The Iceman Cometh

There is a cute story for the season. It's about paranoia, but of the best type: paranoia as comfy slippers or sitting before a warm fire on a cold autumn day.  

Read the Tomgram, 
Mike Davis on Manifest Destiny, the Sequel
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?mm=9&yr=2006

Herein we see the Saudi government has plans to build a 560 mile long fence on the Iraq border. Add this to Israel's new ghetto wall and the USA's new gated-community-wall along the Mexican border and with a little ingenuity, we could have a globe girdling wall and have it hook up with China's Great Wall just in time for the 2008 Olympics (tm).
What will we do when the Iceman gets here?
Will we continue to sit around in drunken Consumerism in the Bottom-of-the-Sea Rathskeller? Where all tomorrows have become today...and quickly vanish in intoxication.

David Kuo was on 60 Minutes yesterday. Talking about the Faith Based Initiative, I have a quote of his:  

At the end of the day, both parties played to stereotype -- Republicans were indifferent to the poor and the Democrats were allergic to faith.

He told of being at an Evangelical Convention where there were information and publications on everything - except the poor.

Yesterday being Sunday, I watched the televised goings-on of Pastor John Hagee, the foremost Christiano-wiseguy. There was all politics, all Iran, all nukes in Korea, all advice to Caesar. There was no humility or charity nor any other pesky virtue.
There were quotes about total victory, however. In the world of Pastor Hagee, Jesus is a political subordinate to Big John.
To blaspheme in this manner is equivalent to tearing out your own heart and replacing it with iron. It is Lady Macbeth seeking to change her own nurturing gender to that of a blood-maddened soldier in order to kill without compunction.

Those of little wit speak of World War III or World War IV.

When the War comes which is the result of our sojourn here in Harry Hope's Bar, the place where we have withdrawn from the rest of the world to live in our drunken dreams, it will come on as a whirlwind.  

As we sit in the semi-darkness, our cheap booze in jam jars on the dirty tables, we squint through the street facing windows of Harry's Bar. They haven't been cleaned since his wife died years ago, and they are almost as opaque as etched crystal. The people on the street become figures of dream, wispy and indeterminant figures with unsure outlines, blurs that come into view, come closer to each other, binding themselves in an amorphous shadow, part into smaller sections and go their ways up or down the street. It's so hard to see. Fashions must have changed. It's hard to tell. Maybe someday we'll go outside and take a walk around the ward. Until then, we'll wait for the Iceman. We'll wait for the wife-murdering Hickey.  
Wait! 
Didn't we see Hickey's trial on television? 
Didn't we see Hickey in his white Ford SUV being chased on the highway?  

Damn! This booze ain't got no kick to it! Just then, an infernal explosion blew in the front window and Harry's head ended up by the cash register while his body still sat at the table, jar of booze in its hand, puzzled and searching for its lips.
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