essays

Why Our Country Can’t Trust Mitt Romney

Posted by Klaus


So, as Mitt Romney wins in the Illinois Primary and knocks Santorum out of the race, which makes him the Republican candidate, he decides he will not take Medicare. Would that we all had that option! If I was as rich as Mitt, I wouldn’t take Medicare either. Why would a rich man want to rob the system if he doesn’t need to?

As a matter of fact, one of the first things Mitt wants to do is cut aid to the poor and disabled while raising Pentagon spending even higher than some hawks recommend. Mitt wants to be President because he wants to rob the system. Romney wants to feed the rich and starve the poor.

Mitt already robs the system. For as much money as he has, I’ll bet he doesn’t pay as high a per cent of taxes as my wife does. There are plenty of loopholes built into the system and Romney is a master at making use of them. He has no concept of what the average person, like you and I, have to go through to make ends meet.

For example, he owns a house, one of a few, in La Jolla, California. Mitt has decided to build an extension on this house, already worth over 12 million dollars, that will enable him to store his multiple cars because, in his neighborhood, space is at a premium.

Mitt is adding to the house and building an elevator or “car lift” that will move his cars between floors. That way his wife’s two Cadillacs, possibly among others, will be able to be stored properly. One would wonder if the “car lift” would have a ceiling high enough to accommodate the dog’s cage so the dog could be stored with the cars making it easier to leave and go on a trip with less bother.

We all live like that in the good old U.S.A., don’t we? I guess not. How can this man possibly have any concept of how us commoners live? Do you really believe that this man, who lives like royalty, can have the people’s interest at heart?

“I’ll bet you $10,000 that’s not true,” Mitt said in a debate about something that Gov. Perry from Texas said. Most of us would offer a $10, even $50 bet but 10 “Large”? C’mon Mitt, let’s get down to Earth.

Now let’s take a look at the super PAC’s that have thrown money towards Mitt Romney’s campaign. Romney has a network of PAC’s that give him major contributions and the source of them is somewhat hidden. These corporate entities seem to have been created specifically to hide the rich 1%’s identities.

For example, a group called Restore Our Future, (as if it disappeared in the first place), has changed it’s reports to the Federal Election Commission after media exposed that the contributions of $1 million and $250,000 were given to Romney through dummy limited liability companies (LLC’s).

In both cases, people with past affiliations to Bain Capital, a private equity firm created by Romney, or Bain & Co., a consulting firm Romney built from near disaster, admitted that they were the wellsprings of the money.

Restore Our Future has demolished Romney’s main competitors for the Republican nomination with a plethora of negative attack advertising. Restore Our Future has become a driving force and a political bulldozer in the game-changed world of campaign finance ever since the Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizen’s United case two years ago, threw open the doors to unlimited corporate, labor union, and personal money to influence elections, according to the Boston Globe.

Marshall Merifield, who has backed Romney for a long time, according to the Globe, said, “When you max out personally, the super PAC is this sort of new game, an out of the box situation, and another way to help out.”

What Merifield is really saying is that corporations are now regarded as having the same rights as individual people, but with a whole lot more buying power—which translates to the crushing of free speech of the individual. The new playing field is twisted in favor of those people, such as Mitt, who are loved by the corporations that now have more power than most countries.

Now let’s take a look at Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin, who has worked hard to destroy the bargaining power and benefits of public workers; in essence destroying the unions that protect the common working man. People in Wisconsin are so incensed at having their labor protections stripped away from them that they have started proceedings to have a vote to Recall their Governor and replace him.

Mitt Romney has come out so hard in favor of Scott Walker that, in Wisconsin, people refer to him as “Mitt Walker.” After all, what understanding does a 1 per-center like Romney have when it comes to what the common American family goes through with their finances. How many common American’s can build elevators for their cars to store them off the streets? As a matter of fact, how many common Americans have so many cars that they would even consider doing something like that?

Mitt Romney just can’t be trusted. Women, especially, can’t trust this man. When Romney decided to run against Ted Kennedy he knocked Republican Janet Jeghelian, a former talk show host, right out of the race. She wasn’t a powerful candidate but she predicted Romney would flip-flop on abortion rights. Jeghelian was right. It took a while but he did.

Then Romney promised Jane Swift that he wouldn’t jump in and block her run for the Governorship of Massachusetts. In the blink of an eye, he leapt right in. Another woman stepped on by the Mitt Machine.

Shannon O’Brian, according to the Boston Globe, said, “The (women’s) choice issue is just one glaring reason why women can’t trust Mr. Romney. The broader, more profound issue is about what he will do to protect and preserve family health care across the country.” O’Brian, the Democrat Romney beat in 2002 says, “that’s the biggest flip-flop that women should be concerned about.”

You could call Mitt Romney “Elevator Man” because he wants the Presidency so badly that he’s willing to climb up the backs of the working people with the money of the other 1 per-centers to do just that. And Mitt is willing to do anything, say anything, promise anything—just to become President.

This “Massachusetts moderate” has become known for flip-flopping on so many issues, one would wonder whether he has had acrobatic training by the best. He can certainly afford it. But can the United States afford “Etch-a-Sketch” Mitt Romney for President?

Aren’t all politicians truth-twisters when it comes to election time? The sad story of Mitt Romney is that he is the King of the flip-flop, the man who grew up with a golden spoon in his mouth and his greatest goal is to be the King of the United States. Of course, we don’t have royalty—or do we? What is a Democracy when it becomes a Plutocracy?

How The Troll Met Ar Lain Ta

Posted by Klaus


There’s dope houses and then there’s dope houses. Any junkie knows what I mean when I say that. The dope house of the Troll is like the last house on the block, you know, for the junkie who has tried everything to stop using and nothing works.

The Troll. You’ve probably heard those tales from medieval times where, like the bridge you have to cross to save the maiden, or get to the water so the village can survive, or maybe just cross to get to market everyday has a gatekeeper where you have to pay the toll to get across. Whatever that toll might be. In those ancient stories the gatekeeper was often a hunch-backed creature with hooves for feet, bumps and hair coming off a massive nose, yellowed teeth, some broken, with the breath of a demon from hell issuing forth from his mouth. If you were unlucky enough not to have the toll, you might have to give up some precious possession to get across the bridge and get what you need, whatever that might be, and if you were desperate enough maybe you would sacrifice anything you had, maybe a child even, even the first-born male, just to make things right. But, as any junkie knows, nothing will ever be right again.

He was a modern day gatekeeper at a subterranean basement underneath a three-decker apartment house. The lights were never on in the dwellings above the basement. People were said to live there but no one ever saw anyone coming or going. Now and then there would be screams or cries from above us. The Troll would look up, the furrows on his brow would deepen and he would wink his good eye, the one where red mottled the whites of it, the brown one, not the pale blue one surrounded by yellow with a drooped lid that kept it half-closed all the time, even when he might be asleep, (no one ever knew for sure whether he slept at all or whether that bad eye could see or not), he would wink his good eye at us and say, “The angels. Can you hear them cry? Trapped in a heaven that they never made. Wing rot. They can’t lift off anymore without the help of God. And He’s down here with us, fixing to chase the nightmares away. Heaven help ’em.”

And then he’d chortle and snort from deep into his chest until a hacking cough would cut him off. Usually it would be time for another fix and Veronica de Veux would be slithering through the door with a brick for the gatekeeper.

Veronica. Really, everyone called her Ron so that’s what I’m going to call her for the rest of this tale. Ron de Veux was one of the Troll’s pets. She was a tired old whore, used to be a dancer, used to be a cover girl, used to be a porn star, used to be a call girl, used to be a streetwalker, and at the end no one even called her to the car for a two-bit blow-job, but always a junkie, always a junkie; no man ever moved her like the spike running the horse into her blood. It was the only time she ever came close to orgasm, except maybe when the Troll would roll his creaky wooden wheelchair into the back room of his crib with Ron de Veux right behind him with two loaded syringes. Those of us who knew would perk our ears up and wait. It wouldn’t be long before the moans would start and then suddenly it would sound like a choir of demons mating in twelve-step rhyme from behind that kitchen door. Whatever they were cooking, we knew that we didn’t want any part of it and we’d all drop another bag in the cookers ourselves to dim the lights in our cursed minds.

After a bit the door opened up and they’d come out. She’d be pushing the chair by the cracked rubber handles on the old dark wood and the Troll would wink at us as the spittle ran down his grizzled chin. Ron would be scratching at her crotch for hours after that with a dreamy look on her face. Then she would curl up at the foot of his chair and he would drop two bags into her cooker. The fire from her lighter flashed and within seconds she’d be sleeping with the dustman who was a close relation of the sandman, lord of dreams. The Troll would pull part of the blanket covering his withered branch-like legs down over her and put his grimey gnarled finger to his bearded lips. Sometimes his other pet, Nadia Chance, would be there too, yet she had many other functions in that last house on the block which I’ll go into later.

Then the Troll would start to speak. His low guttural voice would rumble out into the cement and brick basement and echo from corner to corner. Even those of us in the deepest nod would listen up and the basement would get so quiet that you could hear a dull spike skewer the fibrous scar tissue of an overused vein if you were sitting next to someone who happened to be fixing, or maybe the sound of the slide on the barrel of a hypodermic that had been run up and down so many times that even the vaseline on the rubber stopper was locking it up, or maybe even the powder dissolve when the spray hits the stash covering the greyed old cotton in the spoon. Instead of the clink of glasses there might be the ting of the metal buckle on the belt or the creak of the old leather as someone tightened up so they could get a clean hit. Might be that you were listening so hard that you missed the popping of airbubbles in your vein as you overshot the air from the syringe right in after the dope. Don’t worry though, it takes a lot of air to kill an old junkie and we’re not that lucky anyhow.

Did I drift off for a minute or two. Hey, that happens sometimes. Some sentences take an hour to finish, if you know what I mean. Anyway, it would get real quiet and then the Troll would start to spin a yarn.

“Well folks,” he would say, “now that I got your limited attention, let me tell you a true story that nobody will believe if you take it out of here. You can try but remember, who believes a junkie? Heh, heh, no one with any damn sense and you can put your fix money on that any day of the week. I’ll be glad to take it off your hands.

“Did I ever tell you about the four years I spent clean? Hey, I can see the looks you’re giving me,” and he winked his good eye shut, then when he opened it the light flashed out of his pinpoint pupil and he gave out with a soft chuckle. “Really, I’ll tell you, I was a card-carrying member of Narcotics Anonymous going from meetings to detoxes to carry the message of hope for the sick and suffering addict. I chaired meetings and even sponsored people. I kinda do that here too, sponsor people into dreams, let ’em meet the Dustman themselves before they go permanently into the angel’s dreaming in deathtime.”

“My life was going along quite well during that period. Sure there were times that I felt like a little tickle from the old poppy dust would lighten the load. Probably every day it crossed my mind but you know, if you don’t pick it up, you don’t get high. Which is why I make sure that Ron here, “pointing to the sleeping woman at his feet, “picks it up. ‘Cause I sure ain’t in the shape to be rolling up the stairs in those dope houses. I like to stay right here where my dreams live and keep safe.

“You might wonder why I stopped a good run of reality, just like that, when everything was right as ice cream on apple pie. Maybe you’d like to know what it was that kicked me back into the life and made it so that I never want to have an undusted moment again as long as I live.

“Well, if you don’t want to know you can just slip out the door back into the cold and hang out at the auto-mat. See if Jimmy the Greek will take care of your needs and find yourself fixing in an alley or busted by the man and crying the blues in a shit-stained cell out on Rikers. Or you can just sit back, shut your eyes, and let the ole’ Troll tell you why he took this ticket to ride, got on the horse and never looked back.

“It was because of Ar Lain Ta. Maybe you heard old Casey over there speak of him. Maybe you’ve run into him yourself or heard the stories in the other places. I’ll tell you my story about him and then we’ll let Casey tell his, if he’s up to it. Yeah, old Casey met him too.”

Right then I saw Casey pull out another glassine envelope, slit the tape with a cutting blade, and shake it empty into his cooker. Just hearing the man’s name, Ar Lain Ta, that was enough. Casey’s hand shook so much that I reached over, took the gimmick out of his hand, traced his vein with my finger, tapped it once with the point and then slid it in. The fresh blood made a spot at the bottom of the slide and I pulled up on it for a second and then, when the blood plumed up in the barrel, slammed it home.

The Troll continued.

“It was like this. I was sitting in the church in my chair after confession, you know, being in recovery and all had brought me back to the church of my childhood. I was alone there just contemplating my future, like in a state of meditation, when I first caught the scent. You know the smell, that smell when the fire first hits the pipe, or when you walk in the door of an opium den, that sweet smell that lets you know that, no matter what tragic circumstance is on you, you’re gonna be all right as soon as your lips kiss the pipe. It had been a long time since I caught a whiff like that and so naturally I look up to see where it’s coming from. Maybe the priest was coming back around with the incense burner to chase the stench of hell out or whatever.

I look up and he’s standing right in front of me. A man of Asian extraction dressed in a dark suit, very natty, smiling white teeth beaming from his oriental lips and soft eyes looking at me. Where he came from or how he slipped up on me as quiet as the breath of a mouse I just don’t know.

“Lloyd,” he says. That was the name I went by in those old days.

“Huh, how’d you know my . . . ” and he interrupts with

“Ssshhh. It’s okay.”

But right at that moment it just felt all wrong, even the chair I spent all my time in since the war went odd on me and hurt me in places I had forgotten since the last sickness, the last time I kicked in the dark damp cell out at Ryker’s Island.

“Son,” he continued, “you have some unfinished business to attend to. Remember the first time you hit up? You swore to the swamp flies that were buzzing around your head that you would do this the rest of your life. I believe you’re not quite done yet.”

“Hey,” I came up with the retort, “I don’t think you know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, but I do.” His eyes pierced mine and then I caught the scent of the dope sizzling in the cooker and I peeked around to see where the odor was coming from. Then I realized. By the God on the crucifix, the scent was spilling from his body. It was at that moment that he touched me on the head with his hand and the rush came like I was shooting the pure right from the backhills of Burma.

To be very honest with you, I did not pull away. His hand rested on my head and the rush came and came and the dustman had me in his kingdom. The dreams. Oh my God the dreams. And then he lifted his hand away and it all came to a stop.

We all know what it’s like when the dope starts to leave and the sickness starts to kick in, that melancholy feeling, and then all of the senses sharpen up and the tears start in the eyes, that empty feeling in the stomach when you know, if you had the time, you could write the blues for every junkie, everyman that ever cried out to the deaf Gods in the night. That’s just what happened.

Then he pressed an object which I could not focus on into my hand and whispered an address into my ear.

The last words I heard him say were, “The basement is yours for as long as you like. Leave the angels on the three floors above to their own tortured passage but let your basement be a sanctuary for those at the end of the road, those who, due to sundry losses in their life, need the extreme unction delivered by the opiates. It will be your kingdom, you will be the Troll, you will be the gatekeeper, the one who will grant these souls deliverance. And their numbers will grow as the unrest in the world increases and there will come to you one day a man who will tell you of my doings. However, the knowing will not be for you alone. Another will come to tell the tale to the world and he will write it in the form of a book. Of course, no one will believe him. Who believes a junkie anyway?”

And then there was laughter that echoed through the church. Suddenly I realized that my eyes were closed and I looked up and he was gone. A dream. It must have been a dream.

Just then the priest, Father Michael, came up to me.

“Can I help you out, my son?” he asked.

I nodded my head and he began to roll me up the aisle when I noticed that the fingers of my right hand were clenched tightly around an object. I opened my hand.

In my hand, God help me, God save me, was a brick of heroin with a key taped to the outside. The key fits this basement door. And here we are, all of us, touched by the poppy till death do we part.”

The Troll bowed his head and the quiet clogged our ears. Then this grotesque creature sitting in the wheelchair looked over at me and winked. He winked at me, may God turn my next fix to chalk if I lie, with his bad eye, the drooped one, the one that never moves. And he began to laugh.

Marc D. Goldfinger is a formerly homeless vendor who is now housed. He can be reached at junkietroll@yahoo.com and via his web page MarcDGoldfinger. Marc also has books on www.smashwords.net that can be downloaded for $2.99.

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Are You My Girl Or What

Posted by Klaus

She sat across the table from me drinking her coffee. Her eyes kept blinking really fast like there was too much light going into them. It was her third cup of coffee and my second was just going down my throat. I got up to get another cupful.

“Get me another, okay,” she said.

“You could wait til you finish that one,” was what I said as I walked away. I knew she wouldn’t say anything. She just looked into her cup for a minute and then drank some more. I filled my cup again and walked back to the table.

It was early in the day and the school cafeteria was quiet. It was after breakfast but way before lunch and we had just woke up after drinking late into the night. Me and Sarah, we had fought about something around 3am right before we passed out. I didn’t remember anything about it except that she cried a little bit before she started sleep breathing. Then I rolled over and went to sleep too.

“What did we fight about last night,” I asked her as I sat down.

Her eyes flicked from mine to another part of the room. She stared away for a long second then turned back towards me. I kept staring to where I thought her eyes should be. She stuck her finger into her coffee and moved it like she was trying to pick something out of it. I looked at her coffee but there was nothing in it but her finger.

“What did you ask,” she asked.

“Never mind,” I answered.

People were starting to drift in to the cafe. We sat and watched one couple get coffee. They were talking really loud and the girl kept saying, “I can’t believe you said that,” but we never could hear the guy as well as we heard her. It was like his words were all jumbled together. They paid for their coffee and went outside.

“They looked like they were high on drugs,” Sarah said.

“You think everybody is, don’t you?”

“Well?” she answered.

I stared at her. Reached down and took a sip of my coffee but kept looking at her eyes until she looked away.

“I don’t like the way you treat me sometimes,” she said.

That really made me smile.

“What are you smiling about? That wasn’t funny.”

“You know, I really think I could do anything I want to you and you wouldn’t leave me.” was what I said to her.

“That’s not true,”she said. She stared into her coffee.

“Come on. You know it is.”

“I don’t know why you’re saying that,” she said.

I picked up my coffee cup and splashed the rest of my coffee all over her, in her face, on her sweater. She jumped up and tried to brush it off like it was bread crumbs or something and it stained her blouse and dripped off her hair.

She went to the rest room to wash it off and then came back and sat down.

“I don’t know why you did that,” she said. “Now I’m going to have to go back and change. Why did you do that?”

I looked at her and tapped my finger on the table.

“Just to prove a point,” was what I said.

“I can’t believe you did that.”

“Are you my girl or what?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “So what does that have to do with anything?”

“It has to do with everything,” I said. And I smiled at her.

A Bureaucratic Limbo

Posted by Klaus

Just imagine that all of a sudden you die; you find out that there may be no God. You’re thrust into a world full of drifting ghosts like yourself, all distraught because no one knows where to go. You talk to other ghosts and some of them say that there is a way to get out of the regions of nowhere, but you have to find someone or something that has the answers.

The ghosts may not have all the answers, but they can start you on your way, and you are warned that there are roadblocks. Some things you say will open doorways that will bring you closer to heaven or hell, but if you say the wrong thing or leave something out, you are stuck adrift in the land of howling winds, and bridges made of bones and skulls that lead nowhere.

It is never dark but there is a fog all around you; a ghost may pass by ten feet away from you; you can hear them moan, but if you move in the wrong direction, you cannot connect.

Sounds like a bureaucracy, right? Have you ever tried to apply to a government program that assists the jobless, the hungry, or the mentally adrift, and found that something you say puts more roadblocks in your path? Then you have to clear those blocks before you can go further.

Or you’re assigned a caseworker, and he or she guides you into a maze that doesn’t get you what you need or want. You find yourself disqualified or set back and you have to go around the circle one more time before you can get help. The caseworker is holding out rings for you to grab, as if you were on a merry-go-round, and you hopefully grab the ring, but it is not gold — it’s a lead ring that isn’t worth anything.

If that wasn’t bad enough, what if the caseworker thought, because he was misinformed, that it was the right ring for you but he didn’t know that a more appropriate ring would have gotten you rolling in the direction you wanted to go? The caseworker was unaware of the right ring to give you.

Let’s climb the ladder of the bureaucracy. Let’s say, on the third level, two levels below the Benevolent Demons who make the rules, is a Guiding Spirit who actually knows about the programs that can help the “consumer,” which is the term for those who must apply for things they need. But, because of rules set up by the Benevolent Demons, the Guiding Spirit can only speak to the Secondary Gods of the agencies where the caseworkers work to help the consumers get what they need.

Now, let’s add some interesting roadblocks. To efficiently serve the consumers, the caseworkers should have an ideal caseload of 40 to 50 people. However, the numbers game, which determines the allotment of money to hire the caseworkers, may be rigged by, let’s say, the population increase or decrease in the state where the organization is located. So the organization is only allotted enough money to hire caseworkers to work at one satellite — or just enough so the caseload of the caseworkers is over 160 consumers at any given time.

This means that the efficiency level of the caseworkers is crippled, and not only do they not have the time to research what programs are appropriate for each consumer, they also don’t even have enough time to find out what programs are available. Why is this?

The Secondary Gods of each satellite program have so much information to manage that they don’t have the time to dispense the information that exists to the caseworkers. In addition to this snafu, the Guiding Spirit, who is aware of all the programs and just might have time to meet with the caseworkers in groups to dispense the information about programs that exist, is not allowed to talk to the caseworkers directly. The Guiding Spirit can only talk to the Secondary Gods of the satellites of the agencies if he has permission to do so from the Benevolent Demons — kind of like entities who are so removed from the realities of the situation that they block important avenues through which vital information can flow.

For example, let’s say there was a program that would give food vouchers to consumers who needed them because they had lost their jobs. Imagine that there are enough food vouchers to serve 90 consumers, but only 30 consumers are aware of the existence of this program because the Guiding Spirit is blocked, by one manner or another, from dispensing the information about the program directly to the caseworkers who need this information. This is because they are dealing with the consumers who would most benefit from having these food vouchers.

Imagine a series of bridges built of bones and skulls and some of them lead to dead ends and others lead to the food vouchers, but you must count the steps when you are on the bridge. If, when you get to the caseworker ghost, you don’t know the number of the steps you have taken to get there, you must turn around and start over again.

Maybe you counted the number of steps and are facing your caseworker, but he does not have the information of the food voucher program, so you are blocked again. The caseworker ten feet away in the fog has the information, but you can’t see him, so again you are blocked. The Secondary God of your satellite is so overwhelmed by the numbers that, as much as he wants to help the caseworkers underneath, he doesn’t realize that this particular caseworker doesn’t know about the food voucher program.

Oh yes, another snafu. There are time limits to these programs. If enough food vouchers are not given out during the Year of Our Lord within which they were allotted, the program is scrapped because the numbers show that there really isn’t a need for the extra food vouchers.

Ironically, the food vouchers are not extra — the consumers are lost in the fog of rules and roadblocks — but now less money will be allotted to the diverse programs that no one but the Guiding Spirit is aware of. However, the Spirit is not permitted to directly transmit the information to where it is needed because the Benevolent Demons are busy looking at numbers that don’t mean anything in reality.

Also, the caseworkers have 160 consumers to deal with and the Secondary Gods have so many caseworkers to deal with that the consumers are not told what actions they must take to get to what they need. Even if they know what they need to do, their caseworkers may not have the right assistance to dispense.

Unfortunately, this is a true story, and the facts have been altered to protect the innocent. Instead of helping people with empty stomachs, the money goes to bombing people we don’t know, blowing their legs off, and creating more enemies all over the world so that we have even less money to dispense — even if the right information were available to the right people. People with empty stomachs don’t have the money to hire lobbyists, and corporations benefit mightily from the continuation of war and are now considered to be people, and have plenty of lobbyists. So our Congress, even if it wanted the right information, doesn’t get the information it needs to re-figure the numbers so that people with empty stomachs can get to the food vouchers they don’t even know exist.

What if, when we die, even ghosts face bureaucracies and must wander in the fog unless they get lucky? The bridges are made of skulls and bones — only those who built the bridges know the truth, and they’re not saying a word.

And I’m just a ghost who got lucky.

The Birth Of Ar Lain Ta (Conclusion)

Posted by Klaus

Ar Lain Ta was a man of humble origins. His parents were farmers from the west bank of the Salween River. The terrorist but legally sanctioned army of Burma, known as the Tatmadaw, had driven his parents from their farm.

The Tatmadaw used what they called a “Four Cuts Strategy,” which meant isolating and controlling sources of food, funds, intelligence, and recruits. His father, a farmer named U Hla Pe, had been meditating, and his mother had been in the fields slicing the pods off the poppies, when the Tatmadaw arrived and began looting homes, gang-banging the wives and daughters of friends, and plundering animals and the croplands.

Instead of surrendering to them and becoming unwilling participants in the construction of a 100-mile-long railroad line from Aung Ban south to Loi Kaw, in a slave labor camp where cholera, dengue fever, yaws, blackwater fever, yellow fever, amoebic dysentery, and other antagonistic life-forms constantly raided the camps, U Hla Pe chose to slip through the fields and flee with his pregnant wife across the Salween into Mae Ark, a small Pa-O village which was controlled and protected by a benevolent lord of the opium trade named Chang Te Tzu.

Very little is known about his mother’s origins. Her name was Nang Saeng Zoom, however it is not known whether this was her given name or one that she acquired later on in her life. It is said that she loved the fields and she talked to the plants as she worked. There were some that said she was haunted by the ghosts of her ancestors.

The story about Ar Lain Ta’s mother was passed on by an old farmer in the opium den that he retired to after his day’s work was done. One day, when Chang Te Tzu was visiting the village, he became very ill with symptoms of cholera.

The diarrhea came on suddenly and violently, and his stools were filled with rice-like particles. He vomited and defecated simultaneously, and the muscles in his arms and legs knotted and contracted spasmodically, appearing to be boiling beneath his skin to all those who watched with horror.

The man collapsed and virtually seemed to shrink in size within moments. Other observers said that his skin turned to light parchment paper and began to rip in places.

At that moment, Nang Saeng Zoom appeared and light seemed to shine from her eyes as she lifted the seemingly weightless Chang Te Tzu and carried him quickly into her dwelling. His personal guard stood well away and did not interfere for they were afraid that they would be stricken with the strange malady that had infected their Lord. Normally they were afraid of nothing and would charge into battle no matter what weapons their enemies wielded, but this was something out of their realm.

Nang Saeng Zoom lit lamps and mixed potions from strange herbs that were hanging on the walls of her hut. Soon alien smells and chants mixed with the sound of moaning, and the smell of feces, vomit, and death spilled into the air. At first, the smells were weak and the chanting was soft, but like a rising wind they increased in velocity and power. Suddenly, they began to diminish and, within hours, the stench of Hell was gone and the people nearby the hut heard the voice of Chang Te Tzu singing in harmony with the sweet soprano of Nang Saeng Zoom.

It was told–and there are no villagers who will contradict this–that in the evening, Chang Te Tzu emerged from the hut of U Hla Pe with Nang Saeng Zoom on his arm. He was in such robust health that he appeared to glow. When he asked Nang Saeng Zoom what he could do for her, the only boon that she requested was that Chang Te Tzu take her soon-to-be-born son and raise him with the best education possible. When Chang Te Tzu asked her how she knew that the child would be male, she laughed. He began to laugh, also; he laughed so hard that his body shook and the laugh leaped from him to his men and coursed through the entire village like an unstoppable, titanic tide.

Three days later, when the harvest was being celebrated, Ar Lain Ta was born. It was the largest harvest in the history of the village. Soon after that day, U Hla Pe met with an unfortunate accident–the details of which are unknown–while working in the poppy fields. Six months later, Chang Te Tzu married Nang Saeng Zoom.

To this day the people speak of the wonder and magic of the times when Chang Te Tzu ruled with Nang Saeng Zoom at his side. There were those that said that she wielded the power during this era in which Chang Te Tzu’s influence spread across the land, and even reached overseas to the Americas. Of course, this is nothing but rumor and innuendo. Only the walls of their many dwellings know the truth, and they are not speaking. Yet there still remain servants from this era who might talk if they were so inclined.

However, these servants who still live now serve Ar Lain Ta, the birth son of Nang Saeng Zoom and the adopted son of Chang Te Tzu. It is said that he is everywhere at once. There are many stories told about Ar Lain Ta, the man of many names.

Some say that Ar Lain Ta speaks more than eight languages fluently. It is documented that he attended Harvard University and now has two post-graduate degrees: a doctorate in International Relations and a doctorate in Ethnobotany.

There are many stories about Ar Lain Ta, yet there are not many people who have specific memories of meeting him. Many students say that he was like a phantom; sometimes they noticed him and sometimes they did not. Even the professors have different versions of their experiences with him and their stories are always subject to change.

The Dark Tower or What To Do After Harry Potter

Posted by Klaus


So, the final book of Harry Potter by J. K. Rowling has been released. Yes, I have it. No, I haven’t begun to read it yet but if it is as wonderful as the past 6 books, I know I won’t be disappointed.

There is another series circulating in town by a present day author that hasn’t made as much of a bang as the Potter series, yet it is equally as good, if not better. I’m talking about Stephen King’s Dark Tower series which, ironically, is also made up of seven volumes.

I’ve read quite a few of Stephen King’s books. I’ve read “The Stand”, “Jerusalem’s Lot”, “Hearts of Atlantis”, “The Regulators”, and some of the Bachman books, like “Thinner”, the latter of which were rejected by booksellers until they realized that Richard Bachman was Stephen King. Names sell books.

There is a book out now called “Crooked Little Vein” by Warren Ellis, who is well-known for his excellent graphic novels, published under the Harper-Collins imprint. I skimmed it, being an Ellis fan through his graphic novels, and the only disappointment I found was that my own novel Tales of the Troll: Junkies, Angels & Demons, hasn’t found a publisher yet and it is just as good as Ellis’s book. Of course, I’ve only sent it out to two places, which I won’t name, so maybe it is just sour grapes but people who have read it love it. Every chapter except for about five out of thirty-two chapters has been published somewhere and I’ve made a few chapbooks of it a number of times and sold out every time. Anyway, back to the main topic. Two of my favorite Stephen King novels were “The Stand”, and “Hearts of Atlantis”. I love the “low-men”. Sorry, you won’t find any spoilers here.

I blew off The Dark Tower series for a number of reasons. One being, Mr. King wrote the first four and then stopped working on the series, except for in his head. It was close to ten years before he decided to take book 5, The Wolves of the Calla, out of his head. Within the next three years he wrote book 6, The Song of Susannah, and completed the series with book 7, appropriately called The Dark Tower.

Then, in 2006, Marvel Comics started putting out a portion of The Dark Tower in comic book form. Besides reading regular literature, I also read comics. I read hungrily. I am a word junkie, which beats being a heroin junkie, which I was for over three decades. I never stopped reading or writing; I just lost everything I wrote, except for a book of poetry I wrote in prison called Poison Pen, which I released as a chapbook, made 500 copies and sold them all.

But before I picked up the opiates, my drug of choice was fantasy. I day-dreamed in school, in the playground and at home. I finished Moby Dick by the time I was 8 years old. Truth to tell, it took me close to four months to read, but hey, I was just a kid.

Some of my heroes growing up were Isaac Asimov, Harlan Ellison, and Philip K. Dick. There were plenty of others. On the darker side was Junkie by William Lee or, as we later found out, William S. Burroughs, who became infamous because of his book called The Naked Lunch. I think his best two books were “Junkie” and “Queer”. There are those who might disagree, but so what!

But, back to The Dark Tower by Marvel Comics. I read the first three installments; there were seven called The Gunslinger Born, and said to myself, “hmm, this is pretty good. I think I’ll give the books a chance. Peter David, who graphically wrote them — Thank you. And I started the first of the 7, called “The Gunslinger.”

Now, Stephen King, sometime during the period between books 4 and 5, like I said — about ten years — had a lot to think about. When he almost got killed by a Plymouth van in the late 90′s, his thinking changed. I know this for a fact because getting whacked by a pick-up truck, which I wrote about in a short story called “Getting Fixed In South Carolina”, in 1991, did the same for me. Yes, my story got published and a jazz group called The Jeff Robinson Trio made a Spoken Word cd about it that got written up by The Boston Globe. We only had the cash to make a few thousand, but, “Cry your pardon”, it did sell out and the story was published in a few places, just no place really big.

Bam, it changed my life. I stopped using heroin for the first time and went into recovery. But back to the main story, which is Stephen King and The Dark Tower.

Stephen King went back to The Dark Tower. He did some re-writing of the first four books and he worked diligently, totally inspired and gifted by the Muse like never before. You can tell whether you have the re-write of the first four because each of the new ones begin with a preface called “On Being Nineteen.” If you have one of the first four of The Dark Tower Series and it doesn’t have “On Being Nineteen” in the beginning “I cry your pardon”, you don’t have the finished product in your hands.

Now — I don’t know yet how “Harry Potter” will end up yet because I haven’t read the final book yet. I also don’t know how The Dark Tower series will finish because I’ve only read the first 5 books of the series of 7.
“The Dark Tower” series is good, really good. Did you ever read a book and hope it will never end because it was so good? If you have, then you know what I’m talking about. I don’t want “Harry Potter” to end, but, even more so, I don’t want “The Dark Tower” series to end.

“The Dark Tower” series is by far, in my not-always-so-humble-opinion, the best series of books that Stephen King has ever written. Jack Spicer, who is a great poet, once said that “Writers are the dictation machines of the Gods.”

Well the Gods were sitting on Stephen King’s shoulders, creeping in his ears, spinning around in his fantastical mind, which I wouldn’t want to get lost in, when he wrote “The Dark Tower” series. If you’ve read anything by Stephen King and liked it, if you blow off “The Dark Tower” series because it looks too long, you are doing yourself a major disservice.

The truth, and I “cry your pardon if you deny this and have forgotten the face of your fathers”, is that “The Dark Tower” series is too short. But so is life. Now if you’re just nineteen, then you have no idea how short life is, unless you are in Iraq, but, in the preface to “The Gunslinger”, which is the first of the 7, and in the next 3 books in “The Dark Tower” series, Stephen King, will tell you about “The Bad Patrol Boy” and how He’s gunning for you and you don’t even have a clue yet.

But that’s all I should say. Just walk into a book store; I like the Harvard Book Store on 1256 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, and look for a copy of “The Dark Tower” series, any-one of the first four, and read the preface. It’s called, and I know I’m repeating myself, “On Being Nineteen”, and then you might have some idea on how good “The Dark Tower” series is. Please, and “I cry your pardon”, begin with book one called “The Gunslinger.”

You’ll also want to look over your shoulder and have one hand on your gun. “He’s coming for you.” Whatever you do, read Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. Now that you’ve finished “Harry Potter”, you owe it to yourself to have another adventure, ya might say equally as good. Me, I think it is better. It’s the best writing Stephen King has ever done and it is probably the series which will follow him beyond the grave.
But what do I know? I’m just 61 years old and never thought I’d see that day.

One important fact. “The Dark Tower” series is not for children. It’s for people who were 8 year old when the first “Harry Potter” book came out. Do the math, then read this unbelievable series.

All props to you, Stephen King, and may you live long and well. I wonder if the guy on death row ever got to finish the series. Mr. King, you know what I’m talking about. And, The Old Woman, may the miracle take place for her.

And you — Read this, slow down and enjoy it. It goes faster than you think.

Long Time, No Surveillance

Posted by Klaus


You can tell it’s summer. I’ve neglected my posting; Congress is getting ready to take a month off after stripping us of some more freedoms because Papa George W. thinks we’ll be safer. They can wiretap at will now, folks.

Also, the new estimate of the cost of World War Iraq is now 1 trillion dollars. You know, Social Security and Medicare wouldn’t be in trouble if the government could throw money at it like they are doing to kill good men and women in foreign places.

Do you feel safer now? Why couldn’t that money rehabilitate bridges so we don’t have another debacle like Mississippi? Man, that shouldn’t have happened.

George W. ran almost every company he was in charge of into the ground, took his share and then ran. Now he’s in charge of our money. There is no such thing as Government money. It’s our money that they take from hard-working people.

Well, it’s August and Congress and George will take a vacation. I’ll bet our soldiers in Iraq aren’t on vacation. Neither is Iraq.

God help us all. What is the matter with the human species? Can you hear the fiddles?

Mitt Romney, Massachusett’s “MonkeyMan”

Posted by Klaus


In the CD called The Traveling Wilbury’s, there is a song called Tweeter and The Monkey Man, where they sing “In Jersey everything’s legal unless you get caught.” Mitt Romney is Massachusett’s Monkey Man.

Just recently his driver posed as a police officer both in New Hampshire and in Massachusetts. Jay Garrity, Mitt Romney’s man who identified himself as Trooper Garrity on at least two occasions, was even driving, according to the Boston Metro, on a suspended driver’s license.

According to the report, Mitt Romney was in the car on at least one of the occasions.

Jay Garrity has taken a leave of absence from Romney’s employ at this time and Mitt, always there when you need him, says “He’s a good guy and wish him the very best, but this is really now in his hands.”

When you’re super-rich like Mitt, “everything is legal, sometimes even when you get caught.” Romney may be the worst candidate running. He really only gives a damn about himself and his family and sees the Presidency as just one more “feather” to collect.

Romney has a net worth of $350 million and is feeding his campaign money hand over fist. Like George W. Bush, he inherited his giant stake of “start” money. He’s just smarter and more dangerous. He doesn’t give a damn about the working guy or gal.

W. Bush is the worst President we’ve ever had but, if Mitt cops the big “feather”, he might top Dubya at that position.

Romney is the rich, works and favors only the rich and is a pretty frightening spectre on the horizon. The United States has become a Plutocracy and Mitt Romney is the new MonkeyMan.

Oil and how it holds civilization captive

Posted by Klaus


It was just a little over one hundred years ago when the automobile was invented. One only need to look at today’s traffic reports to see what has happened. We have built a civilization where the automobile holds us captive. Most of us need the car to get to work, or we think we do.

Picture the size of your gas tank, if you can. Then take all the gas tanks in the world, fit them together, and just try to imagine how big that tank would be. Don’t even think about the oil tanks that many people use to heat their houses. It’s going to take enough of a feat of the imagination just to visualize the size of all the gas tanks in the world put together. Imagine yourself walking through that tank. How far would you have to travel to get from one side of the tank to the other?

Just think, we fill that tank with gasoline, derived from oil, at least once a week, some of us more than that. Now think of the hole in the ground that is the same size as the tank you are walking through. Understand me, this hole is doubling in size, at a minimum, every week.

Now consider that we use oil to make plastic, we use oil to ship food to our major population centers, we use oil to run our giant farms that mono-crop, we use oil to grow the feed that the cows and pigs and chickens we eat need to survive, we use oil to build the asphalt roads we drive on, we use oil to get the energy to manufacture almost everything we use, we use massive amounts of oil to wage war.

Do you see where we are all going here? How big is that hole in the ground now? This all started only a little over one hundred years ago.

Oil is the weak link that holds our civilization together. Consider this: Is it possible that we have come close to using half the oil that exists in this world in a little over one hundred years and the use of oil increases constantly as our population explodes to over 6,000,000,000 people from a mere 2,000,000,000 just a little over two hundred years ago.

Oil has made this possible and, as we drain the Earth of its fossil fuel, we are going to watch the intricate threads that hold our civilization together unravel.

Now, maybe I’ve made a miscalculation. Maybe this isn’t happening as I’ve described it. But when I turn on my TV and watch the traffic reports and the war reports and all the little events that make up the Big Event, it hints that something is happening and you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones.

I haven’t even factored in Global Warming or given you the picture of all the exhaust pipes in the world fastened together to make one giant pipe. Our collective noses are in that pipe.

Ethanol is nice but it’s only possible in a cheap oil economy because it is derived from mono-cropping oil. So we’re back to the drawing board. Or maybe scratching pictures on the walls of caves after civilization implodes.

Have a great day and go for a joy drive folks.