My father watched the evening news regularly. He looked more at his solitaire game than he did at the screen, but he listened to Walter Cronkite, Roger Mudd, Dan Rather and Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, Katie Couric, and Jessica Savitch, and he listened to my mother making dinner, probably glanced at her, too. He'd eat whatever she made, never complained, made the contents of his plate disappear every time. He loved the casserole with Tater Tots on top with hamburger below, my least favorite. He rarely praised her cooking but when he did the compliment stood out.
I'm interpreting his thoughts. I don't know what he really thought, but he was always open with me about most things. He kept a diary, bestowed them on a grandson. The last diary, 2004, is half complete. He lost it to cancer.
He shows in my dreams upon some times. He's getting younger, more mobile. When I first dreamed of him after his death from esophageal cancer metastasized to his liver, with chemotherapy--bald and skinny he was towards the end--added, I found him that way, old and dying, not able to do much. As he ages backwards in my dreams, I get closer in waking life to his death age of seventy-six. I'm a ways a way, but I wouldn't mind a little more than seventy-six, then dead.
My mother lived to ninety-four. She hated the last five years of it. Age shrinks one's activities, one's movements within a house or apartment, or retirement home. Get out of bed, bathroom, kitchen, eat, watch movies on TCM--she saw 2001: A Space Odyssey three times, forgot she liked it the first two times until the multi-colored lights scene.
"Then it got weird," she told me twice.
I thought that was strange because a sentient computer that goes nuts and murders one of the astronauts was not, to her, "weird."
The imaginations of my parents were as follows:
Dad worked hard on teaching and reading work for classes and doing his own scholarly research for the writing of articles, of which he wrote hundreds. In the evenings he unwound by watching television, although he also would read a lot, usually fourteen or less books at a time, in various genres. A mystery novel, a science fiction work, an adventure story, a book of H.L. Mencken essays, a few things I wrote.
Mom liked to read in the south and west facing kitchen, her favorite room. Newspaper every day, Classics, one time a Stephen King. She watched a lot of TV in her later years, preferring movies. Receptive, not an intellectual by her own admission, intuitive, and stumped on how to be funny, but appreciating others' humor.
I wrote a short story, "Border Haze," using the character created by Robert E. Howard, Conan of Cimmeria. An ancient made-up world based on prehistoric Europe and Africa, lost civilizations. I put my Conan into a heist story gone horror show with a splendid action scene wherein Conan slays some ghastly creatures that once were men. Dad liked the story, saying, "That's pretty good."
In the story, Klastos of Messantia, a dapper fellow with rich garments, rings, earrings, very elegant man, puts forth to Conan a proposal about stealing a scroll of spells written by a long dead sorcerer. The scroll has come recently into the hands of a sorcerer, whose name must be forgotten. Conan, who detests sorcerers, immediately suspects it would be bad for the world if this sorcerer used the spells on that scroll.
Other stuff happens in the story. There are at least three other characters, including a big oaf named Jaashan. He's well-meaning, but always gets the punchline a minute after everybody else. He joins the thieving duo, presenting himself to the sorcerer as the latter's date. Jaashan will distract the sorcerer while Conan and Klastos pilfer the scroll. Conan intends to take a few other things, too, while he's at it.
They're thieves, see?
Conan has many professions during the career written for him by the great Robert E. Howard, who died way too young.
Conan, mercenary.
Conan, king.
Conan, raider of caravans.
Conan, extraterrestrial contactee?
That last refers to Robert E. Howard's story, "The Tower of the Elephant," from 1933, the third Conan story--there were 21 in all written by Howard. Conan, while robbing the tower of the title, enters a room with an uncanny inhabitant. An alien being from a very distant planet trapped on Earth in this temple, worshipped as a god. The being cut off from his people and world, gives Conan a mesmerizing lecture on his origins on the planet, Yag. Fun stuff.
I go astray from my first iron clamp paragraph, the firm and steady start, maintain coherence, falter, change the subject, like how people talk with each other. I'm like my father in that he had encyclopedic knowledge, was interested in a great variety of subjects. He and I both shared a love for cinema. I've been making movies since 2000, so I'm both a twentieth and twenty-first century filmmaker.
When I heard of power outages in Taiwan, I didn't assume I know how that happened. It came from an installation that's gone screwy in the past, causing blackouts. Like with Ukraine before Russia invaded, blackouts could, I thought, precede a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Biden has said that would involve the U.S. and China in a hot war. I'm not convinced the Ukraine blackouts came from Russia, given U.S. involvement and meddling in that country since 2013. I'm also not convinced the blackouts in Taiwan were caused by Chinese cyber-operatives. It's also possible the blackouts in both Ukraine and Taiwan were caused by U.S. cyber-operatives to agitate nations afflicted by volatile political events stoked over years by other powers. Blackness, people on edge, no electricity, communications down, Covid-19 fatigue, invasions.
It seems that the U.S. strategy, along with NATO, is to involve Russia in a long guerrilla war in Ukraine, a confrontation with Russia long sought by American neoconservatives and neoliberals for purposes of achieving hegemony, king of the hill stuff, the U.S. government brimming with individuals afflicted with Napoleon Complexes. I don't trust anything I read or see about the war in Ukraine because mainstream news media broadcasts lie about it all the time. They broadcast, as real, footage from video games. They passed on the story of an alleged fighter pilot, the Ghost, who supposedly shot down six Russian planes in two days, and then it was reported the true number was ten planes. A Wikipedia page went up on the Ghost, who turned out to be non-existent.
An assassination "team" of 400 (!) Chechen fighters was reported as heading to Kyiv to eliminate President Zelensky. As of March 2, I found only one article questioning this and numerous others in mainstream outlets reporting it gullibly. The reason I don't believe it is due to the number of Chechens mentioned. Assassination isn't usually carried out by hundreds of people. The killing of Anwar Sadat in Egypt was perpetrated by no more assassins than could be fit into one truck. Heavily armed they were, they succeeded, they did a lot of damage to Sadat and many others, but there weren't hundreds of them. What's more, the Chechens are said to have been wiped out by Ukrainian military forces. Russian media reports two Chechens dead.
It's part of the "fog of war" that people like to intone, but really, it's just lying and sometimes it's sloppiness with facts. Americans are supposed to support Ukraine and hate Russia. Aggression by Russia is terrible. U.S. aggression in the Middle East, South America, Africa and Asia is worthy of a shoulder shrug.
The winners in America are the arms manufacturers. Biden didn't say that in his State of the Union speech. That's why his level of morality and yours don't come close, because he serves corporate entities making profits off of killing people. That includes the pharmaceutical industry.
I felt giddy last night contemplating the terrifying possible scenarios that could come from the current Russia-U.S.-China tensions. The idea that this could be the spark for a fire lit by the United States and NATO, with Russia playing along in their need to prevent Ukraine from serving as a splinter in their side.
I thought, What is the artist's response to these conditions?
Answer came quickly: To work on my art, to write, to speak my mind. Also, maybe, don't watch any news for a few days, let my mind settle into a new rhythm, a slow-flowing stream with sun diamonds glittering on its blue surface. Keep laughing, make the politicians of all countries into clownish figures in your mind. Some of them are obviously nuts for acquiring more wealth, it shouldn't be hard to picture them as having dollar signs tattooed on their foreheads. Some of them, from their actions and policies, are obviously vicious, it shouldn't be difficult imagining them wearing executioners' masks.
I turn my back on them to concentrate more, for a time, on fictional and non-political non-fiction.
For, like my father, I write a variety of things, in differing tones. My absurd work is unlike anything my father ever wrote. Examples of my absurd work can be found in this blog: A Variation on Stephen King's Carrie (November 6, 2021) and The Ratfuck Bastard Conspiracy Part One (February 22, 2022) to name two recents. When I write absurdly, I go all out. Eras blend, people who have been dead for.a long time are alive in our society, as are fictional characters. Fictional and deceased become political commentators, actors, coaches, presidential advisors, or are just trying to get an old job back, like dead Mike Wallace in a yet to be published story for One Damned Thing After Another.
Absurdity is a perfect tool of satire. Exaggeration is part of comedy. Look at Abbott and Costello. There aren't people as ridiculous as this but there are people like this. Costello was out front, the slapstick and noises man, also a great facial expression man. The viewer roots for him because he's such a schlub, we can all relate to feeling awkward, and he plays that with Oscar-worthy skill.
Bud Abbott, the Straight Man of the Duo, was funny in a different way. His barking domineering voice cracks me up. He's hilarious when he monologues, like in a masterfully delivered speech in Africa Screams. Lou finds a big diamond in the path. Bud takes it from him, claims it, but there's more diamonds along the path. Some sinister villain is luring the pair to his tent to question them. Bud picks up diamond after diamond. He has Lou hold his diamonds as he picks up more. All the while he's going on about what he's going to do with his wealth.
"Summers in Florida, Winters in Maine."
"Let's see, what else shall I do with my millions?"
Just writing that sentence cracks me up.
In that moment Bud Abbott is the greatest and funniest comedian of all time. He has other moments in other films when he's so great you may as well stop looking for the best line deliverer in comedy. Much of what he said were prompts to Lou to make him act or move in certain ways. Bud knew that if he said a certain word, or a certain phrase, Lou would do a certain move, or make a certain noise. Bud, then, claimed to have directed their scenes interpersonally with his costar. What Lou thought of that claim I don't know. They seem to me to be distinct people.
Lou played poker, gambled, drank, got married, died in his fifties after the duo split up in 1956 after about 25 years performing together on stage, on radio, on television, and most memorably for us now, on film. All of their films, it seems, are on YouTube now. I'm going to revisit them, films of my childhood, the Andrews Sisters in WAC uniforms singing and dancing the "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" in Company B song in the Abbott and Costello movie Buck Privates (1941), a military comedy made before Pearl Harbor.
I'm on humanity's side, on the side of Somalians, Yemenis, Iranians, Venezuelans, Russians, Ukrainians, Syrians, Libyans, South Africans, British, Americans, Mexicans, Colombians, Israelis, Palestinians, Russians, Japanese, Chinese, and every people oppressed by imperialistic troublemakers.
What's going in the world now seems to be satisfying the evil mental murmurings of John Bolton and his ilk.
So in my absurdity, I imagine my father sometimes in the present, contemplating the news, hopefully not taken in by CNN's cons, or MSNBC's mind-warp. He was deeply resentful and furious with George W. Bush and Dick Cheney because "they lied to me." No weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq, the whole thing based on a lie, like all wars, Dad. He didn't vote for George Bush, he voted for Gore and Lieberman, which is another way of saying he voted for Israel and an evermore corporate-controlled Democratic Party. My Dad learned then, I think, that just because a President puts forth a convincing-sounding case for war doesn't mean somebody wrote that speech to fuck with your judgment.
Every president in that moment is fucking with your judgment. The propaganda makers of the world are becoming wizards in their ability to cloud the waters, blast the populace with misinformation, some reliable information, a few undeniable facts, get the populace going on the prospect of s hot war with China, an absolutely insane idea but then most lead leaders of the world these days aren't thinking some things through like they should if we're going to get through the next thirty or forty years before the climate crisis stomps on us, if that happens.
The problem with politicians is simple to figure out: they're natural liars. All their lives, lying has helped them get ahead. They lie to their spouses, they lie into cameras, they're liars.
In my city a District Attorney was arrested for his participation in taking bribes in exchange for reducing sentences, or even getting the case dropped. He lived well, had a boat on the lake at least. Maybe a girlfriend. He was in prison for about five years. I saw a report about his parole hearing on TV. He'd gone in to prison with black Italiano-Americano hair. He came out in orange, still blessed with hair, but all gray now, his face lined, eye sockets seeming to be pulled down, dead gaze. I can't remember if they let the poor man go. All one has to do is look at him. He's obviously had enough, let him go!
Our sophisticated technological frontier-gazing society wastes a lot of time looking after brutalized and dehumanized prisoners. Some of them, the non-violent ones, should not be in prison. They are Joe Biden and Bill Clinton's victims, author and signer respectively of the 1994 Crime Bill which led to the incarceration of millions of Black men, mostly for minor drug offenses, not for committing violent crimes.
Time was, mid-1960s, California morning, roar and sighs of the sea hitting the rocks, picturing Joan Baez playing a concert on the grass for about a hundred people. Her voice would blend with the wind and the sea birds talking. She was and is a peace activist. She was in a bunker in Hanoi in December 1972 when Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger decided to bomb Hanoi on Christmas, after the war was over. Joan had her guitar and the sound engineer she'd gone there with. They recorded a few songs while her country dropped bombs on her and every other person in Hanoi due to two men's spite towards a frustrating country to conquer. Joan Baez released that album, with a long track of her experience being bombed by the U.S. Air Force.
That was fifty years ago. The same kind of morally perverted children running the world poke a hornets' nest, knowing there will be stinging. They can't help entering a new arena, but war unfolds in various known ways. Introducing tons of weapons into Ukraine, foul gifts from NATO countries including, especially, the U.S., recipients and users of those weapons include neo-Nazis, such as the Azov Battalion, a unit of self-admitted, racist, hardcore gun enthusiasts, and, by admission of their leader, they enjoy killing people. They're Nazis, and the U.S. arms them to fight against Russian forces in Ukraine. Proxy war. Zelensky cooperates with the Nazis. If Zelensky were to go over to compromising with Russia, the Nazis would overthrow Zelensky. Now he's convenient to the Nazis because he has the sympathy of the West. He's our Aragorn holding off the Russian hordes. Give him more weapons! Make the arms manufacturers richer! Thus, the U.S., NATO, Trudeau, they all arm Nazis. There's no getting around that. It's true.
I know my father would have been appalled that "we" are supporting Nazi fighters in Ukraine and have been for eight years. Sitting at the table, I see him with solitaire, the fast zip! way he would shuffle cards. Watching the war unfold in Ukraine, according to George Stephanoupolous, whom Dad remembers as Clinton's (liar) press secretary (liar), my father would see some explosion. I think his shaping by the Cold War, as it shaped so many, would cause him to feel lizard brain revulsion at the idea of Russians invading another country. He remembers the tanks entering Czechoslovakia, he remembers Hungary in 1956.
What would he think of the creation of a refugee safe corridor to Poland? Here was Russia and Ukraine negotiating.
Let's not kill the refugees, agreed? Agreed.
What's the light at the end of the tunnel, Vic?
Tell us!
Yes, tell us!
Oh won't you tell us?
Please, sit down, I'll tell you. The light at the end of the tunnel is that which gladdens your heart. Enjoy that now, and in other nows.
I also imagine there's a few cool heads among those savages trying to make the world even worse. Another thing, tangible evidence of coming Spring: this morning I saw a flight of eight geese flying north, honking. High winds at their altitude, they moved smoothly across the sky, on their way to Canada.
Utah, Bryce Canyon, August 1989. Bright sun, uncomfortable after a while even through sunglasses. Western movie landscape dug out, not as big as the Grand Canyon but a significant sculpting of earth by water, a place of erosion--yellowish-orange columns of rock, red at sunset, my brother and I, who were there, looked down at this spread out Cinemascope shot.
Spartacus's hideout on the Vesuvius slope. Smoldering mountain, smells of Hades, a band of eighty hardy souls, half of whom have been with Spartacus from the beginning of the rebellion, and a few were his fellow gladiators in training. These are now his generals. Marcus. Slusis. Cremulus. Tripodus.
Tripodus: I yearn to visit a brothel, Spartacus! Let me go into town. It won't take long!
Spartacus: After the next fight. We're going to ambush the relief column as they approach the Fifth Legion.
Cremulus: Hm. Bold.
Spartacus: One vote of approval. Now, we are being joined by 500 just freed slaves led by Crowbar the Terrible.
Slusis: Crowbar? That maniac? He didn't fight fair in the arena!
Marcus: That's why we need Crowbar in this ambush, dummy.
Spartacus: Crowbar is ready to break Roman bones, salivating to dine on their slain flesh.
Cremulus: Wait a minute. He eats people?
Spartacus: Crowbar is a gourmand of Homo sapiens, yes.
Tripodus: What a ghastly creature we've hooked our wagon to. Spartacus, we don't like this.
Spartacus: With Crowbar's numbers we can't lose.
Slusis: Will he eat his allies?
Cremulus: You're skinny. He'd eat me. I'll eat him instead.
Spartacus: I will not pass judgment on any man here unwilling to eat human flesh.
Marcus: What about you, Spartacus?
Spartacus: If someone puts a good-smelling piece of meat in front of me when I'm hungry, I'll eat it.
Cremulus: But you wouldn't go out of your way to order human meat, a thigh perhaps.
Spartacus: I am ferocious. I am Spartacus. As a boy in Thrace I speared a lion. Yes, there were lions in Thrace in those days. I killed most of them. I fell in love with a woman above my station. She's part of Crowbar's band. We will reunite, we will mate, we will make people, they will make people, the whole world will be better off. I've seen the sunlight reflecting off of my bronze skin, I'm more powerful than a god. Drink me, universe!
All: Drink him, universe!
Tripodus: Where to, Great Spartacus?
Spartacus: To town, to the baths, to the gambling dens, to the palace where we slay the governor.
Eight hours later all of them are in holding pens in Napoli, stared at and hit with fruity projectiles and rocks, rainstorm, miserable night, mud in their cage, no place to lie down but in the mud. Exhausted. Thunder and lightning constant for a while last night. Lit up parts of the city, including the Tower of Greed, where the Economics and Banking Industries had their headquarters and Stock Exchange.
Forced to fight in gladiatorial duels for the bloody-mindedness of your typical spectator, Spartacus must needs slay Slusis, one gladius thrust through the chest. Cheers, money changing hands.
Cremulus: Poor Slusis.
Spartacus: I gave him several chances to at least wound me, but he's a terrible in-close man. The one time he tried to get near me he set himself up for his fatal encounter with my gladius, trusty Remus.
Cremulus: A fine blade. You will carve nations with that blade.
Spartacus: And Roman flesh.
Marcus: Slusis was Athenian.
Spartacus: When I conquer Athens, I'll make a shrine to Slusis, he'll get his own cult.
Cremulus: Can I be High Priest of the cult?
Spartacus: I'm thinking aloud, Cremulus.
Marcus: We first have to get out of this cage. Who's next on the fighting list?
Cremulus: Me, against you, Marcus.
Marcus: I asked for a way out of the cage.
Cremulus kills Marcus in three minutes. At first, Cremulus held back, not wanting to chop up his companion in arms and friend of five years, two of the original slave rebels with Spartacus. The crowd urged his arm to strike hard after two and a half minutes. Arm half sliced through, Marcus staggered from the shock and pain of the wound. He swung a few times, dripping blood on the sand, finally slipping on a damp patch--Slusis, tripping his friend Marcus, who feels very briefly, with an instant of pain, Cremulus's gladius entering his neck to the spine, lodged there and yanked free. Marcus sees spurts of red liquid, he falls and the small sand arena becomes a desert.
Cremulus wasn't about to die. He had High Priesthood in mind, the Cult of the Lesser Arena Fighter, animal and human branches, the animal branch run by a baboon capable of drafting treaties, playing chess, walking on his hands backwards, making judgments every Friday afternoon. That we've jumped forward to the twenty-fifth century shouldn't alarm you. Some of those intervening centuries aren't worth delving into, too upsetting, or too empty of people. Cremulus became High Priest of the Cult of the Lesser Arena Fighter, CLAF.
Infighting between CLAF and the Animal Cult of the Lesser Arena Fighter (ACLAF) consumed three hours per day of Cremulus's time. He wanted a different job in the organization. For five years he'd been mediating between rival factions. Sitting in an office converted into a swamp, filled with alligators, parakeets, wealthy benefactors from Wall Street, a tapir, Venus Fly Traps, and a python.
The python turned out to be the most reasonable of the bunch. But CLAF broke the agreement, hoarded profits it had agreed to share fifty-fifty with ACLAF, always an organization subject to wild rides in the stock racket.
Meanwhile, Spartacus was driving his Mercedes-Benz to the lot to look for a Mercedes-Benz to buy. Wealth bored Spartacus. His gold rings, his gold crown with a single, modest topaz in a chalcedony setting, his gold money clip with his initial, S. In this age he can't just kill people without being arrested or shot or hunted. Spartacus is glad the Romans didn't have surveillance drones. Spartacus hems and haws over whether or not to buy a seventh Mercedes-Benz. Decides against it, gains pleasure from planting the belief in the salesman's head that he's bound to buy this car, but then not following through, oh the disappointment I can inflict on people even without a sword in my hand! I have a mind! Spartacus, the Psychic Gladiator! Gladiator Psychic. A mental force deployed against the forces of evil, that is, laziness. I shall put the world to work.
CLAF's headquarters are bombed by a suicide kestrel. A small bomb, but enough to make crooked a painting of the president and knock a secretary and a deliveryman to their knees. The message: ACLAF will not be fucked with. Everyone at CLAF knew it. Kestrel feathers covered the floor. Everyone remarked upon how there were so many feathers. The brave kestrel, dubbed Horatio, left the place spattered red. The secretary had the shocking moment of believing all the bird blood on her was hers. The deliveryman complained of hearing loss. He complained of hearing loss for weeks, had no insurance.
Cremulus, focusing on his High Priesthood, welcomed Spartacus to his office on the corner of Einstein and Crab.
Cremulus: You always have battle and conquest in mind.
Spartacus: Crushing, riding over my enemies, slicing their heads off, watching them burn in their houses, shooting them full of arrows when they escape, on fire. I shall conquer this world.
Cremulus: Doubtful. The Man has a tight grip.
Spartacus: Tightness of muscle lessens the strength of adjoining muscles.
Cremulus: Is that true?
Spartacus: I'm going to send one of my Mercedes-Benzes packed with explosives to the baboon himself.
Cremulus: Lord Spiteman?
Spartacus: The very primate.
Cremulus: All out war between CLAF and ACLAF. Who will win?
Spartacus: You make CLAF win! With your mind! Think it, it will happen, it comes with practice. Watch.
Spartacus looks at a letter opener on Cremulus' desk. Cremulus pulls his arms back to avoid the opener spinning fast suddenly.
Spartacus: The propellor trick. I'm going to take on Lord Spiteman, I'm going to make him my monkey.
Cremulus: How long are you going to make that spin?
Vic Neptune
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