June 3, 2012: Finally, I want to get to this issue of the Killer Bees, because tonight they're feeling like the perfect metaphor for the new Fear that's gripping me around the ankles, throat and genitals, and all simultaneously ... And wasn't it Anne Sexton who spoke of that "awful rowing toward god?" ... or perhaps that was Dan Woog, referencing those idiots on the Saugatuck River in Westport.
The point is, I'm drowning in the awful visions of corporate domination and one-percent control and private GOP armies and the like, and the Fear has me, like it did in the early '80s when Reagan first came to power and I was sure a nuclear strike was imminent, and that it would be hitting ME in particular ... It's like the Killer Bees, which were poised to attack when I was just a little lad, if you can imagine such a thing, me being all grown up and devilishly handsome and all, but at that time existing on pure Fear, adrenalin, and iced tea ...
But you see the question comes to mind for me: What the hell happened to the Killer Bees anyway?! I mean, I was told they were attacking. We all were! They were allegedly flying north from Mexico, as all dangerous things are wont to do. There were kitcsh TV movies about them, where dopey victims were stung repeatedly beyond recognition and the heroes outran them to the last, but not before stomping a few of the worse ones into pulp ... So where are they now?!
It's interesting, for I remember someone telling me -- some idiot in the never-ending series of idiots I've known -- that "the scientists" -- and that's what he said -- would merely meet the Bees at the border -- the Rio Grande River, I guess -- and they would spray them and solve the whole problem. Such a comforting image it still evokes -- a small group of Gary Larsen-type white-coated nerds shooting a few puffs of gas out over the water with one of those little metal pumping cannisters, and halting dead the rampaging cloud of gangland Bees in an instant ...
I guess that's what happened, because after the 70's I stopped hearing anything about Killer Bees ... Except, just three weeks ago I found a book at the library that's right now, at this very moment, sitting in the other room (probably overdue, actually), and there are probably additional answers there waiting to be realized ...
But you know what? I don't want to know them! I don't want to know anything, except that SPACE CASE is selling and you're going to buy a THIRD copy and will bring a harum of gorgeous women to my speaking engagement this Wednesday night at the Westport Library ... That's all I want to hear about! F*** the Killer Bees and Reagan and the crooked governors ...
But no, my stomach is being wrenched by the new knowledge of widespread corruption and union crushing and proletariat neutering and supreme court stacking and graft, and ongoing corporate malfeasance and chicanery and scum selling lies and scum telling lies and liars lying with straight-faced sociopathic integrity and old fools believing them and young fools as well ... Ouch! It makes my stomach hurt! Ouch! I AM Charlie Brown, you see, and my stomach always hurts ...
But wait! For now I'll quote Robert Plant, who bubbled so specifically in that lovely "The Song Remains the Same" movie rendition of "Stairway to Heaven," "But there's good news! Listen!" Yes! Why not?! Why not good news, for the Killer Bees are away from my radar after all, and all dead and buried at the bottom of the Rio Grande, for all I know ... and that's where one day soon we may find all these malfeasants and supplicating nitwits and schmucks and greedheads after all ... Aren't they just Killer Bees, really, on a demented rampage to keep alive and sting out at anything they THINK threatens them -- a fear-fueled frenzy of sociopathic stupidity ...
Even as we speak, there are probably focused, intelligent scientists in nerdy white lab coats who are developing vaccines for bullshit and marketed media manipulation and stupidity, and they'll be innoculating mankind before I know it ... And these lovely simply honest smart men (and women -- a few hot ones, with horn-rimmed glasses!) will be using their antiquated DDT puffer devises to soundly gas the bloodsucking parasites and heinous stinging bastards ...
They'll wait for them by the side of the River Styx, or some such river, and make it clear to them that they'll never be allowed in to heaven, which is probably here on earth after all ...
And heaven should be a place without sociopaths, Killer Bees or plastic surgery, and we'll all sit together by a quiet springtime stream and read aloud from the Bagvhad Gita, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and Space Case ...
the giant ants ate them, i thought you knew that . . . oh and you spelled 'devices' wrong so that'll be ten cents for editing services my dear Liotta.
ReplyDeleteBill Ward wanting to see Jarret Liotta one of these days. There. I typed it.
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