Category / Uncategorized

by DrMabuse

John Kerry, Can You Hear Me?

There’s a moment in Superman II where E.G. Marshall, playing the President of the United States, appears on television, announcing to the nation that he has surrendered his authority over to General Zod. But Marshall breaks down midway through the speech and shouts into the microphone, “Superman: can you hear me? Superman!” Zod then picks up the microphone and asks, “Where is this Superman?” and demands that Superman come to challenge his authority if he dare, so that the son of Jor-El can eventually kneel before Zod.

But Superman has lost his powers. He has just been beaten to a pulp by some hick in a diner and he suggests to Lois Lane, as he is bleeding, that maybe they might need a bodyguard. But Superman, knowing that he must rid the world of the forces of evil, insists that he has to go back. He eventually gets his powers back and stops the three baddies. Though not without sacrificing his love for Lois Lane.

The moment is one of supreme comic book movie melodrama, but for some damned reason, it’s one of the grandest cinematic moments I remember as a kid. It might be the general state of helplessness, an unexpected breakdown following the calm actions of a leader willing to kneel before Zod to save human lives. But I like to think it’s more about decency in the face of horrible capitulations — something that buys the human race a little more time.

In contemplating the current situation, I feel almost exactly like E.G. Marshall reflecting the will of the people. If Kerry is really presidential material, just where the hell is he? Deaths continue in Iraq. The economy remains in the toilet. Bush’s approval figures are now the lowest ever in his presidency. And now Bush wants more troops while remaining in firm denial about the consequences of our actions: “The actions of our enemies over the last few weeks have been brutal, calculating and instructive. It reveals a fanaticism that was not caused by any action of ours and would not be appeased by any concession.”

This should be a slam dunk, a moment that the Democrats should be seizing with momentum and mobilization. This should be a time in which John Kerry is galvanizing the nation with the same fire he showed protesting Vietnam.

Pollster John Zogby himself is on record stating that John Kerry will win, but only if he, and he alone, will screw it up. And from where I’m standing, I see a tepid man and an ineffectual leader. I see a man playing it far too safe for the present time. I see a man who doesn’t have the guts to fight the good underdog fight and act like a goddam President, a man who believes that Bush’s extra spending before the Republican National Convention will somehow buy the faith of the American people — this even as Tom Clancy almost came to blows with Richard Perle..

Kerry’s hands may be admittedly tied by current campaign finance and a colossal Republican-to-Democrat spending gap. But the real question here is whether postponing the nomination until the Republican National Convention so that Kerry can spend his own money is worth sacrificing the general morale of the country.

It would be one thing if Kerry managed to express public consternation over our current unwillingness to accept responsibility for the horrors that we sow. But whether he’s officially the Democratic candidate or not, the time has come for Kerry to start acting like our next President, which means sacrificing something in the process.

John Kerry needs to show us that he’s Superman.

by DrMabuse

The Power of Denial

The Guardian: “[Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt] insisted there were ‘no decorations, no musical instruments found, no large quantities of food or leftover servings one would expect from a wedding celebration’. However, the video obtained by APTN – which lasts for several hours – shows a large wedding party, and separate footage shot by AP cameramen the following day shows fragments of musical instruments, pots and pans, and brightly coloured beddings used for celebrations scattered around a bombed-out tent. There were also fragments of ordnance that appeared to have US markings.”

by DrMabuse

The Dangers of Opening Twix

Until now, only ten important people were aware of their existence. The Tupperware people knew of similar creatures for sealed pies and pastries, but they recognized that the specific conditions beneath the seal, combined with certain sugary textures, created the necessary living variables, much as carbon does for the silly homo sapien race. But since Tupperware does not in fact mass-produce the contents within, their legal team has a clear defensible position which places them in the clear for endangering lives. They escape culpability.

twix.gifTwix, on the other hand, does create conditional material — specifically, gooey candy bars within sealed packages that allow life to evolve. Thousands of tiny environments, in fact. Sets of two. And until now, the horrible secret has remained tightly kept.

The men inside spin spanned steel twixt twain chocolate sticks. Micromen clanging miniscule hammers, breaking tiny flakes of chocolate for plinth, suspension, so long as the package is unopened. They live happy lives. The chasm beneath these nimble worker bees is a giant reservoir of air, the silt bottom reflecting the shimmering sky of plastic protecting them from the elements. This small working class microcosm hopes that ants and other assorted insects will not use their mandibles and destroy the plastic seal of their happy little gated community.

There are many of these candy bars circulating throughout the world, finding their way into stores and eventually into the hands of consumers, sometimes opened immediately and, other times, opened after being momentarily put into a freezer, where the workers within the candy bar housing shiver and freeze, often dying cold and painful deaths.

But this tragic hypothermia pales in comparison to the micromen’s vampire-like evaporation when exposed to light. When a customer rips open a package, the light instanteneously destroys not only the wondrous bridges, homemade bowers and glorious chocolate Quonset huts that these beatific micromen construct, but also the very micromen themselves. The only trace of their existence is the ridge, which forms as the microman stands happily on chocolate terrain, only to disintegrate into nothingness, his footprints the only remainder. While most people believe that the machines create those glorious ridges, found on the topmost texture of all Twix bars, it is actually the small, barely perceptible conflagrations of a suddenly opened package which cause this tiny subtlety.

Despite the presence of an expiration date signaling the time that the community will transmute into moldy, melty or otherwise unedible form, the process of opening a Twix bar, which thousands of people enact every day, is, in short, genocide. Millions of micromen are destroyed on a daily basis. On a tiny, basic level, the sudden tear of a candy bar package has produced a veritable Rwanda 365 times a year.

I ask those who would dare open a candy bar how they can sleep a night. How can they willingly disregard this tiny life form, who has done nothing save construct bridges of chocolate? And where, pray tell, are the archeologists and zoologists? Why does the mysterious life of the Twix Microman remain a secret?

I have much more to say about these and other ethical questions at a later time. But for the moment, the immediate solution is to get the candy-eating public to stop eating, let alone opening Twix bars. Respect these small creatures. They have the potential to be your friends.