A Pilgrim’s Digression

From The New Yorker, Nov. 7, 2005.

Maybe this is one of those things that, in my density, I’ve only just noticed; or maybe this is yet another new feature released just this afternoon with which Google means to conquer the world.

Google Homepage

It’s like My Yahoo!, only Google. Only better. It supports RSS feeds in a simpler manner than Yahoo! I added feeds for all of our sods brood blogs, dragged and dropped them into the left column so that they look nice and neat, and now I’ve got easy access to all my friends’ postings. In the middle column I have fun stuff like “Quote of the Day.” In the right column I placed news feeds for all the major news sources, with my gmail account at the top.

Democrat Joe Lieberman has written an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal that takes to task those Liberals and Moderates who increasingly support a withdraw from Iraq. Titled Our Troops Must Stay, Lieberman posits that a premature withdrawal (how I hate that phrase, with its sexual overtones) would sacrifice the 27 million Iraqis who desire freedom to the 10,000 terrorists who want civil war.

Lieberman is a bit too chummy with Sean Hannity for my taste—I probably would not vote for the man—but I like him, and I think he is forthright and genuine. However, I think his worries are misplaced and serve only to undermine the groundswell now forming for a withdrawal from Iraq within the next six months to a year.
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Before my leave-taking last week, I noticed a flier posted in the elevator lobbies around the library, advertising a retirement party for an “icon” who has worked here forty-six years. At one time, I would have said I can’t imagine working anywhere past retirement age, let alone forty-six years. Thirty years is enough for me, not one day more.

Now, I am not sure retirement sounds so enticing. I can fully understand why someone might continue working past the point that they don’t have to work any longer. There is great relief in work, so long as the work is not too dull. I can find comfort in an inter-office mail envelope and distraction in any number of tasks which, once completed, are forgotten in an hour. Work is good, work is healthy. I returned to work today; I am good, I am healthy.
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In a glowing Washington Post review of Goblet of Fire, Christy Lemire wrote that the third “Harry Potter” film, The Prisoner of Azkaban, was in the style of German Expressionism. Oddly, she found no such categorical terminology to attach to the film she was supposed to be reviewing, Goblet of Fire.

The reason becomes apparent upon seeing the film: it has no style. From a purely visual or cinematic standpoint, Goblet of Fire is the least interesting of the four films based on the “Harry Potter” series. There is something in this movie for everyone to dislike, from film buffs to Potter fans.

Potter fans will be greatly disappointed in a movie that retains much of the skeletal framework of the novel, but denudes the plot of many beloved details, or else alters details that were germane to the original story. Film buffs will find the movie lacking in any notable beauty or richness; it is stylistically flat, its plot garbled for those who haven’t read the book, and the cutting of the film is as herky jerky as a ride on a county fair Scrambler. Newell, best known as director of Four Weddings and a Funeral and Donnie Brasco, was clearly the wrong director for this film.
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Iraqi Minister Says Torture Claims Were Exaggerated

Almost as if he was channeling the spirit of Dick Cheney, Interior Minister of Iraq Bayn Jabr accused critics of Iraq’s secret prisons of supporting the terrorist insurgency in a press conference today. He also accused these same “terrorist” critics of exaggerating the scale of the torture. One of the most unbelievable moments in the press conference came when Jabr accused a paralyzed Polio victim, who was incarcerated and tortured at the prison, of being paid by the insurgency to detonate roadside bombs. Thus this paralyzed terrorist must have deserved to have the flesh peeled from his body.

These are the disciples of the Bush Administration, those whom the President would have us believe are the equivalent of our beloved Founding Fathers.

This foreign entanglement diverges farther and farther from the rosy scenarios portrayed by Cheney and others back in 2003. It is time to leave Iraq for the Iraqis to sort out, as Representative Murtha said yesterday.

I’ve written a new piece of satirical fiction, which I have published under the title The Lost Book of Onan. If you take the time to read it, I hope you derive some enjoyment from it.

About ten years ago, I wrote a piece called the Apocryphal Book of Onan, which is much inferior to my updated version. Indeed, it’s sole recommendation is that it is under a thousand words; ‘many words won’t fill a bushel,’ as the Aphorist said.

I recall that in the summer of 1994 or 1995, I read the piece to my friends Todd and Dawn, as well as Dawn’s sister Linda and her cousin Shelley. Linda, I think, was shocked and offended. Shelley didn’t seem to mind it, nor did Dawn. Todd, who was much more serious-minded at the time, thought it blasphemous and juvenile.

The charge of blasphemy may in fact be true, but if so, I blaspheme out of ignorance rather than a Voltairean contempt for religion. On the subject of my juvenile sense of humor, I own up to that as well. The updated version of the story is, if anything, more chock full of sexual puns and double entendres than the version I wrote when I was closer to my true juvenile stage. For comparison’s sake, I will also publish the 1994 version of this story, and you can judge for yourself whether I have matured with age or only grown more perverse. Following are links to both pieces. Enjoy.

The Lost Book of Onan

The Lost Book of Onan [circa 1994]

Of Onan we know little, but much hermeneutical ink has been spent upon what little we do know. In the Book of Genesis, we learn that Onan was a son of Judah, and that when his brother Er died leaving no offspring, under Jewish law Onan was required to conceive a child with his widowed sister-in-law. Onan, knowing that the child would not be his child, practiced coitus interruptus each time he lay with his brother’s wife. For that, God killed him. From four verses in the 38th chapter of Genesis, much of the Christian church’s teachings on human sexuality are derived.

With the recent discovery of a lost piece of the Apocrypha, the Book of Onan, our understanding of God’s Will for the member of His body, in regards to human sexuality, is greatly increased. It has been my great honor to have been chosen by the Vatican to edit this small, yet remarkable book, the Book of Onan. It is my contention, as well as the contention of those other Theologians who have read it, that in this book we have a genuine work of Apocrypha. Accordingly, we have recommended to Pope Benedict that he immediately give consideration to the inclusion of this book in all future editions of the Holy Word.

Perhaps some explanation is in order detailing how such a treasure as a previously unknown text of Holy Scripture came into the hands of the Brothers of the Holy Prepuce.
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Judge for yourself. The Pentagon has admitted to using an incendiary chemical, white phosphorous, during the siege of Falluja, as reported by CNN. If you go to Google News, the story does not even rank a presentation on the front page, however.

Search on “white phosphorous” at Google News and you get about 375 hits, the vast majority of them European news sources. I’ll quote from a Swiss news source:

ISN Security Watch - US confirms use of white phosphorus in Iraq

ISN SECURITY WATCH (Wednesday, 16 November: 13.40 CET) - The US military has admitted that it used white phosphorus as an incendiary weapon during a 2004 offensive in the Iraqi city of Falluja.

Pentagon spokesman Colonel Barry Venable said the military fired a “white phosphorous round or rounds into the position, because the combined effects of the fire and smoke will drive them out of the holes so that you can kill them with high explosives”.

Venable defended the tactic, saying that the use of phosphorus was not illegal, as it was not classified as a chemical weapon.

However, the Pentagon had previously stated that white phosphorus was used only for the purposes of creating smokescreens and illumination.

Under normal circumstances, white phosphorus is released high in the air as a way to illuminate dark enemy positions. But if it is released at a low enough altitude, it will still be active when it reaches the ground, where it can melt human flesh on contact. In large quantities, it can dissolve flesh to the bone.

The Pentagon statement comes in the wake of a Italian documentary alleging that US forces used chemical weapons in Iraq.

According to an earlier report from ISN Security Watch, the documentary was based in large part on comments from former US soldier Jeff Englehart.

“I received an order to use caution in Falluja, because we had used white phosphorus on the city,” Englehart told Ranucci. “We all knew that phosphorus kills, burns the body on contact, and eventually melts right down to the bone.”

Reuters is reporting that we also used “a firebomb similar to napalm.” No doubt the Pentagon considers such a bomb appropriate because we didn’t agree to classify it as a chemical weapon, either. It’s rather funny, when you think about it: because men make laws, we can choose to obey or disregard them at our pleasure. Interesting that no one at the Pentagon seems to feel it necessary to refer to a higher ethic of right or wrong than man-made laws and treaties.

The Reuters story also presents more testimony from an American soldier who was there, Jeff Englehart, who saw burned bodies of children and women. If true, it rather contradicts the Pentagon’s official statement that white phsphorous was only used against military targets. Oh wait, no it doesn’t. There’s a semantic difference between intentional use of weapons against civilians and collateral damage, which is what the military commonly terms “dead women and children.”

Anyway, the Reuters story is a must-read, in my opinion. No doubt supporters of the war will soon be marching in lockstep to the tune of “Kill the Messenger,” trashing Englehart as a traitor and a liar. Since trashing soldiers who oppose the war is Michelle Malkin’s specialty, I suspect a column from her on Englehart must be imminent.

I never write about my work, and I rarely even refer to the fact that I am an employee of the Government, for several reasons. For one, I’ve read too many news stories about bloggers being fired for mingling their creative and strictly fiduciary careers. For two, the ethics rules governing legislative branch employees’ use of their positions outside official business are pretty arcane, thus dangerous. For three, I don’t care to deal with bitter emails from people who disagree with me politically asking how I come to be blogging at 12:30 every day when I ought to be at work for the people of the United States and their Congressmen and women (and the answer is: it’s called “lunch hour.” Also, I often post-date the time stamp on my blog posts in WordPress, thus publishing in the middle of the day or in the middle of the night).

But I read a story today in the Washington Post that I thought appropriate for a blog post. Titled Mini-Porn Could be Mega-Business, the article is ostensibly about how the porn industry is already capitalizing on the new video iPod. Just as an aside, I refuse to call the porn business the “adult industry,” just as I refuse to call strip bars “gentleman’s clubs”—these are euphemisms that suggest that people who buy these products or frequent these establishments are more mature and refined than the folks who don’t. There is nothing adult about wanking to pictures of sex acts in a magazine or video, nor is there anything gentlemanly about putting twenties in a woman’s panties…or other, um, places. I’m not being judgemental about the acts themselves, only about the use of the English language to obscure the meaning of these acts.
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