Money is "an emissary armed with full powers who speaks in the name of an unknown force"

When we concerned ourselves only with survival -- such as those six weeks I was abandoned in the woods before Tony and Shelly adopted me -- we were unable to see the commodity with any kind of consciousness. Commodity instead was an occult force.

Yet the commodity becomes an occupying force in social life after the Industrial Revolution.

The White House in effect says, "Because of the commodity, we can have a society of leisure." (For fuck's sake, just tie a string of dental floss to the tail of your catnip mouse. The spearmint-flavored wax tastes like catnip anyway.)

In control of the very physics of power, Karl Rove instructs George Bush to hide from us the fact that commodity is no longer an occult force. It's there always. As Guy Debord writes, it is here that "political economy takes shape, as the dominant science and the science of domination."

On My Back

Please scratch my stomach. Don't scratch my stomach. Please. Don't.

Don't. Please. Please.

I Want to Go Outside

A tickle in my belly. The outside. Must go outside every morning. Sometimes Tony and Shelly don't understand, so I get up on my hind legs and stretch for the doorknob. It's like begging, and I don't care. Today, Tony lets me out right away. I step onto the back porch. I look across the walkway between apartments to see if Tytan, the dog who eats potato chips, is loose and running about. I've smelled him at this end of the building before. I can't be too careful. I'm outside! Standing on the back-porch welcome mat, filled with ghostly leftover scents of squirrels, ants, spiders, and yesterday's snow. It's drizzling and I'm not afraid. A breeze riffles my fur. I sniff the welcome mat. Chew on a leaf.

All the Pretty Things They Want to Blow Up

What kind of homicidal mental illness makes the Right-Wing want to blow up pretty things? Reading the Reuters newswire today, I saw that the Bush Administration allegedly planned to bomb Al-Jazeera last year. According to the news report, a "secret British government memo said British Prime Minister Tony Blair had talked Bush out of bombing the broadcaster in April last year." I thought Tony Blair spent all his time licking the fur behind Bush's head and cleaning the spaces between his claws. Can he really talk that sick man out of anything?

Maybe Bush actually said, "Tony, after dinner I'm going to admit to God that I'm a lame, cowardly, simpering fool -- not much of a man at all. I've wakened from an awful dream. What horrors have I created these past 5 years? I'm going to beg forgiveness as best I can." Then maybe Blair actually did talk him out of it. Perhaps Tony Blair's face took on the shimmering visage of Dick Cheney, green smoke creeping out his ears, and he said, "Don't do anything rash. I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency."

I broke into the bedroom closet again, in the middle of the night, and sat atop a stack of old shoe boxes. I thought that sound was a raccoon. It's the dogs upstairs chasing a vile bone.

I'm left wondering why they want to blow up pretty things like Al-Jazeera . . . or why they want to blow up pretty things like Coit Tower, a monument to San Francisco firefighters. During his November 8, 2005 radio show, the lying infantile Bill O'Reilly asked Al-Qaeda to blow up pretty things in the United States. As if speaking directly to Ayman Al-Zawahiri, O'Reilly said: "Look, every other place in America is off limits to you except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead."

But Coit Tower is a monument to firefighters. I don't understand. Is O'Reilly somehow inspired by Al-Qaeda's own hatred of U.S. firefighters? If so, does this impulse make him a sociopath? Wasn't the Right-Wing happy enough in 2003 when the U.S. Air Force dropped a bomb on the pretty Baghdad headquarters of Al-Jazeera, killing journalist Tarek Ayoub?

Zoetrope in My Living Room

Yesterday, a documentary film crew from American Zoetrope set up in our living room. Director, producers, sound engineer -- they all just walked right in. My god. What's next, the vacuum cleaner? A house-sitter? I was picked up off the ground by Tony and carried to sure imprisonment in the bedroom. Believe me, I fought. Wriggled and hissed. He always finds the "right" hold on my shoulder blades, some kind of steely grip. Still, he only has two hands. He clutched my shoulders, but my clawed legs were free (and gorgeous) and I kicked. Oh, I kicked my whipsaw fucking legs. For a few moments, my right claws hooked on Tony's precious delicate little sweater. As he carried me to the bedroom, I turned back to the filmmakers and growled.

Dental Floss Vines

My red catnip mouse swings from the end of a string of dental floss pinched between Shelly's fingers. I'm stretched along the rug, swatting. A man in Lincoln Square fills old baby food jars with rice and popcorn kernels for pigeons. They walk on his head, shoulders, arms, thighs, feet. They strut. Climb his chest. Today I'm going to kill the milk bottle cap ring I tucked under the rug a couple months ago. A tiny pumpkin on the dining room table is scary. Dental floss vines stolen at night from the bathroom garbage can. Soon it's winter and I won't be afraid of the rain.

Reading the Libby Indictment

Unable to contribute to the blog the past few days -- I've been perched at the spare room window, conducting surveillance on the squirrel family. I spent three days last week keeping close watch on the radiator. Slight movements there, little flashes at the corner of my eyes. I wasn't sure whether a goldfish was living in the radiator or if this was just a fleck of dust in the sunbeam. It's probably a goldfish. Autumn is the season of blood.

I've also been reading everything I can about the imminent fall of the Bush administration. From the Nov. 7 New Yorker, a piece on Judith Miller, hack, and her scabrous, reptilian relationship with Scooter Libby, vile NeoCon minion and pornographer bestialist.

Nicholas Lemann's article begins with the worst kind of apologetic -- delivered smugly, no less -- as if this were a game of Yahtzee rather than a flesh-and-blood criminal act that has cost (so far) the lives of 2,000 U.S. soldiers. Lemann writes:

It's probably safe to assume that nobody who participated in
the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson as a C.I.A. agent, in the
summer of 2003, was mindful that the result of the process
-- the publication of Wilson's name in Robert Novak's
syndicated column -- might be a federal crime.

If Lemann's fantasy of blamelessness is true, then what was Scooter Libby thinking when he signed his "Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement," a requirement for his high-level White House security clearance? Compare Lemann's fantasy -- no one's to blame, everyone's just a mischievous pixie! -- to the following excerpt from page 2 of Scooter Libby's indictment:

On or about January 23, 2001, LIBBY executed a written
'Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement,' stating
in part that 'I understand and accept that by being granted
access to classified information, special confidence and trust
shall be placed in me by the United States Government,'
and that 'I have been advised that the unauthorized
disclosure, unauthorized retention, or negligent handling of
classified information by me could cause damage or
irreparable injury to the United States or could be used to
advantage by a foreign nation.'

He broke the law. He knew it. Judith Miller helped him, just like she helped create the myths that justified the war. Maybe Lemann was too busy chasing a mouse or licking his fur when he wrote: "The people involved in the Wilson affair were [. . .] behaving as they would normally behave, and not as people cognizant of the possibility of criminal prosecution would behave." Possibly they did behave this way. But this is not the issue. Libby can behave any way he wants (the pixie!), as long as he accepts the consequences of Title 18, United States Code, Section 793, and Executive Order 12958 (as modified by Executive Order 13292), which makes it a crime to disclose classified information to those not authorized to receive it.

After all, a mouse I'm stalking can act as if nothing unusual is going on, but once I've wrapped my mouth around him, he can't say, "You're not supposed to eat me! I was behaving as I normally would behave, not behaving like a mouse cognizant of being stalked by a beautiful, dangerous cat would behave."

Closed-Door Session

Woke up just in time to see Bill Frist on TV, stunned that the Democrats forced the Senate into secret session today. Poor Bill Frist -- no one prepared him for this when he took over Senate Majority leadership from whatsisname, the guy in the white hood. Senate Republicans feed Democrats their Science Diet Hairball Control pellets every morning, and the Democrats dutifully crouch at their bowls and eat, hoping for a can of wet food once per week. So who can blame Frist for being upset? After all, no one told him this was a democracy. And weren't checks and balances eliminated years ago?

Feeling empathy for Frist, I called him over to the apartment for a special closed-door session in my litter box. I ordered the general public out of my li'l toilet. Dimmed the lights. He argued that the clump in the corner was yellowcake uranium. But I pointed out the distinct ammonia smell, and affirmed that it was a mound of litter mixed with this morning's pee. He said he distinctly smelled yellowcake uranium destined for Iraq. Oh, please. Look, I said, if that clump of dried pee is yellowcake uranium, then an absent-minded goldfish just swam underneath the back door and landed, flopping next to that pyramid of turds I just laid as a protest against prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. It just can't be, I continued, since fish obviously cannot swim into my litter box during closed-door session. He persisted (and of course claimed my precious poop was not shaped like an Abu Ghraib pyramid). Finally, I pushed him out of the box and back into the apartment. If Frist wants someone to believe anything he says, then he can call Judith Miller. As far as I'm concerned, he's a fucking bore.