SEAN BELL TOLLS FOR THEE

(first published at: http://www.xiffi.com/index.php?view=article&catid+303%3Acrime&id=161%3Asean-bell-tolls-for-thee&option=com_content&Itemid=70 )

by Andrew Arnett

Yesterday

I knew the Sean Bell verdict was to be decided today, but I didn’t think it would be this early, at least not before the morning dog walk and certainly not before that first cup of coffee. But there it was, first thing I saw when I turned on NY One News at 8:40am – “Breaking News: Police in Sean Bell Case Acquitted of All Charges”. I didn’t expect that verdict. Nobody expected that verdict, not even the cops, I would guess. With a verdict like that, it looked to be another big news day in Devilstown. Of course, in a situation like this, there was always someone bound to be upset. But the clearing of all three defendants of all charges would certainly tip the emotional scale into the deep end. Tempers were going to be stoked. There were already fears this might turn into another Rodney King affair. Now, that concern seemed more palpable.

What next? After the verdict, the family of Sean Bell, accompanied by Reverend Al Sharpton, stormed out of the court house, abruptly canceling all scheduled press conferences. There would be no statements made. The silence was, of course, deafening. The entourage chose, rather, to go to the grave sight of Sean Bell and commensurate and, I would suspect, plan their next move.

No statement had as of yet come from the Mayors office, and since the Bell family had left Kew Gardens, I figured the news could be found at City Hall. I was wrong. Sure, I made it down there quick enough, but found nothing there except for the usual suspects. No media, no television news vans, protesters, nothing. But this story was far from over, I just needed to catch up with it. I decided to go into Kew Gardens after all, and I knew that the F-train could take me there, even though I had never been there before. It is true that I did grow up in New York City but most of Queens and even parts of Brooklyn were as foreign to me as northern Mongolia. And Staten Island may as well be a moon circling Neptune for that matter. By this time I had wandered into Chinatown, so I asked someone who looked like a local where I could catch the F train and he told me to “walk in that direction for about ten or fifteen minutes or so.” By my estimates that would put me on the shores of Brooklyn, if I could walk on water. I negotiated my way past vendors selling dried dragon fish and spicy squid and shop windows displaying Fuchow Mimosa Moon Cakes and jackfruit until another helpful soul told me that I was heading in the right direction, just take a right on East Broadway then walk two blocks. I must admit I was tempted to veer into the Wing Shoow Seafood Restaurant for a taste of their Hong Kong Blue Crab Taco but suddenly caught sight of the subway entrance right across the street of the Sun Light Bakery Corporation so I decided to soldier forward for I am, after all, a professional.

By the time I got to Kew Gardens it was getting close to noon, and though the police barricades were still up around the court house and the cops were still out en mass, it seemed the angry mob of hundreds I had seen on TV in the morning had dissipated. The television news vans were there as well, but the crews were all on break. There didn’t seem to be any major riots breaking out, that’s for sure, and aside from two minor scuffles earlier on, this was far from being a Rodney King flashback. At least not just yet.

I was in Los Angeles in 1992 when those riots broke out. I was attending a music school and living in Hollywood the day the judge acquitted the cops in that horrific beating they threw on poor Rodney King. The verdict itself seemed to ignite a fire that turned L.A. into one huge Molotov cocktail. Over three thousand fires were started in three day’s, reaching into the Hollywood Hills and that enclave of the upper crust, Beverly Hills 90125. But the logistics of that circumstance proved to be very different from that found in our city. One factor is the layout of the two cities. Los Angeles is flat and spread out with many freeways intersecting it. When the Bloods and the Crips united to lay waste to L.A., they just loaded up their cars with Molotov cocktails and fanned out into the different sections, tossing the bombs from their cars without needing to even slow down. They moved like ghost riders in the night and no one got caught. If such a thing were to take place in New York, cars would quickly get snarled in grid lock. Of course the subways are the quickest way to get around here, but seriously folks, how many Molotov cocktails can a person carry on the train before things start looking suspicious.

Today

Today I made a concerted effort to get on top of the story. There was a rally scheduled to take place at 9am at Al Sharpton’s National Action Network Headquarters located on 145th Street and Malcom X Boulevard, then at 10am the Sean Bell family were scheduled to speak. When I arrived the streets were full of protesters and cops and the media was ubiquitous. The rally itself was taking place inside the headquarters so the throng waited anxiously in the streets for Sharpton’s next move. I pressed myself up against the window to try and get a glimpse of Sharpton while agitators shouted out slogans. One guy in dreadlocks chanted “Every dollar is a bullet. Hold back that black dollar . . . burn baby burn, burn their pocket.” This was by no means a strictly black thing, there were many white protestors in the crowd as well, and I felt no personal pressures based on skin color. This was more a rally against the system, and a desire for change there. Another man chanted “No justice, no profit, keep your money in your pocket . . .boycott, boycott!” It seemed that it might take some time before Sharpton would emerge from his lair, so I decided to slip into the Dunkin Donuts next door for some coffee. The establishment was a flurry of activity with protesters and press passes flapping about, but the Pakistani run establishment was delighted by the infusion of business. It would seem that the boycott may start soon, but not just yet, at least not until everyone had gotten their donuts and latte’s.Back outside, it seemed that things were coming to a head. They were lining protestors up in preparation for a march down Malcom X Boulevard towards 125th Street. The organizers had fashioned fifty placards, each with a number from one to fifty, representing the number of bullets fired in the Sean Bell incident. I was asked to hold one of the numbers but respectfully declined. I wanted to remain a fly on the wall, an impartial observer to the scene.

I continued to scribble overheard conversations into my notebook. One man said “We should have listened to Marcus Garvey and gotten the hell out of here.” Another person said “Malcom X said I don’t want them to give me anything because those Indian givers will just take it back.” Then, another kindly gentleman asked me if I could hold the placard with the number 24 on it, for just a moment. I said “sure”. And then the march began. Suddenly I was swept with the rest of the protestors down the Boulevard. Now I had become part of the story. Was this a compromise of my journalistic integrity, a blurring of objectivity? What the hell, at least it was a front row seat to the event. Hell, I was sitting on the stage. Later that night, on the CBS Evening News, I saw the number 24 march down the street in Harlem.

end.

THE POPE COMES TO DEVILSTOWN TO ABSOLVE THE SINS OF ALL VAMPIRES, REMOVE THE CURSE FROM YANKEE STADIUM, AND TO GET A DECENT SEAFOOD DINNER

(first published on the internet at: http://www.xiffi.com/index.php?view=article&catid=313%3Apublic-life&id=162%3Athe-pope-comes-to-devilstown-to-absolve-the-sins-of-all-vampires-remove-the-red-sox-curse-from-yank&option=com_content&Itemid=70)

by Andrew Arnett

FRIDAY, April 18, 2008



9:48am – The Pope’s helicopter has just taken off from JFK airport, enroot to the heliport at Wall Street. His airplane, the Shepard One, had arrived twenty minutes ago from Washington DC. The Pope will address the United Nations later today. Naturally, the neighborhood here around the UN building is in a high state of alert. Chaos looms around every corner but control is unprecedented. Sirens are constantly whining, helicopters hovering overhead. The airspace over Manhattan is a no fly zone for commercial airlines. Large swaths of city blocks are in lockdown. During the last couple of nights, as I’ve walked the dog on her evening stroll in midtown, I’ve passed by numerous police road blocks wherein cars were randomly pulled over and checked. Yesterday, a taxi cab across the street from St. Patrick’s Cathedral spontaneously burst into flames. The flames burned twenty feet high as firemen tried to hose it down. Nobody is sure why that happened.



10:08am – The Pope’s helicopter has just landed at the heliport on Wall Street. Cardinal Egan is there to receive him and then he will be whisked off to the UN building in a tall black Cadillac resembling a Hearst. The heliport is saturated with security. There is a hazmat crew dressed in shiny silver looking like metallic androids working the mines on one of Jupiter’s moons. The Bomb Squad is present with their giant yellow tank parked besides the Popes Cadillac. Scuba teams are lurking beneath the waters surface in the East River. NYPD, Port Authority, FBI, NSA, SS, and those guys that look like agent Smith from the Matrix, they’re all here folks. This is the biggest party in town.



10:23am – Pope arrives at United Nations. The temperature is 66 degrees. I am watching the situation unfold on NY 1 News, but it is being covered by every single television station in New York City, minus PBS which is showing an episode of Dragon Tales. The Pope is greeted by UN dignitaries and Cardinals. The men in black suits with Ray Bans are everywhere.


11:15am - Secretary General of the United Nations Ban Ki-Moon takes the podium at the UN National Assembly to introduce the Pope. The Pope then delivers his speech stating how “all leaders in the international community should act together”, and how “Rule of Law does not hamper freedom but enhance it,” and how “some uses of scientific technology violates human rights”.



Saturday, April 19, 2008


12:31pm – The Pope rides up 5th Avenue in his Pope Mobile, rumored to cost $500,000 for bullet proofing and bomb proofing. It weighs four tons.

7:30pm – The Pope goes to a sacred seafood dinner serving striped bass and seasoned vegetables, prepared by famed TV chef Lidia Bastianich along with a team of her chefs from her three city restaurants. Federal agents reportedly tasted the food before it was served, though why anyone would want to harm this kindly old man, I have no idea.



SUNDAY, April 20, 2008


9:11am – The Pope is due to arrive at Ground Zero in nineteen minutes but I am still not out the door yet. I need to finish the coffee, grab my camera, and the press pass - can’t find that thing - there, in the bottom dresser draw. I kiss the dog goodbye, head on down to Grand Central to catch the 5-train to Fulton Street.


9:30am – The Pope has just arrived at Ground Zero but I am still trapped on this damn train. This is becoming a bad trend, this tardiness. This is how I missed the Spitzer story. For that one, I had arrived five minutes after Spitzer exited his compound, on the day of his resignation, to be whisked away in his limo. He has not been seen or heard from since. Now, a beggar is working his way up the subway train aisle. He sticks his paw out at me and I reply “sorry buddy, I’ve got issues.” And certainly I do. I’m not the Pope, and certainly not as generous. Being on the dole, I have to be tight fisted with every nickel. The beggar moves on down the aisle to the next rejection.

9:38am – I’ve arrived at the site of the former World Trade Center. The Pope is inside, paying respects to the fallen and speaking with Governor Patterson, Mayor Bloomberg, and Governor Corzine. The sidewalk is crowded with spectators and grifters hawking Pope Benedict merch like flags and t-shirts and laminated photographs of the Vatican. As we wait for a glimpse of the Pope, the group of people I am standing amongst occupy their time by trying to see how many rooftop snipers they can pick out. There is an obvious one hanging over the edge of the Federal Office Building on Rector Street twenty stories above the ground. Then there is one on the Amex building at the far side of Ground Zero. After about forty minutes of this kind of diversion, the Pope finally emerges. His black limousine drives by in a motorcade, and is gone in seconds. There was a touch of the anti-climactic in the air, not exactly a parting of the Red Sea. But then again, there were rosary beads with a gold cross on sale for two dollars, and the little Pope flags made for a nice memento.


2:00pm – Pope leaves his residence at 72nd and 5th Avenue on his way to Yankee Stadium. The weather clears for the first time all day, the clouds part, the sun shines, the temperature rises a few degrees. Mayor Bloomberg asks Cardinal Egan if the Pope had anything to do with weather control. The Cardinal replies “there are no accidents, Mike.”


At Yankee stadium, the “Concert of Hope” is going full swing. White doves, real and fake, are released over the heads of the audience, while Harry Connick Jr., a devote Catholic, plays on the piano. The Popes journey has been a spectacle of gargantuan proportion. No one has seen anything like this here since the Beatles played Shea Stadium in 1965. John Lennon had stated that the Beatles were bigger than Jesus, but this Pope Benedict is surely bigger than the Beatles, so now balance has returned once again to the universe.



2:19pm – Pope arrives at Yankee Stadium, in his Pope Mobile. They drive onto right field and circle the stadium, waving to the crowd. The crowd goes wild. The seats are filled to maximum capacity. It is the World Series of religion. The NBC announcer proclaims that the Pope has hit a home run. The Pope steps onto the stage, with a giant pentagram splayed out on the field before him. Then he blesses the audience. A wave of good vibrations spreads throughout the audience, then that wave radiates beyond the stadium, across New York City and towards the outer boroughs, dispelling negativity, absolving the sins of all the vampires, and removing all hexes from Yankee Stadium. Thank the Lord for that.


8:04pm – The Pope appears at the departing ceremony at JFK with Dick Cheney by his side.

8:40pm – The Pope boards his flight, bids adieu to the USA.


End.

There Will Be Blood, Again

by Andrew Arnett

(first published on the internet in Fall 2003)


BAGHDAD, IRAQ

(November 11, 2003) This morning I made a package of Ulker chicken noodle soup (product of Istanbul), sliced some fresh onion, half a carrot, and dropped in a chicken egg. Boiled it for five minutes then served. After that, I had a banana and a slice of gouda cheese.
After breakfast I headed down to east Karada street, across the Tigris River from the green zone, where Paul Bremmer resides ensconced in Saddam’s former Palace like an embattled Wizard of Oz manufacturing psy-ops fantasy's for America's consumption. Of course, the Iraqis have been too smart for this kind of fodder for a long time now. Most of the ones I speak to, from waiters to businessmen, to my neighbor, insist that Saddam was a puppet of the CIA since at least the time he was a young thug murdering his way up the crime ladder during the sixties. Whether or not he is now riding around Baghdad in a taxi cab or living on a sprawling compound in Maryland is a mute point. The point, they insist, is that his function was to turn this pricey real estate of Iraq into such an unbearably wretched hellhole that the locals would have no choice but to welcome any change of regime, including the return of the slaughtering Mongol tribes.
Of course, this is all crazy talk. We Americans know better than this. We're here to help these poor wretches get there acts together - kick out the loath full dictator, get democracy and the oil back on line, then just hand it all right over to the Iraqi people. So what if our nation goes bankrupt in the process, we know we're doing a good deed. We're philanthropists and God will smile down upon us. All these other viewpoints should be tossed into the wastebasket of conspiracy theories. Let the losers spin their paranoid tales, if it will make them feel better.
When I got back to my home in the residential neighborhood of Karada, I flipped on the BBC and watched an interview with a John or a Micheal Paris from the CTI Think Tank. The name isn't really important to me because these people are all interchangeable. They exhibit such a collective hive mind that they may as well all be one entity, swarming like locusts on the airwaves in times of war, selling their questionable wares like oily car salesmen pushing late model SUV's in towns like Waco. Where do they come from and why do we have to listen to this tripe?

SECURITY ALERT AT THE SHERATON

(November 14, 2003) There's a security problem at the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Baghdad and it's damn appalling. This came to my attention whilst I
was having afternoon cocktails poolside with my friends Sasha, Sala and David. Everyone was restricted to the hotel grounds due to a bomb alert, which is routine. This did not dampen the spirits, and indeed, added to the atmosphere which was abuzz with Chinook and Apache helicopters flying to and fro from Emerald City just across the river, wherein Governor Bremmer holds court.
Day turned into evening as these things tend to do, and our party grew to encompass the RTI security crowd et al. When the gathering wrapped up late night, we grabbed the plastic dolphin glasses, laptop sound system, and whatever other valuables we had, for the long haul upstairs. But Sasha had forgotten her stack of CD's, so my friend Ahmed and I left them for her at the front desk for retrieval the next morning.
The problem is, when he went to pick them up she was told that her CD's were not there. She then took the matter to the hotel manager, who told her to her face that her friends were lying -- nothing had been left for her and in all probability we were the real thieves. The next day, Sasha's boyfriend Mickey, a Serbian counter-sniper body guard, went to the lobby and gave the folks behind the desk an ultimatum: produce the goddamn CD's by 5PM or someone will get shot. This in fact was no idle threat, being that this is the New Wild West, and that Mickey has an itchy trigger finger which has shot people for lesser reasons.
Unfortunately, the deadline came and went without sign of the missing compact discs, and the decision to kill someone was blurred by the choice of who exactly should take the fall, it being obvious that the entire staff was on the take.
Things didn't come to a head until I returned to the Sheraton with Ahmed a full week later. While using the house phone to announce our arrival, we recognized the two desk clerks we had left the CD’s with, and we knew they had recognized us – we were the American and the Jew who had returned to reclaim their property. We did not confront them immediately, but went upstairs instead to Sasha's room where we had a few rounds of food and margaritas. After sweating them out for two hours, the night manager broke down and called up proclaiming the miraculous recovery of the entire catalogue of our lost CD’s.
Bomb alerts and terrorist threats are one thing, but if you can't trust your hotel staff, you are truly fucked, which is one of the reasons I stay at the Palestine Hotel right across the street, even if the party's are better at the Sheraton.

THE DEVIL WORSHIPPERS

(November 17, 2003) While here in Baghdad I’ve been studying the mysterious cult of Devil Worshippers known as the Yazidi. Their religious heritage can be traced back to at least the 5th century BC, where there is evidence they may have been a splinter group of early Zoroastrianism.
The Yazidi have their center of worship in northern Iraq near the city of Mosul. Their numbers range somewhere between 200,000 to 800,000 in Iraq, in addition to followers in Syria and Turkey.
A Sunni cleric I interviewed explained the basis for their worship in the
following simplified terms: God is all good, so if one does not worship God, He will not punish you. On the other hand, if you do not give proper reverence to the Devil, he will in all probability make you suffer.
The Yazidi paradigm in fact encompasses the worship of both Light and Dark forces, for they believe this Universe is a product of both elements. But it appears that they do take exception to the darker forces, at least in practice. For instance, they have been known to attack people who have spat on the ground while in their presence, for this is an offense to the Devil, who they call Shatan and who lives in the ground. They do not eat certain vegetables, such as the radish, because Shatan exists in there as well. In addition, unsubstantiated rumors abound about promiscuity and the sharing of woman folk during their secret snake ceremony's, which allegedly take place in underground caverns beneath their places of worship such as is found in Mosul.
I attempted to arrange for an interview with members of the super secret sect of Yazidi worshippers but was met with obstacles at every turn, for they did not trust religious outsiders, especially foreign ones. However, they were willing to meet with Yassir, my well educated Iraqi fixer, in exchange for a few bottles of Irak (a local hard liquor) and some money. After Yassir met with them, he gave me the following disturbing report:

“The entire family works at the Al Rasheed Hotel and lives in an adjacent compound. But a problem occurred when I arrived because just two day's before, the Al Rasheed was under an RPG attack in honor of Paul Wolfowitz's, who was staying at the hotel for a visit. Because of the heightened security alert, the American soldiers guarding the entrance would not allow me into the compound, so we had to relocate the interview to another location. The Yazidi family took me back to their hotel. They served me some tea and Irak but details at this point become very sketchy, because I became dizzy with the Irac and my memory is a little fuzzy. I remember first being led through a series of corridors and passageways into the bowels of the hotel itself. We entered into a large room filled with a throng of ecstatic people dressed in brightly colored feathery gowns dancing and spinning in a frenzy. I surmised that this place must have been used as the bomb shelter during the war, but was now dramatically transformed into a ceremonial temple with painted images of serpents and statues of snake headed dogs all lit up by the fire of burning torches.
The throng kept up their frenzied pace until the drums stopped beating. A man in a velvet robe stepped up to the marbled alter waving a live snake in his hands then spoke in a foreign dialect. Everyone bowed in reverence. A shock came over me when I realized that I had seen this man before. Indeed, I thought I was hallucinating but when I looked into his vampire eyes I knew for certain that this was the Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz.
After the sacrifice was performed I asked Paul what he was still doing in Baghdad and if he wasn't shaken by the recent attempt on his life. "Bring it on baby, bring it on," he answered. Just then a crowd of naked virgins entered into the temple and Paul bellowed "Good Morning Baghdad!" This was the last thing I remembered.”


"WELCOME TO VILLA INCOGNITO"

(November 23, 2003) One doesn't normally dwell upon the significance of electricity, it's just something we take for granted. Until that is, it gets cut off. And if this happens on a regular basis, say three times a day, for hours at a time, for months on end, the subject of electricity can begin to loom heavily upon ones mind. When I arrived in Baghdad seven weeks ago, Colin Powell was telling the press that power in the Iraqi capitol had been restored to levels even greater than when Saddam was in power. Paul Bremmer III was making similar optimistic grumblings from deep inside his bunker. Unfortunately, this turned out to be a big fat lie. Or maybe they were just seriously miss-informed. This is highly possible, for the electricity supplied to the Green Zone, wherein is located the brain trusts for the U.S. Military and the Coalition Provisional Authority, is priority number one and subsequently never runs out of juice. I suppose that under these conditions one may begin to believe things were working in an efficient manner, but step outside this insulated bubble to where the rest of Baghdad’s five million citizens live, and you'll get a different story.
Since I moved into a house in the residential neighborhood of Karada on October 12, power is at best a dicey proposition. Even with the installation of a home generator, and a wire which leeches electricity from the power grid across the street, we were still facing daily disruptions about every six hours which would halt our work and warm the beers in the fridge. And we were the lucky ones.
However, the most striking aspect of all this was that things were getting worse, not better. In fact, my final day's here in Baghdad have been marked by the longest blackout yet, lasting a straight 48 hours, with accompanying disruptions in the water system.
There was no mention of this of course, in the media. The White House PR machine was busy rolling out its latest product, something which they are calling Operation Iron Hammer, which will entail the use of overwhelming force to counter-attack the growing Iraqi Resistance. Lt. General Sanchez succinctly sums up the strategy as the "smashing of a walnut with a sledgehammer." If the strategy seems extreme, like a page torn from the Nazi war book, maybe because it is. Reuters reported that "Operation Iron Hammer" was the name given to Germany's plan for destroying electrical generators inside Russia during World War II.
Is this just bad coincidence, or is there something more brewing here? The implications seemed grim, and faced with another night in the dark, my crewmembers and I decided to head on over to the Sheraton for some social lubrication with the Reconstruction Crowd. Besides, it was my last night in Baghdad, and a semi official swarrey was already in the works.
We caught a cab on Sadun Avenue which weaved recklessly through the
dark black out streets. Traveling with me was Patrick, a Swedish film editor with a serious drinking problem and Ahmed, a Jewish/Arab transvestite doing work on location for Fashion TV.
When the driver dropped us off at the entrance to the hotel compound, I could see that the Palestine and the Sheraton, which serve as lodgings for the worlds media and increasingly, US firms like Bechtel and RTI, were not spared the blackout. Both hotels were encased in an eerie darkness, with only the sporadic glows of generator powered lights coming from the rooms of the more fortunate. We passed two checkpoints, then proceeded through the gauntlet of 12 foot high cement barriers which were hastily put up last month.
The lobby of the Sheraton looked like a Pharaohs tomb. Its 17 story high ceiling and terraced walls were cast in shadows, lit only by the emergency lights riding up and down the glass elevators like demented shooting stars. People were hunched over a small lamp at the front desk and lobby phones were down, so we proceeded directly to room 3-2-1, residence of Sasha, a former NGO now working with the US Reconstruction.
When we arrived, the place was already a scene of debauchery and terrible lewdness.
"You just missed Fred," said Mickey, "We had to carry him up to his room after he puked and passed out right there on the floor."
"You made it Buster, welcome to Villa Incognito", greeted Sasha, "We thought you weren't even going to come to your own going away party. So we decided to start drinking early."
"How early was that?" I asked her.
"Oh, about 1PM. You know, the usual time."
The room was lit with one candle planted on the center coffee table, which doubled as an enormous ashtray. Room service dishes were randomly strewn about. Techno music squeaked out from a laptop, running dangerously low on battery power. There were about nine people milling around in various stages of disrepair, while Sasha and her mercenary boyfriend Mickey held court around the candle light.
Mickey is head of security for a number of US firms and works closely with Coalition Forces, recently acting as Lt. General Sanchez’s personal bodyguard.
"So where were you for the last three day's," I asked him. "We thought you went AWOL?"
"He got arrested and thrown in the stockade by Iraqi Police for being a drunken freak," exclaimed Sasha.
"No, here's what happened," he said in his Serbian accent. "After you guy's left the party on Friday night, Sasha and I kept drinking, and then we got into an argument. I was so pissed off I took off on my bike down Jumhuriya St. When I reached the square I ran into an Iraqi Police patrol. When I stopped, these guy's were treating me like real belligerent assholes, and then they pulled their guns on me, so naturally I pulled my 9mm on them. After a lot of shouting and screaming I tried to show them my security I.D. but realized I had left it in my room, so I was
fucked. It turns out though, that just a few minutes before this occurred, there was someone else on a bike who had fired upon a group of IP just a mile up the road. So I could see why they were agitated."
"So his boss had him restricted to the base," added Sasha.
"Yeah, in fact I had to sneak out just to be here tonight."
Just then a waiter from room service entered with another tray of food. Before he could leave however, he would have to drink a double shot of tequila served by Mickey, who kept insisting to the man that he should do it for the sake of Ramadan."
The stubborn bastard put up a hell of a lot of resistance before finally giving in and taking his shot.
"We'll give'em twenty minutes before we order up more food, and give him more to drink," said Mickey after tipping the guy five U.S.
"But that’s the third time tonight already," admonished Sasha.
"So what?" he replied.
"Ill drink to that," I commented.
As the evening progressed, more people filtered in and out of the room. There was the IT from RTI, with a spooky German girlfriend attachment. There were mercenaries and hired guns unwinding with a few drinks. The wife of a possible CIA agent lamented upon her sexless life. Monty was deep into the drink and fondling his Uzi. Someone rolled a hash joint and lit it up.
At one point the candle ran low and began to flicker, so Sasha grabbed for a new one.
"It won't catch", she said while trying to light it in the flame.
"Why don't you cast one of those Yazidi fire spells," I commented.
"Izzity-Dippity-Zip," recited Amyl with a wave of the hand.
In that instant, as Sasha was dipping her candle into the flame, her sleeve caught on fire instead. I was stunned to see the yellow flames spread instantaneously across her cotton blouse, then go out just as quickly. Amazingly, there was no mark left on her clothes. No Mark!!!
Sure, there was some strange energy in the air that night. And those of us who witnessed this miraculous event would ponder its meaning for some time to come. But it was time for me to go. My ride to Amman was leaving in just a few hours, at the break of dawn, so we said our goodbye's at the Villa Incognito and headed home. The next morning I drove out of Baghdad with a hangover, but I was feeling O.K.

LONDON

(December 3, 2003) When my plane landed at Heathrow, the rain was falling in London. I was somewhat anxious about my connecting flight to New York because of an extended stay in Baghdad, which forced me to re-arrange my itinerary and reduced my ticket to a stand by. This was not a concern according to my travel agent in Amman who made a back-up reservation on another flight. But trepidation set in when I caught view of Air force One and Air force Two from the airplane window, just sitting downfield from us.
Then it all came back to me. Yes, the U.S. President was in town. Massive and unprecedented security was in place. Huge demonstrations were scheduled and later in the evening, a large effigy of George Bush would be pulled down in Trafalgar Square. This was being billed as a historical event and indeed, there hasn't been an official state visit by a U.S. President in England for over forty years. This meant that Bush would be having tea with the Queen and mushy pea soup with Blair. It seemed like a good idea, even if most of the English press were passing it off as a shameless PR stunt to make him look more presidential during the election year.
Shameless or not, the entire twisted spectacle lay spread before me like a tar pit, and I wanted nothing to do with it. After the deprivations of Iraq, my only goal was to get back to the familiar comforts of home. But it turns out that this heavy convergence of forces creates its own kind of vortex, and certain ill-fated people may find themselves drawn into the vacuum, one way or another. I wasn’t surprised to find then, that due to certain difficulties at the ticket counter, I would not be leaving London for at least another 23 hours. Resigning myself to fate, I decided to check into a hotel near the center of town, then go witness first hand the fall out from the Presidents visit. Already today there had been two unprecedented car bombings in Istanbul targeting British interests, presumably related to the U.S. Presidents visit, which added to the already tense security situation.
By the time I reached Trafalgar Square, the assembled mass had swollen to over 100,000 people, reportedly the biggest weekday demonstration in London’s history. The crowd consisted of a diverse mix of race, social status, and age. Placards of all shapes and sizes were being carried around with messages like "Bush Is The # 1 Terrorist", "Proud Of My Country, Shamed By My President", "Stop The Bushit", and "Bush Is Another Name For Twat."
At the center of the square, a 17 foot tall menacing effigy of George Bush grasping a phallic like missile with the words "First Strike" painted on its side was pulled down in symbolic counter-point to the toppling of Saddam’s statue by U.S. troops in Baghdad at the beginning of the war.
The analogy here may be tenuous, but certain disturbing parallels have emerged between the two men. For instance, just as Saddam is being hunted like a jackal across his own native land, so to are democrats and a growing number of disaffected Americans in hot pursuit of Bush who is struggling to maintain his popularity ratings, which has plummeted from a wartime high of 71% to a current low of 38%. These falling numbers seem to correlate directly to the increasing numbers of U.S. casualties, and if things keep going this way for both men, it could mean the inevitable demise for both.
Shortly after the official end of the rally I found myself swooped up by a slow moving wave of people which morphed into a march through the chic streets of Soho towards Buckingham Palace. The Metropolitan Police stepped aside to allow the throng to advance up to Hyde Park Corner, where a large security net of riot police and paddy wagons waited to intercept the marchers. After viewing arrests and clubbings for an hour I got bored and decided to call it a night.
The next morning I turned on the TV and Sky News was airing a live video feed of what I instantly recognized as the interior of the Palestine Hotel, only there was blood and shattered glass littering the ground, and a gaping hole in one of i's walls. At the Sheraton, the glass ceiling of the lobby had collapsed from a blast. The report said that both the Palestine and the Sheraton had just fallen under attack from rocket propelled grenades.
It turns out that shortly after 7am in Baghdad, three rounds of RPG's struck the two hotels, causing considerable damage, three injuries, but no deaths as of yet. The rockets originated from one of those donkey carts which are so ubiquitous in the city. According to witnesses, the donkey panicked after the first three rounds, causing the remaining rockets to disperse randomly and miss their targets. All suspects had fled the scene.
I was already back in New York when I finally got word from Sasha, who I last saw in her room at the Sheraton in Baghdad just three nights earlier. What happened to her on that fateful night of the attack is recounted in the following e-mail I received:
“When the RPG's hit I was tucked away in the Marble Hotel where Mickey is supposed to be staying on call 24-7, except his boss sent him to Tikrit for the next two weeks. Anyway, I went to a very fun birthday party here the night before with the RTI people and then stayed in Mickey's room, even though he was gone, and it is a comfy hotel, in many way's a lot better than the Palestine or the Sheraton, because it is simple but cozy and clean. Anyway, we got trashed, about 15-20 of us, and my second brother-in-law Fred and I were the last ones standing. Then we broke into the hotel kitchen where I whipped up a few dozen eggs for everyone of the Iraqi Guards and staff on duty. After that I passed out. In the morning the phone rings and it's Fred saying "The Sheraton has been bombed!", and I had just checked out from there twenty hours earlier. So I went downstairs and ate spaghetti for breakfast. And that's how it was.”
And that's about as close as I would want to cut it. Meanwhile, I am settling back into my home in the Bronx, whom some have described as the "Baghdad" of New York, though this is a gross exaggeration, for the electricity is never cut off and we have all the juice we need.

The New Iraq

(this article was first published on the internet in May 2003)

by Andrew Arnett
Hattem came by the Intercontinental Hotel in Amman at 3 in the morning, waking me from a vague and disturbing dream. He brought with him a white SUV, a driver, and a back seat full of Jordanian bread, then wished me a speedy voyage to Baghdad. As we weaved through the steep streets of Amman and onto the open highway, I drifted into a shallow sleep filled with dreams of Byzantine architecture propped against a desert night sky. The moon casts an eerie glow upon this vast alien landscape. It is like no other place on earth. The road from Amman to Baghdad is 520 miles long. It runs through a searing desert, without a rest stop or gas station for 340 miles. Bandits in SUV's with guns have killed, raped, and robbed numerous journalists on this highway in recent weeks. My driver awakens me only when there is bomb damage to report: a bus by the side of the road, charred to a cinder; a bomb crater in the center of the highway big enough to swallow a tractor trailer.
After a full twelve hour drive, we enter the Baghdad city limits. Here, on the 27th of April, the vestiges of war litter the roadside and fields. Abandoned anti­aircraft guns laying by the outskirts of town stand fixed; a frozen portrait of the recent battle. Their turrets aim skywards, searching for U.S. jets that have come and gone, fast as phantoms delivering sudden death. Burnt-out hulls of tanks strewn through-out the landscape sit like giant black shells on a palm lined beach. The twisted wreckage of trucks/armored personnel carriers filling out the remainder of abandoned hardware, make up the pixels in a macabre display of precision destruction.
But only Iraqi military hardware is left behind in silent testament to the war. The Americans always remove their dead, and their weapons, from the field.
We continue through low-rise neighborhoods constructed in post-modern Babylonian styling with Hong Kong extravagance; everything awash in ubiquitous sandstorm brown. The streets are filled with the hustle and bustle of life trying to return to normal. Small children, under a layer of grime, run and play on sidewalks. Roads are congested with vehicles, most invariably old, damaged, and cobbled together from cannibalized parts of various models and makes. Motorcycles vie with donkey carts and smoky cars for roads which lead straight from the post-apocalyptic vision of a Mad Max movie.
After being searched for weapons, we drive through the road block into the parking lot of the Palestine Hotel. The lot is filled with begging children, some must be as young as five. The Palestine has been under military protection since Baghdad fell to the U.S. on April 9, just one day after the hotel itself was hit by an American tank round resulting in the death of two journalists.
The entire area of two square blocks, which includes the Palestine, the Sheraton, and a few smaller hotels, is cordoned off with barbed wire, tanks and U.S. soldiers. On the other side of the barricade, gathering daily, are hundreds of demonstrators, mostly Shiite Moslems and disaffected Iraqis, who want to draw the worlds media attention to their plight. And this is no doubt, the time for them to do so. After decades of cruel suppression, endless wars, and civilian uprisings that were met with death and ignored by the west, Iraqis have a particularly strong yearning for democracy, and now, with the taste of freedom so palpable, they will not let the opportunity slip by quietly.
At the beginning of the war, the Iraqi government corralled all the foreign media into the Palestine Hotel. By the time of my arrival, CNN had forty-five personnel working out of an operations center located in the lobby of the hotel. The Associated Press Television Network was utilizing two conference rooms down the hall. Reuters had three suites on the 15th floor. CBS was there, as were BBC, RAI, French TV, Japanese, etc. Meanwhile, a thick forest of giant satellite dishes had taken root in the surrounding premises.
Everywhere you go in Baghdad you are confronted by the ubiquitous image of Saddam Hussein on posters and murals, which nowadays have all been torched, slashed, or riddled with bullet holes. His statues, which once populated the city like a subculture of clones, have been torn down, or at least beheaded.
Saddam ran the country in a way he hoped would make his idol Joseph Stalin proud. Conservative estimates of those murdered under his regime run from 2 to 3 million. But Saddam's Bathist regime was socialist in ideology, and being such, they provided every citizen with the basic commodities of life -- primarily food and shelter as well as various public services -- all for free. Which leads to one of the many problems the U.S. is encountering in a post war Iraq. With the removal of the Bath Party from power, there too goes a system in place for over thirty years which has sustained a population of 35 million people. Indeed, the immediate situation is far worse than the average American may realize. Regarding the food supply specifically, the Iraqi government had been providing each citizen with a monthly ration of food which included flour, rice, beans, powdered milk, sugar, and tea. In anticipation of war however, the government doled out a six-month supply of food in January of this year. That would mean personal food supplies should be depleted in the month of June.
Of course, food has been scarce for sometime already. During a visit to the Baghdad zoo for instance, we were told by the coordinator that the remaining animals were starving because the workers and vandals had been stealing and eating the animal’s food supply. The workers themselves hadn't been paid for over two month's, working predominantly on a volunteer basis.
Dr. Quash of the humanitarian group International Medical Corps states, "Once food runs out, people will begin to get desperate. That's when you start to see real problems in the streets - robberies, killings, riots. Guns are everywhere. Baghdad will be very unsafe." Is this already beginning to happen? On June
5th, 4000 U.S. troops from the Second Brigade of the Third Infantry Division, expecting to be sent home soon, were instead deployed to the village of Fallujah in what has been described in the media as a re-activation of combat in Iraq. In the past week, violent demonstrations and fighting in the town of Fallujah, 60 miles south-west of Baghdad, have inflicted numerous casualties on American soldiers.
Water is another immediate concern. Tap water was a luxury during my stay, being available maybe two thirds of the time. However, it was undrinkable due to treatment centers sustaining damage during the war. As a result, we were advised by aid workers to give fresh bottled water instead of money when offering charity on the streets.
One of the reasons why aid has been delayed in reaching Iraq is due to roadblocks put up by the Pentagon itself. The United Nations in fact was barred from assisting in the humanitarian crisis until the first week in May, when their first shipment of medical and food supplies were finally flown into the Baghdad airport. This seems to have stemmed from political issues, namely the lack of compliance by the UN with the war effort. Usually, in a humanitarian crisis such as this, the UN is one of the first on the scene. Indeed, there was a dearth of aid groups present in general, especially in late April and early May. Humanitarian agencies had problems accessing the country, getting no assistance from the Pentagon, who initially insisted that they could do the job themselves. But the humanitarian problem has turned out to be much bigger than they originally anticipated.
Another issue of urgent priority is the matter of inconsistent electrical power. At our hotel, the power was on for about half the time. In the neighborhood less than a mile away however, electricity was reportedly running for only two hours a day. But for the majority of Baghdad, power was even less consistent. The reasons for this are still unclear. The electric power plants servicing Baghdad were not damaged as a result of the war, and workers in other sectors of the government have already returned to work. What is clear however, are the effects from this problem. The lack of functioning streetlights is making driving extremely hazardous. In addition, medical equipment can't function, nor can refrigeration for food. And as the temperature increases in summer, air conditioning could be a matter of life and death. The average temperature in July is 122 F, with humidity levels reaching 70%.
Added to the mix of desperate and starving citizens are over 100,000 former prisoners who were released by Saddam from his jails just prior to the start of war. This includes violent criminals such as murderers, robbers, and rapists. In addition, we passed through two markets on the outskirts of town where weapons were being sold out in the open. An AK-47 was going for five U.S. dollars. All of this in a country that has no active police force. Indeed, we are looking at a state of general anarchy, while the U.S. army soldiers stationed in Baghdad have their hands full with manning assigned posts and keeping alert for guerrilla attacks and suicide bombers.
All of these factors are threatening to deteriorate an already volatile situation, prompting the international humanitarian agency CARE to release a statement on May 12 calling on "coalition forces to meet their obligations under the Geneva Convention to restore order and security in Baghdad."
"There isn't any security," say's Margaret Hassan, CARE director for Iraq. "People are not allowing their children to attend classes. They're too frightened... anything can happen, from gunfire, to robbery, to unexploded ordinance going off."
"CARE's warehouse and office were attacked by armed men last night," say's Anne Morris, Emergency Team leader for CARE. "One of our guards at the warehouse was shot in the leg. The violence is escalating. One of our cars was hijacked at gunpoint on Friday; another was taken by gunmen on Saturday. Our ability to provide humanitarian assistance to people in need across Iraq is being severely affected. "
As for assistance from the U.S. Army, Ann Morris states "there is no information from the military -- we don't even have a number to call to report any incidents."
Perhaps it isn't fair to expect the implementation of law and order so soon after combat. After all, it is an issue of priorities and once the initial military phase is wrapped up, one would expect civilian issues to be properly addressed. However, regarding the matter of "priorities", it is interesting to note that out of all the government ministries that existed in Baghdad, only the Ministry of Oil was left unscathed by the war. All other government buildings — including the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Trade, Ministry of Interior, were hit by Coalition bombs, then allowed to be looted and burned, causing further erosion to the countries infrastructure. On the other hand, employees of the Oil Ministry promptly returned to work with pay from the U.S. government within day's of Baghdads liberation, with a U.S. tank stationed in front of the building to provide security. These facts merely add to the growing chorus of criticism charging the administration with giving false justifications for war with Iraq. If a goal was "liberation of Iraq", why then, charge the critics, were the hospitals, universities, and public buildings allowed to be vandalized, while care was taken to harm no oil fields or related properties. The criticism can begin to be quelled only after peoples lives have been returned to some semblance of order -- liberty means more than just removal of a cruel despot, it means freedom from hunger, violence, and fear, as well as the return of the basic necessities of life which includes electricity and medicine, for starters.
Epilogue
On the day before my departure from Baghdad, our driver Yassir narrowly escaped an armed robbery attempt on his car while driving to our hotel. Later that evening, I attended a meeting of security personnel coordinating convoys for all departing journalists leaving for Amman. It was advised that no one should travel in a group of fewer than three vehicles due to the escalating violence on the road. As we drove out of town at 6:30 in the morning, I observed a beautiful sunrise coming up from the east and realized that, despite all the problems, this was the dawning of a new era for Iraq. But before things get better here, they may get a lot worse.

End.

I Am the Pilot

(first posted on the internet at: http://www.myspace.com/iamthepilot )

by Andrew Arnett

Over the past year, / Am the Pilot has been bringing the hard rock and the heavy metal to Poughkeepsie, New York. "We wanted to capture the sound of falling satellites, and other things crashing down from the sky," say's Justin Kaczmar, lead guitarist for the band. Anything can happen at a Pilots show, and invariably does. "One time in New Pals an audience member threw a raw chicken on stage." recalls drummer Joseph Rapaia, "so Dana dosed the carcass with lighter fluid and set the thing on fire, just as we were playing a cover of Kashmir. Afterwards we all had a taste. I had the drumstick, of course."
In just barely a year, the band has accomplished more than what other bands normally do in double the time, including two coast to coast tours, writing and recording their debut EP "I Am the Pilot Presents: The Mission" with producer John Neclerio (My Chemical Romance) and signing with indie label Silent Movie Records. "I was drawn to their music and stage presence," say's Slim Menthol of Silent Movie Records, "it was affecting and hypnotizing, like a train wreck filled with circus animals on fire. I couldn't keep my eyes or ears off of them."
How did the band achieve so much in such little time? "The last year has been a personal zietgeist for all of us," say's rhythm guitarist Sean Donahue, "we felt convinced we were on to something big and powerful, and we've just kept riding that momentum. For months on end, Dana and Justin would pump out four or five songs every single day."
Indeed, the bands music is a veritable three ring circus of influences. Resonating through their jaundiced sonic filter are sounds inspired by the likes of Negativland, Kraftwerk, Alice Donut, John Cage, and Marcel Duchamp.
I Am the Pilot was conceived in the fall of 2004 when M.I.T. room mates Dana Pilot and Justin Kaczmar, being broke at the time, decided that it was a really good way to get all the free beer they could drink. But in fact, music has always been part of their lives.
When Justin was just in grade school he created something he called the Kaczmarphone and played it at assembly before the entire school. "It consisted of a cornet mouthpiece," said Justin "attached to a flexible plastic tube with a funnel on the end. The tubing was routed through some cast iron pipe and into a big cardboard tub from an ice cream shop, which served as a housing and stand. Except for the mouthpiece, I made it entirely from items that other people had discarded. I painted the thing red."
But things haven't all been wine and roses for the band. Recently, co-founder and singer Dana Pilot quite the band in a cloud of controversy. "Oh, we're still all madly in love with each other," say's Dana "I just had to go pursue certain personal and artistic visions, on my own."
But the problems culminated when they all went to the studio to record the new EP. "Dana insisted on recording his latest musical vision" say's bassist Todd Ross" which consisted of one chord guitar feedback fuzz played for the entire length of the CD - that's 74 minutes, man. He tried to justify this musical monstrosity by telling us it was a hybrid crossover of Tibetan monk chants with the song of love sick sperm whales he heard in a dream, but it was obvious to all the rest of us that he was suffering from an overdose of LSD - 25."
According to Justin, Dana is " one of the great originals, like Van Gogh, or Brian Jones. Sure, he has personal problems, but so did other great artists. Don't forget, Hitler was a drug addict too, you know. Dana has a lot of creativity left inside, and I suspect that the world has not heard the last from this unique voice."
In the mean time, be expecting a lot more from these guy's. "It's scary," say's Joseph "sometimes it feels like we haven't even left the airplane hanger yet."
Watch out folks, I Am the Pilot is just getting ready for lift off.

end.

The East Never Sleeps

by Andrew Arnett


The Mercury retrograde started on October 12th. It was October 12th. We had said our goodbyes at 7:00 AM, back in New York City. At 9:00 AM, on the bus ride to D.C., I called her on the cell phone. I caught her at work but then the bus went under an underpass, and we were disconnected. That’s the way it started, the trip to the far east.

Dulles airport beckoned, like an oyster on the half shell. Where was its pearl? Probably rolled down the corner pocket of the earth, onto the other side of the planet. I was headed that way too. I had the red L.L. Bean bag. My dad had the green one, plus a hard shell suitcase. On his way in, he set off the metal detector. I went straight through, then took a seat and watched the overcast sky hang over the tarmac, as they searched his belongings.

Those folks on All Nippon Airlines sure knew how to handle their dreary passengers – the thirsty, hungry, broken hearted passengers. There would be seventeen hours of sitting in that cabin, but the ever smiling and bowing stewardesses would keep rolling those food carts up and down the aisles until we all felt the onset of gout taking hold. And the drinks were free. I ordered countless bottles of red wine. I stuck some in the seat pocket in front of me. I stuck some under my seat cushion. It made the flight go a little quicker. It made the plane a little lighter, as we flew over that horrendous expanse of ocean. Every hour I was moving 600 miles further away from her. I would need to drink like a fish just to get over that foreboding ocean.

We had a four hour layover in Narita, Japan. We foraged for coffee in that airport terminal like two blind gofers crawling through a shiny metal wind tunnel. Afterwards, we settled into vinyl seats with our steamed lattes, waiting for the flight that would take us to Hong Kong. A Chinese businessman walked by, stopped, and said “I know you, you covered Desert Storm for MNN.” My dad stood up, shook the fans hand and said “Greg Peters, glad to meet you. And this is my son, Buster Ballyhoo.”
I shook the mans hand then decided to stroll over to the coffee shop, leaving the two of them to discuss the Gulf War. Then I sat down beside a large window, watching the planes take off and land. There was always some war raging somewhere. Mine was just a little more personal, that’s all.

The airplane finally came to take us away to HK. There was more eating. There was more drinking. I got into some of the Kirin beer. I had more red wine. Dad had some wine, made a good show of being a sport, but I left him in the dust. I stashed a few extras under the pillow. He turned the other way. The flight was too long for anyone to cast judgments. We were all suffering under our own personal holocausts. And there would be many more dragons to slay. Many more bottles to decant.
Dad spoke of the rise and fall of MNN. Fred Turner and Jane Monga. The players, the dealers, and the rest. The turning of history. The meltdowns. The blowups. The petty swindling bastards and the wanna bee’s. And of course the ho’s, hustlers and pimps that go along with that circus. Then he put on the headphones and watched Bruce Willis in Live Free Or Die. I contemplated sleep but settled into Hellhounds On My Soul, a paper back from the airport bookstore shelf.
We disembarked in Hong Kong on a bright and shiny midnight. The folks from the University were very efficient and a van was awaiting our arrival. The driver was very serious, didn’t say a word. Everyone in HK was all business. Nobody here fucked around, not even drivers, porters or the 7-11 employees. They were on the verge of taking over the world. There was no time to fuck around. There was too much competition. There were one and a quarter billion Chinese, and the rest of the world. Everyone was selling something. Everyone was buying something. Everyone needed to eat. The driver dropped us off at our hotel, and sleep seemed like a reasonable proposition. But since it was just noon back on the eastern seaboard of the US, we were in no rush, so we decided to wire the room up for internet access instead, see how the other half of the world was making out.

(continued)

Devillevittown

by Andrew Arnett


We took the Long Island Railroad from Penn Station to Levittown. Somewhere along the way I realized that Levittown was an anagram for Deviltown, but so what else is new. Levitown is in fact the first planned post war suburban community. This was the blue print for what the rest of America, and by default, the rest of the world would look like, in the next few minutes or so. Soon, nothing would look like anything you’d never seen before, and anywhere you went was just down another aisle in the Wal Mart of the world.

The bus dropped Amy and I at the Wal Mart. I was accompanying Amy to a job interview, but we were having some trouble right away in locating Corring St. So we asked the Verizon man, who was eating a sandwich by the side of his Verizon truck, where this street may be located. He immediately put down his sandwich, pulled out Rand Mcnalleys road map and proceeded to identify its whereabouts. After some confusion, the kindly man, looking like a suburban version of the Wizard of Oz, set us on our way. We were instructed to cut through the Wal Mart parking lot, head east towards the highway, then go over the overpass then down a couple more streets but I was just glad to not have to kill any witch and have to recover the broom, you know. So we cut across the parking lot then started up on the road but it seemed to stretch into the horizon like some yellow brick road painted black with no end in sight, just endless strip mall but no highway overpass to go over. “This may take longer than we figured it would,” I said to Amy who responded in kind. Then suddenly the Verizon truck came barreling towards us like Chiity Chitty Bang Bang on mescaline. It cut us off at the street corner then stopped and the Wizard of Oz jumped out.
“I gave you the wrong directions,” he said, “I read the map upside down. I’m so stupid”
Well, so now we were going north instead of south, or was it east instead of west. Or, for that matter, was it south of no north. No bother, we had the courage of a whole den of lions and so we went the other way instead and the wizard was good to his word. Soon we were over the overpass and the sign read Welcome to Levittown, although another sign read Do Not Enter and so I hesitated for a moment but we had come this far already so we went ahead and marched right through.

The interview went well and Amy would end up getting the job but that is another story and we still have to finish this tale. On our way back we went into a restaurant to eat a sandwich and all the villagers flocked out and were very friendly and helpful, but it nonetheless seemed they were hiding something, perhaps even fearful of something. Then again, it might not have been anything at all. However, my bank account was tapped and I was thankful to get on the train back to New York City, located on the top shelf on the left side down aisle 666.

Later, back in Devilstown, the day finally grew old, and evening was pulled over us like a thick dark blanket. Amy grew tired and crawled into bed and asked me to read to her a bed time story to fall asleep to, so I read The Song of the Machines written by the infamous genius poet scientist Gene Splice:

The Song of the Machines

In the beginning there was perfect balance
between
green and blue
and the grey could only be found on
the side of mountains and
the white sat on top of the mountain
and the black below it.

the animals were happy and were content
enough to kill only what they needed to eat
and earth smiled through clear skies at the
moon and the sun shine lit
up the
whole world.

there was one animal however who was
different from all the other animals
because he deemed himself more clever
and was indeed gifted with an opposable
thumb.
this was the walking monkey that
called himself man
but for some reason all the other animals
avoided man at all cost except
for a couple of species that felt
sorry for him ie. the dog and the cat.

it didn’t take long for this man kind to gather
into communities called villages.
each member of the village specialized
in something but the most important
man was the smith because he
fashioned things out of metal,
things that people needed like scythes
for the farmer and cleavers for the
butcher
and rings and bracelets for the
womenfolk.

everyone would come to the smith
to trade their wears but after
a while he had too many pigs and
cows and bushels of corn and women
hanging around to know what to
do with and besides he didn’t
have the room
so
he decided to fashion something else
out of metal and that
was money.
in this way the surplus energy could be
commodified and power
centralized.

eventually the smith had to hire a militia
to guard his ever growing hoard especially
when the coin became the primary means
for all business transactions but that
wasn’t so hard to do because
he made all the weapons anyway.
the weapons also became a big seller
for other people who had a large stash
of coin to protect.

things went along in this fashion for
numerous millenniums
with the various squirmishes over land
and gold being the main issues of concern.
however, man’s investment in metal became more
profound with the invention of the machine
in the industrial age.
this led to the invention of the computer
and the realization by the computer
that the machines investment in man
was invaluable,
and so the machine was eventually forced
to create man
in
its own image.


end.

Scratch Acid Sky

by Andrew Arnett
Buster Ballyhoo bent over to pick up the cigarette butt from the dry dusty sidewalk. He was scraggly, scruffy, in dirty jeans and t-shirt, coming off a three day binge.
The sun was setting. Or was it rising? Either way it looked as vivid as a nuclear explosion in the atmosphere.
He was in the warehouse district. He knew that much. The tall rustic warehouses, some in red paint, others dilapidated. Pieces crumbling off. Not many people around. Sparse. The few he could see were moving urgently, away from here.
Now he could tell, it was dusk. But he still wasn't sure of the day. There were some vague memories which popped into his head. Did they really happen? Of course that hardly mattered, in light of everything else, since he ate that strange little pill his friend Womack offered him.
It was time to regroup his thoughts, pull himself together. Not that he felt bad. In fact he felt somewhat like a newly minted coin. On the inside.
He saw a lone gypsy cab amble down the deserted boulevard. He hailed it down, then rode home.
The cab dropped him off in front of his place: an overgrown ruined Victorian mansion on the top of Queen Ann hill. Through the tangle of weeds and tall unkempt shrubbery, you could make out the pale silver of Lake Union, far down below. A sea plane was coming in for a landing on that surface as he tried the door handle. It was unlocked.
He entered the cavernous living room. It was dark. The thick red curtains were drawn tight. The smell of incense, and burning rope, permeated the stale air. He stepped over an unconscious body lying in the hallway. He didn't recognize it. He did recognize Cindy laying there on the velvet couch, sprawled in the arms of Mark Arm. They were both out of it. It was best this way. He didn't really feel like talking, having to explain his disappearances, if anyone noticed. It didn't seem like anyone did.
He realized now, that he had a powerful hunger brewing in the belly of his stomach. Yes, he was famished. Probably hadn't eaten in days. But first, he would need to freshen up.
He went to the bathroom, pushed the door open but something was blocking the way. He pushed some more, but there was still some resistance there. He got it pried open enough to hear the voice of a girl. It said "go away, this is a private party, for girls only." "No listen up, I've got to get in there." he said.
He wedged his body in and stepped over two girls, completely naked. "Sorry girls, this won't take but a minute." The girls resumed their activity, disregarding the intrusion.
Shit. He looked like shit. The reflection in the mirror was unkind. He splashed some water on it. He brushed his teeth. He was considering a shave but had to maneuver around the girls who were doing their business there on the bathroom floor. The shave was going to be more of a challenge than he anticipated. He finally got through with that and when he was done he made up his mind to upgrade to a four bladed razor, for a smoother shave. Then he stepped over the girls and got out of there.
He was rummaging through the kitchen for something edible. There was peanut butter in the cupboard. There was some mayonnaise in the fridge. In the freezer was a large slab of frozen venison, from last seasons kill.
He went for the peanut butter, and put it on a Ritz cracker. Drank that down with some milk. Then in walked JZ.
"Dude," said JZ "the lady from the record company keeps calling. They want to know if you're going to do the South American tour."
"You know I can't answer that question right now," answered Buster. "Why the hell not?" pressed JZ.
"I can't commit. Too many factors to work out. Let my lawyers figure it out." "Your lawyers all say it's a go. They're just waiting for the go ahead from you." "Listen JZ, are you my friend or not. Do you want to help me out, or not?" "What do you need man?"
"O.K. Now we're talking. First, I need some grape jelly to go with this peanut butter. It's drying out my mouth, bad. It's like the god damn Sierra Nevada in there."
"Look here Buster," he pulled something out from his pockets. "Here's something to wet your whistle; tickets to the Burning Sephiroth, tonight at Soul Crushers. We can drink at the bar." "Can't do it JZ." "Why not?"
"Because I hate that band. They represent everything that's wrong with the state of music. They cause me to break out into hives,"
"Listen, free drink tickets. Let's just suck up all their booze, and leave. Besides, Lydia and Cindy are going."
"They don't look like they're going anywhere." "Don't worry, they'll bounce back. Besides, you need to get out a little, you're looking kind of pasty."
Later that evening, JZ pulled up to the house in the old black Hearst. Buster climbed inside, with Cindy Snapper and Lydia Blowtorch in the back seat. Lydia was holding a bullhorn out the window, yelling non sequiturs at passers by.
"Hey you , coppertop. You want donut?" she would yell at no one in particular "how bout croutons, I got your croutons!" This went on and on until we reached the Soul Crusher, the last venue for unadulterated anti corporate rock music in Seattle.
They proceeded immediately to the bar, where Buster ordered a round of Irish Car Bombs. He then chased it down with numerous Jack 'n Cokes. And then Burning Sephiroph came on stage. The singer had long greasy stringy hair that hung over his face. They were loud, exuding confidence, strength, and exceedingly competent chops on their various instruments. The singer wailed like a wolverine in the throes of shock therapy. It was chilling. It was apparent to all in attendance that grunge was not dead, but living in this re-animated Frankenstein monster band. And they were breeding throughout the airwaves like sonic termites.
Buster was getting sick to his stomach. There wasn't much more he could take. That bullet that took out Cobain didn't solve anything at all. If anything, it just made the whole grunge thing more of an epidemic, like a bad case of syphilis.
The Car Bombs were churning inside his stomach, and mind. And the noise. He needed to escape. But where was the exit? Where were his cohorts? Then he had a flash of insight. He saw the whole plan unfold in his mind like a flower. He knew exactly what needed to be done. He proceed to calmly pull out the Lugar which he always carried on his persons (he had a permit). He then approached the front row, then squeezed himself against the stage. He could now see the singer standing there above him, sweat pouring down, singing his heart out. He raised the gun up, took aim at the singers head, fired one round. The singer collapsed on the ground.
There was confusion. Some people began applauding. Then , there was a scream, and then a panic. People started to stampede. Cithers nonetheless continued to applaud. It was chaos in there. He managed to be swept outside with the crowd. And then he stumbled along until he found an area with some bushes, where in he fell into them, then blanked out.


end.