COME WITH ME TO THE CASBAH

The following small wonder came in today from Henry Cabot Back...

DEAR Citibank Members,

This E-mail was _sent_ _by the Citibank server_ to
veerify your_ E_MAIL addres.
You musst clmoetpe this prsecos by clicking on_the link
below and enttering in the smal winddow your CITI-bank
ATM Card number and Pin that you use in the local ATM Machine.
This_is done - for-your pcertotion -G- because some of_our
members no logner have accses to their email adrssedes
and we must verify it.

Aside from qualifying as the most inept webscam of all time – or at least to date – the looney clip from Henry also started me thinking. I’m well aware that my imagination tends towards overcook a lot of the time, but that’s how I earn a living (distant laughter), and also how I keep myself sane (more distance laughter), but it serves as yet another reinforcement of my fantasy picture of the internet. Al Gore dubbed it the Information Super Highway, conjuring, for me at least some rolling, big-deal perspective that had elements of Heinlein’s Roads Must Roll, the world of the clone-makers in Star Wars II, the Venusian city of Mekonta, and Osaka International Airport, all clean and chrome, plexiglass, and airstream tubular, with order and efficiency, a precision of integrated and organized traffic. And maybe that’s why Old Al found himself incapable of defeating chump-chimp George W. because at least Bush, probably courtesy of Dick Cheney, and with rich-boy contempt, could see a little, if iniquitous, vision of the true unkempt nature of reality.

For me, the internet has always seemed far more like a some middle eastern bizarre, a souk or casbah, part futurist, part medieval, a space-floating Interzone, unplanned, asymmetrical and labyrinthine, although easily negotiable by those who know, with narrow accessways between gimcrack structures, who’s flaws are hidden by hypnoswirls of niteglo color, and all the whores, hustlers, cutpurses, deadrabbits, footpads, swackdogs and gutter jumpers at which an adventurer could ever hope to shake his swordstick. Quack croakers with dirty instruments want to enlarge your penis, brothel-shills do it with domestic beasts, and that’s only the promise of better things inside, swarthy bunco artists whisper of fortunes in Nigeria, and politicians with corrosive blood want your money even more than they want your vote. Sexualized cartoon hentai-children retail their tears in darker alleyways, dancing in come-to-me display for dangerously scarred and mind-numbed teenage gunpersons on r&r from the carnage of their X-cubes, while dealers in long coats of a million pockets whisper transactionally of every dubious pill know to man and crustacean, to calm your mind, roll up your eyes, or keep you fucking to Sunday. Pop-ups like dirty grey beggars need beating, while mules look for their 40 acres, and the gambling games tell you there’s ninety minutes in every hour and a hundred seconds in a minute and the odds are in your favor. And you should believe that when pigs eat your brother.

And in the middle of it all, there’s Doc 40's Own Cozy, Leather-Jacket Gin-Joint, 24 Hour Global House Party, and Medicine Show, offering sharp conversation, bad ideas, honest politics, cheap stimulation, dirty concepts, and links to revolution, right out on the stairs. The girls are smart, the women wicked, the men at least reasonable, poets cut up, the aliens behave themselves, the cats help themselves, the fire escapes work, and there’s never a cop around – even if you need one. And that, my friends is why I attempt to keep it all going. Even if it is only a bunch of freaks on a stream of electrons. Come on back now, y’hear.

MEANWHILE
London’s blogging callgirl Belle de Jour seems to have acquired a stalker...
http://belledejour-uk.blogspot.com

AND A LAST WORD ON DEATH

I'm not quite sure how many Americans want to see executions live on TV, but according to a recent poll, it’s a hefty and bloodthirsty majority. I’ve been against capital punishment since I first saw Susan Hayward in I Want To Live, essentially figuring that a society should act according to a higher moral standard than its killers. (And if you’ve got a problem with that, the comments board is up on the right.) On the other hand , I do think, if we’re going to put people to death, it should be televised, just so we see exactly what is being done in our name. And if we’re not sickened by it, we are hardly worth the designation civilized.

CRYPTIQUE – Embiggen the girl.