Hooray For Our Chains (3)

What Happened to Ann Coulter's Mouth?

Ann Coulter arrived at the boat dock with a Styrofoam plate on her head. She called out for Michael Savage but at first he didn't answer. She was just about to leave when Michael Savage appeared. His fat eyelids barely moved. Ann Coulter told him she brought Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings, but if he didn’t want it, she would chew through the kitchen wall because she smelled peanut butter on a spoon in the sink. Ann Coulter suggested that Michael Savage let go of the past, but he refused to listen. Ann Coulter said she could chew through the wall and hide under the stove until I fell asleep. Michael Savage told Ann Coulter that the United States is fifty leagues below the degeneracy that brought about Hitler. Ann Coulter chewed through a television power cord. Ann Coulter chewed a hole in a sack of corn.

We Have No Affective Knowledge of Any Other Reason for Existing

"Where have you been, Shimmy?" he asked.

The President of the War on Terror sat on the edge of my litter box.

He kicked his cantankerous legs back and forth and chewed a sprig of parsley.

"Sleeping in front of the bookshelf," I said.

"The hardest part of making a big decision, Shimmy, is the run-up to the decision. But once you make up your mind, it's a liberating moment."

"And under Tony's desk. On the tabletop hockey game under the bed. And on Raoul Vaneigem's The Revolution of Everyday Life. Next to a pile of folded clothes on the ottoman. On the kitchen floor in front of the stove. In the bathtub. And in the bedroom closet. On a backpack. On the suitcase. On Tony's desk chair. And on the bean bag chair until it scares me."

"I've missed you," he said, looking out the window at the bare spindles of the Mayakovsky Tree shivering in the wind. It was snowing.

He added, "You don't invite me over anymore."

"Because you want to bury the copy of the Constitution my cousin Winter gave me. That's why I'll never let John Yoo near my litter box."

"I'm comfortable with my decision, but I'm not ready to give a speech yet. There are a lot of people who don't understand prayer, Shimmy."

"What happens when you take away our War on Terror?" I asked. I licked my salacious right haunch. "We have no affective knowledge of any other reason for existing."

The President of the War on Terror glanced behind the bookshelf, looking, no doubt, for where I hid my copy of the Constitution. A slack-jawed waterbug crawled along the wall.

He said, "I'm not a brooder. I probably shook hands with 9,000 people when they came through."

"You fondle our suffering like a good dog and hand out photographs of crushed but smiling people," I said.

"Speed it up," he said. "This isn't my first rodeo."

"The War on Terror turns our wretched earthly existence into a time of voluptuous expectation."

Democracy Rears Its Head and, Putin-Like, Comes into the Airspace of the United States of America

"America's new flag is just a white flag.
But there's a picture of a burning American flag on it."

The Vatican vs. Gertrude Stein (Part XVII)

THE VATICAN: You may not vote for any candidate who supports abortion rights. A candidate for office who supports abortion rights has disqualified himself as a person that you can vote for. If a political candidate supported abortion, it would not be morally permissible for you to vote for that person. This is because, in voting for such a person, you would become an accomplice in the moral evil at issue. If the candidate about whom you have strong feelings or opinions is pro-abortion, then your feelings and opinions need to be corrected by your correctly informed conscience. The Democratic Party once was the party that helped our immigrant parents and grandparents better integrate and prosper in American society. But it is not the same anymore. At this point the Democratic Party risks transforming itself definitely into a "party of death" for its decisions on bioethical issues. The church must always be very clear on this point.

GERTRUDE STEIN: There is no pope.

Studs Terkel (1912-2008)

"Once again, I was in the thrall of sleeplessness. Now, a touch of fear that I might indeed die in my sleep distinctly possessed me. It brought forth a habit that still obsesses me. Whenever I'm about to doze off, I deliberately unclasp my hands and remove them from my breast. Every night. Even now."

"These days I think constantly of my father and brothers. They died in what should have been their prime. I, the favored, sickly little child they loved (as did my mother in her own wild way), have had so much the better of it. Though I grieved when each of my brothers died, my father's death, the first in our family, brought upon me a heartache that was too much to bear."

(From Studs Terkel, Will the Circle Be Unbroken? Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith. New York: Ballantine, 2001)

May Studs Terkel have happiness and the causes of happiness, and be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.