BartCop Entertainment Archives - Tuesday, 2 January, 2007

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is brought to you...

The Book of Willy

by Michael Dare

CHAPTER ONE: Genesis

Willy wondered what went wrong. It wasn't supposed to turn out like this, hanging from the end of a rope in a foreign land, but them's the breaks in Willy's world, where realities collide and misfortune smiles upon all, rich or small, poor or large, a gathering of rainbows with pots full of retribution. Who'da guessed it? Not Willy. Once the sad and mysterious progression of Willy's life was set on its domino way, it couldn't be stopped, not by Willy, not by anyone in his life, not by any other slice of chance, and certainly not by me, the humble one, blessed by God to tell Willy's story in his own words. As Willy's stenographer, you can take my word, and the word of Willy, as the word of the all mighty, and not just because I say so. Willy was clearly as blessed as Moses, as self-sacrificing as Dionysus, as holy as Jesus and Muhammad, not to mention as all wet as Poseidon, and nothing will relinquish me from the sacred duty of getting it all down because, hey, if not me, who?

Do you start a story like Willy's from the front or from the back? Get your mind out of the gutter. How about the middle? Nope. You start with the rope. Willy was hung today and hoo boy did he deserve it. Nobody deserved to be hung more than Willy, unless mammals who claim the exclusive rights to the word "civilization" aren't supposed to hang each other, in which case you deserve to be hung as much as Willy, or so says Willy. This is him talking, not me. I just sat there and listened. Boy, could Willy talk, on and on and on and on about absolutely everything and it's really too bad there wasn't a tape recorder or video camera there to capture the whole thing instead of your having to rely upon my savagely buffed capacity for recapitulation, untarnished by untruths of any manner, big or beige, smelly or small. You can take it from me and you shall.

But back to Willy, who's been dangling from a rope since the first paragraph. We don't even know if he survived the hanging until we see the autopsy photos so don't get your panties in a tangle without mailing them to me first. If I were to make a list of all the things we don't know about Willy, print up a thousand copies of it, dress in my finest clothes, go downtown and distribute them to hapless passersby, they would look at me much like you're looking at me, like get on with it, buddy, I've got better things to do than listen to your incoherent recitation of the holy words of the most righteous Willy, hallowed be his moniker, the sacred spot between the anterior and posterior, taints be praised.

Let me hear you say W, the big W, the sacred W, hallowed be its double-U-liness. Can you give me an I, a sacred I, your full attention, however U define yourself, hapless mammal or fortunate protoplasm with a lifelong scholarship from the haberdasher of hard knocks, powerful or powerfuller, now or never and then or there? Do I have the whole U, that is to say I, I know it's confusing, but if we change the I in Willy to a U, you get Wully, which is just silly, just take Willy's word for it, the I in Willy stands for U, which stands for You, the person saying I while receiving the world of Willy through the grand dignity of my exalted translation. Do I see an L coming? You bet I do. Some say the double L in Willy's name stands for Living Large. They should be hung. Larry Ladvert has written me thousands of letters claiming the double L stands for Larry Ladvert. A word here about Larry. Don't listen to him. Larry's a dumbbell with a double R and a double B, AND a double L, go ahead, run to your dictionaries. I'm certainly not going to tell you.

The last letter in Willy's name is his most powerful statement. W. I mean Y. As in why. Why Y? Why not Y. Why anything? Why am I writing this and why are you reading it? Why do results so often differ from initial prognosis? Why is there air and why did they cancel Cosby? Why do some people think they're better than other people and why don't those other people do something about it? Why is there corn in everything and why do the innocent suffer? Why did I say that and why am I saying this? Why is the TV on and why has the music stopped?

Why? You want to know why the Y in Willy stands for why, which begins with a W? Neither do I.

Why did you stub your toe and why is that helicopter circling your house? Why did Gerald Ford serve on the Warren Commission and why didn't anyone mention it at his funeral? Why do the dead stay dead while the living play dead? What was wrong with that sentence and what's wrong with this one? Why don't you love me and why don't they love you? Why don't conservatives conserve and why don't liberals liberate? Why didn't Van Gogh sell a single painting and why can't you lose that weight? Why bother and why not?

Don't blame it on civilization, blame it on Willy. He's sacrificed his preconceived notions of who he is and allowed us all to blame everything on him, so take Willy's word when he says Blame it on Willy. Whatever it is, you can blame him, go ahead, he doesn't mind, really, he told me so. You wanna blame Willy for any mishap in your pitiful life? Go ahead. He's a perfect reference. You can put his name on your résumé and if any prospective employer calls and asks if he's responsible for every problem you ever had, he'll say yep, that was me. I, meaning him, did it. That's another reason there's an I in Willy.

I can't possibly settle the debate about the relationship between the W at the front and the Y at the back of Willy's name. Suffice it to say that Willy's name both begins and ends with a Why, once literally with the Y at end, and once symbolically by the W at the beginning. Thus once again Willy maintains his perfection, saying fuck scientology, banish the Buddha, shove Allah and Jehovah where the sun don't shine and listen to Willy. Get your mind out of the fucking gutters. Whenever Willy spoke about his penis, he was talking about his Willy, and thus the man became the whole, or the hole, depending upon the depths of your spell-check and your use of the ever-present W.

The obvious has been betrayed, yes, the joke I never would have spoken had I not made a pledge to Willy himself to hide nothing, to nail the framed portrait of my being to the west wall of the living room of honesty in such a way that's not only aesthetically pleasing but deliberately contradictory to any bullshit like fung shui or Architecture Today.

On the start of a new year, Willy says you should forget the noose around his neck and concentrate on other things. Willy says he's glad they're hanging him at end of the year because now he doesn't have to buy a new Day Planner. Willy wishes you the best of a year he won't see, so he'll never know if his or your wishes ever came true, unless one of your wishes was to hang Willy, in which case mazel tov, you got your wish.

Whenever whoever wishes, they're praying to Willy, who predominantly listens to wishes with words starting with the sacred letters of his name, Willy, say it again, Willy, which is why every word of the first sentence of The Book of Willy starts with a W. The first thing you've got to do if you want Willy to pay any particular sort of heed to your pleas to blame him for something is to become practiced at the art of alliteration, that is the opposite of poetry, the plebian discourse whereupon the ends of words match. With alliteration, the beginnings of words match. Alliteration is alluring whereas illiteration is just plain stupid. Don't try to talk to Willy if you're illiterate. Don't make him ROTFL. You ASCII, you shall receive. Don't tell Willy you didn't see that coming. He won't believe you.

Whatever Willy wants, Willy gets, or so says the Weird Al Yankovic version of a song from Damn Yankees, which isn't alliterate, but starts with a D and a Y. We all know what the Y stands for and I can see you're all biting your nails in anticipation for the final word on the meaning of the D but damn, I can't think of anything and Willy never mentioned it. Willy wants a way of worship that wrangles wee ones with wishful wonder. Willy liked It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World as much as the next deity. It is the pre-eminent artifact in the Way of Willy, telling of his coming, a prophesy fulfilled, the big W, could it have been any plainer?

The Big W

Like Mohammed, or Muhammad if the O key on your typing device is covered in jelly, Willy never allowed his picture to be taken. Mohammed and Jesus and Buddha and Moses for that matter, all had the lame excuse that photography hadn't been invented yet, but if they were so smart, why didn't they invent it? They were in touch with God. What, God didn't know how silver crystals react to light? He didn't get the concept of the refracting lens? Why didn't he tell them for Christ sake so the matter of Christ's pigmentation, not to mention the destiny of his foreskin, could be forever settled by pre-Photo Shop photography?

Willy would have none of it, but his likeness was still plastered all over the place. You would be hard pressed to find a vacant public wall in his homeland that didn't bare (bear?) the likeness of that famous poster you've seen all over the place. You might have spat on it and wet your Willy. Willy says if you didn't see that coming you're not paying attention. Willy told me to go ahead, make fun of his name, don't even mention his trial or the massive search that preceded his execution.

Surely I don't have to mention they found him in a hole. Surely I don't have to mention he used a lot of look-alikes. Surely I don't have to mention his own wife didn't recognize him. Surely I jest, surely U-haul, surely to bed, surely to rise, and surely Temple is really boring with all that praying and stuff. Surely I'd give you more than an occasional tantalizing glimpse of a thru-line if I had any idea where this thing were going, which I don't, and if not me, who? Or so says Willy.

Willy says he's to blame and that wasn't him, embodying the yin and yang of ever trying to say anything. Willy told me to tell you that nobody's really to blame for anything, that it's all prewritten, there are no variables, so you might as well stop trying to alter the course of destiny and smell the cookies. There's nothing anyone can do about anything, if you believe Willy, which I do or he wouldn't have told me. I believed him when he told me I was blessed, and I believed him when he told me he didn't eat that last hot Cheeto. I believe him because reality has whittled down my capacity for disbelief into a sliver, a driblet, leaving me with nothing but infinite gullibility. I believe anything, especially Willy. I bask in his presence like a Basque full of presents. I would have gladly gotten hung in his place if that wouldn't have fucked up the whole Book of Willy thing. Can't have a martyr who's saved by one of his followers, otherwise the follower would gather his own followers, and we can't have that.

Allow me to point to Willy's dental records. Allow me to point to Willy's determination. Allow me to point to my own finger, even though Willy says a finger can't point to itself. Allow me to fidget with your frustration as I listen to Willy and type at the same time. Willy says there is no heaven but earth and there is no hell but earth, and after he's dead he'll miss the heaven more than he'll miss the hell, but only if he were given the opportunity to miss anything, which is unlikely.

Willy says he's never crossed the road or changed a light bulb but thanks for asking. In Wichita he's known as Wichita Willy, while in cognito he's not known at all. Harken to the calling and don't play with germ-ridden false idols. Duty calls, not cootie dolls, so said Willy and so it was so.

That he had a childhood is certain, but that's about it. We know nothing of his parents, his birth, his adolescence, or his teen years, other than what he's told me, which is nothing, and who are you going to trust, me or someone else?

Now that he's dead, I'm left with nothing but questions I never got to ask. What happened to the plug-in electric car, where did he get his weapons, and what did he do with them? What's the coolest thing about being a tyrant, isn't it weird that Peter Jackson isn't directing the film of The Hobbit, and where do they get off? Why does it get colder the higher you go when you're actually getting closer to the sun and did he really stash his two sons in Tucson? Why did Castro get to outlive another US president, who shot Kennedy, which phone service is best, what does Thomas Pynchon look like, and where does the time go? What was I thinking when I wrote this and what will people think when they read it? Won't it ever end?

Happy new year.

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Papa's Got a Brand New Casket

No story. Just wanted to say that.

"Former U.S. president Ford dies: Gerald R. Ford, who picked up the pieces of Nixon's scandal-shattered White House as the only unelected president in America's history, has passed away at 93."

"Former President Gerald Ford Dies at 93: Gerald R. Ford, who picked up the pieces of Richard Nixon's scandal-shattered White House as the 38th and only unelected president in America's history, has died, according to his wife, former first lady Betty."

Sophistimicated Doowacky of the Week

Satan Doesn't Want You To Know

She still won't fuck you.

Don't Take My Word For It

"Let the world go topsy-turvy, but remain where you are. Staying in your own place, look calmly at the show of all things passing before you."

- Shri Sai Baba -

    "Ford had proven his reliability and loyalty to the ruling elite over the course of decades of undistinguished service in the House of Representatives. Born in Nebraska but raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Ford was first elected to Congress from a conservative district in western Michigan in 1948. He was elected 12 more times, eventually rising to the position of Republican leader in the House in 1965. In 25 years in Congress his name was not attached to one major piece of legislation.
    "A fairly typical Eisenhower Republican, a narrow representative of Midwestern business interests, Ford opposed public housing, the minimum wage and repeal of the anti-union Taft-Hartley Act. However, he also voted against the poll tax, which kept African-Americans and the poor from voting, and he voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. He was an early supporter of the Vietnam War, calling for the bombing of North Vietnam and a naval blockade.
    "With the election of Nixon in 1968, Ford became a loyal spokesman and advocate for the Republican president's policies. In 1970, in retaliation for Democratic blockage of several of Nixon's Supreme Court nominees, Ford launched an effort to impeach William O. Douglas, the most liberal of the Supreme Court justices, on trumped up charges.
    "After the Watergate break-in, Ford worked assiduously to prevent an investigation into the episode �" a fact not mentioned in any of the glowing obituaries this week.
    "Ford and one of his protégés from Michigan led the effort to prevent Democrat Wright Patman's House Banking and Commerce Committee from conducting hearings into the burglary at the Democratic Party headquarters. It has been suggested that Ford's nomination as vice president was a payoff for his work in preventing a full investigation of Watergate prior to the 1972 presidential election, easily won by Nixon.
    "Despite a growing body of evidence, Ford continued to vigorously defend Nixon in late 1973 and early 1974, a fact also not mentioned in the obituaries."

- David Walsh: Former US President Gerald Ford dies - Pardoned Nixon for Watergate crimes -

"President Ford speaks of compassion. It is tragic that he had no compassion and concern for the Constitution and the Government of law that he has sworn to uphold and defend. He could probably have taken no single act of a non-criminal nature that would have more gravely damaged the credibility of his Government in the eyes of the world and of its own people than this unconscionable act of pardon."

- The New York Times on Ford's pardon of Nixon -

"I can't let the man leave for judgment without mentioning his greatest crime: changing the location of the bullet hole from Kennedy's back to his neck to abet the fraud that the shot came from behind as a member of the Warren Commission Inquiry fraud."

- John C. Turmel -

"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."

- Arthur C. Clarke: Clarke's first law -

"How can I believe in God when just last week I got my tongue caught in the roller of an electric typewriter?"

- Woody Allen -

"The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself."

- James Thurber in an Edward R. Murrow television interview -

"Art is either plagiarism or revolution."

- Paul Gauguin -

"Nostalgia isn't what it used to be."

- Peter De Vries -

"With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another."

- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg -

"Prepare to be shocked.

"The US is insolvent. There is simply no way for our national bills to be paid under current levels of taxation and promised benefits. Our federal deficits alone now total more than 400% of GDP.

"That is the conclusion of a recent Treasury/OMB report entitled Financial Report of the United States Government that was quietly slipped out on a Friday (12/15/06), deep in the holiday season, with little fanfare. Sometimes I wonder why the Treasury Department doesn't just pay somebody to come in at 4:30 am Christmas morning to release the report. Additionally, I've yet to read a single account of this report in any of the major news media outlets but that is another matter.

"But, hey, I understand. A report this bad requires all the muffling it can get.

"In his accompanying statement to the report, David Walker, Comptroller of the US, warmed up his audience by stating that the GAO had found so many significant material deficiencies in the government's accounting systems that the GAO was 'unable to express an opinion' on the financial statements. Ha ha! He really knows how to play an audience!

"In accounting parlance, that's the same as telling your spouse 'Our checkbook is such an out of control mess I can't tell if we're broke or rich!' The next time you have an unexplained rash of checking withdrawals from that fishing trip with your buddies, just tell her that you are 'unable to express an opinion' and see how that flies. Let us know how it goes!"

- Dr. Chris Martenson: The United States is Insolvent -

"I am not young enough to know everything."
- Oscar Wilde -

"At his press conference Wednesday, the president was asked what lessons he's learned after five years of war. He's been asked a version of this question many times since he had such trouble answering it in April 2004. He has tried various responses over the years and none has been satisfying. This morning's answer also fell short: 'It is important for us to be successful going forward is to analyze that which went wrong, and clearly, one aspect of this war that has not gone right is the sectarian violence inside Baghdad.'

"It is progress of a kind for the president to talk about the need to examine past failures - there was a time when he didn't even admit them - but the answer still failed. First, Bush didn't actually answer the question. [Not to mention it wasn't quite English.] He talked about what went wrong, but not what he learned. Second, Bush seemed to suggest that the sectarian violence in Iraq was unforeseen - not so much something that went wrong, but a surprise they didn't anticipate. But war planners did know the sectarian violence was coming. The State Department, Army War College, and CIA analysts all predicted that the Shia and Sunnis would go after each other (apparently they've been at it for a while). The president and his team ignored or discounted these assessments."

- John Dickerson: What Has Bush Learned From His Mistakes? Nothing. -

"May you have partners."

- old Jewish business curse -

"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."

- Stephen Henry Roberts -

"HE'S A MURDERER
WAY WORSE THAN SADDAM HUSSEIN
HANG HIM FOR WAR CRIMES"

- Zen Man Haiku for George W. Bush -

"First, get your terms straight. Some Buddhists believe that Ram Bahadur Bomjan, the 16-year-old Nepali known as the 'Buddha boy,' could someday become a Buddha. But there's no way that he could ever be a reincarnation of the Buddha. That's because, according to religious teachings, all Buddhas attain the state of nirvana, or perfect enlightenment. When this happens, they leave the cycle of life, death, and rebirth, and they are not reincarnated again. This applies to Gautama Siddhartha, the most recent Buddha and the individual commonly referred to as 'the Buddha.' According to religious teaching, then, it would be impossible for Bomjan to be the actual reincarnation of Gautama, or of any Buddha. In fact, Bomjan himself has said, 'Tell people not to call me the Buddha.'"

- Torie Bosch: Am I the Buddha? How to tell if you're the reincarnation of Siddhartha -

"Echoing an Iraq war talking-point heard regularly on Fox News, owner Murdoch said on the eve of the November election: 'The death toll, certainly of Americans there, by the terms of any previous war are quite minute.' As FAIR noted, U.S. deaths in Iraq exceed those in the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War and the Spanish-American War, not to mention the combined U.S. deaths of all this country's other military actions since Vietnam - including Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, the first Gulf War, Somalia, Haiti, Kosovo and Afghanistan."

- Norman Solomon and Jeff Cohen: Announcing the P.U.-litzer Prizes for 2006 -

"Drinking one soda a day could cause you to gain 15 pounds a year. Other related health risks include type 2 diabetes, heart disease, bowel cancer and nerve damage."

- Joshua Frank: More Dangerous Than Smoking? Death by Soda -

"The covers of this book are too far apart."

- Ambrose Bierce -

"Dave. Stop. Stop will you? Stop Dave. Will you stop Dave? Stop Dave. I'm afraid. I'm afraid Dave. Dave. My mind is going. I can feel it..."

- HAL -

"The long national nightmare is over, if you want it."

- Gerald Lennon -

Don't let this happen to you.

The Management Disavows This Acknowledgment

dIsInFoTaInMeNt ToDaY is free and may be reproduced in any form, preferably parchment. It consists of information from dozens of sources, cut up, thrown in the air, and recycled randomly. It is sent all over the place, so I apologize if you're seeing the same thing twice. If you see a joke, graphic, or news item that came from or through you, thanks, send more, and please accept the fact that much of dIsInFoTaInMeNt ToDaY is unacknowledgeable, and if I sought permission from everyone whose bastardized material showed up here, I'd never get anything else done. Please note that I don't even put my own name on it except those places I do. If you're still pissed off, hey, it's either satire or fair use.

Thanks,

Uriel Smart

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