May 7, 2004
The Golden Seduction of Buddha

if religious and sexual revelation make you uncomfortable, i would advise you simply check your email. yup, yer warned

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the other night i was lonely, and even though it is my lot, being crazy and unfit to marry, i decided to walk and find myself a woman, and went down to the restaurant to see rae-anne. it was late and there was nobody there except two old women who mop and work in the back, and i ordered some food from her and stood and ate it at the counter, as is my custom when it is that late and nobody else is through. and we talked and laughed and i was enjoying myself so much, so happy not to be alone that i narrowed my eyes at some point and said

i would like to take you out somewhere and what do you think of that

and she said, that is very flattering, and you are a good enough looking man, and she bubbled, nervous, but I am a buddhist and I think that I only want to be with other buddhists, so you can see how this would be a problem

and I said

I am a buddhist too, or at least, i am more buddhist than I am anything else. at least I can believe in the Void.

and this, I think, shocked her just enough

what do you know about the void, she said.

it is the obsidian wall. it is all consuming, I said, and once the shades are drawn, we are cast into it and there is nothing.

but how would you know this, she said. you are way too white...

and i laughed, and said, perhaps you have not ever reached satori. buddha would not have minded if I were white. he would have said, of course he is white, of course he can understand the void. how would he not? i am buddha and i have taught him. he has read my teachings and has become buddha. we are the same, and because i know the void, he also knows the void. so it is, perfectly.

you are not buddhist, she said, you have just picked up some lines from the movies. you don't know any thing about the zen way of thinking.

oh no? I said. perhaps you do not see it, because perhaps you are like a schoolgirl, reaching for her childhood teachings without proper contemplation, while i am an adept, who though foreigner to the original teachings, have come to master it.

listen.

and i looked outside at the sky. and i looked at the snow coming down, and i noticed how it settled on the budding trees and i said.

winter sky in spring
but even with falling snow
the birch trees blossom

and I turned back to her, to her open mouth, and said

as it is, perfectly.

and then she was mine.

and i took her home when she was finished her shift and we did not speak much and it was obvious what would happen and when we were through the door we pressed up against each other and pulled off each others shoes and jackets and fell down and got up and walked to the bedroom and fell on each other and at some point the moon shone through the window and we were taken in by its beauty and we turned over to look at it, and she lay in bed, not sure what to do after a certain point. and we kissed, gently, and maybe she wanted to fall asleep, maybe not, but we kissed some more and her tongue darted in and out of my mouth and at some point her breathing was fast enough and i was hard enough that i pulled off her pants and mine and kissed her legs, licked her thighs up and down and lapped up the cream on her sweet eggy nub

and then when she is about to lose herself, i lift her up by the legs and throw them over my shoulder and lay it into deep and she gasps cause she hasn't had it for a long time and her ass is tight and solid and it feels so fucking great that i have to slow down the fucking or come so i slow it down and we fuck and fuck and we are pressed tight and we roll over each other like that for an endless time and at some point she rolls over me and slides her body back and forth on me and pushes herself up until our hips are clenched together and her tits are so juicy and her ass is so bouncy and i am inside of her so deep and we pull the sheets over our heads and sweat and move and breathe our own air until nothing makes sense in the darkness and we bite and grip our hands and gasp as we are cast into the void.

and then we lie there together in darkness. smiling buddhas, luminous and radiating.

May 6, 2004
The Virtuoso

I have to say. At times, there are performances by great men and women that simply enthrall the mind - athletes, musicians or generals - they reach a peak in their careers where they cannot be matched by anyone in their fields.

And so it is now, for President Bush.

In the past two days, he has put on a peerless performance which merits special consideration. To begin with, he and Rumsfeld have enraged and embarrassed their own political party over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners and a possible cover-up, prompting high-profile Republicans like John McCain,who was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, to lash out at the administration.

"It's a neglect of the responsibilities that Secretary Rumsfeld and the civilian leaders of the Pentagon have to keep the Congress informed of an issue of this magnitude," Mr. McCain said.

On his own, Bush has failed to apologize for the abuse of the prisoners and has completely enraged the Arab world with his muted speech.

He has also renewed his widely reviled support for the Gaza pullout - a plan which didn't even pass the Israeli Likud and has been condemned by 50 former American diplomats, who said:

"Your unabashed support of Sharon’s extra-judicial assassinations, Israel’s Berlin Wall-like barrier, its harsh military measures in occupied territories, and now your endorsement of Sharon’s unilateral plans are costing our country its credibility, prestige and friends."

And, in the middle of these assorted debacles, Bush also had the gumption to ask Congress for a minimum of an extra $25 billion dollars for the war.

Bush, who had vowed not to seek more money for Iraq before the November 2 presidential elections, said he would submit a more precise spending request, known as a supplemental, for the full year once needs are better known.

What can one say, except bravo, Mr. Bush. Bravo.

In other news that doesn't make me shake my fucking head in wonder, we have even more mighty submissions. Truly, the world is a bright and shiny place. Unless, of course, you've been forced to wear a hood and have been recently sodomized with a light fixture.

May 5, 2004
The Way Things Are Done In America, And The Way Americans Do Things

Note: More submissions roll in. Hot! And I will be looking into the idea of the Nuntish forum. Stay tuned.

In the meantime.

For those who've been living under a rock, or who've been shackled to a bucket with electrical wires attached to their hands in Abu Ghraib, it may come as a shock that American soldiers have been photographed torturing Iraqi prisoners. The photos were apparently taken as trophies by troops and show prisoners naked, humiliated, and at times, suffering through a torture session. And it may not just be a singular incident. It may be quite widespread.

What is news this week is the fact that twenty-five Iraqis have died while being held by American forces since the start of the war. This includes two incidents wherein an Iraqi captive was murdered by an American.

As Reuters reports:

Shocking excerpts from a report on the abuse completed on March 3 by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba were likely to further stoke fury at home and abroad.

"Between October and December 2003, at the Abu Ghraib Confinement Facility (BCCF), numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees," the report said.

Taguba said several detainees had credibly described acts of abuse, including:

* Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees

* Beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair

* Sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick

* Arranging naked male detainees in a pile and then jumping on them

The impact this is going to have on the Arab psyche shouldn't be underestimated. As the CS Monitor stated nicely:

With no weapons of mass destruction to be found and security an ever more elusive vision, the only remaining rationale for America's fierce grip on Iraq is that the Army's heart is pure. The US stays only to plant the seeds of democracy. That noble goal alone justifies the huge cost in death and injury, money and material.

Goodbye, nobility. Never mind that Americans are supposed to abhor torture, both in their morals and in their laws. Never mind that the rank and file of the military are supposed to be the very models of rectitude. America's primary military asset, its character, has been badly tarred.

With US credibility already near zero in the Muslim world, the photos go beyond blasphemy. They anger the Arab world just as Americans were angered a few years ago by the pictures of an American helicopter pilot being dragged through Mogadishu. In an online poll this week by the Middle East TV news channel Al Jazeera, two-thirds "suspect the abuse of Iraqi prisoners is routine."

Today, the Iraqi Human Rights Minister resigned in protest of American abuses of Iraqi captives. And why not? Who would like to stand around and endorse torture of people who could be entirely innocent? Even Bush has reacted with as much disgust as he can muster, which he should, because the photo of that fellow in the hood has the kind of iconic power that the naked little girl covered in napalm did, running down the street in Vietnam, and it won't help his re-election cause any to be associated with it.

On Friday, US President George W Bush said he shared "a deep disgust that those prisoners were treated the way they were treated".

"Their treatment does not reflect the nature of the American people," he said.

"That's not the way we do things in America," he said.

No George, that may not be the way you do things in America.

But as the world perceives it, that is the way Americans do things.

May 4, 2004
The Numbahs

Just a reminder for all possible contestants in Tourette's Tournament of Evil that YOU ARE RUNNING OUT OF TIME. The contest officially closes next week, May 10th, and the competition is hot hot hot! So get your ass in gear and finish that composition. You don't have much time!!!

And do not forget that you are fighting, by god, for a one hundred percent Mingus-worn gasmask that looks really fucking scary and was also possibly worn, by Canadian soldiers who landed on the beaches of France, ON D-DAY.

Nunt.com Mgmt is also happy to announce that readership was at its highest ever level last month. This has made no impact to the bottom line, of course, but it's nice to be appreciated. Even if, occasionally, one is compared to a rabid dog.

Which reminds me.

Due to the rise in heated guestbook conversation, the possibility of creating a forum has been raised. However, the constraints and conversational bent of a nuntish forum need to be discussed before any real effort is put into the construction of such a thing.

For those who don't know what a forum looks like, or how it works, try looking at one of my favourites, Twelvestone. Lovely people. Really.

So the question is, would it be a useful and exciting thing? Perhaps all we'd need for this place is one straight board where anyone could sign up, post a thought, a link, whatever, and other nerds could post their thoughts on that thought, thereby keeping all the thoughts neatly organized. IE. a conversation on why militant muslims are silly could be constrained to one thread, while a conversation on Nabokov could follow another, and yet another could be dedicated solely to the appreciation of real dolls.

This is your chance to sound off. Make good use of it, because you won't have another. That is, until tomorrow. And the day after that. And if you don't use it, Mgmt. will bitch you out and threaten to quit or burn down city hall.

Fuck, would that ever be a good time.

May 3, 2004
The City Core, The Wasteland, The Brothel and The Death of a Poet

Last week, there were several brilliant missives from head office, covering a wide variety of topics: desperation, death, haiku, sexual debauchery, and fish sticks. Response overall was fair to tepid. Most responses were regarding the idea of a realdoll brothel. My coverage of an article on poetry in E-Ville (starring Mingus) elicited no responses, and the mysterious death of a poet I had known also merited no response whatsoever.

This reminds me of the article one of our readers (J Zombie) posted a few weeks back, about the lifespan of the average poet, as studied by California researcher James Kaufman:

"On average, poets lived 62 years, playwrights 63 years, novelists 66 years and non-fiction writers lived 68 years," Kaufman said in an interview conducted by e-mail.

Kaufman has also studied poets and mental illness.

"What I found was pretty consistent with the death finding actually, female poets were much more likely to suffer from mental illness (e.g., be hospitalised, commit suicide, attempt suicide) than any other kind of writer and more likely than other eminent women," he said.

"I've dubbed this the 'Sylvia Plath Effect'."

Sylvia Plath was a poet and novelist who killed herself in 1963 at the age of 30.

One can conclude from Kaufman's work, and a sampling of this microcosm of society, that NO ONE CARES IF A POET DIES.

Which leads me to ask, why then, am I working so fucking hard at ensuring the relative success of this book? As the release date approaches, I find myself taking on more responsibility for promotion of the book, because that's what any Canadian writer who actually wants to succeed should do. But the hours are getting long, the strain on any remaining personal relationships is notching up and for what? Is there even a chance that this thing will sell? If no one cares when a poet dies, why would they spend fifteen bucks to buy a shot of his epitaph?

Maybe I'm putting it all into this because the desire to write for a living is so strong that I need to either succeed or fail in a spectacular, blow-out fashion before I can leave it alone and move on. Twelve months from now, maybe I'll be working on my next book, happily spending eight hours a day in the library researching anthropology and reading the Apocrypha. And sleeping well. And having dinner with interesting writers and scholars and drunkards and talking about Basho. Or, maybe I'll be loading 1400 books into my parents' firepit, apologizing to the fine folks at Zygote, tossing a jug of kerosene on the pile and surrendering myself, blackhearted, to the idea that no one cares if a poet dies alone on a frozen river bank and no one could ever hope to make a living from it, so why keep on trying? It was bold to do so, but the time for youthful fancies is over, time to grow the fuck up get married have kids buy a house settle down and make one's self comfortable for the long, bitter ride to the end.

Copyright © 2006 Mingus Tourette