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Evil - for dummies

What you do is you start a bank, then by sleight of hand you convince everyone that while you only have 10 units of coin in your coffers y...

Saturday, September 27, 2008

panic

This whole bail-out is a goddam fraud. We’re being conned, Lui. We’re being taken for a fucking ride. We’re getting screwed with our hands tied. This is a country-wide gang rape. We’re getting butt f-

I got it Brendan, I got it. But then he went on about the consolidation of finance, about the tri-lateral commission, about the banking elite engineering bubbles and panics so they can swoop down like vultures and pick out the juiciest bits while the assembled dumbasses of the world are corralled in a pen of bewilderment. That would be us, the supposed dumbasses, the guys who don’t know a security from an interest rate, who think Goldman Sachs is a department store and Ben Bernanke a brand of ice cream. When I mentioned that all this smacks of conspiracy theory, every muscle in his body spasmed and he retorted, they sold fucking "krokets" to the entire world and called them t-bone steaks, Lui, don’t tell me about conspiracy theory. (A kroket is Dutch, it's all the ugliest pork and beef offal –innards, eyeballs, brain, spine – ground up into a revolting goulash and then packaged in a neat little schnitzel that costs practically nothing).

I had to give it to him, you got a point Bren.

Then he went on: And now I have to watch the secretary of the treasury and the chairman of the federal reserve prostrate on the floor of the congress, begging nakedly for 700 billion dollars to "fix" (with his fingers) the friggin mess their own friends engineered. That’s 700 thousand MILLION, Lui, that’s ASTRONOMICAL, that’s like Alaska in dollar bills.

Ok, ok, Bren I got it... just cool it with the all homo-erotic stuff.

But it wasn't just Brendan. Yesterday Goni showed me a small coffer filled with gold coins, and in her closet a piece of luggage, packed, ready to go. Just in case. Just in case what? I asked her, where are you gonna go? but she couldn’t answer. She had no idea, she just mumbled... the economic crisis... it’ll cripple us... send us back to the stone age... remember recent history. She’s Jewish, it’s understandable. But I xerox for a living, I staple stacks of papers together, I file and plastify, I follow orders, bring coffee and eat sandwiches for lunch. Hurtle me back to the stone age and I may be better off. I’ll till the land, eat cabbage and red beet, and love women with wide hips.

I'm an optimist.

I end in verse,

Beam me to Belaruse,
Give me an ox and a plow
And let those vulture loose.

Friday, September 19, 2008

on the moon

The world is fantastical. A torture-strained septuagenarian and the Governor of Grizzlies are rising to the pinnacle of power. The global economy is a pyramid scheme about to collapse. And the weather, once predictable, has become a dysfunctional family of poltergeists. This world makes even a Croat blush. Opportunism, cronyism, staged wars, backroom deals and fat oligarchs sheltering millions in pickled sharks and other installations, artistic or otherwise. I laugh at this world, HA HA HA HA, I sit on the moon in a crater and I laugh HA HA HA HA until reflux reminds me of the moonburger I ate at noon, and then I stop, but I’m lovin’ it, so I’m laughin’ anyway HA HA HA HA. This is giant. This is comedy of the greatest, grandest order! And then I think of the Dark Knight, what he would have done in this riddled, counter-riddled, convoluted story of spiritual doom, meteorological cataclysm and economic meltdown; would he have been honorable and hyper-complex, would he’ve died, then resurged with bigger guns, would he’ve struck at the core of this maze-of-a-plot, at the control centre where heads of state and financial shadow-men pull strings and sip on $100 espressos. And that’s when I remembered that the Dark Knight netted the equivalent of Kenya’s GDP, and that it kept whole nations in its moronic, bullet-strewn trance and I roll with laughter until moon-dust covers me head to toe.

But do you not grieve for the downtrodden, Lui? Do you not feel for them?

"The downtrodden”!!! HA HA HA HA. “The downtrodden” laugh and play cards on the curbs of Port-au-Prince, too poor to buy toxic baby milk from China, too busted up to worry about THE PLOT. And the one dollar they hold in their hand will be, as one guy said, “birdcage lining” sooner rather than later. So no, I don’t. They can trade chickens for bread. We can’t.
And no, Mrs. Palin, I will not write Lui is an impertinent little spoilsport a thousand times. You’ll have to come and make me, but since you only got your passport last year, the moon may be too exotic for a first destination. And to Barack I say, you are a well-spoken man, and intelligent beyond your years. But tell me, tell me really.. who do you love Barack?? And then he looks at me intelligently and he says, it's WHOM do you love, Lui, WHOM . And I laugh a big laugh from deep inside my gut until moon dust rises up all around me in a haze like the teleportation-halo that brought me here in the first place. And then I settle down again in my crater and take a big slurp from my gallon of Coke and look down to watch the advancing hurricane… Gustave, Ike, Jeronimo… tell me, I lost track.

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Bee Labas

Bee’s here!! I scarcely believe it. It’s been more than 5 years! My sister Bee! She flew in from LA this morning. Long hoped for. Then half expected. But definitely last minute. This is great. This is doubly great. This is greater than great.
I picked her up at Schiphol this morning. She skipped into the arrivals hall, trolley case in tow, with her halo of frizzy hair and her golden league jacket wrapped around her waist. LUI, she shouted like a skinny space-bird and then she skipped onward to greet her glowing brother. This is great. This is doubly great. She’s great. . Lui and Bee. Brother and sister. Once inseparable. Sometimes good. Sometimes bad. The bald spot on the back of my head is from a rake she combed my hair with when I was ten. But her greatness is galactic, so I forgave her.
She’s staying in the guest room. It’s small, but so is she. Brendan’s still injured, stretched out on his back from his carnal experiments with Katrina. Note: I take this as a gesture from God. There is no doubt he would have hit on my sister one way or the other - feel this tricep, go ‘head , go ‘head – and then there is no doubt that that would be the last muscle he flexed for the rest of his life. Quiet Croat turns vengeful, knife-wielding Sicilian.
But in truth, Bee needs no assistance at all. She’s all tap-dance, waffles and feta-cheese, when all’s well, but if you cross the line (the lion, as she says) that’s it. It’s over. First the eye-venom (figurative as yet, but who knows how that will evolve.. ) then the projectile-to-crotch: flip-flop, sandal, clog, wristwatch – and her aim is frightening. You stand no chance.
Bee’s galactic– intergalactic – she’s on loan from a better place, a place gold-laced and light-footed. I would take ten more bald spots to the head just to have her here a little longer.