Defense Of Dada

Long summer

2007-09-03T16:00:00.000-07:00

Meet Me at

Fearless. Feckless. Obdurate. Vegesexual. Weaponized. Cartoon.

Letters from Paris

2007-06-25T19:16:00.000-07:00

I have become your national bête noire; your current Onanistic obsession, your contemporary bitch.

Bourgeoise swine....

You pigs couldn't stagger yourselves out of a piss-soaked bag. At least you are trained to obey. Makes my job a lot easier.

I am everything you are.

Love,

Paris

правда

2007-06-23T16:44:00.001-07:00

Baghdad dreams

2007-03-18T15:12:00.000-07:00

free form, by Plastic Jesus

Bush dreamt that he was reading Cosmo
"Can This Planet Be Saved?" asked the article
The man wanted something, the woman wanted something else.
So Bush asked God.
"Sorry, I don't have a dog in this hunt," said God.
"I gave you this planet 7,000 years ago. Ask Cheney. He runs the place."

So Bush asked Cheney.
"What you need," said Cheney, "is a barbecue
"Outside Baghdad. Franchise it.
"Accept either greenbacks or American Express
"Serve only the best ribs, the best steaks."

And it was so.
Security was minimal
Profits were slim
It was de-listed
Outside the barbecue, died the American empire
In the sands of Al-Hajarah.

I hardly miss my Cosmo girl

2007-03-06T17:21:00.001-08:00

,
originally uploaded by an0nym0usmuse.

not seventeen, more like forty
I never believed a word you said
But you always told a good story.

In Heaven (The Lady In The Radiator Song)

2005-08-08T15:23:00.000-07:00

In Heaven
Everything is fine

In Heaven
Everything is fine

In Heaven
Everything is fine
You got your good thing
And I've got mine

In Heaven
Everything is fine

In Heaven
Everything is fine

In Heaven
Everything is fine
You got a your good thing
And you've got mine

In Heaven
Everything is fine

In Heaven

In Heaven
Everything is fine
You've got a your good thing
And you've got mine

In Heaven
Every thing is fine

Don't worry about the government.

2005-06-19T10:10:00.000-07:00

An alternative to your daily media junkie source

2005-06-03T14:54:00.000-07:00

Alice Liddell's Adventures In Dadaland

2005-04-22T10:43:00.000-07:00

Baboons at the art gallery she came to see
Entitled, she thought, at age 153
Her old lover, Lewis Carroll, long dead
She tired of carrying her withered spirit under her curls
And gathered skirt and apron
Curiouser and curiouser
Pornmeisters from Russia sought her for a lolita series
She told them to frig off--she was too old
She smoked Camels in the kitchen while the dishwasher ran
So many memories
When she finally saw the baboons, they had shat on the carpet
And were swatting each other with the guard ropes
One yanked down Le Belle Dame Sans Merci
And proceeded to stomp it
She roiled with mirth
Reminiscent of the circus at Albert Hall

The Marquis Arrives

2005-04-19T21:20:00.000-07:00

He did not know what escort to expect; but he was bemused to endure a shower of sand that drenched his blond locks as the chopper set down outside the gate, in a blur of cresents and crosses. He immediately recognized that he was overdressed and over-coiffed; the troops on either side of him had several days of stubble and the hard tack look of soldiers whose clean-pressed decorum had been inevitably ground down from years of combat. These were mechanics, office men, bureaucrats who had been plumetted into the abyss, and had survived on the other end by becoming efficient machines. Nothing in his fantasies had prepared him for this.

When the blades stopped whirring, the Marquis crept to the rear of the machine and retched, holding his cape so as to not stain it. It was the stench that did it. He rose, recovered, and apologized to his charges.

"I am quite fine," he said. "Lead me."

After passing the gate, he felt entombed. He noted the barbed wire running the expanse of the concrete walls and thought, "Well, prisons must have walls." But this was merely the first gate. Beyond lay a second, of rusting steel, at the end of a large courtyard crammed with humanity: dark figures in robes, many dazed, sitting on the ground, some wailing, some attempting to snatch the attention of soldiers who could not, or would not, comprehend their language. Some clutched indistinct papers, or waved small books. He recognized that most were apparently female.... all sweltering under the fire and the stench of the courtyard.

"Who are these people?"

"They are the relatives," someone answered.

He likened the courtyard to some outer rim; as Stygian as this predicament seemed on the surface, he rationalized that they were at least free to come and go. But he felt his fantasies vanish; blanched from him by acid. His fantasies had fled, leaving a white skeleton, and a robe.

He wondered what to tell Madame Doucette.

Adventures Of The Marquis--Techniques In Torture

2005-04-12T19:46:00.000-07:00

Madame Doucette--Tell me: What are you thoughts at being reborn in this century?

Marquis de Sade--I have primarily desires, and secondarily thoughts, at finding myself plopped on this century. Souls are attracted to those who are kindred spirits, and then to those who desire instruction. Behind many a suit and tie lies a libertine.

Madame Doucette--Where will you travel?

Marquis de Sade--They do not want for instruction in the Capitol. I believe that the depraved are not necessarily hedonists; merely dead souls. A dead soul cannot revel in the delight of sensation, or yield to brimming lust.

I will travel East, to the far-flung gulag of the Americans.

Madame Doucette--I see... you seek those in bondage?

Marquis de Sade--Yes, young men in bondage, and those who hold them. I have heard stories.... many stories. But the Americans are crude, yet, in their craft. What I offer them is refinement, and pleasure that can be found in torture. I have what they lack, and they have what I desire. I will travel this week.

Madame Doucette--And you will write me of your adventures?

Marquis de Sade--You, Madame, shall be the first to know. And when I return, you shall be the beneficiary of my education.

Announcement By The Department Of Homeland Security

2005-04-04T19:53:00.000-07:00

On The Beach, Continued

2005-04-03T21:00:00.000-07:00

When the first season of The New Bewitched was wrapped, Darrin had a few weeks off to think. In his basement, he had sought to create an object of terrible beauty, an object not seen since the first act of the play, The Demiurge. He created to destroy. He became a slave to the wheel until it ground him under, and in a fit of pique, he obliterated it.

"Why?" asked the Woman of the Photographs, when he called her while she was in Missouri.

"I don't know," he said.

"Can't you get Samantha to twinkle her nose and reconstruct it?"

Darrin thought a moment. "Hmmm... maybe so. But I can't tell her what for."

"Lie, you doofus! Ask her to reconstruct the *area* that it was in."

He thought about asking Tabatha to do it... but he knew that she was just tell Samantha, anyway. So, that night, Darrin slid up behind Samantha as she was washing the dishes.

"Loved the meatloaf," he said.

"Oh, Darrin, you *hate* my meatloaf," Samantha sighed. "Whadda want? You want me to pimp your Toyota?"

Darrin explained that there was, uh, a problem with his workbench, and could she progress it back, say, three months?

"Only if you get me that solitaire that I saw at Viandries this weekend."

What's a few grand? Darrin thought. So, Samantha wiped her hands on her apron, twinkled, and went back to her dishes.

Darrin waited a few discrete minutes, then traipsed downstairs to find the object of terrible beauty, magically reconstructed, still sparkling with fairy dust.

He had a year to finish it. A veteran of the insurance business, he worked best when there was a dealine... except that this deadline was literal. The New Bewitched would run only two seasons, and he would be gone.

"You must have found another floozy," the Woman of the Photographs wailed one night, her voice crackling in and out on the cell phone.

Darrin sensed a trap, and said nothing. Implicit in her wail was the assurance that he would always return to her. And his object of terrible beauty would suck the world into itself.

Let's Ask Joan Crawford! What is art?

2005-03-12T16:40:00.000-08:00

Dear Joan Crawford,

According to classic Marxist theory, the Artist cannot be divorced from the social milieu of his class, his function in the means of production as defined by the bourgeois elite, and his utilitarian worth to humanity as a whole. However, the prevailing aesthetic, in these terminal days of capitalism (i.e., the proto-fascist, militarist über-state), the Artist stands aloof from the dreck of values-based production as a beacon of individualism. His very isolation from social affairs is seen as a marker of a higher call, and his eccentricities are excused as virtues. Even Hitler, for example, forgave Speer for occasionally imbibing one too many biers at Brauhaus festivals on account of the magnificence of his architectural sculpting of lights at the Nurnberg rallies. So my question is this: What, indeed, is art?

Sally Mae in White Bluff

Dear Sally Mae,

I see that you are still a baby Marxist, taking your first, stumbling steps through the official catechism of our doctrine. You have not yet begun to live it so that reality appears as it truly is, without question. You need only look at the world that you see, and trust implicitly that this is, indeed, art, because what we remember of the world past is based on--art. When I used to make movies, the producers always said, “Make it imaginative, make it different, but make it sell.” So we could never upset the bourgeois, or the ruling class, and in many cases, our scripts had to be passed by military censors. So my movies became twisted but distilled photomontages of the daily, imaginative and unimaginative lives of everyone who contributed to them.

What is art? Art is: dead bodies littering the streets of liberated nations; newspapers of blank pages; every conceivable word spoken, to an audience of hearing-impaired; and oblivion at the fingertips of a drunk man.

You Can't Afford The Clothes I Wear

2005-02-03T10:42:00.000-08:00

You can't afford the clothes I wear
Lampshades of flesh and shirts camelhair
Bulletproof razor blades with armor plating
Teflon velcro straps camouflage grating

Guaranteed to withstand redress
Red and black jackboot against protest
The claw that paints the slogan, grips the throat
What is writ, shall be unwrote

Dead Souls (continued)

2005-02-03T10:10:00.000-08:00

A Fly buzzed when she died
Through the obelisk of words I erected
They could not warm nor move her
Unheard, unseen, I clung

Je Suis Hanté

2005-01-27T04:00:00.000-08:00

Prenez-moi et secouez-moi
Et mille fantômes tombent au plancher

On The Beach

2005-01-23T00:02:00.000-08:00

In 2007, the television show Bewitched was revived; the original actors were dead, or old, so the network located new actors who bore a very close facsimile to the originals. "Darrin" was discovered by talent scouts as he read The Wall Street Journal on a bench outside his insurance office in Manhattan. The scouts placed his photo side-by-side one of Dick Sargent and admitted--he was a virtual reincarnation.

Finding Samantha proved a bit more problematic. Locating witches was much easier than it had been in the 1960s, but most did not want to prostitute their talents for a such a short-lived commercial venture.

The producers chose to film The New Bewitched in black-and-white, to give it a historical patina.

Immediately, unexpected problems arose. Ten years earlier, Darrin had met a young divorcee, down on her luck. He guided her and her children to the nearest battered women's shelter, loaned her money, gave her advice. Soon, she began calling him, daily. They met in Central Park for surreptitious meetings, or took long rides on the subway, to nowhere, discussing life, love, and a make-believe future. He often photographed her posed against the cherry trees, or in her small apartment, or framed against the Flatiron building.

He fancied himself a contemporary Stieglitz. His attention to the insurance business suffered.

"Marry me," she said. He hesitated. Samatha became suspicious, and his secret was exposed. He burned the letters, the photographs. Those he could not part with, he hid in the rafters of the house.

The woman met another, and married. She sent Darrin a wedding invitation in the mail. Samantha found it. "Let's attend," Samantha taunted, her nose twitching. "I want to attend. I will wear my best gown. I can still fit into it. Could she?"

Darrin filed the invitation somewhere... somewhere in the antique accounting ledger his brother-in-law had given him. He thought. He was never sure.

For the next year, he continued to stumble upon relics of the woman, which he hastily burned before Samantha could find them, sometimes without success.

She was forgotten. She was expunged. She did not exist. She had not existed.

He filled the holes in his photo albums with post cards of Italy.

Until last year. Darrin had been walking down Fifth, when a car pulled up beside him. A window rolled down; it was Her. The Her of the photographs. Her hair had been chopped off, and she wore sunglasses, but they recognized each other. "Hello, Darrin," she said. Unbeknownst to him, she had been working in a nearby building for several years.

It took weeks for them to work up the courage to meet for lunch. Over cocktails, she spilled. Her marriage had gone south. Darrin twisted and twisted the straw in his ice water. Samantha, he confessed, had become a stranger. And his company was near bankruptcy. He was not sure of anything, anymore.

They met, surreptitiously. America had changed completely in the space of a year, since the second attack. A curfew was in effect. Concrete and iron barricades and razor wire blocked many entrances now, manned by Homeland Security "personnel" with M-16s. All-seeing cameras peered behind invisible monocles, everywhere.

Darrin, like most, had accommodated himself to the new reality without grumbling, for the sake of national security. He had become the invisible man again, and his instincts dropped into place. He met her, at cafes, or dark booths in public places, their subterfuge aided by the cloak of constant surveillance.

He allowed himself to caress her hand, but in the years that he had known her, he had never kissed her. Now, ten years older and wiser, he could see the wanting in her eyes.

Finally, after a cadence of lunch meetings and innuendos, they agreed to meet for one last time at the only place they knew would be both public and private—on the beach.

Much of the beach had been closed off and barricaded since the attack, but the guard posts were often unmanned. It was all an elaborate Potemkin village. Darrin, with his connections, knew this.

Standing in the sand, the only illumination being from the lights of nearby Manhattan, Darrin clung to her and felt her warmth beneath her summer jacket. Cancer had ravaged her. "I’m fragile," she warned him. He found her lips; cold, at first, as he sought to warm them. Unlike ten years before, he did not care how many men had kissed her before him. In the shadow of the valley, it no longer mattered. She was what he needed at that moment—someone to hold. "We are all dead souls anyway," he rationalized.

When the producers of The New Bewitched discovered this affair, they came close to canceling the project. The first week’s rushes had been filmed and were in the edit room. Their "Samantha" had been discovered tending bar at a truck stop in North Dakota, and she had been lured to New York City with the promise of extra rations. Finally, it was decided to integrate the story as a subplot, in a dream sequence, as a sort of surrealistic cinéma vérité, to be broadcast near the end of the first season.

Visit Cuba!

2005-01-14T17:54:00.000-08:00

Dadaist Manifesto Portmanteau (draft)

2005-01-10T15:35:00.000-08:00

I am Krishna, destroyer of worlds
I am one hundred thousand and one dead
I am a Shylock lover's kiss
exceptio probat regulam
I am i Am
manifest, unnerving
not Judas
I am
tat tvam asi I am not
A horse head's lament in a bad play
where the heroine stoops to deliver the mortal kiss
I am da
I am I am
da dat
da da am da
Da.

The Danger Of Walking The Babysitter Past The Elephant Zone

2004-12-29T19:32:00.000-08:00

Ingredients to a highball: 1.5 ounces of whiskey, with ginger ale and ice, frigidly ready by 5 p.m. That is all I require for optimal functionality. That, and Ed Sullivan. The secrets that I have carried with me, like fragments of a torn love note, I have carried.. and carried. And like a man about to be administered Last Rites, I seek confession. Shall I confess my secrets?

Gladys sees none of this. She is in the kitchen. For Christmas, I bought her a new Fridigaire. A new one, with automatic defrost. She will be happy for a month.

The babysitter will arrive in an hour. A tie; I must wear a tie. Which tie? There is danger in even the smallest nuance. Every act must be rationed, because the slightest choice conveys a message. Shall I put on Perry Como? Or Nat? Will she think me too middle-aged if I play them?

Does she appreciate the extra 5-spot that I slip her at the end of the evening when she vanishes like a whippet out the door into the darkness? To her boyfriend, perhaps, or to her Beatles, spinning, as I imagine, on her pink kiddy record player on her bookcase, and her lamps and teddy bears?

Where is my TV Guide? The movie that I read about last month does not exist. Last night I spent an hour digging through back issues in search of it. I swear I saw it. Or did I dream it? It involved a man who stood in his living room. His daughter was about to leave for a date. As the date entered the house, the father felt the chill of immediate disapproval. So, he grabbed the young man by his jacket and pulled him out the door. Outside, the streetlamps were just coming on. I want to talk to you, he said. And then there was a growl, from the bushes, and a rustling. It the unmistakeable sound of a panther.

The man worked in a building in a job that involved fastening ceiling tiles with jagged screws. He worked 11 to 7 each night, and fought the onrush of sleep that threatened each night at 2 a.m. Sleep could mean death--death from falling, death from attack, in the blackness of the jungle.

The man had been warned by the shaman of the danger of walking the babysitter past the elephant zone.

Let's Ask Joan Crawford! Informercial For Jesus

2004-12-19T11:14:00.000-08:00

Dear Joan:

Recently, I was approached by a friend to participate in a Multilevel Marketing scheme involving sales of products designed to promote Jesus(TM). I decided to join. Our organization would retain exclusive license on the name and likeness of Jesus, and it would also be in control of both the message and the product.

While attempts had been made in the past to reconcile the various conflicting sects of Christianity under one umbrella, we think that a market approach to the problem would ultimately be the best solution.

The potential for growth would be excellent. Profits of Jesus-related products routinely outperform the Standard & Poor's index by at least three percentage points, annually. In addition, the federal government has shown an interest in providing capital for such a venture.

This is not an offer to sell. For full information on costs, estimated return on investment, and possible risks, please review our prospectus.

Janelle from Long Island Beach

Dear Janelle:

Market-based solutions to social conditions involving complex and conflicting moral dogma might seem a "buy" right now, but my advice, as a committed Marxist, might be to withhold your capital for the moment and look at some more long-term trends developing in America.

Almost completely beneath your radar, the hybrid Communist-capitalist state of China is quietly taking you to the cleaners with their Trojan horse storefronts bearing the "Wal-Mart" label. And China is achieving this, as Marx predicted, by using the tools of the capitalists themselves. So you have thousands of third-world sweatshops dotting low-income communities across the U.S., funneling billions of dollars on a fast boat to China.

Remember that China is officially an atheist state.

So I don't have to draw you too many pictures for you to see that the long-term prospects for Jesus(TM)in America may be bearish.

Ironically, the best prospects for marketing Jesus may be in the erstwhile Islamic state of Iraq. I understand that the long-term plan for that country is to carpet the various cities with hundreds of Christian soldiers, after the military ones leave in about 2007.

Joan Crawford

Lincoln In The Twenty-First Century

2004-12-11T11:26:00.000-08:00

There are no angels left in America, having fled briefly after the second world war. I had wandered as a ghost for a century, occasionally haunting the White House, even frightening the queen of the Netherlands when she slept in Lincoln's Bedroom. One woman, I haunted while she took her nightly showers. I was in full suit and top-hat--nothing inappropriate. However, when she exposed my indiscretion during the call-in hour on Coast to Coast, I knew that I needed a new cover.

I decided to seek employment. I found the city of glittering lights and raucous machines that ate coins. I applied for the position of hat-tupper. For occupation, I listed "Ghost." A balding, Italian man squinted at me and asked, "What are your qualifications?" I did not have a college degree, he said.... "Hit the road."

Bizarre, I thought, to have to validate my worth in a world that knew me only as a myth. I returned to Illinois, to the common people, where I first campaigned. I earned my first vote by doing a turn on the plow for some farmers. "If you can plow a straight line to the end of the sycamore tree, you have our vote." And so I did. But the farmers had now vanished, replaced by strange sculptures of iron and rust, and fields of smooth, hardened rock.

I went South. This, for me, was a novelty. My political party, I had learned, had been embraced by the South in the century that I had wandered. I found a dead-end street of lights and rain in a Verne-esque metropolis. A veteran paced the sidewalk, covered with a billboard placard that read, "I killed innocent Iraqis." Loud machines with fiery eyes sought to attack him, and he dodged and fled.

I would get no votes here, I thought.

So I went to Antarctica. The horizon was a brutal blue, a vast expanse, both empty and new. The time was now, and it was here, I decided, to begin my campaign to reclaim America.

Drang Nach Osten: In Search of Lebensraum in Iran

2004-11-19T20:17:00.000-08:00

It's the silly season again, when politicians turn lightly to thoughts of conquest. With the elections over, Angry Blondie sat down with the Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, to talk about this year's current crop of invadable nations and what battles we can look forward to in the coming year.

AB: Welcome, Paul.

PW: Glad to be here, Blondie.

AB: Paul, you've taken some flak over the protracted fighting in Iraq. Would it be fair to say that after two years, the Coalition's massive military presence is finally making progress in imposing democracy on the various squabbling factions in a nation with a population the size of Delaware's?

PW: Excellent question and I'm glad you asked. Yes, we continue to make progress each month. There have been some bumps in the road, but we are very much on target. And remember that it took even Delaware several years to ratify the Constitution.

AB: Moving on, what's the deal with nukes in Iran? Hype, or red alert? One nuke or a dozen?

PW: Blondie, the situation there is much worse than what's being reported. I am privy to classified reports that suggest that not only does Iran have thermonuclear capability (fusion in addition to fission), but also missile technology that surpasses even our own. Iran not only has perfected MIRV (multiple targeted independent reentry vehicles) ballistic missiles, but also a stealth program that can evade even our tightest strategic defense technology.

AB: No shit?

PW: No shit. And this information is from a single reliable source.

AB: Well, what are our options?

PW: Very few. Diplomacy is obviously failing. Despite days of negotiations, the Iranians have failed to immediately disarm and in fact continue to insist on the right to self-defense in the face of peaceable overtures from the nonbelligerent state of Israel...

AB: ...which is also nuclear-armed?

PW: No, Blondie. The source who started that rumor is not reliable, and in fact has recently been re-jailed for this slander.

AB: So what's the solution? Some sort or region-wide peace initiative, or what?

PW: If peace were an option, we would have tried that already. Peace is obviously a flawed strategy, since it lasts only in the short-term. Our argument is that if we incrementally decrease the periods between wars, we can complete them sooner, with fewer troops, and in turn devote more resources to more creative weapons systems for the twenty-first century police state.

AB: Well, okay, I gotta ask this. How are the hotels in Tehran? Better than Baghdad's?

PW: Much better, Blondie. No liquor, unfortunately, but Tehran's accommodations are more on the level of, say, Macedonia's, and there would be no need for walled Green Zones. Iran's highway systems are in a good state of development, and the population is more homogeneous, which means a far less danger of the type of civil conflict that we experienced in, say, Clinton's invasion of Bosnia.

AB: What about Syria? Any possibilities there?

PW: Maybe, down the road. Right now, Syria is a fairly impoverished country with few resources, such as petroleum, which means that any invasion there would not be immediately cost-effective. But Syria has been tossed around as a possibility in the next season.

AB: Great. Let me know when boots are about to hit the ground. Any hopes that I can be embedded?

PW: Cats are always welcome in our reporter pool.

Well, there you have it--this season's military prospects, straight from the distinguished and congenial Paul Wolfowitz. Check back often as we follow up on what promises to be an exciting military season.

Dick Cheney On The Street Of Broken Dreams

2004-11-19T18:56:00.000-08:00

I am an honest man, straight, no chaser. I know that the common public perception of me is that of a square, but I am really a man of complex currents of emotion. I keep them buried, for the good of the nation.

I am a man of music and poetry who is also a prisoner of his own office and Mount Rushmore responsibility. On dusky summer nights the music calls me as the walls press closer, gripping me like an accordion in Lawrence Welk's television band. I think of Bonnie, who I knew in Nebraska, how her auburn locks cascaded past her bosom. Summer nights remind me of her. Bonnie is dead now, I think. The music stops, and I want a cigarette.

Down from my mansion is a hidden street that's often rain-soaked and trampled by the shoes of countless welfare recipients. It is on nights like this that I walk there, in search of... in search of my past? I don't know. Hell. I'm not a philosopher.

The rain has stopped, and a sort of fog rises up to the streetlamps. I walk a bit further tonight, until I hear a jazz trio echoing down an alley. It sounds like the music that I heard in the Negro juke joints of Lincoln. I never went to those places, but some of my friends did.

Regrets. Would I be Vice President if I had, just once, stepped into one of those places? My enemies would have known. It's a tossup. The fact is, I never went to those places, and now I have the weight of the Western world on me. If I had just once, slipped, yielded, Saddam would still be in Baghdad right now, and Osama would probably be dead.

I can't dwell on the past. My cigarette smoke trails past me. (Note to self: Wash my hands so that Lynne doesn't smell it.) I step inside the dive that lured me with the music. The place is filthy, dark. Greasy dollar bills are taped on the mirror behind the bar. Nice touch. The music almost drowns my thoughts, but it's also strangely exhilarating. I haven't been in a bar since, since... I can't remember. I haven't been free my whole goddam life.

I sit down at the bar. I'm wearing the jogging suit that I bought twenty years ago, and it's a bit tight. No one recognizes me. Good....

The bartender raises his eyebrows in a silent query, and I whisper, "Scotch." My doctor would have a heart attack if he knew what I was doing. The thought strikes me as funny. My doctor having a heart attack. And then I think--Why not? Life is meant to be fun, and funny. To hell with the doctor.

At the end of the bar, a woman is making eyes at me. We exchange glances, strangers in the night. She reminds me of Bonnie, only her hair is straighter and her makeup is, quite frankly, vulgar. But that's okay. I'm open-minded.

She moves over. "What's your name?" she asks. I'm perplexed. No one has ever asked me for my name. I look at her quizzically, and then mumble, "Richard." We make small-talk at first, as I order a second scotch.

There's something hypnotic in her eyes, and after a while I am practically reading her mind without hearing her words. I feel a nostalgic stirring from within me. I feel the armor of my Vice-Commander-In-Chief falling away. This woman makes me feel like a human being. A real man.

As she taps a finger on my hand, she asks me if I'm married, and then interjects, "It's okay if you are." I remember Ralph Reed saying something about being married to God, and I mutter, "Yeah, but it's okay." We smile.

We talked, and we talked. She was wearing some sort of sleeveless thing, and she looked... so... good. The music, the drinks... I trace the contours of her face with my eyes, notice the shadows cast by her long locks. I feel like I'm in a '40s movie, sepiatoned, but she is a voodoo woman. Satanic.

(to be continued)

Back To The Future With Ol' Blue Eyes: American Idiot

2004-11-13T21:37:00.000-08:00

Yep, kids, it's me again, like a bad penny. Are you scared yet? No? Well, Frankie has been doing some reading lately. There are some good books out there on me. I liked the one that Tina did. Pretty good. I always told my kids, "Say whatever you want--just tell the truth." A lot of people out there would benefit from that advice. Oh, they get the facts right, like the songs I sang when I was with Dorsey, but they sugar-coat it. I never realized that once they plant you in the ground, they treat you like a goddam saint, like playing "It Was A Very Good Year" over and over on the radio. People forget that I was the original badass. I used to tell my friends, "If someone makes you mad, I'll knock them off for you." I was joking, and they'd laugh, but they never really, really knew if it was true. That's the essence of punk. All of your pseudo-punks out there dress up in makeup and wear wigs and couldn't play their way out of a piss-soaked bag. No talent. Punk isn't dress; it's not even image. It's attitude. You wear it; you share it. And you won't have to take shit off of anyone again.

Are We Not Men? No! We Are Dada!

2004-11-11T12:42:00.000-08:00

I have a confession to my loyal readers, numbering now in the single digits--the Bush re-coronation has been very bad for this website. What once began as strictly an anti-artistic endeavor, driven by a love of the absurd, has devolved into another political muckraking diatribe. One loyal reader pointed out:

The vast majority of the digerati, intelligentsia, and neo-liberal expansionists have abandoned irony for the duration. The clash of values has proven the superiority of the New Republican Man, and Dadaism will wither away. Among those supreme values is now Art, exemplified by the neo-Romantic landscapes by those of the painterly school, such as Thomas Kincade. To insist that Art has no utility, or worse, that that there is no Art, is to deny the message implied by the victors of the present value war: Life has meaning, and God has given it to us in abundance.

Astute readers of this site will recall that I did wring my hands over the fear that a Bush reelection would result, in the short term at least, in a marked decline in absurdity in American discourse. Lately I have asked myself, "Is meaninglessness dead? Can I assimulate myself into the new Republican world order?" (Although I am tempted to draw historical comparisons to an analogous historical event of the last century, I will, for the moment, refrain.)

Take, for instance, this email* that I received prior to the election, perhaps our last free one:

My name is (***), I am a nineteen year old girl from (***). I think that if you know what is good for your country then you know that George W. Bush is the right one to vote in to again be our Commander-in-Chief. I think that he has done a very good job on running this country. Far more better than Clinton ever did. Bush is a God fearing man and is not ashamed to say "God Bless America." I believe that without him we would have never caught Hussein, who is now where he needs to be. He is strong and he not only says that he will do something, but he actually does it. He has done well in helping gaurd our borders. He will not back down from a terrorist.

John Kerry is a fake. If he says something, he goes to change it by the next day. He wants to make sure that the UN is in favor of the US going to war before he does it. If that were to happen, we would never go to war, and this country would be hurt badly. Kerry gave support to communists in the war. He did whatever he could to get out of the service. John Kerry is a coward. He led VVAW members in a protest and they threw all of their medals and ribbons over a fence. Do you want a president who wants to please other countries before he thinks about America? I hope not.

*actual unsolicited email

With the election over, and the values brigade in charge, I fear that the plurality of 51% will become the new moral majority. People everywhere will embrace meaning, purpose, and divinity, and begin painting romantic landscapes in neo-classical mode. I see a revival in sacred harp music from the last century. Dress hems will lengthen. Perhaps seamed stockings will be revived. The Ten Commandments will become codified and integrated into contract law as well as torts, with a corresponding increase in our prison population, as more and more men (and women) begin to covet the wives of their neighbors that they previously had not even known.

What does this mean to Dadaists and anarchists everywhere? I don't know yet. There is, however, some hope. As more of our leaders begin to take advice from "God," I predict that we will see a movement away from boring legislation dealing with zoning rights and recapitalization percentages, and more toward a social engineering efforts to curb idleness and concupiscence. We will just have to see. Unfortunately, "God" seems to be in a warlike mood lately, at least according to someone we both know. And, to paraphrase our leaders, this is one war that threatens to outlive all of us, particularly this blog.

Back To The Future With Ol' Blue Eyes: Eminem's Mosh

2004-11-07T14:33:00.000-08:00

Hey kids and swing fans--ol' Blue Eyes is back, for another century. I want to tell all you punks that you have nothing on this Jersey kid. You think you invented rap? In my neighborhood we lived rap. You're all just a bunch of talentless, two dollar hacks and whores. I had to come back, if for no other reason, to teach you kids how it's done, how we used to do it back in my 'hood. I intend to clean up this joint. I can't believe you let that Kitty broad write another book, and it was published. When I left, you had some decent people in charge of this place. Now it's just another racket on a blind alley to Dullsville. Even the aliens don't visit you no more. What happened to you? Turn around and look in the mirror. Yeah, you, punk. What's that shit you're listening to? Ashlee Simpson? Let me tell you something. That broad can't sing, and she can't swing. Now you look in that mirror and you tell Frankie, "I want to hear some real music." Say it! Now. Turn around. Clean yourself up. Put on a tie, for chrissakes! You look like shit. Go get a drink, kid. You need it.

Imagine it pourin’, it's rainin’ down on us
Moshpits outside the oval office
Someone’s tryin to tell us something
Maybe this is God just sayin' we're responsible
For this monster - this coward that we have empowered

Falluja

2004-11-03T09:57:00.000-08:00

Jason Among the Nightingales

2004-10-23T18:45:00.000-07:00

The wind smote him like the slap of familiar snow in Minnesota, but now he was in Guadalupe, or at least he remembered as much. He had come in search of art, and capital. His brain buzzed with a dozen margaritas, but his Versace was streaked with an incongruous purple. His fingers traced the bricks in the alley street as he staggered up. His contacts had dried to a glint overnight. Equilibrium was never his strong suite.

When his call center relocated to Guadalupe, he followed. For forty cents, he could employ an army. He recalled vaguely hearing, "Muchos trabajo, un poco dinero," and this became his siren call. He was off, in search of art, and capital.

His ring and Rolex were missing. His hand was cut.

His first thought was to call his lawyer, and then he remembered.

Hidalgo had debated him at the bar last night. "Secular humanism is merely the logical extension of abstract empiricism," Hidalgo said. "You gringos are the modern heretics, inheritors of the Gnostic dialectic. You are spirits above the dust, only you are dead."

This was more than Jason could take. His call center was failing. This was not in the framework. He had discovered, ruefully, that their sense of time was off. Even their breakfast was in the evening. And the Nightingales were disappearing, endangering the enterprise.

The Nightingales were the chicas who arrived at 4 a.m., abandoning children and families for twelve hours to don headsets and repeat, "Thank you for calling Westway; how may I help you?" He even employed readers, as in the traditional cigar factories, who read Hemingway to the crew during smoke breaks.

Hidalgo grinned and awaited his reposte. Even in the darkness Jason could discern his Asiatic features, his farmer's hands engulfing the beer mug, and he knew that there would be no synthesis.

Rumors were that the Nightingales were abducted near the tracks and buried in the river. The investigations died, like his last argument, where the water lapped the sagebrush.

Ghosts I Have Been

2004-10-22T17:57:00.000-07:00

Once I dreamed that I was to be cast in suspended animation for twenty years. I would be blind; frozen; comatose. I was in an auditorium, and the awareness hit me suddenly. I was watching Fellini's 8 1/2 at the campus theater. It had been mis-billed as a sex comedy, and some drunken fraternity guys had accordingly crashed the room, loudly snorting obscenities in the front row when they realized that they had been misled. The projectionist refused to intervene as the film ticked on, with the rapid tick tick tick of old-time celluloid. The punks were slouched in their seats, dressed in black. No one, in fact, moved. It was there that my paralysis began. Eventually, I was unable to move at all.

I had many nightmares while on that campus. Some attributed it to the proximity of the Stones River battlefield. I never could pinpoint the origin of my dis-ease. Only the ghosts moved. Some were mis-identified with Civil War reenactors, but their appearances were always off-season, like some comedic re-run in syndication.

I thought of the time that my brother and I had gone ghost-hunting. I had carried a camera and a tape recorder, and we drove to a local cemetery. Scared witless, I placed the tape recorder on a grave while I snapped a few frames. The ghosts must have chortled at me and figured that they would make it worth my while. I caught no sounds, but the photos that I subsequently developed showed lights, shadows, and strange apparitions.

When I finally awakened, the world was on fire. And the world's leaders had been replaced by screen guild actors, in comedic re-run, like some stupid sitcom whose script will never die.

Let's Ask Joan Crawford! Psychic attack problem

2004-10-15T16:38:00.000-07:00

It's Friday! Which means it's "Ask Joan Crawford" day! Due to extended loafing of our editor last week, who was busy photographing Mexican lizards, we have a bag full of questions for our favorite deceased Marxist movie star. Here is the best:

From Affleckted in Winsor, Ontario, comes the following:

Dear Joan Crawford,

I am a victim of psychic attack. It's a long story, but the gist is that I discovered that someone was secretly living in my house for five years, without my knowledge. Now, I know, you are probably wondering, "How can someone live in your house for five years without your knowledge?" He did it by communicating with me telepathically the entire time. At first, I thought it was the dog catcher, but then I began to detect a criminal aura. Just to clarify, we never had sex. This would be contrary to my moral beliefs. He finally left at my insistence, but he has since been reading my mind during random hours of the day. Is there any way for me to prevent this? I am seeking to live a righteous life, and I fear that he is trying to find out what lottery numbers I plan to play.

Affleckted in Winsor

Dear Affleckted,

Surprisingly, your question is quite common, and I have often asked it myself, when I have noticed fewer drinks in my bar than I recall purchasing the week before. One night I went for my decanter of Crown Royal and discovered that the contents had been replaced with unsweetened tea. What's up with that?

In any case, my first recommendation is to have a shamanistic cleansing ritual, particularly if you have not participated in a dream quest and identified your totem. The ritual should be performed by a medicine man or shaman who has been properly initiated. A second medicine man should probably be present, in case the first becomes incompacitated.

The second solution is to divest yourself of all your possessions. Property is theft--not just an invitation to theft, but an *incitement* to the liberation of your capital. It is this sort of economic disparity that is the root of criminal behavior. In an ideal socialist state, there is no greed, no theft--because all possesions are communal.

Third, and this is very important--Take a good look at this supposed criminal. Ask yourself--Is he real? Or is he a projection of my worst fears? If he is real, youthful, attractive, strong--send him to me.

Joan Crawford

Ask Joan Crawford! Wire hangers

2004-09-30T02:35:00.000-07:00

Due to the abbreviated schedule next week, we are answering your letters early. Today's mailbag contains a query from Mari Q. Contrary of the Oneida Community, who asks:

Dear Joan,

I'm short on hangers, wire ones to be specific. Got any handy? I know you're a wealthy movie star and all so I thought that it couldn't hurt to ask.

Sincerely,
Mari Q. Contrary

ROLF. No! No wire hangers anymore. And no, I take no offense at the question. I saw the movie also (chuckles).

Once you are dead and your life story moves into the public domain, there's little that can be done to guard against the inevitable misinformation that leaks out. My lawyers tried to convince me to trademark my life story, but I didn't listen. Still, you would have thought they would have at least sent me the script ahead of time, so that I could have culled out the inaccuracies (such as that apocryphal scene).

Christina might have had some valid complaints against my behavior as a mother. The book, I admit, hurt me when I read it. However, by the time the movie came out, the myth of "movie star turned Atilla" had already garnered a certain kitsch cachet, and the resultant movie production (released in 1981) was glossed by a growing devolution of American culture. I am happy that I, albeit posthumously, participated in the deconstruction of yet another myth generated by American capital, that of "actress as icon." The quite unintended result was a total recasting of my life and career from this accidental cinematic bookend.

Marx states that capital will always create its own mythology, but as capitalism begins its terminal decline, one of the results (including a shifting of the means of production to militarism, to protect the artificial state) is that the myth will cease to hold power over the masses. Those who are "early adopters" of the new emerging communist state will take up the banner, as Faye Dunaway so artfully did in her distorted biopic.

Joan

Bush Continues to Lead Osama in Latest Poll

2004-09-29T15:50:00.000-07:00

by Velvet Elvis

A Defense of Dada telephone poll conducted this week shows that President George Bush continues to lead Osama bin Laden by at least 3 percentage points.

When Ralph Nader is excluded from the results, his advantage grows to 4 percentage points.

The poll was conducted from a random sample of Verizon cell phone users.

Defense of Dada conducted the poll after the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth said that "A vote for John Kerry is really a vote for bin Laden." Sample polls pitting Kerry against Bush showed Kerry with a slight lead among voters most likely to vote on election day. Republicans and Fox News protested these results, arguing that they were not truly representative of the electorate's wishes. "If people truly knew the real John Kerry, they wouldn't vote for him," stated Foghorn Leghorn. So, the poll has been adjusted to provide more representative results.

Sample poll questions included:

"Who would you trust most with conducting a religious war under the guise of discredited political and economic policies?"
Bush: 60%
bin Laden: 38%

"Who would most likely revive the opium trade in Afghanistan's Northern Territories by allowing the local warlords free reign?"
Bush: 65%
bin Laden: 33%

Bin Laden did lead in one area--accessibility to the media. He has released more statements to the media in the form of edicts and audio tapes than Bush has conducted news conferences.

The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 1 percent.

Sex Pistols Middle Eastern Tour Begins in Baghdad

2004-09-27T15:15:00.000-07:00

by Velvet Elvis
embedded with the 101st.

Kicking off their "Anarchy In The Middle East" tour, a revamped Sex Pistols played a standing-room-only stadium concert inside the Green Zone in Baghdad last night. The group even stayed for two unheard-of encores, tearing through incendiary versions of "Einmal War Belsen Wirflich Bortrefflich (Belsen Vos a Gassa)" and "No One Is Innocent."

When asked why the Sex Pistols chose the launch their new tour here, Johnny Rotten spat, "The 'ole f#&king world is going down the toilet, an' it's beginnin' right 'ere. We want to be part of 'istory."

Such a concert in Baghdad would have been impossible two years ago, Rotten added, crediting President Bush with bringing democracy to the 15-block walled area inside of Baghdad.

There were glitches. Electrical power to the area failed twice, brownouts were common, and what was initially thought as pyrotechnics gone awry turned out to be blowback from Apache attack helicopters, bombing targets in nearby Sadr City.

Further problems developed after the concert when guitarist Steve Jones discovered Arabic script written in lipstick from a prostitute on his dressing room mirror. Two hours later, a translator was finally located, who interpreted the writing as, "Death to British and American Imperialist Dogs." A cultural liaison was later brought in to explain that the message was probably a request to leave the country.

I asked Rotten what future plans the Pistols had. "We want to spread our Anarchy through the f#&king area," he said. "We will follow it wherever it goes."

When asked where the Pistols are going next, Rotten replied:

"Iran."

Mainstreaming the Absurd--A 2004 Election Report

2004-09-25T17:49:00.000-07:00

By Velvet Elvis
via LifeFlight from Atlantic City
September 25, 2004

Of special interest to the Dada-Anarchist community has been the degree to which absurdism has been co-opted by the so-called "527" organizations, such as the Swift Boat gang and other similar voices, and even by the official campaigns themselves.

Just the other day, President Bush argued that he "wanted to work together to pursue court action to shut down all the ads and activity by these shadowy 527 groups."

It was alleged that Barbara Bush was on hand with flash cards with the number "527" circled in red.

Absurdist-friendly organizations were quick to respond. "As performance art, the President's policies have provided valuable exposure to the struggling absurdist community, as well as a public platform for our views," says Nathan Bongwater. "However, we are concerned that with this constant exposure, behavior that was once regarded as absurd is becoming dangerously mainstream."

Witness the recent hullabaloo over Cindy Crawford's donning of a chinchilla coat purchased on layaway at Wal-Mart. "This is absurd," argued PETA. "Just ten years ago, she took her clothes off for us. We have only the President to blame for this."

Colin Powell was in Key West and was unavailable for comment.

Dick Cheney, in a speech before the Wrestlers Convention in Pughkeepsie, sought to appease absurdists by arguing that "there is more than enough absurdity" to fill another four years, and pointed to an increase in ozone levels over the Antarctic as proof that the President's policies were working.

Senator Kerry, also seeking to align himself with the absurdist community, quickly responded by arguing that "another four years" of the Bush administration would result in the "death of Dada. There will simply be nothing left to ridicule."

Ask Joan Crawford--George Orwell: Trotskyite reactionary or subversive Fifth Columnist?

2004-09-25T13:20:00.000-07:00

Today is mailbag day, where we answer your reader queries. Today's first letter comes from Confused, in Dull Tennessee, who writes:

Dear Joan Crawford,

Last year, our uncle died. Along with his tweed smoking jackets and a wooden duck collection, he bequeathed several rental properties and a box full of vintage copies of the Lityurnaya Gazetta, the Soviet literary magazine. Having a special interest in literary criticism, I was ecstatic. My pleasure turned to dismay, however, when I turned to an article by Mendle Ledbedev in the June, 1951 issue that said, "George Orwell, once a comrade in the struggle against imperialist aggression, betrayed the cause with his anti-utopian reactionary screeds, 1984 and Animal Farm, where he aligned himself with the military-industrial state and attacked by proxy the Soviet people's republic." I was stunned. I always thought that Orwell was a Progressive and a fellow Socialist. By the way, I'm 25 years old.

Confused in Dull

Dear Confused,

You're too young to remember, but the fall of the Soviet Union resulted not only in a complete literary revisionism in the United States, but also a reflective reassessment in the Dada-Anarchist community. Remember that the Bolsheviks co-opted not only the revolutionary oeuvre of the Mensheviki, but also the deconstructionist tendencies of the anti-emperial revolt. The Tsar was essentially a Western puppet, propped up for the purpose of exploiting the mineral resources of Siberia, making Russia, by default, a colonial extension of the Western monetarists.

I firmly believe that had the Mensheviks succeeded in retaining power after the March, 1917 revolution, we would have avoided the fiasco that resulted when the world was presented with the appearance of a worker's revolt in the following November, but instead, merely regained the tools of the emperial state, along with instruments of torture and an extensive prison system (which, keep in mind, was developed decades before Stalin seized power from the Politburo).

By 1951, all pretense of revolutionary fervor had disappeared from the Communist Party's talking points, and with the disappearance of a two-party system, the completion of media consolidation, and a series of compliant "colonies," the last vestige of a free society--decent literary criticism--also vanished.

So, I can safely say that your copies of the Lityurnaya Gazetta are probably worthless. You might try putting them up on Ebay, however. Just the other day, I saw a copy of a 1885 edition of The Wealth Of Nations that sold for $1.50.

Joan

Dear Joan Crawford,

What's on your CD player today?

Music-Lover

Last week I picked up a second-hand copy of the EP, There's A Dyke In The Pit, at my local head shop, and it's been on non-stop rotation since. Special faves are "Suck My Left One" by Bikini Kill, and I was very happy to find a very good track by 7 Year Bitch, "Dead Men Don't Rape." My roommate took my only copy of Sick 'Em last year when she was deported.

Joan

Let's Ask Joan Crawford!

2004-09-24T16:15:00.000-07:00

Your ever-humble alt-blogger is determined to add value to your blogging experience. I'm sure that you're like me--overall, you are satisfied with your blogging experience, and the hours you invest in this enterprise, but admit it--occasionally you tell yourself, "My blogging experience could be better."

Go on, fess up. Blogging is so last year. Why else would I be jumping on the bandwagon?

What to do?

Well, of course--an advice column!

Submit your questions now! I promise that they will be read by a team of professionals. We guarantee guerrilla advice.