These are the continuing adventures of a typical resident 
 of the self-proclaimed center of the Pugetopolis universe - 
 Seattle. Most are true stories but some are made of whole-
 cloth. I ain't the Mayor, the Governor or a Big Shot. Just 
 another Working Stiff with a Bad Attitude.

    ------------------------------------------------
    WARNING: This is not a Child-Proof Neighborhood.
    If you're a kid - scram!, beat it! you little
    punk before your Old Lady catches you and calls
    the cops. They'll throw you in the Big House in
    Walla Walla and won't let you out until you're
    89 years old. There. Don't say I didn't warn you.
    -------------------------------------------------

		      - 112 -


 On a beautiful, sunny Tuesday fall morning, one year into 
 the new millenium, our fairy-tale existence came to an end. 
 Geography kept Hitler and Tojo away; our ICBMs kept Joe 
 Stalin and his replicants away; but, with George W. Bush
 in the White House, all it took was a few amateurs armed 
 with nothing more than knives to do what nobody has ever 
 done before in our entire history: successfully attack
 our homeland, inflicting massive loss of civilian life, 
 enormous destruction of property and the disruption of our
 financial and transportation infrastructure.

 The pictures told the truth in all its stark reality. No 
 human mind could absorb all the terror, hurt, pain, anger, 
 despair and anguish implied in them. It would be unbearable. 
 That enormous pile of rubble billowing massive clouds of
 thick smoke and choking dust that obscured the skyline of
 the largest city in America, concealed the burnt and broken 
 bodies of tens of thousands of people. We've seen such sights 
 of deliberate destruction in other places but rarely in 
 America and never, ever by a foreign hand. It seemed like 
 something out of a disaster flick. In a few moments "The 
 End" would come up on the TV screen and everything would 
 be 'normal' again. Not this time. 
 
 The atmosphere in Seattle that morning was mute and subdued.
 Our beautiful, cloudless, sunny skies were empty of the usual 
 aircraft on approach to Sea-Tac and Boeing Field as well as 
 the traffic choppers. They were all grounded by the FAA. It 
 was quiet. Not silent; just quiet. Most people seemed to stay
 at home, more than likely to follow events than out of any
 fear for their lives. The few people who came into work were 
 quiet. They didn't look stunned, fearful or deeply anguished; 
 they just looked pensive, like they were thinking deeply and 
 privately about something. They just wanted to be alone with 
 their thoughts for a while. And it stayed that way through 
 most of the week. While it was on everyone's minds, it was as 
 though no one quite knew how to mention it. The usual lame 
 "...yes it was horrible wasn't it?" just didn't seem to do 
 justice to the moment. At most, it was a matter to discuss 
 with personal friends, not strangers. Someone who would 
 understand the emotions expressed. 

 There were no howling mobs screaming for vengence. Just the 
 expected garrish headlines and livid photo in the papers 
 staring out of the newsboxes, plus a few loud-mouths who were 
 more of an embarassment than an inspiration. Our News Nazis 
 immediately went off on another bigoted String-Up-The-Arabs 
 tirade and wildly spun off into their own grubby little 
 snuff-freak fantasy world. No one has done more to keep hate 
 an American family value than those assholes. Their body-counts
 are meaningless - no intact bodies have been found since the
 day of the attack, they're just finding body parts. All the
 numbers are being deliberately minimized and are false.
 President Yellowbelly's calls for flags to be displayed and
 prayers to be said have been roundly ignored. He doesn't
 understand that these are personal things we do as the spirit
 moves us, not on his command, request or whim.

 A person can only wonder at the thoughts of silent people but
 let me hazard a guess. People were wondering why someone would
 hate us so deeply as to do something this terrible to us. We
 died by the tens of thousands; not our soldiers or agents or
 our politicans, but us - ordinary American citizens. Yet the 
 whole thing was so utterly impersonal as to defy any emotion at 
 all. The attackers needed a large aircraft loaded with fuel and 
 the only ones readily available happened to be full of passengers. 
 The lives of the passengers were as incidental and irrelevant as 
 furniture. The highjackers didn't bother taunting, torturing or 
 harranging them - they simply ignored them. The attackers targets 
 happened to be buildings full of people. They didn't care one 
 way or the other about the people inside; they merely wanted to 
 destroy the buildings and all they symbolized to them. This odd 
 blindness to the lives involved is curious. It's like a message 
 in itself. They didn't merely hate us, they actually denied the 
 existence of our humanity. In their eyes, we weren't human.

 Mayor Rudy Giuliani of New York City stood in the heat, dirt
 and smoke of the WTC frontline directly exposing himself to 
 grave danger even as the attack was in progress, to ensure that 
 whatever decisions and authorizations were needed would be met
 immediately. Meanwhile, President Yellowbelly was cowering in a 
 Nebraska bunker instead of standing before the nation providing
 leadership and direction in our hour of crisis. When the going
 got tough, the limp-dick coward tucked-tail and ran. It took 
 nearly 12-hours before our Presidental Wimp finally worked up 
 the courage to emerge and address us. He looked like he would 
 shit his drawers if anyone so much as coughed. His cowardice 
 and his failure to provide leadership added hours to the attack 
 and cost thousands of American lives. 

 The attack would not have been possible without the help of 
 our 'guardians'. They stood there and held the goddam door 
 open for them. From the CIA, NSA, FBI and military intelligence 
 agencies that failed to uncover the plot, to the Border Patrol 
 agents who allowed these people into our country, to the FAA 
 security people who allowed armed attackers to board our 
 aircraft; to our military whose unpreparedness and confusion
 allowed an enemy to successfully attack our very heartland 
 for hours with no challenge whatsoever. If a single one of these
 jackasses, many of whom stood face-to-face with each of the 30
 to 50 people who supposedly did this, had simply said 'hold
 on a second buster', that would have been it. The whole thing
 would have crumbled. We just needed one. We got none.

 Where were our cowards in uniform when that second airliner 
 swooped in and drew a bead on the second tower? Where were 
 the mighty Tomcats, Hornets and Prowlers of the Navy? Where 
 were the New York Harbor Coasties? Where were the many air 
 wings and missle batteries along the east coast? Where in 
 the hell were they when the firemen and rescue-workers were 
 buried in the debris? They were standing there watching with 
 their thumbs up their fat asses. They didn't protect us, they
 did little to help us in the aftermath. The pathetic bastards 
 couldn't even defend their own Pentagon from attack. At least 
 at Pearl Harbor we went down fighting. In New York and D.C. 
 all they could do is whimper. They're a shameful disgrace to 
 their country and their uniform. Who gives a damn what they 
 do on their present little revenge binge? When WE needed them 
 right HERE in America, they turned their backs to us. You
 can bet your ass we'll remember that.

 If this had been a high-tech, big-budget professional job
 executed with sophisticated National Assets, a degree of
 failure might be understandable. But the facts of the matter 
 are: these people were all amateurs not seasoned military
 warriors, their technology was as primitive as simple knives, 
 and it likely didn't cost them much more than $1,000 total 
 for their weapons and discount airfare. A common janitor 
 could have bankrolled this operation. They didn't need a 
 Saudi millionaire. The failure of our 'guardians' was 
 inexcusable and borders on treason. We can never again trust 
 or rely upon them. They have clearly betrayed us.

 This is an extraordinary historical moment that wasn't in
 the script. It is almost as if there is a global 'peasants
 uprising' emerging - a planetary Civil War. These Have Nots 
 aren't so much anti-technology as people who never had any 
 technology. They have no borders or large military bases for 
 our high-tech spy-sats to see; they have no computers or 
 modern telcom networks for our Echelon snooper network to 
 intercept. Our intelligence has been unable for decades to 
 pentetrate their diverse organizations to compromise them. 
 They have no national boundries - they're from everywhere. 
 Many have no doubt infiltrated America in recent years, 
 unnoticed by our asleep-at-the-wheel anything-for-a-buck 
 'security' services. Probably bought themselves a couple 
 FBI agents to tip them off - everybody else has. And many 
 of them claim their ultimate alligence is to God, not any 
 earthly ruler or earthly flag. 

 They are the very same people America used to welcome and 
 offer refuge to before we struck it rich and slammed the 
 door in their faces. In the name of 'ensuring the flow of 
 resources', we bomb and strafe their wretched poverty-infested
 cities with our multi-million-dollar 'smart bombs' and cruise 
 missles. It's their populations we economically enslave to 
 make our clothes, manufacture our shoes, build our cars and 
 feed our greed. It is their populations that our emerging 
 Brave New World of biotech will reduce to human meat-machines 
 first, just as they presently serve as its guinea-pigs for 
 new drugs. We have denied them their humanity. We don't treat
 them like fellow human beings but rather, as beasts of burden.
 We have made many of their lives a thing of such despair and 
 hopelessness that death is no longer feared. Indeed, it is 
 embraced and welcomed as a friend and a mercy. But such 
 thoughts are unpleasant and we'd rather not think about what
 we've done to them. It's not fun. It's not funny.

 A few of their sons and daughters have escaped this poverty 
 to attend western schools for professional training. Though 
 denied our technology, they can still learn how it works and 
 maybe get well-paying jobs here that will help support their
 families at home. But the wall of blind bigotry and evil hate 
 their dark skin evokes in the white west, teaches them in no 
 uncertain terms where they stand. They will never be one of
 us. We won't allow it. 
 
 Betrayed by earthly institutions, it is God many have turned 
 to. With Christian churches historically little more than an
 appendage of western colonisers and Buddhism/Taoism little 
 more than apologists for Asian tyrants, it is Islam they have 
 turned to. The Muslims are growing like wildfire even as the 
 Christian and Asian religions fade into irrelevance and obscurity.
 Allah, the very same Old Testament God that Christians and the
 Jews of Israel have abandoned and foresakened, offers these 
 people hope and the possibility of justice. He is a God of 
 legendary wrath and vengence who lays low the mighty and brings 
 the powerful to their knees. It's not too hard to figure out 
 why he appeals to them: just what the doctor ordered - a God 
 who knows how to kick ass. 

 Watching the World Trade Center collapse into a pile of rubble
 it wouldn't surprise me if many people the world around didn't 
 see the very hand of God at work. Tapped by two tiny blows, the 
 mighty walls of this entire massive American Jericho came 
 effortlessly crumbling down. It must have seemed a miracle. And
 God protected the angels of His vengence, allowing them to pass 
 invisibly through legions of our guardians to strike a terrible 
 blow at the very heart of Profane, Godless, Souless, Materialistic 
 America before returning to Him untouched by the infidels. America - 
 the mighty, the arrogant, the obscenely wealthy, the untouchable,
 The Beast incarnate - felt God's Heavenly Wrath for the very 
 first time. He's back...and He's pissed off. 

 Ten-to-one that's exactly what millions of people around the 
 world, Muslim and otherwise, are thinking right now. This wasn't 
 just a 'confidence-builder' this was an affirmation and a
 confirmation that their cause is miraculously blessed. You'd
 have to admit, regardless of your religious persuation or lack 
 of it, it sure looked intriguingly like a good old-fashioned 
 biblical come-uppance and the attackers complete success, 
 improbable if not baffling. God surely wasn't on our side
 nor did he extend His mercy to the tens of thousands who died,
 any more than He did to the citizens of Sodom. A surprising
 plot complication for the End-Time apocolyptics to think about.
  
 If we had any brains, at this point we would sue for peace and
 begin exploring ways to ensure that the producers of our obscene
 wealth get a fair piece of the action from here on out. We would 
 embrace our original mandate of 'liberty and justice for all' 
 and become the sworn enemy of any dictator or tyrant who enslaves 
 their people. Being too physically small to welcome all who want
 to be free, we would devote our efforts to setting loose a mighty 
 American wind of Emancipation which would sweep across the globe
 creating a multitude of Americas. We have the resources to do 
 such a thing. But we lack the will. It wouldn't be good for
 business.

 It just ain't going to happen. Anxious to obscure and obfuscate 
 their cowardice and ineptness, our politicians and military will 
 now attempt to divert attention to a campaign of meaningless, 
 ineffective cheap revenge. The attackers are dead and beyond our 
 justice. Their kind long ago abandoned their homelands for the 
 cities of America and Europe at any rate. We'll pay-off our 
 whores, play greedy governments off against one another and find 
 a sufficently helpless/safe target(s) to vent our impotent rage
 on. That's 'pimping' not diplomacy. But those allies-of-convenience
 don't speak for their populations. Our military will constantly 
 have to watch their backs as much as their fronts. We'll be denied 
 access to the ultimate and real source of our attackers: the mosques. 
 They will always be beyond our bombs and cruise missles and, like 
 it or not, they will have the last word. 

 When all is said and done, the dead will still be dead and the 
 WTC still a sad graveyard. Aside from spawning a new generations 
 of suicide bombers, you have to wonder what the point of these 
 futile, expensive military jerk-off operations is.

 If this cheap revenge remains merely punative, the carefully 
 chosen helpless and innocent victims will become our national 
 scapegoats and that will be that. We'll drink their blood, eat
 their babies and call it a day. We've been dying to nuke somebody
 for ages but, as our Los Alamos Labs "Nuclear Winter" scenario 
 made very clear, we couldn't use more than one or two without 
 risking an ecological catastrophe that would essentially slit 
 our own throats. Besides, there nothing there to destroy but 
 sand and rock. And, it'd give everyone else carte blanche to go 
 nuclear whenever they get into trouble. The Rooskies would be
 first in line to nuke Chechneya.

 If our cheap revenge goes beyond punative into an ill-conceived, 
 hastily-contrived, attempt to occupy those countries, it will 
 fail. The Russians in all their dictatorial glory got bled to 
 death trying to beat the Afghanis. There is no electoral will 
 for such a thing.  Americans will refuse to give their sons and 
 daughters to another stupid Presidental/Congressional snuff fantasy. 
 And the effort could well bleed the economic life out of this 
 country. We would die by our own hand. Maybe that's part of God's 
 plan too. Nothing lasts forever. Not even the World Trade Center.

 Even as the gruesome scene was unfolding early Tuesday afternoon,
 the Sorority down the street broke into its first Rush Week chant
 of the year. It was bizarre watching the carnage with a cheerleader
 sound-track. Only in America. They did their penance the next day 
 by standing out front of their house with lit candles softly 
 singing "Amazing Grace". 
 
 BTW - September 11th == 911

........................................................................

 		         MONDO VATICANO

 Future-Super-Saint JP-2 lives like a pauper. That's the line 
 they were slinging at the Vatican this week. Yeah sure. How 
 many paupers you know who live in a complex of buildings with 
 over 1000 rooms (the Papal Palace) decorated with frescoes by 
 the Italian artist Raphael and many personal chapels including 
 the famed Sistine whose walls are covered with paintings by
 Michaelangelo? How many paupers do you know who have a castle 
 to vacation in whenever they feel like it? How many paupers do 
 you know who have a personal secretary, prefect, chief steward,
 majordomo, a personal theologian, numerous chaplains, an imported 
 military guard (Swiss), personal chamberlains, chefs, maids 
 and a few chauffeurs for their modest fleet of limos as well
 as pilots for their jet aircraft? How many paupers do you know 
 are given a blank check for a pay-check? Maybe they call that 
 being a pauper in the Vatican; in America we call that being 
 stink'n, filthy rich. That fat phony Pollock isn't fooling 
 anybody. His obscenity is showing.
 			+	+	+
 This past week was the feast day of one of my favorite saints -
 St. Guy aka "The Poor Man of Anderlecht". His parents were too
 broke to send him to school when he was a kid (this was back 
 around 1000 AD) so they 'home-schooled' him. St. Augustine's 
 writings were a major item on his Ma's curriculum and Guy 
 graduated Magnum Cum Laude in Disdain for Stuff and Love For 
 the Poor. He fed the poor while he starved himself. What the 
 hell - beats selling real estate.

 His first job was as a farm laborer. He prayed a lot while he
 plowed and, legend has it, whenever he got tired his Guardian
 Angel took over for him. But that farm stuff got tired real
 fast and his Guardian Angel was getting blisters, so they hit 
 the road. He had no particular destination - just went for a 
 long walk. He ended up in Brussels where a priest was so 
 impressed by his piety he offered him a job as a Sexton - sort 
 of a janitor/handyman/grave-digger. Guy accepted and whipped 
 that joint into shape in no time at all. Had those stiffs 
 buried before they even knew what hit them. Everybody was 
 impressed.

 A couple years later, a Flim Flam Man came along offering to
 cut him into a 'sure thing' deal on a ship. Sizing up his
 Mark with professional ease, the scheister told him he'd make
 enough money to feed all the poor people in the world. Guy
 went for it. He was so convinced he'd be rich soon that he
 quit his Sexton job. The ship sunk leaving its harbor and,
 since it was before the days of insurance, Guy lost his shirt. 
 Flat broke and unemployed, he did what came naturally - he
 hit the road once again. This time wiser to the ways of the
 world and his own greed. Honest guy that he was, he blamed
 nobody but himself and made a pilgrimage to Roma and Jerusalem 
 as penance. No sooner had he returned to Anderlecht then he
 got sick and croaked. End of show.

 Not much of a saintly tale eh. Everybody pretty much forgot
 about him until a horse dug up his overgrown grave many
 years later. For unknown reasons a chapel was built on it
 and miracles started happening. So they built a full-blown
 church over his grave. He's been a major hit among the locals 
 ever since. Up to WW-I, every year the local Cabbies held a 
 procession in his honor. Horses led the parade with farmers, 
 grooms and stable-boys joining in. The whole town threw a big 
 party and they had competitions racing work horses bareback. 
 The winner got to ride into the church bareback and receive a 
 hat made of roses from the parish priest. I've always thought 
 of Guy as the patron saint of Lighten-Up-And-Enjoy-Life. Just 
 a common, ordinary, shiftless Holy Bum who liked to sniff the 
 roses of life. My kinda guy.
 			+	+	+
 Cardinal Ratso Ratzinger, the Vatican's Grand Inquisitor and 
 Gestapo Kommandant of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
 Faith, is a funny guy in a funny sort of way. This week he
 publically mused pensively about retiring. It's amazing that
 the raving ego-maniac even imagines anyone gives a damn whether
 or not he retires. But, no matter, he was only joking around
 anyways. He was trying in his own clumsy way to mockingly
 belittle and taunt that liberal Sissy-Boy Cardinal Martini of 
 MIlano who recently announced he was stepping down and heading 
 to Jerusalem to pray. The Swiss Guard would have to shoot Ratso 
 to get rid of the dreary freeloader. He'll never leave on his 
 own. He's got nowhere to go. Nobody else wants the gruesome, 
 ugly bastard hanging around with his rubber suits and handcuffs.
			+	+	+
 The Vatican announced they will crank out yet another version
 of the Bible. This one will incorporate the stuff from the
 Essenes. Many of the 60 or so Bibles presently on the market
 (all are copywrited by the translators so no quoting without 
 permission!) already incorporate it. It remains uncertain if
 the writing found dated from just before Christ's time or from
 well past it (1000 AD is a commonly accepted alternate date).
 But you'll never sell Bibles if you waste your time sitting
 around arguing about petty details like dates. While the Bible
 remains a best-seller, most of those who own one oddly 
 admit they haven't actually read it. Waiting for the video
 to come out I guess.

 The Jews are the only ones who haven't farted around much 
 with the Bible. Their TANAKH which incorporates the Torah,
 psalms and much of what Christians consider to be the Old
 Testament, is far more reliable and the translation for
 English is vastly superior to my mind. The New Testament,
 mostly written in Low-Rent Greek, defies accurate translation. 
 It's too crude and has been shamelessly diddled with over
 the years. Few of the original concepts translate well into
 English. Make of it what you will. Everybody else does.
			+	+	+
 Saintly Mother Theresa, friend and confidante to vicious 
 dictators like Haiti's "Baby Doc" Duvalier and Bigtime 
 rip-off artists like the stars of America's S&L Bamboozle, 
 turns out to be far from saintly afterall. In fact her 
 spirituality was so suspect in her final months that an 
 exorcism had to be performed on the self-absorbed old hag. 
 Her supporters are trying to sling it that the exorcism 
 was meant to help her ward off demons. Unh unh. Nice try,
 but you use prayer for that. Exorcisms are, by definition, 
 to cast-out demons from the possessed. Not too surprisingly, 
 some of those close to her are now saying that she despaired
 of God and lost her faith in her final year. Yeah, but what 
 are they going to do with all those holycards and statues 
 they're cranking out for her pending canonization as a saint? 
 She's good for business. They'll canonize her anyways. Saint 
 Theresa of Calcutta - Satan's Choice. This might open a whole 
 new branch for the Vatican's R&D department - holy tatooes
 and nose-rings.

-------------------------------------------------- 
 The above is copyright material. You want to use it, 
 ask. You want to make money off it, gimme some first. 
 I'll let you know if it's enough. You want to steal it, 
 I'll sic my lawyer Yoshi 'The Proctologist' Rasmussen 
 on you baby. He'll teriyaki your sorry butt and turn 
 it into Lutefisk.
~-------------------------------------------------- 
 MAIL:    tofoggymoment@yahoo.com
 ARCHIVE: http://www.geocities.com/tofoggymoment
---------------------------------------------------