About this user
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Thursday 5 April 2007:
For today's lesson, we head to my library to hear readings from 3 good books: The Short Timers and The Phantom Blooper (by Gustav Hasford; Short Timers is the basis of the film Full Metal Jacket) and Roadside Picnic (Russian sci-fi by the Strugatsky brothers, basis of Russian film Stalker).
--Short Timers: "No, sir. We bomb these people, then we photograph them. My stories are
paper bullets fired into the fat black heart of Communism. I've fought to make the world safe for hypocrisy. We have met the enemy and he is us. War is good business--invest your son. Viet Nam means never having to say you're sorry. Arbeit Macht Frei--" "Sergeant Joker!" "Negative, Captain. Number ten. I'm a corporal. You can send me to the brig, sir--I know that. Lock me up in Portsmouth Naval Prison until I rot, but let me rot as a corporal, sir. You know I do my job. I write that the Nam is
an Asian Eldorado populated by a cute, primitive but determined people. War is a noisy breakfast food. War is fun to eat. War can give you better checkups. War cures cancer--permanently. I don't kill. I write. Grunts kill; I only watch. I'm only young Dr. Goebbels. I'm not a sergeant." I add: "Sir."
--Phantom Blooper: The black Marines cheer while Black John Wayne continues, talking with the
tone of a backwoods preacher delivering a fiery sermon: "Black Confederacy secedes from your Viet Nam death trip." With one voice the men in the bunker say, "Amen." Black John Wayne says, "Guilty rich kids marching for peace just wasting they shoe leather. Dumb grunts is stopping this evil war, a--men, and they won't never know the truth back in the World, the truth that the grunts have the power, the real power, because the fucking pogue lifers and the corrupt politicians are not even going to admit the facts, not even." Black John Wayne waits for the "Right ons" to die down, then continues.
"This heavily armed and highly motivated reinforced rifle squad of homeboys will
go back to the block. We be tin-starred marshals of revolutionary justice. With my squad back in the World I could take over half of Brooklyn. Peace through superior firepower! Firepower to the people! History is not over yet! History collects its debts!" ........ Black John Wayne says, "Joker, m'man, you may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you. Or maybe you be here as a tourist? Politics is not hard to understand. Politics is somebody's nightstick upside your head.
Hey, man, can you dig my progressive talk? Don't you know why the Phantom Blooper is here, man? The Phantom Blooper has come to take your white ass to school. Bone Six, that bad ol' Blooper, he everywhere, man. He maybe sitting in this bunker with us right now." I say, "J.W., I'm sick of listening to your race-war movie." Black John Wayne says, "Why, you silly Alabama white trash, you are misinformed. The white man is not the enemy. One day, by and by, you will see the revolt of the Uncle Tom white people. That's some cold shit, man, but there it is. "The devil is a green man, the money man. They tell us we are small. But we not small, we tall, we be kings, and the President is not God in a black limousine. They calling you 'nigger' too, Joker. You just ain't got the word."
--Roadside Picnic: He had been struggling with those empties forever, and the way I see
it, without any benefit to humanity or himself. In his shoes, I would have said screw it long ago and gone to work on something else for the same money. Of course, on the other hand, if you think about it, an empty really is something mysterious and maybe even incomprehensible. I've handled quite a few of them, but I'm still surprised every time I see one. They're just
two copper disks the size of a saucer, -about a quarter inch thick, with a space of a foot and a half between There's nothing else. I mean absolutely nothing, just empty space. You can stick your hand in them, or even your head, if you're so knocked out by the whole thing-just emptiness and more emptiness, thin air. And for all that, of course, there is some force between them, as I understand it, because you can't press them together, and no one's been able to pull them
apart, either.
