Happy Hour in Moktada Town

The Bunker of the Tikriti



Neon lights crackled, popped and glowed in the vice quarter of Baghdad’s Red Zone, where the 21st century mercenaries partied toward dawn. The seediest stretch of the old Christian district, public sin indulged by a more forgiving God. Vintage Arabic turbopop blared from the war-worn jukeboxes of the open air bars that populated two small blocks, competing with a bit of Nazareth cowbell booming from some roughneck’s anachronistic ghetto blaster. KBR truckers, private military contractors, power company engineers, third-string tabloid reporters and a few AWOL grunts played grabass with gypsy whores in the dimly flickering fluorescence, beyond the distracted purview of the military police. The thousand year-old street smelled of a toxic brew of steel, sweat, spilled homebrew, tobacco, public urination, cordite and semen. A zone of timeless medievalism, one of the shadowed spots where men of war and world-weary rogues capture the diminishing day in a milieu of imminent death. On one crumbling wall a fellow had spray-painted “Carpe Diem,” by which he meant “hold it down, tie it up, torture it, and fuck its brains out.”

The most raucous of those dens was called “Vice City” among the PlayStation-trained Army teens that patrolled the streets, though you wouldn’t find that name or any other marring the entrance. Within, the dense crowd roared in a dozen dialects — a multicultural muezzin chorus heralding the apocalypse to a South London drum & bass backbeat that shook the ancient pillars holding up the roof. The customers came in every color. Iraqis dominated, dark eyes ringed with darker circles and thick black moustaches wet with the bar’s backroom Bourbon, but there were plenty of ugly mother white guys ranging from pasty to pink to the battered brown of saddle leather.

A huge Russian stood with his back against the wall, silently sipping grain alcohol straight up, Bizon submachine gun strapped tight. A middle-aged counterfeiter from Karachi displayed his latest Benjamin Franklins to a natty Turk stroking the comely Kurd on his lap. A posse of Red State Blackwater boys hogged the tables near the door, trading insults over tandem games of Texas Hold ‘Em. Behind them, the otherworldly vocal tremors of Tuvan blues emanated from a trio of plastered Mongolian soldiers out of uniform, and a lonely Australian airman trying to teach them a rugby anthem.

On a television over the bar, a young Chuck Norris tried to use his Oklahoma kung fu to restore the vertical hold.



A small crowd gathered around another table, listening to a professional kidnapper from Damascus drunkenly brag his planned abduction and ransom of a famous blonde American news anchor spending the week at the Sheraton.

“This so-called journalist,” the Syrian shouted in lubricated English, “looks more like a character from some ridiculous American shampoo advertisement.” He stopped for a big swig from his sixth Shiner Bock, lifted from the cooler one of the Americans had pulled from the back of his armored Tahoe. “They think she’s safe behind the concertina?” he said, spewing foam. “I own every housekeeper in that place. I’ve been scoping out the plan for weeks. We’ll take her straight out of her bed, down the back stairs, out with the trash, and have her reporting live from a cage in Khatuniyah by morning.”

He pursed his lips in a wet kiss.

“Those kaffirs in New York will have their lawyers sending me more money than Uday has stashed in his secret bunker!”

The Syrian turned in annoyance at a hard tap on his shoulder. To his surprise, a tall white teenager devoid of any semblance of military demeanor stood over him. A weathered black T-shirt revealed a sinewy physique that had never darkened the doors of a school gymnasium. His massive hands disguised the size of the serrated folding knife he absent-mindedly fiddled with. He brushed untamed locks of long hair the color of raven feathers from his eyes, revealing a puzzled expression.

“I thought they captured Uday and his brother,” said the youth in an oddly rounded American accent. “Put more holes in them than an East Texas anthill. What are you talking about?”

“You believe that Pentagon propaganda?” said the Syrian, playing the gathering crowd. “Any fool knows that the corpse they showed on TV was a body double, a trick to flush out the father. Psychological warfare — Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid by way of CNN. I tell you Uday sits right now, comfortable in his safehouse beyond Falluja, with all his favorite playthings and a stolen fortune worthy of the Prince of Wales!”

“If everybody knows it,” said the youth, “why hasn’t somebody ratted him out and delivered him to V Corps? Take his money and the million dollar bounty while they’re at it.”

The Syrian’s eyes popped with astonishment, before his mouth opened with a roar of joyous laughter and his companions joined in.

“Listen to this young Boogshie!” he bellowed. “He’s going to capture the Crazy One. You watch too many Hollywood movies, you stupid fucking American.”

“I’m from Minnesota,” the youth said, indignantly. “Arrowhead country. Almost Canada.”

“Listen to me, Minnesota,” said the Syrian. “In this new Iraq, there are more adventurous scoundrels gathered than anywhere else in the world, and armies that can conquer whole continents. If Uday could be extracted from his hideaway, or his treasure pilfered, it would have long ago happened. Uday’s lair is a secret house, buried inside a mountain in the western desert, territory beyond the control of your Army, beyond even their bombs. If you could find it, and penetrate just the outer perimeter, you would face a small army of ex-Revolutionary Guards and fresh Saudi mujahideen, who would cut off your girlish head and fuck your eyes out before feeding it to Uday’s elephant man pet.”

The Minnesotan scowled at the insult. “They are watching for soldiers in groups, with air cover and armor. One lone tracker could sneak right past them.”

“Listen to Rambo!” shouted the Syrian, gesticulating at the heavens with ten fingers splayed. “Maybe they will beam him from his computer-generated spaceship straight into the house at the heart of the mountain.”

The Minnesotan flinched at the thunder of mocking laughter that filled his ears. Sarcasm was an art rarely practiced on the Iron Range, where a bad enough insult might lead to a drowning in the rapids or an unexplained mining accident. He resolved to leave, but the Syrian egged him on.

“Come on, big boy!” he shouted, slapping his overfed gut. “Tell these men, who have only been fighting and stealing since before your American whore mother wet the barn floor with your milky flesh — tell them how you will steal the head of the secret police from the inner chambers of his private fortress!”

The lights dimmed for a moment then tried to come back up, one of the frequent brownouts endemic to the city.

“There’s always a path to track,” said the Minnesotan. “All you need is five senses, a lot of patience, and bigger balls than they must grow in Baghdad.”

“Fool!” shouted the Syrian, knocking his chair to the floor as he stood. “You dare to question our courage?”
The Minnesotan turned to leave.

“That’s right,” cursed the rogue, pushing the strapping youth from behind and brandishing a small pistol. “Get out of my bar!”

The lights flickered again, then disappeared completely. The shadows shuddered with the sounds of breaking glass, screaming men, grunting women, colliding furniture, two gunshots, and curses in a dozen tongues. When the lights came back on, the center of the room was cleared except for the body of the Syrian, a broken bottle of Shiner jammed into his neck, blood pooling on the floor underneath him. The Minnesotan was nowhere to be seen.

-- From "The Bunker of the Tikriti," in Cross Plains Universe: Texans Celebrate Robert E. Howard (2006)

Baghdad graffitti by Arofish.

No fear of the foodstuffs.

It's been the done thing to blame the French for various woes since 9/11, although the British have been doing it for a lot longer. (The O.E.D. has a pejorative use of "Frenchified" dating back to 1592). But let's not forget to blame the Swedish. Or, more precisely, Gustav Vasa.

Once upon a time, it was an honorable thing to be given the title of lord (occasionally, lady) of the grain. Shénnóng was "Emperor of the Five Grains." (Chi (setaria millet), shu (panicum millet), shu (legumes), mai (wheat and barley), and either tao (rice) or ma (hemp), depending on which translator you use, were the staples of Chinese diet in antiquity). Suddhodana, the father of the Buddha, was known as the "Pure Rice King." The Izapa Maize King drew blood from his own mouth to use as an offering to the gods, while Mayan mortals who wore the headdress of the "Jester God" were the "Maize Lords." (Keep in mind that, for the Mayans, human flesh was made from maize dough, which should hint at the level of importance of the Maize Lord, which is why his sacrifice to the gods, every April 20th, was so vital to the health of the community). The Golden Bough tells us of the Silesian "Oak King," one of a bridal pair who--well, go ahead and read it yourself, although you should probably start at the beginning of the chapter. (But then, the oak was Jove's tree, so of course the Oak King is going to be important). And, of course, there was John Barleycorn, lord of the corn, always dying, alway reborn. The ancients being what they were, we can assume there was some human sacrifice involved. (What, you want to tell Rabbie Burns and James Frazer (yes, him again) they were wrong?)

You'll note that these individuals didn't grab the title for themselves. They were assigned it or given it, and accepted the responsibilities which came with it. Indeed, sacrifice and responsibility were a central part of the role. The kings and lords came from the community and died in the community, and theirs was a role of significance.

More recently?

There was John Mackay, the Canadian "Barley King" and Almon James Cotton, the Canadian "Wheat King." There was Henry Wilson, the South African "Oat King," who was apparently succeeded by Tom Rhatigan, the "World Oat King." There was Lê Văn Lập, the "Millet King."

The "Sorghum King" is a special case. The lineage is unsettled, and the title contested. Was it the Cherokee Charley Bumper? The South Carolinan W.S. Wilkerson? The Missourian John Heathman (father of Frankie Lee Timbrook)? The Georgian Walt Medlock, "Sorghum King of Sand Mountain?" Phelix Pryor Nance, "Indiana's Sorghum King?"

We've also seen a number of "Rice Kings," from Korean-American Kim Chong-nim, who had over 2,000 acres of rice in the San Joaquin Valley, to a succession of Chinese businessmen in Vietnam, all calling themselves "the Rice King." But the last Rice King in Saigon was Ma Hy, and the Communists arrested him in '75, and since then, the only Rice Kings have been...something quite different.

So where did it go wrong? When did the title of lord of the grain shift to profiteers and outsiders? How did it become about avarice and not responsibility, about aliens and not members of the community? Somewhere along the way the archetype of the Lord of the Grain flipped; it went from Tammuz/Attis/life-death-rebirth gods to something colder and crueler and altogether more exploitive, to the naiad of Love Canal. How did this happen?

If Ken Hite were writing this, he would describe, with erudition and wit, the occult significance of the change in the nature of the identities of the title-holders, perhaps involving the Green Man or Caliban's "pricks at my footfall" speech as displaying the symptoms of ergotism or the manne in which Lussi, Queen of Light was replaced by St. Lucia.

But, alas, I'm not Ken. My thoughts are more base. Like Falstaff, I'm led by my belly, or at least preceded by it, and so my thoughts turn to food.

I mentioned Gustav Vasa. In The Observer Guide to European Cookery Jane Grigson mentions seeing "a portrait...of the great Gustav Vasa, the 16th century King of Sweden, dressed all in black with yellow slashes, like a regal insect, who encouraged his subjects to grow rye and make crisp bread. He is the Rye King of the packaged crisp breads sold in Britain." Not just of the crisp breads, though; he was known as the Rye King during his lifetime.

Let's look closer at Gustav. Founder of modern Sweden, but known as a tyrant. Led the rebellion against Christian II of Denmark, a.k.a. "Christian the Tyrant," the man responsible for the Stockholm Bloodbath--but Gustav was no cupcake himself when it came to massacres, so that's a wash. He oversaw the breaking of the monopoly of the Hanseatic League and the conversion of Sweden to Lutheranism--again, a wash. And the gematria gives us a 79 for Gustav, and a 1010 for Kristian (Christian II's real name), which would seem to indicate that Gustav was one of the white knights.

On balance, Gustav seems a positive figure. But there is one area in which we can fairly describe Gustav, or at least his impact, as calamitous, and that's in matters culinary.

From 1470 to 1521 Kristian II and Denmark ruled Sweden, but Gustav led the rebellion, got himself elected regent in 1521, and then was elected king in 1523. At the time of Sweden's independence the most influential school of European gastronomy was French, and this was magnified in 1533 when Catherine de Medici arrived in Paris from Florence. She brought with her a retinue of chefs, pastry makers, and gardeners, and revolutionized French cooking, leading to a deluge of French cookbooks swamping Europe, including the very influential Le Grand Cuisiner de Toute Cuisine (1540), which displaced the more traditional Le Viandier (circa 1485).

Denmark, as it happened, was and remained primarily influenced by German cookery. (This changed in the 1830s, with Madam Mangor's Cookbook for Young Girls, Written by a Grandmother (1837), but we can attribute that to Denmark's choice of Napoleon as an ally). Sweden, on the other hand, more quickly took to French cookery.

Now, consider lutefisk. (In the Swedish, lutfisk). Garrison Keillor, who presumably knows whereof he speaks, described it this way:

Every Advent we entered the purgatory of lutefisk, a repulsive gelatinous fishlike dish that tasted of soap and gave off an odor that would gag a goat. We did this in honor of Norwegian ancestors, much as if survivors of a famine might celebrate their deliverance by feasting on elm bark. I always felt the cold creeps as Advent approached, knowing that this dread delicacy would be put before me and I’d be told, "Just have a little." Eating a little was like vomiting a little, just as bad as a lot.

And where can we find the first written mention of lutfisk?

That's right.

In one of Gustav Vasa's letters, written in 1540. (Wikipedia doesn't give a citation for this, but it can be found in Astri Riddervold's Lutefisk, Rakefisk, and Herring in Norwegian Tradition (1990)).

Gustav didn't invent lutfisk--the taste for lutfisk already existed among Swedes--but he surely had a hand in popularizing it. (We can't discount the effect of royalty's imprimatur on food; just look at what Catherine de Medici did). Swedes wanted to emphasize their differences from the Danes, and so they embraced the French rather than the German influence on their cooking.

This, by the way, was a decision Swedes surely came to regret. Patrick Lamb, cook to five kings and author of Royal Cookery: or, the Compleat Court-Book (1710), described northern European, German, and Danish cooking as a "substantial and wholesome plenty." The French of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, on the other hand: followed the Italian lead in seeing the tomato as evil and claiming that it caused "inflamed passions;" blamed chocolate for corrupting women's morals; said that too much chocolate consumption led to women giving birth to coal-black "cocoa babies;" likened chocolate to feces; said that Madame du Barry's appetite for chocolate came from her propensity for anal sex, gotten from her brothel training at the House of Gourdan; claimed that allowing proles to eat pain mollet, a light bread formerly reserved for royalty, had introduced "an element of voluptuousness" into France; sneered at rye and barley bread, with only white bread being good enough for French palates, so that the elite were "bread mouths," who dined only on white bread, and the proles were "fodder mouths," peasants who lived on dark brown bread; agreed with Diderot, who said, in his Encyclopédie, "the potato is righly held responsible for flatulence. But what is flatulence to the vigorous organs of peasants and workers?"; and ultimately created the attitude which Brillat-Savarin described so well: "a true gourmand is as insensible to suffering as is a conqueror."

Now, lutfisk was originally prepared with potash (K₂CO₃), but that was displaced by the stronger "caustic soda," a.k.a. NaOH, a.k.a. lye. The way it works is, a white fish (usually cod) is steeped in lye for several days, rinsed under running water, and then boiled, which reduces it to a shoggoth-like mess gelatinous substance. It's then served with boiled potatoes, flatbread, a white sauce, pepper and melted butter.

Between 1820 and 1920 over a million Swedes emigrated to the United States, many of them settling in the midwest and bringing their culinary traditions with them. So we can assume that, during that time, an unusually large amount of lye was used and dumped into the soil. Lutfisk consumption declined after the 1920s, when roast rib of pork replaced it as the main dish of Christmas Eve dinner, but lutfisk made a comeback in the late 1970s and has been going strong ever since.

Lye is an alkaline. And the Mississippi River (which, as you can see, runs along the Wisconsin border), is suffering from greatly increased alkalinity (see, for example, Science v302n5647, 7 Nov 2003, esp. Jones, "Increased Alkalinity in the Mississippi" and the Lackner/Raymond/Cole exchange on "Alkalinity Export and Carbon Balance"), with, as Jones puts it, "important implications for the biogeochemistry of the region."

But not just biogeochemistry. Regularly dumping toxic amounts of alkalines into the soil for almost two centuries has, obviously, done more than just poison the rivers. It poisoned the earth, so that those who would claim to lordship over its produce are poisoned themselves. No more self-sacrificing Corn Kings for us. The Lord of the Grain has become a dictator. Now we get Blairo Maggi, the iniquitous "Soy King."

And it's all Gustav Vasa's fault.

Veep me

The Dark Buddha sits resplendent behind the Party Chimp, taciturn and knowing in his lush purple tie, spun of colors so rich they burn up the cathode rays, clandestinely mesmerizing the audience.

Occasionally the corners of his mouth will dimple ever so slightly, as the pacemaker tickles the ripe scarlet flesh under his sternum.

24 hours earlier, on 24, our hero the crypto-Canadian Brat Packer turned meta-G-Man and real-time utilitarian, meets his brother for the first time in six-plus years. They exchange small talk in the foyer, meeting the wife and the boy, before retiring to the home office, where Jack rips an electrical cord from a lamp, ties his brother to a chair, and proceeds to commence the torture. Close-up on on a contorted face consumed by a gaping maw of mouth sucking on a cellophane bag wrapped around his head: the housewife's waterboard. Cut to black.

On the teleprompter, the über pledge captain reads from the fever dream of another Houstonian.

"We defended the city as best we could. The arrows of the Comanches came in clouds. The war clubs of the Comanches clattered on the soft, yellow pavements. There were earthworks along the Boulevard Mark Clark and the hedges had been laced with sparkling wire. People were trying to understand. I spoke to Sylvia. 'Do you think this is a good life?' The table held apples, books, long-playing records. She looked up. 'No.'

"Patrols of paras and volunteers with armbands guarded the tall, flat buildings. We interrogated the captured Comanche. Two of us forced his head back while another poured water into his nostrils. His body jerked, he choked and wept. Not believing a hurried, careless and exaggerated report of the number of casualties in the outer districts where trees, lamps, swans had been reduced to clear fields of wire we issued entrenching tools to those who seemed trustworthy and turned the heavy-weapons companies so that we could not be surprised from that direction. And I sat there getting drunker and drunker and more in love and more in love. We talked."

-- Donald Barthelme, "The Indian Uprising"

At the after-parties, red cocktails flow and the bards recite rhymeless epics of invisible literature as the loyal secretaries perform their best Lynndie England impressions for the crowd. Several garner those gratuitous standing ovations for which the gathered chambers are known.

TO STET OR NOT TO STET

It's a truism of the 9 to 5 world that good work goes unnoted while the boss and the customers only single out bad work. More or less the same happens in speculative fiction publishing. We even have a sort of horror subgenre based on the reported misdeeds of editors, agents, copyeditors, and writers themselves.

Competent people with a high degree of professionalism aren't praised nearly enough. One of these is Deanna Hoak, the copyeditor for my novel coming out from Pyr in July 2007. She did an impressive job. In reviewing the copyedited MSS in Microsoft Word, I responded with the electronic equivalent of stet at some places – I meant it the way I wrote it. At other places my reaction was Am I ever glad she caught that one!

Deanna's work was astute, meticulous, and fair. She posed excellent questions when the MSS was unclear, and when it was perfectly clear but merrily contradicted itself. So she caught scads of typos and worse. As a reader, typos irritate me, but if I can tell what the word/name/sentence was supposed to be, I don't fall out of the story. If the grammar has a glitch I grumble but keep reading. Logical lapses and internal inconsistencies are the worst annoyance of all. If I have to flip back and forth in a book trying to figure out how it makes sense – or how it could make sense if rewritten to say what the writer probably intended – well, that's when my suspension of disbelief teeters and may come crashing down. As John Gardner says in The Art of Fiction, a writer's mistake can abruptly and unpleasantly snap the reader out of the "vivid and continuous fictional dream." That's not, not, not what I want for my novel, and at number of points where it won't happen, I'll have Deanna to thank.

She has a Website in which she offers insight into what her job is like and much good advice to writers. Recommended!

No. 5 of 9

So here we are, a year (give or take) following the launch of New Horizons mission to visit the last unexplored planet in our solar system. A lot has changed since then--namely, a conspiracy of egomaniacal astronomer-types (not to be confused with the sane, rational astronomer-types) conjured up a new and utterly convoluted definition of "planet" for the sole purpose of demoting Pluto. That, folks, is a dead horse I won't continue to beat here at this particular moment. Instead, I'd like to point out some nifty value-added science New Horizons is currently cooking up en route to its primary target world eight years from now:

The fastest spacecraft ever launched, New Horizons will make its closest pass to Jupiter on Feb. 28, threading its path through an "aim point" 1.4 million miles (2.3 million kilometers) from the center of Jupiter. Jupiter's gravity will accelerate New Horizons away from the Sun by an additional 9,000 miles per hour - half the speed of a space shuttle in orbit - pushing it past 52,000 mph and hurling it toward a pass through the Pluto system in July 2015.

At the same time, the New Horizons mission team is taking the spacecraft on the ultimate test drive - using the flyby to put the probe's systems and seven science instruments through the paces of a planetary encounter. More than 700 observations of Jupiter and its four largest moons are planned from January through June, including scans of Jupiter's turbulent, stormy atmosphere and dynamic magnetic cocoon (called a magnetosphere); the most detailed survey yet of its gossamer ring system; maps of the composition and topography of the large moons Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto; and an unprecedented look at volcanic activity on Io.

The flight plan also calls for the first-ever trip down the long "tail" of Jupiter's magnetosphere, a wide stream of charged particles that extends tens of millions of miles beyond the planet, and the first close-up look at the "Little Red Spot," a nascent storm south of Jupiter's famous Great Red Spot.

"Our highest priority is to get the spacecraft safely through the gravity assist and on its way to Pluto," says New Horizons Principal Investigator Dr. Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colo. "But we also have an incredible opportunity to conduct a real-world-encounter stress test to wring out our procedures and techniques for Pluto, and to collect some valuable science data."

The Jupiter test matches or exceeds the mission's Pluto study in duration, data volume sent back to Earth, and operational intensity. Much of the data from the Jupiter flyby won't be sent back to Earth until after closest approach, because the spacecraft's main priority is to observe the planet and store data on its recorders before transmitting information home.

After such a long and thorough observation of the Jovian system by Galileo, it is really a great bonus to be able to scope out Jupiter with a suite of even more advanced instruments such a relatively short time later. It'll be particularly nice to get closer observations of the "Little Red Spot" as it grows, moves closer to, and interacts more with the famous Great Red Spot. Any observations of the Jovian satellites--in particular, Io and Europa--will be quite welcome as well.

When I was a kid, I would pore over the issues of National Geographic that featured extensive coverage of Viking at Mars and the Voyagers at Jupiter and Saturn. I'd goggle over the photos, and reread the articles until the pages were literally in tatters. That thrill's never really left me, and I'm sure I'm only one of millions eagerly awaiting our first closeup view of Pluto and Charon. I have to admit, though, that Jupiter's a pretty groovy opening act.

For more information on New Horizons, visit http://pluto.jhuapl.edu.

Still missing

Some imagined sightings of Johnny Gosch, Missing Paper Boy and forgotten icon of the American imagination



• January 8, 1990, 12:41 pm: Standing against the wall of an airport terminal in Cozumel, Mexico.

• August 27, 1983, 3:57 pm: Emerging from the bathroom of a service station on Highway 668, east of Phoenix.

• September 5, 1982, 4:20 pm: Peering out of the rear window of a rusted and worn white Ford Econoliner van traveling north on 86th Street, Clive, Iowa.

• June 10, 1993, 9:35 am: Sitting in front of an abandoned Stuckey's outside Cape Girardeau, Missouri, drinking water.

• October 19, 1986, 6:15 am: Shuffling down Cahuenga Boulevard, Los Angeles, wearing tight jeans and an olive green windbreaker.

• July 15, 1994, 4:00 pm: Raking sand trap, Hole 17, Royal Melbourne Country Club, Buffalo Grove, Illinois.

• December 20, 1987, 10:00-11:17 pm: Appearing as "Johnny (School Boy Number 3)" in "The Dead Paper Boys Society," Aetherium Theatre, 44th & Broadway, New York City.

• October 28, 1984, 7:40 pm: Hitchiking, westbound shoulder, Route 40, mile marker 172, State of Nevada.

• February 3, 1985, 10:11 am: Sorting novelty devices wrapped in blister-packs, back room, "The Secret" magic shop, Merle Hay Mall, Douglas Avenue, Urbandale, Iowa.

(For one elaborate and insane theory of this secret history of middle America, read this)

Straight Outta Ljubljana

If you're feeling in the mood for 75 minutes of a hyperactive Marxist-Lacanian from Slovenia spewing Theory riffs on his world tour, this is the ticket.

Žižek! Now available at your local indy DVD rental shop.