My fourth grade teacher, each month, jotted down some seasonal words on the chalkboard, which the class was to base a short story around. So, we go from the start of the School Year and Autumn in September to Halloween to Thanksgiving to Christmas and the start of Winter, and so on.

I kept the same characters throughout — a character that was clearly me (and nearly had my name) to the point where if I wrote something self-depracating coming out of his mouth, the teacher would write a “No, You’re not” in the margins. (Also, interestingly, he went to an elementary school that was named after me — seemingly only due to the fact that Arthur Smith and I share the same middle initial… How very narcistic of me!) I started the first story with the character standing in front of his brother’s grave-site, bemoaning the recent death of Jim. (Who quickly materialized as a ghost, and scared the bee-devil out of me/him.) So, I killed off my brother and brought him back as a ghost… one who really only played a pivotal role in the Christmas Carol story (frightening the principal as the Ghost of Christmas Past, the Ghost of Christmas Present, and the Ghost of Christmas Future — and, don’t I know you from a couple years ago?).

I don’t know who the hell Jim was. There was a character named “Zeff”, watching Star Trek in the background. But, then again, it is fiction, and literary devices are hard to come by.

The next year, in service for an assignment on a hated Children’s Literature classic Roller Skates, I turned in a scratchy and wonderfully ugly piece of artwork — which has the appearance of having been inspired by the comix of Gary Panter (Never mind my unfamiliarity with Mr. Panter). (Featured on it were every word that rhymes with ‘itchy’, as a descriptor to the main character.) A few years later, my brother insisted that I keep it. My actual teacher was less impressed with the piece, but that’s the way things work.

Fifth grade, and I write a story about a kid’s Near Death Experience. Some tattle-taling busy-body glances up on the screen as I’m typing (it would have had to be someone who’s name is alphabetically just after me, as we were typing in alphabetical order) — and tells the teacher that I have curse words. The teacher knows better — that the word “God” and “Hell” are not curse-words in the context of the story, and thus the busy-body is kindly pushed aside.

[7th grade later.]

I turned in a piece in eighth grade entitled “Norman Edwards Meets the Seimese Twin Brother He Never Knew He Had”. There, Norman suddenly learns that he has a cojoined twin brother — a head right next to his, who has been living a life entirely separate from his all along. His brother lobs Norman’s head off. While going through his day, with people thinking that he’s Norman, this Twin Brother is confused with Norman… which prompts profound guilt in (I forget his name). His guilt builds to the point where he decides that he has to end his life, and assume the identity of Norman. We conclude with him shouting out the window of his apartment, “And You Can Call Me NORMAN!”. The teacher replied with “You can call him ‘Norman’, but you sure can’t call him ‘Normal'”, which — actually, would be a more succient ending.

My Senior Year of high school, I turned in poems such as this one. For a work of fiction, I wrote “A Dada Murder Mystery”, wherein Private Investigator Marcell Duchamp and his assistant Max Ernst set out to solve the murder of a woman’s husband. It’s a stupid story, and the only thing I can really say about it is that the main suspect was a “Nudist Descending a Staircase”, and that I included an ending that was a muse of mind: the private investigator — having assured his client that he has a perfect tract record of solving these murders, at the end, saying that the case is pretty much unsolvable, while handing over the bill. (And, I snuck in the line “Well, who do you think did it?” “Actually, to be honest, I think you did it.”) The other idea I had would have been titled “[Name of British Literary Masterpiece found in Textbook] as Read by an Emotionally Stunted Student with a Short Attention Span Such that He Loses Focus Mid-Way Through.” It’s a five page limit, so the story would have gone on for two and a half pages as a condensed version of events of whatever story I’m incorporating. (“The Importance of Being Earnest”? Wuthering Heights, which holds the advantage / disadvantage of being a story I could not follow? Who knows?) At which point, we’d have a character shouting out “Oh My God! We’re being attacked by a horde of Vampires!” — and whatever internal disputes are going on would have to be put aside to deal with the horde of attacking vampires. The easier path was the Dada Murder Mystery, thus this story remains… unwritten.

I was either going to write a piece of deconstuctive dada fiction, or I was going to write… a piece of deconstructive dada fiction. What The Hell — Was I on drugs?

I’ll finish this post sooner or later.

I hope you enjoyed the “Nixon’s Enemies List”. It pops up occasionally as a “search phrase” in the statistics, so there it is for, anyone looking for such a thing.

Now, to rid the itch of other phrases sought during this month of March 2005:

Lyndon LaRouche knock knock jokes

Okay.

Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Lyndon.
Lyndon Who?
This is Lyndon LaRouche, and I was wondering if
SLAM!

Since it specifically asks for “knock knock jokes, here’s another one:

Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Lyndon LaRouche.
Lyndon LaRouche Who or What?
This is the Lyndon LaRouche Youth Movement, and you signed up on campus to one of our LaRouche Cadre School for Classically Trained Jungle Fighting. You didn’t show up.
Oh. Sorry. I forgot I had to go to a Scientology Seminar Yesterday. Maybe next time.

Ha Ha. It is to laugh.

Next up:

What would happen if humans didn t have bones?

They would die.

michael landon initiation occult

You mean the Freemasons? Sorry. Can’t help you too much here.

the bald man is watching

The rooster crows at midnight. The Cheese Stands Alone. (Actually, if you google the phrase, you’ll find a perfectly good reason why someone would be googling “the bald man is watching”. What bald man. Don’t know.

bus fare betrayed jesus for a quarter

Must be a reworking of the New Testament. JUDAS!

did bill clinton shape-shift during interview?

Evidentally, yes. See?

hitler posters for sale buk

I will never know whether s/he’s trying to purchase Hitler posters from the UK or trying to purchase them in Bulk. If need be, I’ll grab a Hitler image from somewhere online and offer print-outs of them for sale in large quantities for a little money.

communist funnies for kids

I’ll have to draw one out for you. But this next one distrurbs me, as it shows up every single month:

janeane garofalo barefoot photos

Are there photographs of Janeane Garofalo’s naked feet online? If so, who is looking for them? This begs more questions than I really want answered, or asked.

I’ll probably eventually have to come back to this story for a “Part Three”. We knew there was more to the case of the Zombiefied Kentucky High School, by definition. I had never seen what the 18 year old William Poole wrote that set off her grandma and set off the police and gave him the charge of writing terrorist threats.

Off in the comments of this post from “Aaron — Geek in the City”‘s blog I find two things to flesh things out a little bit.

From a fellow student comes (SIC):

For the most part, Will was pretty cool in the class (I say was because hes probably been expelled, i don’t know.) Anyway, I cant judge him or anything. I thought this might be interesting to you: http://www.lex18.com/Global/stor…y.asp? S=3046416

Also, I think he has the right to write what ever he wants, but i can also see why hes facing charges. Atleast in our class he wasnt what i’d call picked on, but he was probably the short end of a few jokes here and there, and he probably wasn’t the brightest around all the time, so i can pretty much see both ways. anyway, I can see what your saying, with Tom Clancy and all. Later.

No less informative than a brief biographical sketch (though one that I could probably have gathered on my own), the details of the Zombie Fiction have come out in court.

In court Tuesday, police released some of Poole’s writings, and they contradict some of what he told LEX 18 in his interview. Poole says he wrote the short story for English class. Not so, according to police. They say his teachers deny knowing about such writings, and add if they did, the teachers would have reported their concerns about the contents to school officials.

George Rogers Clark High School is the only public high school in Clark County.

Until I actually could look at the journal in question (which, come to think of it I almost wish I could), I still don’t know what I’m looking at. I’m looking at the Authority’s perspective on Mr. Poole’s jammerings.

And, as it turns out, Poole’s writings include no brain-eating dead folks.

Unless it did. From here, the details of the story get a little bit strange, to the point where I can only say Poole either needs to hone his writing skills a little bit more, or needs to rid himself of his militia-wet dream.

What they do contain, Winchester police Detective Steven Caudill testified yesterday, is evidence that he had tried to solicit seven fellow students to join him in a military organization called No Limited Soldiers.

No other arrests are pending, he said, but authorities are looking for other potential suspects listed in Poole’s papers who are identified only by pseudonyms.

The pseudonymous individuals oughta keep their mouths quiet, if you assume they exist for the moment. (Who knows? At this point, I begin to believe we may have something like the Kids in the Hall “Crushing Your Head” Guy.) Anyway, all the members of “No Limit Soldiers” are zombies anyway (and, even subconciously, I don’t see how calling it a zombie story is an accident — a general sense of emotional numbness envelopes us all at about that age.)

Our nation loses its collective innocence.

I imagine this man’s notebook never fell into the wrong hands, and even if it had nothing much would have come out of it.

A note to the nation’s youth: just for the hell of it, include a disclaimer on every half-suspicious item you write down or type. Disclamer: No, I do not want to exact revenge on [fill in the blanks]. They are all lovable. worked for me. Or you could go with the standard, and more formal “Any similarities with real people or places, without satirical purpose, is strictly coincidental.”… though… I don’t know.

There were two lists. There was the “Enemies” list and a much longer “Opponents” list. Anyway… here are his enemies, as compiled by Chuck Colson:

1. Arnold M. Picker, United Artists Corp., New York; Top Muskie fund raiser. Success here could be both debilitating and very embarrassing to the Muskie machine. If effort looks promising, both Ruth and David Picker should be programmed and then a follow through with United Artists.
2. Alexander E. Barkan, national director of A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s Committee on Political Education, Washington, D.C.: Without a doubt the most powerful political force programmed against us in 1968 ($10-million, 4.6 million votes, 115 million pamphlets, 176,000 workers—all programmed by Barkan’s C.O.P.E.—so says Teddy White in “The Making of the President 1968”). We can expect the same effort this time.
3. Ed Guthman, managing editor, Los Angeles Times national editor: Guthman, former Kennedy aide, was a highly sophisticated hatchetman against us in ’68. It is obvious he is the prime mover behind the current Key Biscayne effort. It is time to give him the message.
4. Maxwell Dane, Doyle, Dane and Bernbach, New York: The top Democratic advertising firm — they destroyed Goldwater in ’64. They should be hit hard starting with Dane.
5. Charles Dyson, Dyson-Kissner Corp., New York: Dyson and Larry O’Brien were close business associates after ’68. Dyson has huge business holdings and is presently deeply involved in the Businessmen’s Educational Fund which bankrolls a national radio network of five-minute programs, anti-Nixon in character.
6. Howard Stein, Dreyfus Corp., New York: Heaviest contributor to McCarthy in ’68. If McCarthy goes, will do the same in ’72. If not, Lindsay or McGovern will receive the funds.
7. Allard Lowenstein, Long Island, New York: Guiding force behind the 18-year-old “Dump Nixon” vote drive.
8. Morton Halperin, leading executive at Common Cause: A scandal would be most helpful here. (A consultant for Common Cause in February-March 1971) [On staff of Brookings Institution]
9. Leonard Woodcock, United Auto Workers, Detroit, Michigan: No comments necessary.
10. S. Sterling Munro Jr., Senator Henry M. Jackson’s aide, Silver Spring, Maryland.: We should give him a try. Positive results would stick a pin in Jackson’s white hat.
11. Bernard T. Feld, president, Council for a Livable World: Heavy far left funding. They will program an “all court press” against us in ’72.
12. Sidney Davidoff, New York City, [New York City Mayor John V.] Lindsay’s top personal aide: a first class S.O.B., wheeler-dealer and suspected bagman. Positive results would really shake the Lindsay camp and Lindsay’s plans to capture youth vote. Davidoff in charge.
13. John Conyers, congressman, Detroit: Coming on fast. Emerging as a leading black anti-Nixon spokesman. Has known weakness for white females.
14. Samuel M. Lambert, president, National Education Association: Has taken us on vis-a-vis federal aid to parochial schools—a ’72 issue.
15. Stewart Rawlings Mott, Mott Associates New York: Nothing but big money for radic-lib candidates.
16. Ronald Dellums, congressman, California: Had extensive EMK-Tunney support in his election bid. Success might help in California next year.
17. Daniel Schorr, Columbia Broadcasting System, Washington: A real media enemy.
18. S. Harrison Dogole, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: President of Globe Security Systems — fourth largest private detective agency in U.S. Heavy Humphrey contributor. Could program his agency against us.
19. Paul Newman, California: Radic-lib causes. Heavy McCarthy involvement ’68. Used effectively in nationwide T.V. commercials. ’72 involvement certain.
20. Mary McGrory, Washington columnist: Daily hate Nixon articles.

More here… where we find this curious bit:

Joe Namath, New York Giants [Jets]; business; actor

I guess I understand why Namath was there (and not, say, the more conservative Johnny Unitas), but How was Joe Namath mistaken for a New York Giant? I assume this wasn’t the mistake of Nixon’s, who was a big football fan.

So… who’s on Bush’s enemies list?

I was wondering how Gary Tradeau would pay tribute to Hunter S Thompson.

You remember that copyright infringement where the “Swift Boat Veterans Against Social Security” used that Portland Tribune photograph of a gay married couple — without permission? Hm.

Oddly enough, I just used the covers to the American Spectator (the Jon Stewart and Chuck Hagel covers), one of the offenders to that swipe. (It’s where USNext advertised.) But I’ll count it as being under Fair Use.

We heard this talk before. Back in the 1970s — Ford — Carter years, the question was “Is American power declining?” Are we losing “it”? Some schaudenfreude* abounded. Soon enough, it would become clear that whatever was ailing America, (a few fresh coats of paint during the Reagan and Clinton administrations masked the problem) it didn’t matter too much — the Soviet Union was much further into the thralls of collapse.

Today, the Bush Backers will tell you that we just reshaped the entire Middle East. Or that we’re reshaping it quickly. Jon Stewart says that his entire worldview is in collapse. The Berlin Wall is falling! The Berlin Wall is falling!

But, you know… the entire scene is incredibly brittle.

No sooner had the President arrived in Europe than an economic trapdoor seemed briefly to open beneath his feet when the South Korean Central Bank stated that it intended to move some of its holdings from the dollar to other currencies, causing a 174-point drop in the Dow Jones average. The next day, the bank disavowed its report and the dollar recovered, but not before the fragility of America’s economic position in the world had been revealed.

You return back to the late 1980s / early 1990s, before the tech-boom of the Clinton era and before the Asian Financial Crisis showed that they weren’t entirely on the up and up, when everyone thought that Japan was pretty much crushing us. The Yen was all set to bury the dollar.

Our psyches are perpetually paranoid. But with good enough reason. (You notice that the changes in Bankruptcy is about to pass the Congress and get signed into law… Perhaps the International System is about to draw up the same sort of law for the governing body that ties us down.)

In his meeting with Putin, Bush seemed almost obsequious, repeatedly referring chummily to an unresponding, scowling Putin (it’s an expression that settles naturally on his face) as “my friend Vladimir.” As for democracy in Russia, the man who would “end tyranny” everywhere in the world could only muster, “I was able to share my concerns about Russia’s commitment in fulfilling these universal principles.”

I imagine Putin explaining to Bush (whose administration has been expressing their concerns about his power grabs and crushing of democracy) by explaining it in terms of a “War on Terror”. And Bush nodding his head, and offering to pass in a Patriot Act for his consideration.

This European Visit, incidentally, was glorified in rose colors of “Triumph!” on Fox News.

Its military has been stretched to the breaking point by the occupation of a single weak country, Iraq.

I found a solution to this, said beneath the words spoken by a Pentagon spokesperson, on the trouble of Recruitment.

That’s a factor, that we’re a nation at war,” Lawrence Di Rita, the chief Pentagon spokesman, told reporters on Thursday. “If it’s a young kid who’s in high school and contemplating his future, what are his parents advising him?”

Mr. Di Rita added, “I mean, without question, when there’s the kind of coverage that there has been about casualties – and we certainly mourn all the casualties, but they are covered, there’s prominent media coverage of casualties in Iraq – parents factor those kinds of things in to what they want their children doing.”

What we need, therefore, is to replace the Media with The Pengagon Channel, and then re-educate the parents of America on the need for a more Spartan Society.

* My god. I spelled that word correctly on first blush!

There was this depressing moment when Israeli Prime Minister Barack unilaterally removed Israel’s troops from Lebanon. He did so in large part because Israel simply had no desire to do anything with Lebanon. It was unilateral because Syria didn’t agree to remove its troops.

Had Syria withdrawn, the unsettling message — some terrorists supporting the Palestinian Cause waving signs saying “Palestine Next!” as a sort of “Israel out!” — wouldn’t be so. Thus, we have a glimpse at the tragedy of the Israeli politik.

At the moment, a handful of the liberal intelligentsia (such as they can exist in the form of bloggers and Bill Maherians) are entertaining the notion that “Maybe Bush was right.” It’s the yang to the yen of the Liberal Hawks’ quasi or full (depending on the individual) Apology for supporting the War in Iraq, circa Summer of 2004. Go to the American Spectator website and you’ll find a full page of Triumphantalism: Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Egypt, the DNC — where is the Bush Doctrine not winning?.

Full realization that good be borne (partially, though not completely in the case of Syria now being pressured to withdraw from Lebanon) can come out of bad is the mark of a well heeled non-ideological thoughtful person. (At the same time, analyze these photos and appreciate the manipulation.)

A message to everyone, though: Occupations end, whether a host nation likes it not. More later. Perhaps.

I imagine such things as these covers, which The American Spectator seems to throw at us once a week, as Negative Political Advertising. You can picture the faces turning to the photo-negative Blue, with the voice-over“How Can You Trust This Man?

The Jon Stewart article should be read, not least of which to marvel at the spectacle of giving Jon Stewart a cover for a two-page article. Unfortunately, the article does not appear to be online, except for an excerpt, where we see the author marvel at these jokes:

Here are some of Stewart’s incomparable laugh-quakes from “America”:

“The name of Senator Joseph McCarthy, R-Wis., became synonymous with an era, not unlike his colleague Representative Pleistocene, D-Minn.” — page 61.

My favourite joke on Reagan from the book, incidentally, is (from memory, so it’s not exact), on presidential nicknames: “Well noted as an effective communicator and Conservative Ideolouge, Reagan received his nickname ‘The Gipper’ for his tendency to gip a lot.”

Some people get it. Others don’t. To each their own.

Robert Byrd’s speech before the Senate has received a smattering of controversy from his friends on the other side of the aisle, and a fair amount of right-wing punditry brushing us up on Byrd’s KKK past. (Which they managed to drudge up when he oppossed the confirmation of Condelleza Rice.)

His speech? It’s pretty good.

The problem with turning up examples of what is wrong with breaches of parlimentary procedure, and the exasperated power grabs that are at the heart of said breaches, is that the roads they historically lead to, is that invariably it takes us to a very bad spot.

For example, spots where the indefensible is defended, or brushed aside.:

Gannon: In your denunciations of the Abu Ghraib photos, you’ve used words like ‘sickening,’ ‘disgusting’ and ‘reprehensible.’ Will you have any adjectives left to adequately describe the pictures from Saddam’s rape rooms and torture chambers? And will Americans ever see those images?

McClellan: I’m glad you brought that up, Jeff, because the President talks about that often.

Or… some such nuttiness from elected officials.

“Syria is the problem. Syria is where those weapons of mass destruction are, in my view. You know, I can fly an F-15, put two nukes on `em and I’ll make one pass. We won’t have to worry about Syria anymore.” — Rep. Sam Johnson (R-TX).

(There are two things wrong with that quotation. Maybe three.)

Anyway… We all have our own guages on where the slippery slope runs from, or how Nazi Ideology pervades our nation’s political policy.

Grover Norquist: Yeah, the good news about the move to abolish the death tax, the tax where they come and look at how much money you’ve got when you die, how much gold is in your teeth and they want half of it, is that — you’re right, there’s an exemption for — I don’t know — maybe a million dollars now, and it’s scheduled to go up a little bit. However, 70 percent of the American people want to abolish that tax. Congress, the House and Senate, have three times voted to abolish it. The president supports abolishing it, so that tax is going to be abolished. I think it speaks very much to the health of the nation that 70-plus percent of Americans want to abolish the death tax, because they see it as fundamentally unjust. The argument that some who played at the politics of hate and envy and class division will say, ‘Yes, well, that’s only 2 percent,’ or as people get richer 5 percent in the near future of Americans likely to have to pay that tax.

Grover Norquist: No, the morality that says it’s OK to do something to do a group because they’re a small percentage of the population is the morality that says that the Holocaust is OK because they didn’t target everybody, just a small percentage. What are you worried about? It’s not you. It’s not you. It’s them. And arguing that it’s OK to loot some group because it’s them, or kill some group because it’s them and because it’s a small number, that has no place in a democratic society that treats people equally. The government’s going to do something to or for us, it should treat us all equally. “

Well, let’s get to it, shall we?

A George Rogers Clark High School junior arrested Tuesday for making terrorist threats told LEX 18 News Thursday that the “writings” that got him arrested are being taken out of context.

I don’t know how big a deal this is, but why is the word “writings” written in quotation marks?

Winchester police say William Poole, 18, was taken into custody Tuesday morning. Investigators say they discovered materials at Poole’s home that outline possible acts of violence aimed at students, teachers, and police.

… And Fluffy the Cat? (I’m always going to interject “Fluffy the Cat” when I happen upon stories such as this one… You know that, don’t you?)

Poole told LEX 18 that the whole incident is a big misunderstanding. He claims that what his grandparents found in his journal and turned into police was a short story he wrote for English class.

“My story is based on fiction,” said Poole, who faces a second-degree felony terrorist threatening charge. “It’s a fake story. I made it up. I’ve been working on one of my short stories, (and) the short story they found was about zombies. Yes, it did say a high school. It was about a high school over ran by zombies.”

Yes, dear Poole. But, don’t you see… all high schools are over-run by zombies! You can’t rely on the over-familiar — you need something a bit more exotic or you’ll lose your audience.

Even so, police say the nature of the story makes it a felony. “Anytime you make any threat or possess matter involving a school or function it’s a felony in the state of Kentucky,” said Winchester Police detective Steven Caudill.

The Winchester Police Department, evidentally, is over-run by zombies too. That needs to be his sequel. Only he’ll probably have to change the name to avoid suspicion or dancing to close to “Terrorist Threats”. Maybe call it the Pinheadster Police Department. (I’m willing to donate a notebook and pen so that he can write it while waiting for bond or arraignment in his jail cell.)

“It didn’t mention nobody who lives in Clark County, didn’t mention (George Rogers Clark High School), didn’t mention no principal or cops, nothing,”
said Poole. “Half the people at high school know me. They know I’m not that stupid, that crazy.”

So, half the people at George Rogers Clark High School knew Poole, eh? The other half probably thought he was a freak. Or maybe half the people who knew him thought he was a freak, and half the people who didn’t didn’t think he was a freak. Calculating such percentages is a tough business.

On Thursday, a judge raised Poole’s bond from one to five thousand dollars after prosecutors requested it, citing the seriousness of the charge.

And so it goes…

In the bastions of Pinkwater-related rumours (an obscure Internet reference, circa late 1990s), Pinkwater was in some stage of writing — perhaps entirely written but never-to-be-published, a third “Snarkout Boys” book entitled I Snarked With a Zombie.

But the premise in Lizard Music serves as much purpose as anything else. Our hero, Victor, becomes aware that everyone around him is pod-person.

“Now, what’s this about pod people?”

“Oh yes, it’s a problem, but it doesn’t do to worry about it too much. Somehow, people who get all concerned about podism usually seem to wind up catching it.”

I don’t know what Poole was getting at with his zombies. Perhaps it was a Revenge Fantasy of some sort. Perhaps it was an erudite commentary on society at large. It was probably neither, though.