Day 182: Phantom Vaccine for ‘Immunocrats’

My apologies to those who couldn’t find the site earlier: ISP issues.

I wish I were in Salt Lake City. It’s probably the only way to determine how and why a number of citizens there burned a library two days ago. My TV says unrest had been brewing for months as people ran out of food and patience. Unfounded tales of a clinic operating in the library lured an out-of-control mob to torch it. Somehow it’s the mayor’s fault.

STORM—THEN MEDIA FOG— IN SALT LAKE CITY (Jonnyapple)Bloggers, however, are saying the populace went ballistic because they noticed that well-connected and well-heeled residents were turning up at a library that had been closed for years. Word had it that federal workers were vaccinating them with H5N1 shots freshly trucked in from the airport. The Web says questions weren’t answered, and that the police were neither polite nor numerous enough to get away with being rude.

A latter-day hell broke loose. People were beaten, killed, run over, burned, and dragged off to Hill Air Force Base 30 miles north, where they’re being held without charges.

I’m inclined to believe the Internet on this one. I can see where folks might find selective vaccinations compelling. We all know that cops and soldiers are getting shot up. We remain free enough to imagine who else is getting jabbed. America throbs with mistrust. People are said to be demonstrating from Tacoma to Tampa, demanding access to instant liquid security. Some chant ”Death to the Immunocracy.”

That makes N.A.T.U.R.E. today’s ‘moderate’ antivaxers. The group’s partisans are merely hijacking big shopping websites to post informational videos about how the longed-for vaccines might kill us all. A lesser-known antivax group is threatening to shut down the U.S. transportation system with targeted Web attacks, as has been happening in Poland, Greece, and (wow) Norway. They demand to see concrete testing data on whatever the pharmaceutical sector has devised after all the problems it had cooking up H5N1 vaccine in eggs.

Enter al Qaeda. That chatter we always hear about at the oddest moments—particularly before elections—is back. So we’re told.

The Limits of Terror

I’m not sure a terror attack would make much difference. We’re already scared out of our wits, the stock market has crashed, no one is working, and people are dying in surreal numbers that clearly aren’t being reported. What more could terrorists want? Would anyone notice if some schmucks blew something up?

I suspect it means elections will be held on schedule, though it’s too late for them to be fair. Few will have heard of the challengers, who must find it impossible to raise money. Only very rich candidates will have a chance against the insiders. I never vote or tout candidates, but I suggest y’all bear in mind that politicians who salivate over crushing illegal aliens and looters are unlikely to work at keeping us stocked with food, water, and power. Their priorities are penal, not medical.

The president takes no chances. Anyone who disagrees with the White House is “undermining public order” and “inviting chaos.” I doubt anyone is listening. Threats and bluster do not constitute leadership. Nor are they entertaining. A pox on Washington.

Anna is hard-pressed to keep the LES DIY going. Key volunteers from the community keep dropping out to work at religious facilities approved by RAISE. They’re under a lot of pressure to quit. Plus the work is easier on the other side. That leaves Anna toiling 18 hours a day in her tiny kitchen. She and her dwindling band give out food late in the afternoon at Tompkins Square Park and then rush home before curfew (to work on tomorrow’s offerings) because the LES DIY can’t get permits. My pass and I are on call for twilight emergencies. I spend every afternoon hoping a crisis will arise so I can help Anna save the day.

Do I have to join these dangerous radicals to spend more time with her?

Day 183: A Rite for Stefan—Candy

Tonight I discovered what an idiot I’ve been. Climbing the stairs—relaxed after visiting Anna’s tight little delivery operation—I heard a noise in the old Ukrainian’s apartment. It was a grating sound, respiratory tissue grinding together to no effect. The cough we all dread. I hadn’t looked in on Stefan for at least a week.

IN LIEU OF CHOCOLATES FOR A SICK PALIt took him five minutes to reach the door. Only a hard-bitten man who’d survived wartime winter on the Ukrainian steppes could have managed to let me in. His sofa was piled with filthy garments. He had packed himself in a welter of old sweaters, wisely inviting fever to cleanse him of virions.

The clothes were clotted with blood. Stefan is dying.

I immediately administered Relenza—too late by any standard I know. Stefan’s a tough guy and he loves life, but it may have killed him to let me in.

Of course, I called 911. They advised me to bring him to a school in Chelsea because the local ones are overrun. I have no idea how I’d carry him that far, but I’d get it done if they could promise the place has ventilators. Not that they’d necessarily give him one, but we all feed on hope.

“We don’t have that information. Is there anything else?” Nope. I thanked them.

My Traumatic Reading

I hydrated Stefan, covered him with clean blankets, and cooled him with wet cloths. Then I consented to read to him from a tattered paperback he treasures like an heirloom: Candy, a novel by Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg. I’d never heard of it.

We live to learn—and google. Turns out Candy placed 22^nd on Playboy's all-time list of sexiest novels. Southern wears shades in position No. 20 on the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s cover. He co-wrote the screenplays for Dr. Strangelove, Easy Rider, and The Cincinnati Kid, (all now available for purchase on this site).

I now suspect my ancient buddy made up for the savage deprivation of his early years by running amok through the 1960s in that room and on the streets. Candy may have been Stefan’s guide to New York.

Since I wouldn’t let him drink vodka, Stefan made me down two shots at a time so he’d feel alcoholically represented. Eventually he had me leaf ahead to a particularly crazed scene wherein the naive heroine generously humps a hunchback to the stately medieval tones of the Gregorian chant. I couldn’t help but detect some unorthodox movements under his blankets.

I continued reading in shock. I guess I’m still not quite a New Yorker.

I was wondering how to flee politely when Stefan gasped deeply and broke out laughing as best he could, his eyes streaming tears of delight into deep grooves under his cheekbones. I wound up hoping this wasn’t the last fun he’ll ever have, and feeling desolated that I’ll never hear the tales he should have been telling me in all the years I’ve lived next door.

How many great stories have I elbowed past in my time here?

When I was leaving, Stefan woke up to insist I take a rough painting he made decades ago. It looks like a charming snow monster chasing little girls. Unless it’s abstract. I couldn’t ask. It’s Stefan’s bequest to me, in case he dies before I come back. Or I don’t bother.

While he lasts, I’ll give him my time and Relenza. Maybe I can find him some relaxing literature. Anna suggests something French called Story of the Eye.

Day 184: Our Politicians Are Mad (Angry, too)

Disorder has turned universal. Armed hospital invasions are common in blue states, red states, border states, states of anxiety, hopeless states. Is the State itself in danger?

It’s our fault. We didn’t prepare. Sucks, doesn’t it?

Who wants to read that?

MY EXPERT WITNESS WHEN THEY COME FOR ME: SIGMUND FREUD (Max Halberstadt)No wonder politicians hate this and other blogs. Since bloggers are the ones calling them liars and presenting the truth about our national mess, it must be our fault that no one believes anything they say.

But I wasn’t uptown last night when people broke into Lenox Hill Hospital looking for vaccine. I didn’t shoot it out with anyone along Park Avenue. I can’t even tell you how many people got killed—or how many patients were scared to death—because the city won’t say and the press won’t demand answers. Anyway, I was here, working to inform my fellow Americans about peaceful ways to survive.

Which can include what to guard against. I’m hearing stories of flu survivors making trouble—gangs of toughs who endured H5N1 robbing those who still cower from it. One report said they look for targets in masks. (Never let it be said that my need to sell things prevents me from sabotaging sales.)

According to some DC speechmakers, I’m the real problem: They are willfully misinterpreting my fanciful discussion about H5N1 antibodies and genomic subtype cycles. Why? They want to justify barring anyone who’s not medically trained and/or institutionally certified (connected, in other words) from criticizing the government’s failure to function properly during this oft-forecast emergency. Holding poor Hope-Simpson and his New Concept up for public scorn, they propose a bipartisan bill to outlaw “any effort to spread panic, conscious or otherwise.”

In other words: Shut up! I call this bipartisan authoritarianism. It’s been brewing for a long time, but it picked up speed and mass on Sept. 11, 2001. Few politicians of any stripe bother to stand against it.

Any such repressive statute would benefit only lawyers who can’t find work after the pandemic subsides. I’ve got better things to do than give Congress a free consultation, but that thing needs a rewrite. What constitutes—a loaded word these days—criminal unconscious effort? Are Freudian slips to be criminalized?

Fortunately, I’ve been trying to help avert panic for six months. It’s all documented, right here. Click, click, click: Case closed!

Blame the Lame

So I have nothing to ‘retract.’ I’ll go back to watching these demagogues grind their gums about immigrants—wretched, maskless, jobless people who are dying like bugs. Who dare not shout back like us natives when big taxpaid boots kick their doors in.

This is what scapegoating is about. When the Black Death came to Europe in the 14^th Century, Christians murdered Jews for allegedly poisoning the water supply. The god-fearing majority stole Jewish property, sacked the ghettoes, incinerated babies.

Blaming a weak element of the populace still satisfies man’s dumb need for the illusion of control. If we can believe that our problems derive from certain people, we can pretend to solve things by punishing the culprits—even liquidating them. That was Adolf Hitler’s appeal.

If today’s enemy is us—the poor fools who failed to prepare for a pandemic despite years of warnings—we’ve simply got to find a better adversary. We can’t punish ourselves. Things are bad enough. But someone must pay.

I don’t want to argue the merits of immigration. I moved to a city that celebrates it with every beat and every screech. Our country is founded on it—voluntary (“Give me your tired, your poor…”) or not (“This most rotten branch of human shame…”). Americans can certainly burn the welcome mat if they choose.

But foreigners did not invent this plague and Americans haven’t figured out how to end it. Nature is taking its course. Human nature isn’t helping. Don’t make things worse. Save the rhetoric for the next election, whenever that might be.

Scapegoating: If you’re not against it, you’re with it.

Day 185: Blog Burning in Amerika

I had no idea so many collectivist brownshirt types read this blog. I guess the reposts by all those liberals (you love me, you really love me!) on their blogs stirred up the bullies and directed them here. I’ve received formal threats from people claiming to live in New Jersey, Long Island, even one from Manhattan. You know what they say: If I can get dismembered here, it can happen anywhere.

Maybe the emergency termination of what was left of equal Web access a few hours ago will leave the idjits stranded in a morass of glittering corporate websites that won’t listen to anything they say—except ADD TO SHOPPING CART.

Heil Visitor, Haf Ve Gott Ein Deal Fuhr U!

MERE COINCIDENCE, I'M SURE: GOERING AS TOP STORMTROOPERIs it coincidence that my noisiest Congressional critic of late looks like a reincarnated Reichmarschall Hermann Goering? Both love to hunt, fly, and bully people.

I ain’t scared. Scanning a few of the thousands of flu blogs that have sprung up, I note that New York is relatively safe. I just saw my dentist, whose staff survived but for a very nice hygienist, whom we’ll all miss. She deserved a long life.

It’s the cities without water—Tucson, for example—that seem most out of control. Phoenix and Las Vegas are fighting over Lake Mead’s diminishing waters. The West is aflame, whole tracts with nothing left but angry homeless survivors. It’s as if a gigantic meteor shower spewed fireballs on a third of our country.

After all those prayers, Georgia is out of water, too. Lakes Lanier and Allatoona contain little more than muck from decaying animals and plants. (Do not drink tomorrow’s oil!) The Chattahoochee River that Lanier feeds is running dry, too. Atlantans are being evacuated to Federal camps. I feel particularly sick for the Katrina survivors who were driven into this urban desert and are now being herded into what, FEMA trailers again?

Not that the water is much better back home. Cholera, that quaint 19^th Century disease, has returned to New Orleans. Heckuva job, faceless bureaucrats!

Hawaii has been blacked-out for weeks. Private weapons are said to be priceless since the state’s National Guard was deployed to Los Angeles. There, the Hawaiians stand with troops from Oregon in protecting the Hills from gangbangers and anyone else cruising around looking for loot and trouble in the better-endowed ‘hoods. Guard units from California, Arizona, and Nevada have their fists more than full at home.

National Gangrene

I get emails from all over. I know what people are going through. I have one from a 50-year-old Texan, a Web entrepreneur whose wife and four children died. He’s desperate to figure out why God let him live, saved him. I hope he comes up with a good reason—or that fate grants him one. He sounds like someone worth knowing.

Then there’s the woman whose husband shot and killed two kids who tried to climb into their house in Kentucky. He thought they were the men who had raped his teenage daughter. But it was her loyal boyfriend and his buddy, trying to cheer her up by playing Romeo and Mercutio. Now dad’s in jail and mother and daughter have neither protectors nor friends. Just firearms. They practice a lot, she writes. Maybe the shots keep criminals away.

Further emails recount the tale of thugs who terrorized a hamlet in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains, 90 minutes from here. They butchered five residents in three weeks before someone got the state police to look into it. Two troopers were killed before the criminals got theirs.

Forty miles from here in Long Island, writes a woman who pleads that her name not be mentioned, someone firebombed a house crammed with Salvadorans, killing five children and two adults. I read last week about the unexplained accident. My informant says local lads boast that it wasn’t one.

Three buildings west, on my block, they just discovered a mother and her little boy dead from flu. A neighbor looked in when he saw that their door had been kicked open, found that their ripe corpses hadn’t deterred looting. Someone ripped the woman’s wedding ring from her decomposing finger.

The luckiest Americans fear someone will commandeer what they’ve got. The least fortunate are dying in droves from injuries and illnesses the medical system normally handles with ease. People are coming down with gangrene because they can’t obtain antibiotics. All those disabled veterans with state-of-the-art moving parts are breaking down. And this is my fault?

Did I mention that someone painted the word “PROFITER” on my building’s front door? I suspect they meant profiteer. Should I take it personally—or correct it?

Day 185 (#2): Loose Lips Get Clipped

Our old mystery mailer has resurfaced! It’s been too long—evidently long enough for her to have acquired some legalistic skills.

Having found an occasion to catch up on my narrative, ‘Evelyn’ demands I retract something I posted a week ago. It was unduly salacious, she charges, asserting her historical right to respond, “a perquisite established in almost six months of well-documented public intercourse, etc.”

Hmmm, WHICH WORD WAS IT?Ominously, my corrective correspondent warns that she shall otherwise elect to exercise said privilege to publish in this venue an accounting of my person, including—but not limited to—my “carnal propensities” and “the particulars of [my] physical endowment.” Top that, she adds. Did anyone out there suspect I had hooked up with a legal fetishist?

Dang this Internet thing. It never fails to go too far. Those Congresspeople were right.

Oh well, here goes: I’m sorry, my love. I won’t do it again.

If my ISP has anything to say about it, I won’t be able to. Due to “numerous complaints” about my site, I’ve been told to find a new host within 72 hours or face a shutdown until the company has completed an investigation, which could take months. Suggestions will be appreciated, although further snickering from Story of the Eye fans is banned!