The Invisible Library

Christian Writes:

Baghdad - October 17, 2004

It is difficult to sum all of my thoughts and feelings regarding the bombings. I hope my following words strike close to the mark.

The past few days have seen the fall out from last week’s events. By far, Thurday, October 14th, was the worst day to date in the Green Zone.

Two bombs exploded. Both suicide missions. The first target was the “Haji Mart”. This was the local bazaar where we could buy cheap souvenirs, DVDs, and cigarettes. The bomb went off in Big John’s, the general store where I bought the charcoal for my grill.

The second bomb destroyed the Green Zone Cafe - until recently our local watering hole and nearest restaurant. Both establishments were Christian which when viewed in the light of yesterday’s church bombings reveals the religious intolerance of some of our enemies.

What is most disconcerting, is that this attack hit so close to home. I used to frequent the Green Zone Cafe almost everyday to eat chicken kabobs and enjoy a Turkish coffee. At night, we would drink Lebanese wine and smoke shisha while listening to the drumbeats of our Arab friends. I got to know some of the help and I still do not know who survived and who did not. The whole place is now only a memory. Smoky nights under the red tent will never be repeated and some of our friends are no longer with us.

Read the rest

Amidst my morning perusal of blogs and such, I found this astounding little piece of fiction by Chris Nakashima-Brown. It’s a bit of Borges in a pop culture blender:

…The episode starts out as a typical variation of the formula. Following the eternally lounge Paul Williams theme, we meet the week’s cast as they board. Barbara Billingsley plays a melancholy divorcee. Her kids have bought her a week on the boat; they didn’t mention they bought one for Dad as well, played by Tom Bosley. Stella Stevens is Honey Spitz, a hard-partying Vegas girl searching for rescue from imminent spinsterhood. She will spend much of her time conferring with Tony Randall as Emmett Graham, a Capote-esque playwright who finds the muse in her story, and engineers a competition for her affections among Dick Shawn as a comical advertising executive, McLean Stevenson as a shy, sarcastic Midwestern arms dealer, and Marjoe Gortner as an aging rock star. And an enfeebled Jorge Luis Borges, as himself.

Four minutes in, Gopher leads the blind Borges up the plank in his incongruous vintage wool suit, hand-tailored by an Anglo-Italian master haberdasher in the Distrito Almirante Brown.

“So, Mr. Borges,” says Gopher, “are you traveling alone?”

Borges’ lazy, whitened eyes stare through the chipper Iowan, reimagining the universe in the nautical vignette cresting the Purser’s cap.

“Can you not see the massing armies of the Heresiarchs?” queries the author.

“Uh, gee, fella, we have a lady who brought her Shih Tzu, but I don’t think that’s quite enough to make it an Ark. But you should talk about that with Dr. Bricker. Maybe he can give you something to help you take a nap.”

As the episode proceeds, we learn that Borges and Mrs. Cleaver were married once, briefly, in the years between 1969 and 1970, adding complication to her efforts to explore a reconciliation with Mr. Cunningham. In the karaoke lounge, as Stella Stevens soothes the passengers with an otherworldly rendition of “Wichita Lineman,” the episode takes a dark turn. The camera closes in on Borges’ Magus eyes. The boom of nearby naval artillery rattles the ship, causing a panic. On the bridge, Captain Stubing radios out a Mayday when a squadron of Delta-wing fighters bearing strange insignia buzzes the Lido Deck. Romantic interludes are suspended as a dashing boarding party scours the ship, rounding up Robin Leach (as himself) and a handful of forgotten English character actors.

In the final scene, Isaac is in his cabin, drinking absinthe with Dr. Bricker and reading excerpts from a musty book Borges left in his cabin. The Anglo-American Cyclopaedia, Thirteenth Edition (Volume XLVI: Uqbar-United States).

“The Hr�nir of the perpetually broadcast American television reruns are infinite in power and proliferation,” reads Isaac, “enabling those who can discover them in plain sight to recast the subtext and reinvent the world.”

“What the heck’s a Hr�nir?” asks Dr. Bricker.

“Darned if I know,” shucks Isaac. “But says here they’re some kind of imagination made real in some country in the Middle East called Tl�n or Uqbaristan or something. Maybe some kind of terrorists, you think? Listen:

“‘Centuries and centuries of Tl�nian idealism have not failed to influence reality. In the most ancient regions of Tl�n, the duplication of lost objects is not infrequent. Two persons look for a pencil; the first finds it and says nothing; the second finds a second pencil, no less real, but closer to his expectations. These secondary objects are called hr�nir. . . . The methodical production of hr�nir . . . has made possible the interrogation and even the modification of the past, which is now no less plastic and docile than the future.’”

High over the village, the mountain cat stalks, preparing to pounce on the unsuspecting people below.

CBC News:

Blasts hit market, cafe in Green Zone; 4 Americans among 5 dead
01:57 PM EDT Oct 14
NADIA ABOU EL-MAGD

BAGHDAD (AP) - Insurgents penetrated Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone and detonated explosives at a market and a popular cafe Thursday, killing five people, including four Americans, in the first bombing inside the compound housing the U.S. and Iraqi government headquarters.

A top Iraqi official said the attacks appeared to have been suicide bombings. Witnesses said two men, each carrying a backpack but not the required ID badges, entered the cafe full of Americans and other patrons, drank tea and talked to each other for nearly half an hour, then went their separate ways and set off their bombs several moments apart.

The attack was an assault on the heart of the U.S.-Iraqi leadership of the country and a serious setback to the Bush administration’s campaign to pacify postwar Iraq.

I just received an e-mail from Christian:

Considering the events of today and the e-mails I have received from numerous people asking if I am OK, I want to let everyone know that I am fine.

Today was a black day in the Green Zone. I used to dine at the Green Zone Cafe very frequently. I do not yet know who was killed but I undoubtedly know some of them.

I must go but will write soon with more details.

Christian

Here’s the Guardian UK story. So far, only the foreign press has picked this up. it’s still early though.

Update: 10/15

More exploding car bombs
Airstrike on Fallujah

Meanwhile, still nothing being discussed much by the Chimp in Chief or by Kerry. This nightmare has got to stop. I’d like to wake up now, please.

If you’re going to be in D.C. next weekend, you have to check out The Lobster Boy Review:

Horrific vaudeville hosted by Lobster Boy! Satanic showtunes! Dancing serial killers! Homeland security! Underwater pumpkin carving! Men in rubber pants! Perverse door prizes! ! Don’t miss the scariest shindig in town!

Blending brand new acts together from Baltimore and Washington, D.C., this tuxedo wearing lobster concocts a witch’s brew so spellbindingly funny it will make you forget who to vote for. Either that, or it will make you vote for Lobster Boy!

Contemporary French social theorist Jean Baudrillard claims, “Halloween is not funny”. He explains it as a “sarcastic festival that reflects an infernal demand for revenge by children on the adult world.” To prove him wrong � we’ve decided to toilet paper his ivory tower.

And if that’s not enough to convince you then I have six little words that are sure to make you come running: The Evil Tap Dancing Hate Monkey!

Tonight is the final debate, people, and it’s about doggone time. I lost any interest I might have had when, during the Vice Presidential debate, Cheney and Edwards both resorted to the “your facts are wrong” refrain. Once two debaters get to this point, it’s so much white noise. Of course any semi-informed American (example: Yours Truly) knows that Bush and Cheney have botched the war horribly, that they have illegally doled out no-bid contracts to their weasely corporate sponsors, that they’re horrible fascists, etcetera. We also know that both Edward and Kerry supported the war, are lawyers, and were bullied like spineless bed-wetters into basically making George’s Bush’s administration a military junta. And why? Don’t buy the “we gave him the authority, not the consent” argument they so lamely attempt to make. They gave him the authority to go to war with Iraq because of the enormous public pressure from Americans post-9/11 who desperately wanted vengeance on whomever, wherever, as long as “they” suffered the way “we” suffered–a sentiment which, in actuality, I only ever heard come out of the mouths of media figures, borderline psychotics, and Country Music “Songwriters”…but I repeat myself.

I’ll watch the debate (I just like to bitch), but I’m not expecting much from it. Kerry will look far more “Presidential” than his opponent, and Bush will look more like that slightly crazy, absurdly macho but nonetheless approachable High School Football Coach, and the individuals that respond, respectively, to each of those things…will already have decided months ago who is getting their vote.

Here’s my pessimistic precognition: Kerry will win the popular vote, by even more than Gore in 2000. Bush will win the electoral vote, narrowly, but by enough to legitimate his second term, inasmuch as that is possible. That is a sad statement to make, I know, and hardcore Kerry supporters will likely call for my head if they read this, but nothing can be done for it.

I hope I’m wrong, I really do. I would love nothing more than to be proven wrong. In fact, if Kerry is elected, I will make it a point to be active in the Democratic Party. (So that I can keep an eye on him.) But I really don’t see that happening. Even with his recent gain in the polls–Me? Never been polled. You?–I don’t think Kerry is a pill the American People want to swallow. Because he comes with the acknowledgment that things just aren’t as simple as they seem to be. He, unfortunately, comes with an intrinsic demand on the intellectual capabilities of Joe Six-Pack. Or, at least, on his conscience. Kerry may, if you believe him, invoke images of Kennedy. He may seem as regal, as statuesque as Lincoln. It’s sad, but it just seems to me that Americans, for now, prefer the wacky Football Coach, even if he insists on lining the field with land mines.

I’m going to my sister’s wedding this weekend so no new posts until monday from me. However, maybe Kevin will use his spiffy new high spead connection at home to dazzle and entertain while I’m gone. And maybe Jason will stop by and say something witty and interesting as well. You just never know. Anything might happen.

I didn’t watch the debates last night. I wanted to, I suppose, though more likely I wanted to want to watch the debates but just couldn’t bring myself to get more than two degrees away from the actual watching. Instead, I drank tea and talked about life and nothing really important with a friend and am the better for it, I think.

But Kevin and I had dinner earlier yesterday evening and we discussed the debate we would have liked to see.

We were both hoping (almost wishing) that Cheney would loose it. That Edwards would riff on his Two America’s speech and point at Cheney and say, “This man represents one of those Americas. Is it the one you live in?” Amidst hoots and claps from the audience, grown unruly at the restraint of so much decorum and politicking, Cheney’s sneer would become evil and livid and grow into a snarl as Edwards continued to brow beat him about Haliburton and his still-secret energy task force. But mostly, about Haliburton. And graft. And corruption. Edwards would be gentile and elegant but also vicious as a snake in that way that only a Southern Trial Lawyer can be.

After an hour of defensive sneering and rambling incoherently about evil men with mustaches and our Precious Bodily Fluids, Cheney’s left arm would go numb and he’d clutch his chest. paramedics would be called in as the audience claps and Edwards takes a bow. But just before they carried him out in a stretcher, Cheney’s cyborg heart would explode sparks and big blood all over the stage and he’d bolt upright and spew prophetic gibberish, while his head spun like a wheel.

From what I’ve read, this isn’t quite how the debates went last night. But they should have.

Via Chris at Crooked Timber, I have just been informed of this years winners of the IgNoble Prize. Special congratulations go to “Ramesh Balasubramaniam of the University of Ottawa, and Michael Turvey of the University of Connecticut and Haskins Laboratory, for exploring and explaining the dynamics of hula-hooping.”