The Vatican vs. Gertrude Stein (Part III)

THE VATICAN: Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency ordered to an intrinsic moral evil, and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder.

GERTRUDE STEIN: There is no pope.

See How Sean Hannity Crawls to Lick Ann Coulter's Calloused Hands

"Then what happened, Shimmy?"

The Mayakovsky Tree was stained deep brown by an early-summer thunderstorm. Its squirrels were drowned.

The bole of the Mayakovsky Tree was decorated with three tall sticks and some chipmunk pieces for stability.

"They took away the suitcase I slept on. Ann Coulter came over every day and mixed my heart medicine with stigmata and Friskies Shredded with Beef and Gravy."

"Then what happened?"

"She moved my food and water dishes from the kitchen into the bedroom because of ants. It rained every day. Ann Coulter ate wild insects with her bare hands."

"And then what happened, Shimmy?"

The Mayakovsky Tree is a delicate, remarkable thing. It is awake most of the day and sleeps at night and is covered with dark green robust fabric that protects it from its enemies.

"The eerie effect of Ann Coulter's glowing eyes is created by matting a negative (reversed) image of her eyes over her pupils when she uses her powers," I said.

"From words like Ann Coulter's, coffins burst from the earth," the Mayakovsky Tree said, "and stride forth on their own four oaken legs. But see how Sean Hannity crawls to lick Ann Coulter's calloused hands!"

"She watched me eat," I said. I remembered a still moth on the window screen. "She waited for me to fall asleep so she could steal all my food."

"Then what happened?"

"Someone like Ann Coulter who thinks about dead people when she's making love should avoid using 'hijack' and 'religion' in the same sentence," I said.

"Then what happened, Shimmy?"

"They came home with two backpacks and a suitcase," I said. "There was some talk of Pennsylvania. Shelly crumpled a hotel receipt and threw it away. A bat with wrinkled wings flew into my mouth and water fell out of the bathtub spigot for the first time in five days. They opened all the windows and complained."

Books I'm Reclining On Next to the Couch in the Living Room

Books (poetry)

Corman, Cid, Sun Rock Man, New Directions, 1973.

Mayer, Bernadette, A Bernadette Mayer Reader, New Directions, 1992.

Notley, Alice, Disobedience, Penguin, 2001.

Stanford, Frank, The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You, Lost Roads Publishers, 2000.

Books (other)

Dick, Philip K., Four Novels of the 1960s: The Man in the High Castle; The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch; Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?; and Ubik. Library of America, 2007.

Wood, Brian, and Riccardo Burchielli, DMZ Volume 2: Body of a Journalist, Vertigo Comics, 2007.

Conversations with Guy Debord (6)

"Debord, I woke up this morning on Tony's suitcase."

Guy Debord's unstruck match and his dense, packed Gaulois cigarette are presented as irreconcilable antagonisms.

"The Republican Party, like modern society itself, is at once united and divided," he said, waving the unstruck match held between his thumb and forefinger.

Debord continued: "The unity of each is based on violent divisions. But when this contradiction emerges in the Republican Party, it is itself contradicted by a reversal of its meaning: the division it presents is unitary, while the unity it presents is divided.

Even where the material flame is still absent, Debord's Gaulois has already used its potential. Upward-seeking braids of smoke invade the social surface of every room in my apartment.

"How did I get here?" I asked. "Why am I purring? Why was the catnip vacuumed? The dog upstairs sticks his whole whooping cough of a body out the window and watches Greenview Avenue go by."

Debord's Gaulois sets the stage for usurping indigenous ruling classes and recontextualizing their agendas.

Just as it presents upward-seeking braids of smoke to be coveted, it offers itself as a model to local revolutionaries.

Smoke is the social surface of every room in my revolution.

"Shimmy, the vestiges of religion and of the family, along with the vestiges of moral repression imposed by those two institutions, can be blended with the pretensions of worldly gratification. Why? Precisely because life in this particular world remains repressive and offers nothing but pseudo-gratifications."

"Smokey Bones," I said. "Aoyma Japanese Steakhouse. Outback Steakhouse. Taco Bell. Fox & Hound English Pub & Grill. Ponderosa. Red Lobster. Panda Express."

"Complacent acceptance of the status quo may also coexist with purely spectacular rebelliousness, dear Shimmy."

I can't remember the last time I fell asleep atop the tabletop hockey game under the bed.

"Ruby Tuesday. Mr. Sub. Dippin' Dots. Eat ‘n' Park. Auntie Anne's. Max & Erma's. Baskin Robbins. Pretzletown."

"Dissatisfaction itself becomes a commodity," Debord said, running his fingernail along the flint end of the match, "as soon as the economy of abundance develops the capacity to process boredom."

The Vatican vs. Gertrude Stein (Part II)

THE VATICAN: The obscuring of the difference or duality of the sexes has enormous consequences on a variety of levels. This theory of the human person, intended to promote prospects for equality of women through liberation from biological determinism, has in reality inspired ideologies which, for example, call into question the family, in its natural two-parent structure of mother and father, and make homosexuality and heterosexuality virtually equivalent, in a new model of polymorphous sexuality.

GERTRUDE STEIN: There is no pope.

She's Queen of the Night

As much moth wing as my teeth.

The narcissus disappeared underwater. Mary Todd Lincoln was named after a day lilly.

Slender, speckled day-lilly beds.

A moth flaps into my mouth.

The furiously flesh-elemental Laura Bush liked his blue shammy shirt, and he loved what she loved, and she drove her car over his ruby red day-lilly chest under the blood black moon on a clear night and she killed that guy who was her boyfriend.

Snug people with tattooed arms tug the tuft of hair where my neck meets my gorgeous tubular body.

List XIV

1. Blaise Pascal
2. Lou Gehrig
3. Lester Flatt
4. Guy Lombardo
5. Paula Abdul
6. Poppy Montgomery
7. José Rizal
8. Gena Rowlands
9. Aage Niels Bohr
10. Mildred Natwick
11. Kathleen Turner
12. Salman Rushdie
13. Doug Mientkiewicz

List XIII (for Scout)

1. Mouse
2. Mouse Mouse
3. Mountain
4. A quiver
5. A quaint statue
6. Silence
7. More silence
8. Salmon
9. A mischief intender
10. A cake
11. A real salve made of mutton and liquor
12. A specially retained rinsing
13. An established cork
14. A sign
15. The specimen

Episode Seventeen: "Ants Crawl My Drunken Arms"

MARINE GENERAL PETER PACE: Mary, do you know what love is?

MARY: In this little voice you say that you're telling me what love is.

MARINE GENERAL PETER PACE: Love comes to you with a handsome mug and skips straight to the hard stuff.

MARY: Oh, please. The city is the place for me. The box of summer sweaters under the bed. Some conversation about letting me out the back door on summer mornings. Some bourgeois worry from Tony and Shelly about the squat Abu Ghraib pyramid I dumped on the floor last night. Ants swarming a stray Purina NF Formula food pellet.

MARINE GENERAL PETER PACE: Love is mean and it throws you out the window.

MARY: Who's more immoral? Marine General Peter Pace? Or Karl Rove sticking a rod down a duck's throat fattening up on foie gras? Why did you make Monica Goodling cry?

MARINE GENERAL PETER PACE: Regent University's presence in the Justice Department is immoral. The U.S. Military should not condone immoral acts.

MARY: Dear Peter Pace: You are such a small unimportant thing. I hope to God that people think terrible ideas about you. You live in California, you are 13 years old, and you are a pizza delivery girl wearing purple jeans and a pink t-shirt.

MARINE GENERAL PETER PACE: I would not want acceptance of Alberto Gonzales's behavior to be our policy.

MARY: I had a premonition about you, Peter Pace.

MARINE GENERAL PETER PACE: I will give up food as a sacrifice for you and drink six glasses of water a day. I can go up to 39 hours at a time without nourishment.

MARY: Go away. The wet food is in the fridge. Go get it. I won't eat food pellets with ants on them. Don't touch me or say my name that way.

There Stand the Dead Upright

James Falwell wrote:

What kind of master do you have, CatFiend, that allows a black cat to ogle and lick himself all over as you display your fine fur through a window? Clearly, there is no lack of moral turpitude in YOUR household! Pray to Jesus, Little Kitty! Pray for the salvation of your Master's soul!

Often I'm asked for clear judgment for 39 days after death, Mr. Falwell. Purgatory is more clear: I chance the black cat in the window across the street licking his haunches. He blinks at me and goes to other persons.

But Purgatory is not 40 days for Supernaturals or anyone. It may be hours, days, weeks, years, worlds, or death -- depending on the individual person, the tradition, or the individual cat I ogle through the window.

Therefore, we can say that time ghosts the earth, Mr. Falwell.

The wet food in my dish is accumulated for 39 or 40 days or even longer and is directly withheld from everyone except me in hell or heaven. Ghosts do not linger on a window sill or rub their speech along your coat. They say the earth as worlds.

"There's Not a Single Gray Hair on Your Soul!"

Despite a certain tendency towards doubt and indecision, the emotional front today is quite reassuring, dear Shimmy.

The Emperor rules over your interactions with the black cat across the street who licks himself in the window: he supports you, lets you cry on his shoulder, and offers you protection from Rumsfeld's Zuni Doll.

Clearly, you have every reason to feel loved by the Mayakovsky Tree -- there's not a single gray hair on your soul! The might of your voice projected into chintz-covered drawing-rooms diminishes the gravity of those eternal big questions that would otherwise torment you.

In your professional life, the Magician and the Emperor suggest that you sleep under the ottoman with authority and vigor.

Thanks to your know-how it should be fairly easy for you to decide whether or not the furiously flesh-elemental Laura Bush murdered that guy on a clear night on dry pavement at a crossroads described as "the middle of nowhere," where the view was unobstructed and the stop sign that faced Laura Bush was clearly visible.

The Vatican vs. Gertrude Stein (Part I)

THE VATICAN: The invasion and conquest of the Americas, which resulted in the deaths of nearly 90 percent of the indigenous population, offered the natives the chance to know and welcome Christ, the unknown God whom their ancestors were seeking (without realizing it) in their rich religious traditions. Christ is the Saviour for whom they were silently longing. The proclamation of Jesus and of his Gospel did not at any point involve an alienation of the pre-Columbian cultures, nor was it the imposition of a foreign culture.

GERTRUDE STEIN: There is no pope.

I'm Pretty Sure Ann Coulter Didn't Kill That Guy

Ann Coulter caused millions of Americans to wake up as avid readers of history and view a summer monsoon in the dark brown up to her neck. Ann Coulter performs wonderful fragments of, as well as letters on, lies about Max Cleland torn to bits. Ann Coulter’s cheeseball pop love songs are now called "Shine, Perishing Republic."

Buy Our Tootpaste or You'll Be Waterboarded

Buy our
toothpaste
or you'll
be water-
boarded

I slid that
pen you
wanted
under
the living
room carpet

"Embracing
the forms
and practices of
a kakistocracy,
the Bush
administration
hastened
the destruction
of the American
republic"

I pray to the
Celestial Saucerians
for guidance in
everything I do

And you
vacuumed
all the
catnip why?

Lou Dobbs
heals
7,000 lepers!

“There’s an
assumption
that often
passes for
common sense
that the more
pain imposed
on someone,
the more likely
they are
to comply"

This is why
it's treason

Travel and play
first-rate
instruments
with other
first-rate
musicians
with guns

You can't stop
me from
sliding another
pen you want
under the living
room carpet
anytime I want

Episode Sixteen: "And the Amputees Return to Combat"

RHODA: The White House hates its own troops so much, Mary, that it's sending amputees back into combat!

MARY: Oh, sure. And the Ayatollah is sending 12-year-old kids from Idaho to the front lines, Rhoda. Come on. Don't believe everything you read. The dog across the hall is barking again. The whole back porch smells like him.

RHODA: "Someone who loses a limb is still a very valuable asset," said Lt. Col. Kevin Arata, a spokesman for the Army's Human Resources Command at the Pentagon. What? Is this some kind of Quentin Tarantino film?

MURRAY: Rhoda, stop it already. You've got the wrong Iraq War. That's what Mary's trying to tell you.

RHODA: According to the Associated Press, "To go back into the war zone, they have to prove they can do the job without putting themselves or others at risk." Or maybe they can get bit parts in Grindhouse?

MURRAY: Let me get this straight.

MARY: What's that noise?

MURRAY: Let me get this straight. The White House ignores its own generals and sends fewer troops than needed to fight the war.

MARY: The White House underfunds its troops so that civilians are forced to buy them body armor.

MURRAY: The troops lose their limbs fighting a war that is handicapped from the start by the Pentagon, which did not send in enough troops and underfunded the troops already there. And then the troops are sent -- physically disabled -- back into a war that itself is always already handicapped by the White House.

RHODA: "To go back into the war zone, they have to prove they can do the job without putting themselves or others at risk." Maybe the President of the War on Terror can send them to the front line as human shields.

MARY: Stop it, Rhoda. You're thinking of Khomeni and the 12-year-olds again.

RHODA: Literally, I wake up every day wondering why the White House hates its own troops so much.