be. You remember what I said then?”

A look crossed the Lovely One’s faced that seemed to indicate a deep desire to remember, but her marriage vows of honesty and integrity would not let her say the word “yes” that her soul longed to utter. So instead, she most tactfully replied, “I think so. But tell me again, anyway.”

Sir Gimp, only too happy to tell his beloved story, knowing full well that it will not fall on virgin ears, began slowly and deliberately.

“When they captured Saddam and showed him doing a Coalition Toothpaste commercial, I said they ain’t seen nothin’ yet. It’s been a piece of cake so far. Where it really gets interesting is when they start trying to deal with the historic and conflicting agendas of the Kurds, Shias, and Sunnis.”

“Well,” said the Lovely One with not a little bit of pride, “You got that right. Look at the mess there today, and this constitution business is going to makes things worse, not better.”

“Exactly,” smiled Sir Gimp. “Well, I’ve got a similar intuition about New Orleans and the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. All the heat generated by the unbelievable incompetence and racism won’t hold a candle to the nuclear blast that will be generated by the ‘cleanup’ or ‘reconstruction’. I have this persistent vision of a track meet where all the ‘athletes’ line up on the starting line. The referee counts 1, 2, 3, fires the pistol and yells ‘Let the looting begin!’ and off they go. And there won’t be anyone to stop them.”

“Now calm down, dear, urged the Lovely One. You know it isn't good for you when your propellers spin counter-clockwise and that smoke comes out of your ears. Come sit down, and I'll give you a neck and shoulder massage.”

Poor Sir Gimp. He couldn't refuse such a kind and caring offer. Soon the massage began to take effect and Sir Gimp started relaxing. Deeper and deeper. He began feeling sleepy. And sleepier....

As he drifted in the massage-induced reverie, he heard the following:

Radio announcer:
FEMA announced today that a no-bid contract was awarded to Halliburton to do the laundry for all the displaced folks from the Hurricane. For those poor folks who don't have any laundry, well our good friends at FEMA will just buy them some so they won't feel left behind at laundry time. This brilliant policy also ensures that Halliburton have at least some laundry for each displaced person.

Sir Gimp's awareness began to drift. After a few minutes, he overheard what he thought was a conversation in Halliburton’s inner sanctum:

D.C.:
Iraq’s so yesterday. Can’t make any money there. Too many damn people getting killed. New Orleans! That’s where it’s happening now! We gotta move on in. It’s a much bigger job than Iraq ever could be. Millions of displaced people. No oversight. Our guys in all the key positions.

Liaison officer:
OK D.C. You’ve proved your point. We’ll move on it pronto. One question. How will we get our boys out of there and into here?

D.C.:
It’s a no-brainier. We just declare victory and go home. We’ll tell ‘em it’s time that we stop meddling in the internal affairs of an independent and sovereign nation. Rove will set up Victory Parades all over the country, and we’ll have a national V-I day parade . The whole shebang will culminate with a FOX TV special called Bringing Them All Back Home hosted by Barbara Walters and Cindy Sheehan. The special will feature a live version of Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson singing With God on Our Side.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ** * * * * * * * * * * *

Upon the completion of the massage, Sir Gimp began to stir from his deep relaxation and reverie.

“Feel better, now?” asked the Lovely One.

“Yeah, I do. Thanks. That was great.”

“Here, dear. Why don’t relax a bit more and read the paper. I saved the comic section. That should cheer you up.”

Sir Gimp’s eyes recoiled in horror as he read the Doonesbury column of the day.

The End

Editor’s note: Some of you may not be able to read the text of the Doonesbury strip so I’m printing it here:

Panel 1: Over there, Sir—see that cloud of dust? It’s some sort of military convoy...

Panel 2: That’s not the military, Honey—that’s the Halliburton gang pulling up stakes!

Panel 3: I don’t get it. Why the hell would Cheney’s boys be leaving the...the...

Panel 4: New Orleans. Go pack, Honey.

The Day the Newspaper Died

2005-09-19T14:08:00.000-07:00

Announcer Amy Goodbar:

"Welcome to Progressive News Network (PNN). This is Amy Goodbar broadcasting live from Pacific Grove, CA. We are bringing you coverage this morning on The Wake: The Day the Newspaper Died. For those of you who are not regular listeners to PNN, the world famous Sir Gimp (writer, poet, musician, humorist, and disabled veteran of the Metaphysical Wars) is holding a wake to mourn the ongoing deterioration of what used to be one of the nation’s leading newspapers, the venerated New York Times. (This wake is a follow up to the previous posting, Bye Bye Miss American Pie.)

First there was Judy Miller’s run-up to the Iraq invasion spreading the fear of Saddam's (now known to be non-existent) WMDs. Then there were Jason Blair’s non-existent sources, and now we have Judy’s ill-fated starring role in the made in D.C. blockbuster, “Romancing the Plame”, with local hotties Novak, Rove, and Wilson.

As the integrity of the paper began to sink faster than the flooding of New Orleans in the wake of Dame Katrina, the Times had to come up with something. And they did. Well, sort of. Maybe. In an attempt to what? Nobody really knows why they’re doing it, but doing it they are. As of today, Monday, September 19, the Times is charging to read some of the most popular features of the paper. Beginning today, only those who pay $49.95 a year or subscribe to the print version will have online access to the columnists in Op-Ed, Business, New York/Region and Sports.

The reaction to this from Internet blogs has been largely derisive, with most bloggers looking at this move as a misguided attempt. In the blog “Electronicity”, we read:

The notice was on the front page of The New York Times, announcing the paper’s imminent ritual act of suicide. Most of the most-interesting parts of the Times will now be closed off from the general internet. Instead of letting everyone see the best of the paper, the paper’s owners have concluded they will live in a gated community by restricting its goodies to a tiny fraction of its readers....

And so we are here today to mourn what perhaps will be the final nail in the coffin of the New York Times, removing some of the Times’ best writers from the public arena.

The crowd is large and growing, most of which is gathered near one of the two large video screens. There are some notable news crews here, including the London Guardian and Reuters. For obvious reasons, the NY Times crew was not granted admittance. Right now Patrick’s Celtic Junket is providing authentic Irish music to settle the crowd and create the appropriate atmosphere. On this special occasion, the Celtic Junket is joined by the Edinburgh Marching Bagpipe Brigade.

To the left of the podium, I see huddled together some of the hard core Gimpbloggers, whose regular comments are now legendary throughout the Internet. Luminaries such as SeriousB, Lady Di, Doon and Tood, are whispering animatedly amongst themselves while the media is having a field day seeing the Fab Four reunited for such a solemn event. As the last melancholy strains of Danny Boy die down, a hush flows through the crowd as Sir Gimp makes his way to the podium. Sir Gimp will now address the crowd, trying to ignore the bright lustful lights of the various media in attendance."

Sir Gimp:

“Welcome, my friends, welcome. It is with heavy heart that I greet you today. As of today, September 19, the once highly venerated New York Times newspaper, has moved closer to irrelevancy. With its new Times Select subscription service, the Times has put its top columnists inside a virtual “lock box.” I expect that this unexpected blow to American Journalism will further drive politically minded readers to other sources of information. Bloggers are placing bets on how long it will be until they admit that the service is a failure and open it back up to the general reading public. The Los Angeles Times tried the same thing with their events calendar, and no one wanted to pay for it, so now it is once again, free.

It must be desperate times for the Times as this latest unfortunate short sided policy glaringly indicates. Yes, we will miss the Times liberal Holy Trinity; Dowd, Friedman, and Krugman. I wonder what they think about this. Since none of them have written about being locked out, apparently they don’t mind. Perhaps they even like the idea. They’ll get a lot less email now so they’ll have time for other pursuits such as Windows Solitaire. Perhaps some of them will start playing email chess. Who knows? We won’t. And six months from now, will we even care?

It’s not so much about missing the inspiration and information from these folks, but the principle of the the thing. What does this denote for journalism? Rather, Jennings, Brokow, are gone as well. Is this the tipping point for the “old media.” Will Times readers now increasingly turn to the Internet blogs for their news? I know I will. Yesterday I removed the link on my bookmarks toolbar and replaced it with a link to the Huffington Post . This is a progressive blog site that contains great blogs and newspaper-like articles and features.

I’m hoping that many of you will in effect boycott the Times. If the click rate drops quickly and dramatically, it may help them see the error of their ways sooner rather than later. Now will you please turn to the handout you were given upon your arrival.

I’m pleased to announce that the founder of Celtic Junket, Paddy O’Ryan will recite his updated lyrics to the song Bye Bye Miss American Pie. The Edinburgh Marching Bagpipe Brigade will provide some musical accompaniment to the recitation.”

Amy:

"Paddy begins in a rhythmic sing-song manner :"

Paddy:

Miss America can throw a Pie
Into the eye
Of the Ol' Boys
And wave Bye-Bye

While the jester makes them sing
For the King and Queen
In coats borrowed from James Dean
With a pink carnation
In a pickup truck
Till they are all out of luck

The angel born in hell
Who won't break Satan's spell
As the flames climb high into the night
To light their sacrifical rite
Satan laughing with delight
watched them on the stage
his hands clenched in fists of rage

Jumpin’ Jack Flash sat them on a candlestick
and drove them in his chevee
to the levee in New Orleans
to catch the last train for the coast
with the three men we admire most
the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost

Where the Boys must write
the book of love
and have faith in God above
if the Bible tells it so
and believe in Rock 'n Roll
till the music can save their
mortal soul

But the Byrds flew off
With a fallout shelter
and dropped the Boys
Eight Miles High and falling fast

While Lennon read a book of Marx
The court kept practice in the park
And we sang dirges in the dark
This'll be the day that they die...

So we all got up to dance
But we never got the chance
Only they can teach us how
To dance real slow
The day the music Died

And we were singing
Bye-bye Miss American Pie!

Amy:

“There is a quiet pause, and now some are clapping quietly, so as not to disturb the solemnity of the occasion.”

“Thank you Paddy,” said Sir Gimp. Now let’s have a minute of silence.”

Amy:

“Silence descended heavily on the crowd as the gravity of the moment sunk in.

(One minute of silence passes).

Now the Fab Four have become pallbearers and are carrying a coffin with NY TIMES painted on it large letters. They carry the coffin a short distance to grave site. They are now lowering the coffin into the ground and each is throwing a shovelful of dirt onto the lowered coffin. A group of shovel meisters quickly cover the coffin with mounds of rich, moist dirt until the coffin is completely buried."

“Sir Gimp, with tears now glistening in his eyes, swallowed hard, blew his nose on his checkered handkerchief, and said quietly to the crowd as his eyes gazed into the far distance, “You know grasshopper, when one door closes, another one opens.” And with this mystical pronouncement, the propellers on his beanie hat are spinning clockwise as he slowly leaves the podium. The Celtic Junket and the Edinburgh Marching Bagpipe Brigade start playing Patriot Game to a slow waltz.”

Amy Goodbar:

“The crowd is dispersing slowly as the Gimpmobile drives off. Sir Gimp specifically asked not to be asked for autographs or pictures. He felt that show business-like activities were inappropriate at a wake. So dear friends, this ends the coverage of the Wake: The Day the Newspaper Died. Now back to our PNN studio. Thanks for sharing, thanks for caring.”

Bye Bye Miss American Pie

2005-09-13T17:41:00.000-07:00

“Sir Gimp, cried the Lovely Donna Jean. What's wrong? I see vapors coming down the stairs from your office.”

“I’m OK. Just a bit steamed up,” came the disembodied voice of Sir Gimp.

“Wanna talk about it?”

“Sure. I’ll be right down.”

As Sir Gimp descended the stairs from his office/sanctuary, Donna Jean tried to calm him with a hug. He gave her a perfunctory response before plopping down in his chair.

“Give me your glasses so I can wipe the steam off of them. I don’t know how you can see. What’s going on?”

“I’m gonna have to hold a wake,” he said sadly.

“Who died? Someone we know?”

“Yeah. Sort of. Several people, actually.”

“Well, who?”

“Thomas Friedman, Maureen Dowd, and Paul Krugman.”

“Were they in a plane crash together like Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper?”

“No.”

“Well, what then?”

As the Lovely One finished wiping the steam off his glasses, he handed her a piece of paper, freshly baked from from his new ink-jet Cannon printer.

“Read it,” he said sadly.

Dear New York Times public editor Byron Calame,

I am planning on holding a wake on Sept. 19 to mourn the end of what was once the nation's leading newspaper. We will be in mourning as a result of some of the nation's most important columnists being removed from public life and made available for only the wealthy people of the this country. I am referring of course to your new policy of only letting wealthy people have access to important writings from Friedman, Dowd, Krugman, etc. If one can't afford $200 a year for a paper subscription or $50.00 for online reading, than one is out of luck. You are putting your columnists in a "lock box" that will take these great writers out of the public eye and reserve their works for only those who can pay.

As of Sept 19, your paper will be removed from my browser's bookmark as I will have no need to view your site. I have a group of readers to which I have regularly emailed many of your columnist’s fine writings. But no more. The Times has joined Bush, Cheny, et al in creating a country for the wealthy only.

Do you plan to change your slogan from "all the news that fits" to "all the news you can afford?" So much for a public service.

I think your "all or nothing" subscription service will fall flat and generate much more ill will than revenue. Why not do something like Salon and provide a "free pass" for the day for the price of watching some stupid ad? Or break down your subscription service into columnists, achieves, etc. and charge accordingly? Or charging only those who benefited from Bush's tax cuts to the wealthy. Let them pay since they've just about completed stealing our country.

I'm surprised your columnists haven't gone on strike. How will they feel, writing in lock box, with their writings available only to the more affluent? They probably don't care since you're still paying them, and after all, it's only about money isn't it? Thanks for showing your true colors. And if by chance, you should want to send a reporter to cover our wake, don't bother. We'll be checking IDs and NY Times people will not be allowed.

Sincerely and with deep regret,

Sir Gimp

In the year of our Lord, September, Two Thousand and Five

“That’s really too bad,” said Donna Jean. “I can see why you’re so steamed up. They must be getting really desperate. First Jason Blair, then Judith Miller in jail.”

“And now they’re going to put the best writers in jail as well.”

“Well, let’s get on to planning the wake. Where do want to have it?”

“In cyberspace, of course. At the Blogspot mansion of Sir Gimp. We’ll invite them to join our day of mourning at the Day the Newspaper Died wake on September 19. Be there or be square.”

As the duo began planning the details of the wake, a song could be heard playing from Sir Gimp’s upstairs office.

Bye bye miss American Pie

Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry

And good ol' boys were drinking whisky and rye?

Singing this will be the day that I die

this will be the day that I die....

Payback Time

2005-09-08T22:13:00.000-07:00

As soon as your dear Sir Gimp saw the devastation and carnage brought about by hurricane Katrina, my first reaction was “its payback time.” Payback for what? you might ask. And I will slowly raise my eyes to yours, and look deeply into the window of your soul, and quietly and gently say to you, “Falluja.”

“Why Falluja?” you might ask. Why Falluja indeed? Of all the events that stood out in my mind since the occupation of Iraq by the U.S. of A., perhaps none has caused me more anguish than the assault on Falluja. Over 100,000 innocent people fled for their lives, abandoning everthing they had in a rush to evacuate the city before Uncle Sam and his “democracy brigade” reduced a city of 300,000 to rubble. Talk about devastation! They got it in bucketfuls.
Here’s a description of the aftermath of Operation Phantom Fury (the assault on Falluja):

Fadhe Kubaissey told IRIN, “Fallujah is nothing but destruction and empty areas. It’s a new desert inside Iraq. Those who have returned to their homes in the past few days lack the minimum conditions—the city is uninhabitable.”

Abbas Jumaili, another Fallujah resident and father of five, said, “We are three brothers and all of us have lost our homes. I really don’t know how we will start our life again inside this city.... This city cannot offer a minimum of living conditions for a year. It’s a complete disaster.”

Dr. Saleh Hussein Iswawi of the Fallujah General Hospital told the British Broadcasting Corporation, “About 60 percent to 70 percent of the homes and buildings are completely crushed and damaged, and not ready to inhabit at the moment. Of the 30 percent still left standing, I don’t think there is a single one that has not been exposed to some damage.” He reported ongoing fighting. “I was in Fallujah hospital last night [December 23] and I heard a lot of fighting and bombing, which continued for about three or four hours. I heard very loud explosions inside the city.”

Another resident, Ali Mahmood, told Reuters: “I saw the city and al-Andalus destroyed. My house is completely destroyed. There is nothing left for me to stay for.” Yasser Satar said: “What do they want from Fallujah? This is the crime of the century. Is this freedom and democracy that they brought to Fallujah?”

"Included in the destruction are not only civilian homes, but the basic facilities necessary for providing minimal public services. The American military has apparently deliberately targeted any structures relied upon by ordinary citizens. The two main hospitals, including Fallujah General Hospital, are no longer operable. The general hospital was one of the first targets of the invasion in November because the US military wanted to cut off any reports of civilian casualties."

Then there’s this eye witness account from a doctor:

“One story is of a young girl who is 16 years old,” he says of one of the testimonies he video taped recently, “She stayed for three days with the bodies of her family who were killed in their home. When the soldiers entered she was in her home with her father, mother, 12 year-old brother and two sisters. She watched the soldiers enter and shoot her mother and father directly, without saying anything.”
The girl managed to hide behind the refrigerator with her brother and witnessed the war crimes first-hand.

“They beat her two sisters, then shot them in the head,” he said. After this her brother was enraged and ran at the soldiers while shouting at them, so they shot him dead.

“She continued hiding after the soldiers left and stayed with her sisters because they were bleeding, but still alive. She was too afraid to call for help because she feared the soldiers would come back and kill her as well. She stayed for three days, with no water and no food. Eventually one of the American snipers saw her and took her to the hospital,” he added before reminding me again that he had all of her testimony documented on film.

For over two years the U.S. has rained hellfire and brimstone on the poor people of Iraq. They didn’t ask for an invasion to remove Saddam. They didn’t ask for a brutal occupation that even today has left them without basic necessities like water and electricity.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

It’s right and appropriate to mourn for the fate of the victims of hurricane Katrina. Like those in Falluja, they've been without food and water for days in very hot and humid temperatures, just like the poor souls of Fallujah. And like the citizens of Falluja, the very fabric of their lives were ripped apart. The panic and desperation are almost unimaginable. I shall always think of New Orleans and Falluja as twin sisters of devastation.

“Where are you going with this?” asked the Lovely One. “With all this sorrow and suffering from the hurricane, why bring up Fallujah at a time like this? Do you want to rub salt in the wounds of your readers? C’mon. We need a break. Can’t you writes something light and funny?”

“Light and funny?” asked Sir Gimp. “At a time like this? I don’t think so! There will be endless articles and blogs and and talking heads, etc., all trying to understand what happened and why it happened. But most of them never will. It’s really not about FEMA and levees and the Army Engineering Corps being underfunded.”
“Then what is it about?” DJ asked.

“I can say it in one word” replied Sir Gimp.

“And what might that be?”

“Karma.”

The Case of the Missing Gimp PT 3

2005-08-21T23:46:00.000-07:00

Our story so far....Sir Gimp has traveled in a time machine to visit the great detective, Sherlock Holmes, in 1899, London England. See:

The Case of the Missing GIMP

and

The Case of the Missing GIMP PT II

to be brought up to date.

As our story resumes, Sir Gimp is asking Holmes to help him. He’s thinks he’s losing his mind on account of a book. Our good friend, Dr. Watson, resumes his narrative:

Sir Gimp blurted with the fiery intensity of a desperate man, “So my question for you Mr. Holmes, is ‘what did I see’? Donna Jean and I both saw the book and I picked it up in my very own hands. But the next day it was gone and according to the bookseller, it was never there! Am I losing my mind, Mr. Holmes? Am I? Please help me!”

Holmes was listening with rapt attention, eyes closed, pipe in hand. Suddenly, he jumped up and started pacing back and forth. Sir Gimp was quite startled by Holmes’ behavior. I smiled at Sir Gimp with my “client reassuring” smile, trying to tell him that this is how Holmes works and that nothing abnormal was happening. Eventually Sir Gimp relaxed a bit as Holmes kept up his pacing. After about fifteen minutes the pacing stopped and Holmes sunk back into his chair.

“I think we may have a worm, Sir Gimp.” Holmes stated softly.

“A worm?” asked Sir Gimp.

“More precisely, a worm hole,” replied Holmes.

“I’m all ears, Holmes,” said Sir Gimp, his eyes almost bulging out of their sockets and the propellers on his hat spinning slowly in a clockwise direction.

“When you went back to the bookstore the second time, to purchase the book, how did you feel when the book was gone?” asked Holmes.

“Weird. I mean...weirder than usual. Like something was wrong...out of kilter. This may sound strange, Holmes, but it seemed like I was supposed to have that book. Like it was literally snatched out of my hands.”

“That may have been exactly what happened,” said Holmes. “You know my methods, Watson. When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains,
however improbable, must be the truth.”

“Are you saying that I was robbed?” cried Sir Gimp. “How could that be? Nobody robbed me. I put the book back.”

There was a pause, heavy with tension, as Sir Gimp and I tried to grasp what Holmes was suggesting. Finally, Holmes broke the silence. “Not somebody Sir Gimp. Some thing. Time, Sir Gimp, Time, with the help of a wormhole.”

“Time?”, I queried. “Good lord, man. Are you suggesting...?” I asked, my question trailing off.

“It’s the most logical explanation, I assure you,” stated Holmes with supreme confidence. “If we assume that the book was really in the bookstore, and you went there the next day and were told that the bookstore never had the book, then it looks like multiple realities might be at play. The first day you were in one reality, and the next day you were in another, or parallel universe.”

“Well,” said Sir Gimp. “Which is the real one? My reality? And how did I travel from one to the other?”

“Now that’s where the real science of detection begins. And here it may also end. If my theory is correct, then you might be a victim of some of the side effects of the Time Paradox. There is, however, one solution that comes to mind that clears up your questions and reunites you with your “missing” or “lost” book.”

“Go on Holmes, I’m anxious to here your solution,” Sir Gimp responded with intense interest.

“It’s rather elementary, you know. All we need to do is send you to the alternate reality from which you came.”

“From which I came?” exclaimed a startled Sir Gimp.

“Precisely,” said Holmes. “According to H.G. Wells’ monograph, time travel creates alternate, or parallel universes. What was it you said a bit earlier Watson? Please refresh our memories.”

I paused for a few moments, not expecting to suddenly be drawn into proposing Holmes’ solution to the case. Then I recalled what it was I’d said earlier, “Put simply, when a time traveler kills their grandmother, they immediately create a new universe, in essence a parallel universe, where the young grandmother never existed and where the time traveler is never born. The original universe still remains.”

“Excellent, Watson! Excellent!” cried Holmes. “Sir Gimp, your visit here created an alternate world or time-line. In one world you couldn’t find your book and time-traveled back to 1899 London. But according to the theory, the original world still exists as well. We just need to get you “back” to the original time-line or world before you lost your book. Then you can proceed on in that timeline; never losing your book and therefore never time traveling to here.”

Sir Gimp closed his eyes and began swaying back and forth, deep in thought. Finally he stopped swaying and opened his eyes. “I knew you could do it, Holmes! I knew it! That’s why I took all the trouble to have my company build a time machine that could take me to your time and converse directly with you, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the greatest detective of all time. Ingenious! Simply ingenious! You find my book by taking me to a time-line in which I never lost it. There’s only one problem. If I take the “other” time-line, how can I leave here if I never came here?”

“That, my friend, is the crux of the time paradox,” said Watson. “The central point here is that when you travel in time, you create an alternate reality. The “original” reality exists “along side” of the reality created by the time travel. In one reality you never lost your book and paid us a visit. In another reality, “this reality,” you time traveled to us. So you can’t have have your book and lose it too. Take your pick.”

“It’s quite a conundrum, I agree,” nodded Sir Gimp. “So what you’re saying is that I can have my book and not have met you, or have met you and not have found my book.”

“Precisely, my dear man, precisely. The choice is yours,” said Holmes.

“I assume,” Sir Gimp replied, “That Dr. Watson will add this case this case to his literary works. What will happen to The Case of the Missing GIMP if I return to the other time line and never arrive here?”

“Well, said Watson, “you won’t be able to see how the story ends, will you?”

“I guess not,” said a morose Sir Gimp.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

“Are you ready to go? While we’re out, I want to stop at the book store and pick up that GIMP book. OK?” Sir Gimp asked the Lovely Donna Jean.

“Works for me. But are you sure the book is still there? Did you ask them to hold it for you?” queried the Lovely One.

“No, I didn’t put it on hold. I suppose I should have, but I can’t imagine anyone buying overnight,” said our intrepid propeller head.

OK, then, got your cane and your water? Let’s go.”

When they arrived at the bookstore, Sir Gimp found the book exactly where he left it the night before. On his way to the sales register, he stopped at an attractive display of a new two volume annotated edition of the collected short stories of Sherlock Holmes.

“Look, babe,” implored Sir Gimp. “There’s a new annotated collection of Sherlock Holmes. The last one was published in the ‘60’s. This is so beautiful!” he exclaimed. “I’ve got to get this. There’s something about these stories that transcend time,” said Sir Gimp as he and the Lovely One made their purchases at the sales counter.

“You’re a lucky guy,” said the sales clerk. “That GIMP book is the last one we have. And its out of print, so we can’t order any more.”

“Well,” said Sir Gimp. “I guess I got here just in time.”

THE END

The Case of the Missing GIMP PT 2

2005-08-05T16:14:00.000-07:00

“Losing your mind?” I asked. “What makes you think that?”

“I lost a book. Or rather a book disappeared...I think. Or maybe it never was. I'm not sure.”

“Surely a lost book doesn't warrant a trip through time,” said Holmes.

“That would be true if it were an ordinary book. But it isn't.” Sir Gimp replied.

“Never mind the bloody book for a moment! How in the dickens did you get here, man?” I asked with intense curiosity.

“Well, we used a time machine,” Sir Gimp replied. “If you've read H.G. Wells, you'll have a basic understanding of what I'm talking about.

“Yes, yes,” I said with exaggerated confidence. “We're familiar with the Time Machine and Mr. Well's monograph on time travel.”

“Very good,” replied Sir Gimp. “Then you know that time is the fourth dimension and with a suitable apparatus one can travel back and forth within this dimension. I say back and forth but I could just as easily say 'past' and 'future'. Actually it's not really any of those, but they'll due in a pinch.”

“Now it just so happened, that there was a time travel convention held at a well-known American University call MIT. It was founded in 1865 so you probably have heard of it,” added Sir Gimp.

“Yes indeed,” cried Holmes. “I've worked with their criminology department on several singular cases.”

“At the time travel convention, they had a prototype of a time machine,” Sir Gimp explained. “They gave us the schematics and their blessings. But we had to promise to take them for a ride if we ever got it to work and could actually go somewhere in time. Eventually Gimp Enterprises, Inc. built some prototypes and one of them became the time machine we used to travel here. I even dis-embarked at Victoria Station as planned.”

“Very well,” I said. “But why go all the way to 1899? You must have very sophisticated crime solving methods in the 21^st Century? Why here? Why us?

Sir Gimp gave a long sigh and then with a very firm look in his eye, walked up to Holmes and said quietly, “Because I want the best. And you, Mr. Holmes, are the best. The very best indeed.

There is another reason. I believe that the book I'm looking for may be a time traveler and might have deposited itself in some other space/time. At this point it's just a theory, and I don't have much to go on. Mr. Holmes, I hope you don't mind me quoting you:

That process starts upon the supposition that when you have
eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains,
however improbable, must be the truth.

And what remains is the truth that I'm losing my mind. And my book,” Sir Gimp said with worry lines appearing on his forehead.

Holmes said to our guest, “Why don't you sit down and make yourself comfortable? Mrs. Hudson, tea for three please.”

“Right away it is, sir,” was Mrs. Hudson's confirmation.

I laid more coals on the fire as we all settled in to hear Sir Gimp's tale.

“I don't know how to explain this. It's difficult when you are at the end of the 19^th century and I'm coming from the 21^st, but I'll try. Please let me know if I inadvertently talk about something you are unfamiliar with.”

Again I interrupted Sir Gimp, “Before you get into that, my good man, can you tell us more about your time travel machine?”

“Gentlemen, as you might imagine, it can get quite complex. However, since time is of the essence here, let me keep it to the basics for now. Perhaps we can delve into the deeper mechanics of it when our business is completed.”

“The prototypes and the final machine we used take advantage of the space-time curve, hyperspace, and wormhole architecture to give us the greatest ‘bang for the buck’ as we might say in the 21^st Century. Of course we did some testing and contrary to current beliefs, it proved easier to travel to the past than to the future. We don’t know why that is but our research work has confirmed this.”

“Have you done any research on the time paradox?”, I asked. “Put simply, when a time traveler kills their grandmother they immediately create a new universe, in essence a parallel universe, where the young grandmother never existed and where the time traveler is never born. The original universe still remains. Some scientists believe they can explain the origin of our universe as a variation of this parallel worlds theme.”

“This is all very fascinating, but let us turn our attention to the problem at hand”, said Holmes, “which is the missing book. What can you tell us about the book, Sir Gimp?”

“Certainly Mr. Holmes, most certainly,” replied Sir Gimp. “In my time we have computers, highly sophisticated computational devices that in additional to mathematical computations, can be used to perform common, everyday tasks such as letter writing and bookkeeping. There are also various learning aids such as books and visual presentations to help users of these computer programs learn how to perform the various tasks. There is a program called GNU Image Manipulation Program, informally known as The GIMP. It is a program that works with computer images. This is where the book comes in. There is a book called Groking the GIMP. Groking is a 21^st century term that means to deeply understand.

After procuring The GIMP computer program I wanted to purchase this book, Groking the GIMP. The Lovely Donna Jean, my wife and companion, accompanied me to one of our larger booksellers to see if they had the book. They had but one copy shelved in a rather obscured area of the book store. I picked up the book and spent some time browsing and though it looked like it would help me learn the program, I decided to delay my purchase until I could ascertain if there were newer editions (this edition was five years old and in my century that is OLD for technical books). I also wanted to find out if there were other books on using the GIMP program.

I went home and researched this and other versions of the book and decided to purchase the version at the book seller I’d visited the previous afternoon. When Donna Jean and I returned to the bookseller, I went to the same obscure place on the bookshelf where I had found the book yesterday but it wasn’t there! It was gone! Vanished! For a moment my mind reeled and I felt I was in a dream... or just leaving a dream... or something. It’s hard to describe.”

Holmes was listening to Sir Gimp’s account in his usual posture: eyes closed, leaning back in his chair, and slowly but continually puffing on his ever present pipe. He spoke slowly and dreamily, “Of course, the book could have easily been misplaced by a patron or a clerk. Or, heaven forbid, stolen.”

Sir Gimp looked warily at his surroundings while pausing a few moments before continuing. “We thought of that, and immediately went to a clerk and asked her to help us locate the book. I showed where I found it yesterday and we looked at all the nearby shelves. Then she excused herself and went to see if the book could be ordered. She returned with some rather startling news. She can’t order the book because it is out of print. And they have never carried it in this store. So my question for you Mr. Holmes, is ‘what did I see? Donna Jean and I both saw the book and I picked it up in my very own hands. But the next day it was gone and according to the bookseller, it was never there. Am I losing my mind, Mr. Holmes? Am I? Please help me!”

TO BE CONTINUED...

The Case of the Missing GIMP

2005-08-02T01:39:00.000-07:00

It was a dark, dank, February afternoon in London, 1899. In our rooms at 221B Baker Street, my friend and colleague, Sherlock Holmes was highly agitated, alternating between his rapid pacing of the floor, and his eccentric screeching on the violin. He has been without a case for almost two weeks and the boredom is getting to him. This was, however, about to change, as soon a most singular case was to present itself and it would provide him with a challenge unlike anything he had faced in his long and illustrious career. The hearth fire was roaring, bravely doing its best to beat back the mid-winter chill.

About half past four, Mrs. Hudson could be heard receiving a telegram and a few short minutes later, she entered our sitting room and handed a telegram to Holmes. Holmes busied himself reading it for a few minutes before handing the telegram to me.

“Watson, what do make of this?”, queried Holmes.

“Sheer nonsense,” I replied after looking over the telegram. The telegram read as follows:

Must meet with you ASAP. Time is of the essence. Arriving from the 21^st Century to morrow at 3:00pm at Victoria Station. Will take cab to 221B Baker St. -- Sir Gimp.

“Utter rubbish!” I exclaimed. “Arriving from the 21^st Century. What in heaven's name does this mean?”

“Precisely what it says, dear Watson. Our visitor is traveling from the 21^st Century,” said Holmes.

“But...but... what in blazes are you saying, man? That this Sir Gimp or whoever he is, is arriving from the future?”

“That's precisely what 21^st Century means, doesn't it?”

“Yes, but how? Unless he's using some sort of time travel.”

“Well, Watson. It looks like this crushing winter boredom may soon come to an end.” Holmes then dove into his bookshelves, and after tearing up half the volumes on the third shelf, he exclaimed, “Aha! Here it is. A monograph on time travel by H.G.Wells. Let's see what we can learn about about time travel before this Sir Gimp arrives tomorrow. It appears that he wrote this monograph while researching his book “The Time Machine.” While “The Time Machine” was fiction, this little monograph seems to deal with the theoretical issues of time travel.”

Holmes rang for Mrs. Hudson. “Yes, Mr. Holmes?”

“Please have tea for three for tomorrow at 4:00.”

“Yes sir. Sir, is it about that telegram?”

“Yes, Mrs. Hudson. It seems that we are to receive a visitor from the future tomorrow.”

“The future, Mr. Holmes? If you don't mind my asking, are you feeling well Sir? Perhaps this boredom has gotten to your nerves?”

“Thank you for your concern, Mrs. Hudson. But I've never felt better. Come Watson, the game is afoot!”

Holmes buried himself in the monograph while I began reading the “The Time Machine,” hoping to find some clue as to what to expect from tomorrow's visitor.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The next afternoon, the atmosphere was electric in the drawing room at 221B Baker St. I spent the rest of the previous day and evening pouring over the “The Time Machine” and while I found it to be a fascinating story, it in no way prepared me for what what was to happen next. At four fifteen, we heard Mrs. Hudson answer the door and let someone in. A few minutes later, Mrs. Hudson entered the drawing room and announced our visitor. “Sir Gimp, may I introduce you to Sherlock Holmes and his partner Dr. Watson.”

Sir Gimp entered the room followed by a stunned silence. For once, even Holmes was taken speechless. There before us stood Sir Gimp, a man who purportedly just arrived from the 21^st Century. He was average height, about 5' 8'', and well fed, with a childlike like aura about him. In his right hand was a walking cane and upon his head was one of the strangest contraptions I'd ever seen. I thought it must have something to do with time travel. Perhaps we were actually looking at the time machine!

Recovering from the awkward silence, Holmes invited Sir Gimp to take a seat and had Mrs. Hudson serve tea.

“Welcome to the twilight hours of the 19^th Century,” said Holmes. “We trust you had a safe journey. How can we be of service? I can see that you are a well-read member of the intelligentsia and that you've not been well for quite a while. You are suffering from diabetes and insomnia and often play the role of the clown to compensate for your chronic melancholy.”

Sir Gimp's eyes twinkled as he smiled and said, “Your legendary powers of deduction are not exaggerated. This bodes well for the solution of my problem.”

“What exactly is your problem?” I blurted out.

“I think I might be losing my mind,” Sir Gimp said matter-of-factly.

TO BE CONTINUED....

Sir Gimp Meets Tom Terrific and Mary Jane

2005-07-21T18:48:00.000-07:00

I was feeling pretty good when I finished my vegan meal at Dharma's, a well-known vegetarian restaurant in Santa Cruz. I was thinking about my GimpBlog and how it was time to create a new post. I had an idea but there was one small problem. There was an article that I wanted to use but I couldn't get a digital version of it and I was reluctant to type it in without the writer's permission. The article was in a recent edition of Comic News, and it was written by the editor/publisher, an amazing dude that I call Tom Terrific.

Comic News is a monthly journal of progressive editorial cartoons. Each issue features well over 100 cartoons from the nation’s leading political cartoonists. The Comic News is the granddaddy of all cartoon newspapers — established 1984.

Tom Terrific has been publishing Comic News for almost twenty years and he still personally delivers new issues to the “magazine stands”. In the best Santa Cruz tradition, the magazine stands are not locked. The price of the monthly issue is “a dollar if you have it.” If not, you can pop open the newspaper stand cover and help yourself to the current issue. But if you do that, how will you ever, ever sleep at night?

Tom Terrific not only is the magazine's editor, he also is the main writer. After assembling over 100 of the best cartoons from the nation's leading political cartoonists, he writes a caption/commentary for each cartoon. In addition, he writes a short letter which introduces each issue.

Each issue of Comic News has a theme and the last issue's theme was “Reefer Madness” referring, of course, to the recent Supreme Court ruling which upheld the right of the Federal Government to arrest sick people even in a state that has legalized medical marijuana. The first part of Tom's letter reflects the paper's editorial position on this matter:

Anyway, you know this nation’s marijuana laws go beyond ridiculous into cruel and mean, and so I’ll try not to belabor the point. Still, it’s a sign of a very sick society that makes it highly illegal for a terminally ill patient to grow and ingest a non-toxic medication (absolutely no risk of overdose) that will ease the suffering.

Although the state and local officials say the federal ruling will have no effect on the state's medical marijuana laws, the court ruling has certainly put a chill in the air. A few weeks later, the Governor's administration decided to stop issuing medial marijuana cards pending an “evaluation” of the court's ruling and how it may effect the state's medical marijuana laws. (Some things never change.)

I was originally going to write this posting about the Supreme Court ruling, but even as we speak, er...write, I've decided that it was time for me to show my support for those unfortunate suffering souls who comprise the medical marijuana adherents throughout the state and the nation. Yes, I'm coming out of the “closet” and onto the dance floor. Step right up ladies and sign my dance card. Yes 'n deed. I'm gonna do that “Cannabis Rag” all night long.

Y'see, ladies and gentlemen, 'truth be known, I have a Chronic Undiagnosable Disease (CUD) and the only treatment that's been known to provide some relief is none other than our renegade friend and star of the National Hothouse Review, Cannabis sativa. Take a bow for us Ms. Sativa, take a bow. Thank you. And now you know. There you have it! It's done. The cat's out of the bag. But there's a bit more to the story here. You won't find me out on the street tokin' up with the local geeks. Nosirree. Not Elgimpo. The Elgimpo. I get my stuff all clear and legal. How's that?

There's cannabis, and there's cannabis, and then there's cannabis. By now, you must be wonderin' what it is that I'm smoking. Well, the joke's on you, dear friend, 'cause I'm not smokin' nuthin'! Y'see, first there's the cannabis plant that some folks smoke. Then there's the extract of the cannabis plant (THC) that some folks swallow in a capsules sometimes known as “bombers.” And then there's the THC that's made by the white coats in some lab. Some now some folks can get their cannabis at the neighborhood pharmacy 'cause its a prescription drug called Marinol. Now what it heck is Marinol?

Marinol is simply the active agent in cannabis sativa put into a capsule that can be sold by your local pharmacy at an outrageous profit. After seeing five neurologists, none of which could provide a diagnosis for my CUD, I had a hunch that my old hippie friend Mary Jane might be able to help control the endless, intense, shaking and grimacing that is the hallmark of the disease. Guess what? I was right! Ol' Mary Jane came through when I needed her. After about six months of coughing and hacking on account of my relationship with Mary Jane, I discovered Marinol. Or should I say Marinol discovered me....

Y'see, last December I was hospitalized as the result of a sudden attack of pneumonia and before you could say Holy Spider-Man! I was in the Urgent Care Unit of the hospital. “Urgent Care” is their way of saying that you're pretty messed up and you might die. And I almost did. But that's a story for another day. Any way, as they were rolling me around on a bed with wheels, the doctor in charge of “my case” introduced himself to me. Then I introduced myself to him saying, “I'm a medical marijuana patient. I use it to control my tremors.” The good doc smiled, bent over me and whispered, “You can't smoke in the hospital. You know that, don't you?”

“Sure,” I said with an airline stewardess smile.

“But, he said, “I'll prescribe some Marinol for you. Three times a day be OK?”

“Yeah,” I said in utter amazement. “Three times should be good. Thanks,” I smiled, genuinely this time, stunned at the ease with which I arranged to have my medicine prescribed and delivered to me with my meals of all things....with my meals. Amazing.

Mary Jane and I became good friends during my ten day hospital stay. By the time I got home, I was hooked. And that began the story of my descent into crime and dark depravity. (Just Kidding!)

Just for the record. The name of Spider-Man's girlfriend was Mary Jane Watson. According to Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Mary Jane is slang for marijuana. No wonder Spider-Man comics were so popular in the '60s!

Oh, Oh! My editor is telling me that I've used up my word count for this posting. But there is something I really must mention before I close.

What really ticks me off and gets my propellers spinning is the hypocrisy of Uncle Sam with regard to the beneficial effects of Mary Jane & Co. When there is drug that can be sold to the public for an astronomical profit, Uncle Sam sees fit to legalize it. Hence, Marinol. But when a plant with the the same basic ingredients as Marinol, can be grown at home for free in your backyard, then it's found to have no medicinal value and is declared to be an “illegal substance.” Looks like some kind of bizarro world to me.

Any way, getting back to our story...As I was leaving Dharma's that day, I was hoping I'd find a way to get a hold of Tom Terrific and get his permission to publish some of his letter in the GimpBlog. As I live and breath, who do you think I spotted outside of Dharma's bending over the Cosmic News newspaper stand?

Yep, its non other than Tom Terrific! We exchanged pleasantries, (he knew who I was by the propellers on my cap) and he gave me permission to use his letter and said he'd send an electronic version to me.

Well, let me tell you! I was stoked! It was the “man himself”, the one and only Tom Terrific! Synchronicity, ain't it wonderful! And just when you'd least expect it. As the Rolling Stones sang in their hymn to Synchronicity:

You can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes,
You get what you need....

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Living in a Bizarro World

2005-07-16T00:54:00.000-07:00

As I was trolling the 'Net this morning, a Reuters headline set the propellers on my beanie hat spinning wildly in a counter clockwise direction. “Red alert!” I cried to the Lovely Donna Jean who was busying herself with her beadwork. “What is it, dear? Your propellers are going crazy!”

“I don't believe it! It's just too bizarre.”

The headline that set my propellers all a-flutter was this:

Army gives $5 bln of work to Halliburton.

Why did this set me off? you might wonder. It's because I just finished reading some of the recent comments on my GimpBlog posting “"We were Right Then and We are Right Now".

Talltale made the comment, “...Some people have made a lot of money off this war, and they will get to enjoy their gains, no matter what happens. And the neo-cons who said the war would be a cakewalk will rewrite their own histories and live in luxury. What a shameful time for our country! ....”

And then LadyDi's prophetic comment followed “Hey talltale...you are referring to vice pres. Halliburton, aren't you?”

The Reuters headline caught my eye only minutes after reading the aforementioned comments. As I scanned the article I couldn't believe what I read:

The U.S. military has signed on Halliburton to do nearly $5 billion in new work in Iraq under a giant logistics contract that has so far earned the Texas-based firm $9.1 billion, the Army said on Wednesday....The new deal, worth $4.97 billion over the next year, was not made public when it was signed because the Army did not consider such an announcement necessary, she said.

“Such an announcement not necessary?” I muttered to the Lovely One. “Not necessary! Of course it wasn't necessary. They wanted to keep their evildoing out of the public eye.” I exclaimed. The article went on to say:

Halliburton, which was run by Vice President Dick Cheney from 1995-2000, has been under scrutiny for its contracts in Iraq and several U.S. government agencies are looking into whether it overcharged for some work.

“Under scrutiny? Of course they're under scrutiny. They've cheated us so-called tax payers out of millions. And they keep getting more contracts. They charged for millions of meals that they that never delivered to our troops who are fighting and dying for Halliburton profits. As if that wasn't enough! They were indicted for defrauding us of more than $3.5 million for inflating the cost of fuel tankers.

And were there any repercussions? In a “normal” business situation, if you hire contractors who rob, lie, and cheat, you fire them and then sue the hell out of 'em. But in this bizarro world we now live in, you keep extending their contracts and give them bonuses. Unbelievable. Simply unbelievable!”

GIANT DEAL
Called LOGCAP, KBR had by May 31 been paid $9.1 billion under the deal, which has nine option years that have been renewed three times. They are up for renewal each December.

“It's too much. Just too much! Look at this”, I shouted as I read a bit further:

Among the costs that Pentagon auditors questioned were more than $150,000 for movie rentals, $1.5 million for tailoring and two multimillion-dollar transportation bills that appeared to overlap.

“Holy Batman! That's a lot of movie rentals,” I said to the Lovely One.”

“Be careful dear. Watch your blood pressure. Steam is coming out of your ears and your eyes are rolling from side to side. Why don't you get off the computer and read your Batman graphic novel for a while. Being this upset is dangerous for your health,” cautioned my Lovely Beader.

“But where is the outrage! Where is the indignation? How is it possible? Are we living in a reverse world or what?”

As I continued reading the article I became convinced that I was living in an surrogate reality deep in the bowels of the Twilight Zone.

A top U.S. Army procurement official said last week Halliburton's deals in Iraq were the worst example of contract abuse she had ever seen, a claim KBR strongly rejected as "political rhetoric."

“There you have it!” I shouted to the mindless masses. “How can they keep renewing these contracts when they know that Halliburton is getting away with such blatant abuse! How can they do it? What kind of bizarro world are we living in?”

“That's it. You've got to stop this right now” she exclaimed as she snuck up behind me and began massaging my shoulders.”

As I began to calm down, my propellers started slowing down, the steam stopped pouring out from my ears, and I slumped over, exhausted from the ordeal.

Later....

And later still....

The Lovely Donna Jean is holding a few pieces of paper, hunched over in great concentration when Sir Gimp slowly comes to, still groggy from his ordeal.

DJ: I read your newest GimpBlog article while you were resting. I hope you don't mind.

SG: That's fine. What do you think?

DJ: It's pretty good. But not sure about this Bizarro stuff. And why the Superman comic book cover?

SG: When was a kid I read a lot of Superman comic books. And there was this crazy bizarro world, were things were backwards, or reversed, or something.... It's kind of a bizarre twist on the Frankenstein story.

Bizarro is well-meaning but witless, super-powerful but pathetic. His speech is illiterate and ungrammatical. Because Bizarro's mind is an imperfect imitation of Superman's, however, he is capable of flights of occasional super-genius. The bizzaro world is sort of the reverse of Earth life.

I even remember the the Bizarro code:

Us do opposite of all Earthly things!

Us hate beauty!

Us love ugliness!

Is big crime to make anything perfect on BIZARRO WORLD!

DJ: Well, I feel better about it now that you've explained it. But I'm afraid your readers will think that referencing this comic book world is a bit, uh...dare I is say it? Bizarre.

SG: No more than the government getting cheated again and again by Halliburton, and renewing their contracts again and again. Now that's really bizarro!

DJ: If you say so.

SG: I say so.

The London Train Bombing

2005-07-11T07:49:00.000-07:00

I have been an Anglophile for most of my life. From Sherlock Holmes to the Beatles, from Shakespeare to Masterpiece Theater, I have always love English culture and the English people. So it was with a deep sadness that I was riveted to the horrible scenes of the London Train bombings this morning on the TV. Despite the scenes of carnage and violence, I couldn't help but be impressed at the courage and calmness of the Londoners “under fire.”

I was reminded of newsreel films of London during the Nazi blitz in World War II. The proverbial “stiff upper lip” was once again brought into play as Londoners went about coping with this tragedy in their heroic fashion. Equally impressive was the speed in which the rapid response teams went to work, pulling victims out of the wreckage, providing first aid, and in general, quietly and efficiently going about the business of bringing order to the chaos that ensued in the aftermath of the attacks. Unlike the U.S., London has been preparing for an attack like this for years and that preparation paid off today.

That was in direct contrast to the cowboy mentality displayed by the G8 leaders in Scotland. Remember Bush's challenge a few years back?:

"There are some who, uh, feel like that, you know, the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is: Bring 'em on. We got the force necessary to deal with the security situation."

The blustering swagger of Blair and Bush in the aftermath of the London Train bombings are perhaps more tragic than the bombing itself. Once again, the response, as it was in the aftermath of 9/11, displayed much braggadocio and not much else. As Prime Minister Blair said:

"When they try to intimidate us, we will not be intimidated. When they seek to change our country or our way of life by these methods, we will not be changed."

But that's exactly the problem. Change is what is so badly needed. Bush and Blair were not the only ones to wallow deep in the hubric swamp of self righteousness. French President Jacques Chirac denounced the attacks as unconscionable.

"The scorn in which the human life is viewed is something which together we must fight against with increasing firmness, with solidarity among the great nations of the world against those who commit [the terrorism]."

The President of Spain Zapatero said in a defiant televised statement:

"The terrorists will never force us to abandon our principles and values.... The moral force of democracy is stronger than their vile and cowardly methods. Terror will never impose itself on the rule of law and on democracy."

The other G8 leaders had similar comments. However, there was at least one breath of fresh air from MP, George Galloway, who represents an east London constituency. He linked the attacks to Britain's presence in Iraq. He said Londoners had "paid the price" for their government's actions, and called on Mr Blair to follow the example of the Spanish government, which withdrew troops from Iraq after the Madrid train bombings.

"We argued, as did the security services in this country, that the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq would increase the threat of terrorist attack in Britain," he said. "Tragically Londoners have now paid the price of the government ignoring such warnings."

London was very fortunate in that the attacks could have been much worse, as were the train bombings last year in Madrid.

As with 9/11, there was no attempt by the leaders of the G8 to understand why these attacks took place. The meaningless saber rattling will continue and the causes will go unexamined. And more attacks and more suffering will be the inevitable result.

The G8 leaders continue to spout the same tired cliches about how they hate us for our freedom and our way of life. This is utter nonsense. They hate us for our policies. To paraphrase the Great Bard, “the fault dear Bush, is not in our freedom, but in our policies.”

Unless and until the G8 and the people of the Western world get this and act on it, nothing will change.

But there are rays of hope, dimly shining in this ill fated firmament. The alternative press does get it, and says it loud and clear.

Here is an excerpt from interviews held on Democracy Now! from the July 8^th broadcast. The full transcript can be found here at www.democracynow.org. Participating in the interviews were:

Stephen Grey, journalist with the Sunday Times of London.

George Galloway, Respect Member of Parliament for Bethnal Green and Bow in East London, England. He was previously a Labour Party member but was expelled in October 2003 because of statements he made opposing the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In January 2004 he formed a new political party, RESPECT The Unity Coalition, and was returned to Parliament as its candidate in the 2005 general election.
George Monbiot, an author and columnist for the London Guardian. He is author of the book "Manifesto for a New World Order."

George Galloway:

"It's just basic common sense that if you don't drain the swamp that I have talked about, if you don't intervene to stop the ongoing calvary of the Palestinian people, who for 50 years have been dispossessed, sent to the four corners of the world as refugees, regularly massacred, occupied, if you don't do something about the hundreds of thousands of foreign soldiers occupying Iraq, if you don't stop propping up the puppet presidents and the corrupt kings who rule the Muslim world almost without exception from one end to the other, then you lay bare your double standards, your hypocrisy, when you talk about liberty.

What our leaders want is liberty for us, but only up to a point, and they're ready to take that away if it suits them, but no liberty for anybody else. And the people in the Muslim world can see it very clearly. They know that nobody gave a toss about the thousands who were killed in Fallujah. Nobody in the British Parliament raised any qualm about the American armed forces reducing Fallujah to ash and killing thousands of people. Yet, they go into the kind of emoting that we saw yesterday about the deaths in London.

...The blood of everyone is worth the same. God didn't differentiate between a dead person in London killed by sheets of flying glass and red-hot razor sharp steel and someone who died the same death in Baghdad. These deaths are the same. And war of the kind that we have seen -- unjustified, illegal, based on lies, in Iraq, is terrorism of a different kind. Just because the President, who ordered it is wearing a smart suit rather than the garb of an Islamist in the Tora Bora doesn't make their orders more legitimate than orders if they were given from bin Laden."

Stephen Grey:

"...it's not just about a threat to the way of life of the West. If you talk to people who actually are close to these movements, I mean, they hate, above all, the policies of the West, ...not just invasion of Iraq, they also extend to our policies to the Middle East peace process, our involvement in Afghanistan."

George Monbiot:

"...As far as its impact on Britain is concerned, I am worried that we are going to see the loss of certain civil liberties as a result of this. We have seen with, for example, the PATRIOT Act in the United States, that there has been quite a curtailment of some fairly basic human rights, including the right to free assembly and the right to free expression and, of course, there has been a great deal of very intrusive surveillance and policing of the Muslim community and indeed parts of the non-white community in general in the U.S., some of which appears to have very little to do with anything which could reasonably be regarded as dealing with terrorism. And I'm concerned that that's going to come over here."

And its not just the alternative press. Last night on Nightline, Ted Koppel's guests were in agreement that it's the West's foreign polices, night the life style that has galvanized the Jihadist's all across the Muslim world.

Another thing that has really bothered me is the warped value of human life displayed in the West . The London attacks were referred to as “barbaric”, “crimes against humanity”, etc. But the G8 don't see their own actions in this light. The invasion of Iraq and the continuing support of Israel's occupation of Palestine are not seen as “barbaric” or as “crimes against humanity.” Why? Because they are viewed as some sort of subhuman species that doesn't really matter. The so-called “coalition forces” can't even be bothered to keep a body count of Iraqi deaths.

From the July 8^th issue of the Boston Globe columnist Derrick Z. Jackson muses:

"...Or perhaps you forgot about them. That was by design. We have rightfully mourned the loss of nearly 3,000 people on 9/11. We have begun mourning the loss of about 40 people in London. We have mourned the loss of 1,751 US soldiers, who, bless them, were following orders of their commander in chief. But to this day, there has been no major acknowledgment, let alone apology, by Bush or Blair for the massive amounts of carnage we created in a war waged over what turned out to be a lie, the nonexistent weapons of mass destruction.

...These innocents never existed, either in Iraq or Afghanistan. ''We don't do body counts," said both General Tommy Franks, former Iraqi commander, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld....

The United States waged its own war of propaganda by refusing to conduct a legitimate, authoritative, honest accounting of the deaths of innocent civilians. As it urged people to change the channel, the Bush administration cut off all channels to finding out what we did to women, men, and children who were shopping, working, or leaving their mosques. In an invasion based on falsehoods, the truth of the civilian carnage might have been too hard for Americans to take, and support for the war might have ended in the first few weeks.

...The propaganda of an invasion with invisible innocents surely allowed Bush to seamlessly switch his stated reason from the unique horrors of WMD to liberating an oppressed people. It is a lot easier to tell the world you are their great liberator if you do not have to own up to the thousands of dead people who will never get the chance to vote in that free election. It sounds a little bit like people who say African-Americans should be thankful for slavery because they are no longer in Africa.

Worse, this denial of death, in a war that did not have to happen, is sure to fuel the very terrorism we say we will defeat. The innocents in the so-called war on terror are always ''our" citizens or the citizens of our allies. The only innocent Iraqis are those killed by ''insurgents." Our soldiers clearly did not intend to kill innocents. But this posturing of America as the great innocent, when everyone knows we kill innocents ourselves, is likely only to make us look more like the devil in the eyes of a suicide bomber."

So where do we go from here? Will the West begin to wise up and begin to examine the role that our policies are playing in fanning the flames of terrorism? Will the anti-war movement gain momentum from the London attacks and cause the G8 to change its murderous ways? Or will we “stay the course” and rally 'round the flag and create the police states that will be necessary to “win the war on terror?”

"We will fight them over there so we don't have to fight them here."
G.W. Bush

Are you feeling safer now?

We were Right Then and We are Right Now

2005-07-01T01:00:00.000-07:00

Sir Gimp and the lovely Donna Jean were enjoying a late summer breakfast out on the patio porch. Their conversation went something like this:

DJ: What do you think of the new umbrella?

SG: I think it's great. We wouldn't be celebrating the summer solstice out here if Mary hadn't given it to you. It was good of her to think of us.

DJ: Yes it was. She didn't need it after she completed her garden redecorating project.

SG: Hey babe, remember Vietnam?

DJ: You mean the war?

SG: Yeah. The Vietnam war. I've been thinking about it a lot lately.

DJ: You mean because of the quagmire talk?

SG: Not exactly. I was thinking of something else. Do you remember me telling you how they all thought we were crazy then, even my parents?

DJ: Yeah. Well, kind of. But eventually you were vindicated, weren't you?

SG: Ultimately we all were.

DJ: You and your brothers?

SG: Yeah, me and my brothers. But not just my brothers. All of us. The entire antiwar movement. After ten years and 500,000 US military deaths, the public had enough and the tide was turned. They finally realized that we were right. For ten years we marched, and sang, and yelled, and voted, and cried, and prayed. And eventually all the anguish and hard work paid off. We declared “victory” and pulled out. So much for the “domino” theory. Turns out they had the wrong game. It wasn't dominoes, it was poker, and they were all bluffing. Or maybe the game was really “blind man's bluff.”

I remember many times laying awake at night, unable to sleep because of what my country was doing to those poor, peasant farmers. First they had to battle the French army for 10 years, and then us, the 10,000 pound gorilla. Whole villages, bombed, burned, plundered, and left wasted. We were murderers, not liberators. It weighed very heavily on me during those sleepless years.

DJ: Yeah, I know it was hard for you. You're so sensitive. But at least you weren't drafted.

SG: That's right, when they took one look at my application with my antiwar essay, and my photograph with my trademark propeller hat and the foolish gimpish grin on my face, they wanted to run, or at least turn the other cheek, and they did. I got my 4F rating (unfit for military service) faster then you could shake a tail feather). I knew the war was immoral and I didn't want to die for an immoral cause. Besides, I didn't believe in murder, rape, and torture as my favorite problem solving techniques. I knew there were better ways.

It was strange time. J. Edgar Hoover and the boys thought we were all communist agitators, doing the will of foreign powers. In their eyes we were traitors, dirty commie, pinko rats, running around after dark, trying to turn on upper middle class girls to LSD and pot so we could “take advantage” of them. But we persevered and in time our message was heard and the war ended.

And then we were vindicated. Gone were the pinkos and traitors. In their place was a generation of heroes who had enough courage and passion to “stay the course” until our message was heard.

DJ: And don't forget the ultimate personal vindication. Your mom and dad. Remember how she was bragging about her “antiwar sons” to her friends?

SG: Yeah. That really blew my mind! I'll never forget that phone call when my mom told me that she had been bragging about me and my two brothers at one of her parties. She said, “My sons were, as usual, ahead of their time. They were against the war way before we (the parents attending the party) had any idea what was really going on. I'm quite proud of them. When my eldest son first come home from Berkeley, he was all fired up about what was going in Vietnam, and he was not shy about telling us. We thought he was a little too 'far out' then, but it turned he was right.”

DJ: Not too much as changed, has it? Now its a different war, and we are against this one too. Once again your parents have come around. But it took time. Since they were gung-ho about the first Gulf War, it took them a while to see that “this one was different.” But they did. Your dad, a WWII combat veteran, thinks this war is a disaster. Even he has seen through the charade of the Bush team's lies and incompetence.

I remember the last visit with your parents. We were talking about the war, and I'll never forget your mom saying, “I'm so proud of you. You were right about Vietnam and now you're right about Iraq.”

SG: Yep. Looking back, it's amazing how somethings never change. Both wars were started on false pretenses and it took time for people to finally see that the Emperor had no clothes. Simply amazing. But we were right about 'Nam and we are also right about Iraq. I just wonder how many more will have to die, and how many more sleepless nights I'll have until “victory” is declared and the carnage ends.”

Sir Gimp sighed heavily as he began peeling an orange.

Beware of Symptoms of Inner Peace

2005-06-19T23:34:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the Universe speaks to us in strange and unexpected ways.

For example, today your humble, lovable, yukable Sir Gimp was taken out to a natural food restaurant by the lovely Donn Jean for Father's Day. Now, don't get excited dear ones, there won't be any junior Gimps running around any time soon. (I'm not an expecting father. Donna Jean just likes to honor Father's Day by taking me out for some fresh air and a meal.)

After we ordered, I asked to be excused as nature was making its hourly call. On my way to the “little boy's room”, I saw a poster on the wall and stopped to read it. And then I read it again. And again. I was so transfixed by the message that the propellers on my beanie hat began to rapidly spin in a counter clockwise direction. After answering the call of nature, I floated back to the dining area and returned to our table.

“Uh, oh. What's the matter now? Your propellers are spinning again,” said the lovely Donna Jean. “Somethings happened. What is it? Are you all right?”

Sir Gimp said grinning like the Cheshire Cat, “Oh yeah. I'm alright. Quite alright, actually. But you gotta come and see this right now, OK? I'll stay and watch the table and our stuff. On your way to the “little boy's room” you will see a poster on the wall. Read it. You'll love it.”

The lovely Donna Jean hurriedly made her way to the poster. This is what she saw.

Watch for signs of Peace. The hearts of a great many have already been exposed to it and it seems likely that we could find our society experiencing it in epidemic proportions. Some signs and symptoms of inner peace:

Tendency to think and act spontaneously, rather than from fear.
An unmistakable ability to enjoy each moment.
Loss of interest in judging other people.
Loss of interest in judging self.
Loss of interest in interpreting the actions of others.
Loss of interest in conflict.
Loss of ability to worry (a very serious symptom).
Frequent, overwhelming episodes of appreciation.
Contented feelings of connectedness with others and with nature.
Frequent attacks of smiling through the eyes and from the heart.
Increasing tendency to let things happen rather than make them happen.
Increasing susceptibility to Love extended by others as well as the uncontrollable urge to extend it.

If you have all or even most of the above symptoms, please be advised that your condition may be too far advanced to turn back. If you are exposed to anyone exhibiting several of these symptoms, remain exposed at your own risk. The Center for Disease Control has declared Inner Peace infectious and dangerous.

When the Lovely One came back to the table, I could tell that she was also infected. Not by the spinning of the propellers on her beanie hat (she doesn't wear hers in public very often) but by the Cheshire Cat grin on her face.

“Uh, oh!”, I exclaimed, causing the folks at the neighboring tables to turn our way. “You've been infected too. You've got Inner Peace. I've to get home right away and publish this warning on my GimpBlog. This could be dangerous if it started to spread.”

Sir Gimp went home and rushed (as much as he can rush) into his sanctuary/office and got to work. So, dear reader, you have no excuse. You have been warned!

Wake for Amerika (Pt 2)

2005-06-15T16:13:00.000-07:00

(Click here to read Part 1)

Gore Vidal is up on the platform completing his speech. Our intrepid Sir Gimp and CCB's reporter Rather Dan are sitting off to the left of the platform listening as Vidal's impassioned words riveted the crowd:

We have never been for imperial foreign wars. We have to be dragged screaming into them, as we were after Pearl Harbor and there was a lot of machinations going on to make sure that that happened. And it goes on all the time. Events are made so horrible people like Saddam and so on are demonized, and we all have to immediately begin by saying how awful he is for 25 minutes before we can get down to the fact that he was no threat to the United States, no threat at all.

He was not involved with al Qaeda. He was not involved with 9/11. He was not. He was not. You can say it a million times, but there you have a president with the help of the most corrupt media in my lifetime buoying his words across the land and telling lies about the... ‘We're 45 minutes away from being blown up by the weapons of mass destruction that this master of evil has in his hands.’ To which the answer is: Why? Why would he do that? There must be some motivation. You see, they are now beyond motivation, and that is insanity. So, an insane government is not one that you can look to with any confidence.

The conclusion of Vidal's speech was met with thunderous applause that continued for almost five minutes. As Mr. Vidal leaves the platform, Howard Dean, the MC for the Wake for Amerika, announced that there would be an intermission before Sir Gimp's speech.

“It gives me great pleasure to introduce tonight's musical performer, the one and only Willie Nelson. Willie's gonna sing Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?, followed by Stardust and Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain. Let's have a nice round of applause for the distinguished outlaw of country music, Willie Nelson.”

As the music begins, Rather Dan takes advantage of this break in the program to continue his interview with Sir Gimp.

RD: Well, that was quite a eulogy from Mr. Vidal, wasn't it?

SG: Of course. He's the master. He knows full well that the end of a free press, the end of journalism, means the end of democracy here at home. While the government sings the praise of “democracy to the world”, here in Amerika we are seeing the demise of “freedom and democracy” take place before our very eyes. And almost no one bats an eye. As soon as Bill Moyers leaves PBS the House Appropriations Committee votes to cut $100 million in funding for the Corporation For Public Broadcasting. And as you know Rather, it goes on and on.

RD: Well, what do you hope to accomplish by holding this wake?

SG: I'm not sure. One meaning of wake refers to the tradition of watching over the deceased body in the hope that life might return. Another is a a period of mourning and healing, trying to make sense of the loss. Another meaning is to wake up, to become more alert and aware.

RD: So even though you all here are mourning, you also hold out the hope that life might yet return to the deceased corpse of Amerikan Democracy.

SG: Yes. I mean sometimes. Well, I really don't want to totally give up hope that a good wake might awaken the sleeping giant. But I wouldn't be surprised if its too late for artificial respiration.

RD: But maybe your wake is part of the “turning tide”, so to speak. The latest news seems to indicate that perhaps a tipping point has been reached. Military recruitments are way down, the latest Washington Post poll showed that a majority of Americans (56 percent) don’t think the war in Iraq is worth it, Republicans are joining Democrats in their cries to shut down the Guantanamo prison, and the social security “reform” is becoming stillborn. Even the most senior military officers are saying that the war can't be won by military means and are calling for a political solution for ending the war.

SG: Yeah. Maybe so. But then again, maybe not.

RD: What do you mean?

SG: We are so far from any sane reality now. The cognitive disconnect (psychological conflict resulting from simultaneously held incongruous beliefs and attitudes) is so great in this country right now that it may be impossible to change. What do you make of things when a large group of people consistently vote away their freedoms and economic progress? When Hitler was being voted into power, the German people thought that they were progressing, reviving the Fatherland, as it were. And the reality was so different. So terrifyingly different. It was Benjamin Franklin who said that “those who prefer security to liberty deserve neither.” And that, Rather, is what I'm afraid we might end up with.

RD: Well, thank you for your time. It looks like it's time for you to speak.

As Sir Gimp slowly made his way to the platform, the rain stopped, the sky began to clear, and from his vantage point at the left side of the stage, Rather Dan thought he saw, ever so faintly, a rainbow hovering over the large group of mourners attending the wake.

End of Part 2

A Wake for Amerika

2005-06-10T03:51:00.000-07:00

It was a damp, rainy, morning. The crowd was very quiet. The usual media was there, making the most of this unusual media event. Most of the crowd's attention was riveted on the raised, covered platform where the speaker was captivating the crowd with his reverent yet subdued speech. Everyone was dressed in black, and even the bunting around the platform was black. A large Amerikan flag was projected on large screens to the right and left of the platform. But there was something unusual about the flags; instead of the normal red, white, and blue colors, the flags were a somber black and white. Most of the media were seated on the left of the platform, cameras whirring and clicking as the speaker delivered his speech.

But there was one reporter not on the platform. He and another man were standing under some umbrellas off to one side. The reporter was Rather Dan, from CCB. Next to him was a well known figure in a propeller hat holding twelve black roses. Rather Dan was pleased to have a CCB exclusive interview with the one and only Sir Gimp.

RD: This is very unusual for you, isn't it? You don't make many public appearances any more, do you?

SG: That's right. I went into a sort of semi-retirement after leaving my position as an embedded armchair war correspondent during the invasion of Iraq. It kinda took it out of me, y' know. It was hard work, very hard work. I mean really hard, hard work.

RD: I can imagine.

SG: No! You can't imagine! You simply can't imagine how hard it was. You had to be there.

RD: Is that why you went into therapy when you came home?

SG: Yeah. That's why. It was hard, hard work, being embedded like that that. Seeing all that slaughter, all that misery. The arms, the legs, the guts, the brains, splattered all over the goddamn place, even on your clothes. Even worse were the wounded. So many limbs blown off, eyes and ears shattered forever. It was hard, seeing all that misery day in and day out. I still can't sleep much at night. Then I make up for it by falling asleep while reading, watching movies or whatever. I guess I'm really sleep deprived now. Too tired to sleep much. How about you Rather? Ever get so tired that you can't sleep?

RD: Yeah, I know what you mean. But we're not here to talk about me. We here to talk about you. Why did you organize this wake? It's a strange sort of coming out party, isn't it?

SG: Yeah. I put a lot of thought into it. I didn't know if the time was right, or if I was well enough to meet the public again.

RD: What was it that triggered your coming out today?

SG: It wasn't just one thing. It's the culmination of what's been going down in this country. The war, the loss of freedom, the encroachment of fear that seem to be spreading its dark shadow. You know even better how deep the shadows have permeated our lives than I do. I don't think I have to spell it out for someone like you.

RD: But was there must have been something that got you motivated. What was it?

SG: It was Newsweek. Not really Newsweek per se. It was what followed in its wake. The insanity of Newsweek being blamed for the increased hatred of Americans by Muslims. Army Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, even said "the violence that we saw in Jalalabad was not necessarily the result of the allegations about disrespect for the Koran."

And yet the White House continues to blame Newsweek and demands an apology. Why don't the Amerikan people demand an apology from the White House instead? They took this country to war on the basis of lies and deceit! What about the Downing Street memo? Even though it documents the plotting and lying about the reasons for invading Iraq, it has been virtually ignored in the great land of Amerika. And it just goes on and on.... My doctors have told me stay away from politics. They say its bad for my health, but I just couldn't take it any more! Just couldn't take it.

Even the Newsweek editor, Whitaker, in the current edition of Newsweek, said two unnamed Pentagon officials did not dispute the Koran allegation when shown the story to check its accuracy before it was published. So why the big uproar later? Only after the violence broke out did the White House look for a scapegoat and they conveniently found one in Newsweek. Whitaker said, “Numerous other news organizations have printed allegations of prisoner abuse. For some reason, those did not get picked up by activists and insurgents and radical in the region trying to stir up trouble. Ours did."

It became obvious to me that someone, somewhere high up, said to Newsweek, “print a retraction or else.” Notice that Newsweek NEVER said the story wasn't true. It's just that they weren't sure if the Koran episode was in a military or civilian report. But Rather, to me what was worse, was how the media and the Congress copped out. Newsweek copped out. The Democrats copped out. They all just rolled over, like they were dead. It was the death knell of journalism, and therefore the end of democracy here in Amerika.

The implications of all this were so heavy to me, and the hubris was so thick, that I gagged on it all and puked my guts out in the bathroom last night.

RD: You're getting all red in the face. Calm down. Can I get you something to drink? You don't look so good.

(Ignoring Rather's remarks, Sir Gimp continues to rage and fume.)

SG: Well, let me tell you that this poor old Gimp couldn't take it any more. I just had to do something. So I decided to have this Wake. I think we need to stop and really mourn the end of democracy here. It was a good 200 years, but now its over. We had our day in the sun.

RD: Hold on a minute. I think Gore Vidal is the next speaker. Can continue this interview after he speaks?

SG: Sure. There's two or three more speakers until I go on.

A large applause was heard as Gore Vidal stepped up to the podium.

(Click here for Part 2)

Too Zen for Me

2005-06-08T00:41:00.000-07:00

What is the sound of one koan laughing?

The sound of one hand clapping.

Writer's Block

2005-06-06T13:15:00.000-07:00

He lay in bed, the sweat beaded on his forehead, his stomach so tight that he could barely breath. “Oh, migod, what have I done? I shouldn't have sent the invitations to the Grand Opening. I shouldn't of even had a Grand Opening. What will they think of me when I fail to make new postings? What if I can't think of anything to write? Why did I do this to myself? Life is hard enough.”

These thoughts and a thousand like them raced through Sir Gimp's overheated brain. It was early morning, about 3:30 A.M. He didn't know how long he lay there worrying. He must have been really worried, because he was churning the ether so intensely that the “worry vibrations” woke his wife, the lovely Donna Jean.

“What's wrong, dear?” she asked him gently.

“I shouldn't have done it! I'm crazy to take this on now. I've got enough problems.”

“Take what on?”

“You know. The blog. What was I thinking?”

Donna Jean reached over to her tormented husband and caressed his sweaty forehead. “It's OK. Don't worry. You'll be fine. Remember. Its what you wanted. An audience. Someone to read your writing. Besides. I have a fool-proof solution.”

“You do? What is it?”

Donna Jean's eyes twinkled with mystery and delight. “Writer's block. That's the answer. It works every time.”

“Writer's block?” replied an astonished Sir Gimp. “Writer's block? But that's what you never want. Never! It's a writer's greatest nemesis!” Sir Gimp stammered.

“But not this time,” smiled the lovely one. “It's your way out.”

“My way out? How. How in the hell is writer's block gonna help me?” Demanded our valiant propeller-head.

“Simple,” she said with a Mona Lisa smile. “When you don't have anything to write about, write about how you can't write because you have writer's block.”

“Have you lost it?” was Sir Gimp's astonished reply.

“I think that there's a really big problem with that. How can you write about writer's block if you have writer's block and can't write? Writer's block, by its very definition means that you can't write. You're blocked.”

“Well,” said the Lovely One. “You may not be able to write about what you wanted to write about, that's true. But you can always write about not being able to write. Just write about it. Just write that you have writer's block and can't write about anything except your writer's block.”

“But they'll think I'm an idiot! Writer's don't write about writer's block. They write about stuff. You know. Things about this crazy world that make people laugh and cry, stomp and shout. You know. Shake it up baby, twist and shout. The Real Stuff. Not about some writer's early morning fears about writing. Boring! Wimpy! Not the stuff dreams are made of. And definitely not Writer's Block for Dummies.”

Now the Lovely One was starting to worry. “Well, what are you going to do? You could take one of the unfinished segments from your book, the Gimp Chronicles, and finish that. Besides, they'll understand if it takes time for you to hit your stride with your blog. They'll know how much you've been suffering. They'll understand.”

The tension increases while Sir Gimp ponders his fate and the options that lie at his feet. “I don't know. I still think a writer should write, not cop out by writing about not writing. Only a loser would do something like that.”

Grand Opening: Meet Sir Gimp

2005-06-01T19:17:00.000-07:00

Sir Gimp started writing this blog to save his life. Suffering from many acute physical challenges, he has taken to blogging to get beyond his pain and give what's left of his life some meaning. He began writing the Gimp Chronicles several years ago. His work was adored by fans from all over the world, and his unconventional live reporting as an embedded armchair war correspondent during the illegal and immoral Invasion of Iraq, created a new standard of wartime reporting.

He was assigned to the Twenty Second Unarmored Armchair mobile unit of the Physically Challenged Brigade, or TSUAPCHB for short. This was a special Ops unit whose purpose was to report all the white hot action from the perspective of the wounded, paralyzed, blind, and lame. Here's an excerpt from his final report:

I heard the news today on my fave rave radio station WIMP (102.5 FM). Seems that the much vaunted “regime change” is at hand in Iraq. The TV was full of dancing, happy, Iragis, tearing down statues of Saddam the Man and hauling off stereos, TVs, bags of food, etc. Seems that the man himself can't be found.

But no matter, we didn't get Osama either. Didn't find no stinkin' weapons of mass destruction either. Didn't find nobody lobbin' gobs of nasty chemicals either. Didn't find much of nothin' 'cept a poor Arabian country that's been bombed day and night for three weeks by the most powerful military force the world has ever known.

The was last report that the Embedded Sir Gimp filed. Seems he joined the company of other outstanding journalists and celebrities like Robert Arnett, Geraldo Rivera, Phil Donahue, Susan Sarandon, Sean Penn and those girls gone wild, the Dixie Chicks, all of whom suffered political and social injustice for their outspoken ways.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The past two years have been very hard on Sir Gimp as his health has significantly deteriorated to the point where he had to cease work on his beloved Gimp Chronicles. But fear not, faithful readers, hope is once again crawling and trolling around in the deeper crevices of Sir Gimp's memory banks. Since starting the GimpBlog, he has mounted a renewed effort to defeat the horrid Axis of Evil and regain the freedom that has been denied him for so long.

For those of you new to GimpLand, the Axis of Evil is Sir Gimp's name for the forces of ill health that he has been battling for the last two years. They are Grimface, Neckvice, and Braincrusher, by name, and they are some of the most fearsome words in GimpLand. Their presence in his life has been a constant torment and is slowly destroying him. He has been to five neurologists and his illness has been declared undiagnosable by all five. As a result of the this endless onslaught from Axis of Evil, he has spent most of the the last year and a half as a shaking, grimacing, mass of misery.

He also suffers from an unrelenting case of Type II diabetes, and edema and nerve damage in his hands and feet. All in all, quite a mess, you might say.

Sir Gimp has decided to use the GimpBlog to record his madcap misadventures, metaphysical meanderings, political observations, and literary flights of fancy. He is honored to have you join him. At the end of each posting in the GimpBlog, there is an opportunity for you to leave a comment. Please feel free to do so.

Born to Blog!

2005-05-25T12:25:00.000-07:00

This is Blogit! Magazine and we are here live with Sir Gimp in lovely Santa Cruz where he has just announced that his new project, GimpBlog, will start publishing online as of June 1, 2005. As you can imagine, he's very busy now, but he did agree to a brief interview with us here at Blogit! Magazine.

BM: Thank you for taking the time for this interview.

SG: You're quite welcome.

BM: Why did you decide to enter the blogsphere?

SG: 'Cause its the really hip thing for a hipster type like me to do. I've got to shed my nerdy, propeller-head image if I'm going to keep progressing, keep growing. I've been stagnant too long, writing for years for the “old media.” That paper linear thing's got to go baby, got to go. In fact, I've got a search out now for a new, streamlined, non-propeller-head logo.

BM: Yes, yes, One must continue to progress. No doubt about it! But..eh..why blogging? When most folks have their midlife, they get a red Porsche, or move to Brazil, or become Deadheads. But blogging? Why blogging?

SG: Because its there. Because I can. Because I want to. Because I was...

(a great trumpet fanfare is heard as 100,000 colored balloons soar into the air)

Born To Blog! Yes! Yes! That's right. I was BORN TO BLOG! No longer will my well nuanced observations of human behavior languish unread, trapped in the linear paper world of printed books. What good is a bestseller if most of the world's population can't read it? No longer will my relentless wit and biting humor exist for the chosen few. Now, thanks to blogging, all can share, all can partake equally in a glorious new future in the Blogsphere.

And it's all happening here at http://elgimpo.blogspot.com/

See you there on June 1.

Just in Time

2005-05-09T01:02:00.000-07:00

Sir Gimp walked into the meeting exactly 7 minutes and 32 seconds late. He didn't expect to be called in on Saturday. Even Time Masters get some time off. He didn't even try to mumble an apology for being late. They were used to it. They expected it. Even he expected it. He was always late. For everything. That's the way it's always been. And this morning was no exception.

“Sorry to bring you in on a Saturday, but something's come up. And it's important. They're having one again.”

“Oh, no!” Sir Gimp exclaimed, with a mixture of fear and anticipation. “Are you sure, its them again?”

“Absolutely! You wouldn't be here if we weren't. And get this. They're saying that its the only one that's needed.”

“Why are they saying that?”

Here. Let me read some of it to you.

Sunday, May 1, 2005

Time Traveler Convention at MIT
MIT students are holding a Time Traveler Convention next Saturday in the hope that some visitors from the future might show up. I think it's a paradoxtastic plan!

Can't the time travelers just hear about it from the attendees, and travel back in time to attend?

Yes, they can! In fact, we think this will happen, and the small number of adventurous time travelers who do attend will go back to their "home times" and tell all their friends to come, causing the convention to become a Woodstock-like event that defines humanity forever.

“Once again, those MIT hackers have stirred things up! Who would have thought that the Open Source movement would have led to this?” Sir Gimp knew that his fate was sealed. It was he who would have to take the plunge again. Back into the past, to a specific time space continuum, the dreaded MIT Vortex.

He, like all experienced time surfers, knew that time was a bitch and strange things could happen. Especially if the MIT Vortex was involved. It is the Bermuda Triangle of time travel. And know one knows why. Even the Time Masters get confused when paying a visit. They literally don't know if they are coming are going. Or if they are staying, have stayed, will stay, or want to stay. Or as our dear friend William Jefferson Clinton might have said, “It all depends on what staying means.”

“So Sir Gimp, I hope you now can see the reason for the urgency of this meeting, and will make plans accordingly. You will have the usual expense vouchers, and plenty of Terran “money” for those times when use of the vouchers could raise suspicions. Oh, and of course the usual requirements apply. Anyone attending the convention from the future is advised to bring proof, such as "a cure for AIDS, or cancer, a solution for global poverty, or a cold fusion reactor."

“Of course,” Sir Gimp replied.

“One more thing. They've got one and it's going to be on display. Can you do something about it?”

“It's not that one, is it? The very early prototype?”

“I'm afraid it is.”

“Well, I should be going. There's not much time.”

“Why don't we meet back here in about an hour? That'll give you plenty of time to visit the Vortex, freshen up a bit at home, and prepare your briefing for the committee.”

In little more than an instant, Sir Gimp was safely inside the MIT Vortex and getting ready to attend the conference. The conference program had him as the second speaker. The keynote address, as always, was left open to any time travelers who were in attendance. This year there were three alleged time travelers, the most impressive was Dr. Samuel Harding, who offered a solution for Global Poverty as proof of his time travel credentials.

Sir Gimp entered the conference hall exactly 7 minutes and 32 seconds late. The keynote speech was in progress.

Then Sir Gimp gave the keynote follow up, speaking eloquently about the probability that time travel was a lovely idea, but just wasn't practical. He acknowledged that it did fulfill a deep seated psychological need for some kind of immortality, something that would not perish with the end of the universe. He said that too much concern about time travel could easily distract people from more important goals, such as ending global poverty or finding a cure for AIDS.

When his time was up, he quickly left the podium, and disappeared into the crowd. Suddenly he was gone. It was as if he was never there at all. :)

Victory!

2005-04-30T17:24:00.000-07:00

Now that the computer had made three round trips to Dell Service and was still freezing up, I knew that it was time to get a new computer.

But how? I daren't call Tech Support again. I had to find someone in the U.S. who could authorize a replacement. First I called Dell corporate and asked for someone who was part of the escalation team. She sent me to a voice mailbox. The mailbox asked me to leave my contact information and a brief description of my issue and they would call me back in three or four days, depending on the nature of my problem. (Whatever that means.)

After spending days deep in the innards of the Dell Corporate structure, I finally found someone that would listen to me. I needed to find someone who could authorize a replacement computer based on the comedy of errors that had befallen me and my poor frozen computer. How to get past the moat of incompetence that surrounds the Dell castle? Somewhere in the past few days while I was boogie boarding on the Internet, I came across the phrase “executive escalation committee.” “Wow,” I thought. This could be what I'm looking for. Thusly inspired, I opened my faithful Google and typed “Dell executive escalation committee” and pressed Enter. Bang! List of hits appeared. There was quite a list of hits. But out of all them, one immediately caught my eye.

It was a hit to Fucked Company. Curious, I double-clicked on the link, and a page of articles appeared. As I scanned the articles, one jumped out at me! It was reprimanding an employee and they were told in NO UNCERTAIN TERMS to ever, ever, send another email to Michael Dell. But then further down, something really caught my eye. It was a phone number for an “escalation specialist.” “Now we’re getting somewhere,” I thought. Then I noticed that the memo was dated 2002. I doubted that the number would still be in service three years later, but I decided to try it. To my surprise, someone answered the phone. As I began my tale of woe and outrage, she was quite sympathetic. In fact, she used the word “horror” sometime early in our conversation.

When I told her computer had been sent in and returned three times without them being able to fix it, she gave a large sigh which expressed shock and dismay. I suggested that it was time to look at getting a replacement computer. The following chain of events were put into play:

She agreed instantly and wrote a preliminary replacement order.
She transferred me to the Home Computer division.
The Home Computer division wrote up a replacement request.
They transferred me to Tech Support which was authorized prepare the replacement computer paper work.
An order for a replacement computer was put into Dell's “just in time” manufacturing system.

After I hung up the phone, I slumped into my fabulous Aeron chair, exhausted but victorious. After the five week plus ordeal, I was getting a new computer!

Third Time's a Charm?

2005-04-26T08:28:00.000-07:00

When I sent the computer back for the third time last Wednesday, I wanted to make sure that they would know exactly what to do, so I enclosed a sheet of paper with instructions writ large:

REPLACE THE MOTHERBOARD!

I put the paper on top of all the protective packaging so they it would be the first thing they would see when they opened the box. The computer was picked up last Wednesday and came back on Friday.

As I carried the computer upstairs, I visualized the repair sheet summary having a check mark next to Systemboard Replaced. For the third time this month, I set the box on the couch, used my handy dandy screwdriver to slit the tape, and opened the box. I grabbed the Corrective Action Sheet and scanned the columns. Well, to my surprise, this time there was a check mark next to Systemboard Replaced! “Well, well,” I thought. “Maybe they got it right this time.” I hastily performed what was starting to become a familiar ritual--unpacking the foam, connecting the cords, and feverishly chanting to the Great God of Silicone. Now, all I had to do was wait to see if it would freeze up again.

I was faced with an interesting dilemma. If replacing the motherboard really fixed the problem, then I would be proven right that it was a hardware problem. My ego would be salvaged, and I could resume my work without the fear of losing everything again.

But, if replacing the motherboard did not fix the problem, then there were two possibilities.

It really was a software problem and I was completely wrong.
It was a hardware problem that they couldn't fix and they would have to replace the computer.

Since I was reluctant to do any “real” work until I was sure that it was fixed, I spent the next few hours surfing the web. So far so good. I was hoping that the computer would really be fixed this time; then my motherboard theory would be proven correct, and I could get my life back.

Fortunately, it didn't take long to resolve the dilemma. A mere four hours after I set up the computer up, guess what happened? Elgimpo was crushed. Beaten. Embarrassed beyond belief. I was wrong... all this time. It wasn't the motherboard. The little sucker froze up again! It was Something Else. And what, dear reader, was that Something Else? Who knows? I sure don't. And those repair techs that sent it back three times sure don't.

The bad news is that it froze up. And the good news is that it froze up. The news is bad because it clearly demonstrated my utter lack of understanding regarding the real nature of the problem. Out of the ballpark on that one, I suppose. But, and it really is a good but, it means that the remaining option (aside from invoking the Catch 22 clause), is to replace the computer in its entirety. My contract spells it out with the words “repair or replace.” Since a series of rigourous scientific processes have determined that it is not repairable, then it must be replaceable, if not wholly unreliable. And unreliable it was.

Our Lady Of Safeway

2005-04-26T02:19:00.000-07:00

Who would believe it! Not you. Not me. But we must. Why? Because it happened. This is the true story of how the Shrine to Our Lady of Safeway came to be. It all started so simply....

It was an ordinary spring day. Like millions of other people, Our Lady was doing her weekend shopping. She liked to wait until early evening when the weekend shoppers had come and gone and the store was easier to navigate. After about half an hour, she completed her shopping and got into the Express Checkout line. And that's when it happened.

As she unloaded her cart, she noticed a picture of the new pope Pope Benedict XVI on the cover of a magazine overlooking the checkout counter. She was startled when the magazine flew off the rack and landed smack dab on top of her groceries. The magazine cover was facing her and the Pope appeared to blessing her with his upraised hands. She was transfixed with influx of great spiritual energy. Time seemed to stop. She began to tremble. She began to sweat. And then she started speaking in tongues.

The grocery clerk, a life-long devoted Catholic, was stunned by what he saw. The Pope was blessing her through the agent of the magazine. The clerk could hardly contain his excitement! Word quickly spread through the store. "There's a miracle in the Express line!" The crowd began to press in to get a better view of the miracle. Several cell phones were whipped out and before you could say "Holy Ghost", the media began swarming in on the Safeway store. As the media arrived, so did the local police. Then a near panic ensued as shoppers from other stores in the shopping center began flocking to Safeway. Within 15 minutes, the entire shopping center was in chaos.

Our Lady of Safeway was oblivious to the chaos around her. Her body was gently swaying and her eyes were rolling around, looking upward. occasionally saliva dripped down her chin and a white foam leaked out of her mouth. Then she dropped to her knees, clutching the magazine to her chest and shouting "hallelujah, hallelujah!" As her rapture intensified, she dropped the magazine and began waving her hands above her head, swaying to and fro, faster and faster. She suddenly fell to the floor and went into a coma.

Safeway shoppers, police, rescue teams and reporters collided with each other in their attempt to get closer to our fallen Lady. The police and the rescue team prevailed, and before anyone could stop them, she was whisked away in an ambulance, never to be seen again. rumor has it that she voluntarily put herself into the FBI's Witness Protection Program and was living in a cloister in Argentina.

The Safeway store where the alleged miracle took place was remodeled and a permanent shrine to Our Lady of Safeway was erected where the Express Checkout lane once stood. The store now caters to an endless stream of pilgrims from all over the world and has been converted to an Our Lady of Safeway Shrine and International Deli. acquiescing to intense public pressure, Pope Benedict XVI has promised to put her on the fast track toward sainthood.

Dell's Catch 22 or Where is Yosarian when we Really Need Him?

2005-04-20T01:32:00.000-07:00

As described in the Joys of Globalization from April 30, I made an agreement with Dell support that if the replacement memory didn't fix the freezup problem, they would replace the motherboard. Well the memory didn't fix the problem, so once again, I packed up the computer and sent it back, this time expecting them to really fix it.

The computer arrived today, and I was hoping that when I tore open the box and read the repair log, it would say “replaced motherboard” and my problems would be over. As I picked up the one page log, my mind reeled and I staggered backwards in utter disbelief shouting phrases that don't belong in a family magazine. And what, dear friends do you think the repair log revealed? There was no mention of replacing the motherboard. Nada. Nothing. “I can't believe it!”, I shouted to myself. “They did nothing! How could they do nothing.?”

Upon closer inspection, I saw that that they said that they upgraded the bios, and checked the AC adapter. Upgraded the bios? Why. In my first call to them, they had me upgrade the bios while we on the phone together. It's in my log that the bios was upgraded before I sent it in the first time. Don't they look up my case info when the computer comes to the repair center? If they don't read my case log, how do they know what to do? And if they do, why didn't they see that the bios was already upgraded? Unbelievable Absolutely unbelievable!

As I scrutinized the log further, I found great relief to see a checkmark by the AC adapter item. AC adapter? What did they do? Fondle it when the set the computer up? What does the AC adapter have to do with anything? It's a simple device. Either you get power or you don't. I have no idea what “corrective repair” action they could have done on AC adapter. My guess is that they couldn't be bothered to do anything, so they decided to give me a brand new AC adapter in lieu of swapping the motherboard. It makes about as much sense as anything else.

And then there was the lovely semi-legible scrawl at the bottom of the log assuring me that the computer was tested and is working fine but “you have software issue. Please contact Dell support.” Contact Dell support? By now I began to feel I was Yossarian in an updated high tech version of Catch-22. Please contact Dell support. Well then, who were they? The Boston Red Sox? They are Dell tech support. Who do they think told me to send in the computer? I began to see that I was caught in a cyclical pattern, going round and round. In Catch 22, Yossarian asked to be discharged from the Service because he was crazy and unfit for duty. But the catch was that if he wanted to be discharged, then he wasn't crazy and couldn't be discharged.

Dell's catch was:

They ask you to send the computer to the service center for repair. The service people do nothing and send it back, telling youto contact Dell support. You contact Dell support and they again tell youto send it to the repair center. Once again, the repair center sends it back with a note telling you to contact Dell support. And so it goes. Deja Vue all over again. Where is Yossarian when we really need him?

I've used Dell computers for many years, and the primary reason was the good support. As I packed up my computer for the third time, I began to have visions of IBM Thinkpads dancing in my head.

The Joys of Globalization

2005-04-17T18:24:00.000-07:00

I sent my computer back on Friday. Now I have another problem. When they sent me the replacement memory and the backup drive, they didn’t enclose a prepaid return authorization sticker. I’ve got to call them and email them and wait for a response. I’m also curious how they co-ordinate the repair center in Tennessee with the support team in India. Perhaps that explains why they sent it back without fixing anything. Seems like its easy to for things to get lost in transition and translation.

The last time I talked to them on the phone, I asked them how the mixup could have happened. I said,” Don’t they look up my records in the computer and see why the computer was being sent back and what the problem was?” He said something I couldn’t understand about not having the information regarding repairs that were made (even though there is a case number for every transaction).

I’m hoping that when the computer comes back (sometime late next week), it will contain a repair sheet that says that the motherboard has been replaced. Ah, the joys of globalization! (With aplogies to Thomas Friedman :).

Still More Frozen Food from Dell

2005-04-15T01:02:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I received the memory, backup hard disk, and a prepaid shipping box from Dell. As per the agreement with Tech support, I installed the new memory early Wednesday afternoon. By the end of the day, I was becoming hopeful that the new memory would solve the freeze up problem. So far so good. I checked the computer a few times during the night, and all was well.

To my surprise and pleasure, I received a call from Dell support (the caller was in India and it was 4:00 a.m. there). I told him that things were looking good and so far there had been no more freeze ups and it did indeed look like bad memory was the problem. I thanked him for his help and told that I really appreciated the follow up call. Most of the support techs say they'll call you for a follow up but they never do. I was quite impressed and told him so. He told me to keep the test going until next Monday, and if there were no problems, I should return the old memory and back up hard drive. We said our goodbyes, both of us feeling relieved that we solved the problem.

About half an hour after our conversation, I started writing version one of this post. Well what do you think happened? The computer froze! Can you guess when it froze? That's right. The moment I pressed Control-S to save my text, the little bugger froze right up. Gone. No warning. Just like that!

After the shock and disappointment subsided, I called Support and dialing the support tech's personal extension, I left a him a voice mail about the freeze. Then I sent him an email telling him that I was sending him my computer, the memory, and the backup drive.

And so it goes....

More Frozen Food from Dell

2005-04-12T00:47:00.000-07:00

I got my computer back on Friday from Dell. I was very curious to see what the repair folks actually did. I was pretty sure that if they didn't put in a new mother board that the locking up problem would continue. As I setup the computer, I was fairly bursting with curiosity to see what they would come up with. But I was not prepared for what I discovered upon opening up the box.

"It's not possible!" I thought. I looked at the repair record in disbelief. Finally, I had to accept what my eyes told me but my mind could not accept. They did nothing! No repair at all! They sent it back without fixing anything. "How is this possible", I muttered in disbelief. As I reread the form to make sure I didn't miss anything, I sank into my chair with a disgusted plop.

In the entire three columns of possible corrective repair items, nothing was checked. Not one item. Nada! The mind boggles. Why did they have me send it in? More importantly , why did they not do anything? I reread the comments at the bottom of the sheet. They were so bizarre that I thought for a moment that I must be at the Mad Hatter's tea party. I couldn't make any sense of the comments:

Decrease the number of applications running in the background to increase performance. Get updated drivers, wrong Touchpad software

Well, this didn't make any sense at all. I never had a performance problem and we never even discussed it. As far as the driver issue, I never use the Touchpad and anyway it was the driver that was installed when I bought the computer. If it was the wrong one or out of date, that's Dell's problem. That's the driver they gave me.

Eventually we agree on a strategy. Dell will send me:

Replacement memory.
A backup hard disk (in case the computer destroys the hard drive again).
A prepaid shipping box to return the computer if the new memory doesn't solve the problem.

I agreed to test the computer with the new memory. If this solves the problem, then I will return the old memory and backup hard disk. If the computer continues to freeze up, I will send back the computer and they will replace the motherboard.

Heart of a Hero

2005-04-10T17:29:00.000-07:00

At your right is the album Cover for Heart of a Hero, an album of original country folk with a spiritual context. It was recorded in 1993 by our band Easy Access. It took us a year to make, working every Saturday night. We still, almost 15 years later, have boxes of the cassettes in storage. Our problem was that we had zero marketing and sales experience. And we didn't want to move to Nashville.

There was one very unexpected glorious outcome relating to having made the tape. You see, like many bands, we have cassettes of our music for sale whenever we play. Although we still have boxes of unsold tapes, we never regretted the time spent writing the songs and recording them. In addition, the tape proved to be the key that opened the karmic door to love and marriage. Heres how it happened...

One September California day, I received a letter from a woman named Donna. In the letter, she told that she saw my band play at the Capitola Art & Wine festival. She really liked our music and bought one of our Heart of a Hero tapes. On the back of the tape's cover she found my address. After mulling it over for a few days, she decided to write and tell me how much she liked the music. She also wanted to know when and where we would be playing in the next few months.

Oh the irony! This was the first, last, and only fan letter I ever received. And it was also the first and only fan letter she ever wrote. Unfortunately, Donna would never see the band play again. The band broke up a few weeks later. I had put off answering her letter until I was sure that the band wouldnt be getting back together. I also put off telling her because she seemed so excited and I didn't want to tell her about the breakup.

In her letter she wrote her phone number, so I called her a few days later, after I was sure that the band was broken up. She was surprised that I called her. When I told her that the band was no more, she was quite disappointed. We continued to talk for quite while. During the conversation I told her that although the band was gone, Bob, the co-founder of the group, and I had a few gigs upcoming and I invited her to attend. She said she'd come and I made arrangements to meet her at our next performance. By now you can guess that one thing led to another, and about four months later we were engaged. All thanks to the Heart of a Hero cassette package that had my address on it.

First Impressions of BlogJet

2005-04-06T13:40:00.000-07:00

Real bloggers use client editors. I don’t know about that, but there seem to be certain advantages to using this editor as described below:

I'm writing you to recommend a very useful program I discovered - BlogJet. It is a Windows client for blogs.

With BlogJet you can easily make posts with different colors
and fonts, insert pictures and links without HTML coding,
just like you edit documents in Word. From Windows, without
opening a browser you can write and edit your blog content.

I particularly like the way you can place images are placed, adjacent, to the right or left of the text. Many editors require you to edit the HTML directly to get the placement that you see here. Notice the bottom alignment and the extra spacing between the image and the text adjacent to it.

Getting Better all the Time

2005-04-05T21:04:00.000-07:00

What a day this has been! In my last post Chicken and the Egg, I described this unexpected surge of energy and wellbeing. It's continuing today as well. My friends tell me how good I look and sound. It's like the life force that was blocked for the last year and a half, was suddenly freed up. I don't want to get my hopes up to high but I'm just feeling so very, very good.

The great network puzzle solved

For last six months my friend and I have been struggling to get his two computers to talk to each other so they could share files. Finally, we bit the bullet and called the Lord of Networks and File Sharing, who happened to be an outsourced Microsoft contract employee talking to us from the northerly land of Nova Scotia. Her Lordship was quite knowledgeable and we delighted in the way she systematically pinged her way through our network to solve the problem. It turns out that all that was preventing file sharing on the network was an application called Zone Alarm. Once it was disabled, all was well in our tiny networked kingdom of two.

There was much joy in our kingdom that day, and a great feast was held to celebrate the union of the two formerly separate computers.

Chicken and the Egg

2005-04-05T01:41:00.000-07:00

I think I'm in the middle of a small miracle right now. I've been working on my blogging strategy by testing several blogging sites and reading all I can about those sites and blogging in general. It's staggering how much information there is.

As I did my research, time disappered and I sat at the computer for over three hours straight, right through the evening and the dinner hour. After the marathon session, Donna and I had a quick sandwhich, watched the next episode in Season Two of our NYPD DVD set, and then ended up back here in blog land, writin' away like the Mad Gimp that I am.

I don't know what's happening, but I haven't felt this good in a very long time. It's not just that I had no shaking or grimacing all that time, but I felt healthy. Good. Energized. In the present. I didn't even eat until after 10:30 P.M. And I really wan't hungry. I'm just on such a roll. Like my health improvement seems linked somehow to being able to write again. The illness has prevented me from writing for over a year and a half, and now with my entry into the blogging world, I can write again. A very interesting case of the chicken and the egg. Or shall we say, the writing and the health. Better not say that one. It just doesn't sound as good as chicken and the egg. Does it?

On the Right Track

2005-04-04T19:40:00.000-07:00

I got some great tips for beginning blogers from a book by Rebecca Blood. It's called The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog.

1. Choose an updating tool that is easy to use. Try out several services. Some are free, some cost a little money, but don't commit to a tool until you have had a chance to try it out. Pick the one that works best for you.

2. Determine your purpose. Weblogs are used to filter information, organize businesses, share family news, establish professional reputations, foment social change, and muse about the meaning of life. Knowing what you hope to accomplish with your weblog will allow you to begin in a more focused way.

3. Know your intended audience. You conduct yourself differently with your friends than you do with professional associates, strangers, customers, or your grandmother. Knowing for whom you are writing will allow you to adopt an appropriate tone.

4. Be real. Even a professional weblog can be engaging. Avoid marketese. Speak in a real voice about real things.

5. Write about what you love. A weblog is the place for strong opinions, whether about politics, music, social issues, gardening, or your profession. The more engaged you are with your subject, the more interesting your writing will be.

6. Update frequently. Interested readers will return to your site if there is likely to be something new. You needn't update every day, but try to post several times a week.

7. Establish your credibility. To the best of your ability, be truthful. Be respectful to your audience and to your fellow bloggers. Understand that on the Internet, your words may live forever, whether they are self-published or archived on another site. In the Weblog Handbook, I propose a set of Weblog Ethics; think about your own standards, and then adhere to them.

8. Link to your sources. The Web allows a transparency that no other medium can duplicate. When you link to a news story, an essay, a government document, a speech, or another blogger's entry, you allow your readers access to your primary material, empowering them to make informed judgements.

9. Link to other weblogs. Your readers may enjoy being introduced to the weblogs you most enjoy reading. The Web is a democratic medium and bloggers amplify each other's voices when they link to each other. Generously linking to other weblogs enlarges the grassroots network of information sharing and social alliances we are creating together on the Web.

10. Be patient. Most weblog audiences are small, but with time and regular updates your audience will grow. You may never have more than a few hundred readers, but the people who return to your site regularly will come because they are interested in what you have to say.

Bonus tip: Have fun! Whether your weblog is a hobby or a professional tool, it will be more rewarding for you if you allow yourself to experiment a little. Even a subject-specific weblog benefits from a bit of whimsy now and again..

Short Vacation

2005-04-02T15:50:00.000-08:00

I may be taking a short vacation, due to the fact that my Dell laptop is on the fritz and I've got to send it back for repair. So...if I'm not able to get to another machine until I get mine back, you'll know why.

Frozen Food from Dell

2005-03-29T23:41:00.000-08:00

My computer problems continue. Today, my Dell laptop froze three more times. I spent almost an hour on the phone with Dell using their on line chat support service. It worked pretty well. The support tech had me upgrade my Bios to a newer version via a download. I was prettty sure that updating the Bios wouldn't work because I had the computer for more than two years (with the original Bios) and the computer never froze. It didn't make sense to me that this upgrade would do any good. But what do I know? I just work here.

Interlude: A few hours later.

Turns out I was right. When I returned to my computer after dinner and an NYPD season 2 DVD episode, guess what? Give that man a dollar! It was frozen again, the computer's clock elegantly telling me that the computer froze shortly after I went to dinner. I guess that's its way of pouting and having a tantrum.

So there you have it. Another frozen computer day from Dell. Back on the support line tomorrow. And then there's our main computer that functions as our home network server. It's been without it's Internet connection for three days. After I got the new drive and got my network connection up and running, the server lost it's connection. Some days it seems like a conspiracy to suck the life force out of ya. Then my neighbor can't get a PDF document to link to an newsletter on his group's website. I'm due there tomorrow as well. And don't forget our senior friend Nina, taking her Internet baby steps with an old laptop I that I resurrected from the Graveyard of the Dead and Forgotten.

Hello

2005-03-29T03:01:00.000-08:00

As you might have guessed, I'm new at blogging. I'm looking for a blog site to call my home. Could this be the place?

About the Gimp

2004-04-12T16:50:00.000-07:00

I want to see if I can hide this from the main page but make a link to it from the Links side bar.