Thursday, November 02, 2006

wormwood under the ice cream

And the name of that star is called Wormwood; and the third part of the waters became wormwood, signifies the infernal falsity from which their self-derived intelligence is derived, and by which all the truths of the Word are falsified. – Emmanuel Swedenborg. The Apocalypse revealed

Robert Kagan is a bloody old soul, one of war’s puppet intellectuals – not The war, not the war in Iraq, but war as a system, the War system in which we live – and as such, he sometimes speaks the truth. Ask Belzebuub about the anatomy of the fly, and ask Kagan about the tendency of Americans to … well, not fight so much as rain destruction down on their supposed enemies. His column about the Republicans, the Dems, and the American love of war – or, rather, War’s love of America – is right on target:

“In this respect, there is even less debate over the general principles of American foreign policy than during the Vietnam era. In those days, opponents of the war insisted that not just President Richard Nixon was rotten but that the "system" was rotten. They did not just reject the Vietnam War, they rejected the whole containment strategy of Dean Acheson and Harry Truman, which, they rightly claimed, helped produce the intervention in the first place. They rejected the idea that the United States could be a benevolent force in the world.

Today Democrats insist that the United States will be such a force as soon as George W. Bush leaves office. Although they pretend they have a fundamental doctrinal dispute with the Bush administration, their recommendations are less far-reaching. They argue that the United States should generally try to be nicer, employ more "soft power" and be more effective when it employs "hard power." That may be good advice, but it hardly qualifies as an alternative doctrine.
Many around the world will thrill at the defeat of Republicans next week. They should enjoy the moment while they can. When the smoke clears, they will find themselves dealing with much the same America, with all its virtues and all its flaws.”

War’s puppet here can display his tone of preening certainty because he knows the props and devises of court society. It is a society surrounded, on every side, by the prosperity brought on by war system. The harms are all out in the beyond, which is a place tv cameras roam for the odd freak footage.
...

Which brings me to what I was going to write in this post, and which I just wrote, part of, to our far flung correspondent, Mr. T. in NYC. A little personal reminiscence from the fumes of last night:

… Last night, I went to see Maidstone, that rarely seen Norman Mailer film. Which was great - it was funny, Mailer was in his prime asshole decade, the misogyny was over the top, and the way he kept taking the piss out of people, just begging for some hitback, and the end of the film, which is famous, lived up to its sheer... weirdness. Rip Torn tries to kill Mailer in front of his family with a hammer. Or at least flails away at him, drawing some blood and much wrestling – with Mailer sincerely trying to save his head. I saw this with my friend A., who doesn’t love Mailer – but I do. I long for that spirit to be set lose in the U.S. again. That is, the spirit of testing oneself, instead of immediately responding to vulnerability by seeking absolute cures: gated communities, ever more technically advanced militaries, ever fewer rights, ever creeping encroachments on what we do by the Polizei.

And then I went to the continental club and listened to James McMurtry. Anyway, dancing and hopping away to McMurtry, and seeing the usual UT undergrads there, so damn and briefly happy, such plausible lovely girls, such awkward guys, and the stuffed milk fed sports bodies raising their beers every time McMurtry mentioned the joy of shooting guns, drinking beer, or the state of his hardon, I started thinking about the ice cream we live in and how I just fail to enjoy it - in fact, under all that ice cream, I feel there is an apocalypse, that the structures are falling in very, very slow motion. And so all our personal agonies all seem to dissolve in sugars – but the sugars, I think, really mirror the agonies, they don’t destroy them. They will crystalize later - or so some daemon tells me.

And I wondered if this is just because I'm mildly deranged.

And then I got home and decided that it didn't matter, since the apocalypse under the ice cream is my subject, God fuckin' damn it.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm sure it is.

I made a Franco-Dutch (Utrecht) Halloween Cake and will now eat a piece of your apocalypse. You know how I luv to go a-sight-seein'...

Roger Gathmann said...

Mr. NYP! I was afraid you'd been shanghaied by some evil minded band of tricker treaters!

So, did you have a good Halloween? Or do you prefer the Day of the Dead?

Anonymous said...

Well, I nearly was on All Saints' Day (yesterday, but I didn't remember it till today), but had had a most poignant Halloween, which I usually don't pay any attention to. Now today is All Souls' Day, and I finally got a library copy of the Suskind, which I feel I must superstitiously read all of this weekend. These 'hot books' ought to be read all the way through, I've finally found; just hearing about them and their big-ticket items is not quite enough. Also, thanks for recommending the other DeLillo, I've now done 'Underworld,' 'Libra,' 'White Noise', 'The Body Artist', and 'Cosmopolis.' Will soon have 'Mao II.' Great writer, no question. Speaking of Mailer, have decided to do some of that too, starting with 'Deer Park.' I don't think I care to read that long Arabian thing or Bible thing or whatever it was. Hope all is well. I caught one mouse today and saw another, the vulgar bitch--had the never to come and stare around the computer. I bought 12 traps but non-speciesists exists in this here building, and of course I'd call the Law, but they won't do anything about unsanitary habits.

Anonymous said...

Oh, shit, I just saw this bit from the Limbaugh lunacy. This is the kind of thing the Bush Idiot does that is inimitable:

Asked about China, Bush test-drove a new talking point. It crashed: "One great opportunity for China, Rush, is to encourage China to develop a society in which there are savers. In other words, a society in which there's a pension plan. Let me rephrase that: a society in which there's consumer because now there's a society of too many savers."

That kind of illiteracy is really asking too much of everybody, and it proves a lot more than it seems to.

Anonymous said...

How about this for Wormwood, Ice Cream, Stud, Preacher, Amphetamine, Sex, Lies and Voice Mail!

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/03/us/03minister.html?ref=us

Republican Megachurch Homo Caught at Fellatio and Sodomy and Forced to Curtail all Habits!

Finally, poetic justice for the Christian Right's advocacy of Bad Sex!

Roger Gathmann said...

Mr. NYP, reminds me of the preacher at the Southern Baptist Church I went to when I was a kid. The man was a jowl fiesta - and a terrible preacher, as I would gleefully point out each Sunday. Even at 10, I was a budding critic.

Well, Mr. Jowls was caught squeezin' the Charmins in the vegetable section of the local grocery store one afternoon, and then his history of gross gropings unraveled, tittilating the neighborhood and leading to his fall from heaven - except, unlike Lucifer, no retirement benefits for him. It was hard on his daughter, who I felt sorry for - and as for his punk son, I think was good for the kid - relieved him of guilt as he went full time into selling coke. Or whatever.

Where would the American gothic be without the perverse preacher?

Roger Gathmann said...

PS - I just read about the Reverend Haggard. An admirable man getting a bum rap. As he said, he's been steady with his wife. He knows the poor woman doesn't want to ride the lo-down under his big log, so, using Exodus 21:3 as his spiritual guide ("Hie the to the serving boy with cutest, pinkest, most slappable cheeks and plow him righteously so that thou mayest enjoy thy wife's fruit salad in the comfort of all thy days, and so be blessed") he just outsourced his bestial pleasures and saved the little woman some of the fuss and clean up. I mean, if he really has a 30 million member extended congregation, I'm thinking the wife is in the fuckin' kitchen all day, cooking for the deacon suppers. Poor thing. When you are a man of god with a nice meth highball slowly burning in your heart, you have consideration for these factors.

Actually, though, I've never heard of fuckin' Ted Haggard. Although he does have a great name.

Anonymous said...

Roger--he was in the famous Harper's May 2005 article, called 'Soldier's of christ'. Here's quickly what I posted at Lenin's Tomb, so that you see a little bit more:

The following is from the famous May 2005 article on the biggest megachurch in America (in Colorado Springs), and has to do with a sideline of neocon morality:
‘Pastor Ted, who talks to President George W. Bush or his advisers every Monday, is a handsome forty-eight-year-old Indianan, most comfortable in denim. He likes to say that his only disagreement with the President is automotive; Bush drives a Ford pickup, whereas Pastor Ted loves his Chevy. In addition to New Life, Pastor Ted presides over the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), whose 45,000 churches and 30 million believers make up the nation's most powerful religious lobbying group, and also over a smaller network of his own creation, the Association of Life-Giving Churches, 300 or so congregations modeled on New Life's “free market” approach to the divine.
Pastor Ted will serve as NAE president for as long as the movement is pleased with him, and as long as Pastor Ted is its president the NAE will make its headquarters in Colorado Springs.’
Now he has been caught snorting methamphetamine before fellating hunky male prostitute!
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/0...ter.html? ref=us
That gross megachurch is just the right place for the inscrutable obscure object of desire to call attention to itself in a meaningful way. Scandals for hypocritical homos on the Christian Right is good news, because—on ‘campaign trail’--Bush has been trying to fuck up the election by saying marriage (as opposed to new New Jersey legalisms) is just between a man and a woman—and Pastor Ted is still claiming to agree with him! His poor wife had to speak to an audience of 14,000 to tell them that there was an investigation of the allegations. Is this good or what? I personally think Pastor Ted and Mr. Bush may now be forced to disagree on something besides Redneck Cars.
Patrick | 3 Nov, 16:11 | #

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From AP report:

'After Massachusetts legalized gay marriage in 2004, Haggard and others began organizing state-by-state opposition. Last year, Haggard and officials from the nearby Christian ministry Focus on the Family announced plans to push Colorado's gay marriage ban for the 2006 ballot.'

I wonder if the 'spiritual guidance' he is going to look for will include suicide. There's not that much career left when things coalesce so beautifully.
Patrick | 3 Nov, 16:21 | #

Roger Gathmann said...

Mr. NYP, you are being a bit hasty. It turns out that Mr. Haggard just bought the drugs and threw them out, and that he got a nice backrub, nothing more. So he's simply your average drug voyeur - a growing fad! with confused ideas about massage. For instance, instead of looking under "massage" in the yellow pages, he looks under "male prostitute". Anybody could make that mistake. He's just a crazy Christian who gets all confused in the big city.

He also confessed to peeping at heroin, ecstasy, crack and magic mushrooms. I gotta give him credit for coming up with excuses like these. My gut feeling is that he is going to be our next secretary of defense.

Anonymous said...

Roger--I think this has half of the original article in Harper's in case it's still worth it to know what he was like before he came out as a drug and peenie watcher...

http://www.harpers.org/SoldiersOfChrist-20061103288348488.html

Roger Gathmann said...

Mr. NYP, I shouldn't really bother with things like Monsieur Haggard and his hide and seek attitude towards his libido, but somehow, scandals with preachers bring out the worst in people. So I cruised around the blogs looking for comments, and I came across a truly delicious blog of evangelical preachers, TheResurgence, in which lessons were drawn from the meth-n-massage scandal. This was my favorite:

"Most pastors I know do not have satisfying, free, sexual conversations and liberties with their wives. At the risk of being even more widely despised than I currently am, I will lean over the plate and take one for the team on this. It is not uncommon to meet pastors’ wives who really let themselves go; they sometimes feel that because their husband is a pastor, he is therefore trapped into fidelity, which gives them cause for laziness. A wife who lets herself go and is not sexually available to her husband in the ways that the Song of Songs is so frank about is not responsible for her husband’s sin, but she may not be helping him either."

Goll damn! If they ain't fixin themselves all pretty, how can we blame their husbands from going to the first sexually available cute guy they meet in one of them there conventions!

So, you see, the preachers have zeroed in on the problem. I hope this puts your mind at rest.

Anonymous said...

I'm pleased to see that evangelicals continue to see clearly the real root of all evil in the world: disobedient women! Just like that Iman in Australia who colorfully compared unveiled women to meat left out in the open. Meaaaaaatttttt. So tempting. How can any cat, errrr...male resist.

The battle between Islam and Christianity-it's like all intrafamily squabbles between what are in effect fraternal twins.

Roger Gathmann said...

Yeah, that theresurgence comment is so utterly bizarre that it fascinates -do evangelical preachers really think getting a woody for your male prostitute masseuse has to do with your wife not putting out?

Jesus wept.

From the Holodomor to Gaza: NYT softfocuses on famine - the spirit of Walter Duranty lives!

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