Murky Sauce

Some Hope, by Edward St Aubyn: I've seen mentions of St Aubyn over the last several years as some Great One of Literature.  Some Hope contains the first three of his five Patrick Melrose novels, which are apparently based on St Aubyn's own miserable life, a sordid saga of depraved dysfunction within the British *upper-class.*  The trilogy of blue blood rakishness is a jarring patchwork of social comedy and domestic degeneracy detailing the St Aubyn alter-ego Patrick Melrose's abused childhood, narcotized youth and existential angst-ridden adulthood.  

St Aubyn is not without literary talent. . .however, he is not equally blessed as both a witness of the profligate lives of the idle rich and a chronicler of the abused.  By far the best parts of Some Hope are St Aubyn's renderings of aristocratic cattiness.  The dinner party scenes of the dissolute gentry desperately trying to amuse themselves with anecdotes about the failings and misfortunes of others are high snide fun.  But when St Aubyn tries to recreate his own coke-and-heroin Sturm und Drang though Patrick Melrose, the result is often tedious vein-and-syringe minutia that prompts skimming, instead of reading.  Even less effective are the sections that deal with the Great Trauma: St Aubyn being sodomized by his father.  As channeled through Melrose, the reflections on buggery hardly rise above the level of a teen girl blathering about bulimia or wrist cutting on Facebook.  Here is the climatic scene of Some Hope, in which Melrose reveals his dark secret to his best friend Johnny:          

'So, what can one say about a man who rapes his own child?'

'I suppose it might help if you could see him as sick rather than evil,' Johnny suggested limply.  'I can't get over this,' he added, 'it's really awful.'

'I've tried what you suggest,' said Patrick, 'but then, what is evil if not sickness celebrating itself?  While my father had any power he showed no remorse or restraint, and when he was poor and abandoned he only showed contempt and morbidity.'

'Maybe you can see his actions as evil, but see him as sick.  Maybe one can't condemn another person, only their actions. . .'  Johnny hesitated, reluctant to take on the role of the defence. 'Maybe he couldn't stop himself anymore than you could stop yourself taking drugs.'

'Maybe, maybe, maybe,' said Patrick, 'but I didn't harm anyone else by taking drugs.'  (p. 384)  

Compare this rather tepid meditation on incest to the following biting dining table comedy and you will note St Aubyn's uneven talents: 

'Do you have any politics?' Princess Margaret asked Sonny.

'Conservative, ma'am,' said Sonny proudly.

'So I assumed.  But are you involved in politics?  For myself I don't mind who's in government so long as they're good at governing.  What we must avoid at all costs is these windscreen wipers: left, right, left, right.'

Sonny laughed immoderately at the thought of political windscreen wipers.

'I'm afraid I'm only involved at a very local level, ma'am,' he replied.  'The Little Soddington bypass, that sort of thing.  Trying to make sure that footpaths don't spring up all over the place.  People seem to think that the countryside is just an enormous park for factory workers to drop their sweet papers in.  Well, those of us who live here feel rather differently about it.'

'One needs someone responsible keeping an eye on things at a local level,' said Princess Margaret reassuringly.  'So many of the things that get ruined are little out-of-the-way places that one only notices once they've already been ruined.  One drives past thinking how nice they must have once been.'

'You're absolutely right, ma'am,' agreed Sonny.

'Is it venison?' asked the Princess.  'It's hard to tell under this murky sauce.'

'Yes, it is venison,' said Sonny nervously.  'I'm awfully sorry about the sauce.  As you say, it's perfectly disgusting.'  He could remember checking with her private secretary that the Princess liked venison.

She pushed her plate away and picked up her cigarette lighter.  'I get sent fallow deer from Richmond Park,' she said smugly.  'You have to be on the list.  The Queen said to me, "put yourself on the list," so I did.'

'How very sensible, ma'am," simpered Sonny.

'Do you like it?  It's venison,' said Princess Margaret leaning over slightly toward Monsieur d'Alantour, who was sitting on her right.

'Really, it is something absolutely mar-vellous, ma'am,' said the ambassador.  'I did not know one could find such cooking in your country.  The sauce is extremely subtle.'  He narrowed his eyes to give an impression of subtlety.

The Princess allowed her views about the sauce to be eclipsed by the gratification of hearing England described as 'your country,' which she took to be an acknowledgment of her own feeling that it belonged, if not legally, then in some much more profound sense, to her own family.

In his anxiety to show his love for the venison of merry old England, the ambassador raised his fork with such an extravagant gesture of appreciation that he flicked glistening globules over the front of the Princess's blue tulle dress.

'I am prostrated with horr-rror!' he exclaimed, feeling that he was on the verge of a diplomatic incident.

The Princess compressed her lips and turned down the corners of her mouth, but said nothing.  Putting down the cigarette holder into which she had been screwing a cigarette, she pinched her napkin between her fingers and handed it over to Monsier d'Alantour.

'Wipe!' she said with terrifying simplicity.

The ambassador pushed back his chair and sank to his knees obediently, first dipping the corner of the napkin in a glass of water.  While he rubbed at the spots of sauce on her dress, the Princess lit her cigarette and turned to Sonny.

'I thought I couldn't dislike the sauce more when it was on my plate,' she said archly.  (p. 391 - 393)

Such keen portraits of the privileged class make up for Some Hope's less successful drug and buggery sketches.  St Aubyn's not a Great One of Literature, but he's pretty good at skewering the nobility.

The Loser's Prayer

Jesus.  The Lord Jesus Christ.

Let us be clear on one point:

Jesus ain’t for winners.

Jesus is the God of losers.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He hath sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised. . .

The poor. . .the brokenhearted. . .the captives. . .the bruised: losers.  Me.  Thank God.

You ever see the hero of an AmerICKan sporting event, teary-eyed, gazing heavenward, and then thanking God for his victory? 

God don’t want the hero’s thanks.  God don’t want His Great White Throne trivialized by the hero’s childish pursuit. 

And God don’t want the rich man’s thanks for his filthy lucre.  God don’t want thanks for a new car.  God don’t want thanks for an iFad. God don’t want thanks for a new house.

All them people in the housing bust who lost their McMansions?  God wants their thanks.  They need to thank God for showing them what the world truly is. 

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

There’s no place in the world for Jesus and Jesus’ people.  Flee from any preacher in a two thousand dollar suit and a two hundred dollar haircut who tells you Jesus wants you to have the *fine things* of the world. 

Thank you, God, for every bruise the world gives me.  Thank you, God, for my poverty.  Thank you, God, for teaching me the world is garbage.  Forgive me, God, for being so slow in accepting the truth.

My kingdom is not of this world. . .

Ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye are of this world; I am not of this world. . .

If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. . .

God don’t want thanks for your government.  God don’t want thanks for your shit-ass constitution.  God don’t want thanks for your drone victories over your enemies.

Winners love the shit of the world.  With their victories and their stolen treasure, they build their kingdom on earth.

But a majestic defeat destroys them!  Jesus’ defeat has destroyed them.  The winners rule the earth, yet do not realize they are condemned to Hell.  While the winners mocked the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross, our Lord and our God told one loser:

Today shalt thou be with Me in paradise. . .

The world cannot understand the paradox of Christ’s defeat. . .

The shame of it is this includes the vast majority of the losers. They do not understand their victory is in Christ's defeat. In their lust for the *fine things* of the world, the losers miss Christ's message:

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

The losers have the same lusts as the winners, but lack their cleverness.  In the end, they settle for the bones the winners toss them: a bit of bread, some circuses, flags.  When these don't sate their lusts, they relieve their frustration through alcohol, narcotics, fornication and violence.  They never see past the lying vanities of the world, and they live in bitter resentment of the winners--they double down on their losses, losing both in this world, and the world to come.

What a world this would be if the billions of losers could look upon Jesus on the cross, and see their victory!

If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for My sake shall find it.

But what a tragedy, that billions who will never have a pot to piss in, and know they will never have a pot to piss in, still cannot say no to their lusts, cannot turn from the world and follow Christ to paradise.  They reject the treasure of Heaven. They choose to grub their lives away for the winners' hand-me-downs, which moth and rust will eat away.

Heavenly Father, thank you for drawing me to the cross of Christ.  Jesus, thank You for Your obedience.  Your carnal defeat earned the spiritual victory that opened the gate to paradise.  Forgive me for the lusts of the world which still rot in my flesh.  Let that sickness take my body to the grave, but protect my soul from the ambitions of the world.  In Christ's name, let my victory come in eternity.

Chick Flicks

Starlet: Jane is a leggy, fresh-faced young porn starlet specializing in *the-girl-next-door* shoots.  Unlike her two housemates, one a hyper, game-addicted, small-time porn producer and the other a manic harpy porn actress, whose manufactured dramas keep their days packed with plenty of turmoil, Jane seems bored and restless, looking for something (besides her precious tiny dog--named Starlet) to fill her many empty afternoons.  Hoping to find cast-offs to brighten up her bare bedroom (which doubles as a set for the porn producer's pov cheapies), Jane goes off for a day of thrift shopping.  At an old bag's garage sale, Jane finds a '60s-era thermos, which she first mistakes for an urn (in a clever bit of foreshadowing), and then a vase.  She bickers about the purpose of the item for a minute or two with the crusty old bag, buys it and returns home to find it is stuffed with rolls of one hundred dollar bills.  This story gimmick sets up a rather shopworn dilemma: what's a poor leggy porn girl to do?  Keep the money?  Return it?  Change the world with it?  Exhibiting no qualms about her own lifestyle, and very little about the lifestyles of her housemates, Jane is apparently unaccustomed to dealing with *situational ethics.*  Conflicted, in a *two steps forward, one step backward* fashion, Jane begins building a relationship with the old bag.  And that's pretty much all there is to Starlet, a mellow, leisurely, intergenerational buddy movie. . .though Jane and the old bag never really quite become friends. Theirs is more a relationship of surrogacy, as the rather spare script suggests Jane has a strained relationship with her mother, and the movie's graveyard finale reveals the old bag's void (there's also a rather clumsy micro subplot in which the old bag's house of '60s bric-a-brac is taken by *city officials* for hoarding, but which in retrospect we realize is just the old bag's memorializing). Most of the film is taken up with mildly amusing Mutt-and-Jeff moments between Jane and the old bag. . .there are plenty of bingo hall culture clashes which nearly produce a chuckle or two.  Starlet is a warm-bed-filled-with-fluffy-pillows of a movie. . .soft, comfortable, drowsy (even including its brief naughty porn moments).  In truth, there really isn't much to recommend the movie. . .except for Dree Hemingway, the latest of Papa Hemingway's jailbait girl offspring to try a hand at acting. Better-looking than her mother Mariel and her aunt Margaux, Dree seems a natural as the XXX peaches-and-cream Jane.  Is she acting, or merely playing herself?  The script probably doesn't require much of a stretch for Ms. Hemingway.  But if there were an Academy Award for Best Performance by a Lead Actress in Short Shorts and Cutesy Panties, Dree would win in a landslide. She's the Eye Candy which keeps this slight, kind-of-feel-good movie from becoming instantly forgettable.

Though Starlet might not be a masterpiece, it's leagues beyond the horror that is:

Zero Dark Thirty. . .a supposed *thriller* about the hunt for Osama bin Laden.  This is one of the most critically acclaimed AmerICKan movies of recent years.  Ha.  It's almost as boring as another AmerICKan classic, Saving Private Ryan.  Zero Dark Thirty would have us believe that bin Laden was eventually found and killed all due to the dogged efforts of one female CIA officer, Maya, played by somebody named Jessica Chastain, a redhead with a big nose and a jack-o'-lantern mouth.  Given the lethal-but-laughably mistaken targets of their drone operations, I find it hard to believe one, or even a hundred-and-one, CIA *officers* could find bin Laden.  But anyways, back to the preposterous propaganda, er, movie.  Maya has a pet theory about bin Laden which, of course, everybody else in the CIA sneers at, but which, of course, eventually proves true.  Maya nurses her pet theory for 10 long years until some other chick finds an old file somewhere with a picture of some sand nigger in it which somehow everybody had overlooked but which somehow proves Maya's theory is right. . .whatever.  It doesn't really matter. This might have been an interesting movie, except for one little problem: Maya is one of the least interesting characters you'll ever see.  In this nearly three hour long pseudo-epic, Maya spends most of her time staring off into space, apparently meant to convey how deep and total her obsession is to find bin Laden.  . .the tedium is only slightly broken every 45 minutes or so when she has a temper tantrum when someone scoffs at her theory, and, near the end of the movie, when she repeatedly and furiously attacks her bosses door with a red Sharpie, marking the number of days the boss has somehow failed her.  Though the movie covers ten years, Maya doesn't appear to age at all, has no personal life, and exhibits only one minor and utterly predictable character development: initially she is queasy about torture, but soon becomes a calloused advocate of it.  The only interesting characters in the movie are a couple of the torture victims, which may be due more to sympathy from a shared fate (watching this tedious film is about as fun as waterboarding) than to any competencies in the script.  The Grand Finale, the *heroic* SEAL mission to kill bin Laden, is shot in video game night vision green, an absurd attempt to convey gravitas on what in reality was little more than a bunch of over-armed soldiers shooting fish in a barrel, and is just as slow-moving and lacking in tension as the rest of the film.

Idea for a t-shirt:

I Survived 9/11 And All I Got Was This Shitty Movie   

You Can Come Out Now. . .

When life has no meaning, it's good to be an AmerICKan!


I think I'd feel a little silly whooping it up in the streets after obeying Big Government's order to hide under my bed all day. . .

An entire city peeks from behind the curtains for a whole day over one teenager hiding in a boat, then they bust out the flags and dance in the streets like it's VE Day. . .ha ha ha.

Assorted crackpots all over the world undoubtedly took note how little it now takes to terrorize AmerICKa and bring a major metropolitan area to a complete standstill. . .so who really *won?*

One A-rab Is The Same As Another. . .

One caught, one still on the run after a wild night. . .7-Eleven stick-up, MIT campus cop shot, car jacking, shoot-out, suicide belts, bombs tossed. . .

The end of the line for one sand nigger, forced to strip and taken away naked. . .you know that has to hurt his pride. . .dragged off by nude by the enemy.

No doubt after the last picture released these two jokers are A-rabs. . .look at those Joe Camel noses:

Nobody has to feel bad now about the other sand niggers who were falsely accused. . .they’re guilty by association.  AmerICKa can now resume her favorite pastime: congratulating herself.  We'll hear all manner of law enforcement, politicians and other assorted blow hards extolling the resilience, fortitude, bravery and God blessedness of the republic. . .

UPDATE: 4:15 am. . .ha. . .now we are getting what are called *conflicting reports*. . .supposedly one of the bombers is dead. . .so the fellow lying on the ground in the photo above, and who was taken away NAKED in a squad car, must not be a bomber. . .one sand nigger dead, one on the loose. . .and one random NAKED guy hauled off. . .all these conflicting reports will be meat-and-potatoes for the Alex Jones crowd.

UPDATE: 11:05 am. . .IPTDude asks in a comment:

Are Chechens sand-people?

Good question.  My understanding is that Chechens are the muslim niggers of Russia. . .a weird mud people formed out of the slums of the North Caucasus, a mix of Georgian, Azeri, Turk, Persian and assorted other European and Middle Eastern stragglers who stopped by to fornicate while crossing the Caucasus.

So in short, there is something in them for everybody to hate!

UPDATE: 12:30 pm. . .apparently the dead bomber stated he didn't understand AmerICKans, but in his embrace of violence, he showed a shared affinity. . .AmerICKans have always resorted to violence to solve their problems. . .after all, that's what the Bostonians cherished *Partriots' Day* celebrates. . .no one should be shocked at the rockets red glare and the bombs bursting in air on Patriots Day. . .there is nothing more AmerICKan than the smell of gunpowder in the morning.

Subway Sandwich (Camel) Jockey Latest A-rab To Be Tarred & Feathered

Ha ha ha. . .AmerICKa is supposedly this very PC country. . .you can’t even call fat people fat anymore. . .but there is one group of *people* you can accuse at will:

A-rabs. . .sand niggers. . .whatever you want to call them.

Ha ha ha. . .these two dopes found themselves on the front page of the New York Post (and NUMEROUS internet sites) as wanted men for the Marathon bombings.  One of the dopes, Salah Barhoun, in the white hat, turns out to be a high school kid who works at Subway (maybe he stole a *pressure cooker* from work. . .ha ha ha). . .when he saw the pictures and news articles fingering him as a bomber, he turned himself in, after first proclaiming on Facebook:

Going to the court right now!! Shit is real. But u will see guys I did not do anything.

Well, Salah, it probably doesn’t even matter. . .look at the example of John Doe #2, Abdulrahman Ali Alharbi, the first sand nigger to be falsely accused (the evidence of his guilt: he ran injured from the bomb blast seeking medical help—this *suspicious* behavior enough to convince Southie rednecks the sand nigger must be the bomber, whereupon they roughed up the injured raghead and turned him over to the police). . .and so just a day or two after being cleared of the bombing, our John Doe #2, Abdulrahman Ali Alharbi, continues to have the shadow guilt hanging over him, as right wing Media whites such as Sean Hannity, who claims not to be a conspiracy nut, still promote the view Alharbi is a terrorist, and even suggest Obama had a secret meeting with a Saudi prince to arrange for the quiet deportation of the nefarious sand nigger of the nefarious sand nigger (story here).

In 21^st Century AmerICKa, sand niggers just can’t win. . .  

Who Is My Neighbor? In Boston, It Ain't Abdulrahman Ali Alharbi

Boston Marathon: Good Samaritans Shine In Time Of Tragedy

Bostonians are falling all over congratulating themselves for their kindness and charity exhibited during the Marathon bombing. . .as one news story framed it: 

Out of the horror of the Boston Marathon bombings, there emerged uplifting examples of human kindness as the city's residents did all they could to help those caught up in the attack.

Well. . .er. . .there's one colored boy (our Marathon John Doe #2 from yesterday's post) lying in a Boston hospital who might be wondering where his Good Samaritan was.  Abdulrahman Ali Alharbi,  a 20 year old student at the New England School of English, was injured during the attack. As he fled the scene, looking for medical help, he was roughed up by a group of Boston Good Samaritans and then turned over to law enforcement officials, after being falsely accused of involvement in the bombings.  Now, I am sure there are plenty of (white) folks who can tell heart-warming tales of generosity, but to fit the pattern of the Good Samaritan parable, the act of kindness must be directed to the other.  White AmerICKan-on-white AmerICKan love don't fill the bill. . .nor does this:

Come Fly With Me (As Long As You Ain't An A-rab)

Sources told FOX 25 there was an American Airlines flight that was headed to Chicago. There were two men on that plane – not sitting next to each other – and speaking Arabic. There were some concerned marathoners on the flight so the plane was brought back to the gate and the two men were escorted off the plane. No other details were immediately available.

And that ain't the last of it, now we have our John Doe #3. . .surprise!. . .another darky:

Authorities say they are searching for a darker skinned or black male with a black backpack and black sweatshirt, possibly foreign national from the accent of the individual. Five minutes before the first explosion, officials said this person attempted to gain entry to a restricted area. When turned away, he broke eye contact and pulled his sweatshirt hood over his head and left, officials said.

How easy it is to find the scapegoat. . .just look for the black sheep.