Big Rock Candy Mountain - Excuse me, could you stop the cavalry, for a moment, please?

• The Out-Stretched Grasping Hand •

Excuse me, could you stop the cavalry, for a moment, please?

January 24th, 2008

“Dub a dub a dum dum”

So, annual present giving day rolls by again.

Writing about Christmas while in Ireland has the sensation that you’re writing from a fallout bunker several miles below sea level. I’m not Christian; I’m long past the years where I’d sold my soul to Santa for toys. I don’t celebrate it bar to begrudgingly give presents back to the few close family who give me gifts.

Well okay, maybe not so begrudgingly – gifts are always good, but I have an intense dislike for being forced into it by the memory of what I hope future generations will refer to as a phantom super hippy that plied a good schtick pedaling a mix of Eastern philosophy and ancient mystery religions to Jews and any other fool that’d listen way back when.

As much as I’m wishing it, all the Voodoo in the world isn’t going to bring back Celsus.

Straight shot, in reverse to the Great War, there is no lull in our trenches, no genial football match with the enemy. You might even say this is our busiest time of year. So, this is one for Mr. Dawkins and the militant atheism that is gradually becoming the new red menace.

“Dub a dub a dum”

To many with leanings toward being the little poppets to some invisible Middle Eastern bearded sky octopus – we’re advancing through culture like the dark if damn well dressed shadow of 1930s/40s Germany. To others, maybe those standing beside me in the trenches, we’re a motley collection of GIs and British soldiers with rotting feet and a collection of generally crap officers with no idea how to direct an assault.

“Dub a dum dum dub a dub”

At my most cynical, when I get a sense of the desperation that peppers the voices of atheism. I see us as the gathering red cloud that is the Soviet army. Not afraid to grind our fellows’ bones to dust in factories that we run twenty four seven to keep a relentless roll of tanks moving toward the front.

“Dub a dub a dum”

Losing isn’t an option and we don’t care how many of us have to fall in order to maintain a barrier of stee-commonsense that we use to push against the encroaching darkness of stupidity. A sort of; “Stay with me, if they get me, take my rifle and keep marching”.

“Dub a dub a dum dum”

Here in the trenches of the Dr. Morgan bulge on the Western Front of the Great Theosophical War. We have Bomber Herod leading the 42nd Field Artillery Brigade and once the bombardment stops, we go over the top, you’ll have to excuse me…

“Hey, Mr. Churchill comes over here to say we’re doing splendidly”

For the most part, here in what should be lapsed-Catholic Ireland, to say you’re not Christian; that you don’t celebrate Christmas gets a variety of reactions. Quite a few people agree with you, they dislike it, the materialism. Many more stiffen up, go tight-lipped, saying things with conversational ending undertones like “Well each to their own.”

It’s an odd phenomenon.

The half-hearted agnosticism or atheism that flitters through Irish social circles and it’s no better shown by the reaction a friend of mine received when he got himself “defected” from the Catholic Church.

The general reaction seemed shy, embarrassed for him, as if people were cringing in the way they do when the school rebel has pushed things past a limit they deem acceptable. He was told “What did you do that for?” or that he had taken the whole thing too far. Some were even angry with him. Many of these same armchair theological rebels would, earlier in the week, be bashing the Church where and whenever they got the chance.

Come a chance to put your money where your mouth is though and you’ll find just how real they are. Best stick with the flock, if only at its borders…you never know…you just never know…

“But it’s very cold out here in the snow, marching to and from the enemy”

If the last three years mired us in stories filled sinister paranoia on a global level. From supposed Zionist plots to blow up temples in an effort to rush forward the return of a psychopathic sky octopus to encroaching Red-no-Green-no-Phlegmatic menaces. Then, the last year has lurched us forward from one stupidity to another. A great example of this being the US Government effectively barring the Cuban cricket team from competing in an International competition in Antigua, a move one can only describe as childishly spiteful.

“Oh I say it’s tough I have had enough. Can you stop the cavalry?”

Last time I checked Cuba wasn’t roaming the world starting wars. Nor has Cuba dropped any nuclear weapons on another country and not least had Cuban soldiers off-side when it came to topics like crimes against humanity or economic strong arming in other countries.

“I have had to fight, almost every night, down throughout these centuries”

In this, the UNESCO year of Rumi; within it’s very first month, we watched a sort of Zombie Soviet Union cut oil supplies to Poland, Germany, and Ukraine as the Russia-Belarus energy dispute escalated. We saw China successfully test a ground-based ballistic missile capable of destroying satellites in orbit. Not content to be reminded that we’re ruled by a council of cannibalistic pigs; an illiterate nobody famous for being an illiterate nobody was put on live British television and allowed to be a racist illiterate nobody. Which was actually a refreshing break from having to listen to her be an illiterate nobody with weight problems and generally welcomed by academia.

“That is when I say, oh yes yet again, can you stop the cavalry?”

January was brought to a close by the great Boston Mooninite Scare of 2007, a grand display of idiocy that set us up nicely for the rest of the year. If your hopes were up at any stage toward the close of 2006, January alone was sure to ground you back to the reality of humanity.

“Mary Bradley waits at home in the nuclear fall-out zone”

Let’s not forget: Super Phantom Budd-eh-Hippy Vengeful Sky-Octopus (see: Allah, Yaweh, God.)

“Wish I could be dancing now in the arms of the girl I love”

The same year the electronic remix of Orbital’s hit Halcyon, ‘Burma and on and on’ stormed through the charts. We’re reminded that even trying to look back at the general nonsense that the powers at be made of the year just becomes a breathless litany and any comments attached, though pithy are widely useless as the right or the left-right/right-left perform live vivisection on them.

“Dub a dub a dum dum.”

2007 – The year freedom suffered acute kidney failure and was forced onto dialysis.

“Dub a dub a dum”

2007 – The year a morbidly obese woman begins to change the Irish health system into a midget parody of the American health system, phantom limbs et al.

“Dub a dub a dum
Dub a dub a dum dum”

2007 – The year one small blonde British child lost due to the negligence of her parents gets more attention world-wide than all the child soldiers, child victims of sex abuse, child trafficking and child slavery put together.

“Dub a dub a dum
Dub a dum dum dub a dub”

2007 – The very same year that had June, the month where a blonde heiress famous for noth-no-wait, famous for slutting herself from home movie to Internet to the Hollywood party scene received more news spots than just about anything else happening in the world. That’s really going to sting Tony’s place in the history books.

“Dub a dub a dum
Wish I was at home for Christmas”

I’ve said it Christmas or two ago; that I’ve had enough of watching the free world slaughter in the name of freedom, that I was off back to live in the snow. Seems I waited too long, the snow I wanted to go back to is rapidly receding all there is now are mountains of Bolivian marching powder and gutless hand wringing.

I could be Frank and I probably will be.

Here we are!

It’s Sunday morning!

And we’re coming down!

And really, I couldn’t give two shits about a two-bit Irish model and socialite with a coke problem over doing it on diet pills, sleeping pills and cocaine.

Any death is a tragedy – but focusing on a death just because someone was marginally and (I stress marginally) famous is an insult to those more unfortunate to not have lived the silver spoon life, who may well have died curled up and shivering in some derelict squat, alone and terrified, a life of unknown potential thrown away in the beginning of the last soiling yourself convulsions before death.

Oh but now when I go to those sorts of parties. I have to put up with whimpering conceit of people putting gravitas on her death where they would have ignored some pauper’s heroin overdose previously. Wide-eyed and obnoxious they tell you to shut up as they swallow down another pill, tell you “It could have been me” then greedily snort down some more ketamine. What a tragedy indeed.

“You’re wrong and it does have meaning and-and it could have been me and that’s why its important who knows what you’re taking, who knows what any of us are taking…”

“Well the toxicology reports say ephedrine, cocaine and sleeping pills. A stupid mix for a stupid girl.”

Such responses don’t win you any friends.

Such people should give up the ghost; get themselves a psychotherapist and a prescription for some Auntie-Dees.

“Bang! That’s another bomb on another town
While the Czar and Jim have tea”

As friends we can’t even get along.

Forget cultural schematics, ignore borders; we cannot even find a common good to live for. Apparently freedom’s definition changes depending which invisible entity you fervently believe in, be that the aforementioned sons and daughters of Abraham sky octopus or any of the clans or councils that run Russia or China.

Don’t ask me about America.

Don’t mention Africa…Kenya, Sudan, Eritrea…

Protest is now burning innocents to death in churches. Is now? Wait just a moment…hasn’t it always been…

Does it matter? Just tear down that imaginary wall.

“If I get home, live to tell the tale, I’ll run for all presidencies”

This isn’t a love song. I’ve given up waiting and watching for a new Great Liberator, Ghandi, Buddha, Martin Luther King JR, Jesus, Margaret Sanger, Malcolm X, Lao Tzu, James Earl Jones or Christopher Walken, to appear.

Having given up, I now wait for the beautiful Tyrant. The Prince. Pratchett’s Patrician. Japan’s Resurrecting Death Lizard.

Knowing one human life span isn’t enough.

I imagine him as part oblique entity from the stars and part Eastern European.

They look like peoples who can get things done.

For every one of ours you kill, he lines up two of yours on live television.

Ours is a solidarity bonded by fear.

Beneath him – you will learn to love the Iron Fist. Beneath him – you will be granted all freedoms.

Just don’t cross the line.

Oh, but where is the line with you?

I guess it’s a lot more obvious than it was with them.

“If I get elected I’ll stop – I’ll stop the cavalry”

Is it any wonder that the only festive song I can listen to is an anti-war song never meant to a Christmas song?

And yet…

Here I am, eyes on those who gave us Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, quietly hoping for the type of war they can win.

“We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us,’‘

With the Lakota canceling their one hundred and fifty year old treaties, there now exists the potential for a conflict that I would travel to join – if only to repay a historical debt.

“Dub a dub a dum dum”

Meanwhile Christmas ends… – The Day Of The Phantom Super Hippy has drawn to an uneventful close and we may proceed without halt until the day that marks his zombification.

“Dub a dub a dum
Dub a dum dum dub a dub”

Meanwhile…

SETI needs you!

They, we, need more computers. The program has been reversed. No longer will we continue to scan radio signals for intelligent life. They have decided to reverse the process, from now on, we will be harnessing unused radio bandwidth to pump out the following mathematical message to the stars and beyond.

“It’s too late for us
Save yourselves.”

We can only hope they listen and the quarantine continues.