The Magnifying Glass is Burning

Source: www.crimelibrary.com

The rain keeps raining on a day when two men, on either side of this dinasaur-hopping continent, are making news like a Lohan appendectomy or a Britney crotch-shot (as an aside, isn't it refreshing to have tales of horror and presidential ineptitude to steer the mind away from Hollywood gossip sites and paparazzi porn?).

The conversations, like shotgun blasts, have been pumped out non-stop the past 48 hrs. The pig farmer's trial opens with the Crown prosecutor invoking scenes reminiscent of a little known horror film called "Motel Hell"... prostitutes drugged, murdered, and cut into pieces across his farm... heads saved in garbage pails, with the hands and feet of some of the victims inserted like they were piggy banks for a rainy day... public health warnings to local residents, warning of the possibility that human remains may have been mixed into lovely party platters tasted by the hundreds who had frequented the farmer's rural/baby boomer/redneck raves. The millions spent on the forensic investigation, the police plant in the farmer's cell, the boasting of other murders, the botched investigation, the chorus now signs on... and we see/read/hear/salivate over it all. Our altar is the flashbulb.


Lonely mountain ranges and silent plains away, another man with a straight face asks a country to continue sending their best and brightest off to their own "Motel Hell," another pig farm of body parts. Surrounded by a victorious Democrat-controlled Congress, the claps can still be heard, drowning out the meat grinder of IED's blowing up new recruits who still don't, or won't, have the necessary body armour. They'd do better with a shield of sand and Rumsfeld zen. Ah, but those were the good old days, when the lies could be lied, and everyone listened, and nodded yes, and pretended levees couldn't break, and thought Tom Cruise was fun to watch jumping on sofas (oh, you silly Tom Cruise), and mass media congregated for annual sermons in the Rose Garden, and the fucking on beds of money and oil and illegal aliens and bankrupt retirees never felt so good.

And yet, there were still claps. And yet, he still won't listen to 70% of his country. And yet, we have the lessons of Iraq and the bloodlust to test out those oh so cool trinkets called tactical nuclear weapons is being fed and swallowed because it tastes better than Subway's toasted sandwiches.

It all comes back to the two men, and what we want to hear and read and see and feel. No wait, more importantly, it all comes back to what we want to do with what we hear and read and see and feel. We need the news of the pig farmer, and his alleged passion for dead flesh. We need the news of the other man, and his trouble with words, and his longing for the End of Days. We need it all on the table, because the alternative is no table all, a single boom mike, and a starved rat, caged and strapped to your face. It's what you do. It's what you do.


The rain keeps raining, but somehow the magnifying glass is burning.