Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Send a Book to a War Criminal

TINFISH PRESS
"SEND A BOOK TO A WAR CRIMINAL" DRIVE

Tinfish Press has just published Corpse Watching, a chapbook by Sarith Peou.

Peou's book of poems details his experiences under the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia.

Susan M. Schultz, Editor of Tinfish Press, sent a copy to former Secretary of State and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Henry Kissinger, whose actions were largely responsible for the Khmer Rouge's coming to power in 1975.

Susan decided we all should have this chance.

Send $10 to Tinfish Press (less than the usual price of $12) and they will send a copy of the book to the war criminal of your choice with a personalized card to say who's responsible for sending it along.

There are many such war criminals -- choose one or more. If at all possible, please track down their addresses for Tinfish.

Address:
Susan M. Schultz, Editor
Tinfish Press
47-728 Hui Kelu Street #9
Kane`ohe, HI 96744
http://tinfishpress.com/

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

The Vatican vs. Gertrude Stein (Part V)

THE VATICAN: Every individual may kill a heretic. Prelates or Inquisitors may torture witnesses to obtain the truth.

GERTRUDE STEIN: There is no pope.

Friday, July 20, 2007

My Index

Number of U.N. staffers in New York who still have full-time jobs monitoring Iraq for ants, squirrels, water bugs, and bats: 34

Number of the five directors of a No Child Left Behind reading program who had financial ties to the World Church of the Creator: 4

Average amount each of these directors has received from the publishers of reading materials sold to schools: $727,000

Percentage of British children aged seven to eleven who say they "worry about Condoleezza Rice breaking into the kitchen and stealing their food": 77

Percentage who believe their own parents are to blame for the problem: 15

Percentage of Marines stationed in Iraq who say they agree with Thomas Bernhard's observation that Heidegger was "a perfect example of someone who eats all the fruit other people have jarred and who gorges himself, thank God, which makes him sick, and he bursts": 16

Percentage of conservative voters who said in May that they favor amnesty for Ann Coulter for killing that guy: 55

Percentage who said they would be less likely to vote for a presidential candidate who favored such a plan: 96

Minimum number of U.S. colleges that now offer on-campus sites for sleeping under pieces of furniture: 9

Weight, in ounces, of all the information that passed through the Internet last year as I slept under the ottoman in the living room: 0.00004

Cost per minute last spring for callers to the Vienna public library to ask why all their food tastes like Enacard: 49 cents

Average number of minutes callers listened: 4

Thursday, July 19, 2007

List XV

Seized from Michael Vick's estate:

1. "Break" or "parting" stick for prying open dogs' mouths during fights
2. Fifty-four American Pit Bull Terriers
3. E
lectric treadmill modified for dogs
4. B
loodied piece of carpeting
5. Rape Stand: "a device in which a female dog who is too aggressive to submit to males for breeding is strapped down with her head held in place by a restraint"

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

In the United States, Citizens Without Health Insurance Probably are Having Fabulous Sex in Exotic Vacation Locales Even as We Speak

On Mars
in 46 years,
Perky Pat
changes
my litter
every day

You could
feed me
but you're
staring
at my
head

In Peru,
they let you
have pretzels

Quit
looking
at me

In the U.S.,
citizens without
health insurance

probably
are having
fabulous sex
in exotic
vacation locales
even as
we speak

On the moon,
yogurt
& warm
cream
curdle
prematurely,
& the terrified
faces
of dead mice
appear
on coins

Stop
staring
at me

In Kirkuk,
mass funerals
commemorate
80 people

killed by
a truck
bomb
and two car
bombs

I'm not
blinking

In the White House,
the microphone
smells
like a beer
& they're
sharing
a drink
they call
loneliness
& it's better
than drinking
alone

Saturday, July 14, 2007

Tomorrow: Prostrations for Peace

Prostrations for Peace
A Community Response to 1,579 Days of War and Suffering

Date: Tomorrow, July 15, 2007

Time: Sunrise to Sunset

Location: On the pier at North Shore Beach in Chicago's Rogers Park neighborhood

Donations will be accepted for Emergency USA, a humanitarian, neutral, non-profit organization that provides high-quality treatment, surgery, and rehabilitation to civilians in war and post-war areas around the world, including Iraq and Afghanistan. Emergency also trains medical and non-medical personnel in these areas.

http://prostrationsforpeace.blogspot.com

Thursday, July 12, 2007

The Vatican vs. Gertrude Stein (Part IV)

THE VATICAN: Protestant and other Christian denominations cannot, according to Catholic doctrine, be called "Churches" in the proper sense. Christ established here on earth only one Church and instituted it as a visible and spiritual community that from its beginning and throughout the centuries has always existed and will always exist. This one Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church, governed by the successor of Peter and the Bishops in communion with him. Catholicism provides the only true means of salvation.

GERTRUDE STEIN: There is no pope.

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Part 2 of 2: Scooter Libby Roundtable with Brit Hume, Fred Barnes, and Former Beirut Embassy Station Chief William Buckley (deceased)

SHIMMY: Maybe it's no crime to reveal a covert CIA agent's name. Let's empty the vaults of the CIA Archive!

BRIT HUME: Shimmy, there's no evidence they knew Valerie Plame was covert or thought she was covert.

SHIMMY: No one ever believes you: this is why it's treason. I told you to wipe off the blood on your lapel, Brit Hume. Get out of my apartment.

FRED BARNES: And there's no evidence she was "covert" under the meaning of the law that has to do with outing agents.

SHIMMY: The CIA's Wine-presses & Barns stand open. The Wagons are ready. Terrific Lions & Tigers sport & play!

FRED BARNES: Libby should be pardoned because he's been a loyal and effective member of this administration.

SHIMMY: All animals upon the Earth -- even mangy squirrels -- are prepared in all their strength to go forth to the Great Harvest & Vintage of the Nations!

FRED BARNES: We are in the midst of a not-very-serious case. The investigation of Libby produced no crime, Shimmy.

SHIMMY: On that question, I'd like to hear from our other panelist, former Beirut Embassy Station Chief Lt. Col. William Buckley.

BRIT HUME: So would I.

SHIMMY: Lt. Col. Buckley was a covert CIA operative kidnapped by Hezbollah on March 16, 1984. He was held for 15 months. When his captors discovered he was a CIA agent, they tortured him to death. His remains were found in a plastic sack near Beirut airport in 1991. He's buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Part 1 of 2: Scooter Libby Roundtable with Brit Hume, Fred Barnes, and Former Beirut Embassy Station Chief William Buckley (deceased)

BRIT HUME: The Libby case was not something very major.

SHIMMY:
I won't let you speak, Brit Hume, until you wipe the blood from your lapel.

FRED BARNES: You can pardon for different reasons, Shimmy. This goes way back to the founders.

SHIMMY: I'm a strict constructionist. If Tony doesn't do a full change of my litter box after 7 days, then I leave him a gift pile shaped like an Abu Ghraib pyramid.

BRIT HUME: George Washington pardoned the perpetrators of the Whiskey Rebellion. Thomas Jefferson pardoned those convicted under the Alien and Sedition Acts. This goes way back to the founders.

SHIMMY: What did I tell you about the blood on your lapel, Brit Hume?

FRED BARNES: Remember Bush's father pardoned Caspar Weinberger.

SHIMMY: Sometimes I drop an Abu Ghraib pyramid anyway. No one can stop me.

FRED BARNES: Bush's father pardoned Caspar Weinberger when he'd been indicted for some connection -- I forget what it was -- with Iran-Contra.

SHIMMY: He was indicted by Iran-Contra independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh for lying to the independent counsel during its investigation.

FRED BARNES: In this case, the commuting power is for political reasons. I think that's what the President has done here.

Monday, July 09, 2007

Review: Sicko

I was under the ottoman when the phone rang. Shelly turned on the shower. "We're meeting him in the lobby at 7:00," she said. Tony put on his sandals -- they smelled like Tytan, the dog who eats potato chips, and the new Labrador who tilted his head when I hissed at him in the hallway this morning. I looked up the length of Tony's ridiculous elongated body and blinked at him. But he didn't shake the catnip container then pour a mound for me to roll in. They left. I wedged myself on cool marble between the toilet and the bottom of the bathroom sink box. A suicide truck bomber killed 23 Iraqi army recruits when he rammed into their vehicle while they were traveling on a road south of Baghdad, near the town of Haswa. At least 27 others were wounded. Two other blasts, nearly simultaneous car bombs, left at least eight people dead in Baghdad's Karrada district. A neighbor walked down the back stairs and his lamentable giant shoes woke me before he could break a window and steal my food.

Archibald Cox's ghostly hand reached up from the earth but Brit Hume said this was an illusion caused by misaligned camera optics. Brit Hume said: "These 'sightings' and 'feelings' have been reported over the years and continue right up to this day even though the investigation of Scooter Libby produced no crime, Shimmy. We are in the midst of a not-very-serious case." I looked for mint dental floss string in the bathroom garbage can. Fatigue sometimes masks itself as hope. Time ghosts the world. Joe Lieberman punishes us because we don't love him enough. Water did not come out of the bathtub spigot but a water bug climbed the porcelain and I threatened to eat him unless he called me Monica Goodling. Their keys rattled in the front door. I ate the bug anyway. "I feel like I want to walk right into traffic," Tony said. I smelled Margaritas, french fries, tortilla chips, salsa, avocados, and garlic. No, it was guacamole.

Saturday, July 07, 2007

Prostrations for Peace: Next Sunday, July 15

Prostrations for Peace
A Community Response to 1,579 Days of War and Suffering

Date: July 15, 2007

Time: Sunrise to Sunset

Location: On the pier at North Shore Beach in Chicago's Rogers Park
neighborhood

Donations will be accepted for Emergency USA, a humanitarian, neutral, non-profit organization that provides high-quality treatment, surgery, and rehabilitation to civilians in war and post-war areas around the world, including Iraq and Afghanistan. Emergency also trains medical and non-medical personnel in these areas.

http://prostrationsforpeace.blogspot.com

Friday, July 06, 2007

My Interview with the New York Times Editorial Board

SHIMMY: Could the Libby commutation define acceptable ethical standards in an age in which those standards are sorely lacking?

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL BOARD: The President of the War on Terror felt pressured by a million million foul little loves. Probation was an immense, sweating belly.

SHIMMY:
As with Archibald Cox, is this a case where a president has violated every acceptable standard? Will the Democrats lift their heads from the food dish the Republicans placed on the kitchen floor for them and -- at great personal risk -- pursue this case?

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL BOARD: "Harsh! Harsh!" went the death of law.

SHIMMY: The bathtub gives me insomnia. Move the laptop cord and I'll sit next to you on the bed.

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL BOARD: The President of the War on Terror trifles with damage except for common lockup. As a fine Christian justification for Paris Cheney Karla Faye Tucker, Hilton Karla got 250,400 days knocked off her time in a born-again country pouring out joy body to body.