Jill is a shill,
She works on the Hill,
For this man or that man or he,
Who pays for her bill,
Her pockets doth fill;
The downfall of our liberty.
americanifesto.com | updated Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday
31 March 2011
30 March 2011
forsooth
forsooth, it was mother.
she, and no other,
who did instill
in me the will,
to treat men like my brother
she, and no other,
who did instill
in me the will,
to treat men like my brother
22 March 2011
name your god
I was very pleased recently to read about Mr. Newt Gingrich's efforts to protect the role of god in society. I am also very much looking forward to viewing this man's films about Rediscovering God in America. It is truly refreshing for a worshiper of Allah, especially one so prominent as a former speaker of the legislative house of the American republic, to boldly call for the protection of Allah's role in American life. Praise be to Allah. Please hold on, for since beginning to write again, I have received increased attention by the centralized state surveillance programs, and I want to be sure they do not find me typing and sell me to the Americans.
I just received a call from my brother-in-law, who lives in South Dakota, saying that I must stop writing about Mr. Gingrich and his love for Allah. My brother-in-law claims that, when the former legislative speaker mentions god, he is not talking about the one and only true God, Allah, rather the strange deity of a small and shrinking group of Americans known as Pastafarians, who worship their own god, the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Pardon. my battery died and I had to go get more diesel to run the generator. Once my computer booted back up, I found I had received an email from an angry man in South Carolina claiming that Mr. Gingrich's references to god were in reference to the Christian god, who has a name, and whose name is Yahweh, or Jehova, depending on how closely you adhere to the Christian biblical teachings that forbid you from using the name of your god in passing (see here) and that mandate that anyone who works on the seventh day of the week must be killed outright (see here). What strange and terrible ideas these people have.
I have tried to contact my brother-in-law, to clarify whether I should praise the former legislative speaker for his courage in openly championing the place of Allah in society, or whether I should write a letter to him condemning him for his poor choice in gods, as every intelligent person knows that there is only one god, Allah, and that Yahweh and the Flying Spaghetti Monster are false idols.
Ultimately, I think I will just ask Mr. Gingrich, and any other public figure in America, to name the god to which he is referring, because it is confusing for outsiders and foreigners who understand that the United States of America was not founded as a Christian nation (see here), who know that there is folly in strictly adhering to laws mangled and adjusted as they were passed down from the Iron Age, who hear some man praising a god, and, not knowing to which god he is referring, assume that his god is my god, when his god, and I am presuming by god he means Jesus, is, from one perspective, a cannibalistic suicidal zombie who impregnated his own mother.
What strange and confusing customs these Americans have. I hope they do not find oil here, for they would surely topple our democratically elected government and install straw men and dictators who would rob us of our natural resources and subjugate us in the name of regional stability.
Please stay at home, Americans. You have enough problems of your own.
Signed,
A. Randomarab
I just received a call from my brother-in-law, who lives in South Dakota, saying that I must stop writing about Mr. Gingrich and his love for Allah. My brother-in-law claims that, when the former legislative speaker mentions god, he is not talking about the one and only true God, Allah, rather the strange deity of a small and shrinking group of Americans known as Pastafarians, who worship their own god, the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Pardon. my battery died and I had to go get more diesel to run the generator. Once my computer booted back up, I found I had received an email from an angry man in South Carolina claiming that Mr. Gingrich's references to god were in reference to the Christian god, who has a name, and whose name is Yahweh, or Jehova, depending on how closely you adhere to the Christian biblical teachings that forbid you from using the name of your god in passing (see here) and that mandate that anyone who works on the seventh day of the week must be killed outright (see here). What strange and terrible ideas these people have.
I have tried to contact my brother-in-law, to clarify whether I should praise the former legislative speaker for his courage in openly championing the place of Allah in society, or whether I should write a letter to him condemning him for his poor choice in gods, as every intelligent person knows that there is only one god, Allah, and that Yahweh and the Flying Spaghetti Monster are false idols.
Ultimately, I think I will just ask Mr. Gingrich, and any other public figure in America, to name the god to which he is referring, because it is confusing for outsiders and foreigners who understand that the United States of America was not founded as a Christian nation (see here), who know that there is folly in strictly adhering to laws mangled and adjusted as they were passed down from the Iron Age, who hear some man praising a god, and, not knowing to which god he is referring, assume that his god is my god, when his god, and I am presuming by god he means Jesus, is, from one perspective, a cannibalistic suicidal zombie who impregnated his own mother.
What strange and confusing customs these Americans have. I hope they do not find oil here, for they would surely topple our democratically elected government and install straw men and dictators who would rob us of our natural resources and subjugate us in the name of regional stability.
Please stay at home, Americans. You have enough problems of your own.
Signed,
A. Randomarab
19 March 2011
boast ye not
A very easy method exists for derailing any kind of personal development you might have gained from counseling, personal contemplation, or by surviving a significant event: boast about your success. Boasting about your accomplishments reveals them to the world incompletely, thus divorcing you from a complete understanding of the true meaning of your success (which can only come over time), and stunting the full effect of your success by forcing it into a definition that must and can only be incomplete (for it has been packaged into phrases and generalities so as to make it more understandable to others, a process which, similar to verbally describing Van Gogh's painting Wheat Field and Cypresses, inevitably ruins the fine and tender nuances of the original piece and renders it nearly impotent).
But, today, with few thinking before they speak and even fewer taking the time to contemplate a situation before beginning to ask questions (which I believe is a symptom of information-overload, an actual condition that short-circuits the brain and literally makes you stupid), we are expected to explain every single step of our day and every single thing we do, destroying whatever internal success we might have made by trying to explain that which cannot be explained to the world.
Lao Tzu says: He who speaks does not know. He who knows does not speak. (Tao Teh Ching #56)
What a strange and cunning little man.
X
X
17 March 2011
hemming and hawing
Our political culture has in recent years become quite aggressive. This is not our first period of vociferous and vitriolic politicking: in the 1850s, before the Civil War, there existed a similar environment of aggressive bantering and even outright, physical battle. We may just be heading for another internal struggle of similar proportions, for I do not see either side budging on the issues argued so passionately.
Part of the reason for the sharp divides being driven into the fabric of our society is, I believe, our nearly complete lack of political diversity. The Republican and Democratic parties are nearly indistinguishable on many issues, and, even though they claim to be more or less fiscally conservative or more or less morally sound, they are really just two sides of the same coin. We live effectively under a one-party system.
Nearly two hundred and thirty million Americans are eligible to vote. These hundreds of millions of individuals come from diverse backgrounds; they have diverse appetites; they dream many different dreams. Each one of these two hundred and thirty million Americans has a slightly different suggestion for solving the challenges our nation faces. And yet, they are give the choice between not two dozen, not one dozen, but two parties for which to vote. Two. Two hundred million people have the choice for one group or the other. There is certainly nothing holding individuals back legally from voting for a party other than the Big Two, but, given the capital, experience, and sheer mass of the ruling two parties, they have the capacity to all but drown out the voices of those groups looking to bring some diversity to the political scene.
If you were to go to the store today and you would have the choice between only two brands of everything, two brands that are so similar in taste and consistency and appearance, would you be happy? Would you rejoice in the nearly complete lack of choice? We have allowed our political system to stagnate. We have allowed two giant beasts to provide us with whomever they choose to lead us rather than forcing our system to stay nimble and diversified. Our legislative bodies, those organs that are supposed to represent the people as a whole, are nearly completely packed with red or blue, with two, only two, parties that are somehow supposed to represent the two hundred million Americans who are capable of voting. Have we become so homogenized that only two parties can possibly represent the millions of different opinions we commonly have? I think not. I believe that we can do better, that our political bodies should represent the diverse factions that exist within the people, that they should represent the cacophony of differing voices that exist in this country. We can do better.
To accuse one party or the other of being evil or disingenuous or out-of-touch or whatever is to miss the fact that they are both overgrown, plodding, and not truly representative of the great diversity that exists in this fine nation. The Republican and Democratic parties are like red delicious and granny smith apples, so close to one another in appearance and taste and substance as to be nearly indistinguishable. We can do better. It is often said that voting for a minority party, one that is attempting to bring new voices and new opinions to the political scene is to throw that vote away. This is true mostly because of the sheer power of the entrenched parties. We are not a people who can be truly represented by groups whose viewpoints are so overlapping at times that the tiny differences between them must be shouted from the rooftops, repeated ad infinitum until they seem so large as to be significant. Where to go from here I do not know, if I should join a minority party or found one or just try to change the system as a whole. Still thinking, still scheming, still writing. Can't nobody hold me down. Oh no. I've got to keep on moving.
UlRaRe.
JPR
Part of the reason for the sharp divides being driven into the fabric of our society is, I believe, our nearly complete lack of political diversity. The Republican and Democratic parties are nearly indistinguishable on many issues, and, even though they claim to be more or less fiscally conservative or more or less morally sound, they are really just two sides of the same coin. We live effectively under a one-party system.
Nearly two hundred and thirty million Americans are eligible to vote. These hundreds of millions of individuals come from diverse backgrounds; they have diverse appetites; they dream many different dreams. Each one of these two hundred and thirty million Americans has a slightly different suggestion for solving the challenges our nation faces. And yet, they are give the choice between not two dozen, not one dozen, but two parties for which to vote. Two. Two hundred million people have the choice for one group or the other. There is certainly nothing holding individuals back legally from voting for a party other than the Big Two, but, given the capital, experience, and sheer mass of the ruling two parties, they have the capacity to all but drown out the voices of those groups looking to bring some diversity to the political scene.
If you were to go to the store today and you would have the choice between only two brands of everything, two brands that are so similar in taste and consistency and appearance, would you be happy? Would you rejoice in the nearly complete lack of choice? We have allowed our political system to stagnate. We have allowed two giant beasts to provide us with whomever they choose to lead us rather than forcing our system to stay nimble and diversified. Our legislative bodies, those organs that are supposed to represent the people as a whole, are nearly completely packed with red or blue, with two, only two, parties that are somehow supposed to represent the two hundred million Americans who are capable of voting. Have we become so homogenized that only two parties can possibly represent the millions of different opinions we commonly have? I think not. I believe that we can do better, that our political bodies should represent the diverse factions that exist within the people, that they should represent the cacophony of differing voices that exist in this country. We can do better.
To accuse one party or the other of being evil or disingenuous or out-of-touch or whatever is to miss the fact that they are both overgrown, plodding, and not truly representative of the great diversity that exists in this fine nation. The Republican and Democratic parties are like red delicious and granny smith apples, so close to one another in appearance and taste and substance as to be nearly indistinguishable. We can do better. It is often said that voting for a minority party, one that is attempting to bring new voices and new opinions to the political scene is to throw that vote away. This is true mostly because of the sheer power of the entrenched parties. We are not a people who can be truly represented by groups whose viewpoints are so overlapping at times that the tiny differences between them must be shouted from the rooftops, repeated ad infinitum until they seem so large as to be significant. Where to go from here I do not know, if I should join a minority party or found one or just try to change the system as a whole. Still thinking, still scheming, still writing. Can't nobody hold me down. Oh no. I've got to keep on moving.
UlRaRe.
JPR
13 March 2011
not here nor there
Every single American president since World War Two has sent our country's military forces into battle. Not since 1941, however, has an American president actually declared war. An unchecked power-grab has allowed for the circumvention of the people's representatives (if one can still call them that) in Congress, so that our boys and girls can bleed and die overseas without any input from the citizenry other than massive, sustained, self-organized, and ultimately demoralizing demonstrations on their part. Instead of following a more democratic method and allowing such momentous decisions to be ratified or refused by those individuals who bear at least a modicum of obligation to the will of the American people (as intended by this nation's founders when they proclaimed that only Congress has the ability to declare war), we now allow one person and his or her close circle of advisors to make this decision. Vietnam was a police action, as is the Iraq conflict. We are not officially at war. This increase in the power of the executive branch of our government is threatening the stability of the tripartite system (executive, legislative, and judicial branches) our country's forefathers set in place, and will, unless it already has, bring our country to its knees.
It has become a rite of passage for a president to go to war, to grandstand and to self-promote and, ultimately, to try to solve problems that exist in other countries rather than tackling the issues we face here at home. (Compared to the complex social issues that, among other things, make Americans poor and that have filled our prisons beyond capacity, military action is satisfyingly efficient, brutal, and final.) Roughly three millions of Americans live in poverty, with nearly one million American children, yes, children, starving every day. The richest four percent of our countrymen control over half of this fine nation's entire wealth, and tens of millions of our fellow citizens work themselves to exhaustion in order to barely scrape by.
We have elevated the lure of money, the ever-damaging and ever-corrupting influence of cold hard cash, to the status of a deity, for which we sacrifice our time, our health, and our tears. Similar to the non-porcine animals in Orwell's book Animal Farm, we slave away by the millions under the impression that we are making our nation a better place for all, when we are only feeding the greedy, selfish, and bloated few at the top. This aggression will not stand.
As Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels declared in the Communist Manifesto, "Capital is a collective product, and only by the united action of many members, nay, in the last resort, only by the united action of all members of society, can it be set in motion." Americans, awake! We have fallen into an Orwellian trap from which the only clear escape is an early death. We are wage-slaves, base and pitiful creatures kept quiet by old tricks the Romans pioneered, by bread and circuses, by fast food and television, deadly to the body and to individual creativity alike, soft and fat and unfulfilled we live, shelling out billions every year to trick ourselves into thinking we are happy while wallowing in a system (our brand of top-few-capitalism) that is specifically designed to separate us from the hard-won fruits of our most precious commodity, our labor. This aggression cannot stand, just as it did not for the Romans, who soon realized that the people are smarter than they appear, and whose empire eroded soon after the people had had enough of the panem et circenses.
The Declaration of Independence says that government will bring our Happiness (and our Safety) into being, that it is there to make us happy and safe. Dear Washington, you must do better. You must change the system from its current configuration that funnels billions to the Few and alter it to benefit everyone equally.
This is the obligation set forth in the Declaration. Waiting for the people, the masses, to act, to demonstrate, to tear down the walls and institutions we have all worked so long to build can only end in heartbreak, terror, and death.
Dial back the executive powers. Realign our system of government to the promise of the Declaration, to the tender balance of the Constitution. It is not too late, but there is no time to waste.
Ultima Ratio Regum.
John Paul Roggenkamp
It has become a rite of passage for a president to go to war, to grandstand and to self-promote and, ultimately, to try to solve problems that exist in other countries rather than tackling the issues we face here at home. (Compared to the complex social issues that, among other things, make Americans poor and that have filled our prisons beyond capacity, military action is satisfyingly efficient, brutal, and final.) Roughly three millions of Americans live in poverty, with nearly one million American children, yes, children, starving every day. The richest four percent of our countrymen control over half of this fine nation's entire wealth, and tens of millions of our fellow citizens work themselves to exhaustion in order to barely scrape by.
We have elevated the lure of money, the ever-damaging and ever-corrupting influence of cold hard cash, to the status of a deity, for which we sacrifice our time, our health, and our tears. Similar to the non-porcine animals in Orwell's book Animal Farm, we slave away by the millions under the impression that we are making our nation a better place for all, when we are only feeding the greedy, selfish, and bloated few at the top. This aggression will not stand.
As Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels declared in the Communist Manifesto, "Capital is a collective product, and only by the united action of many members, nay, in the last resort, only by the united action of all members of society, can it be set in motion." Americans, awake! We have fallen into an Orwellian trap from which the only clear escape is an early death. We are wage-slaves, base and pitiful creatures kept quiet by old tricks the Romans pioneered, by bread and circuses, by fast food and television, deadly to the body and to individual creativity alike, soft and fat and unfulfilled we live, shelling out billions every year to trick ourselves into thinking we are happy while wallowing in a system (our brand of top-few-capitalism) that is specifically designed to separate us from the hard-won fruits of our most precious commodity, our labor. This aggression cannot stand, just as it did not for the Romans, who soon realized that the people are smarter than they appear, and whose empire eroded soon after the people had had enough of the panem et circenses.
The Declaration of Independence says that government will bring our Happiness (and our Safety) into being, that it is there to make us happy and safe. Dear Washington, you must do better. You must change the system from its current configuration that funnels billions to the Few and alter it to benefit everyone equally.
This is the obligation set forth in the Declaration. Waiting for the people, the masses, to act, to demonstrate, to tear down the walls and institutions we have all worked so long to build can only end in heartbreak, terror, and death.
Dial back the executive powers. Realign our system of government to the promise of the Declaration, to the tender balance of the Constitution. It is not too late, but there is no time to waste.
Ultima Ratio Regum.
John Paul Roggenkamp
10 March 2011
federal browbeating, et al.
The events portrayed here are true. They have haunted me every day since they occurred. I find myself unconsciously running through the confrontation at random points throughout my days, repeating the things I said that kept me from being black-bagged and shipped off to Gitmo. This is a therapeutic writing to try to process them better, and more fully.
The Thai Airways jet, on a direct flight from Bangkok to LAX, banks hard from the usual approach vector (with which I am well accustomed, having flown into El Peublo de nuestra Seniora la Reina de los Angeles many times), heading over Whirlywood, around Downtown, and approaching the airport from the east. The stewardesses are tense. The mood within has become hostile. We land well, all gears touching smoothly, nary a flutter along the big plane's long axis, and taxi for an unusual amount of time. It is nine fifteen in the evening, right on schedule. Sitting by the window, I can see our police escort, lights blazing, follow us to a darkened section of asphalt.
For nearly an hour we sit. Roughly half of the passengers are south Asian. Elderly Indian women make frequent sorties to the restrooms, but any time a man unbuckles and rises from his seat, the stewardesses, thin, elegant Thai women, scream at him to sit back down. People begin to ask questions, demanding to know what is going on, requesting a reason for our unexpected and unexplained delay. I am near the rear of the aircraft, and have not used the restroom in nearly seven hours. Having purposefully dehydrated myself to cut down on disturbances to my neighbor, a somewhat rude older man whose English sounded a little too groomed, I am in considerable need of a good long piss. I get a funny feeling about my right cargo pocket (where I always keep a pen and at least one permanent marker), and reach inside to pull out my portable gaming device. A wave of enemy troops fall before my well-placed defenses, and I beat the level.
Finally we begin to deplane. I thank the stewardesses on the way out, bowing to them and saying sawadee krap like a good boy who has learned his manners. Dozens of officials line the mobile staircase, asking each man as he passes to see his passport. "Are you Russian?" one agent asks me. I say no. A helicopter flares its rotors overhead. We pass through a phalanx of airport police, TSA agents, and people wearing FBI counter-terrorism jackets, to board buses that will hopefully take us to the distant terminals.
I am in the back of the third and last bus to depart. My hair is long and bleached nearly blond from three weeks of sun and surf. My clothes, of which I only brought one pair, are ripped and stained with sweat. The tattoos on my arms and chest are clearly visible. My bag, a cheap Nike knockoff I bought in Chiang Mai, is also ripped. We are packed in tightly, with TSA agents sewn heavily amongst us. The men are hyper-aware, scanning faces, trying to figure out who is looking at whom, changing locations at times to get a better view of whomever they are trying to find. A man behind me asks when we will have the chance to use the bathrooms, as we were not allowed to on the plane, and as there are none on the bus. The TSA agents answer sporadically, sometimes not at all. Having no knowledge of what is going on, and knowing that asking questions to any type of law enforcement officer is a bad idea, I stand quietly wedged against a short man with bad breath and the window, and enter a semi-trance so as to pass the time and to control my need to void.
After nearly another hour we are allowed to leave the bus and to enter a terminal building. Shouting agents direct us toward a bank of metal detectors, through which we pass, jostling with departing passengers eager to board their flights. More agents direct us through a maze of narrow hallways into a waiting area that has seen better days. As one of the last to enter, I have no seat, but I find a space against a wall where I stand at parade rest, my torn bag at my feet. I reenter the semi-trance, eyes fixed on the far wall, and do my own time, as they say in prison. FBI agents rush back and forth clutching clip-boards, normal looking, sometimes down-right unattractive people you would never be able to pick out of a crowd.
A tall man with a hollow chest approaches me, sweating under his counter-terrorism wind-breaker. "Did you notice anyone acting strange on board? Was anyone visibly upset?" he asks me. "I can't say I did, sir," I respond. "Someone wrote a threat against the airline in one of the bathrooms," he says. "So I need to know if you saw anything suspicious." I tell him I was asleep most of the flight, and cannot say I did. He nods and walks away, and at that moment I realize that I am a suspect. The realization churns my innards, but the semi-trance holds, and I resume my patient waiting for whatever the fuck is going on to be over, but now I am seeing everything but looking at nothing, letting my peripheral vision do the work.
A graceful, lithe female approaches from my right. I allow her to pass, then sneak a glance at her perfect ass. She talks with the agent with the hollow chest who approached me, and glances over as I am eye-fucking her through her immaculately tailored grey suit. "Would you come with me?" Hollow Chest says. "We need to ask you some additional questions." I am led to a sectioned-off area piled high with rows of discarded seating and introduced to a TSA agent whose name I will not here mention. He asks me about my life, about my travels in Thailand, about my primary source of income, about my activities on the flight, if I have ever had any military training, where and how often I went to the bathroom on the plane. I answer his questions, and we begin to chat amicably. The lithe female with the perfect ass walks over and says, "Where did you get those tattoos. Were you in the military?" I tell her I wasn't, but refrain from explaining why I have an American eagle and a Shield of the Union cut boldly into my left forearm. (It is because I love my country, and consider myself a patriot.) "Why are you so calm, and why were you standing against the wall like that," she asks. I explain that my father was a Navy man who taught me how to stand correctly, and how to act the gentleman. I also mention that, as an unofficial American ambassador to the Thai nation, I had been on my best behavior throughout the trip. "Oh, well, sweet tatts," she says condescendingly.
"Do you have any writing instruments in your possession?" my TSA guardian asks. I remove me permanent marker and pens from my pocket. "Oh," he says upon seeing the marker. "Better sit down, get comfortable - this is going to take a while." The bathrooms are quite close by, but I decide not to ask to use them. He asks if I have had any trauma in my life recently, and I tell him that my father died not long ago. "You must still be pretty upset about that," he says. I refute this gently, but he does not seem convinced. Hollow Chest and an airport policeman walk over and ask me to follow them.
Rounding the partition, I discover a sea of faces staring at me. Everyone who was on the plane, flight crew included, is staring at me, some with hatred in their eyes. Flanked by federal agents, I fix my gaze on a point at the far end of the long hallway and walk calmly and steadily down it. A door opens, and I am led into a large room. Two burly gentlemen sit along a far wall, elbows on knees, shooting daggers. "This way," someone says, and I enter a room with glass walls. Seven FBI counter-terrorism agents are waiting for me, including Lithe Female. I am instructed to sit at a cheap folding table.
"This is federal property," Hollow Chest says. "This room is wired for recording, and we can search anything we want, here." "Fine by me," I say, sitting down. Since I have not yet passed through customs, I am in international waters, where I have few, if any, rights. I stay calm, controlling my breathing. Inside, my mind is utterly still, focused to a razor sharpness. Every second bears tremendous weight, and as the eight agents lean forward to stare at me, pens poised above their notepads, I remind myself that I have done nothing wrong.
Hollow Chest introduces himself and another agent, a short, ugly man who looks like a Tolkien troll. I have to force myself not to laugh at the absurdity of the situation, at the comparisons my mind is making to every spy flick I have ever seen and their portrayals of coiffed and dashing agents grilling a suspect. "Do you have a camera?" Hollow Chest asks. I produce it, and as he is rifling through my saved images the trollish man asks me about which cities I visited in Thailand, with whom I associated, where I stayed, if I met any shady characters, and if I participated in any sort of military training. I answer truthfully while forcing myself not to look over at the three agents emptying my torn bag and fingering its seams.
"You have a lot of pictures of graffiti and tagging in this camera," Hollow Chest says. "Thailand is full of amazing street art," I reply enthusiastically. "I never would have thought that there would be so much beautiful stuff there." My zeal bounces off their stony faces. "Have you ever done any tagging yourself?" he asks. I tell them I have not. "Are you willing to answer that under polygraph?" I answer that I will.
"Well, the thing is, we have your customs declaration here, and, while we're not handwriting experts, we do see a fair bit of this sort of thing, and, again, we're going to have to run this past the handwriting guys, but the way you wrote the letters O and P on your customs form is very similar to the Os and Ps used to write the note," Hollow Chest says. "Again, we're not experts, but when the Os and Ps are similar, it pretty much indicates a match."
"OK," I say, nodding, waiting for them to proceed. "Did he have any writing implements on him?" Hollow Chest says. Before I can answer, my TSA guardian produces my marker and hands it over. I can see the excitement in Hollow Chest's face. "So," he says, "we have the pictures of graffiti in your camera, and we have your marker, and we have the handwriting match on your customs declaration. It would be best for you to just get this over with now. If you admit to anything later on, it will be far worse for you. So you should probably just get it over with now." Variables flash through my mind, and I think, 'Shit, if I fuck up here, I'm looking at three to five in a maxsec federal prison. Just. Stay. Calm.'
I nod and look around at the assembled agents leaning forward expectantly. Hollow Chest repeats himself, again telling me that I should just get it over with now before I reach a judge. "Look," I say, pointing at the items on the table, the camera and the marker and the form. "I realize that all these things probably indicate to you that I am somehow involved with the note..." Here I pause, for the agents have all perked up, straining to hear and thus indicating just how important is what I will say next. "That I am somehow involved in whatever happened on the plane, but I refuse to confess to a crime I did not commit."
"That is your right, here in America," Hollow Chest says, thus enveloping me in the awesome and comforting blanket of Constitutional protections. "Will you repeat these statements under polygraph?"
"Absolutely," I say. "I've been on a plane for sixteen hours, and my internal clock is way off sync, but if you need me to polygraph tomorrow morning, eight a.m., I'm there. I went to the bathroom once, just once, on the right side of the plane forward of my seat." "So you didn't go to the bathroom on the left side of the plane?" he says. "No, I did not. I didn't even set foot on the left side of the plane." I give him my seat number. "Sweep the bathroom for prints," I say. "You will find none of my prints in the bathroom where whatever happened occurred. You will find my prints in the bathroom nearest to my seat, on the right side of the plane."
"Will you make these statements under polygraph?" he repeats. I again assert I will. Again he tells me to, "Just get it over with now." Again I tell him that I refuse to confess to a crime I did not commit. "As a matter of fact," I say, "take my marker. Run a chemical analysis on the ink in my marker against the ink used to write the note. You will find they are not a match." I slouch back in the chair and stare into the faces of the assembled feds, forcing my breathing back to normal, willing the rising anger to abate.
"Well, we have your phone number, and we know where and for how long you are staying in LA, so, we'll be in touch," Hollow Chest says, rising to his feet. "Do you have a criminal record?" he says. I say I do not and rise also. "Thank you all for your time," I say politely as I turn to follow an agent back out into the waiting area. I take a seat next to an elderly Japanese gentleman. He looks at me and says, "What is going on?" "They think I am a terrorist," I say. He laughs so hard he shakes in his seat.
I take a bottled water from a passing pushcart and, after a few minutes, walk with the rest of the passengers over to customs. While I am waiting in line, the unpleasant man who had sat next to me gives me a strange look from across the way, but then I am called to the customs desk, where a stone-faced agent dutifully stamps my passport. Having no checked luggage, I walk calmly through the baggage retrieval area, but, halfway to the exit, my TSA guardian, he whose name I will not mention, stops me short.
"You don't have any checked baggage?" he asks suspiciously. "You're traveling alone, without checked baggage?" "I like to travel light," I say; "it cuts down on time and removes the likelihood of airline error." He attempts to engage me in conversation, but I have had enough, and keep my answers short. It is nearly one in the morning.
I face no hassle at the customs desk, and exit into the main arrivals hall. After urinating for a glorious eternity, I make some calls (to my lawyer and to my arranged ride, who has long since gone back home), get money for a cab, and, just for good measure, check if the Flyaway bus to Westwood is still running (it is not). Sick of being followed around the airport by uniformed personnel, I jump in a cab, and speed into the night.
FIN.
p.s. If any agent of law enforcement tells you to confess, claiming that it would be better for you to, "Get it over with now rather than later," he or she is more than likely bluffing and wants you to sacrifice your rights and to send yourself to prison because he or she has no tangible evidence. Do not do this. Do not give up your rights. Ever. Educate yourself about your rights, and do not give the Man an inch, for He will surely take a mile.
p.p.s. I never received a call, and have not been questioned further.
Ultima Ratio Regum.
JPR
The Thai Airways jet, on a direct flight from Bangkok to LAX, banks hard from the usual approach vector (with which I am well accustomed, having flown into El Peublo de nuestra Seniora la Reina de los Angeles many times), heading over Whirlywood, around Downtown, and approaching the airport from the east. The stewardesses are tense. The mood within has become hostile. We land well, all gears touching smoothly, nary a flutter along the big plane's long axis, and taxi for an unusual amount of time. It is nine fifteen in the evening, right on schedule. Sitting by the window, I can see our police escort, lights blazing, follow us to a darkened section of asphalt.
For nearly an hour we sit. Roughly half of the passengers are south Asian. Elderly Indian women make frequent sorties to the restrooms, but any time a man unbuckles and rises from his seat, the stewardesses, thin, elegant Thai women, scream at him to sit back down. People begin to ask questions, demanding to know what is going on, requesting a reason for our unexpected and unexplained delay. I am near the rear of the aircraft, and have not used the restroom in nearly seven hours. Having purposefully dehydrated myself to cut down on disturbances to my neighbor, a somewhat rude older man whose English sounded a little too groomed, I am in considerable need of a good long piss. I get a funny feeling about my right cargo pocket (where I always keep a pen and at least one permanent marker), and reach inside to pull out my portable gaming device. A wave of enemy troops fall before my well-placed defenses, and I beat the level.
Finally we begin to deplane. I thank the stewardesses on the way out, bowing to them and saying sawadee krap like a good boy who has learned his manners. Dozens of officials line the mobile staircase, asking each man as he passes to see his passport. "Are you Russian?" one agent asks me. I say no. A helicopter flares its rotors overhead. We pass through a phalanx of airport police, TSA agents, and people wearing FBI counter-terrorism jackets, to board buses that will hopefully take us to the distant terminals.
I am in the back of the third and last bus to depart. My hair is long and bleached nearly blond from three weeks of sun and surf. My clothes, of which I only brought one pair, are ripped and stained with sweat. The tattoos on my arms and chest are clearly visible. My bag, a cheap Nike knockoff I bought in Chiang Mai, is also ripped. We are packed in tightly, with TSA agents sewn heavily amongst us. The men are hyper-aware, scanning faces, trying to figure out who is looking at whom, changing locations at times to get a better view of whomever they are trying to find. A man behind me asks when we will have the chance to use the bathrooms, as we were not allowed to on the plane, and as there are none on the bus. The TSA agents answer sporadically, sometimes not at all. Having no knowledge of what is going on, and knowing that asking questions to any type of law enforcement officer is a bad idea, I stand quietly wedged against a short man with bad breath and the window, and enter a semi-trance so as to pass the time and to control my need to void.
After nearly another hour we are allowed to leave the bus and to enter a terminal building. Shouting agents direct us toward a bank of metal detectors, through which we pass, jostling with departing passengers eager to board their flights. More agents direct us through a maze of narrow hallways into a waiting area that has seen better days. As one of the last to enter, I have no seat, but I find a space against a wall where I stand at parade rest, my torn bag at my feet. I reenter the semi-trance, eyes fixed on the far wall, and do my own time, as they say in prison. FBI agents rush back and forth clutching clip-boards, normal looking, sometimes down-right unattractive people you would never be able to pick out of a crowd.
A tall man with a hollow chest approaches me, sweating under his counter-terrorism wind-breaker. "Did you notice anyone acting strange on board? Was anyone visibly upset?" he asks me. "I can't say I did, sir," I respond. "Someone wrote a threat against the airline in one of the bathrooms," he says. "So I need to know if you saw anything suspicious." I tell him I was asleep most of the flight, and cannot say I did. He nods and walks away, and at that moment I realize that I am a suspect. The realization churns my innards, but the semi-trance holds, and I resume my patient waiting for whatever the fuck is going on to be over, but now I am seeing everything but looking at nothing, letting my peripheral vision do the work.
A graceful, lithe female approaches from my right. I allow her to pass, then sneak a glance at her perfect ass. She talks with the agent with the hollow chest who approached me, and glances over as I am eye-fucking her through her immaculately tailored grey suit. "Would you come with me?" Hollow Chest says. "We need to ask you some additional questions." I am led to a sectioned-off area piled high with rows of discarded seating and introduced to a TSA agent whose name I will not here mention. He asks me about my life, about my travels in Thailand, about my primary source of income, about my activities on the flight, if I have ever had any military training, where and how often I went to the bathroom on the plane. I answer his questions, and we begin to chat amicably. The lithe female with the perfect ass walks over and says, "Where did you get those tattoos. Were you in the military?" I tell her I wasn't, but refrain from explaining why I have an American eagle and a Shield of the Union cut boldly into my left forearm. (It is because I love my country, and consider myself a patriot.) "Why are you so calm, and why were you standing against the wall like that," she asks. I explain that my father was a Navy man who taught me how to stand correctly, and how to act the gentleman. I also mention that, as an unofficial American ambassador to the Thai nation, I had been on my best behavior throughout the trip. "Oh, well, sweet tatts," she says condescendingly.
"Do you have any writing instruments in your possession?" my TSA guardian asks. I remove me permanent marker and pens from my pocket. "Oh," he says upon seeing the marker. "Better sit down, get comfortable - this is going to take a while." The bathrooms are quite close by, but I decide not to ask to use them. He asks if I have had any trauma in my life recently, and I tell him that my father died not long ago. "You must still be pretty upset about that," he says. I refute this gently, but he does not seem convinced. Hollow Chest and an airport policeman walk over and ask me to follow them.
Rounding the partition, I discover a sea of faces staring at me. Everyone who was on the plane, flight crew included, is staring at me, some with hatred in their eyes. Flanked by federal agents, I fix my gaze on a point at the far end of the long hallway and walk calmly and steadily down it. A door opens, and I am led into a large room. Two burly gentlemen sit along a far wall, elbows on knees, shooting daggers. "This way," someone says, and I enter a room with glass walls. Seven FBI counter-terrorism agents are waiting for me, including Lithe Female. I am instructed to sit at a cheap folding table.
"This is federal property," Hollow Chest says. "This room is wired for recording, and we can search anything we want, here." "Fine by me," I say, sitting down. Since I have not yet passed through customs, I am in international waters, where I have few, if any, rights. I stay calm, controlling my breathing. Inside, my mind is utterly still, focused to a razor sharpness. Every second bears tremendous weight, and as the eight agents lean forward to stare at me, pens poised above their notepads, I remind myself that I have done nothing wrong.
Hollow Chest introduces himself and another agent, a short, ugly man who looks like a Tolkien troll. I have to force myself not to laugh at the absurdity of the situation, at the comparisons my mind is making to every spy flick I have ever seen and their portrayals of coiffed and dashing agents grilling a suspect. "Do you have a camera?" Hollow Chest asks. I produce it, and as he is rifling through my saved images the trollish man asks me about which cities I visited in Thailand, with whom I associated, where I stayed, if I met any shady characters, and if I participated in any sort of military training. I answer truthfully while forcing myself not to look over at the three agents emptying my torn bag and fingering its seams.
"You have a lot of pictures of graffiti and tagging in this camera," Hollow Chest says. "Thailand is full of amazing street art," I reply enthusiastically. "I never would have thought that there would be so much beautiful stuff there." My zeal bounces off their stony faces. "Have you ever done any tagging yourself?" he asks. I tell them I have not. "Are you willing to answer that under polygraph?" I answer that I will.
"Well, the thing is, we have your customs declaration here, and, while we're not handwriting experts, we do see a fair bit of this sort of thing, and, again, we're going to have to run this past the handwriting guys, but the way you wrote the letters O and P on your customs form is very similar to the Os and Ps used to write the note," Hollow Chest says. "Again, we're not experts, but when the Os and Ps are similar, it pretty much indicates a match."
"OK," I say, nodding, waiting for them to proceed. "Did he have any writing implements on him?" Hollow Chest says. Before I can answer, my TSA guardian produces my marker and hands it over. I can see the excitement in Hollow Chest's face. "So," he says, "we have the pictures of graffiti in your camera, and we have your marker, and we have the handwriting match on your customs declaration. It would be best for you to just get this over with now. If you admit to anything later on, it will be far worse for you. So you should probably just get it over with now." Variables flash through my mind, and I think, 'Shit, if I fuck up here, I'm looking at three to five in a maxsec federal prison. Just. Stay. Calm.'
I nod and look around at the assembled agents leaning forward expectantly. Hollow Chest repeats himself, again telling me that I should just get it over with now before I reach a judge. "Look," I say, pointing at the items on the table, the camera and the marker and the form. "I realize that all these things probably indicate to you that I am somehow involved with the note..." Here I pause, for the agents have all perked up, straining to hear and thus indicating just how important is what I will say next. "That I am somehow involved in whatever happened on the plane, but I refuse to confess to a crime I did not commit."
"That is your right, here in America," Hollow Chest says, thus enveloping me in the awesome and comforting blanket of Constitutional protections. "Will you repeat these statements under polygraph?"
"Absolutely," I say. "I've been on a plane for sixteen hours, and my internal clock is way off sync, but if you need me to polygraph tomorrow morning, eight a.m., I'm there. I went to the bathroom once, just once, on the right side of the plane forward of my seat." "So you didn't go to the bathroom on the left side of the plane?" he says. "No, I did not. I didn't even set foot on the left side of the plane." I give him my seat number. "Sweep the bathroom for prints," I say. "You will find none of my prints in the bathroom where whatever happened occurred. You will find my prints in the bathroom nearest to my seat, on the right side of the plane."
"Will you make these statements under polygraph?" he repeats. I again assert I will. Again he tells me to, "Just get it over with now." Again I tell him that I refuse to confess to a crime I did not commit. "As a matter of fact," I say, "take my marker. Run a chemical analysis on the ink in my marker against the ink used to write the note. You will find they are not a match." I slouch back in the chair and stare into the faces of the assembled feds, forcing my breathing back to normal, willing the rising anger to abate.
"Well, we have your phone number, and we know where and for how long you are staying in LA, so, we'll be in touch," Hollow Chest says, rising to his feet. "Do you have a criminal record?" he says. I say I do not and rise also. "Thank you all for your time," I say politely as I turn to follow an agent back out into the waiting area. I take a seat next to an elderly Japanese gentleman. He looks at me and says, "What is going on?" "They think I am a terrorist," I say. He laughs so hard he shakes in his seat.
I take a bottled water from a passing pushcart and, after a few minutes, walk with the rest of the passengers over to customs. While I am waiting in line, the unpleasant man who had sat next to me gives me a strange look from across the way, but then I am called to the customs desk, where a stone-faced agent dutifully stamps my passport. Having no checked luggage, I walk calmly through the baggage retrieval area, but, halfway to the exit, my TSA guardian, he whose name I will not mention, stops me short.
"You don't have any checked baggage?" he asks suspiciously. "You're traveling alone, without checked baggage?" "I like to travel light," I say; "it cuts down on time and removes the likelihood of airline error." He attempts to engage me in conversation, but I have had enough, and keep my answers short. It is nearly one in the morning.
I face no hassle at the customs desk, and exit into the main arrivals hall. After urinating for a glorious eternity, I make some calls (to my lawyer and to my arranged ride, who has long since gone back home), get money for a cab, and, just for good measure, check if the Flyaway bus to Westwood is still running (it is not). Sick of being followed around the airport by uniformed personnel, I jump in a cab, and speed into the night.
FIN.
p.s. If any agent of law enforcement tells you to confess, claiming that it would be better for you to, "Get it over with now rather than later," he or she is more than likely bluffing and wants you to sacrifice your rights and to send yourself to prison because he or she has no tangible evidence. Do not do this. Do not give up your rights. Ever. Educate yourself about your rights, and do not give the Man an inch, for He will surely take a mile.
p.p.s. I never received a call, and have not been questioned further.
Ultima Ratio Regum.
JPR
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