Twa Corbies

[waldopaper]

The War Fetish and the Weapons Industry

Memorial Day, 2010

"Ye'll sit on his white hause-bane,

And I'll pike oot his bonny blue een;

Wi ae lock o his gowden hair

We'll theek oor nest whan it grows bare."

--1611

If humanity survives, although strange at this writing, the image of a young living woman prone on the grave of a dead young man will be with us for centuries.

Make of it what you will. Wiser eyes will see carrion-eaters; invisible, all too real and engorging themselves on the
dead. They see the living only as moving feasts. There is horror in
something so living pressed so closely to something so dead. Between
them the arrogant worms writhe in corruption and await the time when
the sweet flesh will finally be still and feed them in the darkness.
The maggots muck and wiggle in the profits of war. At their command,
the tombstones raise graven with lies.

“Operation Iraqi Freedom” or “Operation Enduring Freedom:” what could be more cynical, viler and more evil than the black suits
and high hats of the Ghouls? The undertakers who lugubriously pout and
preen to bring comfort to the bereaved are all the while preparing their midnight banquet. Call it the high-kitsch “Memorial Day Concert,”
the grave-robbers fawn and mince, “…a time to remember, to heal, to
bring our nation together…” they say, and what “nation” would that be?

Is it the “nation” of Boeing, or the Land of Lockheed-Martin? Is it the Kingdom of Xe or the Republic of Religious Roobs? This is not to gainsay the folk or families who had the idealism to try
and believe in something bigger than themselves, nor is this to
“politicize” their stories, so go on and look at them if you have the
heart or stomach. Go on. Look at them. Look at Katherine Cathey reaching into an open coffin. Read about Tyler and Renee… their wedding was a state holiday. And don’t miss the show afterwords!

It’s a show full of actors and acrobats and old soldiers… all full of that Yankee Doodley Dum. Go on ahead and make
Kitsch of the dead. They were the kids with the drum. And the
photographer said, “I felt I owed the Arlington National Cemetery a
little time -- and I think I still do. Maybe we all do." Goddam right
we do. If we spent more cognitive time and a lot less show-time, we
would stop filling it up with victims. Had we not been such smarmy
Kitchifying cake-heads about WWI, WWII never would have happened.

But when the yellow-ribbon drum-and-trumpet showboat serve-the-cause Corbie comes home to roost on the cradle, when we have
to face the boxed-up meat that used to be someone we loved so very much
in real life… well THEN we have to make some kind of sense of it all.
We parrot the dogma of “duty” and “honor” and “sacrifice.” Even worse,
we say it was all for “freedom.” The Germans had their “Fatherland,”
the Japanese their “Emperor,” and we have our damnable
fuss-and-feathers “freedom.”

All of these seedy simulacra serve quite nicely for swelling the bellies of the Ghouls. They see the swollen stomach of pregnant
mothers pressed against the casket as well as the starving children’s
bloated bellies in the “developing world.” It enhances our zeal. To
them, it is veal. “They are neither man nor woman… they are neither
brute nor human… they are ghouls.”

We could not admit to ourselves that the “first world war” was a pointless fuckup generated by ghouls. It really was not the
“first” in any case, but one thing the ghouls do not want us to
understand is History. They do not know it either, it is second-nature
to them. They have been eating the fresh-dead of war fetishism
for at least ten thousand years. The horrific hubris they use to lure
us into gathering them grub should make us hurl bile and hairs instead
of “offering tears and prayers.”

Look at “Operation Just Cause.” Right. “Just ‘cause” we felt like it.” Not so funny to thousands of dead Panamanians who live in a
“country” we stole from somebody else “just ‘cause” we needed the space
for the merchants, who wait cooling-tables for the ghouls. The
merchants are impatient for their profit-tip, the ghouls may be the
only ones who understand the value of “renewable resources,” and what could be more renewable than carrion? Death occurs naturally, and if not, give it a boost with bullshit.

So even today, Memorial Day, 2010, the slobbering classes feed their dead children, wives and husbands into Mammon’s gaping maw.
Long after everyone with the brain of a moth knows that the “war on
terror” is stinking bullshit, we smile (tearfully and respectfully),
put on a show, and dance on their graves. We watch T&A TV to help
us hump and squirt and produce more veal for the villains. Meanwhile,
we vilify our ancestors who had all this shit figured out almost a century ago.

The half-billion goal of the neo-feudalists will be no problem.

[waldopaper]

I usually feel compelled to write something on "Memorial Day." I thought most of the poison was lanced with Empire of Dirt. So this seemed a good time to ignore it... spend the time drinking beer and doing the usual spring repairs on the driveway.

Then I saw this picture... and it freaked me right out of my tattered skivvies. I didn't go looking for it either... thanks to AO-hell... it punched me right in the face when checking my email. There's some kind of serious sick-ass shit going on here. I was going to call it "Eros and Thanatos," but that didn't seem to peck at the ghastly morbidity of the thing.

I didn't bother to check if the stone had "Operation Enduring Freedom" on it because I was already about to hurl. Really... it's sad... it's touching... you can't help but feel sympathy for the sweet girl... but when you zoom out... it's really sick. Then, too boozled to avoid it, I was accidentally exposed to the "concert" on PBS... something I try to avoid every year. The roobs managed to kitsch-up another perfectly good holiday... like so many others.

And somehow, "Hottie Fucking Death" didn't seem an appropriate title.

[pan]

The Green Table, Kurt Jooss, 1932

[BO]

Well, it almost happened on memorial day...

World War Two bomb explodes in Germany, three dead
01 Jun 2010 22:18:19 GMT
Source: Reuters
BERLIN, June 1 (Reuters) - A World War Two bomb found in central Germany exploded on Tuesday, killing three people, as disposal experts were about to defuse it, local authorities said.
Six people were injured, two seriously, when the bomb dropped by Allied aircraft on the university town of Goettingen went off unexpectedly, the town's fire department said.
Authorities had evacuated thousands of residents beforehand so experts could defuse the 500 kg bomb, a fire department spokesman said. Bombs left over from World War Two are regularly defused in Germany and rarely explode unexpectedly.

-----------------------

Yep, I saw that PBS had some fascist concert thingy going on, so BO fired up the Netflix and watched the movie, Reds to commemorate memorial day. Who in their right mind wants to remember anything this country has promoted for the last 100 years--if ever? Au contraire, we could use an "amnesia day" for Americans with a conscience.

[pan]

Don't Support the Troops
Second speaker is a vet who makes a very powerful statement.

[pan]

Fuck the troops!

[waldopaper]

ead the comments and marvel... sadly... compare the comments here: http://sexualityinart.wordpress.com/2007/11/20/mary-mchugh-and-jame...

...to the comments here: http://www.nostate.com/77/fuck-the-troops/

"Fuck the troops," is it? well... ignoring all the obviously fun sexual wordplay there... one of the reasons I have lived to this ripe old age is my innate ability to avoid saying "fuck you" to people who were armed to the teeth when I was not.

Oh, I totally agree with the inferences on nostate.com... but pissing off armed people is somewhat problematic. Better, maybe, to point at the nauseating irony posted by one "R. Hilton" on sexualityinart, June 3, 2008:

"God bless America !!and go to hell terorrists!!
in my opinion this war is necessary because we love life and they love death!!"

Waalll... gee Sparky. Seems to me... after reading pages of maudlin wallowing on graves... that... um... aw, fuckkit. Math to dogs. The bright side... Einstein Hilton may have developed a sense of irony in the past two years.

Anybody here want to make a wager on that?

[pan]

looking at the picture again I am struck - for the first time ever - with how phallic tombstones are, and how the grave itself is yonnic....

A tangential thought...... the Hopis didn't find a need for phallic demarcations for kivas......

[waldopaper]

well, as usual pan, your gut reaction is way more scholarly and cerebral than my square-head guttural frizzen-flash of lizard-brain. There was something about this photo that was so horrifically wrong.

Getting down to tacks and talking about it... I don't think it had that much to do with my own gender as much as what is left of my own sexuality/humanity/life... it's not like we ALL don't have it... some of us are aware of the roots and tentacles and chemicals... and some of us so obviously are not.

[waldopaper]

damn... post interrupted again and I can't edit it... taking up with "...some of us obviously are NOT." We all have a mental construct of what is "natural" which usually overlaps what we think is "right" or "correct" or "virtuous."

To be blunt... I did not see the grave as "yonnic." I saw it as a dead mummified nut-sack. That a huge segment of a huge culture saw this image as "noble" and "right" reminded me of past rants about "patriarchy," which is why I chose the invocation of the "Twa Corbies" instead of the "Three Ravens."

She buried him before the prime,
She was dead her self ere euen-song time.

God send euery gentleman,
Such haukes, such hounds, and such a Leman.


That's right girls... you are to be regarded in the same light as trained dogs and birds... how fucking fucked up is THAT? Further... the print of "dream of the fisherman's wife" depicts a woman fucking a squid... not so far-fetched when you consider the 65 years of US Naval bases in Japan. Jeezola... the neural/hormonal connection between sex and violence has always freaked out me own neural-dendrite connection. I mean, c'mon... how fucked up is the connection between fucking something the same as killing it?

My guess is... for some fucked-up dudes it's not about connection... it's about power... which lends great credence to the Feminist position... which makes me poor toiny head hurt.

I think I'll go outside and work on the tractor now...

[BO]

I dunno if they're nut-sacks or doorways to heaven. All I know is...womb rhymes with tomb...so I guess they must be related. What rhymes with penis?

Anyway, I thought this video was cute...albeit, not directly related to the subject matter. Or maybe it is...