Dzhugashvili Or DzhuBushvili And Non-Euclidean Geometry

Der Freischutz

I was jumped over my tasteless History of the Future post about Georgei DzhuBushvili. As if he were anything at all like Josef Dzhugashvili, or Stalin as he is commonly know. Can you imagine anyone writing a book like Animal Farm about George Bush? Hmmm. Come to think of it...all Muslims are alike, only some are more...Muslimy than others! That seems to fit in with the perceptions of the "base" to which the proponents of constant war make their appeals. So, with Levine ineffectually trying to maintain the peace, old man Steuben and I whipped ourselves into a pointless fury of political debate, consisting essentially of my profoundly deep observation that Baghdad was Bush's Stalingrad, and Steuben's snorting into his beer stein. I should mention at this point that this particular tete-a-tete, or vis-a-vis, or kitfu kitfu ( shoulder-to-shoulder for you non-Arabists out there) was held at the German-American Shooting Club, or the Deutsche-Amerikanische something something Freischutz Verein something. (I told you I lived in the midst of a variety of peoples.) The discussion became so heated that Otto the bartender removed the august head of Fritz the deer from the bar. Fritz was sort of a mascot for the Verein. A dead mascot, to be sure, and well preserved by the taxidermist's art. Fritz was the holder of stakes and the arbiter of fortunes...there was a type of deer-omancy (cervomancy?) practiced that had the decisions made by tossing rings at Fritz, and the rings that landed on his antlers and stayed there indicated the winning side. (Hey...there is drinking going on here! If you want behavior of a more cultured type, go to Dresden and visit the Zwinger and look at Kunst!) Anyhow.......... Baghdad Bush Stalingrad! No it ain't! Yes it is! That sums it up. Steuben sez "Ha! Yer so schmart! Stalin won at Stalingrad! So you mean Bush will WIN at Baghdad! Ha!" "No way", sez I. "Historic parallels are not so exact...and they follow non-euclidean geometry...parallels intersect and switch packets of DNA...and then bacteria becomes resistant to drugs and the lions will lay down with the lambs." Suddenly a shot rang out !! Well, it is a shooting club.