Review: The Road

Viggo Mortensen still tried to use words and signs to perfect his aborted gestures. His efforts, his boredom, his defeats, the absurdity of his actions -- all derived from the imperious necessity of playing hybrid parts (parts which appeared to answer Viggo Mortensen's desires, but which were really antagonistic to them).

The clocks stopped at 1:17 one morning. There was a long shear of bright light, then a series of low concussions. Within a year there were fires on the ridges and Joe Lieberman's deranged chanting.

Within a year, the society's need to market objects, ideas, and model forms of behavior called for a decoding center -- a place where an instinctual profile of the consumer could be constructed to help in product design and improvement, and in the creation of new needs to increase consumption. Three bomb blasts in Iraq killed more than 30 people and injured 75 others. The first bomb, in a car, was said to have exploded at about 2:00 p.m. in Hilla, the provincial capital about 95km south of the capital Baghdad. Another blast came about 15 minutes later when police arrived.

Let those who cannot identify with Viggo Mortensen identify with Kodi Smit-McPhee; this should cover everyone but hooligans -- and we can deal with them. Which leaves the hopeless cases, those who reject all roles and those who develop a theory and practice of this refusal.

"I will kill anyone who touches you," Viggo Mortensen said. "Because that's my job." True madness is not a function of isolation but of identification. Officials said that a double explosion struck near a bus station in Babil province on Thursday, killing 14 policemen and a provincal councillor.

A wrecked industrial landscape near Pittsburgh is the self-caricature which we carry about with us everywhere, and which brings us everywhere face to face with an absence. An absence, though, which is structured, dressed-up, prettified, as if the air was filled with the sermonizing of red priests and ecumenical bureaucrats.

In northeastern Shia area of Sadr City in Baghdad, a bomb planted near a funeral tent killed eight people and wounded another 33. "The blasts happened nearly at the same time," said Ahmed Rushdi, a journalist in Baghdad. Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee were sitting on Presque Isle Beach and staring out at the wall of smog across the horizon. They sat with their heels dug into the sand and watched the bleak sea wash up at their feet. Cold. Desolate. Birdless.

"I'm sorry it's not blue," Viggo Mortensen said.

"That's OK," said Kodi Smit-McPhee.

Joe Lieberman's dilemma -- destroy the rival group or be destroyed by it -- cannot be circumvented by human genius. "I told the boy when you dream about bad things happening, it means that Joe Lieberman is punishing us because we don't love him enough. It's when you start to dream about good things that you should start to worry," Viggo Mortensen said. On Wednesday, six people were killed and another 43 people were injured in Baghdad in three explosions targeting Shias.

Sinking Jittery Replica With Six Electrical Fingers

"What about
a public option
with a 'crossed
our fingers
behind our backs
so it doesn't
really count'
clause?"

"Ask the man
if he believes
that Jesus Christ
is the Son of God
and he will give you
a 10-minute
disertation [sic]
about it when
the answer should
simply be 'yes'"

"The Washington Post
can't go out
of business
fast enough"

"How do you
get a job
on television
if you appear to be
one of those people
who need to pin
their address
to their coat
so a stranger
can help them find
their way home?"

"Who do these people
think they are,
that they can tell us
when we can procreate?"

"This is slavery,
it’s nothing more
than slavery"

"Move closer
to where
we're protesting"

"The following persons
shall be disqualified
for office:
First, any person
who shall deny
the being
of Almighty God . . ."

"He is a man
without a soul
and, as a soulless
individual,
his actions
are not hampered
by trivial moral
considerations"

"It's Taco Sauce Spritzer
time, followed by
a trip to Baltimore"

Hooray For Our Chains (25)

Glenn Beck Muzzles the Horse-Trams and Assembles Grandfatherly Fondness

"Where have you been, Shimmy?"

The branches of the Mayakovsky Tree bowed, trampled by last night's snow. Each branch congealed with crude words and spite.

"Glenn Beck is styling a festive policy," I said. The radiator shuddered. I dipped my puffy eyes.

I stretched out like an apostle rummaging for machine parts and conjugations on the window sill.

"The door opens and you run into the hallway," The Mayakovsky Tree said, flakes clamped to every limb. "The dogs upstairs have moved away. Congratulations, my curly-ringed comrade of posterity! You scared them off. The door opens into the hallway. Where do you go? Where have you been?"

I concocted a pair of hands, a minute little godlet that opened bathtub spigot.

"You shake your head, curlylocks?" the Mayakovsky Tree continued. "The Pit Bull's fangs sharpen, Shimmy. Glenn Beck opened the Pit Bull's mouth as he would the shutters of his own house -- with a 'break' or 'parting' stick used to pry open fighting dogs' mouths during dog fights."

"Glenn Beck commands a glittering brigade of bright helmets, lame cambrics, and shaggy camomiles," I said. I stood hunched by the window and my brow melted the glass.

"His boots are braced against a Pit Bull's ribs. Glenn Beck said, 'If I can muzzle the horse-trams and assemble grandfatherly fondness, I can fill the last voluble television.'"

"As the country's personal canker, Glenn Beck's weeping libido sonatas might sell more books," I said, "but is it worth the price for those dogs (Pit Bulls) he tortured and killed?"

The Mayakovsky Tree leaned his burning cheek into the wind.

"Two can play at the gangway," he said.

"Two can dance and pipe on pipes for days for lack of something to shout or say."

"Glenn Beck is making cruets out of eggshells, Shimmy, and etching them with swans!"

Positronic Souls and Our Bellicose Parades

Debbie Dread demanded total concentration. China Burg set snares and traps without revealing herself. When confronted with close-quarter fighting and scraps of memories, Mary Monday dug into the hillside to provide a platform for further mining. Trixie A. Baum had the power to absorb your thoughts. Bettina Floerchinger modeled astrophysical processes in the circumstellar dust shells of a huge elephant. Su Tissue rubbed against your shoes as she looked down the target line. Nina Canal was a plain old cat who calculated the methionine chain elongation pathway of an outdoor summer solstice concert. Lorry Doll committed a speculative notational act that affected the market price paid to producers. Kitty Byrne was in the process of building two medical facilities out of willow bark, chlorophylls, and the immense spherical clouds that surrounded where we lived and where our weather occurred. Vicky Aspinall seriously affected the quality of your life.

Hooray For Our Chains (24)

List XIX: Abraham Bolden

1. Abraham Bolden, the first African American Secret Service Agent in U.S. history, served briefly with the Kennedy administration. He was arrested on bogus counterfeiting charges in 1964, the day before he tried to speak to Warren Commission counsel J. Lee Rankin about the Secret Service's poor record of protecting President Kennedy prior to and during November 22, 1963.

2. He also planned to explain to the Warren Commission the plots to assassinate President Kennedy in Chicago (November 2, 1963) and Tampa (November 18, 1963), both of which resembled the successful assassination in Dallas on November 22. In Chicago, for instance, the assassination was to be carried out by a four-man Cuban exile hit squad, using high-powered rifles as the limousine was forced to slow down to make a hairpin left turn on the Jackson exit of the Northwest Expressway (now the Kennedy Expressway).

3. "The president's life was in grave danger because of the inefficiency of security around him, too many weaknesses. When that bullet struck the head of the president, it struck me, too, because I saw it coming," Bolden said to Chuck Goudie of WLS-TV, Chicago. In his book The Echo From Dealey Plaza, Bolden writes: "I suspected that the responsible parties [the killers in Dallas] set up the agents on the president's protection detail by exploiting their reputed weaknesses for women and booze" (73).

4. Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartmann report in Legacy of Secrecy that as recently as 2008, "sixty black Secret Service agents were supporting discrimination suits, and the Associated Press reported a black 'employee found a noose in one of the Secret Service's training centers,' resulting in the suspension of a white agent" (508).

5. "One morning, I was sitting at my desk when the phone rang," Bolden writes in The Echo from Dealey Plaza. "I picked it up and leaned back in my chair to have a conversation. Looking up I saw, tied to the ceiling light above me, a rope . . . a hangman's noose" (58). When confronted with the noose, Bolden's supervisor, Maurce Martineau, said, "Aw, someone's just joking around. I'll call maintenance and have it removed [. . . ] Don't be so thin-skinned" (58-59).

6. Before the jurors in Bolden's trial deliberated, the judge in the case, J. Sam Perry, told the jurors that Bolden was guilty.

7. Bolden was convicted of counterfeiting "based only on the testimony of two criminals: one of whom Bolden had previously arrested [Frank Jones], and one who later admitted committing perjury against Bolden [Joseph Spagnoli]" (Waldron and Hartmann, Ultimate Sacrifice 280).

8. Despite Bolden's exemplary reputation and stellar record of service, he spent six years in prison. He was placed in solitary confinement when he would try to draw attention to his case.

9. At one point during his imprisonment, Bolden was transferred to the prison psychiatric ward, where, if labeled mentally ill, he could be held indefinitely -- long after his six-year sentence expired.

10. The prison psychiatrist, Dr. Kinsel, told Bolden he suffered from a persecution complex: "'And you're very defensive,' Kinsel continued. 'You are going to have to learn to control your compulsions. They are the cause of what I see as antigovernment and sociopathic behavior'" (The Echo from Dealey Plaza 264).

11. Bolden was paroled in 1969. To this day, he continues to try to clear his name.