ROCKS, ROCKS & MORE ROCKS

SEEN ON THE SIDE OF AN AEROSOL CAN

2015-05-14T21:55:00.000-07:00

A QUOTE ABOUT TAXING THE STUPID

2015-05-13T23:17:00.000-07:00

Hans Christian Andersen's First Fairy Tale

2012-12-15T14:03:00.000-08:00

Danish experts believe they have found the first fairy tale written by Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875). Titled "Tællelyset" (The Tallow Candle), the ink-written manuscript was found by local historian Esben Brage. Brage made the discovery in October, 2012, in an archive on the island of Funen where the Danish author was born. Historians have confirmed that the six-page manuscript was indeed written by Andersen. They dated the document to the mid-1820s, when the writer was about eighteen.

The Tallow Candle

Hans Christian Andersen

Note: Before there was electricity and electric lights, people used candles. Candles could be made from tallow. Tallow is a rendered form of mutton fat, processed from suet. It is solid at room temperature. Unlike suet, tallow can be stored for extended periods without the need for refrigeration to prevent decomposition, provided it is kept in an airtight container to prevent oxidation.

It sizzled and fizzled as the flames fired the cauldron. It was the Tallow Candle’s cradle - and out of the warm cradle came a flawless candle: solid, shining white and slim it was formed in a way that made everyone who saw it believe that it was a promise of a bright and radiant future – a promise that everyone believed the candle would really want to keep and fulfil.

The sheep – a fine little sheep – was the candle’s mother, and the melting pot its father. Its mother had given it a shiny white body and an inkling about life, but from its father it had been given a craving for the flaming fire that would eventually go to its marrow and bone and shine for it in life.

That’s how it was born.

And with the best and brightest anticipation, it was cast into existence. There it met so many, many strange creations that it became involved with, wanting to learn about life – and perhaps find the place where it would best fit in. But it had too much faith in a world where people only cared about themselves, and not at all about the Tallow Candle. A world that failed to understand the value of the candle, and thus tried to use it for its own benefit, holding the candle wrongly; uncaring fingers leaving bigger and bigger blemishes on its pristine innocence which eventually faded away, completely covered by the dirt of a surrounding world that had come much too close; much closer than the candle could endure, as it had been unable to tell grime from purity – although it remained pristine and unspoiled inside. False people found they could not reach its inner core and angrily cast the candle away as useless.

The filthy outer shell kept all the good people away – scared as they were to be tainted with grime and blemishes – and they stayed away.

So there was the poor Tallow Candle, solitary and left alone, at a loss at what to do. Rejected by the good, it now realised it had only been a tool to further the wicked. It felt so unbelievably unhappy, because it had spent its life to no good end – in fact it had perhaps sullied the better parts of its surroundings. It just could not determine why it had been created or where it belonged; why it had been put on this earth – perhaps to end up ruining itself and others.

More and more, and deeper and deeper, it contemplated – but the more it considered itself, the more despondent it became, finding nothing good, no real substance for itself, no real goal for the existence it had been given at its birth. As if the grime had also covered its eyes.

But then it met a little flame from a tinder box. It knew the candle better than the Tallow Candle knew itself. The tinder box had such a clear view – straight through the outer shell – and inside it found so much good. It came closer and there was bright expectation in the candle – it lit and its heart melted.

Out burst the flame, like the triumphant torch of a blissful wedding. Light burst out bright and clear all around, bathing the way forward with light for its surroundings – its true friends – who were now able to seek truth in the glow of the candle.

The body too was strong enough to give sustenance to the fiery flame. One drop upon another, like the seeds of a new life, trickled round and chubby down the candle, covering the old grime with their bodies. They were not just the bodily, but also the spiritual issue of the marriage.

And the Tallow Candle had found its right place in life – and shown that it was a real candle, and went on to shine for many a year, pleasing itself and the other creations around it.

Two Long One-Act Plays In Which The Weak & The Vulnerable Get Dumped On by Dale Andersen

The Little Match Girl

2012-11-21T11:37:00.001-08:00

November 22, 2012. Eight Chinese officials have been fired or suspended after five boys died in a rubbish bin after suffocating on fumes from charcoal they burned to stay warm, according to state-run media. The bodies of the boys, aged between 9 and 13, were found by a trash collector in Bijie in China's southwestern Guizhou province. They are believed to have died the night before, as rain fell and temperatures plunged to as low as 33 degrees Fahrenheit.

Users on China's social media platforms expressed shock and disgust, with some questioning how society could have allowed such young children to fall through the cracks. There are estimated to be more than 150,000 street children in China, according to official figures quoted by Xinhua. State media reported that four of the five boys found dead in the dumpster were being cared for by their aging, blind grandmother who had difficulty caring for herself. A local resident told reporters neighbors had noticed the boys wandering the streets. "They were living in a shabby shed in a construction site near the dumpster and ate some discarded vegetables in the market," he said.

The plight of the dead children in Guizhou is being compared on China’s social media to the tale of The Little Match Girl, a Hans Christian Andersen story of a poor girl ignored by the rich who froze to death after trying to warm herself with matches. The Little Match Girl is familiar to Chinese because it is taught in reading classes in elementary schools.

The Little Match Girl

Hans Christian Andersen

It was so terribly cold. Snow was falling, and it was almost dark. Evening came on, the last evening of the year. In the cold and gloom a poor little girl, bareheaded and barefoot, was walking through the streets. Of course when she had left her house she'd had slippers on, but what good had they been? They were very big slippers, way too big for her, for they

belonged to her mother. The little girl had lost them running across the road, where two carriages had rattled by terribly fast. One slipper she'd not been able to find again, and a boy had run off with the other, saying he could use it very well as a cradle some day when he had children of his own. And so the little girl walked on her naked feet, which were quite red and blue with the cold. In an old apron she carried several packages of matches, and she held a box of them in her hand. No one had bought any from her all day long, and no one had given her a cent.

Shivering with cold and hunger, she crept along, a picture of misery, poor little girl! The snowflakes fell on her long fair hair, which hung in pretty curls over her neck. In all the windows lights were shining, and there was a wonderful smell of roast goose, for it was New Year's eve. Yes, she thought of that!

In a corner formed by two houses, one of which projected farther out into the street than the other, she sat down and drew up her little feet under her. She was getting colder and colder, but did not dare to go home, for she had sold no matches, nor earned a single cent, and her father would surely beat her. Besides, it was cold at home, for they had nothing over them but a roof through which the wind whistled even though the biggest cracks had been stuffed with straw and rags.

Her hands were almost dead with cold. Oh, how much one little match might warm her! If she could only take one from the box and rub it against the wall and warm her hands. She drew one out. R-r-ratch! How it sputtered and burned! It made a warm, bright flame, like a little candle, as she held her hands over it; but it gave a strange light! It really seemed to the little girl as if she were sitting before a great iron stove with shining brass knobs and a brass cover. How wonderfully the fire burned! How comfortable it was! The youngster stretched out her feet to warm them too; then the little flame went out, the stove vanished, and she had only the remains of the burnt match in her hand.

She struck another match against the wall. It burned brightly, and when the light fell upon the wall it became transparent like a thin veil, and she could see through it into a room. On the table a snow-white cloth was spread, and on it stood a shining dinner service. The roast goose steamed gloriously, stuffed with apples and prunes. And what was still better, the goose jumped down from the dish and waddled along the floor with a knife and fork in its breast, right over to the little girl. Then the match went out, and she could see only the thick, cold wall. She lighted another match. Then she was sitting under the most beautiful Christmas tree. It was much larger and much more beautiful than the one she had seen last Christmas through the glass door at the rich merchant's home. Thousands of candles burned on the green branches, and colored pictures like those in the printshops looked down at her. The little girl reached both her hands toward them. Then the match went out. But the Christmas lights mounted higher. She saw them now as bright stars in the sky. One of them fell down, forming a long line of fire.

"Now someone is dying," thought the little girl, for her old grandmother, the only person who had loved her, and who was now dead, had told her that when a star fell down a soul went up to God.

She rubbed another match against the wall. It became bright again, and in the glow the old grandmother stood clear and shining, kind and lovely.

"Grandmother!" cried the child. "Oh, take me with you! I know you will disappear when the match is burned out. You will vanish like the warm stove, the wonderful roast goose and the beautiful big Christmas tree!"

And she quickly struck the whole bundle of matches, for she wished to keep her grandmother with her. And the matches burned with such a glow that it became brighter than daylight. Grandmother had never been so grand and beautiful. She took the little girl in her arms, and both of them flew in brightness and joy above the earth, very, very high, and up there was neither cold, nor hunger, nor fear - they were with God.

But in the corner, leaning against the wall, sat the little girl with red cheeks and smiling mouth, frozen to death on the last evening of the old year. The New Year's sun rose upon a little pathetic figure. The child sat there, stiff and cold, holding the matches, of which one bundle was almost burned.

"She wanted to warm herself," the people said. No one imagined what beautiful things she had seen, and how happily she had gone with her old grandmother into the bright New Year.

Download a copy of the story HERE

THIS IS TOTALLY TASTELESS...

2011-08-02T15:40:00.000-07:00

DIALOGUE - SYRIAN STYLE

2011-07-13T16:18:00.000-07:00

ROCK THE CASBAH - YEAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

2011-07-01T14:35:00.000-07:00

Missing - an award-winning dark comedy FEATURED ON SCRIBD.COM by Dale Andersen

BRUBECK'S "TAKE FIVE" -- Pakistani Style

2011-06-30T00:12:00.000-07:00

STUCK INSIDE DAMASCUS (WITH THE MEMPHIS BLUES again?)

2011-06-06T21:56:00.001-07:00

I wake up in Damascus
To some noise out in the town
I open up the window
“Can’t you people hold it down?”

I spot a soldier standing
And I clear my throat, "Ahem!"
He sees me up above him
And he shouts, “You're one of them!"

I start to close the window
But he's Johnny-on-the-spot
He tells me I’m a pris’ner
Of the al-Mukhabarat.

He takes me to his Sergeant
In a room without a view.
Who says that he has proof that
I'm an agent of the Jews.

He shows me grainy photos
Of a club at Thomas Gate
“That bar’s a Mossad hangout
You were there. It’s check and mate.”

I sign a typed confession
And I thought that we were through.
But no, he tells the soldier,
“Take him up to the HQ."

The Captain at Headquarters
He’s a thug, his name’s Farooq
He takes one look and mutters
“Hell, that ain’t no Jewboy spook."

He tears up the confession
And he kicks me in the balls.
He says, “You’re in al-Qaeda
Give it up and tell me all.”

I rattle off this story
How I trained in Pakistan.
And taught Mohammed Atta
How to sneak through airport scans.

They type a new confession.
As I sign my autograph.
Farooq decides to send me
To the Army Chief of Staff.

They toss me in a dungeon
In a place both dark and dank
They leave me there for six days
The food they gave me stank

The seventh day this colonel
He's one of Bashar’s friends
He drives up to the prison
In a pink Mercedes Benz.

He glares at all around him
He huffs and puffs and roars
His helpers cringe and tremble
As he calls for blood and gore.

He looks at me and hollers
“You’re a liar! You’re a fake!
You never were al-Qaeda.
Didja think you’d get a break?”

He tears up the confession
And he stomps and kicks a chair
“You’re CIA, I know it.
It’s a fact as clear as air.”

I sign a new confession.
As we watch the drying ink,
They post my face on YouTube
They throw me in the clink.

They tell the world they got ‘im
Both the plotter and the plot
They have it down on paper
How this "terrorist" was caught

Each Friday before Moslem prayer
They trot me out to say,
“I’m an agent of al-Qaeda
Of the Jews and CIA.”

So that is all my story.
Each word I swear is true
I’m stuck inside Damascus
Guess it’s better me than you

But if you ever go there
And you’re feeling in a rut
Don’t go looking for trouble, Dude,
Just keep the window shut.

And stay out of the daylight
Just sit there like a monk
Go pour yourself a strong one
Hell, you might as well get drunk.

'Cause it's crazy in this city.
It's a parallel universe
All the cops are cutthroats.
It only can get worse.

The al-Assads are werewolves
Maher's a bombardier.
Asma's locked in a tower.
She stares into a mirror.

The Parliament's a dumb show.
The Prime Minister's a chump.
The Grand Mufti's a hunchback.
The Mosque's an ammo dump

So what's that sound we're hearing?
Is it a wounded tiger's roar,
Or the cry of a despot dying?
Let him die like a dinosaur.

But hang on tight to that ticket
It's the last train to the coast.
You do not want to be stuck here
And end up being toast.

Download a copy of the poem here...

HITLER AND THE ARABS - nazis in the middle east

2011-05-31T18:35:00.000-07:00

First, a quick story. A few years back, Christopher Hitchens, the famous British atheist, was in Beirut. And he was walking with friends to a bar when he passed an SSNP poster on a wall. I'll let a blogger tell the rest of the story:

...we come across a poster for the SSNP on an abandoned
bagel shop -- abandoned, if I had this right, after Hezballah had attacked
it last year due to the overly Jewish connotations of bagelry.

So Hitchens immediately takes out a pen and writes "No, no, Fuck You" on
the poster. In case you were wondering, the SSNP Nazis are very unpopular.
Neighborhoods have tried to get the posters taken down. But when they try,
the SSNP threatens people and causes problems. So the state leaves them up.

And to avoid getting them defaced or torn down, the SSNP pays these
out-of-work goons to stand there and keep an eye on the posters.

Well, when this Syrian Nazi goon saw Hitch do this, he confronted him and
kinda-sorta attacked him. I say "kinda sorta" attacked, because his main
intention was to delay Hitchens from leaving -- until the ten Nazi goons
he had just texted on his cell phone could arrive.

There was some kicking and pulling and hitting. Hitch and the others
attempted to get into a cab -- the Syrian Nazi goon got right in the cab
with them, still hitting Hitchens. They could not force him out. Eventually
they all exited, and attempted to get a fresh cab, but other cabbies were
now hip to the fact the Syrian Nazis had been riled and wanted no business
from them, so two cabs passed refusing their fare.

Now at this point the ten Nazi goons showed up (about five minutes into
this -- they came quickly) and Hitch and his friends were probably going
to get the crap beaten out of them, at best. However, they finally managed
to get a cabbie who was either brave or didn't know the trouble he was
getting into and got in, this time without the goon, and left the other
ten behind.

Now, as far as the damage Hitch suffered, it wasn't much. He did get some
lumps -- a knock on the leg, a scrape on the face. And also his writing
hand had been stomped on. He'd been roughed up, but didn't have "the shit
beaten out of him." Apart from a bit of pain walking and some more pain
typing, he was fine.

So. Nazis in Syria and Lebanon. Where did this shit come from? Read the rest and find out.

On February 1, 1944, two unlikely allies in the United States Senate—Robert Wagner (D-New York) and Robert Taft (R-Ohio)—introduced a resolution that caused shockwaves around the globe. Their initiative advocated American support for “free and unlimited entry of Jews into Palestine for the creation of a Jewish commonwealth.” This was a bold move and one that put the Roosevelt administration on the spot.

Nearly five years earlier, the British government had released a White Paper on the issue of Palestine—one that largely abandoned the Jewish people in that region. Since the 1917 Balfour Declaration and during the period of the British Mandate they had been largely supportive of Jewish migration to Palestine and the idea of a Jewish state there. In essence, the White Paper changed all of that. It advocated severe limitations on Jewish immigration to Palestine—this at a time when European anti-Semitism was reaching critical mass.

The gang in Berlin was pleased.

Interestingly, at the time of that 1939 White Paper, two men who would later strongly support the creation of the modern state of Israel saw things differently. Winston Churchill spoke to the House of Commons on May 22, 1939 “as one intimately and responsibly concerned in the earlier states of our Palestine policy,” and insisted that he would not “stand by and see the solemn engagements into which Britain has entered before the world set aside.” And in the USA, Senator Harry S. Truman from Missouri —- who had no clue at the time that he’d be a major player on the world stage in a few years –- also issued a forthright condemnation that was inserted into the Congressional Record:

Mr. President, the British Government has used its diplomatic
umbrella again, this time on Palestine. It has made a scrap of
paper out of Lord Balfour’s promise to the Jews and has added
another to the long list of surrenders to the Nazis.

But instead of embracing the ideas put forth by Taft and Wagner in 1944, the White House, State Department, and other powerful entities in the government pulled out all the stops to make sure that the idea of proposing a homeland in Palestine for Jews went away. They did this even though they knew very well about the ongoing mass extermination of European Jews at the hands of the Nazis.

The standard answer to the obvious question as to why the Holocaust evoked little official response from our government until near the end of the war has been to cite “isolationism,” or “economic Depression,” or “xenophobia” in our nation. Presumably, the idea of doing anything overtly “pro-Jewish” was politically untenable — so goes the argument.

But a closer look reveals something else going on at the time—and ever since.

The most lasting legacy of the toxins that created an epochal global conflict is the fact that elements of Nazism in many ways survive to this day in Islamism. The short-sightedness of FDR’s cronies was corrected in part by his successor, a man of courage who chose to recognize the new State of Israel eleven minutes after its birth in May of 1948. But the question remains: Why did FDR and company not get on the bandwagon, even while millions of Jews were being slaughtered?

Sadly, the real reason has a lot to do with U.S. surrender to Nazi propaganda—its power and content.

Largely overlooked or dismissed in the years since is the fact that the Nazi propaganda machine, the distortion factory that shaped attitudes in Germany throughout the duration of the infamous Third Reich, had its most lasting impact far away from the boroughs and beer halls of Deutschland. In fact, Hitler’s nightmarish vision of ridding Europe of Jews was only the beginning of what he wanted to do—he wanted to extend The Final Solution to Palestine.

And he had been preparing the hearts and minds of the Muslim world for many years.

Jeffrey Herf, a professor of history at the University of Maryland, has written an eye-opening book about the effectiveness of Nazi ideas in the Middle East during the Second World War called, “Nazi Propaganda For The Arab World.” In it, he describes the Nazi campaign for the minds and hearts of the Arab world in great detail—particularly the Axis radio programs that ran in Arabic around the clock from late 1939 until March of 1945.

These broadcasts spewed venomous anti-Semitism and pushed every demagogic button imaginable. They were also highly effective. In fact, long after the last vestige of Nazi rhetoric faded from consciousness in Europe, the poisonous seeds planted back then are still bearing deadly fruit.

The mind-set that gave way to the Third Reich is very much alive and well in the Muslim world of the Middle East.

When those two senatorial strange-bedfellows offered their visionary resolution in 1944 about a Jewish homeland in Palestine, the “Axis Broadcasts in Arabic” were way ahead of the story. Mr. Herf has accessed a significant cache of transcripts and leaflets produced by the Nazis during the war—materials that have not been adequately examined—until now.

So back in 1944, any hopes a couple of well-intentioned voices in Washington might have had to garner widespread national support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine were dashed by forces largely influenced by the hate-speak of Nazi propagandists. Berlin, broadcasting in Arabic, referred to Taft and Wagner as “criminal American senators,” while announcing, “a great tragedy is about to be unfolded, a great massacre, another turbulent war is about to start in the Arab countries.”

And in phraseology that sounds eerily familiar to what we still regularly hear from Islamists, the Nazis described the stakes as kill or be killed:

Arabs and Moslems, sons of the East, this menace threatens
your very lives, endangers your beliefs and aims at your wealth.
No trace of you will remain. Your doom is sealed. It were better
if the earth opened and engulfed everybody; it were better if
the skies fell upon us, bringing havoc and destruction; all this,
rather than the sun of Islam should set and the Koran perish…
Stir up wars and revolutions, stand fast against the aggressors,
let your hearts, afire with faith, burst asunder! Advance your
armies and drive out the menace.

Bear in mind that this is a 1944 Nazi broadcast to the Arab/Muslims in Palestine. Of course, the relationship between Hitler and Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti in Jerusalem, is well known and documented, but the broadcasts from Berlin to Palestine are just now beginning to be examined. And what is being found is further evidence that to refer to Islamists as Nazi or Fascist-like is no smear—or stretch.

The rhetoric broadcast to the Middle East 70 years ago is still being noised about—and even more pervasively and effectively. Back then, the attitudes it reinforced, complete with distortion, hate, and prejudice, caused U.S. officials, from FDR on down, to “go wobbly”—as Margaret Thatcher would say.

It is sadly clear that the most lasting impact of the Nazi propaganda machine is that murderous ideas espoused back then are alive and well in our day and age and still being used to demonize and kill Jews.

READ IT IN LARGE PRINT HERE

DOWNLOAD A COPY HERE

THE OLD ROLLING CHAIR TRICK

2011-04-18T15:28:00.001-07:00

THE UNITED STATES RECOGNITION OF ISRAEL 1948

2011-04-10T19:57:00.000-07:00

Download a copy here

MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD'S OBITUARY

2011-04-04T09:40:00.000-07:00

June 12, 2018

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, missing for more than half a decade, died last week at the hands of an assassin.

He’d been living quietly in St. Joseph, Missouri under the pseudonym Robert B. McCoy. According to investigators, he’d taken in a former colleague, Mahdi Mostafavi. Friends say Mister Mostafavi, who'd legally changed his name to LeRoy Neiman, had fallen on hard times after the collapse of the Iranian Theocracy and Ahmadinejad was letting him stay in the Victorian-style home he had leased in a quiet, tree-lined neighborhood. At ten in the morning on the day of his death, Ahmadinejad was on a ladder hanging a print of da Vinci's The Last Supper when Mister Mostafavi came up behind him with a pistol, shouted, "Sic semper tyrannis!" and fired two shots and fled. Ahmadinejad’s fourth wife, Candy, heard the shots and called police. She reported his last words to be "Rosebud."

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was an anomaly, a mystery wrapped in an enigma slowly sinking into a deep muddy quagmire. Beloved by thousands, hated by millions, there was never a dull moment when he was at Iran's helm. What were the influences in his life? What social forces propelled him to become the most talked-about man in Iran, the man 99% of Persian women voted as "the guy least likely to get a sympathy fuck from me?"

He was born of Jewish-Scotch-Irish-Armenian parents in Aradan, Iran. Aradan is famous for two things: dog food and house painters. When he was five, his Uncle Krikor, a senior supervisor at Aradan Dog Food Plant Number 5 and a part-time house-painter, promised to get young Mahmoud "a good job on the assembly line" as soon as he celebrated his bar mitzvah. But his mother was heard to remark that she didn't want any more Saburjians (the family surname) "humping dog food." She sent him off to live with her Jewish-Gypsy cousins in Azerbaijan. He remained there eight years until Uncle Krikor keeled over from emphysema.

The Mahmoud who came back as a teenager was very different from the sweet little six-year-old boy the family remembered. Now he was described as a "shifty little weasel" who never looked you in the eye and someone you had to hide your wallet from whenever you took a shower. Some family members blamed the Jew-Gypsies. Professor Fawaz Younis Firouzbacht, a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a recognized authority on Iranian Jew-Gypsies, commented, "those people can really fuck you up." Indeed, after Mahmoud returned, one Aradan resident recalled he taught every boy in the neighborhood how to pick pockets and every girl how to do the strip tease. It was then that his Uncle Koorken stepped in and ponied up the cash to send him off to Teheran to truck-driving school. He told Mahmoud's mother that the drug dealers were paying "big bucks" for long-haul drivers. Hearing that made her very happy.

So off Mahmoud went to Teheran, a suitcase in his hand and a song in his heart. Unfortunately, this was the time of the uprising against the Shah. And Mahmoud, by chance or design, fell in with a couple of ne'er-do-wells named Mirdami and Habibollah. These two con artists had concocted a get-rich-quick scheme: take over the American Embassy and hold it for ransom. Mahmoud, being a country boy just off the proverbial turnip truck, thought it sounded like a really cool idea, so he said, "Can I write home and tell my mom?"

Well, the rest is history. The US Embassy hostage spisode jump-started Mahmoud's career as a professional terrorist, torturer and all-around thug. Over the next thirty years he rose in the ranks of the revolutionaries right up to President of the Islamic Republic. It was a heady time. His mother bragged to her friends in the tea circle back in Aradan about her "big-shot son, the President." Interestingly enough, he never learned to drive a truck.

But you know the saying, whatever goes up, must come down. And Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Presidency crashed like a bowling ball on a fat man's big toe the day General Salehi changed sides and pledged his support to Mehdi Karroubi. Mahmoud saw the handwriting on the wall, quickly donned the emergency burka he had hanging in his office closet and made a beeline for the Armenian border.

Soon enough, in the euphoria of the mass executions of Mullahs in Teheran, the world lost interest. But every so often, there would be tidbits of information referred to in the National Enquirer as "Mahmoud sightings." There was the unnamed naked male in a grainy Czech porn film who had an uncanny resemblance to you-know-who. There was the middle-aged pick-pocket in Rome who lost his temper and beat up four Gypsy kids for "crowding him out." There was the strange man in the public park in Denver who bragged to a group of drunks that he used to be the "Prince of Persia." And finally, there was the shaky little man with the accent who showed up at a US Serviceman's funeral in Kentucky with a "God Hates Fags" sign.

Strangely enough, when the St. Joseph police first arrived at the scene, they referred to the decedent as an "unidentified male." It wasn't until two days later that they found out Robert B. McCoy was in fact the former Iranian dictator. And this is how it happened. It seems at the time of the US Embassy takeover, Mahmoud was sent to the Soviet Embassy with a "You Assholes Are Next!" message. He was drinking Coca Cola from a can. When he delivered the verbal message to the Russian Guards, he hurled the can into the compound to emphasize his point. The Russians saved it and it was DNA from that very can on an Interpol terrorist database that confirmed Mahmoud's identity. Crazy stuff, huh? Like the Grateful Dead song says, it's been a long strange trip.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will definitely be missed. Or perhaps not.

Read it in large print here

Download a copy here

A REJECTION LETTER FROM HUNTER S. THOMPSON...

2011-04-01T10:33:00.000-07:00

If you had had the temerity to have sent an unsolicited manuscript to the late Hunter S. Thompson, you would have received this "Dear Writer" form letter acknowledging receipt of same...

Dear Writer:

You worthless, acid-sucking piece of illiterate shit! Don't ever send this brain-damaged swill in here again. If I had the time, I'd come out there and drive a fucking wooden stake through your head. Why don't you get a real job, asshole? Like maybe delivering advertising handouts door to door, or taking tickets at carny rides?

You cocksuckers are all the same. You're just like the drug-addled geeks at Rolling Stone who keep sending me this crap. I'd just as soon kill them all.

Do me a favor, dipshit. Jam this tissue of delusions where your readership will better appreciate it.

Up your ass!

Sincerely,

Yail Bloor III, Minister of Belles Lettres

P.S. Keep up the good work. Have a nice day. Loser.

BLAKE SNYDER, RIP

2009-07-29T18:09:00.000-07:00

Who's Blake Snyder? He wrote Save The Cat, which is the latest in a series of "must-read" books about screenwriting. If you take a screenwriting class anywhere in Academia, the name "Blake Snyder" will pop up.

Blake Snyder says something must happen on page 25. Must. He says whenever someone hands him a script, the first place he goes is, you guessed it. But don't take my word for it. Let's go straight to Blake himself:

Wise words, succinctly put.

He died a couple months back. All of us who read his books will miss him.

30,000 HITS...

2009-07-19T02:36:00.000-07:00

Woo-Hoo!!!!!!

EGO-BOOSTER NUMBER 7...

2009-07-14T01:02:00.000-07:00

Good news! Dead Angel will have a five-week run at the Whitefire out in the San Fernando Valley. Here's the straight skinny from the Whitefire website and the Dramatists Guild online newsletter:

DEAD ANGEL - a short one-act play

THE SHAH, RIP...

2009-06-30T20:35:00.000-07:00

You gotta admit, with the Shah of Iran, you got a snappy dresser with a hot chick perched behind him on a hog...

RIP, Shah Dude...

The Martyrdom of Madeline Slezak, an award-winning screenplay by Dale Andersen

RIP MICHAEL JACKSON...well, kind of...

2009-06-25T23:14:00.000-07:00

The Iranian Mullahs needn't worry about any further US interference as all Americans pause to mourn the tragic and untimely passing of a prominent pedophile.

EGO-BOOSTER NUMBER 6...

2009-06-08T22:37:00.000-07:00

Just got an email from John Lant, the head honcho at Write Act Repertory. Attached to the email were scans of the postcard front and back for the upcoming one-act fest. Looks pretty damn good, doncha think?

Oh, and by the way, here's my actress. She emailed me, told me she really likes my play. I love it when they say they like my play. Don't ever tell people flattery doesn't work. 'Cause it does...

Opening night is June 26th. Write it down...

DEAD ANGEL - a play about two cheaters and what happens when one cheater drops dead in the act of...

THEY ALREADY HAVE THEIR REWARD...

2009-06-04T21:27:00.000-07:00

I wrote this letter-to-the-editor to the OC Metro in 2004 in response to an article on Paul Folino's fund-raising endeavors to benefit the South Coast Repertory Theatre.

The letter, in retrospect, was probably too snarky and certainly too bitchy. But the point was (and is) valid.

Theatres like the SCR will survive. They have the support of the community bigwigs who will always give to "The Arts" because they want to appear cultured and refined, even when they're not.

But the struggling small theatrical entities will always remain under your basic OC billionaire's radar. I'm talking about the theatres that operate out of storefronts in the inner city. Theatres where the members of the company work for no pay.

These are the ones who take the risks and carry on for the love of the art. But nothing is forever. And sadly, when one of them gives up the ghost, nobody seems to notice, or care.

We have maybe eleven theatres that do live stage in the OC. We used to have twelve, but the Rude Guerrilla just shut its doors. The landlord raised the rent and...well, you get the picture.

It happens. It's too bad when it does. I'll miss it. RIP, RG.

PROP 8 IN THE OC...

2009-05-30T18:51:00.002-07:00

So this was last Friday's front page of our local throwaway, The Ladera Post...

...despite the fact there was a really juicy incident in our community worthy of front page coverage. Seems a mother of two right here in Ladera Ranch was arrested on suspicion she murdered her millionaire boyfriend back in her former life. Now that deserves front page with a pic. But no! The Humpty-Dumpties at the OC Register kicked it to page 3 and led with a real yawner about Adam and Steve, still shell-shocked by the flak from Prop 8, trying to lead lives of quiet desperation in the OC.

This calls for a letter to the editor...

News update. The Ladera Post ran the letter. They left out the "grow some cojones" line, but hey, I got my name in the paper. And in the end, isn't that what really counts?

THE CHICKENS ARE COMING HOME TO ROOST...

2009-05-26T10:28:00.000-07:00

The final score on Prop 8 last November was: 7,001,084 aye, 6,401,082 nay. That's 600,000 votes short of the brass ring. 48%. And getting from 48 to 50 will be a bitch. Ask any policy wonk.

Truth to tell, 48% may be the high water mark. 48 may be as good as it's ever going to get. Let's crunch some numbers. In the last election, the whites split about 50-50, maybe 48-52 against Prop 8. It was among the Hispanics and the Afro-Americans where you had the big pro-Prop 8 percentages. Strange how homosexuals think of Latinos and Afro-Americans as their natural allies. As brothers and sisters in a common bond of oppression. Just another one of their fairy tales, I guess.

Looking to the immediate future, looking to kick off the post-Prop 8 season on something of a high note (and to get everyone's eye on the prize, I guess), California homosexual activists have some special events planned. One is called "Meet in the Middle" and it consists of a rally/demonstration/happening/whatever in Fresno, of all places.

Why Fresno? First of all, Fresno is in the Central Valley, at the geographical center of California. Middle, get it? Secondly, the Central Valley is California's "Bible Belt" and Fresno is the buckle.

Speaking of Bibles... Homosexual advocacy groups went to great lengths to blame the Mormons for Prop 8's success. And it's easy to blame the Mormons, easy to make them the bogeyman. Easy because Mormons don't hit back.

Fact is, the Mormons are a small cult with minimal clout. How minimal? They don't even control Salt Lake City anymore. The last SLC Mayor, Rocky Anderson, was about as gay-friendly as you can get. Nevertheless, California gays persisted in hammering home the fiction that it was Mormon gold and Mormon lies that turned the tide.

When in fact, the truth all along was Latino and Afro-American voters were the ones who did the damage. That's the truth, but truth is never the object when you've been kicked to the curb and you're looking for people to blame. So in the aftermath of Prop 8, you saw these massive angry gay photo-ops at the Mormon tabernacle in Westwood Village, but nary a peep of protest outside any of the Afro-American churches in South LA or outside any of the Pentecostal iglesias in the barrio.

But happily, the chickens are about to come home to roost. Because there's one other thing I forgot to mention about Fresno. It has a big, big Latino population.

Stay tuned. Should be interesting.

Note: regarding the "bite my pillow" bit. Watch this:

UPDATE ON PROP 8 - - GAVIN'S DOUBLE WHAMMY NIGHTMARE...

2009-05-20T23:28:00.000-07:00

A confidential source close to San Francisco City Hall leaked that the California Supreme Court was gearing up to issue its opinion on Proposition 8 on Thursday, May 21, but decided to delay after getting a call from Gavin Newsom.

Remember Gavin Newsom? The goofy little tool who singlehandedly blew any chance the homosexuals might have had of getting Prop 8 defeated with his ill-advised "whether you like it or not" speech?

Right. That Gavin Newsom.

The source reported that "Newsom reached out to the Supreme Court and asked them to hold off releasing the decision so it wouldn't coincide with the anniversary of the White Night riots."

It turns out Thursday is the 30th anniversary of the San Francisco riots, which erupted when the Gay Community there learned Dan White had successfully copped a voluntary manslaughter plea in the Harvey Milk/George Moscone murder trial. If you don't know who Harvey Milk was, rent the movie.

The ensuing riots in San Francisco on May 21, 1979 caused massive damage from which the Bay Area has only lately begun to recover. Examples of the destruction abound. Here are two taken at random: a claim submitted to the city for fifteen dollars to repair a crack in a Chinatown bistro window caused by flying debris from a rioter's exploding piñata; an estimate of $300,000 to paint over the slogans scrawled on the sides of buildings on Castro Street (happily, the UN, having been deliberately misinformed that the grafitti was a free-form, stream-of-consciousness expression of solidarity with an obscure Cuban dictator, declared it a World Heritage Artifact, after which the city certified it as a tourist attraction).

Par for the course, Newsom's office shot off a press release denying he approached the justices.

Nevertheless, it's very possible the leak story is accurate. First of all, Newsom has access; his father is a retired state appellate court judge. Secondly, the smart money has the Court upholding Prop 8; releasing the opinion on the anniversary of the White Night Rights Riot (say that three times fast) would be a bit of a double whammy, n'est pas?

May 23rd update: the rumor is accurate. The Justices agreed to delay the issuance of the opinion until Tuesday, May 26.

FEEDING THE EAGLES...

2009-05-18T22:35:00.000-07:00

In January the weather on parts of Vancouver Island was so cold the eagles were cruising over houses looking for kitty cats to make a quick meal. Some kind souls decided to feed them down at Goose Spit so they would survive the cold spell.

Here's what happened! A colleague took these photos in front of his home. They are incredible!