(EDIT [July 10]: It just occurred to me that this story is also uncannily similar to the ancient Egyptian Tale of Two Brothers, from the 13th century BC. Seriously, read the synopsis [or read the entire story, or, for all you "traduttore, traditore" types, here's the original Late Egyptian]. According to Robert Coover, the Tale of Two Brothers is basically about male castration anxiety. So there you have it: Keanu von Fagerström unwittingly proves Freud’s theories.)

Chow-Snork Cunthrob

Once upon a time, Chow-Snork was wandering the woods which surrounded his home. His home was among a small tribe of 60 or so Pixies. It was a quiet and slow-paced life. The tribe was governed by a hierarchy of elders, central among which was the patriarch, Henry-Humphrey. While on this walk he came upon an orangutan with a snake head. Chow-Snork was taken aback, as he had never encountered such a strange creature before. “Fear not!” the snake-head hissed. “I have come to give you a gift, which will show Pixies what they are meant to be.” The Orangutan Snake creature disappeared, and Chow-Snork looked all around, but he was gone. Chow then looked down and noticed a red, spotted mushroom was in his hand. Chow didn’t recall picking it up. “Was this the gift the Orangutan Snake was talking about?” he wondered.

Chow decided to take a bite of this plush and vibrant-colored truffle. It tasted much like other mushrooms, but had a unique sourness to it. “What do you have there?” a voice from behind him said. Chow-Snork Cunthrob turned to see the wife of the chief elder. “A mushroom. Would you like a bite?” he offered. “Sure,” she said, taking it from his hand and eating it. “In all my years I’ve never seen this variety before; where did you find it?” Chow-Snork didn’t expect her to believe him, and answered that he found it growing on the side of a fallen tree.

The next thing Chow-Snork recalled was waking up with a slight headache and confusion. He looked around and found himself in unfamiliar surroundings. Then a sudden stroke of panic hit him as he realized he was in the chief’s bedchambers, and the chief’s wife was asleep beside him! Chow-Snork decided to try and sneak out. He couldn’t find his clothes anywhere, and so grabbed a sheet and quietly began to sneak out. Just as he was about to go out the chamber’s window, Henry-Humphrey entered the room in a half-drunken stupor. The hearing before the elders was set for the next night. Chow-Snork appeared before all the elders, where the chief’s wife gave testimony that she didn’t know what happened, and, due to what later dripped out of her, claimed she had been raped. The elders emerged from the room of deliberation after 15 minutes to hand down their punishment:

“BANISHMENT”

“No! Please, don’t banish me. I don’t know what happened; I must have been controlled by demons.” All of Chow-Snork’s friends and family, everything he knew, was here. He couldn’t bear to have it all torn away from him. The elders whispered among themselves, and then the blue-skinned patriarch spoke: “If you are truly innocent, then God will protect you through the test.” “What test?” Chow-Snork dared to ask. “There is a mother badger who lives in the tree along the bend in the stream. If you insert your phallus into a hole in that tree for 10 minues and are unharmed, then your innocence will be proved, and you can live with us.”

Chow-Snork didn’t look forward to this test, but he knew in his heart he was innocent and believed his deity would protect him through it. All the villagers gathered around, and he inserted his phallus into a small hole in the tree. About a minute into the test, he was feeling rather confident his innocence would be proved. Then it hit him like a thousand needles shooting up his spine. Something inside the tree was throwing all the ferocity and anger of a defensive mother at his most vulnerable part. The villagers gasped, and some fainted as he retracted what was left of his genitals from the tree.

Chow-Snork was banished, and he was penisless. For many months he hid on the outskirts of his village, never getting close enough to be seen; it would surely mean his death. Yet he was close enough to hear their celebrations, to smell their BBQs when the wind was right. His frustrations and anger grew. Chow-Snork may not have been able to derive sexual pleasure anymore, but he was still able to fantasize. He fantasized about killing Henry-Humphrey and that whore seductress slut of his wife. This anger slowly grew, and one night he decided he would go through with it. He snuck in through the same window late at night while the village slept. He groped in the darkness for Humphrey’s wife and moved his two hands up to her neck. Then he choked her with all his strength; she woke up and struggled, but Henry-Humphrey slept drunk on the couch. While choking her he felt a sensation in his phantom penis. He felt arousal! By the time she had stopped struggling, he had come.

Chow-Snork snuck out as quietly as he had entered and spent the next two weeks thinking about and replaying the events of his “adventure night”. He enjoyed the evening so much he decided to do it again. This was now the only way Chow-Snork Cunthrob was able to achieve sexual pleasure. After the third killing, the villagers became vigilant. They kept lit torches and shifts. Chow-Snork decided that, for him to continue his “adventures”, he would have to find new prey, easier pickings. And so he went on to explore new lands. He sought ways to expand his power and domination over others. Over the years he learned many tricks and killed many people. Chow-Snork honed his killing techniques and abilities, and the pleasure he received from killing kept up his motivation. His thirst and lust for such adventures only increased with time.

Also gathered along Union Road were Franklin twins and storm chasers Levi and Seth Walsh, who said they were out in the thunderstorm when they heard about the fire through a Facebook update.

“It sent goosebumps through my whole body because I am a believer,” said Levi Walsh, 29. “Of all the things that could have been struck, I just think that that would be protected. … It’s something that’s not supposed to happen, Jesus burning,” he said. “I had to see it with my own eyes.”

“I can’t believe Jesus was struck,” said his brother, who noted the giant Hustler Hollywood sign for the adult store across the street was untouched. “It’s the last thing I expected to happen.”

The now-razed effigy of the White Christ was, appropriately enough, made of Styrofoam.

This is not the first time this has happened. Note that Jim Caviezel was struck by lightning not once, but twice. Presumably the first strike was out of wrath at Mel Gibson’s Jesus movie, and the second was Thor’s attempt to prevent that nauseating teratoma of a Prisoner remake. I can only attribute Caviezel’s survival and subsequent desecration of McGoohan’s legacy to the hand of Loki.

Also, what does it say about the USA that Wikipedia needs a disambiguation page for “Touchdown Jesus”?

In conclusion, St. Boniface can suck my fuckin’ dick.

So I should point out that there are a few hours left to submit public comments to the Department of Justice on the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission’s proposed standards to eliminate prison rape. You can go here and click on “submit comment” (or go to regulations.gov and search for “Docket No. OAG-131″). You can also learn more here and here.

I was almost going to write a much longer post about why rape and sexual abuse in American prisons is such an important issue — and so indicative of the barbaric sadism at the center of the American psyche, seeing as how we are the Land of the Incarcerated — but then I realized that would be kind of like writing an essay arguing against Nazi human experimentation. I shouldn’t have to convince anyone that it’s brutal and sickening, because those words have no meaning if they don’t apply to forcing someone to live in an environment where they’re violently raped and sexually humiliated on a regular basis.

But this video was too disturbing to ignore.

Now, I make no claims to being well-versed in the finer points of Jonas-Brothers-based humor (beyond jocularly mispronouncing their names with a “Y” sound, as is my comedic heritage), but I think I get this one: it’s funny because the President claims the right to order American citizens killed with no judicial process!

So I decided to come up with some other punchlines that Barack Obama might like to try out:

“Boys, don’t get any ideas. I have two words for you: Abu Ghraib. You will never see it coming.”
“Boys, don’t get any ideas. I have two words for you: penile torture. You will never see it coming.”
“Boys, don’t get any ideas. I have two words for you: Camp No. You will never see it coming.”
“Boys, don’t get any ideas. I have two words for you: forced sodomy. You will never see it coming.”

Tee hee! I look forward to a great career in White House speechwriting.

To anyone who supports the bill that just passed, ask yourself why you think any of the consumer protections in it carry any weight whatsoever, when the passage of an individual mandate with no public option means that the insurance companies are now rich enough to gut every reform that cuts into their profits.

There’s a reason (besides poor mental health) that people fall for the lies and demagoguery coming from drug-addled racists, Mansonesque Mormon alcoholics, borderline illiterate Christian jihadist ding-dongs, and the astroturfed “Tea Party” movement, and that reason is the moral bankruptcy of the “liberal” political class in this country. Obama was never for the public option: he secretly promised the for-profit hospital industry that there would be none, and went on to tell the American people he supported one. He made another backroom deal with the pharmaceutical industry to oppose allowing government to negotiate drug prices, and later lied about it.

And what do liberals do? Dennis Kucinich, the most visible exponent of leftist policies in Congress, did what he always does: he made a big show of supporting real alternatives to the corporate model, and then fell in line when it turned out that his vote might actually matter. He did the same thing during the 2008 election when he claimed to oppose any candidate who would “employ war as an instrument of foreign policy,” and then gave a speech at the Democratic Convention endorsing Obama. (Salient quote at 2:40: “The insurance companies took over healthcare! Wake up, America! The pharmaceutical companies took over drug pricing! Wake up, America!”) Kucinich, that paragon of progressivism, has no real principles. Then again, to be fair, I suppose boning leggy redheads who are half your age and twice your height is a pretty solid principle.

And Kucinich’s brand of obsequious toadying is typical of the “progressive” movement in this country. Perhaps the left opposes Obama’s platform more than the right wing ever opposed Bush’s. But that’s mostly because the Bush administration went beyond the wildest dreams of right-wing authoritarians (and libertarianism, for most Republicans, is only a rhetorical tactic anyway). On the other hand, President Jesus has betrayed just about every activist group that supported him, and yet his cult lives on:

“President Obama is stifled by a dysfunctional Congress. When he was on the campaign trail, he used the word ‘we’ a lot. He cannot do this alone. He needs our help,” she said.

So many people on the left* in this country continue to labor under the illusion that deep, deep down, Obama really agrees with them. It’s the liberal version of what Taibbi calls the peasant mentality: “You know you’re a peasant when you worship the very people who are right now, this minute, conning you and taking your shit. Whatever the master does, you’re on board.” And even those who are disappointed and disillusioned will still support Obama in 2012 when the Republicans nominate another terrifying psychotic troglodyte. Why do you think the Democrats break their promises so easily?

Fuck that. It’s fundamentally immoral, good-cop/bad-cop games notwithstanding, to support a man who carries out murderous drone attacks and is considering expanding the torture chamber at Bagram. Or to support a man who wants to further enlarge the surveillance state.

As for healthcare, all real liberals, and progressives, and libertarians, and conservatives (and basically anyone with economic views to the left of medieval European feudalism) should rally around the inevitable lawsuits challenging the individual mandate. Even if it is constitutional, it’s deeply unfair and immoral, and the government should be forced to prove its constitutionality in court.

And let’s face the facts. The hypnotic voice, uplifting rhetoric, and immaculate smile do not mean that Obama is your friend. He does not, deep deep down, really believe in the same things you do. There is no deep down with Barack Obama, any more than there is with Disney World or Bono. He’s the genial figurehead for a corporate-owned state that redistributes wealth upwards at home and murders innocents abroad. The role he’s filled so brilliantly has been to distract and pacify us with his soothing platitudes while the riot police, the overflowing prisons, and the surveillance databases kill our chances at real democracy.

*To be clear, I don’t consider myself much of a leftist, as my political views are pretty solidly in the “other” column.

For contrast, here is an example of a serious and cogent contribution to our political discourse:

WALLACE: How hard do you think President Obama would be to defeat in 2012?

PALIN: It depends on a few things, say he played — I got this from Buchanan — say he played the war card. Say he decided to declare war on Iran or decide to really come out and do whatever he could to support Israel–which I would like him to do. That changes the dynamics of what we can assume will happen between now and three years. Because I think if the election were today, Obama would not be elected.

WALLACE: You’re not suggesting that Obama would cynically play the war card?

PALIN: I’m not suggesting that, I’m saying if he did, things would dramatically change if he decided to toughen up and do all that he can to secure our nation and secure our allies. I think people would shift their thinking a bit.

Here is a quote from Bedell’s “bizarre series of Internet postings”:

The moral values of individuals and communities are increasingly attacked by a political system where deceit is routine and accepted, and the only standard is power. This inexorable attack on morality and conscience must be opposed and overcome.

Here is an exchange with a government lawyer who won’t be punished for professional misconduct:

Cassel: If the President deems that he’s got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person’s child, there is no law that can stop him?
Yoo: No treaty.
Cassel: Also no law by Congress. That is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo.
Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that.

Bedell’s attack, which resulted in his own death and two superficial injuries to Pentagon police officers, and Stack’s, which killed him and one IRS employee and injured thirteen other people, were the “toxic” results of “fevered minds” with “poisonous views.” And Nidal Malik Hasan’s attack on a military base, which killed thirteen people and wounded thirty (most of the casualties being military), was “the most destructive terrorist act to be committed on American soil since 9/11.”

On the other hand, our drones kill fifty civilians for every suspected Al-Qaeda member, and our wars in the Muslim world have also resulted in child rape, kidnapping for the purpose of genital torture, and all manner of murders. We’ve also funded a terrorist group that bombs mosques. Clearly, “an overemphasis on civilian protection is now putting American troops on the defensive.”

Bedell, who protested US cannabis laws, and Stack, who opposed the bailouts, the health insurance industry, and “the monsters of organized religion,” were right-wing extremists. Barack Obama, who claims the power to assassinate Americans abroad, is a leftist who “doesn’t want to admit we’re at war” and even won a Nobel Peace Prize for his peacemongering ways.

Any questions?

And then there’s this creepy NSA collaboration business. Since when is a surveillance agency in the business of cybersecurity anyway? (Although it’s not really a huge surprise.) And how about Youtube’s censorship of questions to President Obama about marijuana legalization?

But now Google had to drop a big steaming turd on my e-mail account. I’m getting tired of your waterhead fuckarounds, Google. All I wanted was e-mail. If I wanted a goddamn social networking site, I would already be on Twatbook or Facefuck or whatever the kids are using these days. And I certainly wouldn’t be on a social network that automatically lists me as “following” my proctologist.

Salient quote:

When I enabled Google Buzz, it was using a photo on my personal Buzz page (not my profile or anything) that I’d taken on my Droid but hadn’t ever uploaded. Why? And why that photo? And–what? That’s just creepy as hell.

And a quote from a Google statement:

We thought very carefully about how to create a great experience in Google Buzz with as minimal setup as possible. We designed our auto-following system to enable users to immediately see content from the people they email and chat with most, so when they start using Buzz, it “just works.” If users are automatically followed to anyone they’d rather not follow, it’s easy to remove these individuals during the auto-following step by clicking on the “edit” link and then clicking “unfollow” next to their names.

Maybe next time instead of thinking “very carefully about how to create a great experience” in their next irritating horseshit application they foist on us, Google should think very carefully about how not to dick over their existing users.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, check out the arcane and byzantine rites required to turn it off. I did all that, and I’m still not sure that I’ve exorcised the Buzz demon. I wanted an e-mail account, not motherfucking Leviticus.

All social networking sites need to die in a fire. I DON’T WANT TO SHARE ANYTHING WITH ANYONE. I WANT TO BROWSE THE INTERNET ALONE IN MY ROOM IN THE DARK. SINCE WHEN IS THAT SO WRONG?

*One day I will direct a deaconesssploitation film: think School of the Holy Beast, but with Lutherans. The Saint Lucia scene will be epic.

Duc proved himself a clown one evening at a “pompous” dinner party. He had been left upstairs, in case some of the guests did not like dogs; one senses that he may have been somewhat provoked by this slight. Meanwhile, at dinner, the subject of the famous white Poodle was raised; just as his owner was about to expound on his greatness, in walked Duc, all dignity and elegance — with an enema bag in his mouth! As if in the show ring, he marched around the table and out of the room, tail wagging.

edit: Speaking of Zappa, here’s an ironic news story about his hometown (or rather, one of his several hometowns).

I also have a variety of subjects I’ve been meaning to write about, but every time I think about writing about poodles or television or Icelandic people, it seems to me to be rather like a conversation about trees.

I don’t really have anything to say about Obama’s snoozer of a State of the Union speech the other night, or about the nasty little fascist dorkwad who gave the Republican response. I realize that “fascist” is a bit hackneyed nowadays, but anyone who thinks that Obama’s record has been marked by excessive respect for civil liberties is truly diseased. (Why, yes, I have adopted Frank Zappa’s typographic idiosyncrasies; glad you asked.) Overall, the most interesting quote from that night was when Chris Matthews said, “I forgot he was black for an hour!” Stay classy, Chris.

Anyway, if the American news media had any priorities, there would be two headlines on the front page of the newspaper every day: a really really big one saying FORCES OF EVIL CONTINUE TO CONTROL PLANET, and then underneath that a smaller one saying “Puppies, kittens still adorable.” But to provide some further detail, here are some interesting links I’ve seen since the last time I posted. Some are old, but they are still relevant because a) timely blogging is THE MAN, b) I assume that everyone who reads Poetariat lives in the wilderness on honey and locusts and has no exposure to other media, c) many of the most important news stories only appear once and then nobody ever talks about them again, and d) to paraphrase Ralph Nader, “to know and not to blog is not to know.” Ralph Nader would probably slap me for saying that.

Gitmo North
detainees are nonpersons
11% think free market is working well
Afghanistan wants foreign killers handed over
good 2009 news stories from the Muslim world
Obama wants $741 billion for militarism…
…but exploring the universe costs too much
police like to record you, don’t like when you record them; they also steal from innocent people, with Obama’s support
more illegal spying
MPAA wants a censored internet (and spying begins in the UK), and “Bono” also wants censorship. (Honestly, the only crime happening here is that in an era when any bizarre and marvelous music is available at our fingertips, there are still people who feel the need to subject themselves to Bono’s insipid liberal-communist Davos-rock caterwauling. Every night I pray to the gods to unleash the Stark Fist of STFU upon Bono’s house to the third and fourth generations, sevenfold.)
record industry owes up to $6 billion for infringement
sonic weapons used against protesters in the US
John Pilger on Obama as corporate marketing creation; here is the Chris Hedges article he cites in that clip, and here is Pilger’s own piece on the subject, with a truly devastating final paragraph (this is all semi-old, but what the fuck — see also)
and here are a few more worthwhile Hedges articles: political prisoners in the US, war memorials, democracy in America, Martin Luther King, Mike Gravel (I should note, however, that I’m disappointed by the way Hedges writes one article on thought-terminating clichés followed by another article consisting almost solely thereof)
Israeli government suppressing nonviolent protest
The real story on Yemen, more
WHO a front for drug companies?
war criminals professionally unaccountable
US acknowledging Taliban role in Afghanistan, and we might as well, seeing as how we’re funding them
the campaign cash behind the Afghanistan escalation
Gates blocks release of war crimes photos
police tackle woman in labor in ER
civilian “casualties” vs. CIA “victims”
Constitutional rights only when it’s convenient for Obama
presidential assassinations of US citizens abroad
A couple of opinions on the Supreme Court case that killed Howard Zinn
new bank regulation
the Guantánamo “suicides”
Jesus rifles
food fight leads to arrest
pastor calls for economic boycott of Houston due to gay mayor; I guess Providence and Iceland will never recover
schools in Finland
Iceland an offshore publication center? Also, their first horror film has the excellent title of Reykjavík Whale Watching Massacre
surveillance drones in the UK
Free Vermont
most Americans support strip-search machines that don’t work, are sold to us by people with major conflicts of interest, break child pornography laws in some countries, and won’t protect us from the ass bomber; the American Association for Nude Recreation also supports them, which is kind of like if a gay rights organization supported giving the government the power to anally rape you — I think this is a pile of shit, while Erick Williamson rots in (suspended) prison (also, the Dutch are developing portable versions)
HIV came from cats?
Bin Laden wants to save the planet (more on Bin Laden)
banks monitoring social networking sites to see if your friends are riffraff
religious fanatics do stupid things, but if I were Pope John Paul II, I would have whipped myself with a belt too
whites-only basketball league
I get the feeling that the plan is to rid the world of nuclear weapons by blowing it up
bankers buying guns
if you want privacy, you must have something to hide, says Google
1 in 6 chance that your cell phone company provided the police with your GPS data
Blackwater’s youngest victim — never mind Blackwater; why isn’t George W. Bush serving a life sentence, instead of becoming the United States’ way of saying “fuck you” to the people of Haiti?
coming to terms with imperial power
open are the double doors of the Large Hadron Collider
Americans rally in support of Conan O’Brien, but didn’t give a shit when NBC censored a presidential candidate

RI Gov. Don Carcieri, already known for his authoritarian bent, legalizes police rape (did you know that in areas where prostitution is illegal, a prostitute is more likely to have sex with a police officer than to get arrested by one?)
provisions of leaked ACTA treaty would ruin the internet
patents on human genes challenged
teenagers sue school that violated their free speech rights to enforce Abrahamic “morality”
and speaking of Abrahamic morality…
court says swearing in text messages is legal, as should be obvious to any American with a rudimentary grasp of civics
Sen. Grassley wants to prohibit government advisers from discussing an end to the drug war, as is already the case with the “drug czar”
Maine voters reject love
bats like oral sex

Also, Sibel Edmonds has a new news and commentary site that you should check out, and here is an in-depth interview with her and fellow FBI whistleblower John M. Cole. And here are some very inspiring rugs by Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo.