The Best Parts

Come when you've got everything squared away. It has probably been more or less so for main winter festivities since we used mammoth tusks for tent poles. Squared away, as in a presentable abode and comestibles arrayed an hour or hopefully more before a brood of family and friends arrive for a party. In our case for Christmas Eve, and as the duck said in the movie 'Babe,' Christmas means carnage.

However achieved, the best parts come when you find yourself relaxing and reflecting on good fortune. There's that point where you think, "It is done. Ready. Chaos lurks, but let not perfection be the enemy of the good. Disapprove of the downstairs bathroom disarray as you will. Screaming children, all you crazed little wanting machines and rug-rats, come and do your worst."

Foods are best simple, easily wolfed down. The freshest finest bagels available can serve as vehicles for a commanding centerpiece of fat and salt, for example cream cheese Grandma mixed with Grandpa's toothsome smoked salmon. Chips of both kinds (potato and tortilla), salsas and dips, veggies crackers basic wines and beers fill out a conveniently accessed table. Prime rib is fine, but nobody really expects or requires more than peasantries, those foods which first tend to dance in the imagination if cruel circumstance ever conspires to make us prisoners. Speaking of which, guests unaccustomed to hard liquors need not be entrapped nor enticed. Good people and the smell of oranges and cloves suffice.

After the kids are in bed and the presents are all done up (or after the UPS truck delivered them pre-wrapped), there's another of those moments, the closest thing to ritual remaining to most of us religion-free types. The evergreens, the mistletoe and lights are ancient symbols of coming Spring and eternal life; an Egyptian from 3,000 years ago would recognize a Christmas tree's purpose instantly.

Yes, there is pervasive commercialism just this side of mind control, the distracted drivers running stoplights, the twisted and counter-twisted wires, facile vengeance of Chinese slave labor, maddeningly secure toys to cardboards. There are tiny screws, assemblies, plastics, packaging, disposal of same. There was having the house clean a grand total of 4 hours. But there is at least as much solstice as there is Santa, and there is having to wait until next year.

Obama's West Point Speech and Karl Rove's Congratulations

I am the government's unwilling mule hit with IRS kicks and satrap whips as they drive me up through one last 13,000 foot high pass sucking the biting air in through my helpfully slit nostrils and the atrophied ass of my imagination. I bring strapped to my back explosives down at dawn into another hidden valley to the people hibernating there who when they cry out as loud as human throats can throw sounds of pain and mourning will be muffled in our angels' hierarchies.

When phosphorus bombs were raining down on Tokyo in the Good War to start a firestorm the rice farmer said to the shopkeeper don't worry friend it's only politics. Our man-designate went to West Point again this week in blackface to sing and dance the golden oldies of Al Jolson crooning my Mammy because even the great-hearted become small-minded when faced with the prospect of wild Indians all smart enough to press plastic buttons duct-taped to wires rigged to hypothetical nukes. Myths are far more potent than realities and somewhere there are people who still remember if Zeus slew Uranus or Uranus slew Zeus and super-sized are the fears that gnaw on our comfortably guilty imperial innards.

The War is homeowner's insurance for Uncle Sam and of course it's not meant to be won. The enemies don't even qualify as enemies just as tragically paid extras in gruesome comedies and when all this is gone they'll still be there and victories over cockroaches aren't possible nor do they matter. It's the victories over concepts which are key thus the wars must continue and flow into each other and death to reality as molten ores flow into the forms of shining cities on hills. The thirst for retribution remains and bring me the head of Osama bin Laden speaking of myths may he rest in peace and attentions turn to the next object of collective ire.

The speech was the past and no different speech could be given. Our way of corporation which is to say profit and self-embodiment depends upon the gray pulverized dust of the Hindu Kush so invasion is withdrawal a puppet is a nation and self-determination is occupation. As hierarchies crumble they rely increasingly on lies ably abetted by cupidity base stupidity and meanness but this is simply how it must be done and look look pay attention to the stagecraft and flourish. There's recognition behind the blackface that it can't keep going although it must keep going it will keep we are the noble experiment anointed by the hand of god. Now give us more money and if not just remember how found our embodiment is of saying well if they all hate us anyhow let's drop the big one now. Boom goes London. Boom Paree. More room for you and more room for me.

I am a little toiling mule not invited to parties by the only important party called the Property Party which has politely devolved into arms dealers drug lords and jailors. Its parliament of whores and two right wings plan to keep the poor the black the anti-imperialists and malcontents like me divided and entertained with videos of cats flushing toilets. When you're born into this world you get a ticket to the freak show just like George Carlin said and when you're born in America you get a front-row seat. A brittle democracy's lost moral imperative may occur to us at any time our burritos are on the line and the war is on all as Bismarck said it's business by other means.

I catch artisanal bread and my wife can get us backstage to the Cirque de Soleil. I feel the ship of state's skin stretching and buckling hear John Wayne's rivets popping bulkheads bitching Elvis is gyrating history is ending and I remember when Rome was the biggest game in town and it went down because they hollowed it from the center and reneged on their veterans' pay. The Senators took their mistresses to their villas and families waiting in Spain and the south of France. They think we're easier to be played on than a pipe and their plan will work until it doesn't and when it doesn't it's going to not work in a very big way.