My name is Kalashnikov, it is true. The details of my history are of no consequence. They matter not, I will not dwell on them, it is best for the both of us. Whether I live or die, I no longer care. There was a time I cared, long ago, but let us pass over this. Soon I will be in the ground, or I will be dust on the air, I don’t care which. Whatever it is, I expect it will be final. Yes, I will be dead and gone and there will be no one to speak of it and nothing to say. A void and a nothing—not even an emptiness, in which a nothing. A not nothing not empty nothingness. Who can say for certain? To speak of it is to not speak of it, it is beyond speaking. So I will not speak of it.
Tag Archives: America
Peace Comes to the Middle East
He steps into the damp November air and descends to the tarmac of Ben-Gurion Airport. The Tel Aviv rainy season has begun. God has sketched a featureless sky of phosphorescent pencil. The earth receives its languid tears. But Charles-Edward Crusher, son of the President-elect, has arrived. The sun will soon emerge in Israel.
The Presidential Apprentice s01e03
The Presidential Apprentice “You’re hired!” s01e03 11/22/2016
TEASER
FADE IN:
NEW YORK MONTAGE
ORANGE MENACE (V.O.)
New York is a tough place, and that’s why I love it. I also love a good show. In this town everything is show business. You want to make it big? Then learn how to put on a show. I’m talking real drama. I know show business, and look where I am today. The White House!
FLATLINE
America: Open for Business
America’s rich diversity streams to the tower for an audience with the orange menace. President-elect Crusher receives the variegated entourage with evident pleasure. He is charmed by the oil billionaire. The Hollywood billionaire is amusing. The media billonaire cajoles. The hedge fund billionaire tells a funny story involving a scandalous politician and a Rockaway restaurant. The real estate billionaire performs an indecent but also competent impersonation of George Soros. The technology billionaire speaks mostly of golf.
– “We’ll have to get on the course,” says the orange menace.
– “Let’s,” says the technology billionaire.
The Spirit Works Through Him
The orange menace sleeps his usual seventeen minutes but does not sleep well. He wakes with the mist of a terrfying dream thick upon his brain.
The Orange Menace Chooses His Cabinet
Each morning the orange menace rises at 4:20, refreshed by his standard seventeen minutes of sleep, and prepares for the day.
His eyes open to the copula and take in the ceiling fresco. Apollo is crossing the sky in his four-horse chariot. The gods are young and beautiful and shimmering white. They turn their gaze to him. The orange menace tosses in his sleep but each day he awakes to a heroic world. “Good morning,” says Apollo. “I have been waiting for you.” The orange menace lifts himself from the goose down pillow and sits on the edge of his bed, puts on slippers. He is on the move.
Introducing Mr. Leed
Geld Times journalist Barry Leed is an unacknowledged hero. Although he failed to anticipate the triumphal rise of the orange menace, he retrospectively writes of its inevitability. There’s nothing about this shocking election victory that Mr. Leed cannot explain. “It’s obvious to me what happened,” he says. “Hardly a surprise, given the clear and abundant facts.” As for what lies ahead, Mr. Leed can explain this, too. He is a restless watcher of President-elect Crusher, a restless fact-checker, and a restless defender of democracy.
The Return of The Orange Menace
The orange menace returns to his city of Geld in triumph. He is the anointed one. From atop his fortress he scans the southern coast.
– “My city,” he says. “The everperning gyre, of depravity and appetite unbound, subjugated to my warrior will.”
The Office of Official Optimism
Bim Kerbler is a Junior Associate in the Office of Official Optimism, Division “C” (Quotations) Unit 42 (Inspiration) sub-sector twenty-nine (Cats). His particular area of assumed expertise is words.
The story of Catharine
When Catharine was a child, her parents told stories. Some were written in books, others improvised or recited from memory. Catharine’s mother would sit on the edge of the bed in lamplight, reading. “Why?” asks Catherine: for every story, Why. Sometimes her mother knows the answer, sometimes she invents. Catharine makes pictures of her mother’s words. The pictures come to life as dreams, embellished by the hopes and fears of a child.
To boil a frog
I was in an Upper Manhattan bar with Herbert J. Gans, around the time he was writing The War Against The Poor, and once again we were discussing media bias. Journalism would be better without objectivity, I argued. Better to be truthful than objective. Report the facts, and never be afraid to declare and defend a position. I had the best arguments that day.
The angry man rises
The bar in this small central Pennsylvania town is like many others. A few tables, a mounted television, branded tap handles, metal tube stools. I order a draught and scan the snack menu, turning my attention to the TV because it’s impossible not to.
Greetings From Hollywood
I Don’t Look Forward to Fred Phelps Rotting in Hell
ACCORDING TO A Facebook post of his estranged son, Nathan, Fred Phelps Sr, the founder of the notorious Westboro Baptist Church, is dying. There’s an undeniable aesthetic appeal in the prospect of Mr. Phelps soon meeting his Maker, but this indulgence presumes far more than I can manage. My own view, if you care to know, is that Phelps will die and dissolve and remain forever in a condition of no condition whatsoever.
Reflections on the Random Mass Killing
WILLIAM MARSDEN observes today, in a Postmedia article “A touch of socialism might tame America’s killer psyche,” that
Murderous rampages have become so commonplace in America they have reached a level of banality that has earned them their own massive, militaristic and bureaucratic response system. The shooter opens fire. Police “active shooter” squads — on call 24/7 — are deployed. The shooter either commits suicide or is shot dead. The police are declared heroes. The victims are mourned and become “patriots.” Their family photos drift ghost-like across TV screens. Friends of the shooter struggle to comprehend why such a good-natured guy would do such a terrible thing. Blame inevitably falls on, as the Chicago Tribune ruled in an editorial Tuesday, “a lethal grudge and a gun.”
There is no repudiating that the mass killing of strangers in crowded public places is a template act, from beginning to end scripted and carried out along known and predictable lines. For years the question Why? has necessarily occurred, under the assumption that a coherent explanation is available.
Journalism, Essays, Broadcasting, Books 