We were wending our way around downtown D.C. looking for a good parking spot. We had come down from Baltimore so we could show my pal Robert Hernandez’s 8-year-old niece Aniya, who lives in Havre de Grace, out in the Maryland country, the museums and sites. Rob’s girlfriend, Stephanie, was driving with Aniya sitting next to her.

Aniya and I have one thing in common: We’re both Hispanic and Jewish. It’s a rare blend, but more common than many people think. Fidel Castro is probably a Latin Jew.

About 10 blocks north of the Mall, I started seeing signs of a protest: small Lebanese flags and handwritten fliers too small to read from a distance. I am always glad to see demonstrations. We kept driving closer downtown.

I advised Stephanie to try the east-west streets, as they tend to have more free spots. We were cruising the borders of a park just north of the White House when we came upon the pro-Lebanon demonstration.

There, as many as 300 people were beginning the day’s activities, wearing the red, white and green national colors and setting up activities under the flag of Lebanon.

But throughout the crowd people carried signs with Israeli flags covered in barbed wire or dripping with brightly markered blood. There were posters drawn with skulls and gas masks and printed with slogans such as “Israel: Country of Murderers,” “Stop Jewish Genocide” and “Die Israel.” If you needed one, there was a bin of more such signs on the sidewalk when you walked in.

I have always been outspoken in my support of the Muslim peoples of the Middle East. Israel seemed to have had itself covered: A full third of all U.S. foreign aid goes there, the economy is good. For a nation only half a century old, it is coming along well.

But over the past month of conflict in south Lebanon, I have heard from so many people I know, read in so many news sources and heard from organizations I respect how terrible Israel is. It is almost a reflexive thing. Not many people feel particularly bad about trash talking the world’s only Jewish state.

And for a long time, I’ve endured people making anti-Semitic jokes and remarks to my face. And when I protest, I am told that things aren’t so bad anymore and it’s much worse for others.

But it is deadly, and the people of my own bloodline in Israel are dying for it daily, as we have for thousands of years.

This summer, I have seen that when the chips are down and war is on (or when Mel Gibson is blowing up again), very few people and organizations will defend us but us. And though I believe devoutly and without hesitation in the rights of all people, when someone is attacking my people, I will stand firmly with my people.

Our car was slowly turning the next corner and Stephanie was trying to explain to the 8-year-old Aniya what the protest was about. And just as we were turning away from it, we saw a man on the corner wearing a red, white and green sort of doo-rag and red, white and green sweat pants, T-shirt and sunglasses standing tall with his arms thrust to his hips. The tension was relieved and all of us in the car laughed when Robert joked: “Look, everyone, it’s Captain Lebanon!”

Are you among the tens of millions of Americans whose calls are being tracked by the NSA? Are you using AT&T, Verizon or BellSouth? The president today said, “Our efforts are focused on links to al Qaeda and their known affiliates.” Tens of millions of us are in Al Qaeda???

I quote from my favorite book:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized" (Amendment IV of the Bill of Rights to the Constitution).

Check it out, it's good readin'!:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.billofrights.html

--E.

Whatever anyone may say about her boobs, acting choices, love life, whatever, the fact remains I love Pam Anderson because she is speaking for those who can’t speak. Those we must protect because they can no longer protect themselves against us: animals of all stripes, environments and intellects.

Indeed, any faith we have asks us to do this, be it Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist or Hindu. Judeo-Christians: That man was given “dominion over the animals” means not that we are supposed to do as we please, but that we must accept our role as their king – thus words like “dominion” – will we be wicked or good kings?

Always, always, Pam is there for animals. I can think of few people I respect more. Like PETA, for whom she is celebrity spokesperson, she makes people think. A democracy needs to think.

This from Netscape News recently:

“Anderson is using her assets, so to speak, to further her anti-fur position. The New York Post's Page Six gossip column reports that last Friday Anderson attended a luncheon at the House of Flaunt in Hollywood Hills with the Japanese designers of the Sly fashion line. She staged a stand-in of sorts, refusing to sit down until everyone in the room had removed all animal pelts from her sight.

 

“It gets better. With that little task accomplished, the former Baywatch star then refused to take off her trench coat and model a very clingy, very low-cut wrap dress she assured them was underneath it until the Sly designers agreed to never use fur again. Guess what? They did! And then she took off her coat and gave them an eyeful. Page Six quotes Anderson as saying of her bust, ‘They're good for something.’"

Guest writer Bill Leighly -- poet/prince of the Midwest -- logs in:

Turn Away from the Machine

I  got home from work yesterday and grabbed a busch light and turned on the news... preface this with the fact that I have been in intense pain since Wed. after having a fucked-up root canal, and that the right side of my face has swollen to the size of a moderate softball (yes I am now on strong antibiotics and I have some vicadin if necessary) and that my mood under severe pain and sleep-deprivation always swings into the intensely cynical... anyways I had walked home from work thru the rain, picked up some drugs at Walgreens and then a six-pack and some smokes at the Licka Stoh (no I am not an alcoholic... I only drink on certian days at certain times... the same goes for the smokes... actually I am a long-distance runner but somehow started smoking only while drinking beer, I now have a hard time separating the two activities)... so I had arrived at my decrepit flat, exhausted as hell from no sleep Wed. night (that night I spent moaning in misery and watching my face swell up while popping codeine pills every hour to absolutely no effect) and flipped on the goddamm tube... I don't watch too much T.V., hardly any in fact... but because I had arrived home early (leaving work due to the discomfort) I was in time to catch the World News on one of the networks (I don't have cable)... I believe it was NBC... I lit up a Camel and took a sip of beer and leaned back to relax... after absorbing 30 minutes of theWorld News on NBC I had come to the conclusion that it was nothing but propoganda interspersed with multitudinous automobile commercials... later that evening I headed out into the cold rain for a beer or two at my pub... there I watched more goddamm automobile commercials interspersed with a basketball game... anyways the purpose of this rambling blog is that I am FED UP with American middle class society, FED UP with the gluttony, the wastefulness, the materialism, the mindlessness that constitute its foundation... FED UP with this modern existence under the Empire where every original thought has been extracted as ruthlessly as the root from my throbbing tooth...so I shall turn away from the Machine...

My grandfather and I were shopping in the street markets near his apartment, on Thayer Street, far north Manhattan, in the Washington Heights neighborhood. I was just a few years old. This was and still is a big Spanish market. My grandfather didn’t speak much English, so we conversed in a blend of Spanish and English. We were out looking for a toy gun – back then, they were still sold in black – as my parents wouldn’t let me have one.

As ever in the market on a Sunday morning, people of all colors were bustling in every direction, bumping into each other, trespassing onto the street, shouting to each other over the long and short distances. Papers covered the walls of the shops and the light posts, and blew all through the streets.

We were on a particularly busy thoroughfare, filled with sun, almost noon. It was quite hot – the dirty, city kind of hot that you can feel. The sidewalk burned.

That was when I saw them.

They were a couple. The man wore a beard and that rounded hat I now know to be Muslim topping his black face. The woman wore a black full burqa – I could see only her darting eyes and the glistening black skin around them. They walked up the sidewalk together silently, at a slight distance.

What I remember was that every step they took broke up the crowd. Everyone was looking at them. Every shopkeeper peered up from his wares to mark the passing of these two, and all the buyers and talkers and hustlers in the street stopped what they were doing to watch this couple. Sentences ended midway. No one ran before them.

At my young age, I was equally puzzled as I was impressed. Who were these two wearing so much black in that heat and strolling so seriously that everyone so loud and vibrant just moments before could be struck dumb? At that age, I already had ideas of what faith was, having done my best to juggle Judaism and my grandmother’s devout Catholicism already all my life. But what was the power of this faith (for I quickly knew faith was at the core of this scene) that it should part the human sea of the market at morning?

They moved closer, till they were passing just before me. I still don’t know what look I saw in that woman’s eyes. Was it a flash of fear as she walked straight on? The man she was with wove among the crowd somewhat more. His expression may have had a bit of delight in it, as he searched around, perhaps for what they had come to market for.

When I got home, I asked my mother about these people. She was liberal and knowledgeable, but didn’t elaborate, perhaps because it would be too complex to explain to someone my age.

I think this was the moment I first knew that Islam would ever be a factor in my life, in all our lives, in the streets of the world and in our national interests. I have never stopped trying to figure out what look I saw in that woman’s eyes.

So it begins -- the "Long War."

You know this isn't going to end anytime soon. The Defense Department's just-published Quadrennial Defense Review Report (.pdf)uses the term "the long war" repeatedly to describe the varied conflicts we are in now. The opening chapter, "Fighting the Long War," has subsections titled "Afghanistan," Iraq" and "The Fight Beyond Afghanistan and Iraq."

And in case you missed it, Bush made this endorsement Tuesday night: "Our own generation is in a long war against a determined enemy -- a war that will be fought by presidents of both parties."

If you had to choose, what would you rather have: a Great War or a Long War?

It was cold when we went to the zoo last Sunday. It was nice to meet all the animals again. They’ve been doing their thing for millions of years and they’re not planning to change.

I love animals. From my dog to a snake chillin’ the afternoon away in a fake tree to some giraffe eyeing a crowd of zoo onlookers as impassively as a supermodel would, they all seem to look upon us interested mainly in why we are interested in them.

Every species, I suppose for evolutionary reasons, is curious mostly about its own species. They seem to appreciate us, each according to its intellect, for we are their keepers. But cats want to know what’s happening with other cats, birds with fellow birds, etc.

I went with some fine people: my great new girlfriend, Jessie; her mom and sister, in for the weekend from Connecticut; and my dear old pal Rob (whom we call “D.C. Rob” or “Lawyer Rob,” to distinguish him from all the other Robs I associate with).

The gorillas that afternoon were interested in us. A smaller one took delight in sneaking up and punching the glass of the ape cage hard near the face of any blonde woman looking in the wrong direction. The human crowd would squeal. The huge silverback male leader gazed upon the event without emotion.

There are two activities at the zoo, though, that drive me crazy. The first is the pretend zoological expertise people profess. “That’s a ferret!” I overheard a man tell his girlfriend in the Small Mammal House. He was looking at a porcupine. Read the sign, man, read the sign.

But please don’t read FROM the sign. This happens a lot: “Kids, that’s a golden lion-headed tamarind. They’re native to southwestern Bali.” So knowledgeable! And then said reader starts smacking the glass and scaring the poor beast -- which is a sloth anyway.

Second, it’s the sexism at the zoo. Inevitably, different species have evolved different gender roles. Male lions are lazy. OK. “Just like all men,” I never fail to hear someone conspiratorially whisper nearby, in the kind of whisper you can’t avoid hearing.

Even so with the cuddly giant pandas, paragons of adorability. Mei Xiang, the mom, sat with her new baby, Butter Stick, knocking him away again and again when he tried to attach onto her, taking away the bamboo stick he gnawed on and eating it herself. Butter Stick’s dad sat far away in a corner, tossing a ball around by himself. Way to represent your sex, old man!

That night, we trod through the Mt. Pleasant cold to an Ecuadorian restaurant. A few young waitresses served us good food. Football -- both the U.S. and international kinds -- played on big screens. Men sat all over being served that Sunday, the day of rest. A huge man dressed in black and wearing a pinky ring the size and color of an Oscar award sat at the bar dipping his fingers into a plate of something red and gelatinous. He looked greasy but important, calling out commands to the line cooks and waitresses. Ah, I thought: the silverback male.

"Bush defended Vice President Dick Cheney's pre-war assertion that the United States would be welcomed in Iraq as liberators.

"'I think we are welcomed' he said. 'But it was not a peaceful welcome.'"

Yes, we are 1 year old today.  With this post on August 26, 2004 we opened up the Iron Mouth for everything in the world.  This is post number 542.  Alas, the world as it is, politics has been our primary focus since then.  Don't worry culture hounds, we will satisfy your appetites as the situation permits. 

So what has been the best thing about the Iron Mouth?  The commenters, of course.  With a relatively low visit count, we have had lively threads, sometimes reaching over 70 comments for a single post.  Although we have a leftward tilt, we have attracted an intrepid band from other parts of the poltical landscape, people looking for more than validation of their own point of view.  These sorts are rare indeed, and we hope they continue to visit us.

War on Terror, bah! Amid the recent Mad Tea Party appointments of John Bolton and Paul Wolfowitz to the U.N. and World Bank respectively comes this Bush masterstroke. Because we all know how good terrorists have been at running things in the Middle East:

"Tuesday, March 15, 2005, WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush on Tuesday expressed the hope that Hezbollah -- which the U.S. State Department has long regarded as a terrorist group -- could enter the political mainstream in Lebanon."

Bin Laden, get your suit pressed and polish up your resume -- again.

If the country ain’t gung-ho enough for you yet, read these two stories from Thursday:

Marine General: It's 'Fun to Shoot People'

Thursday, February 3, 2005 Posted: 4:16 PM EST (2116 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A three-star Marine general who said it was "fun to shoot some people" should have chosen his words more carefully, the Marine Corps commandant said Thursday.

Lt. Gen. James Mattis, who commanded Marine expeditions in Afghanistan and Iraq, made the comments Tuesday during a panel discussion in San Diego, California.

"Actually it's quite fun to fight them, you know. It's a hell of a hoot," Mattis said, prompting laughter from some military members in the audience. "It's fun to shoot some people. I'll be right up there with you. I like brawling.

"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil," Mattis said. "You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them."

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/02/03/general.shoot/index.html

'Adopt a Sniper' Fund-Raiser Shot Down

Thursday, February 3, 2005 Posted: 5:10 PM EST (2210 GMT)

CHICAGO (Reuters) -- A Catholic university in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has blocked an attempt by Republican students to raise money for a group called "Adopt a Sniper" that raises money for U.S. sharp-shooters in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The students were selling bracelets bearing the motto "1 Shot 1 Kill No Remorse I Decide".

"Clearly the rhetoric of that organization raised some questions and we had some strong objections as a Jesuit university," Marquette University school spokeswoman Brigid O'Brien said Thursday.

Here's what I found the most sickening, and even one good thing, about the president's State of the Union address last night:

1) His remarks about constitutionally banning gay marriage. This is a HATE CRIME, and I think a president ought not participate in that.

2) His constant praise for FDR -- whose great plan for the poor, Social Security, Bush plans to ruin for the gain of the wealthy.

3) The teary theater of that KIA's mother hugging the Iraqi voter. How hard did they have to look to find a pro-Bush Iraqi?

And the one thing I liked about it was his again saying there should be a Palestinian state. He's said that all along. But it should be noted he hasn't lifted a finger about it in four years, and really it's the biggest sore spot in the minds of all the Middle East.

Are we racing toward war with the Ayatollah? Here's a list of everything Bush has said about Iran in all his State of the Union addresses (Clinton, in 2000, was the only other post-Cold War president to mention Iran, in 2000. See below):

2005: Today, Iran remains the world's primary state sponsor of terror -- pursuing nuclear weapons while depriving its people of the freedom they seek and deserve. We are working with European allies to make clear to the Iranian regime that it must give up its uranium enrichment program and any plutonium reprocessing, and end its support for terror. And to the Iranian people, I say tonight: As you stand for your own liberty, America stands with you.

2004: America and the international community are demanding that Iran meet its commitments and not develop nuclear weapons. America is committed to keeping the world's most dangerous weapons out of the hands of the most dangerous regimes.

2003: Different threats require different strategies. In Iran, we continue to see a government that represses its people, pursues weapons of mass destruction, and supports terror. We also see Iranian citizens risking intimidation and death as they speak out for liberty and human rights and democracy. Iranians, like all people, have a right to choose their own government and determine their own destiny -- and the United States supports their aspirations to live in freedom.

2002: Iran aggressively pursues these weapons [of mass destruction] and exports terror, while an unelected few repress the Iranian people's hope for freedom.

2001: (Inaugural address, no mention)

2000 (Clinton): We must meet this threat by making effective agreements to restrain nuclear and missile programs in North Korea, curbing the flow of lethal technology to Iran, preventing Iraq from threatening its neighbors, increasing our preparedness against chemical and biological attack, protecting our vital computer systems from hackers and criminals, and developing a system to defend against new missile threats, while working to preserve our ABM missile treaty with Russia. We must do all these things.

Rolling Stone, which is one of my all-time favorite magazines, says it won’t carry an ad for a new version of the Bible being published by HarperCollins. The ad would have pictured a man gazing at the sky and these words:

“In a world of almost endless media noise and political spin, you wonder where you can find real truth. Well, now there's a source that's accurate, clear and reliable. It's the TNIV -- Today's New International Version of the Bible. It's written in today's language, for today's times -- and it makes more sense than ever.“

I’m sure Rolling Stone’s decision had to do with its overall format. An issue of Rolling Stone typically runs ads for new music, technology, fashion and adult products, among other things. So how would an ad for a Bible fit Rolling Stone?

Music is described by many people as a nearly religious experience. It is ecstatic and passionate and even at times inspires questions of belief. Many artists in their music and as they are quoted in Rolling Stone do make references to God, spirituality, faith, biblical texts and so on.

Such an ad would simply show a product to people who may very well want to know more about the Bible. It’s not proselytizing. It’s just an idea. Rolling Stone, in its vocabulary and subjects, has long been on the forefront of free expression. This, however, is a step backward.

Art and music often enough bring up questions of faith. They’re just questions, and attempts to address those questions should not be censored. I am disappointed that Rolling Stone won’t run this ad.

--E.K.

BUSH AND FIRST WIFEY TODAY IN CHURCH (FOR A CHANGE). DO THEY LOOK JUST A LITTLE OVERSTRESSED?

--E.K.

“Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.”

--Pericles, 430 B.C.

I have not read a better description of what it is to write than this, from Richard Wright’s lecture on his Native Son, “How ‘Bigger’ was Born” (both works 1940). If one isn’t writing like this, physically like this, I can’t see how one is writing:

“That was the deep fun of the job: to feel within my body that I was pushing out to new areas of feeling, strange landmarks of emotion, tramping upon foreign soil, compounding new relationships of perceptions, making new and — until that very split second of time! — unheard-of and unfelt effects with words. It had a buoying and tonic impact upon me; my senses would strain and seek for more and more of such relationships; my temperature would rise as I worked. That is writing as I feel it, a kind of significant living.”

And then, the writer’s devil-and-angel appears — why Dionysus was god of wine and art:

“The book was one-half finished, with the opening and closing scenes unwritten. Then, one night, in desperation — I hope that I'm not disclosing the hidden secrets of my craft! — I sneaked out and got a bottle. With the help of it, I began to remember many things which I could not remember before.”

And all of this left the world changed utterly:

“True, we have no great church in America; our national traditions are still of such a sort that we are not wont to brag of them; and we have no army that's above the level of mercenary fighters; we have no group acceptable to the whole of our country upholding certain humane values; we have no rich symbols, no colorful rituals. We have only a money-grubbing, industrial civilization… if Poe were alive, he would not have to invent horror; horror would invent him.”

I am waiting for the Last Supper to be served again with a strange new appetizer. A new rebirth of wonder. Yours — E.K.

Folks,

Two maps:

1) 2004 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION BREAKDOWN BY STATE (RED: BUSH, BLUE: KERRY):

2) THE U.S. BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR (RED: SLAVE STATES, BROWN: TERRITORIES OPEN TO SLAVERY, GREEN: FREE STATES AND TERRITORIES):

“When you have the angel and the devil on each shoulder, which do you choose?”

You first have to look very carefully, because as we know, from at least Luther on, a devil may appear as an angel as well as itself. Don't forget the only woodcut Luther had in the translation: the Antichrist, wearing a papal crown.

When a Christian says the people should kill in war or as punishment for a crime, that's the devil trying to impersonate an angel. Even when that spirit on your shoulder is a beaming Baptist.

The devil also makes the angels look bad. Remember that he is an angel, though fallen. The devil will try to convince you that the purest spirit on your other shoulder is the weak, wrong, wicked one.

You have to look very carefully. And then, always go with the angel. 

--E.K. (Comments? ekblog@yahoo.com)

Hey Sickos,

Some photos below of the candidates, surreptitiously obtained. But if Eddie Izzard is any indication, this may be our reality soon enough. (Question, class: Why do the incumbents look so much hotter?) Cheers, EK  (COMMENTS?: Write me at ekblog@yahoo.com)

This was just a blip, just a nothing in the political landscape. But of blips, of dust, of infinite private moments of wonder and discomfort is the world made…

Such things nearly pass for dreaming.

It was May of this year. I had heard that, in the run-up to handing over Iraq “politically” to Iraqis, in late June, the president of the United States of America would deliver a live speech weekly, to explain the administration’s thoughts.

Five Monday night speeches in five weeks. For an old newspaper delivery boy and later AP editor-reporter such as I, that was like what hearing of a surprise slew of off-season Monday Night Football playoff games must be to a football addict. That first Monday found me sitting down to dinner before the TV at promptly two minutes before 8 o’clock, ready to listen.

I must explain. I am not an aficionado of this current president. But I am mesmerized by his speaking genius. I confess to a lifelong funereal fascination with leaders who mean very little good for their people and who speak absolute insanity that passes in the minds of enough of the populace as inspired, defensible, godly, more than propaganda. I study carefully the pronouncements, daydreamy metaphors and money-printing abilities of administrators like Korea’s “Dear Leader” Kim Jong Il and Turkmenistan’s “Great Leader” Saparmurat Niyazov. With a similar gusto I await word from the “Leader of the Free World,” U.S. President George W. Bush.

How do such people rise to such power? Is politics the only profession in which the truly mad stand a chance at a grand and successful career?

That first Monday offered little more than mutters, stumbled attempts at awe and the promise of further speeches to come. On the second Monday, I cancelled plans I had in order to stay home and be before the radio at 8:00 sharp. No luck. The NPR airwaves returned to music after the Dow and Nasdaq numbers.

Well, there was much news that Monday, and it was also a holiday, so I thought the president must be otherwise occupied.

Week three came. And again, with the radio and television on and IMing with my friend Bill…nothing…no president, no speech. Was I awake, or politically dreaming?

Months passed, and after searching around a bit online for what I had missed, I gave up on the speeches. Did I hear right? Anyone I asked didn’t know of them.

So all summer I scratched my head in dreamy wonder like a sleeper just awoken. What happened?

Then, to my delight, last week, The New Yorker, in its great humor and righteousness, published its regularly appearing absurdist (but too true) quiz on the administration, this installation titled “The Thirteen Hundred Days: The Quiz.” (This is where, faithful readers, your present writer had a AP wire story appear last June, a blip about the president-candidate describing his wife as “the lump in the bed next to me.”)

It’s a compendium of administration faux pas. “Quiz” question No. 11 ran:

In May, the White House announced that George W. Bush would deliver five weekly speeches intended to shore up support for his Iraq policies. How many of the five did he deliver before abandoning the effort?

The correct answer: “(a), One.” Dreamers, awake.

--E.K. (Got comments? Write me at ekblog@yahoo.com)

Today's the 65th anniversary of the Germans' Blitzkrieg on Poland, and here is the poem W.H. Auden wrote about it. Always a puzzling disavowal, Auden wished it deleted from his vast collected work. Few people can.

Yours -- E.K. (Got Comments? Write me at ekblog@yahoo.com)

SEPTEMBER 1, 1939
by W.H. Auden

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
"I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,"
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.                                ©1940 W.H. Auden

On September 1, 1939, lightning hit and killed 835 sheep that had been bedded down for the night on the top of Pine Canyon in the Raft River Mountains of Box Elder County in northwestern Utah. Rain from a passing thunderstorm wet the ground and sheep, causing the lightning's electrical discharge to move completely through the herd of female sheep and lambs. The next morning, fifteen sheep (out of 850) were found alive but in a dazed condition. The sheepherder was knocked temporarily unconscious, but escaped death because he was in a tent. However, burned spots on his canvas tent revealed he probably missed the fate of the sheep by only a slim margin. (Text and photo courtesy of the Utah Center for Climate and Weather and the National Weather Service.)

Welcome to The Iron Mouth. The Iron Mouth will be speaking daily. Topics you will hear the Mouth speak of may include politics, culture, religion, outsourcing, bail bondsmen, turncoats, anti-antidisestablishmentarianism, under use of punctuation, and others.

The Mouth starts as five friends, but the door is kept slightly ajar: three within the deep savage heart of the D.C Beltway, one perched aloft the glassy, reflective towers of nearby Baltimore, the last in Middle America. Of course, these friends don't always share the same point of view, though as friends they certainly try to get along.

The Iron Mouth is named after La Bouche de Fer, a journal published by the Cercle Social, a club founded by Abbe Claude Fauchet (1744-1793). Fauchet, a revolutionary priest, was a leader of the attack on the Bastille and styled himself the "Attorney General of the Truth" in the French Revolution. Viva.