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I'm not dead. I'm resting.

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I happen to work for a reinsurance company, so I'm not at all surprised at Swiss Reinsurance's attempt to weasel out of full payment to the owner of the World Trade Center. In fact, the company I work for used to be part of a larger company based in Switzerland, so I'm even less surprised. Only in the insurance industry can two planes flying into two buildings be considered one event. The number of sneaky clauses, Byzantine definitions, and downright fuzzy math involved in a reinsurance deal the size of the one that covered the WTC is truly astounding. This will go to trial, and Swiss Re will appeal it for as long as is humanly and legally possible. Then they'll figure out a way to appeal it again.

Read more from the September 11 Archive
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Continued fever and otic disruption (that's Unnecessarily Highfalutin' Speak for ear infection) prevent me from extensively commenting on the latest wave of death in Israel. I've got something in the works that will be a Sunday Spew someday.

I will, however, say this: if the Palestinians resurrected Ghandi himself and put him in charge of the PA tomorrow, there would still be squads of freakish Muslims running around, high on Allah and Jewish blood, ready and willing to make their contribution to society by shooting up buses and blowing themselves up in nightclubs. Those people will never be brought into any rational political process, because their goals are not political. Their goals are religious, and represent the worst, most irrational ideas that human religious thought has produced. In the ancient Near East, a god's power was often measured by the height of the pile of unbelievers' corpses. That's the game the various Islamic murder-squads are playing.

The tragedy is that Israel is being forced to play along.

Now I must go soak my ear canal in ciprofloxacin and hydrocortisone.

Read more from the Middle East Archive
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Not only are some New Yorkers criminals, they're just plain stupid.

The NYT reports today that around 4,000 members of the Municipal Credit Union are under investigation for purposefully overdrawing their accounts to the tune of $15,000,000 after the 9/11 attacks cut off Credit Union ATMs from their computer networks. So far, 66 people have been arrested and another 35 are being sought for arrest.

Rather than simply cut off the machines following the attacks, the Credit Union--knowing that many of its members were policemen, fire fighters and other critical City personnel--kept the machines running without being able to verify that those making withdrawals had the money in their accounts. The theft began almost immediately.

Of course, the Credit Union was able to keep track of every penny, including who withdrew it and when.

"One man, an employee of the Housing Authority, never had an end-of-the-month balance that exceeded $130, prosecutors said. 'Nevertheless, he made 53 A.T.M. withdrawals ranging from $20 to $300 each, and charged 101 Visa purchases using his M.C.U. A.T.M. card between September 19th and October 22nd,' according to [Manhattan district attorney] Morgenthau's press release.

It continued: 'The purchases were at stores including Foot Locker, Jimmy Jazz, Joy Joy Jewelry, Bronx BBQ, Hot Booz Liquor and the 216th Street motel.'"

People who responded to the Credit Union's demands for repayments were given the opportunity to convert their negative balances into loans with deferred payment schedules.

Imagine! "You stole money from us. We know you stole money from us. Here, let us turn it into a loan for you."

I have to say that in terms of sheer schmuck-value, these folks beat the recovery workers who stole watches from the Cartier store in the mall beneath the WTC. Handily.

Read more from the September 11 Archive
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"You'd think that after 170 years of railroading, you could have a crapper door that works."

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There's a bit in a Bugs Bunny cartoon that I remember, devoid of its context: Bugs is onstage for some reason, squinting out into the dark beyond the footlights. He hears noises...coughs, rustling. Suddenly, he realizes what's out there, and screeches with appropriately Looney expressiveness: PEOPLE!!!

Sometimes, I get that sensation when looking through the logs to see who's visiting. This month, I've gotten my first hits from a reader in Israel.

Yikes!

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Courtesy of Mr. Reynolds, last night I read a fascinating account of Vietnamese-born Anh Duong, the woman who spearheaded the fast-track development of the cave-busting thermobaric bombs we used in Afghanistan. A bit at the end of the first section caught my eye:

“Much of the world would gasp. Greenpeace called it inhumane; a Russian geologist blamed it for deadly earthquakes; critics would dub the weapon "thermo-barbaric" - so unfathomably lethal that it should never have been created.”

The Russian geologist immediately brought to mind another story from a few days ago, headlined “Scientist blames failure of monsoon on US warplanes.” The chief scientific officer at the Center for Atmospheric Sciences in New Delhi claims that the unusually dry Indian monsoon season is being caused by the “large volumes of greenhouse gases” that were released by US warplanes in Afghanistan.

Not only is America the awakened giant… not only do we act with crass unilateralism… not only do we wield impressively scary military power… apparently we also affect the very crust of the earth and the weather itself.

I’m not sure what to make of that. Both claims are clearly bunk, yet the mere fact that people made them suggests that the powers assigned to America in some parts of the world are beginning to border on the godlike.

Good. Something for our raging desert-dwelling enemies to contemplate.

Read more from the Middle East Archive
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Having once again come to the end of an exhausting couple of weeks’ worth of declaiming loudly, I’ve been thinking about cetacean religion. That’s because I wrote the phrase “human religious thought” a couple of days ago, which prompted me to think about other kinds of religious thought. I believe that whales and their relatives are the best candidates for such thought. They’re social. They’ve got big brains: the average adult sperm whale brain weighs 20 pounds. Their smaller dolphin cousins’ weigh about 3.75 pounds. For comparison, human brains weigh about 3 pounds. Not that brain size necessarily means anything. But I’ve noticed that the extra weight in dolphin brains is all in the in good, smart-making, folded-up cerebrum. More folds means more neurons packed into the skull, and the hemispheres of a dolphin's brain are much more densely folded than ours.

Read More...

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Quoth Bush the Younger:

"For those who yearn for peace in the Middle East, for those in the Arab lands, for those in Europe, for those all around the world who yearn for peace, we must do everything we possibly can to stop the terror...I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers. Thank you. Now watch this drive."

Papers are full of various tut-tuts today. Newsday reports that Bush "did not even pause for a breath" as he told reporters to observe his shot. In a column about Al Gore that I unexpectedly and wholeheartedly agree with, MoDo pauses to sarcastically note Bush's "sensitivity." Even the Pro Golf Association's website duly reports the President's "smirk." Many outlets made sure to mention that White House advisors "pleaded" with him not to "look like he was on a golf course" when he was there last month.

But I laughed aloud when I saw the footage--on Entertainment Tonight, no less. Why? Because it was funny. Here's the President of the United States, calling strongly and sternly upon the nations of the earth to stop heinous, evil acts. But he's on a golf course. He knows he's on a golf course. What no account reported is that he used the same Presidential Tone to direct the reporters' attention to his swing. He wasn't trying to pretend he was somewhere else, or not doing what he was doing. He was well aware of the absurdity of the situation.

Crass? Maybe.

But funny.

Read more from the Political Effluvia Archive
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After being at this for a few months, I’ve begun to notice that some themes are developing. They are (in no particular order):

• The Middle East


• Things Biblical


• Everyday Babble


• Hallucinations


• Dreams


• Intellectual Pissing Contests


• Extensive Quotes From Obscure Sources

A couple of those I’m going to have to get rid of or combine, I think. But I am beginning to plan a reorganization of the site, so that those who expect to encounter some pleasantly bizarre paragraphs with their morning coffee are not confronted with a pedantic essay on the impact of the Torah upon modern Israeli politics, and vice versa.

I will be migrating the site over to Moveable Type, because it looks swell and I’ve installed it onto my server all by myself which in turn has made me feel strong and powerful and geeky.

But: the realities of life intrude, and will delay the project and, no doubt, render posting for the next few weeks somewhat sporadic. I’m closing on a house at the end of August, and moving the first week of September, which means that I’ve got four billion and eight things to do.

So, of my regular readers—both of you—I beg indulgence and patience, and to new visitors I say, have a look around, thanks for stopping by, don’t hurt me.

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I've been resisting this all day. But the barrel...the fish...oh god...

Courtesy of Mr. Drudge, I read today of a certain Woody Harrelson. Said Mr. Harrelson:

• "The war against terrorism is terrorism. The whole thing is just bullshit."


• George Michael is "brilliant," and "incredibly brave" for putting out his Shoot The Dog single, in which he tries to revive his flagging career by taking a brilliant and incredibly brave stance against British Prime Minister Tony Blair and American President George Bush. Mr. Harrelson thinks that such an act could be "very dangerous."


• The Daily Mirror is also "very brave," and "bold" for agreeing with him about the war on terrorism.

Mr. Harrelson recently had an encounter with the British police after he trashed a London cab and then tried to skip out on the fare. The cab driver described Mr. Harrelson as a "caged animal." Mr. Harrelson described the event as "one of those terrible circumstances." Ah, yes. These things just happen, Mr. Harrelson. You smoke enough marijuana to choke a ruminant, and suddenly you're paying a cabbie over 500 pounds in damages. It's nobody's fault, really.

Apparently, Mr. Harrelson is also concerned that Mr. Michael is "too scared to go over to the States now." As well he should be. Unlike the civilized people of Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, we here in America are not averse to executing people who speak their minds. Mr. Michael is also an unabashed homosexual, which means that, should he come to our shores, we would have to capture him, bind him with rope, and place him next to a large, poorly built stone wall, which a group of Christian ministers would then push over on top of him.

You're right, Mr. Harrelson. It is dangerous in America. Our culture grants success to flagrant drug users who don't know that one can't be a vegan and also eat canapés. It supports the lifestyles of foreign homosexuals. It gives them fame and tremendous wealth. Fortunately, there are those of us who know the true path, and are committed to insuring that all of America--and eventually the world--stays upon it. Praise God! For He will assist us in our struggle against the sinning, unrepentant nonbelievers.

Since you "love it" over in London, Mr. Harrelson, I suggest that you remain there. Otherwise, you may find yourself strapped into a chair alongside Alec Baldwin and Tom Cruise while our Most Holy confessors apply jumper cables to your testicles.

Read more from the America Archive
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Steven Den Beste writes too much.

Bastard.

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Fires. Corporate scandal. Terror warnings. Wondering what else is in store?

--Kenneth Cole

That, in its entirety, is a billboard that Mr. Cole and his ad execs have seen fit to raise along the West Side Highway. It's a plain black field with white lettering in 4,000-point type or whatever size is required to permit viewing from the highway below. I see it every time I'm heading out of the city via the George Washington Bridge, and every time I see it, I spit the same venomous response: Shut up, Ken! I hate that billboard. And I hate Ken for putting it there.

This is Kenneth Cole the fashion designer, not the late Kenneth Cole, former Director of the Domestic Council under Presidents Nixon and Ford. His series of subway ads for the Reaction clothing line are ubiquitous here in New York: lots of trendy bewhiskered young men and waify young women thrusting various Kenneth Cole products at the viewer with airy coolness. None of the models have any pores; it's quite astounding.

The demonstrable idiocy of using a veiled reference to 3,000 dead people to increase brand awareness of a line of unremarkable clothing isn't what sets me off when I read the billboard's blasé question. It's the attitude. Oh, yawn...Cole says. The American mainland was attacked for the first time since 1812. Thousands dead. Been there, seen it, bought the tee-shirt. Then, as an afterthought: Hey, why not buy one of my shirts?

Just when I thought I couldn't be more irritated by this fatuous, ill-considered bit of billboard blather, I visited his site. There, I clicked on the "Cole Poll." And I was asked:

The government's recent terror warnings:

o For our own protection
o For their own protection

Results of the "Cole Poll" are 35.3% "our" and 64.7% "their," with a little over 5,000 respondents.

I'm not as disturbed by Cole's oh-so-hip ads as I am by the genetically engineered blowjob dwarfs that Steve Madden uses uses to hawk his particular brand of crap. But Madden, at least, stays within the familiar and warped advertising realm of distorted womens' bodies. Cole, on the other hand, seems to think that he has something to say. If there is an industry less qualified to have an opinion about anything that matters, I can't think of it. Except perhaps the porn industry. But the last time I checked, that industry wasn't putting up billboards.

The fact that 65% of the respondents to the "Cole Poll" felt that the government was covering it's own ass doesn't bother me. There's some truth to that, I'm sure. But who, exactly, is Kenneth Cole to say so? How does he reconcile his snarky, lefty-cynical West Side Highway billboard-thinking with the Burmese sweatshops that produced his clothing? Or the fact that his shoes are manufactured in China (long recognized as a bastion of human rights and political freedom)? I suppose that if you can justify an allusion to vaporized corpses as part of a marketing campaign, you can justify anything. Or, it seems, you can justify it until you get caught.

Tommy Hilfiger, at least, was using the American flag to sell his wares before September 11, so his recent spate of red-white-and-blue ads weren't out of character. But Kenneth Cole is another sort of creature. He doesn't get to go sit in the corner with Harrelson, Baldwin, and Cruise and think about what he did. Those folks are just grinning empty-headed yutzes who are used to being listened to, and mistake that sensation for actually having thoughts. Kenneth Cole has decided that the dead of September 11 are fit salespeople for his products, and that the carnage of that day is the equivalent of "fires," "corporate scandal," and other "current events."

No, Ken doesn't get to face the wall with his fellow-travelling dolts. Ken has to go have breakfast, lunch, and dinner with each of the families of the September 11 casualties, eating with a different family for each meal. That's three meals a day, every day, for nearly three years.

He can pick up the check.

Just for kicks, you can write the company here.

Read more from the September 11 Archive
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Bloody hell. Still stupidly hot, and all day was yesterday's post out there, being viddied, with its errors and typos. I hate that. Trying to put out a quality product, I am, and the Editorial Staff just falls down on the frickin' job, leaving me dangling in the wind, looking like a cretinous hack with the mental capacity of a hazelnut. It's everyone's fault but mine, that's what I say.

Anyway. Sod-all going on in my cranium today, which is just as well, because soon there will be a flurry of activity. The closing date is set. The movers are coming to estimate the cost of lugging Stuff from one housing container to another. Soon I will be a denizen of this city no more. I will like that.

I will like that just fine.

And then, once that has been accomplished, the first Astonished Head Site Redesign can commence. The first of many, I'm sure. But I'll be in a new house, with a new DSL connection, building a new version of my site, and that probably won't happen very often, so I plan to enjoy it and Cherish The Moment. Yes! See what happens when you grab life by the horns and shove Paxil down its throat?

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Still hot. More hot coming. Hot with rain. The urban jungle has never been more humid, fetid and insert-unpleasant-Latinate-root-id. This weekend promises to be a steam bath. Fun for the whole family. Bring the kids.

Can't wait to escape. Soon. Soon, my precious. No, wait. That's a different sort of obsessive creature, and besides, I'm not after jewelry. I'm after an abode! And space for my head. A place where my girlfriend is not harassed in my very courtyard, prompting me to go down and shout testosterone at youthful hooligans. Which was very satisfying, but so old. The problem, I have long maintained, is not the city. It's the people in it. The structures are just fine. It's all the humans, hiving it, brushing up against each others' psychic space until the line between person and monkey gets too damn blurred. Some people like it here. Some people, clearly, like people, of all sorts. I find an unpleasant experience unpleasant, not "diverse."

So, I'm off to bed now. Bed with the sleeping head on the pillow which is not as fluffy as it used to be and will be replaced when the bed that it is on is in the new bedroom of the house which is being bought, for me to live in.

Read more from the Peapod Archive
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Eh! I give up. I've been trying to determine if my recent spate of short, lame daily entries and my failure to produce any Bits of worth has affected my meager traffic. To do this, I studied the excellent graphs and charts and whatnot offered by my excellent host. I discovered that people read Astonished Head first thing in the morning, but that it's mostly a lunch-time read. I also discovered that traffic drops off precipitously on the weekends. Usually no more than 20 hits. Then bang! I get 120 hits yesterday. I give up. On the whole, though, the traffic for this month resembles a ski-slope of medium difficulty. Slowly declining.

Ah, well. Life does have an irritating habit of intruding, only so many hours in a day, and so forth. In a few minutes, I must venture out into the broiling afternoon and hunt down the elusive box. I most often find them lolling and relaxing near the Chinese Man's Liquor Store, an institution that I will miss when I live this area. "Verry good wine!" the Chinese Man yelled at me once. "Good wine, all French!" This, as I was contemplating a bottle of Transylvanian red.

And so it goes. In just under four weeks, all of this Stuff will be packed into box carcasses, trundled into a truck, and then whisked away, to be reassembled in a new configuration, in a new place. Meanwhile, the bits and bytes that make up this site will remain where they are: somewhere in Utah. Very strange.

Now: I must suit up. I've got some box nets here, and my MB-40 box tranquilizer gun, and my box call. I'll put on my full camouflage--which will be very uncomfortable, because it's so hot today--and sneak outside to begin the hunt. And please, no mail from all of you box-rights loonies. The herds in the city habitat are far too large. I'm maintaining the natural balance, here, and if you bleeding hearts had ever actually seen a herd of winter-starved boxes, you'd agree with me.

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In 1985, when Reagan was President and I was a young lad, I opened up a copy of Newsweek and was treated to a glossy color photo of a bunch of corpses splayed out in an airport in Rome. There was a lot of dark blood, and what appeared to be a substantial portion of someone's liver smeared across the floor. Terrorists had sprayed the ticket counter with automatic weapons. The action was orchestrated, the article said, by Abu Nidal. Full of rage and disgust, I typed up a letter to President Reagan and sent it off. "Why can we not apprehend this beast Nidal?" is one phrase I remember from that letter. Little did I know that, sixteen years later, I would be engulfed in a choking dustcloud and fleeing for safety as a result of actions taken by people just like Abu Nidal.

Now, Abu Nidal is dead. I'm happy about that. I'm doing a little dance.

The exact circumstances of his death are mysterious: all that's known is that his body had a bullet or two in it and was found in his home in Baghdad. The Fatah-Revolutionary Council, a group of Nidal's erstwhile terrorist buddies, says that he shot himself because he had cancer and was addicted to painkillers.

Good. I hope they're telling the truth. I hope he had cancer. And I hope that, by the end, the painkillers stopped working.

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Silflay Hraka and I nod at each other in the hall, apparently. I like that, and I suspect that it's a result of comments I made on the rarely-seen Instapundit comment page, which manifested itself in response to Silflay's proposal of August 2 to bring the Palestinians here to America. I disagreed. He blogrolled me anyway. Nice chap.

nod
/nod

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This morning, while sitting in the dentist's chair, with half my face feeling blown up to the size of a muskmelon and the whine of the drill coursing through the bones of my skull, I thought again about the late Abu Nidal.

I mean, it's wrong to wish someone a painful, cancerous death, isn't it? An interesting thought to have while the odor of burnt enamel fills your nostrils...lends the idea some perspective. A little weight.

Nidal's organization killed at least 275 people and injured hundreds more. In addition to the Rome and Vienna airport massacres, they hit the Neve Shalom synagogue in Istanbul, hijacked Pan Am Flight 73 in Karachi, and attacked a cruise ship in Greece. They are responsible for terrorist attacks in 20 countries, targeting the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Israel, moderate Palestinians, the PLO, and various Arab countries. Nidal himself was a sworn enemy of Yasser Arafat--he considered him a moderate. Think about it: this guy thought Arafat was too soft.

But still: painful, cancerous death? Who am I, to wish such a thing?

So I thought about it some more, as gelatinous, mercury-laden goop was forced into the hot, freshly excavated holes in my molars. In 1985, when Nidal's organization made their "political statements" at the El-Al ticket counters in Rome and Vienna, I was 14. I remember the photo of the Rome airport. Very graphic, as I mentioned yesterday. Full color and shiny, shiny, shiny. Newsweek is a shiny magazine, with slick paper, and that stock lent a memorable gloss to the pooled gore.

Remembering this as my drool was siphoned from my numbed mouth, I realized that it was probably my first conscious exposure to the Big, Nasty World. To evil. The first time I understood that there are those who would kill me without a thought, who had killed others without remorse, and would continue to do so. It was my first encounter with Monkey Mind.

Humans are of primate stock. Deep beneath all of that packed cerebrum lie the old, tree-swinging parts of our brains, the parts that are well-fired by ancient chemicals that squirt into our blood when we're enraged or frightened. I've watched a lot of footage of other savageries since 1985. I've seen a Chechnyan cut out the throat of a Russian soldier, watched Daniel Pearl die in similar fashion at the hands of cowards, seen smug militiamen cut off the fingers of a long-bearded, emaciated man and then muss his hair, almost affectionately: see, that wasn't so bad now, was it? I saw a video of a man being killed by a mob during one of the innumerable African conflicts: they had him bloody and half-conscious on the ground, and one after the men loped up to him. They kicked him. They beat him with sticks. Finally, they dropped cinderblocks on him, holding them high over their heads and then crushing his chest, his head. It continued long after the man was obviously dead. I was struck, watching the mindless mob at work, by the way they ran up to their victim, each in turn: that peculiar, loping, shambling gait, arms flopping at the sides as they stove in his ribs with a well-placed boot, then danced back to let others take a turn. Where had I seen it before?

Then it hit me: they looked like chimpanzees. Their body language of violence was exactly the same as I had seen on various nature programs documenting the behavior of chimps and other primates. When primates attack a weaker member of their group, or an interloper, they take the same running, shambling turns at their target, waving their arms with threatening bravado, shrieking with rage. The attack: vicious, brutal, quick. Then the dance back, cautious and fearful, in case the victim should lash out in defense.

And that's when I put a name to Monkey Mind. It's what drives racial hatred, ethnic cleansing, and terrorism. Monkey Mind mows down people at airline ticket counters. Monkey Mind hacks the limbs off of Tutsi boys and gang-rapes Bosnian Muslim girls. Monkey Mind shoots Palestinians for violating curfew to buy bread, and blows up Israelis in nightclubs. Monkey Mind flies airliners into buildings.

Iraq is saying now that Abu Nidal shot himself to avoid interrogation. They say that he was working with anti-government forces. Which, of course, doesn't mean that he was on our side. At any rate, my vicious wish for him to die in tumor-riddled agony came, I think, from old, familiar hatred. I've always remembered his name, since that day in December, 1985. He was the one behind that glossy, bloody image that imprinted itself into my brain. His was the first human name I associated with evil.

Thus: when I think of the possibility of painful, diseased death, I want it for him. The image of his very cells turning against him, eating him alive, humiliating him with pain, squeezing his dignity from him with every dose of increasingly less-effective medication, is to me an image of justice. It is especially so, because the punishment was not meted out by the hand of man: what must Abu Nidal have thought, to be so rewarded for his service to his god? When I read that, perhaps, he instead died by his own hand to escape the torture of his Iraqi hosts, I am disappointed. That is not justice. That is escape. There should have been no escape for him, just as there was no escape for his victims.

Monkey Mind works in all of us. It works in me: it is what allows me to find satisfaction in the death of an evil man.

Right now, I can't bring myself to say that's a bad thing. I will call it paradox, instead, and think about it while my teeth ache.

Read more from the Middle East Archive
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I'd like to write something important. Maybe about Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, who told him that he's doing too much, what with the judging for the entire nation of Israel and all. It's in Exodus 18, a remarkable bit of human interaction preserved for four millennia or so...Moses, prophet, leader, judge, being gently chided by his in-law. One of the many reasons why it's good to read the Old Testament as the cultural account that best survived the cauldron of Mesopotamian civilizations, rather than the Big Holy Book That Will Oppress You.

As I said...I'd like to write something important. But I won't. Not tonight. There's rain falling, pinging loudly on the air conditioner in the window. I just finished watching some M*A*S*H I taped, snuggling on the couch. There was some Saranac involved. The box hunts have gone well. I'm sleepy.

Time for rest.

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Apparently, Ted Turner is helping to defend the world against terrorism.

According to the WaPo, yesterday a joint Russian-American task force moved 100 pounds of weapons-grade uranium from the decaying Vinca reactor facility in Belgrade, Yugoslavia to a secure location at Dimitrovgrad in Russia, where it will be reprocessed into non-weapons grade material. It cost US taxpayers $2 million, which isn't much, and is certainly a worthwhile use of our money.

At the bottom of the article, the WaPo reports that another $5 million dollars was pledged by The Nuclear Threat Initiative, a private, non-profit organization created by former Senator Sam Nunn and Ted Turner. Until now, Russia has refused to take responsibility for nuclear material that the Soviet Union placed in its various satellite countries. The extra $5 million was needed to close the deal, and will be used to clean up two tons of radioactive waste stored on the reactor site, as well as to help keep the Vinca scientists employed. Now, that's just smart. Clean up the radioactive mess left by the Communists, and give impoverished nuclear physicists less incentive to go work for Iraq.

More evidence of the corrupt values instilled by capitalism, I suppose.

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And so, as my life descends into the chaos of packing, mortgaging and moving, so too does my site. I puttered around on it today...discovered that since FrontPage changed over to .asp all of my links to the pieces on the Letters page are now wrong...discovered that I don't really like the Letters page anymore...decided that I just hate the way the whole site is laid out...hate it, hate it, hate it...

Which is fitting, I suppose. I'm about to change every other damn thing in my life, so why not the site, too?

Everything must go!

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There is a curious state that I have been subject to for as long as I can remember. It falls somewhere between full wakefulness and deep sleep, and is composed of the conscious awareness of the former state combined with the hallucinatory reality of the latter. For want of a better term, I call the state “hypnagogic,” although that word carries with it a connotation of drowsiness and lack of awareness that is somewhat too strong.

Briefly: when in this state I see things that are normally confined to dreams, and I interact with them. This state often occurs late at night. Once, I awoke from dreamless sleep to discover that my bed was afloat on water, and that the bedroom wall next to me was the hull of a ship that I had drifted against. I pushed against the wall, and felt the sensation of my bed-raft floating away from the hull, while at the same time realizing that my efforts had no effect. When I was much younger, I would sometimes awake and see spiders or other vaguely unpleasant things, which would sometimes provoke me to leap from my bed, flinging the covers at whatever I saw. Generally, any physical effort on my part brings me fully into wakefulness.

Lately this state has taken a more curious turn: sometimes, I see gods. Old, ancient, primordial gods. Shapeless gods from before Yahweh, or El, or Anatu. Gods whose names can't even be rendered properly in our alphabets…approximations are kl'dk and skck, and strange, clicking, rushing, burbling sounds that remind me of what, perhaps, a thousand cubic miles of locusts might sound like underwater. Names that I feel in my gut but cannot actually hear. When I awake in the night and try to make muddled sense of how the light has filtered through the curtains from the courtyard, and the patterns then resolve themselves into these beings, I am deprived of speech. I cannot address them. I know the “deep dark dread” that came upon Abraham when Yahweh came to him, and it is even deeper, and darker, and more dreadful, for these are gods that cannot be truly present with us, cannot even speak to us. They are a form of age-old experience…collections of will, and intention, and knowledge, aware of neither human reason nor intellect. Which is not to say they are beasts. Far from it. But they are alien. We could never worship them, for their demands would be incomprehensible to us. Adrammelech demanded that babies be burned for him. The demands of these beings…I cannot even articulate them.

And yet, during these foggy, half-awake visitations, I receive the acute sense that, even today, they influence us. In the muddy pits full of corpses in Cambodia and the backwaters of Europe…they are there/not-there, in the peculiar way of a presence that is of the void. A chasm is an absence, yet it “is.” These beings are the same way…undeniably real, unaccountably absent. Since these…“visitations” began, I sense this there/not-there in the voids of downtown New York. Re-reading John Hershey's “Hiroshima,” I felt the there/not there as well. I suspect that the same could be found in Dresden, or Auschwitz, or the oil fields of Kuwait. There is something about the ever-increasing human capacity to both rend order into utter disorder and to create order from complete disorder that is now, to me, a constant echo of these old and ancient things. I can't quite put an image or word to the sensation, but I experience such echoes everywhere.

I expect that little or none of this will have relevance to anyone who happens to read it. These disturbances are my own. There is no priesthood that serves these beings, no context that will aid in interpreting the experience of them, no extant scripture that tells tale of them. They are from a time long, long before marks were incised into soft clay to tell of Gilgamesh.

Yet…they're here, now. And they were absent, for a very, very long time. Somehow, they have returned. I don't think that's a good thing. They are, at the last, frightening. They don't wish us harm…because the idea of harm does not exist for them. Neither do they wish to benefit us, for the same reason. They exist outside of any system of thought or morality that we have constructed. In fact, they cannot be said to “think” at all. Yet they act, in ways that defy our notions of causality.

As for the young gods—Yahweh, Allah, all of those other human constructions…they are just puppets. Weak, empty puppets. I suspect that it is through them that these old, unpronounceable gods will have their ways with us. We devalue these puppets at our peril.

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Here's my first mention on Instapundit. Just a letter I sent in, cribbed from last Friday's entry about Ted Turner's good deed. No link, though, and I am profoundly grateful for that.

Right now this site is embarrassing, like my apartment.

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"Waiter! There is a mustache...in my soup!"

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Let's see...one more trip to the dentist, tomorrow, for some drilling into my skull...a trip to Philadelphia to rendezvous with a generously donated automobile...also tomorrow...and, on Thursday, a trip to the new town, to stay overnight, and then the house closing on Friday at noon. We'll be meeting in front of Hop's Saloon, and will each march ten paces, turn, draw our lawyers and fire.

Huh. I'm busy. How grown-up of me.

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The closing draws nigh. Posting will be sparse for the next few days.

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