28 May 2009

Tokyo Gore Police

Tokyo Gore Police: To say this thing is *over-the-top* would be an understatement of an immeasurable magnitude. In one scene, an unfortunate Japanese policeman, looking for a little action on the side, gets his penis bitten off by a mutant whore. With his penis stump spurting blood, he machine guns the whore until she is severed at the midsection. Crocodile jaws then sprout from the whore’s wound, and she proceeds to use her new *snapper* on the cop. Imagine a film of nearly two hours of such non-stop *action,* and you begin to get an idea of the atrocity that is Tokyo Gore Police.

I don’t know what you call this kind of movie. And it’s not even really a movie. For the first 2/3s of this thing, it’s just of a compilation of highly stylized gore money shots barely held together by a thin plot and interrupted by bizarre fake commercials and public service announcements dealing with issues from a clearly troubled future Tokyo (the old Tokyo may have been buried under volcanic ash—or it may not. . .it was never quite clear to me what the repeated references to volcanic activity were supposed to mean).

This thing is chock-full of arterial gushers from exploding heads, decapitations, severed limbs and sexual organs, autopsies and self-mutilations. I doubt there has ever been a movie which sprayed more blood at its audience. Heads are sliced in half, and blood gushes out like water from a hydrant on a hot summer day in an American slum.

The last 1/3 of the movie, the *serious* part, attempts to explain what the first 2/3s was all about, and can be summarized thusly:

Tokyo is in the middle of an *engineer* crime wave. *Engineers* are criminals who have been turned into homicidal mutants by an evil scientist. When *engineers* are shot, chopped or bludgeoned, as frequently happens, their wounds morph into freakish weapons (like flesh-encased chainsaws, or bazooka penises or breasts that spray flesh-melting acid! Woo hoo!!). *Engineers* can only be killed by destroying the mutation-producing key-shaped tumors in their bodies. The privatized Tokyo police’s star *engineer* hunter is samurai sword-wielding Ruka (played by the JHottie from Audition), an angel-faced knockout who flashes her amazing thighs in police-issue mini-skirts and undercover short-shorts. While battling *engineers,* Ruka tries to the find the criminal mastermind responsible for the bizarre phenomenon, and also to learn the identity of the assassin who executed her policeman father.

I suppose the film makes *sense* (if one can say a movie like this could make *sense*) to the Japanese. . .they would understand the filmmakers point of view on the cultural issues which the film either mocks, satirizes, exploits or comments on.

For example, one of the fake commercials which interrupts the manic blood-letting advertises a product called *Wrist Cutter G*. . .it’s a cutter with a cute design! a trio of JPop-looking schoolgirls cheerily sing as they cut their wrists and lick their wounds. Is wrist-cutting a symptom of psychological problems among the Japanese? Or are cutters just bored girls indulging in a *modern primitive* fad? What’s the point behind the *Wrist Cutter G* commercial? Who knows? Who cares? Not me. I just sat back and gaped, like a rube at a circus freak show from an infinitely milder bygone age.

Is there any redeeming social value to this gore porn? If there is, it is beyond me. As I was watching the fetish strip club/whorehouse scene, which featured a disturbing line-up of mutant stripper/whores (including *snail girl*) engaging in various perversities (*chair girl* gives the patrons a mass golden shower) from a 21st century Psychopathia Sexualis, I wondered what our Lord Jesus Christ would make of this obscenity? How great is that darkness! That this kind of depravity is *entertainment!* Is there any defense for watching it? Yes, much of the movie is goofy, campy and comic, but that makes the depravity even more depraved, because we are tempted to judge it as harmless. And to see the images of transmorgified human flesh, to see the human body, which is made after the likeness of God, to see it corrupted, to see creation mocked so basely, to watch this and not vomit, validates the fall. I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven. Mankind is in the midst of a similar fall. We are so damaged, so unclean, the filth of our culture seems *natural* to us (or, to many of us. . .I am sure there are still a few who will turn from Tokyo Gore Police in disgust after a minute or two), I am reminded of the following from the prophet Isaiah, who felt beyond redemption in the presence of the Lord:

Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts. Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar: And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged.

After watching Toyko Gore Police, no, after ENJOYING Tokyo Gore Police, I felt I needed one of the Heavenly host to purge me with a live coal. . .

Alas, the closing credits promise *more gore coming soon!*

26 May 2009

The Wrestler

The Wrestler: I’m a Mickey Rourke fan. From way, way back. I consider his two minutes in The Pledge as good as anything ever done on the screen. He was easily the best actor in the ‘80s, turning in great performances in Body Heat, Diner, Rumble Fish, The Pope of Greenwich Village, Year of the Dragon, Nine ½ Weeks, Angel Heart, Barfly, even in the lesser films A Prayer for the Dying and his own Homeboy.

During his lost decade of the ‘90s, when he appeared in increasingly smaller roles in mostly terrible films, Rourke was still worth watching (Thursday was probably the Mick’s top ‘90s flick)—like Bela Lugosi in an Ed Wood movie.

They say The Wrestler is Mickey’s *comeback,* but he has already comeback two or three times in the 2000s. . .starting quietly with the small roles in Animal Factory and The Pledge, then the full-fledged *comeback* in Sin City.

The hype for Rourke in The Wrestler began months before its US release, and continued throughout the Awards season. I finally saw it on dvd a few nights ago. . .and Mr. Rourke lives up to the hype.

Rourke is probably a little too rough-around-the-edges for some in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and so was passed-over for Best Actor. I didn’t see the winner, Sean Penn as the queer Milk, but based on other Penn films I have seen, I find it hard to believe he actually turned in a better performance. Penn is a good actor, but it’s all surface, he impersonates retards and spastics, etc. Rourke fully inhabits his characters, and infuses them with seeming genuine emotion. Penn mimics. Rourke personifies.

For me, being of the same condescension as Max von Sydow’s Frederick in Hannah and Her Sisters (Can you imagine the level of a mind that watches wrestling?), the highest compliment I can pay Rourke is he makes professional wrasslin’ seem heroic. . .

The Wrestler is a fairly conventional character study of an American loser. . .the story of a sorry chump, to take the lingo of I Stand Alone, which is appropriate, since that film’s antihero is forced to take a job as a deli counter man, just as Rourke’s Randy *the Ram* Robinson must do in The Wrestler. But whereas the butcher in I Stand Alone can’t even crack a smile, and doesn’t last five minutes on the job, Rourke’s *the Ram,* as is his character’s wont, tries to make the best of it, until the accumulated circumstance of his downwardly spiraling life drives him to confront the paradox most in the *real world* spend their entire lives avoiding:

He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal. . .

When *the Ram* sheds his own blood in the deli counter meat slicer and barks at a customer you want some fucking cheese, lady? Get it yourself! he renders his verdict:

He hates his life in this world. . .the world outside the wrestling ring.

For *the Ram,* *eternal life* is the life in the ring. . .but to return to the ring means death in the world outside the ring. Betrayed by his body, he has suffered a heart attack (Judas as cardiac arrest), and has submitted to the judgment of his doctor, that he hang up his wrasslin’ trunks. Thus, for most of the film, we watch Rourke’s character struggle to make a life outside the wrestling arena.

The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay His head.

The filmmakers shade Rourke’s sorry chump of a broken-down wrassler with a touch of the Suffering Servant. Randy *the Ram* Robinson is a trailer park Jesus, suffering the children to play Nintendo, and befriending fallen women.

The filmmakers poke fun at their own hagiographical pretentions in a barroom scene between *the Ram* and the stripper Cassidy (a Mary Magdalene of legend), in which Cassidy (like *the Ram,* an aging performer betrayed by her body—lap dances being harder and harder to sell), looking upon *the Ram’s* battered visage quotes

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

as coming from Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, and not from Isaiah.

As part of *the Ram’s* attempt to reconcile with the world outside the ring, he tries to connect with Cassidy—but Cassidy, unlike *the Ram,* hasn’t yet hit rock bottom, and she has a double mind about getting involved with him outside the strip club.

The scenes between Cassidy and *the Ram* are credible and nicely done. Marisa Tomei plays Cassidy, and though she’s probably older than what her character is supposed to be, she hardly looks like an aging stripper. At 44, she has a better body than most of the skanks you will see in second and third rate strip clubs.

Tomei is particularly effective in the scene in which *the Ram* tells Cassidy he has had a heart attack. She quickly does a *cost benefit analysis* of *the Ram,* and deftly gets rid of him with a cheery-but-icy you’ll be all right.

When Cassidy finally decides to take the leap of faith and commit to a relationship, it’s too late, for *the Ram* has gone past the point of no return—he’s through with the world outside the ring. He’s determined to wrestle again, he no longer wants to keep his life in this world, he’d rather die and enter eternity from the ring.

Less effective are the scenes between *the Ram* and his college age daughter Stephanie, played by the weirdo Evan Rachel Wood. *The Ram,* of course, has been a lousy, mostly absent father, and thus Stephanie has *issues.* The problem is not just that this is one subplot too many to stick into a character study, but also that Wood seems far too chic to be *the Ram’s* daughter. Given what one must assume her upbringing to have been, you would expect *the Ram’s* daughter to be trashier. . .one of those overweight, potty-mouthed white girls who sleeps with scores of thugz and pops out mulatto babies like candy from a Pez dispenser. Instead, Stephanie is a serious, studious lesbian, living with an articulate, well-groomed young black woman. It’s hard to believe she was ever in the same environment as her father.

But bottom line, The Wrestler rides on Mickey Rourke’s shoulders. There’s nothing here you haven’t already seen in a dozen other movies. . .but you haven’t seen it done the way the Mick does it—body and soul. You can feel *the Ram’s* physical and psychic pain—the subtle movements and facial expressions that reveal a worn-out body and soul. The authenticity of the voice—Rourke can deliver a line like here’s your bologna, pal, as *the Ram* says to his first deli customer, and you catch in it just a trace of the resentment he’s trying to bury. The resentment of a soul that’s had a small measure of success, but mostly a long, grueling struggle to get it back, and then the realization it’s gone forever. . .and now it’s time to put on the hair net and slice bologna for lesser men.

Here’s your bologna, pal. . .

That’s the signature line from Mickey’s masterpiece.

20 May 2009

Satanic Verses

GQ, 19 May 2009: In the days surrounding the US invasion of Iraq, cover sheets—like the ones in this exclusive GQ.com slideshow—began adorning top-secret intelligence briefings produced by Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon. The sheets juxtaposed war images with inspirational Bible quotes and were delivered by Rumsfeld himself to the White House, where they were read by the man who, just after September 11, referred to America’s war on terror as a “crusade.”

Particularly galling is the cover sheet above, perverting the doctrine of Ephesians 6. We have a *romantic* sunset vista, with an M1 Abrams tank ready to crush the weaklings of Iraq. The caption:

Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.

The tank, ready to blow to bits the flesh and blood of the raggedy Iraqis, is labeled *the full armor of God*. . .this is a damnable heresy, for we are told in the following verses of Ephesians 6 that the *full armor of God* means:

Having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

No mention of a tank, anywhere. . .

Equally damnable is the implication the *targets* of an M1 Abrams tank are our enemy, when the verse immediately prior to the one perverted by Rummy’s Pentagon states:

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

Our only true enemy cannot be hurt by a tank shell. . .

But the Pentagon would sanction the shelling of flesh and blood with Ephesians. . .

To lift a verse from scriptures which are meant to show a common bond between all humanity against the wicked archon, and then represent that verse as a justification to destroy flesh and blood, is a monstrous blasphemy. It is a Satanic Verse.

For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works.

The Pentagon is anti-Christ. The troops they employ do the work of the devil. No matter how much they want to excuse their wickedness with patriotism, the stink of Hell is on them:

Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?

The churches this Sunday ought to be full of preachers thundering against this doctrine of the devil. . .but where have the cowards been for the last six years? This Sunday will be no different.

Yellow. . .gutless. . .

Giants against abortion or faggotry, but midgets against the idolatry of American nationalism.

They’ll even offer prayers for the troops. But the only prayer that ought to be directed to Heaven for the troops is they be freed from the Satanic perverts who control them, that they be granted repentance from doing the devil’s work.

Pussies in the pulpits, never speaking out against torture and war. . .afraid to offend the *Christian* patriots in the pews. . .

If I had been a preacher, wouldn’t I have rather preached to an empty church, than be a God damned pussy, turning my eye from torture and war?

A yellow, gutless church. . .

The visible church in America is the Pentagon’s whore. . .letting demons commit shameful acts upon the Word of God.

Ha ha ha. . . is it any wonder, then, that titty-flashing airheads like Miss California can claim to speak for God?

19 May 2009

Christopher Marlowe: Poet & Spy

Christopher Marlowe: Poet & Spy, by Park Honan: At the time of his murder at age 29, Christopher Marlowe was the greatest writer in the English language, greater even than Shakespeare, who shared the same birth year of 1564. In the years following, Shakespeare would surpass Marlowe as a dramatist, but Marlowe’s poem Hero and Leander would often be praised through the Victorian era as the finest ever penned in English.

Of course, as the title of this book indicates, in addition to being a writer, Marlowe also served as a part-time spy for the government of Queen Elizabeth. Marlowe’s assignments invariably required him to infiltrate and report on foreign and domestic Catholic threats to the crown.

The author is a professor from the University of Leeds, and the book is what can be expected from a limey egghead. . .it is as dry as the surface of Venus, and I doubt ninety-nine out of one hundred American sheeple would have the patience to read every word of this thing.

One must give the professor high marks for placing Marlowe’s work in historical context, and he does a good, if often laborious, job of analyzing Marlowe’s texts and hi-liting his technical and artistic advances.

For example, commenting on Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, the professor informs us:

The subtle, complex consistency of his portrait, its representativeness of men and women in general, its lack of dependency on moral evaluation, as well as the poet’s use of farce and comedy in aid of tragic effect were all to be gifts to Elizabethan and later dramatists. (p. 218).

Concerning Edward II:

He aimed to give his new play a special authority, or a convincingly developed inwardness in a sustained central portrait, and a more realistic sense of time, and of political milieu, than he had seen on the stage. (p. 295).

In 1592 no more powerfully unified history play had been written for the London stage. Though borrowing from Shakespeare, Marlowe for the moment eclipses him in a fresh, astute development of psychology and in fresh techniques in dramaturgy, including sharply contrasting styles of speech. (p. 307).

But four hundred and sixteen years after Marlowe inked his last lines, here in the PopEater Age, the casual reader (if a Marlowe bio could provoke such a thing in the 21st century) will be more interested in Marlowe the spy and his mysterious murder, rather than in meticulous analysis of:

It lies not in our power to love or hate,
For will in us is over-rul'd by fate.
When two are stript, long ere the course begin,
We wish that one should lose, the other win;
And one especially do we affect
Of two gold ingots, like in each respect:
The reason no man knows, let it suffice,
What we behold is censur'd by our eyes.
Where both deliberate, the love is slight:
Who ever lov'd, that lov'd not at first sight?

poetry.

Alas, our university professor appears too highbrow to rake the muck of scandal and conspiracy. He declines to remark upon, let alone refute, various of the theories which have risen over the centuries since Marlowe’s murder. He accepts the official State account, yet, strangely, he admits its questionable status. Before presenting the professor’s inconsistent conclusion, we need to set the crime scene:

On 30 May 1593, Marlowe met the spy Robert Poley and two bottom-feeders, Ingram Frizer (Marlowe’s supposed killer) and Nicholas Skeres, at Bull’s rooming house, located just outside London. The reason for the meeting remains unclear. Was Poley, a veteran of various intrigues in Scotland, supposed to recruit Marlowe for an assignment, with Marlowe’s murder being an unplanned result? Or was Marlowe set-up?

Ten days prior to the rooming house meeting, Marlowe had been called before the Queen’s Council, likely due to his reputation as an *atheist.* This was a serious matter back in the 16th century. For example, Marlowe’s fellow playwright and former roommate Thomas Kyd was undergoing torture (the effects of which would lead to his death) in the Tower of London for *heresy* during the days leading up to Marlowe’s murder.

Marlowe’s literary patron, Thomas Walsingham, had also been his intelligence service case officer. Walsingham had a favorable position with the Queen, and may have wanted to distance himself from the *atheist* Marlowe. As it happens, Walsingham was also the employer of the small-time grifter Ingram Frizer, who may have provoked an argument with Marlowe as a *self-defense* pretext for murder. Frizer could have killed Marlowe at the request of Walsingham, or to curry favor with Walsingham, or for any number of reasons. He may not have even been the real killer, as a number of theories hold. He may have only admitted to the self-defense killing in order to cover for the true murderer(s), knowing he would be quickly pardoned by the Queen, as was the case.

Regardless, the official account has Marlowe, Poley, Frizer and Skeres in Bull’s rooming house on 30 May 1593. Here is how our professor understands the resulting events:

When Marlowe came indoors at 6 o’clock, the room was still suffused with daylight. After the evening meal, he lay down because he was disconcerted by events and perhaps hazy with drink. Few men handled situations better than Robert Poley, but judging from the coroner’s report, neither he nor Skeres spoke or intervened when the argument began.

Malicious words, between Frizer and Marlowe, arose because of a dispute over the bill, says the coroner. But the inquisition sketches an odd, almost hallucinatory scene. The three men, Skeres, Frizer, and Poley, sit with their backs to the poet, and they remain squeezed together and glued to a bench. Frizer speaks to a wall, and Marlowe on a bed replies to the ceiling. Possibly, the room begins to contract; one might think that the furniture is on the move, for twice, in Latin and in English, Mistress Bull’s long table comes ‘nere the bed.’ Poley and Skeres hear nothing. When violence begins, nobody can move, stand up, shout for help, or even turn his head. The most spectacular, bloody events occur next to Poley’s elbow, but he has no idea that a man is being killed.

‘Is it not odd,’ John Bakeless once asked, ‘that there is nothing to explain why three men could not overpower Marlowe without killing him?’ And yet the coroner addresses just this point: ‘Ingram Frysar could in no way flee’ from a mortal attack by Marlowe. Again: Frizer ‘was not able to withdraw in any way,’ or again, ‘the same Ingram could not withdraw further from the aforesaid Christopher.’ In Elizabethan fights the safest way to draw blood without inflicting serious harm was to reverse the dagger, and pummel an opponent’s scalp with the hilt. ‘If thou dost lay they hands on me I will lay my dagger on they pate,’ says an earl’s agent at Stratford in 1582. The scalp wound, like the threat of it, is meant to confuse or intimidate, but not to kill.

Leaping from his bed, the poet grabbed at Frizer’s dagger, and with the hilt gave him two wounds on his scalp, each two inches long and a quarter of an inch deep. The poet’s ‘rashness in attempting sudden privy injuries to men’ was later noted by Kyd, possibly with reference to verbal injuries; but Marlowe could be violent, and his attack left his enemy free to respond. Poley and Skeres may have pinioned his arms, or simply let Walsingham’s business agent do as he wished. Frizer recovered his weapon and drove it hard at Marlowe’s face.

According to the original report, this blade struck ‘above his right eye’ (super dexterum oculum sum), or just under the thin, bony ocular plate which roofs the eyeball. The dagger apparently penetrated two inches to the internal carotid where it divides into its terminal branches, the middle and anterior cerebral arteries. Modern medical opinion is skeptical of the view that Marlowe died of an air embolus, since the normal pressure in the sinus approximates to atmospheric pressure, as J. Thompson Rowling, a surgeon at Sheffield, has noted. It is hard to see how an embolism would result from a long, thin wound. The likeliest cause of death would be intracranial bleeding from a major vessel, such as the carotid, just punctured by the weapon. This would have left Marlowe conscious for five or six minutes; he is unlikely to have died at once.

Such a detail may catch Poley, Skeres, and Frizer in a lie, since they told the coroner that Marlowe had died instantly—et ibidem instanter obit. With access to details not in the official report, both Vaughn and Beard indicate the poet remained conscious for a while: ‘he shortly after dyed’ or ‘hee even cursed and blasphemed to the last gaspe.’ If the coroner’s report is false in one detail, it may be false or distorted in others.

But as soon as the professor opens the door to alternatives to the official verdict (Frizer killed Marlowe in self-defense), he quickly shuts it, citing as *evidence* of the basic truthfulness of the coroner’s report an account written in 1600 by William Vaughan which only includes additional details that do not seriously jeopardize the coroner’s conclusion.

Especially disappointing is the author’s complete refusal to address the most interesting of all the Marlowe conspiracies theories: Marlowe faked his own death to escape execution as an *atheist* and then continued his literary career as. . .William Shakespeare.

The reason this is so disappointing is the man our professor uses to validate the state report, William Vaughan, appears to be known to *William Shakespeare.*

*Shakespeare* makes use of Vaughan’s record of the Marlowe murder in As You Like It (as well as quoting Marlowe directly). *Shakespeare* likely also had direct contact with Vaughan, as records indicate Vaughan paid for the staging of at least one performance of *Shakespeare’s* Richard II.

Many credible scholarly articles and books have been written on the Marlowe-as-Shakespeare theory, including two interesting recently published works:

Marlowe’s Ghost

The Marlowe-Shakespeare Connection

Besides neglecting the Marlowe conspiracy theories, two other major complaints can be made against the author:

1). He doubts the authenticity of Marlowe’s *atheism.* He would have the reader believe Marlowe’s *atheism* was mere *posing* from a literary *bad boy.* It is true Marlowe was a restless genius, as bored by the Elizabethan *Christian* sheeple that surrounded him as a fifth-rate Marlowe, *Marilyn Manson,* was bored by the sheeple that surrounded him in his *Christian* school. So there is a grain of truth in what the author says:

But Marlowe’s reputation as a daring, outlandish heretic or ‘atheist’ stood in the way of finding new sponsorship. . .No doubt, there were obstacles and uncertainties in his temperament, his habits, his jokes and exaggerations, his eagerness to irk and incite comment. (p. 315).


Marlowe did like to *irk and incite,* but this does not mean he did not believe his own *material.* Indeed, it would seem rather foolish of Marlowe to deliberately pick such a dangerous act to provoke the Elizabethan establishment. Scores were executed for *blasphemy,* *atheism* and *heresy*. . .a practice that did not end in England until 1611.

The author perhaps intentionally confuses the meaning of *atheism* in the Elizabethan era and that of today. In downplaying Marlowe’s atheism, he cites the playwright’s rather generous views of Islam and Judaism in Tamburlaine. Today, no one would be labeled an *atheist* for only denying certain of the doctrines of Christianity. . .but in Marlowe’s day, anti-Christ doctrine was equated with *atheism.* Marlowe certainly knew this, and our learned professor should know this. Thus, when we review a few of Marlowe’s documented *gibes* at Christ, given the religious tenor of the era, it would seem disingenuous of the author to defend Marlowe against the charge of *atheism:*

Christ was a bastard and his mother dishonest.

Christ deserved better to dy than Barrabas and that the Jews made a good choise.

The woman of Samaria and her sister were whores and that Christ knew them dishonestly.

That he was the sonne of a carpenter, and that if Jewes among whome he was borne did crucify him they best knew him and whence he came.

St John the Evangelist was bedfellow to Christ and leaned always in his bosome, he used him as the sinners of Sodoma.

(All of the above from the testimony of Richard Baines, circa 1592).

2). Whereas the author underplays Marlowe’s *atheism,* he seems to strongly overplay Marlowe’s alleged *homosexuality* (it may be both these misestimates are due to the university professor’s bowing to the cultural fads of our day).

On what evidence does the professor judge Marlowe a queer?

From the supposed *homoeroticism* that is said to be sprinkled throughout Marlowe’s writing, such as this passage from Hero and Leander:

Had wild Hippolytus Leander seen,
Enamored of his beauty had he been;
His prescence made the rudest peasant melt,
That in the vast uplandish country dwelt.
The barbarous Thracian soldier, moved with nought,
Was moved with him, and for his favour sought.
Some swore he was a maid in man’s attire,
For in his looks were all that men desire.

And statements such as this, attributed to Marlowe while a student at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge:

All they that love not Tobacco and Boies are fools.

And it is supposed since Marlowe offers a generally sympathetic portrait of the faggot King Edward in Edward II, that is also *proof* of Marlowe’s poofery. Yet I take it more as an example of his literary sophistication, that he does not need to render Edward as a flaming degenerate, as had previous writers done with queer Kings, such as Raphael Holinshed’s sordid take on Scotland’s King James VI.

But if one were to accept Edward II as evidence of homosexualism in Marlowe, one should also then suppose Marlowe was a self-hating queer, as he has *Lucifer* taunt Edward, and then slowly kill him by sodomizing him with a red hot spit. Even our university professor is forced to speculate:

In its ghastly way, Edward’s death mimics a male sexual act. What are we to make of this? Does Marlowe punish the hero for buggery, or punish the excoriating vileness of his own desires, or show the Elizabethan age an image of its own frightful inhumanity? (p. 307).

Marlowe may well have been a devotee of buggery, but there is no record of any *gay* sex, no names of any supposed lovers, so one cannot take it as *fact* that Marlowe was a *sodomite.* Even after spending most of his book assuming Marlowe’s homosexuality, the author concedes Marlowe would have nothing in common with the faggots of our day, the proud and self-righteous brides of the Church of Adam and Steve:

The matter of his sexuality, though, is more elusive, if only because, in a strict sense, there were no ‘homosexuals’ in the realm; homosexuality is a modern concept, and few Elizabethans seem to have thought of homoerotic desire in connection with a distinct personality type, or as giving an erotic identity. Marlowe is called a homosexual today, with some justice, if we think of his plays and his descriptions in Hero and Leander; but the anachronism may be false to his self-awareness. (p. 297).

Indeed. One can imagine one of Marlowe’s well-known violent outbursts should he walk into one of our modern taverns and be called *gay.*

Still, despite these criticisms and the dryness of the text, I appreciate Christopher Marlowe: Poet & Spy for taking me away for a few hours from our vulgar, stupid, dull-of-wit age, and placing me back in an era where one produced one’s own amusements by one’s own wit. Marlowe was caustic, sarcastic, edgy and above all, clever. He had a classically educated, sophisticated cleverness which is sorely lacking in our dumbed-down day. The rag Entertainment Weekly gushed recently as the epitome of modern wit the following lame-ism from a colored celebrity named Aziz Ansari, who typed on Twitter:

Yo @ Snoop—hey I’m working on a woodworking project, can I borrow your nail gun tomorrow?

A dim-wit on Twitter. The garbage of an ignoramus applauded as art in a national magazine. What is this colored boy’s vapid verse compared to:

Some say for her the fairest Cupid pined
And looking in her face was strooken blind.

Christopher Marlowe: Poet & Spy reminds us just how far culture has fallen. . .

15 May 2009

What Is, And What Can Never Be

It is this way because it can be no other way.

Live long enough, and the mind is filled with *what if I had done this instead?*

But I could not have done that. . .

I could not have done that because of my sin.

I met certain people. . .and now, years, even decades later, I wonder *what if I had done this instead?*

But because of my sin, I could not have done anything else.

There were certain people I could not reach, because of my sin. *Character traits* necessary to reach certain people either were missing, or were broken by sin. I could not overcome my brokenness. . .and these people drifted away. . .a lasting connection was never made.

It was not a matter of lacking will. Behavior can be changed by force of will. But the *I* cannot be changed. I am a creature. I am what I was made. I was shapen in iniquity. Because of my sin, I lacked the charity, the patience, the understanding, the compassion, the whatever was needed to connect to certain people.

I met certain people, and a weak bond was formed, but could not be sustained because of the defective *I*. Because of sin, *I* did not have the necessary charge to create a stable bond.

I lacked the patience that M. required.

I think of M. now, and say, if only I had been more patient!

But it was never within my ability.

David, at the nadir of his sin, did not pray to God to give him the will to change his behavior. He understood behavior was not the problem. The problem was the defective *I*. . .the soul, the spirit, whatever you want to call the substance that creates *I.*

The Bible identifies it as the *heart.*

I the LORD search the heart. . .

Every way of a man is right in his own eyes: but the LORD pondereth the hearts. . .

The *heart* of man is defective. . .and is the cause of our trouble.

So David prayed:

Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.

Behavior is not the issue, it is the brokenness. . .and this brokenness prohibits from *doing this instead.*

By force of will, behavior can change. . .but unless God repairs the heart, everything remains the same.

I met certain people, and I had brief glimpses of other possibilities. . .

These are glimpses of the world without sin. . .

Sin does not wear on me because I feel guilt over my behavior. . .I have long since passed that by. . .I am what I was made.

Sin wears on me because of what I could not and cannot be in this world. . .

14 May 2009

Are Those Real People?

Reuters, 14 May 2009: Ninety-three children and 25 adult women are among a list of 140 names of Afghans who villagers say were killed in a battle and U.S. air strikes last week, causing a crisis between Washington and its Afghan allies. The list, obtained by Reuters, bears the endorsement of seven senior provincial and central government officials, including an Afghan two-star general who headed a task force dispatched by the government to investigate the incident. Titled "list of the martyrs of the bombardment of Bala Boluk district of Farah Province", it includes the name, age and father's name of each alleged victim. The youngest was listed as 8-day-old baby Sayed Musa, son of Sayed Adam. Fifty-three victims were girls under the age of 18, and 40 were boys. Only 22 were men 18 or older. Nevertheless, Washington has continued to dispute the death toll. "Well I could give you 140 names too. Are those real people? Did they ever actually exist? I can give you a list of 53 girls names with their ages," U.S. military spokesman Colonel Gregory Julian said.

Are those real people? Did they ever actually exist? So asks the American Colonel.

Ha ha ha. If you are not some horribly obese American slob, picking through the junk at Wal-Mart on your remaining credit, blind to all the misery caused by the *American Way of Life,* you ain’t *real*. . .you don’t *exist.*

We have here a new, more extreme form of dehumanization. When the crimes are so horrible they seem unjust even when committed against an already demonized other, it is no longer sufficient to regard the other as evil (*we are good, they are evil*). Now, the other must not even exist (*we are, they are not*). . .and so therefore, no atrocity took place.

The martyrs of the bombardment of Bala Boluk district of Farah Province weren’t killed. . .they were erased.

This American Colonel was already in a terrible moral state. He was part of a military machine victimizing some of the poorest people in the world. But his devotion to this deviltry is so pure, so fervent, his mouth now foams the most shameful filthiness.

Arrogant, in his uniform of the wicked, and with Satanic defiance He makes himself God, Numberer of the Very Hairs on the Heads of all Humanity.

Are those real people? Did they ever actually exist? this serpent sneers.

He will be shown these corpses. . .all one hundred and forty. He will be shown these corpses at the Great White Throne. The last will be the corpse of the 8-day-old baby Sayed Musa, and God Almighty will ask the proud Colonel if the child was real. And then the arrogant Colonel will be shown his own name, Gregory Julian, in the Book of Life. . .and he will watch as it is erased. This is the fair judgment of the Lord Jesus Christ, who warned us all:

For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

13 May 2009

Carrie Prejean: Half-Nude Mannequin Martyr


Are you kidding me? This airhead is crying over her *punishment?*

What punishment? Losing an idiotic beauty *pageant?* So some internet gossip queer doesn’t like her and doesn’t vote for her? Does she consider that *punishment?* Does she think she was owed that stupid *crown?*

You got to be an idiot even to want that piece of junk.

This nitwit was cute for 24 hours, but look what a monster she has become!

Or does she consider as *punishment* a nation of infidels mocking her for being a semi-nude *spokesperson* for God Almighty? Can’t this bubblehead see the Christian God does not employ semi-nude female models as His messengers? Does she honestly believe God Almighty is so stupid He can’t see how His message might not be taken seriously if it is delivered by a half-naked helium-head?

This feeble-minded mannequin needs to spend a little less time stripping and parading around half-nude for filthy lucre’s sake, and little more time reading her Bible. If you are being punished, if the internet gossip queer has punished you, it is because God has used this queer as He used the Assyrian and the Babylonian against Israel:

O Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, and the staff in their hand is mine indignation. I will send him against an hypocritical nation, and against the people of my wrath will I give him a charge, to take the spoil, and to take the prey, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.

Instead of crying for her self, her beautiful selfish self, instead of uttering those preposterously angry words about what should not happen in America, this pea-brain needs to honestly look at what she has become. She has become just like the whores of the world.

If she is a Christian, instead of crying and feeling sorry for herself and being angry at all the queers and infidels, she needs to rejoice and thank God for His mercy:

My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of Him: For whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons. Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live? For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but He for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness. Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby. Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees; And make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed. Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord: Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled. . .

If she is a Christian, God is using the queers and infidels to chasten her. . .

Carrie Prejean, put some clothes on and do what is right. . .

Because as it stands now, the lowliest, dirtiest, most STD and Hep-C and HIV plagued crack whores enter the Kingdom of God before you. . .for these pathetic crack whores abuse the Temple of God from weakness. . .from sickness. But Carrie Prejean, you who pretend to a *crown,* you make the Temple of God a House of Pornography, not from weakness or sickness, but from pride, ambition and vanity. With calculation and premeditation, you turn the Temple of God into a House of Harlotry. . .for filthy lucre’s sake.

Miss California stands half-nude before the world and saints herself a Christian.

Has she never read:

In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array; But (which becometh women professing godliness) with good works. Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.

She’s going to speak for God? Half-nude? On what authority?

She was cute for 24 hours, but now she needs to put some clothes on, shut up, get married and have some kids.

But no, she insists on her right to be an immodest mannequin and to speak her *Christian* nonsense. . . and she tries to cover this sin with *martyrdom.*

She refuses to admit her pornography is sin. And trapped by her filthy pictures, she must tell outlandish lie after outlandish lie to explain why this filth pops ups daily on the internet.

So she cries for herself and claims she shouldn’t be *punished.*

This should not happen in America, the airhead blubbers. . .

LET ME TELL YOU WHAT SHOULD NOT HAPPEN IN AMERICA:

THE FAITH OF THE LORD JESUS CHRIST SHOULD NEVER BE DISGRACED, AND MADE SUBJECT TO THE MOCKERY OF THE QUEERS AND THE INFIDELS BECAUSE SOME FAKE-TITTED AIRHEAD DON’T HAVE THE COMMON CHRISTIAN SENSE TO PUT SOME CLOTHES ON BEFORE SHE DARE CLAIM TO SPEAK FOR THE ALMIGHTY AND WON’T SHUT HER PIEHOLE FROM UTTERING LIE AFTER LIE TO DEFEND *CHRISTIAN PORNOGRAPHY*

A Christian can be a slut and a tramp and a whore and every other kind of sinner under the sun. . .but you can’t be a Christian and say it ain’t sin.

Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness. . .

It’s that simple. . .

There may be some who, reading this, think I have a problem with Miss California exposing herself. Listen, it would be fine with me if she posed completely nude and spread-eagle. I would look and I would enjoy it. . .and I would know my sin.

Christianity is not about doing, it is about knowing.

Almost everything I do is wrong. . .and I know it. And I know I can do nothing about it. This is the truth that sets me free. This is the knowledge that compels trust in Christ. I can’t DO anything, except ask for mercy for Christ’s sake.

If I get *better,* it is only because Christ delivers supernatural aid. . .I didn’t make myself better. Otherwise, I can’t DO anything, except ask for mercy for Christ’s sake.

I am carnal, sold under sin. For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I. If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good. Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.

This pinhead Carrie Prejean needs to admit she is weak, that she is whoring herself for money because she don’t have the faith or patience to wait for the Lord to show her a cleaner way. . .we all punk out on Christ, but as Christians, we ought to be honest about it. . .we ought not call a press conference and cry and blame the queers and infidels for our sin.

This young lady, who most times don’t want to put on any clothes, stood there in front of the camera and dressed herself as a martyr. But it don’t fit:

And all that sat in the council, looking stedfastly on him, saw his face as it had been the face of an angel. . .But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God, And said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God. Then they cried out with a loud voice, and stopped their ears, and ran upon him with one accord, And cast him out of the city, and stoned him: and the witnesses laid down their clothes at a young man's feet, whose name was Saul. And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. And he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he fell asleep.

How did Miss Half-Nude Martyr California react? A week ago she claimed she was going to pray for her infidel tormentors. . .now we see her weeping, not for the infidels who are cut-off from God, but for herself. And did she have the face of an angel? Or the face of angry spoiled brat, pouting over her lost *crown,* and spouting the most retarded garbage, linking herself by some labyrinthian logic to General Patton?

PUT SOME CLOTHES ON, SHUT YOUR PIEHOLE, READ THE BIBLE. AND IF YOU CAN’T PUT SOME CLOTHES ON, THEN TAKE THEM ALL OFF, AND LET US REALLY GET AN EYEFUL, AND ADMIT IT IS SIN AND TELL THE WORLD YOUR ONLY HOPE OF SALVATION IS CHRIST, AND THAT THE ONLY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN YOU AND THE QUEER YOU CRIED ABOUT IS THE BLOOD OF CHRIST.

I AM SICK TO DEATH TO BE ASSOCIATED WITH THESE SO-CALLED *CHRISTIANS* WHO DISGRACE THE FAITH IN FRONT OF THE INFIDELS.

12 May 2009

Pusillanimous Pope Panned For Poor Performance

12 May 2009, news.yahoo.com: The speaker of Israel's parliament accused German-born Pope Benedict on Tuesday of showing detachment from Jewish suffering in the Nazi Holocaust, adding to criticism that has marked his Holy Land pilgrimage. The pontiff, described by one Israeli newspaper columnist as coming across as "restrained, almost cold", prayed at Judaism's Western Wall and visited Islam's Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem holy sites at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But his speech on Monday at Israel's national Holocaust memorial attracted the most attention in Israel, with the parliament speaker accusing Benedict of glossing over the Nazi genocide and survivors lambasting him for failing to apologize for what many in Israel see as Catholic indifference during World War II. Moments after he spoke, Yad Vashem's top two officials criticized him for failing to use the words "Nazis" or "murder" in his speech. Israeli newspapers Tuesday were filled with criticism.

It’s not enough, now, to visit and offer a few solemn comments. . .

Remember that great scene in *The Good, The Bad and the Ugly,* at the prison camp, when Tuco is getting the shit kicked out of him by Angel Eyes’ enforcer, and they have a raggedy confederate band play music to cover Tuco’s screams? And the camp guard taunts the confederate fiddler with a demand to play with *more feeling?* That’s what the Jews want from the Pope: *more feeling.*

It’s not enough, now, to visit and offer a few solemn comments. . .you have to give a full-blown performance, replete with what appear to be *heart-felt* apologies, tears and *never again* pledges.

The Pope is condemned in Israel for being a lousy actor!

You are also not permitted in Israel to show any sympathy for the suffering of the Palestinians:

Haaretz, 11 May 2009: The head of the Palestinian Sharia court, Sheikh Taysir al-Tamimi, fiercely denounced Israeli policy in the presence of Pope Benedict on Monday and appealed to the pope to help end what he called the "crimes of the Jewish state." Speaking at an interfaith conference held at the Notre Dame Church in East Jerusalem, al-Tamimi accused Israel of slaughtering women, children and senior citizens. The speech was delivered in Arabic, without simultaneous translation, but after the pope was informed of the political nature of al-Tamimi's speech, he left the conference. Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi criticized al-Tamimi's speech. "The speech by Sheikh Taysir Tamimi was not scheduled by the organisers of the meeting. In a meeting dedicated to dialogue, this intervention was a direct negation of what a dialogue should be.”

The Pope betrayed Christian Palestinians by walking out of a conference in which they were participating. The Pope’s walk-out validates zionist white-washing of crimes against Palestinians, some of them members of his own church. Ha ha ha. . .but the Pope didn’t even get 30 pieces of silver from the zionists. . .they repay *his holiness* the very next day with a scathing review of his performance at the world’s foremost Theater of the Absurd, Yad Vashem.

What will the Pope do to make amends?

Bishop Williamson, you better run for cover!

11 May 2009

He Deserved To Die Because He Had $8.50

Reuters, 11 May 2009: The US military said on Saturday its troops had shot dead a 12-year-old Iraqi boy suspected of throwing a grenade at them and said it believed insurgents were paying children to help them. Iraqi police, speaking on condition of anonymity, said however the boy, whom they named as Omar Moussa Salih, had not been involved in the grenade-throwing. US and Iraqi forces came under grenade attack on Thursday in the western part of Mosul, the northern city seen as a final stronghold of al-Qaeda and other insurgents, said Major Derrick Cheng, a US spokesman in northern Iraq. US forces responded by firing at several people, killing the boy. He was found with 10,000 Iraqi dinars (US $8.50) in his hand. “We have every reason to believe that insurgents are paying children to conduct these attacks or assist the attackers in some capacity, but undoubtedly placing the children in harm’s way,” Cheng said.Iraqi police in Mosul said the boy was shot more than once in the head. His eight-year-old brother ran away when Omar was shot.

But eyewitnesses said the boy was standing by the side of the road selling fruit juice - a common practice in Iraq -- and had nothing to do with the attack. A friend, Ahmed Jassim, 15, said he was selling cans of Pepsi nearby when he heard the grenade explode. He dove behind a parked car, then heard the roar of machine gun fire. "When the shooting was over and the patrol went away, I stood and I saw Omar on the ground covered with blood," Jassim said. Another witness, Ahmed IzAldeen, 56, said he saw the person who threw the grenade. It wasn't the boy, but a man in his twenties, he said. IzAldeen said he saw the man standing behind a truck holding the grenade as the American patrol approached.

Listen to what the American military devil Cheng says:

We have every reason to believe that insurgents are paying children to conduct these attacks or assist the attackers in some capacity, undoubtedly placing the children in harm's way.

This is Satan speak.

When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.

Study the language carefully. . .

Every manner of wickedness and wrong-doing can be excused by the military’s *belief.*

Even if 100 witnesses testify the boy was indeed selling beverages, the demonic liars of the US Military can counter with a *belief* insurgents paid the boy to set his juice stand at just such a spot along the convoy route to serve as some sort of cover for the insurgents, and thereby ensure his own death!

Thus the American army of demons (whether worshipers or patsies of Satan) shift all blame for the boy’s death from the Americans who, without dispute, did the actual killing, onto the boy himself.

The US military will never admit what is most reasonable to believe:

American soldiers were frightened by a grenade, and fearing for their own lives, they immediately began firing wildly at anyone in their field of vision. Panicked by fear, they had no idea whether they were firing at the *enemy,* (and God knows they have no legitimate enemy in Iraq) or a poor Iraqi boy trying to earn a little money for his family.

Six years of this war, and the children of Iraq continued to be killed.

Only God on His throne knows how many thousands of *terrorist* children have been killed. . .

Six years, and no remorse from America for the blood her military has shed. . .only some regret for the dollars wasted, and for the blood of her own soldiers.

Six years, and no remorse from America for the blood her military has shed. . .only now a desperate desire to achieve some paper *victory* and to shift the troops to another *theater* before the next round of *sectarian violence* erupts and traps her military in the stepping-stone-to-Armageddon war she lied herself into.

Six years, and Americans remain dumb to their violence. . .

Our Lord asked:

How can Satan cast out Satan?

Today we see this:

New York Times, 11 May 2009: The United States military said Monday that five American soldiers had been shot by a solider who opened fire on fellow troops at one of the main American bases in Baghdad. The American solider suspected of being involved with the shooting is in custody, the military said. The shooting took place at around 2 p.m. local time at Camp Liberty, a sprawling base next to Baghdad airport, the military said in a statement. The names of the dead soldiers were being withheld at this time pending family notification, the statement said. “Anytime we lose one of our own, it affects us all,” Col. John Robinson, a spokesman for the U.S. military in Iraq, was quoted as saying.

This fellow was sickened by the wicked displays of violence he was exposed to day after day after day. He was poisoned by the Satanic violence. In Satanic madness, he turned against his *own.*

This is how Satan *casts out* Satan.

Satan spreads the cancer of violence, and convinces men their enemies are flesh and blood. . .

Satan does not cast out Satan. . .through violence he casts out man. . .he deceives man into believing his *enemy* is flesh and blood. This is the great lie from the father of lies, for the truth is exactly the opposite:

Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.

The American soldier who killed his countrymen: first he believed Satan when the Adversary whispered in his ear the Iraqis were his enemies. . .then, after being deranged by the violence, he believed Satan when the Adversary whispered in his ear his countrymen were his enemies.

It’s all the same. . .it’s all the same. Whether they are shooting at *insurgents,* children selling juice, or their former friends. . .the madmen are just shooting at phantoms.


BTW, I keep forgetting to mention this here, but let us continue the fun and laughter on Facebook. Email me at
facebookzombie@michigan.usa.com for my Facebook ID.

09 May 2009

The Age Of Aquarius

Reuters, 9 May 2009: The U.S. military acknowledged on Saturday that civilians were killed in a battle which prompted Afghan President Hamid Karzai to call for a halt to airstrikes within the country's borders. Villagers from Western Farah province gave name lists of 147 dead to provincial officials and told Reuters of bombs hitting houses packed with terrified people, including women and children. In a joint statement with the Afghan government, U.S. forces confirmed that non-combatants were among the dead but said it was not possible to give a firm number because the bodies had already been buried.

Ha. . .you God damned daydreamers! You God damned daydreamers who thought you were voting for the Bringer of a New Age! You God damned daydreamers, proud to align yourselves with a ventriloquist’s dummy! You God damned fools actually thought Obama’s inauguration was the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius!

It’s unfortunate Obama has continued with the Clinton-Bush economic policies, which cause the monetary ruin of millions for the benefit of the New York Usurers.

But you God damned fools need to ask yourself: do you deserve a house to live in? If you don’t lift so much as a fucking finger to stop your nation from killing babies, why should you have money and a house? Why should you have a fucking penny to your name? Shouldn’t you be in ragged clothes, wandering in the rubble, also? Shouldn’t you have bandages wrapped around your head, and your face burned as black as the face of your false messiah?

No, that Obama has continued the economic ruin of America, that Obama has remained subservient to the New York Usurers, isn’t really troublesome. For even if you God damned fools deserved to keep your money, it is, after all, only money. . .you would have lost nothing of eternal value, anyway.

What ought to trouble you God damned fools is the ruin of your soul. . .

For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, But a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries.

It is true the wicked Obama spoke to you out of both sides of his half-colored mouth, but you still willfully played the harlot. Yes, he told you he would bring change, but he also told you the truth about that change. He told you God damned fools again and again he would shift the troops from Iraq to Afghanistan.

This charlatan was honest in the most important point you had to consider: he told you the killing would continue, the killing in your name, the killing for the flag you love to drape yourself in. You God damned fools voted for the killing of the babies in Afghanistan. You played the harlot for Obama. . .you let him fuck you, and you delighted in it. . .and you still delight in it, even as the dead are buried.

No, you don’t deserve any money, and you don’t deserve to have a home to live in. How many refugees wander through the rubble of the Middle East, because of the Bush-Obama policies? Why should you have a nice 2500 sq ft McMansion to live in, while they have nought but mountains of rubble?

You God damned fools, the small wicked, you are the ones who allow the killing, by playing the harlot for Obama. . .

Do you think the timing of the economic ruin of America is coincidence?

Tell yourselves it is so. . .

I would find it more comforting to believe it is God’s work. . .

You will say you voted for the *lesser of two evils*. . .but you know that is a lie. You had a chance to say 'no' to the baby killing. . .you had other choices, true anti-war candidates, but you scorned them, you wouldn’t *waste* your vote for them, so you played the harlot for Obama. . .and your economy fell apart almost overnight. . .

I will judge it as a shadow of the judgment against the great harlot Babylon:

And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities. Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works: in the cup which she hath filled fill to her double. How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her: for she saith in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow. Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her.

I HAVE SEEN A GREAT WICKEDNESS. THE HARLOTS FROLICK AS THEIR COUNTRY KILLS THE POOREST OF THE POOR

07 May 2009

All The Living

All The Living, by C.E. Morgan: San Francisco Chronicle, 26 April 2009: Buzz is a marvelous thing (especially for the writer being buzzed about), but it can, perversely, skew a potential reader's expectations by promising too much, or too lavishly. Kentuckian C.E. Morgan's first novel has been compared to the work of Marilynne Robinson and James Salter, and no less than Farrar, Straus and Giroux editor Jonathan Galassi has declared, "Katie is going to be one of the remarkable writers of her generation."

Friend, if C.E. *Katie* Morgan is going to be one of the remarkable writers of her generation, then don’t bother buying anymore contemporary fiction, just read again Dostoevsky, Dickens, Celine, the rest of the classics.

There is powerful literature in all big cultures, but you can't get away from the fact that Europe still is the centre of the literary world--not the United States. The US is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature. That ignorance is restraining--Horace Engdahl, permanent secretary of the Nobel Literature prize jury.

All The Living is a perfect example of all that is wrong with American literature. Some provincial publisher pokes around for somebody who would look good sitting with a couple shirt buttons undone next to Oprah, talking loftily about the *human condition.* The provincial publisher, like a crack dealer giving away free the first rock—thus creating a whore who will do anything to stay high, then gives the novice novelist a huge cash advance, hooking them on the *voice of a generation* narcotic. High on literary credit, the scribbler imagines herself a *writer,* and unashamedly plays the part in public.

Next, the provincial publisher, months and months before the book is released, sets about creating Media *buzz* through a carefully crafted marketing plan largely dependent upon payola-procured *advance praise.* Then when the book is set to hit the store shelves, the provincial publisher purchases and places *glowing* reviews in everything from the lowbrow Entertainment Weekly to the pseudo-highbrow New York Times Book Review. This will generate a decent initial sale. . .but after a few hundred *real* people have read the book, which turns out, contrary to the *glowing* reviews, to be SHITE, and said *real* people don’t bother recommending it to their friends, the shite book, suffering from lack of *word of mouth* (the only genuine *buzz*) begins to collect dust on the store bookshelves and in Amazon.com’s fulfillment centers.

When this threatens the provincial publisher’s cynical campaign to spontaneously generate a *voice of a generation* (a *voice* rises from a stinking, maggot-infested shite book), the provincial publisher leans on bricks-and-mortar book retailers by threatening them with credit holds unless they instruct store personnel to hand-sell the book. *Make* books, they call them. $7.00-an-hour book clerks harass customers with dishonest recommendations. Stores must meet their sales quotas, or the corporate office will cut the stores’ payroll hours. This often forces minimum wage employees to buy copies of *make* books, which they promptly *reshelve* in the dumpster.

If the *make* book scam doesn’t work, the provincial publisher’s last resort is to start buying his own author’s book. Yes, the provincial publisher will inflate the sales of the shite book, desperate to make it a *best-seller* and validate their *voice of a generation,* by buying thousands of copies of the shite book from online retailers and having them shipped to hospitals, schools, public libraries, old folks’ homes, prisons, even to the provincial publisher’s own offices. There must be stacks to the ceiling of All The Living at 18 West 18th Street in New York.

As for the shite novel All The Living, well, Hell, it’s not even a novel, it’s an overweight short story, it’s Kirstie Alley-as-novel, and it tells the rather spartan story of a Kentucky orphan girl named *Aloma* (how regional, eh?) who takes up with the first swinging dick who comes her way, a Kentucky tobaccy farmer named Orren (how regional, eh?). After Orren’s mommy dies, he brings Aloma to his tobaccy farm and then, apparently because he’s so grief-stricken, he proceeds to neglect poor Aloma, and sometimes he is even a little brusque with her. Why did he even bother to bring her to the tobaccy farm in the first place, if he was heart sick over mommy? I guess he needed somebody new to sleep with—Aloma, the teddy bear with a vagina.

Anyway, lonely Aloma, who had learned her some piano at her *settlement* school, goes down the road a piece to a little clapboard church and asks the preacher, Bell (how regional, eh?), if he needs a piano player.

I’m sorry, we have a piano player, a good one. I reckon she’s gonna hold up for a while, the preacher says. (p. 64).

Four pages later, the piano player is dead and preacher Bell calls Miss Aloma. . .the rest you can likely guess.

Though if you guessed Bell got himself a piece of Miss Aloma, you guessed a little too far. Bell don’t actually tap dat azz, lessen you reckon on maybe a Matthew 5:28 tap o’ de heart.

Well, I’ll jes go ahead and tell you the res of the story, it don’t make no difference, no how. Miss Aloma don’t tell Bell she’s shacking up with the tobaccy farmer, but when one of the town’s old hens goes a gossipin’ to de preacher about her, he seems real hurt like, and tells Aloma he caint have her to play the piana no mores. This after they’d been kindly warming to each other.

Meanwhile, dat ole boy Orren been gettin anxiouser and anxiouser over his tobaccy crop, waiting for de rain to fall. He gets hisself into such a state, he damn near drives Aloma crazy. . .but in de end, they ain’t nowheres else neither one of them can go, so’s they stay where they are, fixin to make de best o’ it. And dat’s how de shite story ends.

199 pages of the thinnest domestic soap opera and most tepid of love triangles. . .

Listen, I’ll never joke about Stephenie Meyer or Charlaine Harris again. After about 40 pages of this shite, I was praying to the Good Lord to send a creature of the night to feast on Aloma’s and Orren’s blood.

Katie is going to be one of the remarkable writers of her generation.

Yeah. Well. . .

You can tell the author, C.E. *Katie* Morgan, was *trained* in literature. . .she *learned* what passes for her *craft*. . .for this is one of the most over-studied, over-labored novels I’ve ever read. They should have printed this shite in purple ink:

The ragged porch clung weakly to the wall of the building, its floorboards lining out from the door, their splintering gray now naked to the elements that first undressed them. (p. 3).

The cows had all wandered up a hillside to a stand of brazen green trees and stood blackly on the fringe of its shade gazing out, their bodies in the cloaking dark but their heads shined to a high gloss like black pennies in the sunlight. (p. 5).

Orren placed his hand on his own chest flat-palmed and she saw the dark line of dirt under his nails like earthen parentheses. (p.7).

Listen, we’re only seven pages into this shite, and I’m ready to have C.E. *Katie* Morgan flogged for crimes against literature. *Earthen parentheses?* And it just gets worse:

She studied the morning light as it forced itself through the pocked and splintered wood boards of the batten walls so that it shot through in silty bands of white like roughspun silk. It caught and lit the barn sediment as morning sun lights the mist and bugs that hover over the skin of a still river. (p. 131).

A dwarf story stretched out to 199 pages with the most tedious, pretentious purple prose imaginable. 199 pages of inanimate objects *yawning,* *fretting,* *whispering,* *quarreling* and *worrying.*

This is literature for pale, nervous women who need to lay in darkened bedrooms for days at a time. . .

I read this shite thing all the way through just to see how bad it could get, and for the laugh-out-loud *drama* of Aloma being attacked by a rooster, which leads to this, maybe the single most absurd line of dialogue I’ve ever read:

I want not to be murdered by birds! (p. 58).

Ha ha ha. . .what a shite book! *Voice of a generation!* Pray this shite isn’t translated into French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian or any of the Scandinavian languages. . .we don’t need anymore scorn from Horace Engdahl and the rest of the International Literati.