Saturday, November 10, 2007

AFP photo Norman Mailer is shown in February 2007, about the time I bought an autographed copy of his final novel. I killed Norman Mailer Pulitzer Prize-winning author Norman Mailer died today at age 84. Which means that the autographed copy of his final novel, The Castle in the Forest, that I have probably is worth something. I wasn't looking for a signed Mailer novel, but I came across it in a Sacramento bookstore less than a year ago. Mailer had been in town, where he gave a speech that I missed. (Well, I heard it broadcast later on a local NPR station and I don't think that I missed much; I'm rather glad that I didn't shell out the money to see him in person. His talk was rather informal, rather conversational, and the woman he had his conversation with was, if memory serves, a bit ditzy and did too much of the talking...) Anyway, my autographed copy of The Castle in the Forest was priced at cover price, no extra charge for the signature, and since Mailer is famous and since he was, at that time, pretty old, I figured that I'd snatch the book up. So Mailer died today and I have a signed copy of his final novel. What it's worth I have no idea, and I probably will hold on to it indefinitely. The book kind of has special meaning for me now. I seem to remember fellow gay writer Augusten Burroughs writing an essay about buying autographed copies of Mailer novels because Mailer was old and thus the books probably would be worth significantly more at any time (it might have been another author whom Burroughs was writing about, but I'm pretty sure that it was Mailer). Of course I thought of the Burroughs essay when I encountered the autographed copy of The Castle in the Forest in the bookstore. And one of the very few books that my newish boyfriend Tony has is a copy of The Castle in the Forest (not autographed; and I am working on getting Tony some books...). So there seems to have been enough synchronicity surrounding my autographed copy of The Castle in the Forest that I'm thinking that I want to hold on to it and hell, maybe even read it in the near future. I'm thinking that Norman Mailer's actual DNA must be on the book, since he signed it, so maybe some of Norman Mailer will rub off on me... 11:12:53 PM    Comments []

Reuters and Associated Press photos At an Army medical center in San Antonio, Texas, U.S. "President" George W. Bush on Thursday visits young men who were maimed in his Vietraq War. Those he visited have problems that they will live with for the rest of their lives, including the loss of limbs, blindness and disfigurement from severe burns. Since the Federal Emergency Management Agency likes to hold fake press conferences in which every single "journalist" actually is a FEMA employee, I'm thinking that all of the maimed Vietraq War veterans were very carefully pre-screened so that only the Bush-loving ones (and I'm guessing that there are plenty of them in Texas) got to meet their Fuhrer. I mean, it sure would have been awkward had one of the vets demanded from Bush his legs or his face back! Bush told the maimed veterans that the veterans' health care system needs improvement -- with which I won't disagree -- but apparently avoided altogether the issue of whether the vets he visited were maimed for a just cause in the first place, a point that the mainstream media happily avoided as well. Because the American democracy just can't withstand too many difficult questions, you know. Does he really feel their pain? No, but he should be made to You know, if I were president of the United States and I were to meet soldiers who had been maimed in a war that I had sent them to -- even if it were a necessary, just war, even if it were a war against a nation that truly had posed a serious threat to the United States and with which ardent attempts at diplomacy had failed -- I'd feel like complete and total shit. So I have to wonder how "President" George W. Bush felt this past week when he met a bunch of young men who were maimed for life in the Bush regime's Vietraq War -- an illegal, immoral, unprovoked war of choice that was launched against world opinion and against the wishes of the United Nations for the war profits of Dick Cheney's Halliburton and the other war-profiteering subsidiaries of BushCheneyCorp. Do you think that Bush loses any sleep? Do you think that when he meets maimed veterans he thinks things like, "Gee, my fucking lies for greed did this to these poor young men?" Do you think that he feels their pain? It's funny. Those few wise Americans like myself who opposed the Vietraq War before it even began have been called traitors, yet the likes of George W. Bush, who sent young men and women off to Iraq to be maimed and killed for absolutely nothing but the greed of plutocrats, most of them Repugnicans, who have stolen billions of dollars from the U.S. treasury via the bogus Vietraq War (meanwhile, no health care for American children! We have Iraqi children to slaughter!), are called patriots. No, those of us Americans who wish to prevent harm to their nation, such as those of us who always opposed the Vietraq War, as Iraq had had absofuckinglutely nothing to do with 9/11,* are the patriots, and those who have harmed the nation for their own selfish interests -- the members of the Bush regime and their cronies -- are the traitors. And they fully deserve the appropriate punishment for treason: execution. But I'd settle for us just maiming them for life, like they have done to our young people in the sands of Iraq. We could visit Dick Cheney in a nursing home in Wyoming and see how he's adjusting to life without arms and legs. We could visit Gee Dubya at the ranch and see how he's adjusting to life as a blind burn victim whose face is now completely unrecognizable. We could feel their pain -- for once. *Fifteen of the 19 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, the monarchy of which the Bush crime family is buddy-buddy. Not a single one of the 9/11 hijackers was from Iraq. Look it up. 8:06:52 PM    Comments []