The Worst of Times, The Best of Times
Issue 65

REV. WRIGHT decided to put his Bible in his mouth this week as he took off on a Clinton funded hit-job on the Great Black Hope.

Gas prices are beginning to look like student loans, and student loans are starting to look like mortgage payments, and mortgage payments are beginning to look like the price tag for a fucking North Korean nuclear scientist on eBay.

China is finally beating the peace out of the Tibetans.

And here in our own civilized neck of the woods, a hate-mongering minister lures Christians to a school in an effort to legitimize the last socially acceptable form of bigotry.

Face it: we’re fucking doomed.

Can anyone deny that in our present torment that we are, in our age, living out the final death throes of America? It is clear to me, now, that the Framers and the Fathers in their grand political experiment to create a new world cradled in the good grace of God has failed as Hillary and her gang of fucking hick thugs rape, burn, and pillage any chance we may have had at coming out of this with our teeth intact.

Face it: Americans will be the new “Wetbacks”, the next generation of undesirables as we flee this fucking ship of doom and stupidity, chasing a better life for us and ours among the nations that scorn us and our nation. Canadians will hire us to mow lawns, work at WalMart, and wash dishes at Applebee’s. Our neighbors will hunt us like animals, packs of white men in flannel, drunk off maple syrup, will chase us through the city streets of Ontario, hurling curses and empty bottles of Molson’s at our fucking skulls.

And why shouldn’t they? Jesus, just ask yourself what we’ve done for the world lately and I guarantee your blood will curdle at the thought of international disdain that now lays upon our beetled brow. Ours is a culture of decadence and blind stupidity, where a war that is consuming an entire generation of American’s doesn’t even rate to a good vag shot of Brittney Spears and her pudgy cooter.

We derserve our doom.

And it is now, in this time of social waste and degradation, as we begin to consume ourselves like feral canines in a cruel snare, I say this: go down sinning.

Why not? None of you poor bastards are ever going to own a house, have a successful marriage or raise spawn in a fashion that prevents them from not becoming an inmate. So with that, I believe that it’s up to us to live as hard, as fast, and insane as possible.

Nothing is forbidden now. Expand your recreational pharmacopeia. Drink until you can’t feel familiar body parts. Fornicate with any animal, vegetable, mineral possible because baby, your time is now.

It’s the apocalypse boogie and everyone is doing it. So should you.

These are good times to be a social deviant. Honestly, we are the only normal ones if you consider it. Recognizing the fetid maw of oblivion that is about to consume us has made us ravenous in our primal lust for reality. The world may collapse about us, but for us, we rare form of the species, this is our time.

Think about that… and then, when your done, go forth and sin some more. You’ll thank me later. Trust me, I’m an authority on such things.

Love, Mephistopheles

Much Ado About Hillary
Issue 62

The best way I can describe democratic politics these days is “eating their young.” After eight years of being the political equivalent of a leper colony under an “Anything but Clinton ” White House, the democrats have regained control of the House and the Senate, and unfortunately haven’t a clue what to do next. You can’t turn on CNN or FOX without seeing John “Man-Tan” Kerry trip over his own shoes, or party elder and campaign guru James Carvill taking swings at DNC Chair Howard Dean kneecaps. After so much time being out of power, now that democrats have some they don’t know what to do with it except shoot their own eye out.

Yet all is not lost. Already there are rumblings from within the party of true believers who are gathering around 2008 presidential hopefuls; young gun Barack Obama, Illinois Senator has been testing the waters for a potential run for the White House, as well as the infatiguable former vice president Al Gore who’s global warming documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” could have been better titled “My Love Letter to the American People.” Both seemingly great candidates with a lot of cross-party appeal that would look great on the same ticket.
 
But Hillary Clinton?

There is much ado about Hillary these days, and unfortunately the baggage she brings with her cannot fit in the overhead compartment. The carpetbagger…er…I mean Senator of New York has many a problem, and not all of them easily rectified with a revisionist point-of-view book or a campaign swing through Arkansas. Let’s face it, nobody is crazy about “Robo-Hillary.” A poor public image that still suffers from the “Clinton Fatigue” of her womanizing husband, a history of scandal including not only her marriage but also Whitewater and the suicide of family friend Vince Foster, plus the added weight of having to answer for every mistake her husband made in eight years of office. Yes, she wins New York and its 31 electoral votes but she loses the south as most southerners see her as abandoning Arkansas. So if not at the top of the ticket, then as the running mate to Obama or Gore, what does she bring to the table? Will she really turn out the women’s vote only to have alienated the south and scare away moderate conservatives?

Yet, many would see this as the opportune time to elect a woman to the highest office in the land. Many, but not all. Hillary’s lack of foreign relation experience is staggering, and considering the mess that our next president is going to inherit when taking office, one wonders if such a thing can be passed on to a novice of dubious quality. Do I think a woman should run for office? Of course. Should it be Hillary? Of course not. There are many women in the political arena who are more qualified than Hillary. Yet none of them have the coattails of a husband and former president to ride on into a democratic nomination.

The problem is, those really aren’t coattails, it’s a suspiciously stained blue dress.

2008, The Year of Retribution

Was it just me, or was 2007 perhaps the worst year ever? Perhaps it was for you as well if it was anything like mine, or rather for the rest of those suffering in the police state that is the United States of Paranoia.

Let me be clear: it’s getting weirder out there, and not in a good way. Email is getting rifled through, phones are being tapped, private conversations over coffee eavesdropped, your image captured nearly 2,000 times a day according to some estimates. Indeed, our private lives are no longer private.

Look at what rights we have given up to feel secure, a contradiction in terms when you see the lengths the government goes through to keep you in a constant state of catatonia. Fear has become the tool in which we have been conditioned to obey, and obey we have. Of course we also have the usual suspects to round out the most wretched year in recent history: 2007 represented more than a year of corporate greed, a failing war consuming a generation of young people, and perhaps the worst offence of all being perpetrated by ourselves, the people. For you see, we allowed this. We were angry, righteously so, but there was no will to act. There was no unifying front or person or cause to unite the multitude, just a smattering of peaceniks, daft fucking hippies and angry white people.

And what got accomplished? Nothing. Not a god damned thing. I can’t remember a time when we were surrounded by so many peace groups and no real peace movement. You can throw a rock from atop Capital Hill and hit 300 activist groups that aren’t even active, which makes you really want to consider reassigning the term. In 2007 the “inactivist” reigned; groups full of sound and fury who signified nothing, save their own bloated sense of self-righteousness. I can say this because I am one of them. I consider myself an activist, yet my activity has been a resounding “meh” in the rising tumult. I have been afflicted by the national torpor that has seized our great society, rendering it ineffective and without consequence.

But not this year. I have penned myself in for revenge.

That’s right. Let this be my year of discontent, and for you for that matter. Too long have we cooled our heels, hoping that much better people than ourselves will fight the good fight and rally us to new levels of social justice. Fuck that. It’s time to rage against the dying of the light, to take a stand and for the love of Christ do something.

Living like this, quiet and disappointed, has been difficult… but then again, living on your knees usually is.

It’s time to stand up. We shouldn’t just fight the fights that we can win, we need to fight the fights that are worth fighting. Let 2008 be the year we rose up with a full heart and rebelled against the tyranny that threatens the better angels of our humanity.

Let 2008 be the year of their discontent.
Selah.

Dear Mr. Bennett & The Seattle Sonics,
Greetings from the most important magazine ever to grace Seattle with its presence. And, since I am the resident devil in this menagerie of mutants, hedonists and other assorted lizards, I would like to be the first to bid you a pleasant bon voyage to the land of Oklahoma.

Or, in other words, fuck off.

I can’t even begin to describe to you how much Seattle and its denizens could give a less of a shit about you. Perhaps a quarter shit, but then again I wouldn’t want shit to feel poorly, after being compared to a horrible jackass such as yourself. You backwards, gibbering water-heads deserve your time in the great Dustbowl, amidst the frothing redneck masses that await your coming. I’m sure that Okies, noted basketball aficionados that they are, will welcome your arrival like a papal visit. I’m sure you’ll fit right in with a modern generation of redneck swine located in the hairy, sweaty scrotum of the Bible Belt.

Honestly, look where Seattle is at the moment. Transportation woes, schools crumbling just like their failing academic standards and emerging governmental faux pas. And you have the testicles to threaten us with a move because we won’t use taxpayer money to fund a new arena?

And for what? So your crap team can loose spectacularly in a spectacular new arena? Hmmm, no. There are more pressing needs facing our great society, and your second-rate King County Corrections Farm Team isn’t one of them.

For this, if nothing else, I am proud to be a Seattleite for this very issue: To deny corporate bottom feeders such as yourself that prey upon the public to turn a buck. I like that we are collectively smart enough to let a bad deal such as you and your wretched brood of talentless hacks wander off into the wilderness that is the Midwest with your flaccid corporate ambitions.

In conclusion, I dearly hope the city successfully sues your for breach of contract. After all, we could give a toss about your new arena but we really could use a nice big public school that doesn’t suck.

Go Fuck Yourself.

Osama Who?

Sometimes I think the Great Unwashed possess a type of mass ADD — something that reduces their attention spans and short term-memory to that of a second grader in the middle of a vicious dodge ball-melee. Of course, it’s the American media’s fault with their salacious infotainment inundation, corporate advertising with its slick, intrusive social programming on a grandiose scale and the always sneaky United States government with their geo-political three-card Monte games in a much more far-reaching arena.

However, instead of them “shucking and jiving” on a street corner on Broadway atop a Zenith widescreen cardboard box with some reject cards from the local gambling den, you see them making moves on a global scale, getting you to pay attention to one card — or in this case, one person — while they go about and sneak the other one away out of the mind’s eye, past the short-term recall that even a dog with late-stage distemper possesses.

It’s almost pathetic, really, and more than a little sad that we could be that blind, that blissfully unaware. It’s almost as if we are making an attempt at wholesale ignorance, like it’s something we can pick up at Costco with a five-gallon jug of mayonnaise and a years supply of Top Ramen.

But I digress.

So with my point woefully and hopefully made excruciatingly clear, here’s my question for the news cycle: What happened to Osama bin Laden?

You know, the mastermind of Sept. 11? Bombed American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998 that killed over 200 people, not to mention the 10,000 Americans that perished when his low-jack terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center Towers in New York City?

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

With such an obviously cruel and wicked man still on the loose after we basically rendered Afghanistan into a smoldering crater, the question begs asking why we still haven’t caught up with the most infamous Saudi Arabian in the world, responsible for the biggest single act of terrorism ever in the history of Creation.

I asked a fellow editor, “When was the last time you remember something being mentioned about Osama bin Laden?” She made a face, shifted her backpack and said, “I don’t know.” And I doubt many other people remember either, as we have been so overwhelmed with the Hatfield’s & McCoy’s re-enactment in Iraq that it seems we have lost the plot. Again. “We are going into Iraq to fight the War on Terror,” Ari Fleischer says, yet state-sponsored terrorism is much more affluent than one might think. China, North Korea, Cuba, Sudan, Iran, Libya (who is next on the hit parade, I believe) and a myriad of other countries are responsible for sponsored terrorism — but I suppose just not as popular as a country with plenty of oil to spare, or without the virtue of having ones father invading it three presidencies ago. Kind of makes you wish that this war on terrorism was really about terrorism and not saving 30 cents on a gallon of petrol.

With a $25 million price tag around his neck, compliments of the U.S. State Department, you would think we would be hearing more about bin Laden — but don’t worry, he has a way of grabbing our attention. Just ask Secretary of State Colin Powell, who just hours before he was to arrive in Saudi Arabia an Al Qaeda bomb went off, killing 34 and injuring 200 as if to say, “Hey guys! Remember me?” Nothing like having your memory jogged via 10 pounds of plastic explosives. Indeed, as recent press releases indicate from the Halls of Power, yet another attack seems imanent as soldiers prowl the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco and the FAA is in the process of making the airspace over the Indy 500 a no-fly zone to keep the some 200,000 odd spectators safe from harm. Overreactionary? Maybe, then maybe not. It is high time the government spent more time with precautionary measures than reactionary ones.

Hopefully in the days to come we won’t require such reminders at home and abroad, and the war on terrorism will finally commence on those who endanger global freedom, not just those who threaten the price of Texaco unleaded.

St. George

Religion, the ever-present fly in the political ointment. Organized religion has always been something of an intrusive guest in the backstabbing melee of American politics, as it has been in other arenas the world over. Some scholars believe that Christianity was the downfall of Rome, and of course merry old England took a serious pummeling due to its reliance on its own theocracy. There are lessons to be learned from both, however it would seem we are destined to repeat. I suppose practice makes
perfect.

For your consideration, I offer the latest incarnation of burgeoning theocracy, that of the ultra-right wing conservative movement that has somehow landed a ringer in no other place than the White House, as President George W. Bush is, if nothing, a slave to the religious right that helped get him where he is today. The proof of Bush’s religious appeal is evident, as in the last election; Bush garnered 80 percent of the WASP/conservative vote, which in retrospect may not be too difficult to comprehend, as the alternative was a vice-president suffering from the advanced stages of “Clinton Fatigue”. No, I suppose not to many Americans of faith would willingly vote into office someone who’s direct superior used an intern as a humidor.

Not that religion and politics don’t mix, mind you. In a certain sense they always to a lesser or greater extent, but the current trend in political religious frenzy is more than a little disconcerting, it’s dangerous.

Now before you get your rosary all in knots, I would like to announce that I do consider myself a Christian, albeit a bitter and backslidden one with views on the church that would probably get me burned at the stake, but a Christian none the less. I believe in God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and the miracle of the Virgin Birth. But…not so much in the body of believers that make up the faith as a whole. Nope…pretty much the most backward lot of practicing hypocrites and Pharisees that I have ever known. So what does that say, that a group of such socially retarded people have gained such influence in the most powerful office in the Federal Government, and the ear of the Leader of the Free World?

Ill portends indeed.

While the Bush family has had a longstanding relationship with the Reverend Billy Graham, whom seems to be the most moderate and likable of the Christian Superpowers, his ties to the Copeland televangelist regime are a bit disheartening. Though I think Bush would be loathe to throw in with any of the more radical televangelist ilk with their verbal diarrhea, he seems quite happy to support the opiate fix for the masses that may seem needed at this time. My question is, how far will it go and how far will the President of the United States let it influence his far-reaching office?

Only time will tell, but you can be assured that this is the Hour of the Religious Right, and time for the lefties to put up or shut up.

Killing Ourselves

Vol 2 Issue 16

If you have a TV then you know about Carlie Brucia, the 11 year old Florida girl who was seen abducted on a carwash surveillance camera days before her body was found in a church parking lot days later. If you have a pulse, then you most likely want to see accused killer Joseph Smith fried like a KFC drumstick – extra crispy.

If you are like many Americans, you don’t care if he did it or not, you just want to see someone pay…and so do I.

And he’s in the right state for it all to happen. Florida, ranking fifth in the country for state executions with a mixed bag of electrocutions and lethal injections adding up to 58 since 1976. The Sunshine State already has one execution in 2004 under it’s belt, and Governor Jeb Bush and his fellow Floridians are aching to make this number two. With the mother, Susan Schorpen (Our Lady of the Perpetual Feline Clutching), already clamoring for the death penalty, a wounded community looking for closure and an ex-con who looks like the poster boy for capital punishment, it seems like it’s a safe bet that they wont even take the time to spray the electric chair down with PAM.

So the question is: where do you stand on state executions?

It’s a brutal truth that is revisited with the righteous furor of those who seek justice on both sides of the issue, those who seek the death penalty as well as those who seek to abolish it. While DNA evidence is improving the accuracy and validity of murder cases, securing convictions and sending the offenders to wallow in a 15 year holding pattern until their big day, it is also setting more than a few free. Nearly a hundred Death Row inmates have been released from prison after the physical evidence they were convicted with was later voided and their sentence overturned due to DNA testing (incidentally, Florida leads the country with 23 exonerations). Then again most didn’t have a videotape of a 37-year - old career criminal pulling an 11-year-old blond girl off camera. It’s one thing to see it happening on CNN, but quite another to come to the conclusion of what comes next in your minds eye. It is very, very difficult for anyone other than the most devout of death penalty abolitionists to not want to see Smith burn at the stake.

I wonder what Carlie would want. Would she want Smith to pay for what he has allegedly done? Would she want someone to suffer over a decade in a maximum-security prison waiting to be put to sleep like a rabid dog? Maybe, maybe not, but I am sure of this: she would want to be alive. She would want to go to prom when she got older, maybe go to college or get married some day. She would choose her life, and if she had it would she so arbitrarily desire another’s death as easily as we who merely sample the tragedy via prime-time cable than those who have actually experienced the loss first hand? Who are we, the viewing audience to decide? As a community, a country, what right do we as citizens hold to judge another in the court of public opinion whether or not someone should live or die?

Life, and the giving or taking there-of, should be a much simpler matter than this visceral exercise in death. By using the death penalty we are, as a society, cheapening the lives of those we are trying to protect. Compassion shouldn’t have to contend with anger born of fear for our safety and the well being of our children. Rage over the crime of murder should not be coined "justice" by politicians looking to get tough on crime and used viscerally to turn the wheels of the criminal justice system. There should be a better way, but there isn’t.

Then again, maybe we don’t want there to be.