Let's Try That Again

(Posted between December 13, 2013 and February 4, 2014:) Here is a link to twenty live recordings of me playing and singing against my background music: Sound Seclusion. Am I legitimate yet? If I'm not legitimate yet, who is? Charles Manson? By the way, did I mention this? If you see my image or my work anywhere outside of my one YouTube account or my one Blogger account, CALL THE POLICE! This is the main body of my live set, but I have a few new songs I'm developing right now to thrill my audience when the time comes. I think my singing voice has taken on an appealing timbre since I overcame laryngitis in my late twenties. I write my songs according to my physical limitations. I expect my singing voice for these songs to last me until I am well into my fifties. Perhaps if I had become famous in my youth there might be some cause to worry about the effect of aging on my voice because it would have changed my voice from the familiar sound that had made me famous. But I wrote all of my most popular songs within the last seven years and they will sound the most authentic if they are sung by someone my age, especially me. There will be more live posts from me coming up. I'll let you absorb this batch before I share them. By the way, I wrote Free twenty years ago and I still have no problem singing it. I'll post poems to maintain my online presence for the time being. I'd rather write poems than statements. More challenging. Since corporations were first recognized as 'persons under the law', they have taken on an evil life of their own. People who work in corporations are often good and I regret that I may have hurt a few by standing up for my rights against their evil employers. I had no choice. I fail to see how we can call ourselves civilized when we organize our economies around the primitive law of the jungle with these corporations. They bring out the very worst in us. I know I saw some of the fraud myself in 2007 but you must remember that I live in solitary confinement. When you see stars on TV with your music and writing, it helps if someone else is with you to let you know that you are not hallucinating or daydreaming, especially if you have been spending too much time on your music and writing. I had no one like that with me so I just thought I was crazy. You know what happened to one of Vladimir Putin's political adversaries who falsely accused the Russian leader of having sex with under aged girls? The guy died of radiation sickness, slowly and painfully. And someone snapped a picture of him as he rotted on his hospital bed. He didn't look happy about it. I wonder if they have employment opportunities like Nasco for reprobates in Russia or if they just shoot them in the back of the head along with all the other problem offenders. Maybe we're too soft on them. If there is a good side to corporations, it's going to have to be very good to make up for the side I've seen in the last seven years. Corporations like to wave the flag of freedom at the same time as they take our freedom away. Do you know why they love freedom so much? BECAUSE THEY'RE THE ONLY ONES WHO HAVE IT! THEY OWN EVERYTHING! The rest of us are imprisoned by money. And freedom demands having a choice. What choice do television viewers and radio listeners have when all the TV stations and radio stations are owned by a corporation? The Public Broadcasting Corporation? The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation? Yeah, some great choice. I wanted to live an ordinary life but I wasn't free to do that either. And how about those free elections! Let's focus on the U.S. elections for this one. They give you a choice, a choice between a liberal corporation or a conservative corporation. And who gets to run for president? Anyone who can put together the billions of advertising dollars needed to win the favour of the population. I guess that cuts out you or me. Not very democratic. Apparently America got its economic edge from not having to pay slaves to do all the work in their country for a couple centuries. Is that the freedom they praise so highly? Free labour? How about free music and free writing taken from my erased posts? What the Hell do they pay their writers for anyway? How do they find the time to read my blogs? I'm unemployed and I don't even have time to read them. One failure of democracy might be its treatment of artists. Artists are possibly the most underrepresented minority in all history. Unless you yourself have artistic talent, you are not likely to sympathize with the problems of an artist. On the contrary, you may envy his talent and perhaps forget how lucky you were to be able to live a full and normal life as one who could more easily socialize and get ahead in the world. An artist has a gift which he is compelled to use. He spends his time using this gift and doesn't get paid for it. Many self-made tycoons might have ended up in rundown hotel rooms if they had been born with talent. Sorry if I'm not out 'partying' like those great guys who stole my songs and blogs. It's pretty hard to work up a festive spirit when so much crime is committed against you and all they want to do after they're caught is justify their wrongdoing with more lies. This must be the only crime that makes the victim a target of hate. Most victims only have to suffer their ordeal once, they don't have it constantly thrust upon them every day as they try to recover their health. It's been over twenty-four hours since I posted anything online and I was wondering how many lies you've heard about me to explain my absence. Why don't I tell you what I've been doing and you can figure it out from that? Well, in the last week or so I've been making live video recordings of my songs to prove that I can play them. And it doesn't take me long to record a live video. As the music's author I know the songs well enough to make a decent recording in under twenty minutes per song. I usually leave after making one recording so as not to create a disturbance for the rest of the day. And never a truer song was written than my 'Out from Under'. That's my experience as accurately as I can relate it in a song. Imagine if a serial offender worked for CBC. His victims' parents would have had to spend three years blogging to defend themselves from accusations of killing their own daughters. That was the point I was trying to make both times I shared my 'Privileged Information' script. But how could you gather what I mean by my scripts when you think they were written by the very people they criticize or accuse? I am not the only victim here. Most of the world has been duped by these illegitimate broadcasts of my work. They call it protection when an unsigned artist survives overwhelming adversity to assert his work's ownership. I call it hostage taking. Writing popular work singles you out in a way that makes being treated like everyone else a cruel experience. Everyone else isn't recognized by strangers in the street. Everyone else isn't threatened by the TV and radio. It's easy to forget problems when they belong to someone else. A hit-and-run driver feels nothing when his vehicle drives over a pedestrian. But as he thoughtlessly drives away, his bleeding victim is unable to forget. Since I am the victim of the crimes against me, I'll remind others of what they have been saying about me through my 'recovery' period. First they said that I didn't write my songs. Then when their idol told them he stole his songs from me, they said I didn't write all my songs. Then when I rewrote all my songs (More or less. I don't like that funky rap thing very much and left it unfinished.), they said that the only reason my songs rocked was because they were stolen by a band. Then when I wrote new songs that rocked, like 'Business (Psych)' and 'Meat Hooks (Wrath)', then what happened? MY NEW SONGS WERE STOLEN! How will I ever regain my mental health under these conditions? From 2007 to 2010 it looks like the hottest stars were frauds who stole either my music or my writing. The industry let them take my erased work. It let them defame me. No one told me what was going on. They just sat back and cheerfully waited for me to kill myself as I was thrown into a torture chamber. An artist doesn't share his work to be popular, not essentially. Popularity was enjoyed by the ones who took the credit for my work, but it wasn't the aim of my work. Artists like myself need to express their feelings through their creations. I went online with my music in 2007 to pass my time while I was on employment insurance. I stopped pursuing stardom in 1995 when I quit my band in Toronto and came out here to settle down into a quiet, ordinary life. All of my online music was created purely for fun and for no other purpose. I think 'Heaven' is impossible among such brutal competitors. The only Heaven I want is with God. Someone said that without me they had to make a new Heaven. How did they do that? Are they God? There is no Heaven without God, just money. I intend to post more live music videos on YouTube. I might need to buy a new camcorder first. I'm hammering my singing voice into shape. When the cameras all converge on me I'll be ready. You must know that, although I'm taking my time, I don't want to. If you want some idea of what my television debut would have looked like before everyone knew who wrote all those great sketches that ended up on Saturday Night Live and other TV shows, look up my script entitled 'What Might Have Been'. You'll find it in my index of scripts. I did not consciously rewrite all this material. I simply retreated into my writing from a sense that it was still unsafe for me to perform in 2012. I'm glad I have my work organized into scripts and statements now. It's important to separate them. For instance, that reference to Gollum in a fighter plane was meant to explain that by writing a song about bombing people I was only expressing the dark side of my subconscious. I don't really want to bomb people. It's too bad that some delightful comedian couldn't come up with his own Gollum joke and let me keep my vital explanation for why I wrote that song. Then people wouldn't have been left to think I was some kind of closet mass murderer. But heroes like him were too lazy and too unimaginative to write their own scripts. Looks like Saturday Night Live's whole cast of twenty or so glorified extras only knew how to rip me off for three years. Their deficiencies have cost me dearly. It is also crucial for me to show that my copyright assertions are not a joke. So where do I go from here? I must sustain my faith in God since it came to me by what I've come to learn as being a kind of very reliable ESP. The same voice that told me I wrote a hit told me that Christ really walked the Earth to 'give us this beautiful gift'. (Her words.) Perhaps I was in contact with someone who received 'this beautiful gift'. (Kingdom of God.) Look what happened to me when I shunned these messages in late 2007 and reverted to atheism! Anyway, that's why I went from atheist to Christian in my 'Coats from the Lost and Found' blog, my most serious blog. I'm back with Jesus for good now. Through Him I have received a vision of my future glory. I have learned that my future is as unalterable as my past. My future is 'situationally' preordained and there is no way out of it - short of suicide. I tried to escape my destiny at the end of 2007 and was then forced to relive every moment of that year until I had restored most or all of my songs and laughs to the internet in my name. (I deliberately left offline the bitter entries George Carlin took from me.) This extraordinary experience tells me that I must take my songs and laughs with me into the future. It tells me that I must practice every day and continue on with my new ideas. It tells me that I must at least try to play some gigs before I die, if only to set the musical record straight for all time. It tells me that I must keep my work online. The longer I survive, the more justice I expect to see. Justice benefits everyone and perhaps others will be grateful for it, though I've learned not to expect any rewards in this life for anything good that I may accomplish. Hopefully people have had enough time by now to realize the threat against my life these last few years as I blindly unmasked one high profile fraud after another. Did NBC or FOX ever tell you I wrote 'Nothing but Ashes'? You'd think a band as big as the Rolling Stones would make the front page when they're caught with one of my songs. Instead I was left alone to report this fact to all their millions of fans. I could have been killed. And that's just one song of dozens that caused me problems. And that doesn't include those hundreds of scripts snatched up by popular TV stars. When it comes to telling the truth about what happened to my work, I'm on my own. But they were sure in a hurry to take it all and give it to my enemies, creating stars who used their popularity to make me widely hated. I heard that some countries even considered changing their entry requirements, in order to bar 'undesirable' tourists from visiting them. It's remarkable that I survived to the present. I don't hold it against women for wanting to be with wealthy, glamorous stars instead of me when I'm poor and isolated. I expect that from women. My love for women is indestructible - as long as they don't rip me off. I think I am at least a happier person than the ones who stole my work. I am pleased with the results of my creative efforts: a pleasure they could never know. Music and writing gives me a substantial purpose. I'm happy that I could never take someone's hard earned paycheck and spend it on making his life miserable the way they did to me, no matter how much I disliked the person, because I have a conscience to stop me from committing such horrible crimes. I'm happy that I can look forward to my future. Really, I have a lot more going for me than any of those so-called stars. Mine is not the kind of happiness that is necessarily expressed with a smile or a laugh. Sometimes I'm happier to yell and complain. I'm pleased with how I have not compromised my most important principles when the pressure to do so has been overwhelming, especially in the last few years. I have retained possession of my soul and I still wouldn't trade it for the whole world. Dehumanization often serves the establishment. War is possibly the best example of this. In 'All Quiet on the Western Front', the protagonist, a German soldier, hiding in a shell hole, reflexively bayoneted a French soldier who stumbled in by accident and then, trapped by heavy shelling, had to stay in close quarters to his moaning, dying victim. The longer he looked upon his fallen foe, the guiltier he felt. His humanity won out in the end and he tried to save the French soldier's life. Dehumanization also helps the establishment's marketing analysts by making our behaviour more machine like and predictable, letting them more efficiently herd us through the shopping centers. I wonder if my music and writing, so full of warmth and heart, was used deliberately to dehumanize the population. By using my music to make people hate and reject me, marketers would be reassured of the total control they have over our behaviour. If this was the case, I still have faith in most people out there. People have gotten to know me now, just like the German soldier got to know his unfortunate French counterpart in that God forsaken shell hole almost a hundred years ago. I believe that humanity will triumph in the end. Love will prevail. People are essentially good. They might yack when I turn my back but I love them. That's Amazing P.S. Here's an idea for a science show called 'That's Amazing!'. (January 18 2014: I think I may have borrowed this DVD and parodied it some time in the last few years. The Public Library should have a record of it if I did.) Good day and welcome to 'That's Amazing!', where we discuss exciting new scientific discoveries which are making life better and better for everyone in the monied - uh - developed world. Up first is something we're putting together right here at Google: the driverless car. This wondrous machine, equipped with sensor arrays, hyperstellar overdrive, and voice activated controls is guaranteed to make transportation safe and easy for everyone who doesn't suffer from a speech impediment. We must wait for the perfection of head-voice activated controls before we can make driving safe for everyone but schizophrenics. But at least now a man can pick up a girl hitch hiker and drive around the block as many times as he needs to without getting into an accident. The back seats convert into a water bed as an added bonus. Of course, auto insurance rates are not expected to decrease until the invention of the passengerless car. Isn't that amazing? Next we bring you a new anti-depressant. This pill will keep you smiling no matter what. Your boss can regularly tie you up and beat you senseless and you'll smile all the way through it. Someone can bust into your home and shoot you in the stomach and then rape your daughter right in front of you and you'll keep smiling. You can be drafted into the army and see all of your friends blown apart in front of your eyes and you won't lose that grin. That's amazing! Another brilliant new invention is the all-seeing eye. This state-of-the-art technology uses lazars and global positioning to make a digital record of every move you make over a set period of time. Look, there you are going to visit your mother. And there you are going to the bathroom! And there you are again with your wife! Wait, that's not your wife. Anyway, that's amazing! By using stem cells and genetic engineering to make this female tse-tse fly think it's a male, we hope to improve brain surgery. Don't bother trying to see the connection. It's over your heads. Unfortunately, the last generation of tse-tse flies is anticipated to die off before we can complete our work. A team of field researchers has been dispatched to the Island of Lesbos, where the last surviving swarm of this species is rumoured to have migrated. That's amazing! (Source: Stephen Hawking's Brave New World. Hope you don't mind, Professor. I generally only parody things I like. And it was flattering to see the phrase I coined in 2004, a force for good, in your introduction. That one really caught on. Back to my readers, I suspect that I have had the attention of Republican speech writers ever since I sent those letters to the editor of Maclean's magazine complaining about America's dangerously swollen military/industrial complex in 2000. Or was it Newsweek magazine in 2003? Anyway, I guess they lifted content from my popular 2004 writings for use in President George W Bush's re-election campaign. Maybe after I'm through with my music and writing I'll run for president.)
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Dead End

I asked for compensation for the incredible insult to my dignity and I'll tell you what I got for it so far. A stranger stood outside my door while I was playing one of my songs and told me to 'play it right' and a little troll of a woman walked by me on the street holding her nose at me. The TV has been very thorough in pointing out every possible fault in my personality and image for the last six years, much of which was fabricated, but they still haven't answered a very vital question: how much money did broadcasting networks make from three years of stealing my scripts and songs? Yeah, sure, merry fucking Christmas, right? There's nothing to eat except charity food that was probably paid for with drug profits, so I'm not hungry. I doubt I'll ever be hungry again and I've stopped eating. Pretty soon I will look like Winston Smith in the Ministry of Love. O'Brien pointed to Smith's emaciated image in the mirror and said 'That is the last man.' I can hardly wait until they have to hospitalize me and I can refuse my tray of hospital food. I can tell them to give it to Jay Leno. That alone will be worth it. (Does everyone recall that I love institutional food? Did one of those frauds include it in his act to help remind you?) If I end up dead, remember that survival does not need to be limited to survival of the flesh. Don't be sad about it. I want to die. Good bye and have a great time in this bullshit world your evil corporate overlords have made for you. As long as you lie to yourself every six seconds you can have a great life here. I'm in the early stages of my starvation. I can feel the life draining from my limbs and I know I won't have the energy to come back here after today. I guess I've been dying in front of all your eyes for the last six years while you've all been partying with my songs and laughs. Don't feel guilty about it because you didn't know. At least now I can die with dignity, knowing that I depended solely on the money I got for my hit songs and popular blogs. I won't die a bum. P.S. (December 11, 2013) I know my intelligent readers don't need the following but I must try to silence the stupid ones out there for long enough for me to starve to death in peace. Firstly, are the networks trying to be Santa Claus now? That's funny because Santa gives gifts, he doesn't steal them from the internet. What does Christmas mean to you? Do you still think like a five-year-old and expect to be showered with magical presents? I don't. I have a more sophisticated view of Christmas. I celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ on Christmas. (I know it's not his real birthday but the former 'Festival of Saturnalia', which celebrated life's renewal, is appropriate enough for me.) Jesus said that 'It is written that man shall not live on bread alone but by every Word of God.' So if you believe in Jesus, you're supposed to reject bread when you think it came from something evil like a tax deduction for a local drug lord. You're supposed to starve to death if necessary to protect your immortal soul. Jesus would be happier with the way I'm celebrating Christmas than with how you're doing it. But go ahead and call me the grinch if you must. What else could I expect from the kind of people I'm forced to share my roof with in transitional housing? (The transition is from life to death if you don't use narcotics and your IQ is over 90.) I'll just think of myself as the grinch who stole Christmas from a bunch of Devil worshiping creeps in the broadcasting business and gave it back to Jesus. P.P.S. (December 12th, 2013) After being blocked from my Google account all day my nerves are a bit frazzled. I wanted to say that I've learned that someone posted some nasty words and put my name on them. This may have provoked the last P.S. and I'm sorry if it's over the top. With all this nastiness going on it is for the best if I retire from Google for a bit. This will not be the end of the fight for my money though. I have completed my will and had it signed by two witnesses. I will mail the original to my lawyers in Ottawa and a copy is on file with my outreach worker at the Lookout. It bequeaths the rights to my music and writing to my parents so that my lawyers can keep fighting for my money on their behalf after I am gone. Did Dateline call my mother and tell her I was going to be big in 2012? My parents sold their house and moved into an old age home thinking they would not have to suffer long. That's a fine way to treat a woman in her eighties. I'm still not hungry. I don't know how I got in to this account to report these facts. I don't know why I was blocked out. I will still need to come back here to make amendments and change my words when they are inaccurate. Please don't block me from my Blogger account. Oh yeah. Merry Christmas. A little more to let you know that I'm back on the bread. I wish I had the physical strength to stand by my convictions. The way I have to enter my account now forces me to bounce halfway around the internet before I get to Blogger. But along the way I noticed that I am popular on YouTube. That's what it said about me. Does CBC know this? Hey, CBC, I'm popular on YouTube! Why don't you do your job and support a Canadian artist! You know why? Because you think it's your job to sell Canadian artists out to your pets who meet you in the cafe and suck your dicks! And as for the Canadian classic rock station, you think it's your job to sell Canadian artists out to foreigners like Mick Jagger and company. What a miserable country this is. It's not even a country, just a corporation. No one has any balls. And anyone who sticks his neck out to tell the truth just ends up like me. What a miserable future your children will have. If they want to tell the truth, they'll just end up getting their songs stolen and having to listen to others thank the thieves for doing it in a drop-in center. Yeah, they're making me listen to 'Wild Horses' as I type this. I fucking wish Jagger could rip them off so they know how it feels. And I think comedians are the lowest form of life on the planet and if you know my background you'd know that I am entitled to think of them that way. You bitch going around telling people my blog is the nastiest load of bullshit, what are you going to tell the world when it's still online in ten years and twenty years? Why don't you make me take it down if I'm lying, like I made SNL take all their lying sketches off of YouTube? You're stupid. No one thinks ahead and they'll all be sorry. Mark my words.
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Too Insulting

So we're back around to me being called a bum again. These fraudulent fuckheads steal my work, which they are too lazy to do for themselves, make you pay for it, deprive me of the profits, and call me a bum for having no money. Well, I must tell you that sharing my thoughts and my songs here on the web is the hardest job I've ever done in my life. Did you get a laugh from one of my blogs? Did one of my songs take your mind off your troubles for a few moments? Did you pay for it? Gee, I guess you're a bum, too! Aren't bums those guys who go out on the street and beg for spare change? If I were the kind of person who did that, wouldn't it be easy for me to go to Dick Cheney and beg him for a recording contract? But I find this impossible. I've never begged anyone for anything. I'm on disability, not Welfare. Before that I was on Unemployment Insurance from having a job - the kind of job that was too hard for those comedy superstars who think they're so decent. I've been working in hard jobs all my life because I'm not a bum. But this job right now takes superhuman effort and I can't say I'm impressed with the pay. What do you think it's like for me to ponder a future where some comfortable reporter asks me what it was like to experience all this? Why do you want me to lie alone on my bed with these violent thoughts in my head for years? Are you sadistic? You like my songs? You like my laughs? Why do you let me get treated like this? Decades of my life are being wasted because you need Dick Cheney to tell you if it's okay to support an artist. Why don't you stand up to him? Boycott WEA! Boycott the big networks! I can't do it all alone. This is all in the hands of lawyers now. I don't need fans any more. If you're going to treat me like this, why don't you go read something else and leave me alone. (If you're innocent, disregard this request.) Really. I've suffered your readership for long enough now and I'm surprised I'm still alive to complain about it. I doubt I'll live much longer and I think dying is a better fate than success in such a criminal business. I heard that early in his career Dean told a crowd of supporters that I wrote Size. So everyone knew. And then less than a year later they all thought I stole it from him. This zombie like behaviour from the masses is as much of a problem for me as the criminal attitude of the labels. I'm sorry I ever wrote a hit. Really. I'm in for another miserable day now, just like almost every day has been since I shared my first song on YouTube almost seven years ago. I could have handled being unthanked, but when everyone wants to thank an airhead like Taylor Swift for my intelligent songs or a wimp like Dean for my heavy songs or a bunch of witless wonders for my humour, that goes well beyond being unthanked to being insulted. And insulted I will remain until I am properly compensated for these terrible offenses against me - by money or by eternity. (Or by both.)
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Furious With George

I'm in a violent mood at the moment because I am withdrawing from nicotine and yet another tenant in my building is taunting me from the adjoining bathroom. Is he from Nasco like the others? Must I live in poverty with Nascos while I wait for justice? How nice. Do you recall how George Carlin mentioned his TV commercial and pointed out how it conflicted with the words he said about businessmen in his act? He said, 'I'll let you figure that shit out on your own.' Well, I think I've solved the mystery. George Carlin was a fraud. Almost every word he said about businessmen came from my erased posts from 2006 and 2007. As a fraud he was free to sell out to advertising at the same time as he pretended to be cool and anti-establishment in his act. Did you get a laugh from seeing George Carlin bashing businessmen on HBO? You know who laughed harder? Businessmen when they laughed at you. They knew you thought my anti-business blogs were funny and they wanted to make money from them, but they had to do it in a way that let them have the last laugh. Every time you laughed at one of my business jokes coming out of Carlin's lying mouth, businessmen were laughing harder at you because they knew you were hurting the author by supporting this fraud. You were slipping right into back their hands at the same time as you thought you were rebelling against them. I imagine the same is true of the businessmen who signed the Crystalids and any other 'rebellious' performer who stole my work. They let you rebel and be 'rad' as long as they could secretly make fools out of you and, above all, destroy me while you were doing it. I'm glad George Carlin is dead because you people think I'm so funny when I'm yanking my hair out in clumps from anger and frustration. It paid him to injure me so I could throw hilarious fits on the internet and he could steal them! Yes, they sent their minions out to injure me and let me throw a fit over it. Then they made me think I'd offended the population so I would erase my protest and they could claim it for themselves. I've since learned why he and his buddies at SNL thought they were entitled to abuse me this way: because they think I'm their Canadian talent bitch. Given the obsequious behaviour of the guardian of Canadian culture, the CBC, their attitude is understandable. (Does everyone remember what 'obsequious' means from my erased post on Aristotle's table of virtues and vices? It means 'brown nosing'.) That phoney prick would be on a stage right now, telling you about how the cars of the future will run on molten lava and you'd all be just laughing away and thanking him some more for my suffering. But we still have at least one internet jerk who wants to follow in his footsteps. Could someone tell him that he's not fooling anyone by stealing my erased vlogs and pretending they're his? You might save him from going to prison - if he's not already there. At least Carlin was the only fraud who accurately expressed my opinion in interviews, such as when he said 'power does what it wants' and when he said 'food should not cost money' and when he said 'elections are a charade', all word for word from my erased posts. What a genius. He was not a poet either. That's why he should have left my 'Modern Man' poem the Hell out of his act. You know, he is precisely the kind of greedy, senseless, destructive monster regularly produced by our brilliant consumer culture. This may be how the citizens of Iraq will all behave now that they've been 'liberated'. Fuck I wish I were never born sometimes. And who's teaching the course on 'learning improvised comedy'? Did he just get out of prison for fraud? Because it looks like the pros on TV have been improvising all of their best comedy from my erased posts for the last seven years.
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The Spirit of Taking

I wonder what Santa would look like if he were treated the same way for giving his gifts as I was for sharing my songs and laughs. Something tells me he wouldn't be so jolly. He wouldn't be so fat either. In fact, Santa would probably be lying in a hospital bed by now, reduced to a skeleton, begging his doctor to pull the plug. I'm not saying I'm tougher than Santa, but he's been giving his gifts a lot longer than I've been sharing my songs. And I could never hack living in the North Pole. Too cold. Canada's bad enough.
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Conan and the Barbarians

I watched a good documentary last night about geopolitics and World War Two called Last Secrets of the Axis (the History Channel). An alliance between Germany, Russia, and Japan might have been unbeatable. Hitler had an intellectual mentor named Karl Haushofer who cautioned that a conflict between Germany and Britain would weaken both powers and let America take over the world. Haushofer wanted to make an alliance with Russia and Japan to stand up to the Anglo-American powers who controlled all the important trade routes. This might explain that non-aggression pact between Germany and the U.S.S.R. in 1939 which let both countries divide Poland between them and gave Germany such an edge in the first two years of the war. Hitler's invasion of Russia was personal. He let his emotions get the best of him. Hitler evaluated the Russian civilization on the basis of their plumbing. He thought the Russians weren't civilized because at that time most of them still relied on outhouses rather than underground pipes. It turns out that the Russians were saving all their steel for tanks, which they had in vast quantities. This shallow means of assessing a civilization according to the material standard of living it offers is still popular today, as with those who want to add a McDonald's to every street corner in Baghdad. Invaders often think they are doing foreign countries a favour by taking them over. I do not assess civilizations based on their standards of living but by how they treat artists, for the history of art is the history of civilization. And I would call what happened to my art in this proud consumer culture an act of the lowest barbarism. And while the people of Iraq may view Christ as a mere prophet, in some ways they exceed self proclaimed Christians in living according to God's Word. For instance, Jesus said that we should put God first and hardly anyone does that in the Western world. By contrast, the profound religious faith of the people of the Middle East has been incorporated into the very fabric of their culture. Now they will be forcibly secularized. Hooray for us.
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Looks Like Trouble

He finally had her where he wanted her, in the car with him at the wheel, looking like he was in charge. He had done his best to look aloof in his associations with her, though she played a central role in his private thoughts. He was not an architect, as he told her, but a high school dropout with convincing facial hair. Nor was the car his, as he said, but his father's. At the moment it looked like she trusted him and might even reward him for offering the ride. His gesture appeared strictly compassionate and he intended to withhold the truth from her for as long as necessary. She finally had him where she wanted him, providing transportation. The key was to look like she was interested in him. This could be accomplished from a safe distance, allowing him room to perform his Platonic farce. As soon as she got there she would ask him to pick her up again tomorrow. He would be so shocked that she could slip out, giving him no more than a smile of thanks for his trouble. Tomorrow she could arrange for rides for the next two weeks and give him even less. To help her smile she thought of how he would drive home alone, confused and disappointed. The car accelerated down a long, steep incline. It looked like it had enough brake fluid because the brake fluid gauge was broken.
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Yes There Is

As documented on A&E's Biography, there is a Santa Claus. His full name is Saint Nicholas, but most of his followers didn't get it right. Saint Nicholas is a popular saint. He's the one who converted the Greeks and Russians to Christianity in 446. He accomplished this by teaming up with Good King Wenceslas and Saint Patrick. Together the three heroes amassed a fortune in gold, frankincense, and myrrihuana, which they lavished on the poor folk, in order to bribe them into becoming Christian. The tactic worked and the region has been Christian ever since, even when it was communist. Anyone who says there's no Santa, I point to every present they receive from Santa every Christmas as evidence against their claim. Further to that, I would add the volumes of answered letters to the North Pole, the thrilled faces of small children, and the combined sworn testimonies of every Who in Whoville. Nice children have something to look forward to, but naughty children are worried. Santa's dark nemesis, Salt Peter, plans to put rotten potatoes in their Christmas stockings. Just ask the Dutch. Salt Peter is hiding in your chess set right now, mixed in with the black pieces, disguised as a fool. Sometime soon he is expected to spring to life, swell up to enormous size, and go on a parade. Time is running out for the naughty children.
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Catching Wind

Dog catching was more heroic in the old days. Back then a dog catcher was a kind of knight who swore an oath to protect his community from all stray pets, wild and domestic. In vigilance the dog catcher slept in the bell tower, waiting for the bell to wake him so he could get up, grab his net, and slide down the rope directly onto his mount. The draw bridge of his castle would unfold and off he would trot, as long as it wasn't a prank. Some of history's most important explorers were dog catchers. Labrador is named after the European mutt who first swam to her shores from Newfoundland in 1502. Her pursuer thought it only fair. A prolific breeder, she soon had every dog in the region looking like her. The Industrial Age got off to a good start for dog catchers. Special motorized vehicles were introduced with a hatch in the floor to let the driver pick up a stray without having to take his foot off the gas. By now dog catchers were organized into units who stayed together in a barracks and usually slept or played cards between sorties. Most of these brave men perished as pilots in World War Two. Their vehicles were turned into amphibious landing crafts. In recent times this profession has lost much of its lustre. Tranquilizer guns have changed everything. And global positioning tools let owners monitor the movements of their pets. Maybe they no longer wear a uniform, maybe anyone can do their job, but when you step out into your yard and find the dog house abandoned, with your dog's tracking device smashed on the ground, there's no reason to suspect that it is the work of a desperate, unemployed dog catcher. There's an abundance of openings for him today in parallel fields like parks administration and zoo security.
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Dare Devils

"Let's get started right away with our first contestant, a bank manager. Sir, were you ever charged with fraud? Truth or dare?" "You mean that little income tax mistake? That was cleared up ages ago, but to avoid your loaded question, I choose 'dare'." "Very well. I dare you to take this cheque to a bank and cash it." "But it's not in my name." "Just use the name on the cheque." "I can't do that!" "Why not?" "It's illegal!" "You should've thought of that before you committed fraud. Moving on to our next contestant, a schoolteacher . Ma'am, were you ever disciplined for corrupting your students with vile lessons on human anatomy and reproduction? Truth or dare?" "You mean sex ed? It's in the curriculum. However, rather than argue with you, I choose 'dare'." "As you wish. I dare you to take these magazines and circulate them in your class." "Good heavens! They're as bad as the internet!" "Yes, you might want to put them in a brown paper bag if you're using public transit." "I can't expose the innocent eyes of my third graders to these abominations!" "You want the money, don't you? Get going. Time for one last challenger, a top secret federal agent, though you probably know him as belonging to some other occupation - especially if you're watching from abroad. Sir, are you permitted to kill anyone who exposes you as a spy? Truth or dare?"
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Eve of Destruction

Eve had timed her arrival with the peak of visiting hours to avoid being noticed. Unopposed she made her way to the door of a helpless patient. He shouldn't have dumped her. Her first act of revenge, pushing him down the stairs, had come from feeling humiliated by him and wanting to get even, but his inability to connect his ensuing streak of bad luck to their relationship's recent demise made Eve lose all respect for him. Rather than being appeased to calmness by the belief that she was better off alone, her greatly reduced concern for his well being removed a barrier to her darkest violence. He suffered more accidents. He came down with the flu. His car exploded. Still, when she saw him being wheeled around the hospital like an emperor, it had taken every ounce of restraint to keep from kicking him. She took him out him later that day while he was heavily drugged and no one was looking. The result was only more pampering in the intensive care ward, pretty nurses waiting on him around the clock as he gorged himself on oxygen. If she wanted justice she would have to work harder. He had his own room and she didn't need to look under his bandages to know his face. Quietly she approached him in the dark. He appeared to be unconscious and attached to a monitor that registered his vital signs. She took his hand and pressed it flat against his mouth and nostrils, suffocating him for a long time, but the blip of his heartbeat persevered through the monitor. In frustration she seized him by the throat and shook him fiercely. This caused a more erratic signal, but he clung to life somehow. Then she noticed that a special machine was breathing for him. No wonder she couldn't kill him. She bent down and pulled the plug. Success at last. The room flooded with light as the door behind her burst open. She turned around and was blinded by camera flashes from a crowd of unexpected reporters. One of them had promised to be the first to take a picture of the man she had just slain, for her estranged lover had been moved to another bed and in his place was a fireman with third degree burns from rescuing a small child. The media had come with friends and relatives to interview the stricken hero before Eve got to him. His wife began to cry as he was pronounced dead. Eve couldn't remember anything past that because she'd been incarcerated ever since.
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Honest to a Fault

As his chauffeur driven car cruised to his next engagement he reflected on a recent press conference. A foreign reporter asked him how he had escaped assassination. He explained that he killed potential assassins before they become a threat. Then to prove his point he shot a loyal bodyguard in front of them. There were no further questions. He had founded the Honesty Party on the recommendation of a team of marketing analysts who located a popular need for more honest politicians. The proud capital 'H' in his party flag stood for just that kind of honesty: the kind of honesty one can look up to, towering and monolithic, the honesty with which he could openly and unashamedly defend a bad system with good, traditional fear of change. How much more would they let him get away with? As long as he was honest about exploiting them there seemed to be no limit to what he could ask. He had taken their jewellery. He said it was needed to pay the debt. He didn't say it would be used to pay the debt. He had taken away their holidays, telling workers to call in sick if they want a holiday. He had uprooted them from their homes and talked them into renting caves, promising that it would increase property values. Now he believed that his unfortunate people were ready to make the ultimate sacrifice for their country. After all, a war would at least get them out of the caves. The war would be against a country they liked. They would fight for a small island rumoured to hold buried treasure and as many as five geysers. Neither he nor his enemy counterpart really cared about the disputed land and were just looking for a way to increase their power, to thin out the population, and to test new weapons. He would not need to explain his decision. The people knew he didn't like them. He once even told them that they remind him of rats. They expected to be mistreated by him and appreciated his honesty. The car parked and he got out. As usual he was met and surrounded by an escort of loyal bodyguards armed with assault rifles. These men protected him as he traveled on foot between his bulletproof car and his screened public appearances. Today's venue was strange and desolate: the City Morgue.
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Captains Outrageous

The captain's assignment was top secret. He stayed under constant surveillance through the training program and would not know his destination until he was safely aboard a spaceship, hurtling away from the Earth at near light speed. The news wouldn't reach him until he approached the maximum range for ground transmissions. He believed he already knew what he had been chosen for and why. He figured that his mission was kept secret to assure public calm through a period in which the fate of the world hung on a precipice. Apparently he had been hand picked on the basis of his gift for model airplane construction and his unbeatable high score in Asteroids from 1983. His destination must be a life bearing planet to be claimed for his country and named after himself by wiping out every living thing on it if necessary. Only the details were a mystery to him. The captain still did not know his precise destination nor how he would return home once his ship lost contact. These concerns were foremost on his mind as he pushed a button on his armrest console to tilt his chair back for the long awaited message. By contrast the figure coming into focus on the screen stood upright. It was his supervisor, the doctor. Now he would know everything. The doctor's voice began in ingratiating tones, "Greetings from Mother Earth. Your friends and loved ones greet you. Your leaders praise you and your peers salute you. Your mother kisses you and your priest blesses you. Your team plays for you and their cheerleaders cheer for you. The 4-H Club have knit their warmest thoughts of you into a quilt, and they wish they could give it to you." "Standing by to receive co-ordinates of the enemy planet." "Enemy planet? Are you joking?" "Then where are we going?" "Your ship is on course and time is unessential to your mission." "Unessential to you because you're not stuck in space." "That's not true. We are all stuck in space. Why, Gaia herself is just a spaceship following the Sun to God knows where. But you should be happy. You have air conditioning. There are many here on Spaceship Earth who would envy you." "You have sunsets." "If all you need are coloured lights, why don't you get started with your Christmas decorations?" "You've still not answered my question." "Your ship is on course-" "On course for WHERE?" "Why do you care about that? Has your life changed in any noticeable way? You can watch any program you like on your giant screen. You have a host of digital gaming options, plus a dart board. Have we not considered your every need? We've even provided you with women. To deprive you of them for such a long voyage would be inhumane. Incidentally, where is your pretty first mate?" "In the brig for trying to poison me. What do you mean, 'such a long voyage'?" "Well, I'm sure you'll sort out these little misunderstandings and learn to trust each other. There are a lot of single men back here who wish they had your problems." "Doctor, perhaps I'm not getting through to you. When may I again feel the gentle kiss of a warm summer rain?" "Stand under a shower head with the water mixed to a luke warm temperature." "It's not the same." "It's better." "And I'm missing out on history." "You're not missing anything, trust me. We were even thinking of starting another war just for something to do. Now, don't you feel lucky? Instead of being shot or taken prisoner, you're far away from it all." "Doctor, why are you trying to make me feel good about being out here instead of answering my question?" "Be proud, Captain. You are the future of humanity, stretching out into space and taming the wild regions, the volcanic moons and the poisonous dust clouds and the black holes-" "Hold on, no one told me anything about black holes." "Relax. You couldn't reach the nearest black hole in your lifetime." "That's a relief." "It will be your ancestor's problem. Good luck and Godspeed." In a flash the doctor's image evaporated. The communication beam, vital tether to the home world, had stretched beyond its limit and snapped, stranding the captain and all hands in deep space for the expansion of civilization as we know it.
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Wanda's World

Wanda's confusion was clear on her face. Invading troops had taken her by surprise earlier that day, loading her on a truck with her unit and hanging a large number around her neck, as though she were some sort of criminal. She was just a simple farm girl, doing her duty. Her job at the camp was like her job at the farm. It was an ordinary experience, not worth the attention of the cameras converging on her. As a girl Wanda always got her way. Papa not only bought her a pony when she turned nine, but had the animal's head stuffed and mounted for her when she turned thirteen. And all the farm animals knew who was in charge when Wanda was around. She saw herself as a beautiful goddess and looked upon the animals as her subjects. The animals had no choice but to agree with her. When the time came to lead them to slaughter, she usually took care of it. She had a special way of talking to the calves. They trusted her and rarely did she have to use the pitchfork on them. A relative got her the job guarding prisoners, calling it a well paying opportunity that suited her skills. She was expected to control prisoners with the same ruthless efficiency as she herded cattle. At first she thought the camp job would be easier, but the prisoners were too unruly. They walked upright and muttered insults like 'blonde bitch' and 'homicidal hayseed'. They neglected their appearances and often needed extra persuasion to accept Wanda's world. Now that the camp was closing, she longed for the simplicity of her grandfather's farm. The delay of these proceedings were a senseless waste of time to her. She had surrendered, disarmed, and was no longer a threat. If she shot a few inmates who caught her at a bad moment, so what? It's normal. Next to the mass graves caused by others, her body count was negligible. And her targets were dangerous enemies of the state. Surely she would be seen as a conscientious worker doing a respectable job during a time of war. At last, her advocate appeared. His smile held the promise of good news. "Well, what is it?" she asked him eagerly. "We talked them down to a hanging!" he proudly declared.
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Folk Tales: The High King Mortimer

Legend has it that long ago there reigned a High King Mortimer who failed to pay his royal biographer, Geoffrey Canterbury. Canterbury writes: 'No one liked Mortimer. Whenever a storm caused damage or some other natural catastrophe befell us, we all surmised that God was angry with Mortimer over something and taking it out on us. Mortimer passed a law forcing all brides to lie with him on the eve of their weddings. He did it just to infect all the brides in the land with plague and thus make them less attractive to their husbands. In battle Mortimer was a notorious coward. Against the Dragon of Doonsbury he behaved both as a fool and a knave. First he shed his armour when it proved to be itchy after being soaked in a magic potion to make it heat resistant, conjured by his wizard, to whom he also owed a princely sum. Then he let the Dragon chase him naked through the square, with only his hands over his bare bottom to protect it from his foe's fiery breath. He hid in a well until the dragon had had its way with all the maidens in the land and had eaten its fill of all the children in the land. His horse, Shadowbox, was also a coward and fled from any small, harmless creature popping out suddenly from the bogs. Mortimer did not die at the hands of his guards, who he insulted constantly, nor did he die at the hands of the angry mob of peasants who gathered to burn down his castle with him inside, for God got to Mortimer first, smiting the hated tyrant with a powerful lightning bolt. Mortimer miserably perished. Such was the end of this unhappy King.' Mortimer may not have been as bad as his biographer said, but he is certain to have had one weakness: illiteracy. He is not to be confused with the figure of Vortigurn, who is said to have reigned as High King in the roughly same period.
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