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anti-press ezine 2001 10 31
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< ANTI-PRESS EZINE #28 >
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"We're Positive About The Negative"
A Halloween E-dition
(C) Copyright 2001 Anti-Press All Rights Reserved
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* Traffic Cones Will Save Us!? *
A War of Symbolism.
That's why the terrorists took out the Towers and hit the Pentagon. The
twin monoliths of capitalism have fallen; the crypto-pentacle of
American militarism has been severely wounded.
Symbols can have magical powers. Flags have blossomed all over, their
ubiquity speaking for a need for solidarity (i.e. conformity). The
Star-Spangled Banner also represents God's Blessing. Such imagery harks
back to our tribal beginnings. "I am from the clan of the Bear; we are
more powerful than your tribe, clan of the Dodo Bird." Brave warriors
believed that the spirit of their totem would watch over them in pitched
battle. Everyone in the tribe had to believe in the totem, warrior and
non-warrior alike, their prayers and passion making the spirit stronger,
giving them the edge on the battlefield.
And such tribal passions still live. What sports totem do you channel?
Are you a Seahawk or a Ram? A Diamondback or a Red Sock?
Here in NENYland there are those of the Catholic faith who display their
homemade shrines to the Blessed Virgin. They take an old enamel bathtub
and plant it upright, tap end buried in the ground, a quick frontyard
niche to house a Marian statue. Back in the days of the U.S. vs. the
Evil Empire, when the atomic sword of Damnocles hung over our heads,
NENYlanders built bomb shelters and bathtub shrines. The former in case
our country started mushrooming; the latter to tap into the supernatural
power of the Supreme One, radiating spiritual force fields to keep the
warheads away.
Yet the strangest symbol we've ever seen was witnessed here in
Plattsburgh, right after Terrorist Tuesday. We were walking around
downtown and noticed traffic cones lined up on the streets bordering the
Federal Building, every parking space cordoned off. Many spots were
kept empty, a great situation for nearby businesses.
The proper response: traffic cones? You know what we mean, those
bright-orange party hats for oversized androids. Lightweight rubber:
with ease a tricycling kid could squash one flat, a pissing poodle could
knock one over. _They_ would protect the Fed offices?
Downtown Plattsburgh is notorious for the lack of parking. Those free
spots would've been a blessing to someone with a car bomb. Normally
terrorists would spend hours driving around, waiting for a good spot to
open up, and like most frustrated visitors they would give up and go
home.
Maybe those traffic cones had some sort of special magic. Blessed by
Holy Water direct from the Vatican?
We'll never know because the cones were gone after a couple of days.
The geniuses behind this plan were probably pushing their luck. With
its perimeter unadorned, the Federal Building looks like one of the old
banks downtown, nothing really special.
Envision: a crop duster, flying over Plattsburgh, a pilot for Air
Anthrax at the controls. He looks down, looking for a special place to
drop his load. There, that pattern of orange dots: now _that_ must be an
important structure...
* Love Is In The Air *
A crisis is supposed to bring out the best in people.
Soon after 9-11 two out-of-town yahoo brothers were parading around the
city, using the blank backside of a Busch beer banner to proclaim: "TO
WHOM IT MAY CONCERN! NUKE 'EM." To emphasis nuclear retaliation a
symbolic atomic particle accompanied the words, electrons spinning
around an absent nucleus. One brother stated that it was lucky that he
wasn't the President or he would have already taken out Afghanistan.
The two demonstrators were entitled to their opinion -- but it's that
kind of simple "thinking" on the part of the government that got us into
all sorts of messes, the present one included.
Others in NENYland took more direct action to express their outrage and
"patriotism". In one town a store owner, a naturalized citizen
originally from Pakistan, had his United States flag stolen by a pair of
red-blooded Amerikans. The two men had decided a Middle Eastern person
didn't have the right to display "their" flag.
Recently a letter to the editor appeared in the Plattsburgh (news)Paper
from a international student at the College, a Dutch-Sri Lankan who grew
up in the United Kingdom.. He detailed how he was downtown on a Friday
night and a man in his mid-thirties directed racial slurs at him. The
foreign student was told he should've been wearing a towel on his head.
In his letter the student pointed out that he was non-Arabic and how he
was concerned about Arabic students at the college. To him the racist
person he encountered downtown was just as much the enemy as a follower
of Osama Bin Laden, a local terrorist instead of a global one.
During World War II, there was concern that traitors (supposedly) lurked
in Japanese Americans communities. The Japanese Americans were rounded
up and sent to relocation camps, isolated from their adopted country.
Today the government should round up the real traitors that lurk among
us and place them in relocation camps.
These traitors to this country's ideals can't be identified just by
their skin color or facial features. It's their actions that single
them out from most Americans.
Let's round up the monster bigots.
----------------------
* Say Yes To Idiocide *
By Guest Columnist Jill
(Note: I had this prepared before the whole WTC thing. Jill)
Priorities.
What this country needs is a good war. Remember the heroes as they came
back from World War II (or as I say, The Great War, Round II)? We need
one of those. Our young people need a few values. Maybe we could just
make a movie or a sitcom about a war. That's what they think will work.
But the only way to bring people together is to make them suffer in like
ways, and on as grand a scale as America, you need a war to do that.
We're fat and lazy and rely to much on buttons, and sadly, even if I got
my war, it wouldn't be right. We'd blow the enemy up from afar, and
treaties would be made when they realize they don't feel like warring
with us (whoever they are at the time), and my war will be a sham. I
never get what I want.
War is dead, though. War was two armies going at it (not that kind of
going at it, pervert) in a field (well, the Romans were pretty close to
being whole armies when they went at it, but I guess that's beside the
point) and just slaughtering each other with vigor. They wanted to kill
each other, and they weren't going to die doing it if they had a say.
Stab a guy, move on. Stab a guy, move on, etc. So then now we have our
bombs, our Kamikaze, our peace treaties to PREVENT that which is human
nature. If war is dead, does that mean our instincts are, too? I wonder
if we are still human. Maybe we evolved and just didn't notice...Yeah,
that must be it. Or maybe the idiots have somehow taken over society!
Whose idea was it to let them reproduce? They really should get
something cut off. Lobotomy, castration, whatever it takes. This is your
species! Take care of it and weed out the crap.
You used to have to be a genius to rule a country. Now, politics are
something to fall back on when you fail at everything else you try in
life. I guess that's our fault for putting up a big sign back in the day
that basically said "Send us your losers, Europe!" We were founded by
rebels, but then populated by poor bastards. Where exactly did things go
wrong? It went from a place where you had to survive the wilderness just
to make it out alive, and then find your fortune through hard work to
just sitting on your ass all day and making millions. Actually, falling
on your ass makes you more money if you do it away from home.
I would rather suffer in poverty than be an American and think I know
pain.
+++ When asked to provide some info about herself, Jill wrote: "MY
biography... 'The truth is just lies with all the kinks left out.'"
Contact her at < jill_b_@hotmail.com > +++
-----------
* A Final Thought *
It's getting late. No one at our door; no more visits by skeletons,
vampires or boogeymen. The trick-or-treaters have returned home to
enjoy their sugary loot.
But tomorrow ghosts and ghouls will still be with us.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOTICE: Unless indicated otherwise, all articles by Anti-Press.
Articles submitted by others do not necessarily express or reflect the
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WHERE WE'RE AT: Anti-Press Ezine radiates from our Precision Reality
Center. We're presently entrapped in the alleged city of Plattsburgh,
northeastern New York State (NENYland), USA. ("I'm not to blame, your
honor. I thought it really was Osama bin Laden, trying to sneak through
the bar. I didn't know I was beating the crap out of another white man
until his fake beard fell off. It's not my fault that I was too drunk
to remember it was Halloween night.")
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