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.

[Mouse]

Thinking of power and sex,
to throw in a ha'porth, I can remember being raped twice. Thrice.
I love celibacy. It's absolutely gorgeous. Not on the cards though for so many impoverished Iraqi widows living in smashed boxes with rape commonplace and seldom punished any more in that wreck of a country.
Always had a soft spot for the tomb, till I read The American Way of Death by Jessica Mitford and realised that in modern times the worms don't get an invitation to the feast.

The trouble with those pictures of grieving girls, lovely long legs over the grave, mattress next to the coffin, turning loss into a performance can't help them be closer can it to their dead? But it serves the war industry, makes bereavement look cool. In their echoing empty without him they are guided and placed so to catch the light, to fill the frame.

I shall be paying for his funeral, £5 a month till kingdom come. Couldn't make the big gesture because there were people watching. There is no tomb. Just ocean and wind.

[waldopaper]

ah dear sweet mousie... are ye sayin that yer pa has "passed on?" me hugs for ye in yer hurt, ok? i know somewhat what it's like... but i aint you... and then aint now. god bless ye, girl.

as to the other... I can't imagine. No, 'tis truly beyond me ken, lass. Me first instinct is to offer profuse and sincere apologies in behalf of all the male human beings on earth. But that would be hollow and useless, aye? Only because accidents of biology make me feel like i may have something in common with those fucks. I hope they die in a fucking fire.

[pan]

It seems that all the women I care about have been raped.....or maybe it is that the women I care about are open enough, powerful enough to allow themselves to be honest about what happened.

[Mouse]

Same here, Pan, once women get talking you find out it is commonplace.
Waldo dear, my Dad is fine; well, creaky, crotchety and traumatised from putting his wife into a nursing home, where she has been wandering about telling everyone that he is building a boat.

I was just being maudlin about my ex-husband's departure 7 years ago, and tossing his ashes about in a wild wind a year later on the White Strand, Dingle Bay, one of his favourite places.
Just a couple of hours ago I was crying again, crossing the road where he was killed, because I've run out of my favourite smokes and this is the unfriendliest town in the country.

There's no need for ire and fire. Understanding would be fine. Just imagine all these aggressors understanding what they're doing. I saw it once. A man caught sight of his face in a mirror mid lunge and fell down in horror at himself, sobbing.

The yawning pit of self discovery. Oh dear. But Pan has been making me laugh. Have you seen what he said on the telephone?

[waldopaper]

...on the other hand, maybe they're stacked up like fukkin flapjacks.

[waldopaper]

Did not have the heart to post exactly on freaking "Memorial Day" this year... same problem... we do not really "remember" that war is so fokkin stoopid.  Genus sorta rhymes... same way species rhymes with feces.