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BLACK HELICOPTERS EPISODE 3 WEDNESDAY
the FIFTH - 5:55 PM "Maybe the nanny government has
a point," Andy winked, as they stacked up in the lone cashier's line
behind six portly, middle-aged conventioneers, one of whom sported a blue
sash with gold lettering: "Grafex".
"Up at the U. the Bloomberg live-forever lobby has been picketing the
Student Union. No coffee, no meat... no ooey-gooeys,"
he pointed. "No coke (the soda), no chocolate in vending machines. Eating hotdogs made a Federal crime…" Glenn
fingered the edge of a dripping cinnamon bun, then sucked that finger. "You were the one, I recall, whining
about how student activism’s gone out of fashion. So what else are virtuous
people picketing in this Latter Day paradise besides lattes, Costa Ricans,
Jews, Kate Smith, old Confederate statues and the Catfish?" |
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"Well,
recommissioning Fort Marston does imply only one of two things... more interventions,
somewhere which, along with your fellow’s draft to produce boots on the ground
to march south through Costa Rica to Panama, then northeast from occupied
Venezuela through Colombia while waiting for Putin to invade Poland and Israel
to invade Egypt; that’s what you radical centrists believe... hnph!..." Andy winced as the cashier rang up their
orders. “And higher property values,
meaning higher rents, higher retail prices and more people sleeping in the
shelters, the jails or on the streets…”
"Don't
worry, it's on the Conks," Glenn said, slipping the cashier one of those
new Belgian debit cards, some factor beyond platinum… titanium, maybe... or
petroleum... and pressing his thumb to the laserpad.
"It sends a message to Moscow but, yes, Jack would also send the spooks
and troops into Central America and overthrow governments, if necessary, and,
by the former I mean the intelligence community, not the African American – but
that would be in the service of nation building and to prosecute the war on
drugs. Gangs…” he corrected himself,
“assuming people of substance talk him out of ending our war on substance abuse
and raking in the revenues from legal designer cannabis. But what else in this brave new world of the
five dollar cuppa regular do your hippie zippies say?"
"Well...
the usual talk about concentration camps. Not so usual, actually, it sort went
away for awhile at the end of the last century before nine-eleven and the
police riots and then the Capitol siege and Inauguration terror brought it
back. Ten years for women who get
abortions or miscarry, life for their doctors.
The Martial Law Wall. ICE. Gitmo. Of course, only for Nazis and Iranians
and Venezuelans. At first. Then, Koreans... North or South, they all
look the same... and Brazilians, Mexicans and, of course, the French. Then the NSA, peeking at blogs. Terroristic threat prosecutions up two
hundred forty nine percent last year.
Costa Ricans, now and with all those drones in the air, up
there..."
"Sir!"
the cashier challenged Andy. He looked up, she pointed to the thumbpad.
"He's
buying!" Andy objected.
"You're
drinking," she countered, waiting for him to comply. "Otherwise nobody
gets the ten percent Convention discount."
"Forget
the discount," Glenn decided, picking up his tray. "God, I remember
the Repression, now. Those were the good old days! Sons and daughters of the
light against their dark elders... not some insurance clearinghouse monitoring
caffeine and sugar, cyberhackers working for the televangelists scanning social
media posts to see who’s even looked up Planned Parenthood and angry min-wage
security guards at airports fondling your junk.
And now the Big Data is another go-to issue for the radical right, who
are getting all the fun of 1968 except that their music sucks. Forgot though... was the neo-Stalinism lite
supposed to come just before the Revolution or after?"
"Heyyy... given Trump hired Vanilla
Ice last Christmas. Speaking of dark
elders authorizing concentration camps," Anne persisted, once they'd
squeezed into nasty little black formica chairs dandied up to look like wrought iron by busy, little Asian
fingers, "when was the last time you went to Masty
Hall? I've only seen blueprints and pictures... how long since it went up, five
years ago? Six? Looks tres dreary... very Rem Koolhaus..."
"Koolhaas!" Glenn snapped.
Andy
shrugged. "I'm not the one to ask. Waldemar Enseñada
concerts and gun shows ain't my idea of fun. Both too
expensive, and crawling with cops and Turks… and the basketball team still
sucks. They keep talking about bringing back football… Division Two… but the
anti-pedophile, anti-concussion lobby swats that down. In case you haven't noticed, people don't go
out often since they lowered the drunk driving limit
to zero point five statewide once motor vehicles started coming back from the
plague, not to mention Russian gas prices rising again. We’re racing Utah towards prohibition; oh two
at the discretion of the officer, so there isn't that much to protest except
for safety itself. You get the occasional riot at most universities only when
the home team wins."
"Come
the Revolution," Glenn predicted, "our Revolution, I mean, Masty Hall will
get all the Interpol conventions it can handle. Those weapons scanners they've
put in… Tom showed me… they blow right through a woman's clothing. Got perverts
lined up round the corner for those minwage security positions, hired away from airports. Rancid coffee, this!" he
added. “Goddam’
Brazilian tariffs...”
The
corner window next to which they were seated afforded a view of the City's
streets which, over the few downhill short blocks they could see, rapidly
degraded from gleaming office buildings, hotels and theatres to the grimier
tenements and warehouses of Glenn and Anne's memory. "Is that a soup
line?" he now pointed.
"Cat'lics," Andy informed her. "Religion's gotten
a big head, ever since the Big Mac’s’ Twenty-Ninth Amendment opened the
government’s pocketbooks to subsidizing Jesus schools and all that faith-based
jazz once Pope Leo leaned on President Donnie... lotta
people chow down there; more, really, than at the Hellfire Club. You remember
Reverend Owens, always on TV..."
"Wasn't
he the one we marched for to get him out of jail when he had those money problems?"
Anne remembered. ”And mistress
problems?”
"That's
him. Cut a deal, he’d found Jesus and Adam Smith and said the New World Order
was plotting against him, or maybe the reptilian space invaders... food ain't bad, but the sermons you have to sit through first,
they're like... corrosive. Make you feel like shit for having been born. Oh...
there's still the Hare Krishnas, over by University,
there it's the food gives you the runs."
"They've
got vegetarian bums?'
"Hey,
this is a college town, blue dot driftin’ on your
great red tide. Still cranks out wannabe teachers and social workers – end up
clerks for the Motor Vehicles Department. People of virtue, conscience; got to
watch your language. The harmless community here, professional victims in other
words, they call our clients the
homeless community I think, that or... what's that word the Catfish uses... the
dispossessed. As in even Satan don’t
want them anymore.?"
"As
in lacking possessions," Glenn corrected.
"Yeah.
Or the ones on spiritual paths."
"I
suspect the only spirits at the end of their rainbows are the vapors from white
port, Thunderbird or plastic bottles of generic vodka. Or the white lightning, hand sanitizer and
mouthwash, since they raised sin taxes.
Surplus people... you can house them in jails or in shelters, and
churches can feed them, but to what end?" Glenn leaned forward, fingering
his glasses. "Only the dignity and purpose of a mass political movement
can begin the process that would get them permanently off the streets. Of
course that might cut into your client base budget..."
Andy
scowled. "Something I forgot to tell you? Jefferson Street Sanctuary?
Defunded! Going on six months... building and the people still there, of
course, but Pinhead cut our money off, soon as he won his second term. Got some
kind of real estate scam cooking, I hear, but they'd rather let us fade away
than have to call in the police or Turks and do a Waco, or that place in
Philadelphia, back in the day? Building's
still in litigation, could be for years until the economy bounces back, if
ever. Burned up all our assets, though, keeping it warm with space heaters over
last winter, courtesy of the Texans and Saudis and Venezuelan occupation
pirates; next winter finishes us. So
much for global warming!"
"Then
how do you get by?" Anne worried. "Personally..."
"Me?"
Andy tapped his cup. "Deal. Steal. Get up five in the morning, wait in
line at day labor if circumstances permit, then check out the dumpsters. Not the Friendly Frost, tho’
– some guy with a knife started sleeping under the discards and menaced their minwage clerks, so they locked it. Used to throw out whole roasted children...
chickens, I mean,” he recalled with a wry, sad smile. “Stab lab Tuesdays and Fridays except,” and
he removed a brown plastic card from his pocket, turned it over twice. “Maybe not any more… they stopped paying cash
for plasma last week – give out these debit cards that don’t work anywhere but GodMarts, so we had a little altercation yesterday and they
accidentally on purpose plunged their needle into a vein instead of artery –
swelled up my shoulder like it was from a corpse hauled out of the river. Exploit the kindness of strangers. Until the
Coalition wins, of course, forces everybody out of Jefferson and into their
concentration camps... or what's that Catfish-speak, labor environments?
Something like that. Planting trees and picking grapes so we don't miss all the
Mexicans getting shipped back or electrocuted at the border… you hold their
welfare checks and they have to attend re-education and re-doctrination
meetings all night after work. Best of all, the nice people don't have to look
at us any more because we're not there anymore now that they’re
sending building inspectors around to the slums to kick people out of their
homes. Then Pinhead and his developer cronies lean on the courts to settle and
demolish, put up the next phase of condos for gene splicers, all up and down
Jefferson... this isn't so bad,"
he said, swishing a mouthful of coffee. "Not worth four eighty-five,
though."
Glen
put down his cup, wiped his fingers studiously on the Coffee Shoppe's white and
pink napkin. His gray eyes, peering through the lightly-tinted pink spectacles,
were suddenly cold, focused. "Our programs have been instituted in three
states, fifteen major municipalities and over eighty independent counties over
the last three years, and they work. As do our clients. You will
see rebooted people on the ground at the Convention... or would, if you'd
attend. I offered to cover your membership fee back in August, remember? And they would not be residing in
concentration camps, either! That's abusive language... as reprehensible as
Tillerman's people calling the UN monitors Fascists."
"Why
who'd ever have thunk of that?" Andy slapped his
forehead. "My old pals, shilling for Tillerman’s re-jackbooting
corps! You signed consent forms for those little body implants yet? Microchipping the
bums like dogs?"
"It's
not that way, Andy, and you know
it!" Anne reproached. "That’s only for criminals – violent
criminals. The Coalition for a New
Consensus is still an evolving organism, a magnet for the dispossessed no
matter their former ideological bias or how much or little money they may have
– a Trump for the good people, the way that blog calls it. We're the big tent
people, this year, and we’re not going to make the mistake of factioning off, like the Reforms did before they got their
roots established... or being taken over by Wall Street and #MeToo, like the
Democrats, or the televangelists, like the Tea Party… we're not just a bunch of
burnt-out Sandersistas, or tinfoil-hat Muskies... we’re getting plenty of new faces coming over
the fence to us too, from the Perot, Buchanan and Ventura
tendencies, as well as from Republicans of principle. MTG’s on the bus; Jack
and Rayna have meetings arranged with Liz Cheney,
Senators Manson and Cinema, with both Nader and Barr..."
"Trump
one zero’s dope-hating Aygee?" Andy rolled his
eyes. “Roseanne?”
"Bob Barr. The Libertarian… and after him, we start in
on Ron Paul.
"I'm
sure!" Andy smirked. "They go out with a resume with this big blank
space while they've been living in Jack’s Happy Camp, what do they tell employers,
if they can find any... they've been selling Rayna's Modes door to door the
past few years? I'd rather hire a burned-out Uberista
or home caregiver, or some thug out of jail! So they get work on the
Congressional training minimum, four thirty-five an hour before taxes which,
with fifty cents, will buy you this cup of coffee,” he pointed downwards, “and
a bum hotelroom's up to one seventy five a week
here."
"We’re
not eliminating social security and food stamps; in fact, the Catfish is working on rent and utility stamps for
the working poor... once we pressure the Congress to repeal Trump’s tax cuts
for the rich. We’re doubling down on Kamalala, Andy,
the Veep, you know, a woman of color and tired of losing everything but the
symbolic crap? Could yet be one of ours…
if enough people just give Jack a chance..."
“One
of yours,” Andy leaned back and
sighed, “said the plantation massa.” Looking out the window, towards the
intersection, he saw several conventioneers begin crossing the street until four
Turks converged on them, two from either direction, escorting them back to the
curb. Two looked white under their light blue berets, Scandinavians or Canadians, there was an Asian and an African so black he
seemed almost a dark blue. He could see the identity papers being checked and
the mouth of the leader moving, pointing to the traffic box into which
pedestrians were supposed to swipe their ID plastic and input thumbprints
before crossing. Apparently they'd come from some place not yet under U.S. mandatory
ID laws or U.N. peacekeeping dictates, so they'd be let off with warnings...
tickets being poison for the hospitality industry.
"And
what happens to kids... the ones whose parents can't feed them so they kick
them out and we get them at the Sanctuary?" Andy's desire to
bait his old friends increased with every sip of their charity coffee.
"You Conks want to rent them out to foster farms, like the chicken
company, or reunite them with the families that have been beating and abusing
them since the first time they fell... quote, unquote... out of the
cradle. Not to mention the grandparents
unless they get sick as well as old and use up all their assets in the nursing
home… wheel ‘em out on the street in their IV cables and Depends an’ we get
plenty of them, too…"
"The
sixties are over," Glenn said, with a mournful wink at Anne. “We’re working on it.”
"That
they were, and when I was two years old and Nixon was elected King. So are the '70s, 80’s and '90s." Andy
removed his papers from his hip pocket with a pouch and began to sprinkle
tobacco. "And the nothings and the teens. But the 2020’s... they ain’t never goin’ ‘way!"
"For
Christ's sake, man!" Glenn erupted, "don't let anybody see
you! That security guard's passed twice, looking in, since we sat
down!"
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COLUMN by JACK "CATFISH" PARNELL... "ENTROPY and RENAISSANCE"
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