After all the sin we've had I was hopin' that we'd turn back


william eggleston, woman on swing Jackson, Mississippi, late 1960s

* the rude pundit. excerpt:

"It's strange that an enormous, almost ridiculously micromanaging document like the Iraqi draft constitution ought to come down to its use of a single word. And while one could easily say that the fact that the document begins with a shout-out to the 'Sons of Mesopotamia' means women are shat on from the outset and that the line, 'No law can be passed that contradicts the undisputed rules of Islam,' means that Iraq will become mullahrific, it's a single word, used a couple of times in the entire constitution, that means Iraq is fucked.

"It is the word that, if amended to the U.S. Constitution, would make the Christian right go into a weeklong orgy the likes of which Babylon only dreamt of. James Dobson would go down on the withered, dusty snatch of Phyllis Schlafly while Chuck Colson, having a prison flashblack, fucks Dobson in the ass as Ted Haggard, madly jacking off, shoves a butt plug into the heaving, weeping Watergate criminal. Such madness would ensue, with Beverly LaHaye unable to fit enough cocks into her mouth to satisfy her, with Tony Perkins and Cal Thomas sword fighting on top of her lapping tongue. Surrounding it all will be a circle jerk of Pat Robertson, Tom DeLay, and Antonin Scalia, who has his prostate massaged by Clarence Thomas to ensure Lil' Tony gets his full mojo going.

"Goddamn, Gomorrah was destroyed for less, with the piles of bald eagle guts that the fucking mass will devour raw, with Terri Schiavo's stolen ashes mixed with blood smeared all over them, with virgin female members of Campus Crusades for Christ deflowered by trains of megachurch goers right on top of huge marble Ten Commandments monuments. Such grace, such smells, such screeches. But it'd be a once in a lifetime celebration over one word. A word that is part of the Iraqi constitution to be voted on by the people of that pseudo-nation in the coming weeks."

* New Orleans: battered but bars are open. excerpt:

"Gail Henke could think of no better way to celebrate the French Quarter’s survival of Hurricane Katrina than to belly up to a bar on Bourbon Street with a vodka and cranberry juice. Call it a libation to the storm gods.

"'You know what? There’s a reason why we’re called the Saints,' the 53-year-old tour booker said Monday as she communed with 20 or so other survivors. 'Because no matter what religion you are, whether you’re a Catholic, whether you’re voodoo, whether you’re Baptist or so on, so on, and so on — we all pray. We all pray.'

"'I’m not a religious fanatic. But God has saved us.'

* "The great art of making things seem closer together. In reality. Or from where we are standing; in memory, 'Ah! que le monde est grand à la clarté des lamps! / Aux yeux du souvenir que le monde est petit!' ['Le Voyage,' Baudelaire] This is the mysterious power of memory -- the power to generate nearness. A room we inhabit whose walls are closer to us than a visitor. This is what is homey about home. In nurseries we remember, the walls seem closer to each other than they really are, than they would be if we saw them today. The sight of them tears us apart because we have become attached to them. The great traveler is the person who passes through cities and countries with anamnesis; and because everything seems closer to everything else, and hence to him, since he is in their midst, all his senses respond to every nuance as truth. The distanced Romantic is as ignorant of this as the Positivist." -- Walter Benjamin, 'The Great Art of Making Things Seem Closer' (1929)