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Pagans Ate My Sugar Babies
Because what we really need now is the ancient, "real" Halloween to thwart those war-drunk evil spirits

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Thursday, October 31, 2002

Mark Morford's Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SF Gate, unless it appears on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which it never does. He also writes the Morning Fix, a deeply skewed thrice-weekly e-mail column and newsletter. Subscribe at sfgate.com/newsletters.

It is a time of great need. It is a time of national teeth-gritting and resigned fortitude and wine-infused bouts of very heavy collective sighing.

It is a time when one single false war against an already decimated ragtag terrorist opponent is not nearly enough to satiate the delirious military-industrial complex and arouse Cheney's defibrillator and hence we must launch another one.

That's right, two full ostensible wars, Osama and Saddam, simultaneously, though thanks to sinister White House PR everyone seems to think they're basically the same war, even though they're almost completely unrelated, but hey, why split hairs.

Many ask what they can do. How they can contribute, how they can best aid the faux-war effort and support our troops in a whole new way, never mind how we've suffered almost zero casualties in Afghanistan and there is negligible chance we'll suffer much of a scratch in Iraq, given our massive multibillion-dollar budget-crushing macho superiority.

And given how it's all for oil and power anyway, and it has almost nothing to do with Saddam being all evil and brutal, even though he is, which is certainly as convenient an excuse as any.

I have compiled this short list. Things you can do, right now, this minute, to feel more connected and support the nation sans money or blood or prefabricated force-fed rage, and more fully lick the fingertips of your fervent unrequited patriotism in this time of need. Call it a checklist. Call it a spiritual perspective frappé. SUV antenna flags not included:

1. Choose not to believe much of the disinformation spinning forth from the White House at this time. Look at Donald Rumsfeld's shockingly beady and pitch-black eyes and realize this man, these people, they are deeply convoluted and power blinded and do not have your best interests at heart.

2. Choose, furthermore, not to believe the world is really full of these vile power-mad slugs and lizards and prevaricators and fools and Rumsfelds. Stop thinking this is all there is, war and suffering and apparently very pale and egomaniacal and spiritless men running the world into the ground.

Realize that for every ongoing war and religious outrage and environmental devastation and bogus Iraqi attack plan, there are a thousand counterbalancing acts of staggering generosity and humanity and art and beauty happening all over the world, right now, on a breathtaking scale, from flower box to cathedral.

3. Resist the great surges toward nihilism about the media, in seeing them all as either a bunch of depressing snickering pansy-assed gol-dang liberal scum or corporate-controlled sensationalistic J-school lackeys all parroting the same old pro-Shrub war stories and beating the same thudding pro-violence drum.

Seek out nuance and counterargument and subtle irony and contrarianism and balance and perspective. Realize it's never as one-sided as they want you to believe. Read more outside your normal box of viewpoints and interests. Find out for yourself.

4. Remember the world does not consist of simpleminded and reductive good/evil polarities, but, rather, is a living organism, interconnected and breathing and dying and renewing in constant flux, religions interflowing, beliefs inbreeding, crammed full of ecstatically bejeweled people who are just as contradictory and confused and gorgeous and kaleidoscopic and baffled and sleepy and horny and lost and desperately craving of juicy unfiltered spiritual nourishment as you are, in this very moment, as you read these words.

5. Resist the temptation to drown in fatalism, to shake your head and sigh and just throw in the karmic towel and head for the mountains with a case of Grey Goose and a box of Scharffenberger chocolates and the entire DeLillo collection and "Baraka" on DVD. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing.

And instead you can more fully engage, openly celebrate and share the items you happen to love -- vodka, chocolate or otherwise -- as tools of knowledge and power and luscious imbibing of life, throw them right smack in the face of all the Ashcroftian scowling and limpness, upping the vibration instead of merely enduring it, thus countering the urgent federal mandate to please live in a constant state of shuddering obedient paranoia and fear.

6. Realize the divine is not quite what you think it might be, that old methods of imploring, say, a cantankerous bearded patriarchal figure to please please please let you win the lottery and help you have better orgasms and oh yes smite your enemies might be a bit antiquated and prohibitive and just slightly lacking in vital ancient sordid chthonic feminine power.

Realize, further, that it is just these very outmoded and fervid mind-sets that are fueling a great many current hatreds and arming a great many warheads, and that maybe, just maybe, blind devouring adherence to any narrow doctrine -- Christian, Muslim, Jew -- is potentially fatal to the soul, bad for the skin and also just no fun at all.

7. Change the way you pray. Choose to believe in true orgiastic, energetic, self-realized divinity inside the self and emanating out, as opposed to an angry vengeful righteous God out there, one who demands that everyone must pay and suffer and kill and die, in His name, same as it ever was.

After all, it is your intention that sends the energy into play, that directly affects the world, every single person and every single soul, and your hate and fear and self-righteous belief does nothing to up the patriotism not just for country but for the entire planet. You have so much power. More than you know.

8. Realize that this is the perfect moment to change the energy of the world, to step right up and crank your personal volume, right when it all seems dark and bitter and offensive and acrimonious and conflicted and bilious, right when the snakes and pit vipers and squinting finger-pointing cowboy wanna-bes are all distracted -- there's your opening.

9. Remember magic.

10. And, finally, believe you are a part of a groundswell, a resistance, a seemingly small but actually very, very large impending karmic overhaul, a great shift, the beginning of something important and potent and unstoppable. You can breathe like this is the most lucid thing there is to believe. You can walk down the street like you are full of divine free wet secrets.

The nation needs your help. This is a time of warmongering and bitterness and semi-literate Texas cowboy wanna-bes who want nothing more than to careen us down the path of perpetual violence and isolationism and dread.

You can do something. You are being implored. Now is your chance. Please help keep America free. Please show your love for your country. This is just the beginning. Thank you and Shivaspeed.

Mark Morford's Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SF Gate, unless it appears on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which it never does. He also writes the Morning Fix, a deeply skewed thrice-weekly e-mail column and newsletter. Subscribe at sfgate.com/newsletters.

And thusly did Al Gore harshly criticize President Bush's push for war against Iraq, saying it has hurt the United States' standing, which is of course presumably implied to mean our standing as bitchin' punk-ass Starbucks-hammered SUV-loving rock-star hippie-haven crotch-grabbin' boy-toy sex farm, and could dangerously undermine the rule of law around the world, he added, thank you and see you in '04, maybe.

"After Sept. 11, we had enormous sympathy, goodwill and support around the world," Gore sighed during a speech at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on Monday.

An absolutely right and a refreshingly intelligent and articulate thing to say, and which provides a modicum of momentary intellectual relief.

Despite being delivered by a poor disheartened Al standing up there and sipping his fourth scotch and soda and flicking blueberry scone crumbs from his now-invisible salt-'n'-pepa goatee like the slightly frustrated and oddly humorless prof you had for Poli Sci 185: Tedious Postwar Global Interdiction Scenarios back in college, the one who always offered "extended office hours" to his apathetic female students, but no one ever came.

"We've squandered that, and in one year we've replaced that with fear, anxiety and uncertainty, not at what the terrorists are going to do, but at what we are going to do," he added, once again dead-on right and frustratingly accurate.

Though now he's slamming back the last few drops of scotch and ordering another, his neck still sore from shaking his head back and forth for the past 23 months, still in utter soul-cringing disbelief that he lost the election to such a "simpering chickenhawk daddy's boy."

In his first major speech on the Iraq situation, the once and possibly future Democratic presidential candidate and noted Fleetwood Mac abuser accused Bush of abandoning the goal of a world where nations follow laws.

He went on to blame the oily junior Texan grammar-mangler for plunging us "like some sort of squinty cowboy-wannabe on Ritalin" (quote spurious) toward a world that would allow any ol' second-rate piss-ant nation to launch an expensive macho whiny military strike against whomever it likes and call itself a superpower, even if it doesn't have all the kickass sorority parties and the 50-percent obesity rate and the gold-trimmed 8 mpg Escalades with the cute little antenna flags.

A world in which, Gore should've added, where any such a nation can launch a war if it perceives the slightest threat to its oil or its VP's pallid ego or its bass-fishin' boat collection, its squealing faux-virgin beer-bootleggin' blonde daughters or its father's megawealthy cadre of crusted rich white corporate lizards who bought Shrub his office in the first place, in obvious exchange for ramrodded legislation that would finally eliminate them gol-durn national forests once and for all.

Polishing off his fifth scotch in about two gulps and slamming the glass down on the podium and muttering that Bush is a "likable niddering sycophantic imbecile who couldn't screw in a lightbulb without Cheney, much less spell 'niddering' or 'sycophantic,'" Gore, possibly dressed in faded Sean John khakis and black Ugg boots and an "Evildoer" T-shirt, did not go on to say how he truly believes Dick's defibrillator is powered by tiny frantic radioactive demon-monkeys running on little alien treadmills from Hell. But he should have.

At which point Mr. Gore was possibly slurring rather heavily and people in the audience were hurling bras and thong underwear and squealing for him to "take it all off, you hunka hunka burning policy wonk."

On Tuesday, the White House received word of the Gore speech, and aides read some highlights to Shrub while the President was mounted atop the official Oval Office rocking horse (nicknamed "Barb") and was busy furiously "riding" into an imaginary "Baghdad," silver cap gun in one hand and a copy of the Children's Illustrated Large Print Rhyming Bible crammed in the oversize back pocket of his blue Osh Kosh overalls, and squinting furiously.

After asking for definitions of both "niddering" and "sycophantic," and not understanding either, Shrub hastily dismounted and called a meeting of his top aides and finest bubble-bath back-scrubbers and had them help him craft a reply using his "most reddest crayon of anger," and employing many big important-sounding words the aides had to sound out phonetically.

Responding through Collin Powell's ragged and emasculated flock of politically moderate carrier pigeons, and also a very heavily medicated Ari Fleischer, the White House announced that it was, in Bush's words, "very disappointed and disconcer--, discensort--, discansift--... really, really confused," by Gore's harsh words.

But it went on to add that it also couldn't really give a "Lynne's scary patootie" at this time, given how there's still two years remaining until the military-industrial complex has to attempt to purchase another election for Bush while promising more cheap Texas hookers to Rhenquist and Clarence Thomas along with more truckloads of heavily discounted CIA cocaine for Florida.

And furthermore, it's got a false war to prefabricate and a deeply established foreign policy to mutilate and a Constitution to molest and like, everything, and really doesn't have time for this sort of "analytical reasoned nonsense from Mr. Sore Loser-Boy," unless it affects the poll numbers.

"Boom boom skkkkkttttshsh pow!" said Bush, back atop "Barb" and riding like the breaking wind.

Mark Morford's Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SF Gate, unless it appears on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which it never does. He also writes the Morning Fix, a deeply skewed thrice-weekly e-mail column and newsletter. Subscribe at sfgate.com/newsletters/