albanian idol

forget sanjaya.

president timex, although lacking the chia pet hairstyle, waded into adoring crowds in the balkans. it would be a triumph if we could keep him there. and convince cheney to take up the vice presidency of bulgaria to boot. interim president pelosi would be a fresh fill-in until january, 2009.

this administration has alienated the european union, russia, china, and the islamic world. no doubt, even icelanders and tierra del fuegans are pissed off.

but the white house basks in the shiny duo of albania and bulgaria as new buddies. they will doubtless soon join nascar and nato. what witless diplomacy.

we live under an administration at war with three-quarters of its own people, at odds with most of the world, at war with itself, at war with the constitution, at war with cerebration. and of course at war in iraq. all pursued with meathead malignancy.

it's all so versailles i'm surprised bush doesn't dress in sun king robes. with cheney in a cute duc d'orleans outfit of ermine and silk, fitted at an undisclosed herberdashery.
"undisclosed" is the key word for these retrograde romanovs.

look at the cloaca of the undisclosed:

cheney's true role in the outing of valerie plame - undisclosed.
the number and amount of no-bid iraq contracts - undisclosed.
the story of the c.i.a.'s secret prisons, renditions, and torture - undisclosed.
the imprint of karl rove's hand on voter caging, election fraud - undisclosed.
bush's phone call to mrs. ashcroft - undisclosed.
the truth of the u.s. attorney scandal - undisclosed.
the location of alberto gonzo's memory - undisclosed.
the minutes of cheney's energy group meetings - undisclosed.
the fate of joe lieberman's integrity - undisclosed.
the text of the sleazy iraq oil law - undisclosed.
the stolen billions of dollars in baghdad - undisclosed.
the real number and cost of blackwater/wackenhutt soldier/contractors in iraq - undisclosed.
the reason the n.s.a. reads our emails and phone records - undisclosed.
the place of the 5 million missing dept. of justice emails - undisclosed.
the ominous military plans for iran - undisclosed.
any explanation for their cowboy caligulan excesses - undisclosed.

what has been clearly disclosed is the dismemberment of our democracy - it has disappeared down a republican suck hole.

if you want to find the shreds of the american constitution, search the sewers.

make love not war

documents released under a freedom of information request reveal the pentagon developed a "gay bomb," a hormonal aerosol mist that when inhaled induced unrestrained homosexual desire among soldiers. the idea was to disrupt enemy formations.

the disruption this time was to u.s. military personnel.

an improperly labeled "gay bomb" cannister leaked the odorless lusty aerosol through barracks, showers and latrines at an undisclosed american military base. "it instantly turned disciplined troops into the village people." declared colonel jack offalott. "sure, we want to build unit cohesion, but we had to separate these guys with crowbars."

"everyone suddenly wanted to bend over and pick up the soap," a participant stated.

"i thought basic training was a workout," said private hy hardone of gay head, martha's vineyard, who was swept up in the frenzy. "this was friggin testoserone city. it was viagra falls."

military police wearing gas masks were sent in to disperse the unprecedented orgy. boomboxes blared judy garland songs. a kickline of naked drill sargeants was led to the brig.

"the ratio of fellatio was very high," said a marine doctor afterwards. "not to mention other things. i never saw so many tired grunts with shit-eating grins. luckily, the effects wore off after a couple of hours. otherwise, we'd need every proctologist in north america."

"they really got corporal with their privates," declared captain jose pinga. "it was like a night in berlin."

the military reacted with shock and awe:
"they couldn't keep pace with their peters," said general peter pace.
one colonel raged, "it ain't called milifairy service."
a navy commander: "effective immediately, seamen's semen is off limits."
"it's not pronounced semper bi," yelled a marine general.
one pentagon male imitator stated, "a private's privates are private."

the defense department has convened a special sodomy squad to investigate. the pentagon remained closemouthed about fellatio.

neither reverend ted haggard nor ex-porn star rod majors could be reached for comment.

a spokesman for representative barney frank laughed so hard he could not answer our queries.

the pentagon is considering renaming fort dix.

neoconia

a recently arisen volcanic island in the pacific was claimed friday in federal court. the private equity firm of rumsfeld, feith, kristol, wolfowitz, abramoff and bolton (pronounced "nambla") filed papers to assume possession.

world leaders were taken aback by the unprecedented move. the as-yet unoccupied cooling atoll will be settled within weeks, sources told us. google servers crashed as web surfers attempted to find the island on google maps.

in a novel move, the new nation will be incorporated as a stock trading company. its nasdaq symbol,"rape," has already been chosen. "we expect to attract oodles of saudi and russian money for this," a chaste manhattan spokeswoman opined.

reaction from united nations members varied. a french diplomat decried "this new right wing vomitorium among palm trees." a swiss representative remained neutral. an undersecretary from venezuela denounced the concept as "tahiti with nukes."

at a sparsely attended press conference in the seychelles, donny rumsfeld announced "you go with the island you have, not the island you'd like to have."

some elements of the new national structure were revealed. a constitution and set of laws (which can be disregarded at will) are being written. the state religion will be beligerant christianity. french restaurants will not be allowed. the capital city will be named rapture.

some personnel have been chosen. john bolton will serve as united nations ambassador. "no pesky congress can queer my appointment now," bolton chided.

douglas feith was named bishop of rapture. "we'll really get feith-based initiatives off to a hell of a start," he quipped.

editor billy kristol will serve as mimister of enlightenment and assistant secretary of war. rumsfeld called the move "a promotion from weakly standard to kristol macht."

paul wolfowitz and his girlfriend plan to arrive via ruppert murdoch's yacht with a party of surveyors and couples counselors, as well as a fox news tv transmitter.

former house speaker tom delay planned to arrive "without delay."

a cryptic blackberry message from abramoff read "able was i ere i saw elba." attorneys have filed a motion to allow abramoff to serve his remaining sentence in the new nation.

scooter libby could not be located for a comment.

"this sounds like a devil's island of felons and bush leaguers," snarled michael moore. "i have a suggestion for their national anthem," he continued, "how about black sabbath's song 'war pigs.'"

pride and prejudice

the supreme court of the commonwealth of massachusetts declared that same sex couples have the right to marry, that anything less is a violation of their constitutional rights. the bible bullies, the vituperationists, the multi-divorced family valuers, the abominationists, the virginity commissars have all of course gone gaga.

the governor of the state and the mayor of the state's capital will march in saturday's gay pride parade. tens of thousands more will march with them. you will see more marching lawyers than dykes on bikes. you will see more office workers than leather lennys. you will see more suburban home owners than disco ditzers. you will find that the brazillian float has the best dancers and the best music.

you will not see cardinal o'malley, dozens of whose priests have been marched to court and thence to jail, march. you will not see the vote on marriage people march. you will not see the fundy fulminators march.

you will not find the former cardinal in town. he hied himself and his red hat to the vatican, a step or two ahead of ignominy and a possible felony indictment. a decades-long coverup of pederast priests was fine with him; an open pride in one's eros is not.

these christo-neanderthals have evolved an elaborate theology of disdain, a cold loathing, a tax-exempt campaign of derision, using the cross as a battering ram, a billyclub. it is shabby, medieval, irreligious.

but what really frosts them is simpler: two boys kissing. and happy to do so.

so we will ignore them and have our genial saturday saturnalia, our music and speeches, our affections and celebration, our friends, our history, our lovers, our pride, our lives.

whirled news now

libby's next leaks in federal pen
neocons shed crockodile tears

a bush-appointed no-bullshit judge sentenced mr. libby to two and a half years in federal prison tuesday. an ashen-faced scooter commented afterward, "im too old to be a punk in a bunk."

a passel of supportive letters from such as wolfie, kissie, and rummy did not sway the judge. president bush is rumored to be polishing another medal of freedom for yet one more disgraced underling. judge wilson delayed scooter's going-to-jail moment in order to guffaw some more over the stack of touchingly absurd letters.

federal prisoner teara newone commented, "i've already bid four packs of kools to get scooter to scoot into my bunk." federal officials suspected a prison bidding war may break out to obtain mr. libby's sexual services.

paris hilton had no comment.

court ok's flying fucks and shit
fcc lively lingo liberated

a trash-talking federal court yesterday nixed the federal communication commission's ban on nasty words over the air. reading his decision from the bench, judge leonard bruce noted, "the fcc's stringent approach and gigantic fines for dirty words were way out of bounds. so fuck that shit."

paris hilton did have a comment but we won't print it.

bush impales vlad

en route to heilgendamm (german for "place of holy hell") to give chancellor merkel another backrub at the g8 summit, president missile shield lashed out at russian leader putin. with cowboy directness, bush decried putin's news manipulation, threats to other countries, vote suppression, saber rattling, and coziness with big business, "the kinda stuff i'd never let happen in the u.s."

condileeza rice had a comment, but it was about paris hilton.

trump tower baghdad

the state department today announced that the vast $600 million u.s. baghdad embassy will be privatized. the equity firm of trump, chump and dump, l.l.p. is the likely buyer.

the donald outlined his plans for this "unprecedentedly fabulous makeover" at a press conference in the sultanate of oman.

"we'll make this a stunning new mecca." trump crowed. "imagine a sultry night in the new baghdad," he exuded, "when the orchestra strikes up the 1812 overture, we won't even need our own cannons. the danger and glamour of this city on the tigris will supercharge the world-weary paparazzi."

luxury suites will be fitted with grenade-proof shutters, korans, and prada gas masks.

the "shock and awe" disco's indoor pyrotechnics will replicate the sumptuous danger of a baghdad gone wild. enjoy apocalyptic dancing till dawn.

waiters dressed in silk crusader outfits will flit table to table through a dozen luxury restaurants. armani clothed patrons can indulge such delicacies as shishkabob al quaida, fallujah flambe with freedom fries, and tempting shiite on a shingle.

wayne newton will kick off the fun in the enormous boomboom room. he invites you to shake to the beat of the new dance craze, "the mocktada."

huge plasma video screens will feature such classic films as "twelve o'clock high," "dr. strangelove," "the best years of our lives," and "blackhawk down."

trump vowed to hire at least fifty elvis impersonators.

innovative pool wear will include mae west flak vests and and kevlar helmets in imitation of trump's signature mop top hairdo. wet burkha contests happen every tuesday evening.

the "rumsfeld double-down lounge" will provide texas high stakes poker in a relaxed atmosphere of cost overruns and paranoia.

the "thief of baghdad room" will be reserved for pentagon contractors.

wackenbutt corporation will provide beefy armed alcoholics for security.

A state department spokeswoman said, "this ought to give that bearded guy in his cave a coronary."

"this will be the world's most explosive new entertainment venue," trump continued. "we can't promise seventy five virgins and fountains of wine, but this'll come darned close to paradise."

make your will and your reservations now. contact saddamnation airlines for ticket information.

"i misinvaded"

these are the two words i most want to hear from president commander guy's mouth. not misspoke, misstated, misunderestimated, miss thing, or miss accomp.

***

political ornithologists report a strange sighting in the baghdad area. a large slow avian biped (liebermanis disgustus) has been photographed by a number of observers. its grating squawk, "surge, surge, surge," has been tape recorded. this gross near-extinct creature's flak-vest tan plumage and head crest resembling a doughboy's world war one helmet have elicited global astonishment.

the world wildlife fun added: "this species appears to mix simian and avian physiology in an unseemly brew. such a specimen should be captured and held in a preserve on, say, elba."

a unique grotesquerie for your life list, birders.

***

all bush-appointed immigration judges should be deported. see how they like it. they can then re-apply for asylum and test their luck.

***

due to a collapsed tin ceiling in our aging composing room, a guest editorial, "hardliner crybaby," wrongly appeared in the sports section. the incorrect photo and caption gave the impression that representative john boner volunteered to perform as bozo the clown for a ward of quadraplegic iraqi children.

mr. boner, to the best of our knowledge, has never been a freelance clown. he is paid.

***

if della street could talk:
monica goodling's favorite course at pat robberson's school o' law was called "should jesus have hired perry mason?"

***

because of exceptionally powerful solar flares affecting electromagnetic transmissions, tuesday's article "learn english good or go home" was mysteriously printed in swedish.

***


epitaph:

here jerry fallwell lies.
as usual.

errata race

the editor regrets:

due to an inebriation error, our report that dick cheney as a child played puck in "a midsummer night's surge" was not correct. mickey rooney played puck. mr. cheney performed in "krapp's last tape" at the east berlin annual proctologist's convention. we regret the error.

our editorial describing first lady laura bush's hairdo as "wookie-like" was inexact. the editorialist has corrected the phrase to "a festival of furbies."

the odessa correspondent's note that the pentagon's new war czar is a hemophiliac descendant of russia's romanov family is, alas, off the mark. he is instead the great great great grand nephew of kaiser wilhelm ii, and enjoys two fully functioning arms. he does not wear a mustache.

a klonipin-addled photo intern transposed pictures and captions in sunday's "celebs on toast" section. german chancellor andrea merkel hasn't, to our knowledge, ever "jiggled her headlights," and is not in danger of incarceration in california; ms. hilton did not refer to vladimir putin as a "pissant slavic putz."

due to a typesetter's miscue, the headline on page 12, in reference to former massachusetts governor romney's quest for the white house, should read "mormon's heir" rather than "moron's hair."

we regret to inform readers that secretary of state condoleeza rice was never a member of the supremes. she merely shares their aging hairdresser. doctor rice is, however, a pianist of honkytonk quality. she mainly performs privately for her livingroom full of exercise machines.

in a profile of her royal majesty queen elizabeth ii entitled "saxon's angle," please substitute "regal bearing" for the incorrect "fecal sharing." in addition, tony blair is not the author of the 1948 novel "1984."

a description of senate minority leader mitch mcconnell's neckwear as "castro faggot-ass pink" occured due to a brownout that discombobulated our aging linotype equipment. we publicly apologize to the castro district of the city of san francisco.

next week: toenail clipping our footnotes.

lonelygrunt15

at ease, gentlemen.

i hear you all bitchin bout our new rules about them intertubes. lemme lay it out for you. defective immediately, keep your asses off of myspace, youtube, xtube, flickr, dickr, and any other libral shitass wangwave video crap web thing.

and especially stay off dudesnude. i know you guys say you love each other but do you hafta deep kiss? and don't tell me the brits are doin it. this ain't amsterdam or frisco.

and another thing. stop talkin to them writers. don't let me catch you in bed with some embedded journalist. a pen's as dangerous as a bomb.

now i know you been hearin about g.i.'s returnin home and bein denied medical and disability cause the docs fake up some "pre-existing" mental condition b.s. look, you volunteered for this here army. that's crazy from the getgo, so we already got you on a technicality.

i don't gotta remind you to be super careful out there. this place ain't no shopping mall. well, cept for mccain. baghdad is damn dangerous. reminds me of detroit. with crappier cars. crappier cars that explode.

so help me, if one a you guys gets blowed up by any ied, i'll personally strangle whatever's left of you.

hey, you in back there - put down that goddamn noam chomsky book and pay attention.

president brushcut's got his fubar surge thing goin, and we're the lucky bunnies what got to carry it out. extreme awareness is the rule. avoid any bigass trucks with posters of ben loadin on em. remain super cautious while searching or patting down civilians or suspects.

and that reminds me of another thing. no, repeat no, fraternizin with them muslim girls. you stay outta their sunni triangles. and don't be callin in air strikes on no more nail salons.

hey, and don't think i didn't see you friggin sad sacks scratching your eyebrows with your middle fingers the goddamn whole time dick cheney gave his speech here. you can thank jesus the v.p. is fuckin nearsighted. and i don't want any mass crotch scratching next week when condi visits.

men, we got a important mission here. just cause they won't fuckin tell us what the fuck it is don't mean we ain't gonna go out and accomplish the goddamn mission. ya follow me on this?

let's go out and and kick ass and win some hearts and minds.

cause if you fuck this up, boys, there's a moldy rat room waitin for you at walter reed.

oh, cookie wants me to remind you that tonight's special is chipped beef on toast.

that's it.

disfugginsmissed.

cost of life

in my city salad days (more my bacobits days), i paid a third of our $125 a month rent, drank 35 cent pickwick ales, enjoyed 99 cent lunches, and drove cab at night. my college tuition had been $200 a semester. work all summer; save enough for a university year. bob dole was running for vice president.

students, let us compare and contrast.

now: average equivalent urban rent - $1,750.
beer: five bucks a pop.
state school: $8,000 per semester.

the iraq war will easily cost 1.25 trillion dollars. that's billions of months of rent at my 1976 rate.

the gray lady reports last week that the average manhattan hedge fund manager's take last year topped $350 million.

the average.

a subway ride away, the bronx remains the poorest urban county in america. throughout gotham 1.5 million live below the poverty level. a poverty level that is set insultingly low. hundreds upon hundreds of thousands receive food stamps. hundreds of thousands more need them.

this fiscal straight jacket tightens with crushing inevitability, a python. day after day, dime by dime, hunger to hunger, the empire of money crushes human futures.

over a single generation we've slid from pride to penury.

what's a life worth?

andrew bacevich found out. bacevich is from a military family, fought in vietnam. he is a professor at boston university. his twenty seven year old son, also named andrew, volunteered to fight in iraq. professor bacevich has consistently written against the iraq war.

last week professor bacevich received the news no parent should receive. his son had been killed.

professor bacevich writes, "memorial day orators will say that a g.i.'s life is priceless. don't believe it. i know what value the u.s. government assigns to a soldier's life: i've been handed the check. it's roughly what the yankees will pay roger clemens per inning once he starts pitching next month."

let's talk about [blank]

michaelangelo's david was fitted with a figleaf. barbarians thwacked the dicks off classic greek statues. the japanese pixillate out cocks in their porn. satyr vases hide in museum basements.

why this long panic about guy's weenies?

this vital fluid erectory device is getting short shrift. we have two states and two contrasting acceptabilities. state 1: soft, almost ok. state 2: hard, usually obscene.

the lads in plato's time had a dual course too. 1: public sculpture with miniturized genitals (schlongettes?). 2: beasty satyrs with humongous hardons.

along with our double brains we have double attitudes. eros is so powerful and unpredictable we've split this force into sappy puppy love versus bull-savage uncontainment. we lurch between radical extremes.

what about a civil conversation between the two? a confluence. a meeting in geneva, as it were. first negotiations might be tense.

artists can help us out here. creators tussle with contraries, like jacob wrestling the angel. consider the rumbustious life and work of robert mapplethorpe. he roped a suppressed eros right back into the fine arts, hot and camera-ready. prudes were apoplectic. museums refused shows. southern senators fulminated. a curator was taken to court.

his art gave vision to the gay lib phrase 'the personal is political.' what shocked was unashamed pleasure of the flesh. and his crashing of racial barriers ('god ahmighty, there's black dick all over them museum walls.'). mapplethorpe's piece called "man in a polyester suit" raised delicious scandal. a knee to neck close up reveals a black man wearing a cheap suit, fly open, pendulous phallus on show.

there's more than a touch of humor to this work: "here's the forbidden thing. you'll have to change your life."

the satyr is freed from the cellar.

our commentarium

the web is now a huge commentarium that's spread faster than radio, television, or herpes. it is infostuffed, goofy, raging, lewd. strangely, we have the pentagon to thank for getting it going. it subsumes media that came before - print, music, photos, ads, art, design, video.

just this week i've watched monica goodgirl's evasions, japanese porn, bill moyer's journal, al gore on jon stewart, and more more more. i've read reports, articles, comments, prose frothings. i saw the pres shit on by a bird. and, always, the ads, hogging as much space as they can.

untethered to time, i've absorbed this digital dog's breakfast naked in bed curled up with a laptop. all this is, admittedly, far from listening to socrates at the agora.

but this pixel festival is here to stay.

nicholas negroponte is ushering in a one hundred dollar laptop to be bought by governments and donated to children in poorer countries. he talks of making laptops by the tens of millions, by the hundreds of millions.

bucky fuller in the 1960's proposed a 'world game,' in a large stadium wherein mainframe computers pumped data about the whole earth's resources onto large screens. all were invited to 'play' strategies to maximize success for the planet's citizens. then pick the best and enact it.

mainframe shrank to mini computer then into a laptop in every christmas stocking. decentralization decentered. we didn't get the world game (our business poobahs had other ideas). we got google, wikipedia, and lonelygirl.

so we come to blogs and bloggers. 'blogger' is such a plonky word (click 'comment' below and suggest better). a 'blogger' sounds like the roto rooter guy who comes with a fecal encrusted device to ream a septic tank with. note: don't end a sentence with with.

i started on the print trade in an age of hot wax and physical pasteups. i still miss that waxine aroma but type and post is a hell of a lot easier. let the cyber romp romp on.

it's an astonishment to remember that this whole ediface is built on sand. or, at least, on silicon.





.

is it on wikipedia yet?

empussification. a word coined by jon stewart on his faux news show. it refers to the dems backing off including timelines in an iraq war funding bill. the hint is that bush has empussified the congress.

the root word is of course 'pussy,' a slur on females, and, when used by one male against another, an insult.

we seem to be uncertain about sexual boundaries, confused about aggression. butch posturing is an old game played by men in politics. "he looks french" is the least of it. the daggers of speech by the three leading repub candidates presages a 2008 festival of bellicosity.

it's all about domination. from schoolyard insults and fighting to a reluctant empire attacking a far off country, it's about violently getting our way, about forcing submission.

i saw it in its most vicious form on cnn. a young woman from northern iraq had fallen in love with a young man from the wrong tribe, the wrong religion. male villagers dragged her into the street and kicked and stoned her to death. police officials watched and did nothing. someone recorded it on cell phone video.

can we still believe in the moral progress of the human race?

bird terror update

high military officials announced that the bird poop attack on president bush during an outdoor press conference is part of a "dangerous avian al quaida terrorist threat."

Department of homeland security czar michael cjerkoff stated "effective immediately, all birds are on the dhs no-fly list." the director further announced the appointment of tippi hedron as new head of the anti-avian terrorist task force. ms. hedron interrupted her face lift surgery and boarded a plane for washington.

Reports of navy gun boats shelling east coast bird sanctuaries could not be confirmed at this hour.

the aclu reported that an fbi raid on audubon society headquarters was underway. an fbi spokescretin said "any avian terrorist sympathizers will be met with the full power of the law."

senator byrd of west viginia was reportedly detained.

air force colonel walter pigeon commented: "if we see so much as a tweety bird on the wing, our pilots have orders to make broilers out of them suckers."

president commander guy issued this statement: "i tollya they were gonna strike at us at home again. why don't yall listen to me?"

police were seizing copies of an alfred hitchcock film they were not at liberty to name, claiming it is "an ortnitho-islamic fascist al quaida training film that could endanger national security."

al quaida of iraq denounced the administration's actions as "chicken shit."