Before this 25th anniversary year of my father's suicide due to his Vietnam War PTSD (you'll read more about this in a lengthy piece I wrote for MartianLit that will go live in Feb. 2012) is out, I thought I should share this. It's actually a song I wrote in 1993 and has music, but I probably won't ever get around to recording it.
So here at least is the lyric. In absolute and unrelenting hatred of Nixon, Johnson, McNamara and Kissinger, and all the other best and brightest bastards who cost me my dad. And the ones from since that have cost so many theirs.
All of you war pigs: burn in hell forever. And all who still defend the politician scum who send our young people into the pit.
Now the piece.
THE ARMY
I want someplace that I can belong I want discipline & purpose I want my life to mean Something before I die I want to go to exotic lands I want to meet the people there And look them in the eyes As I kill them, kill them all
CHORUS Be all that you can be And take away all they will ever be Better than retail Better than McDonald's The Army's the place for me
Taking orders and marching songs Now I feel like I belong A gun in my hand feels better than sex And it never, ever goes limp This is the life for a man It's just like a movie to me And I won't feel guilty, I won't feel scared Orders erase responsibility
This is so cool, yeah, this is so cool I'm so glad I finished high school I'm wearing ammo just like Rambo I dreamed of this fucking day And I'm alive, and they're just meat Spoiling in the sun Bang rat-a-tat And die you loser I'm number one, I'm number one
They scream as they die In a language I don't know Like I give a shit Like I'd care if I did
Marching out with my buddies We've done a good job for today And we never sleep till no enemy's left Except for peace Except for death I've never felt so fucking alive This is, this is the ultimate high Lock and load Fire at will I'm never going to die
(repeat chorus)
Written 5-9-1993 (c) 1993 John Linton Roberson. All rights reserved.
Sean T. Collins on Hitchens: "It was poison all along."
An excellent piece on now-deceased slimebag Christopher Hitchens by Sean Collins that says what I thought of him(click the tag with Hitchens' name below and you'll see what I thought of this "public intellectual" who had his balls waxed--no, really--while Iraqi and Afghan children were slaughtered) better than I could, or care to. Money quote:
In the end, life isn’t a fucking Authority comic book. I can’t, as a person who found himself thrilling to the burning of the churches in Homage to Catalonia, say that Hitchens’ infamous delight in cluster bomb fragments that will tear right through a Koran on the way to some benighted al-Qaeda fuck’s heart is alien to me. But those bombs found a lot of other people as well. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of them. And in dropping them we also unleashed an atavistic tide of brutality, torture, state surveillance and oppression, and endless global warfare waged by an unaccountable executive branch; those bullets tore through not just Korans, but nearly every document we enlightened Westerners hold dear back through the Magna Carta. I’m no longer capable of performing the elaborate mental arithmetic necessary to excuse all this, and to excuse the deceptive and criminal way it was ushered in, because other people are bad. This is bad! When you’re primarily animated by hatred, as Hitchens was — and even though he generally hated genuinely hateful things — making the bastards pay is paramount. But the bastardry gazes also.
So Hitchens went to his grave quite literally praising endless war — a morally shameful philosophy that if adhered to would basically ruin civilization. But you don’t need to take my word for it. You can take the word of Hitchens’ hero, George Orwell, who wrote a book you may have heard of in which perpetual war was the core evil. Or you can take the word of Hitchens himself. I remember vividly his definition of terrorism: Demanding the impossible, and demanding it at gunpoint. How else to describe Hitchens’ call for a state of unceasing violence as some sort of curative for the other, wrong kind of violence?
I would only add that those who laud him now seem to mostly be those who got drunk with him, members of his own profession and class who have their own callowness in regard to Iraq & Afghanistan to justify and are doing so via him, as though Hitchens' own slime justifies their lack of journalistic integrity--indeed, embosses it in dignified stone. And anyone who calls him out as just what he was, a career character assassin who made money off of slaughter, gets attacked. A lot of the ones who object do so on the basis of Hitchens' atheism.
Which is what Hitchens wanted, I think: by flattering the egos of left-wing atheists he somehow made them forget how he betrayed them in every other respect. Between Clinton and Bush, and his frequent appearances on Fox, Hitchens, like, strangely, many former Trotskyists, found the right a more convenient home than the left, and did more to help them than anyone else. He was throwing the left a bone, while giving cover to right-wing neocons, who could say, "Here's this left-wing intellectual, and HE loves our war!" No more left than Dick Morris and exactly the same kind of Fox tool.
And on his atheism: so what? If you've read God Is Not Great, you realize: neither is this book. The entire thing, like Dawkins' God Delusion, is merely calling believers stupid and preaching to the choir in a way that only makes believers double down; it's a totally useless book except for atheists who want to feel smug. It changed no minds not already inclined to. And frankly, atheists who spend their lives obsessed with religion are no better than any religious fanatic. Same waste of time on a pointless idea but from a different angle, that is all. (I mean here just the subject of God's existence; religious institutions, which DO exist and many of whom DO harm, are totally legitimate targets for criticism) If you're done with God, be DONE with him. How sad he wasted so much of what remained of his life on this subject, along with trying to justify his support of the wars. But how appropriate he died the same day as his beloved Iraq War.
He is still ahead among the Iowa Tea Party contingent, 31%. Wow. 31% of 30%. THAT'LL get you elected.
How does it feel to be Newt, who defines hubris by his very being(he IS Aesop's Frog), and be almost ten points and falling behind Ron Paul? And just think, so recently he was measuring drapes for the Oval Office. But as I've said many times, the GOP's fatal flaw is their tendency to celebrate victory before it's won.
And then they lose.
And Newt's entire career follows, in cycles, this arc. I was so happy the moment Gingrich started talking like he'd already won. Like Herman Cain, for instance.
And it looks like showing himself so willing to kiss the ass of Trump when every other candidate but the frothy Santorum(who's always happy just for someone to listen to him) had the sense to refuse this ridiculous debate (now cancelled) did him no favors. The debate was going to be a reality show straight up: the purpose of the debate was for Trump to decide who to endorse. I would have loved to see Gingrich up there with only Santorum. Then his true standing would have been revealed in all its tacky, low-rent glory.
But that's not the only way Newt got drunk on his brief and now vanished peak. his pathetic amateur fascist doesn't think people know that THE PRESIDENT CANNOT ABOLISH COURTS. Nor can he arrest people from other branches of government when they decide things he doesn't like. Both of which he promised to do when elected. (not "if" in Newt's ever-expanding head) Promising to scuttle democracy and seize absolute power: by him, this is "positive campaigning?"
But what he was actually doing, I think, was relying on the GOP base's misunderstanding of presidential power. The same misunderstanding that allows them to call Obama a "dictator." And that the GOP base hears about the fights on Fox but not the resolution, which is why they don't know the CA Pledge of Allegiance case(where they decided "God" in the Pledge was unconstitutional) was actually overturned. If they knew they actually won, how could they continue the resentful, paranoid, persecuted state of mind that is all that drives them?
But the truth is simple. The GOP base WANTS a dictator. It's the only model of executive power they comprehend.
It's just they want their dictator to be white. Well, and Republican.
But he won't be dictator, nor will he be president, and if the GOP are stupid enough to nominate this walking repository of attack ad material, they deserve to lose(though they probably will anyway). The GOP will, as I've said, have to eat their Romney. And Newt Gingrich will never be president.
We can all be thankful Newt cannot, ever, shut up.
VLADRUSHKA "Gulag Gangbang" Artwork For Sale at Sketchmaven (NSFW)
The best-known Vladrushka story "Gulag Gangbang"(published by Eros/Fantagraphics in 2006) was done a little differently than many other of my stories. The cover art too. It was composed of single tightly shaded full-pencil drawings done out of order(like footage in film), then edited together(and slightly modified, but not inked) into comics pages in Photoshop. So for 24 pages there were 49 drawings.
I explain this so the order you'll see the original art for the story for sale here at Sketchmaven will make sense, because the drawn order differs drastically from the printed. What this also amounts to is that, rather than looking like comics pages, this is straight-ahead erotic art, suitable for framing if you're so inclined. Drawing 7
It's the holidays, so--This episode is premiered early & will run through this Saturday into next; subsequent will be weekly. ________________________ AVAILABLE AT AMAZON & CREATSPACE
News From the Future: The Death of President Gingrich And now, an installment in my new series, News from the Future. Our motto: you can't sue me for predictions.
Feb.14, 2013-Pres. Newt Gingrich was found dead today of a massive coronary due to an overdose of Viagra after locking himself in the Oval Office with 20 hookers. "I can do whatever I want now! I'm the president!" he had been heard to say before he shut the doors. Aides reported that Pres. Gingrich had last been seen only wearing a pink thong with a Valentine heart covering his crotch. Vice President Trump is scheduled to be sworn in at noon, promising to make America a super-classy nation. ___________________
Kendra Lee, the dramaturg for Carnegie Mellon University's production this year of LULU, back in March gave my own version of LULUa mention. Have a look. Hadn't noticed till now. I wish I had discovered this blog before, because there are some useful things I hadn't considered in Ms. Lee's examinations of the play. Including this one on Schwarz (the painter) whom she describes as the "creepiest fucker in the show." I'd actually been thinking of him more as a nebbish, but I might explore that angle when I get to Book Two. (by the way: I am one penciled page away from finishing the current book. ONE.)
And if Ms. Lee reads this: thanks for the kind mention, Kendra. Hope you like Book One when I collect it into one volume next year.
___________________
"Eternity in the company of Beelzebub, and all of his hellish instruments of death, will be a picnic compared to five minutes with me & this pencil." --E. Blackadder, 1789 Questionable
words & pictures from John Linton Roberson