Velociworld

Breaking Silence

To honor a great man on the anniversary of his death. Andrew Breitbart was the man, the person, we all thought we were, until he proved us otherwise. We muttered, he acted. We blathered, he produced. He seemed so invincible I still cannot accept it.

We are all Breitbart. If we choose to be.

Fearing an Executive Outcome

I had a strange sales lead today. A fellow I shall call Mr. X, for the sake of propriety. His company was noted as Executive Outcomes. Based in a small town in Texas, lest I impart too much information.

Executive Outcomes, if you will recall, was the notorious South African mercenary outfit who participated in some rather strident work in Angola and Sierra Leone, among other places. Ex-soldiers out of a job after apartheid ended. I can't speak for them or their work, other than to say they ultimately dissolved in 1998 under some intense international scrutiny.

And yet I have this guy's name and phone number on my desk. A distinctly Boer name. So I gave him a ring. He answered on the first ring with a gruff "What?" I introduced myself and stated the nature of my business. "You got the wrong place," he muttered, and hung up. I didn't even get to explain the incredible benefits of IP telephony.

Now this is consuming me. I'm going to call him back in two weeks with a completely different sales pitch. How's business? Hiring? How are the accommodations? I don't like bed lice. Is your next patron black or white? Corporate security or palace assault? Just curious.

I always block my number before a phone call. I don't think he can find me. But I reckon he just might, and I'd rather reach out and flunk an interview than check under my hood for the next three months. I stirred a fucking bloodletting Afrikaaner. Hiding in Texas. What are the odds?

The first thing I need to do is find out who slipped this my way. Because that ain't too cool.

The Line In The Sand

I'm not certain Obama is serious with his gun control initiative. It could be mere posturing, the eternal electioneering to appease his rabid base. On the other hand, he seems to believe he is a darchangel of sorts. He believes the stroke of his pen is of a covenant with his god. Whoever that Beelzebub is.

300 million guns. 100 million owners. Roughly. A third of the nation owns guns. And the Constitution did not admit a natural right to them for the purposes of shooting bunnies and squirrels. It is for the more stringent task of shooting tyrants, wherever they raise their heads. That's the whole point.

Does this guy think he can make 33 percent of the country criminals with a stroke of the pen? Well, he has extraconstitutional czars, signing statements, executive orders, and appointments without Senate advice and consent with no blowback. Why not? FDR drank four martinis and decided to see if he could pack the Supreme Court. Why wouldn't this guy mainline a bit of narcissism and see where it takes him? Even a failure brings no rebuke. Just a minor setback. He'll try again.

Dangerous times. This bastard reeks of Huey Long, and Hugo Chavez. I smell the sulphur.

Fortunately I am living in straitened times, and was forced to sell my weapons. In the parking lot at a gun show. To strangers. I now abide with a Louisville Slugger and a Lester Maddox pick axe handle he gave me in 1976. To the other hundred millions of you out there who do not wish to become a criminal upon the autopen stroke of a choom head I recommend an underground hidey hole. Throw some silver coins in there. Canned beans. A stripper if you must.

Because a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Wherein I Get My Comeuppance

I made a casual reference to Lobster Boy in a post 10 years ago. True to form, I finally received a comment from the sister of the then 17-year-old hitman Lobster Boy's family hired to whack him. I never mentioned Grady's murder, or the $1500 hitman, but what the hey. I suppose I am the enemy. From yet another Cohort of Crazy. I normally don't recycle comments, but here you go, without further comment:

This is my brother we are talking about here!Instead of commenting on something that happened in 1992 to a man that his own family wanted dead and his own daughter was happy when this happened Comment on a someone who really deserves the harsh comments! As for His story you have not heard!He was a young and dumb kid .He was 17 when he done it but this was planned.He Just turned 17 I speak to him every friday and he will be well off when he gets out!As for his up bringing how do u know i never even heard of you?He has no idea who the hell you are! We grew up poor and with a single mom so yea 2500 was alot of money then to a 16 almost 17yr old Dumb people do it everyday for free even older this dumb teenager!I had that "hard up bringing"and I am well off !As for Chris he has been there for 16yr this Nov and he will be out soon!I love you big bro see you soon!

Actually, I will comment further. I feel bad this kid did 20 years or whatever for shooting Lobster Boy. By my mysterious abacus killing a no good son of a bitch is an 18 month stint. Mostly to teach you a trade other than killin'. Say, rapin'. But as Johnny Mathis tells me in my dreams... it's not for me to say.

Fightin' Words

There's an interesting post at Ace's by @rdbrewer4 about the culpability of the media in not only sensationalizing mass murder, but in fomenting further such acts:

Should there be some rough ethical/professional guideline for the coverage of mass murders? Of course CNN and other news outlets are aware that panic and infamy are what many of these mass murderers want and that there is a good chance the next killer is making a mental note right now, "Here is how I can get on TV." But it appears the immediate opportunity to score political points outweighs the risk they might be encouraging another mass killing--an act they would undoubtedly view as causally remote anyway.

Very interesting. I've been mulling this myself. I obviously believe in a free, vibrant press. It is the most important right we have. Followed only by the right to bear arms, I might add. I didn't enumerate them, I just happen to agree with the numbering system. But does a corporatist media that no longer operates as a check on government, but more as a cabal of unofficial Democratic Party organs deserve such protections? A fascinating question. And before you go all goatse on me, remember what Angel Eyes told that whore Maria in The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly: I'm asking the questions here.

And they are questions. Just as I respect your need to be a questioning bisexual, you should respect my need to question exactly what function the modern media is performing these days. Are they honest purveyors, seeking to enlighten us, speaking truth to power, afflicting the comfortable? Or are they organs of the state? Izvestia, Pravda, Granma? They are certainly righteous burrowers when the wrong party is in power. Otherwise they are compliant little Bolsheviks, I think. Labeling everyone they find distasteful a kulak.

Jumping the rails a bit there, but to the meat of the matter: I'm thinking of Oliver Wendell Holmes' classic opinion for a unanimous Court in Schenck v. United States in 1919. I'm not a big fan of Holmes' for many reasons ("three generations of imbeciles are enough!"), but on second thought perhaps the Kennedys should, after all, be sterilized.

Anywhats, Holmes, in decrying anti-war leaflets, of all things, felt that certain speech, when pushing false claims in times of national emergency, created a "clear and present danger," and were thus not protected under the First Amendment. His criterion was rather strict: the speech must be patently false. This opinion was of course modified in 1969 in Brandenburg v. Ohio, which stipulated the speech must be likely to invite imminent lawless action. You know, like when union thugs beat up peaceful demonstrators.

My point, should I ever meander to it, is that the "free press" are no longer that thing, that entity, exposing the powerful as they exploit they helpless. Rather, they are the critical component in a fascist, corporatist criminal syndicate, allied with but one political entity, and use the power of their supposed neutrality to wage war upon those not of a like political bent.

One might posit that it's all just news, and blood leads, and they are merely performing their capitalist fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders. And this is true to a point. But the wicket gets sticky here. The bias is palpable. One could suck it like a juicy peach. I won't bother with small examples, because the enterprise is too huge. But for a small example: Tim Scott, a black Republican, has been appointed by Nikki Haley, an Indian female GOP governor, to be the only black Senator. And the first from the south since Reconstruction. Now the GOP has more minorities in the Senate than the Democrats. Does this uplifting story get any traction in the media? No. He is called an Uncle Tom on MSNBC. And worse. Fact: there are more minority GOP governors than Democrat governors. Republicans look at African-Americans like Tim Scott and see a future leader. Democrats merely see another nigra vote, lost.

This is all by way of setting up the gist: the exploitation of mass murders by the media to lie, and falsely cry "Fire!" in a crowded theater, to forward their politcal agenda. When you call semi-automatic weapons, a mainstay of civilian hunting and sports activities, "automatic weapons," you are engaging in a knowing lie. When you call them "assault weapons" you are engaging in a knowing lie. You are attempting to whip the populace into a frenzy, you are fomenting hysteria amongst the people, you are creating the next wave of copycat killers, you are knowingly engaging in creating a "clear and present danger." It is your only goal. Your only desire.

When you lie about the name of the killer, and lie about the fact that he used pistols, not an "assault weapon," are you not engaging in treasonous activity? Even by Brandenburg standards you are fomenting a mob.

Again, I'm just throwing this out there. I don't know the legal answers. And it's a damned shame Bob Bork just died. I would like to know his take. He being another innocent civilian rough-housed by the stiff-arm political vanguard of the Party of Power. And most especially by corrupt plagiarists like Joe Biden and Ted Kennedy, neither of whom could carry Robert Bork's briefcase in an arena of honor.

In the olden days tribes would send a single warrior out to do combat, and decide a battle without extreme loss of life. I submit we send Soledad O'Brien to the Taliban. She exemplifies our liberal mindset, after all. She, after all, would posit anything a man can do she can do better. And she don't like guns, so she can use her powerful moral suasion. Then, and only then, will I feel the media follows the diktats they erect for the rest of us. Then, will I capitulate. You say you want a revolution? Don't you know that you can count me in.

Update: Lest anyone think I am seriously calling for treason trials for our less-than-honorable media types, replete with guillotines erected in, say, Dupont Circle, don't be an ass. I would, however, like to try them for fraud in civil court. And bleed them dry monetarily. What little cash they have left. I might give it to the Girl Scouts, but I'd probably give it to the Koch brothers.

Monster

What transpired in Newtown, Connecticut today beggars belief. I've been through Newtown as a college student, and Norman Rockwell could not have painted a more exquisite little hamlet. But this would be a howling tragedy in Compton, or Detroit, as well. Slaughtering toddlers, children, is so especially heinous as to cause all of us to take a moment, and grieve for our imperfect species. History is replete with our ability, and often our tendency, to be monsters. But to shoot one's mother in the face, and then slaughter her kindergarten class? I don't know what to say about that.

Forget the political poseurs. They will be, and are, raising their needy heads. I have no desire to enter the fray of gun-free-zones versus heat-packing librarians. I've eaten herring before, and did not particularly care for it.

What we do have, however, is a seriously psychotic individual acting out a rage that is incomprehensible to the vast majority of us. Shooting toddlers. Someone, somewhere, brought this upon this village. I find it inconceivable that this fellow awakened this morning and thought for the first time Today is the day I go berserker.

Again, I do not see this as a gun issue. It is a crazy people issue. I have no facts, I am intuiting here, but I would wager this young fiend, who is by various descriptions autistic, Asbergian, schizophrenic, has a well-documented history of aberrant, dangerous behavior. I am by no means casting aspersions on the autistic. I have friends with autistic children. It is a heart-rending challenge, but it is by no means this. This is something else entirely.

No, there are some dead kittens quietly buried, some violently aggressive behaviors salted away, some red flags screaming Institutionalize this young man! that we, as family members, as community members, are often too loathe to do. We are historically a nation of fixers. We think we can fix that bad hatchling. Also, of late, we are a nation of cringers. We cannot summon the spine to do what sometimes must be done. We have deinstitutionalized every mentally ill person in the nation, to prowl the streets and haunt our commutes. To defecate in our common areas, and terrify our children. Our sense of compassion is noble, but most certainly displaced.

I'm not so much a believer in Good and Evil as I am in Biology. Mother Nature often gives birth to some troublesome mistakes. If you don't believe me visit a Ripley's museum. It's relatively easy to repair a cleft palate. It's not so easy to fix cleft souls. They are harder to detect, and as impossible as quicksilver to get one's hands on. But they indicate, as the medicos say. The flags go up. The shots are sent with regularity across the bow. The question is how do we deal with these indicators as a society?

We are often mocked in the South for locking our crazy aunts in the attic. My family didn't, but I can think of one or two who should have been. There's a good reason you lock the crazy aunt in the attic. I would posit there's a good reason that crazy half uncle never returned from that hunting excursion. If I'm a rancher and my cow gives birth to a two-headed calf I'll either 1) parade it around for money or 2) asphyxiate it. I'm not going to leave it with the herd and pretend it's okay. Because it's not. It's eventually going to kill itself because the one body struggles with satisfying two competing brains. It's cruel to treat it normally.

I figure this Lanza fellow was like that calf. Mom and Dad certainly couldn't parade his abnormalities around for money, but they refused to institutionalize him. And eventually those two minds had had enough. Tough love is a hard thing. I'm glad I've never had to make such choices. I would probably flagellate myself senseless if I institutionalized my child. But I'd sleep like a baby compared to what I would feel if my child had done this thing we witnessed today. That, of course, is assuming I wasn't the first one killed, like Mom.

Frank and Dorothy

Just to provide a bit of clarification for the nota bene from my previous post. The most exciting five minutes you'll spend tonight.

The Malignancy Spreads

It seems Danish tennis star Caroline Wozniacki had the temerity to mock the rather audacious physical qualities of Serena Williams at a recent exhibition match by stuffing her sports bra and whatever those splendid underthings are called. Witnesseth the awesome:

Yes, I left that extra large for you. Now she is being accused of racism by the usual cabal of nomenklatura who exist only to feed parasitically off the misguided guilt of the tattered remants of western civilization.

What did I see? A girl having devilish sport with an adversary. Mocking, and yet in a way praising, Serena's rather splendiferous attributes. (Nota bene: I would hit Serena Williams like Frank Booth on Dorothy Valens). So Caroline is having fun with Serena's body. Not her melanin content. Yet she is a racist.

This is utter, craven bullshit of the highest order, and I have had enough. I personally reserve the right to mock anyone, on any issue I choose, and if you choose to take offense I truly do not care. I don't care what your one-drop count is, or if you embrace anal sodomy, or if you worship a paedopheliac butcher. I'm going to mock you. Just as I mock my own cracker brethren. This is called humor, and it is the safety valve of over-pressurized societies.

You don't get a pass from me. There is no Get Out of the Bath House Free card. There is no Fear of Fatwah card. There is no indolent reparations bullshit card that will ever sway me. You? You? You were born to be mocked. We all are. Get over yourselves. You are all Scut Farkus, long overdue for a punch in your damned noses.

Here's a novel idea: grow a spine, and some dignity to accompany it. You might also engage in some interval training, because I'm on to you, and I'm after you. Better still, let us sit down for a game of chance. I have a nice, fresh deck of cards here. It doesn't have a race card, it doesn't have a queer card, it doesn't have a naked 9-year-old wife card. Odds are I will beat you at chance, and I will beat you at reason. I will chase you down in the woods with my ancient heart if necessary, and beat you there. Senseless. With a bootful of your sodden ideas.

Having bared my soul, I must say as addendum the extraordinary Ms. Wozniacki might question that Danish heritage. Lech Welesa just texted me, and claimed her.

Tora! Tora! Tora!

I mentioned Pearl Harbor Day to some coworkers today. Most had no real idea what I was talking about. Hipsters. They know pearl necklaces, they don't know Pearl Harbor. Well it was a perfidious thing, I said, and they dutifully Googled "perfidious."

This got me to thinking again about what the Senator had done in the Big One. I don't know, precisely. No one will. That generation wore their PTSD on their livers instead of their sleeves. Not saying that's better, it just is what it was. I know this:

He shaved four months off his age and enlisted two months before graduating high school. After basic he ended up in an intelligence company based in Gander, Newfoundland. But first he went to jump school at Ft. Benning. Because he was going to be jumping into Greenland.

I found 82nd Airborne patches in his military stash after he died. My best guess is he was embedded with an 82nd class at Benning. Pretended to be 82nd for his ultimate billet. Because as far as I know Benning was (is?) the only jump school. But what records I have do not indicate he was ever an All-American.

What he did was jump into Greenland at intervals and knock out German weather stations. Radio shacks. Greenland was by international convention neutral territory during WWII. But the Nazis needed weather stations as far west as possible for the U-boat wolfpacks, and they weren't going to be building them in Anne of Green Gables' backyard. Hence Greenland. It was remote, isolated, a few hours west of Norway. They weren't supposed to be there, and neither were we. But he told us he hunted them down.

He never mentioned killing anyone. Only that the first German he saw was when he crested a snow drift and came face to face with a Kraut about his age. 18. They sized each other up, and both slowly backed away. The mutual unspoken agreement was we never saw each other, and we're both pissing ourselves in fear. This extremely rational meeting of the minds was interrupted when the Senator's sergeant crested the snow drift, and blasted the kid.

From there I only heard vague tales of grenading radio shacks and shooting polar bears. The bears were shot to feed the dogsled teams. The dogs had real meat. Because they were more valuable than the GIs. The soldiers had canned reserve rations stamped 1917. They fed the bear to the dogs, they ate the dog food, and they tossed the reserve rations. Circle of life.

After a year of this glorious living the Senator was sent to Officer Candidate School. Back to Benning. I'm not sure how a 19-year-old high school drop-out with a year of service earned a slot at OCS. Some college grad boy, or some long-time veteran, perhaps, got screwed. In the middle of an existential death struggle. I can only surmise a drop-out gets bumped to the head of the class for doing very special things. And in Greenland that could only mean killin'. And I don't mean polar bears.

To pu this in perspective, my father's older brother, with two exemplary years in the Army Air Corps, had only risen to the rank of PFC. And by all accounts Uncle Bob was a hoss.

At any rate, Pearl Harbor Day is the day Americans shot their cuffs, hiked their britches, snapped their suspenders, and decided to rule the world. The day before we were isolationist goobers. Half-starved sweet potato gnawers, vendors of wormholed apples. The day after we were a mighty juggernaut in the making. Builders of battleships and tanks and aeroplanes, slaughterers of livestock, creators of steel and aluminium. We planted Victory gardens in our backyards, and bayonets in the bad guys' bellies. We were never the same people again.

To close, the Senator never saw a Japanese person until he was a JAG officer in Tokyo during the Korean War. At that point, five years after the war, they were still a starving, scavenging, pathetic race of people. Much as we were in 1940. His letters home indicate no malice toward the Japanese at that point. A certain sadness, mos def.

When you've seen enough, I suppose you've seen enough.

Snot is the New Spoor

I've been noticing something for a few years. In general, the willingness of women to degrade themselves. Through illegitimate whelps to wretched body art to piercings to, finally, a rather boastful obesity that I never saw in my youth. Women have become, quite literally, pigs. Enormous, tattooed, uncouth pigs.

It's all attention-grabbing, of course. Which is what feminine wiles have been since time immemorial. But now it is to seek each others' attention. Women don't need men anymore, anyhows. Except for perverted Uncle Sam. No, they attention-grab for each others' attention. As someone who has been in work environments more female than male for the last four years I am astonished at the covens of vulgarity around me. It is repulsive.

But please allow me to explore one tiny area that disaffects my soul: the common sneeze. Now, I'm embarrassed to sneeze in public. And I always carry a handkerchief. Because: diseases, damn it. For the majority of my life if you sneezed in public you at least covered your offending nostrils, so as not to infect your fellowman.

Women now seem to take great relish in unprotected sneezing. It is boorish behavior. And the worst of it is the sounds. When a man sneezes one hears something akin to an Atchoo! When a female sneezes these days one is inundated with all manner of horrid screechings, shrieks, yelps, howls, barks, squeals, and ululations. All without benefit of hankie, all without shame.

I know what this is. They are marking their territory. Each female must out-bark the other's sneeze. Not marking territory for a man. They don't need a man. There is always some guy, no matter how far down the food chain, who will fuck them. Dirty Uncle Sam will fix all the other problems, such as the aforementioned whelps. No, they are establishing their own pecking order. One that is built upon outdisgusting the other females. I honestly think their heirarchy is built upon the size of their respective muffin-tops and chunkrolls.

I don't want your snot, and I don't want your cooties. Here's a little advice: it's a damned sneeze, ladies. Be mindful of the fact you may sneeze, have a kerchief handy, and show some decorum. It's a fucking sneeze, ladies. You aren't giving birth. Control yourselves. No barking like a dog to outbark your buddy. No high-pitched shrieks designed to make you the center of attention. For my attitude is like Reverend Wright's: Not God Bless You, but God Damn You! Take your Ebola elsewhere.

I realize I am painting with a rather broad brush here, but I ask you to notice the impudence and lack of hygiene the next time a woman sneezes. It is a rancid little microcosm of the complete defeminization of the distaff side of humanity. Something the male half has tolerated, I may add.

I for one am boycotting ink and chunkrolls going forward. A small gesture, to be sure. But one may as well start somewhere. I'm also wearing a SARS mask to work. Because fat girls outfarting each other is right around the corner.