All the World's in the Round

Four score and four hundred six days ago, I recognized for post-erity my wannabe recognition of conspicuously coincidental traffic patterns, in which I compared one particular day's trip to-and-fro - a trip that on any other given day might transpire so spinningly as to resemble a meta-conscious journey on a bliss-bicycle, or so arduously as to rattle my brain into tiny beads of blood, sweat, and tears - to navigating the asteroid belt along a voyage from Jupiter to Mars.

The real trip, though, includes each day's adventure, with the stretch from my hometown near Jupiter to my workplace on Earth representational of the aggregate daily commute. It's just that on September 29th 2011, I found myself dodging a meteoric rise in the number of bicyclers addling the streets & paths, who seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, because unlike the interplanetary passage, you can't see the cluster as clearly in advance.

Six days ago I experienced a morning circuit - or one unique and particularly necessary segment of it - that played out on the opposite end of the circular stage to that of 486 days ago. Firstly, there were no other cyclists to speak of, which in itself is not so unusual, but part of a remarkable hole.

The thing that makes this segment necessary is the inescapability of the route as much as the required transit between two points, though the required transit is the result of my having scheduled appointments such that the route is inescapable. I normally try to allow myself more time; once a week I put myself through changes. Changes perceptible, but not a moment before they confront me.

On a bad day, it might take me as long as public transit's round trip of the same; under typical circumstances I get from A to B ten minutes before the train could.

But last Tuesday morning everything was as if it had already began to unfold when it saw me coming from far afield, as if it had to get out of the way before I saw it first, as if there were a penalty for making me break my stride even mentally. So, unlike lucky occasions past, I witnessed no parting of the seas of obstruction, observed no fortuitous flow of traffic. It was simply a void. Space devoid of atmospheric intrusions.

I looked around and found a world that belonged to me alone. And it's a good thing, too, because I'd quite coincidently been running rather late at the time, though not a coincidence on my part, because I was conscious of my delay as I was doing the delaying. Still, you can't chalk up the thereafter placement of traffic to my having meandered many minutes too long. It was just freak chance in accordance with my need for a little luck.

In the midst of that nothingness, I thought of the asteroid belt and how far away it was from my center of gravity, and, in the midst of that thought, I worried that this might be too much of a good thing, not that it was bloating me then, but would cost me one day when I could least afford it. Fortune would have it that the thought was fleeting. Nevertheless.

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LAM-ELISA stands for lipoarabinomannan (LAM), a molecule secreted by a mycrobacterium known to cause tuberculosis and, as such, a diagnostic for the presence of the same, with Enzyme-Linked Immuno-Sorbent Assay (ELISA) being the biochemical technique used in its application.

But if you were to do a web-search for the term LAM-ELISA, you'd find out a few other things. La Melisa is a restaurant in Denmark, for instance - the culprit in this conspiracy being a script written by the Romans, which is all Greek to me.

Anyway (that is, wholly unrelated), there's been an outbreak of TB in LA. As reported in the town's Times, the city's skid row (apparently unworthy of capitalization) is the link in the majority of cases.

Anyway (that is, onto something entirely different & disturbing), 6 blocks removed from Skid Row Central (sec. Google Maps), is the Cecil Hotel on Main Street. It was in the water tank on the roof of the hotel that an employee, who was investigating a problem with the water pressure, found a 21-year-old Canadian woman who had gone missing from the same hotel almost three weeks earlier. Her name? Elisa Lam.

Now that is some pretty crazy shit, like, a concentrated coincidence.

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CREEPINESS ALERT: FIVE PARAGRAPH'S WORTH
To state the obvious first: a decomposing body in a rooftop cistern did not cause an outbreak of TB around the corner; though the stories broke within a day of each other, the tuberculosis fatalities in this latest wave date back to 2007, when Elisa Lam would have been a teenager living a couple thousand kilometers up the west coast.

And rendering the denominators less common is the fact that the LAM-ELISA is used to detect TB in advanced cases of HIV infection, for which it is difficult to determine diagnosis. This applies to less than 20 percent of the cases according to city health officials.

Or does that make the coincidence eighty percentage points more remarkable? Like, remarkable in the way that, on a day just over nineteen months ago, there was a cyclist in front of me at every traffic light I got caught by. That never happens, and now only once.

The Cecil Hotel, by the way, was home for several months to The Night Stalker (Ramirez, not McGavin), a guy who is said to have developed his blood-lust from his US Army vet cousin who'd showed him Polaroids he took of a rape and beheading he had carried out while in the Special Forces in Viet Nam.

You may know the Special Forces as home to the kind of people who win hearts & minds, if not by securing their figurative freedom from tyranny, by literally removing them from their hosts. Who knows how many of these kinds of heroes occupy the flophouses and skid rows of the American West and elsewhere, let alone successfully instill in their prepubescent kin an acute appreciation for the awesomeness of gruesome cruelty. My guess is not many. Or a shit load. Like I said, who knows?

END CREEPY "GROSS-OUT" - BEGIN CREEPY "CREEP-OUT"
When Elisa Lam was still a missing person, the Cecil Hotel elevator surveillance video was released in hopes of finding someone who might have known her whereabouts. It contains a couple of minutes of her on what may have been the last night of her life. I recommend it only for the incorrigibly curious.

I read a discussion about it on a forum frequented by amateur sleuths, the gist of which revolved around the nature of her perceived unusual behavior: psychotic, medicated; self-induced or drugged; was someone else outside the elevator; was she playing around and having fun, or just plain scared?

Which came first, LAM or Elisa?
Like I said, I really believe this to be an extraordinary - or, rather, as I'm trying to understand it, a concentrated coincidence. As fascinating as I find Carl Jung, there is something about his synchronicity that I cannot get my head around.

So I think of clusters of objects in space as a metaphor for a concentration of coinciding similarities in an attempt to grasp why like-occurrences suddenly & inexplicably happen in clusters, or, as Jung would have it, result based upon their meaning rather than their cause. And I am no further along to grasping it than something that occurred to me at least fifteen years ago: Their seeming vastness notwithstanding, the possibilities are so limited that it couldn't be any other way - even if only this once.

Or every single time.

To wit: the simplest & most concentrated coincidence I can think of is the fact that one plus one adds up to two. Every time I've checked, this has been the case. Still, it's only a matter of time, even if we won't live to see it...

And what of the LAM-ELISA >> TB >> skid row >> Elisa Lam ride into the universe? How can one calculate such chances? Sure, there are only twenty-six letters in the Latin alphabet. But there're so many numbers - as many as the allotment of any given unit of chronology.

Yet always so little time.

How long before I have to return the cosmic favor of last Tuesday? How long 'til the next time I have another one of those too much of a bad thing days? How long before last Tuesday's report in Los Angeles happens again upon another archaeological site, to another anthropological entity, the letters of whose name are arranged the same as a precisely chosen acronym for a pathogen infecting the area of the dig?


FOR INCORRIGIBLY CURIOUS CATS ONLY, and with that in mind...



That, I reckon, is what it means to have seen a ghost.

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.. . .or just maybe what inspires this atheist to say,


Rest in Peace, Elisa Lam.. . .

Manning up & Milking: a phantom sheeple tailing their chase

Merkel in Ankara will today reiterate solidarity with the Turks as ongoing Atlantis Northerly partner in blowing shit up - her having recently recapitulated that the Russians remove their diplomatic obstacle to removing the president of Syria because he's blowing shit up (a reminder that NATO is blowing up the badder terrorists while al-Assad is blowing up the momentarily gooder ones).

While, for his part, the German foreign minister mirror'd a GEuRo colleague's recent prediction that France & Germany would come crawling on their knees to Turkey (albeit not until the coming decade) by warning that if the EU isn't careful regarding the question of their membership, the hour may indeed come when Europe is more interested in Turkey than Turkey in Europe (still, "the question" is not for today, but for "the end of the process").

You can probably gazette your mirror to it.


Tree questions:

1) ¿quién es más macho?

(Anghella Mehrquell o Gido Besterbella)

2) What percentage of turkey is glue?
3) Aren't processes awesome?

The Week or so That Was would have you believe that a disinterested public is suddenly interested because of a little leaked white paper.

What a perfect opportunity for you to sublimate the Chief Reminder that there is one, briefly wonder why O WHY!!!11!!! his office would fan Republican rage, then spend the next several days raging about Republicans.

Quiz: What was that a reminder of?


Are drones a distraction from the fact that no matter the method, the military is a mode of militancy, thereby producing an additional theoretically ethical layer, further shielding the protested from the protester?

-or-

Should they be a warning that with each technological lurch towards more efficiently homicidal automation, we're less cognizant of our inhumanity while we relinquish our rights to rites of the progressively inhumane?

Why both, it's both, it's always both!

And though the rights are theoretical & selectively denied, the rites are rather real & ruthlessly applied.

Representatives stand to demand oversight - because, y'know, an additional closet of jurists to mirror the other smoky star chamber would make it all legal-like.

Just as each step towards integration stacks another level of limestone upon the integrated - so too do we suppress our disbelief in one last final instance.

Don't believe all you believe (and less of what you read).

Only some of the press fib outright, while some unwittingly reprint lies, and others do-goodingly carry water for their respective courters (and/or those they believe are doing gooder than the badder would if they could), while all & none uncover the unvarnished truth - to some.

Guardians be gatekeepers, esquires equestrian, but the mirror doesn't lie (or so it thinks and/or would have you believe).

Look at these Filipinos provoking the free world with the brandishing of Tiki torches. Can't they just sign an on-line petition?


Unfortunately for the protesters, the cardboard replicas of unmanned aircraft are no match for the real thing, so they returned home, having killed no-one.

Der Parkbank Pinkler Kapitel II: der vierte Fall

Hast du schon mal 'nen Hunddog geseh'n
Lächeln beim Laufen, pinkeln im Steh'n?

II.

Die jüngste Leiche lag schon locker im Sack, der Reißverschluß noch nicht zu, als Erste Hauptkommissarin Katrin Elsner am Tatort ankam, um die Umgebung weiter nachzuforschen. Nicht, daß die Berliner Kriminalpolizei zu Schlamperei neigte, was die nötigen alltäglichen Ermittlungen angeht, aber vier solche ähnliche Fälle innerhalb von nicht viel mehr Wochen, im genausovielmal Kilometerumkreis davon, macht nur eines aus:

Serienmord.

Ein Fall für mich, dachte die Hauptkommissarin ernsthaft. Und ehrlich überlegt neigen die Berliner Kripo doch zu Schlamperei, egal was es angeht. Gerade jetzt zu Entsetzen der Hauptkommissarin verweilten eine unnötige Menge von Uniformierten da am Tatort.

Die Streifenbullen dürfen sich ruhig mit dem heutigen Großaufgebot um die Ecke treffen, dachte sie ernst und ironisch zugleich. Die sich dort zu befinden zig Hundertschaften könnte bestimmt ein noch größeren Überlauf von Überaffen gut gebrauchen, wenn sie des unlängst ersteigerten Hauses die Zwangsräumung durchsetzen.

Auf gerade dem Grund und im obszönen Übermaß schwebte ein Hubschrauber in der Luft. Allerdings noch bemannt. Wenn eine pleite Stadt wie Berlin im Auftrag von so-klein eines Kleininvestors doch soviel Kraft einsetzt, um eine wehrlose Familie vor die Tür zu setzen, könnte eine Drohnekampagne gegen Hausbesetzer weit dahinterfolgen? - dachte sie, Spaß beiseite. Ein Fall zum Kotzen, dachte sie noch gleich dazu.


 >>Tag, Frau Hauptkommissarin<<, wurde ihre Gedanken von der Kollegin, Kriminalmeisterin Elke Lamprecht, unterbrochen.

 >>Frau Kriminalmeisterin<<, nickte sie ihr zu.

 >>Um es vorwegzunehmen, der Tatbestand von diesem hier ist gleich wie von denen da vorher, bis ins Detail<<, berichtete KM Lamprecht.

 >>Und was ist mit den Grünern hier?<<, erwiderte HK Elsner, auf die rumstehenden Beamten hinweisend. >>Sind sie auf Streife oder wollen sie gleich einen Freudentanz vorführen?<<

Manchmal versteht sich KM Elke Lamprecht mit ihrer Chefin ziemlich gut, manchmal nicht ganz. Langjährig schon hat sie von ihr gelernt, hat ihr nachgeeifert. In diesem Moment beschwor sie den Geist der Hauptkommissarin herauf, oder ihren aktuellen Ärger nur, oder projizierte sie jetzt nur ihre eigene auf sie.  So oder so oder so, irritiert, forderte die Kriminalmeisterin einen Kripobeamter auf: >>Wir möchten nur Sie, Ihrer Chef und den Rechtsmediziner! Alle anderen putzen die Platte!<<

Die Gruppe löste allmählich aber relativ gezielt auf, und KM Lamprecht kehrte sich der Hauptkommissarin wieder zu. >>Also, wie gesagt, genau wie das letzte Mal--<<

 >>Und die zweimal davor.<<

 >>Uuund die zweimal davor: mehrere Prellungen, hauptsächlich am Kopf und abwehrenden Glieder - also Armen, Händen, Fingern. Dieser hat aber offenbar eine stärkere Verteidigung leisten können<<, räumte KM Lamprecht unangenehm ein.

HK Elsner wandte ihre Aufmerksamkeit nachdenklich der nahegelegenen Parkbank zu: >>Sterbelager?<<

 >>Jo. Wie gehabt.<<

 >>Und der Fleck, wie gehabt?<<, fragte die Hauptkommissarin ihre Assistentin.

 >>Urin<<, antwortete sie ihr und fügte hinzu: >>Ich hab ein Bißchen darüber nachgedacht. Ich glaube, für den Landstreicher wird es vielleicht nicht allzu ungewöhnlich, sich in die Hose zu machen.<<

Daher schnitt die Hauptkommissarin so eine Grimasse, daß die Untergeordnete wußte nicht richtig, ob ihre Chefin verwirrt, amüsiert, oder skeptisch sein soll. Um ihre eigene Verlegenheit abzuwenden, erklärte sie vorschnell und auch gleich verwirrt, stufenweise amüsiert und schließlich zusehends skeptisch:

 >>Also, ich meine, ein Vagabund, also Obdachloser, fällt es natürlich schwer, ähm, normalen Zugang zu bekommen... also bekommen sie eher eine Zugangsbeschränkung, beziehungsweise diverse Hausverbote, worin sich die öffentliche WC befinden, und... also ohne normalen - das heißt, was wir als normal bezeichnen würden -, ähm, Körperhygiene, daß sie nicht duschen können oder so, erhalten sie denn ganz bestimmt kein Zugang... also wird es denn außer Frage, wird doch zum Teufelskreis eben, so-daß sie nicht sooft gleich auf Wunsch ihre Notdurft verrichten... ähm, dürfen.<<

>>Na klar machen sie sich regelmäßig in die Hose!<<, kam die neckende Antwort von der Chefin.

>>Gut, daß wir uns so gut kennen<<, konterte Kripomeisterin Lamprecht regelrecht aufgereizt. >>Nun gut. Wie gehabt<<, fuhr sie wieder fort: >>Unser arme Pinkler hat sich auf der Parkbank in die Hose gemacht. Vielleicht während der schrecklichen Tat, oder als allerletzte Befreiung, im Sterben liegend.<<

Erste Hauptkommissarin Elsner hatte für eine kurze Weile ihre strebsame Kollegin anscheinend ausdruckslos angestarrt, bevor eine anschließende Bemerkung folgte, und die angestarrte KM Lamprecht wußte genau was dieser Spalt, diese Lücke - naja, man sollte es doch lieber eine Diskrepanz nennen -, und was diese Diskrepanz zu bedeuten hat und zwar, was die Kripomeisterin sofort an den Stillblick erkannte, daß die Hauptkommissarin gerade etwas herausbekommen hat, was die Juniorinspekorin hätte nie herausbekommen können. In diesem Sinne wüßte KM Lamprecht so gut wie nichts. Allein wußte sie, daß sie gleich mitbekommen würde, was sie nicht wußte:

Was sie nicht herausbekommen hat. Wie immer.

Angestarrt würde sie nur solang bis es dauerte, sich diese hektischen reumütigen Gedanken durch den Kopf gehen zu lassen und keine Sekunde mehr. Also keine Zeit, um nur den letzten Dialog nochmal durchzugehen, in der Hoffnung damit, die geringste Hinweise davon mitzubekommen, was die Hauptkommissarin zu verkünden hat. Und mit der Zeit so knapp, und jene Gedanken schon im Gange, gibt es ab nun ganz gewiss keine Chance für die Kripomeisterin, irgendwas herauszubekommen, bevor es jetzt gleich verkündet wird.

Und dies alles hat sie gerade gedacht. Panik läßt den normalen Intelligenzgrad im Verborgenen brühen.

Und dann - ZACK! Seufz - mit der Genauigkeit eines Uhrwerks verkündete die Hauptkommissarin: >>Naja. Ich hab selbst ein Bißchen darüber nachgedacht und ich glaube, daß unser Pinkler auf DIE Parkbank uriniert hat.<<

Damit kam Kripomeisterin Lamprecht nicht umhin zu bemerken, daß das Spiel erstmal weiter geht. Sie bekam wohl einen ganz deutlichen Wink, erkannte aber keine Lösung des Rätsels, geschweige denn die detektivische Offenbarung sie erwartet hatte.

Selber einem leeren Starrblick gegenüberstehend kam nun ihrerseits Erste Hauptkommissarin Elsner nicht umhin zu bemerken, daß ihr Gegenüber mit ihrem Latein am Ende war. Schade, dachte sie und sagte: >>Liebe Kriminalmeisterin Lamprecht. Es handelt sich hier um den vierten Fall!<<

Daraufhin konnte die Hauptkommissarin ein heftiges Lachen nicht unterdrücken, auch wenn ihr sogleich wegen desselben ein schlechtes Gewissen gemacht wurde.

>>Ich versteh Sie ganz und gar nicht!<<, protestierte die Kripomeisterin, und: >>Was hat das eine mit dem anderen zu tun? Ja, heute ist der vierte Fall, und alle viermal hat der Opfer--<<

>>Nein!<<, fiel ihr HK Elsner ins Wort. >>Der Opfer hat den Fleck nicht verursacht. Sehen Sie ihn bitte genau an. Merken Sie bitte die Größe der Fläche und den Umriß der Form. Die anderen waren genauso groß, sogar größer. Meinen Sie wirklich, daß sich dieser Opfer soviel in die Hose uriniert hat, daß es hinaus bis da - und schauen Sie bitte darunter - bis dahin ausbreitete, ohne daß der Schritt der Hose vergleichbar besudelt worden ist?<<

Die Kripomeisterin brauchte die Flecken nicht anzusehen, ihr Unvollkommenheit in der Sache war ihr nun doch klar. Und es war ihr höchst peinlich, nicht nur weil sie dieses Detail übersehen hat, sondern zumal deswegen, daß, als sie gegenwärtig trotzdem die nicht zusammenpassenden Flecken ansah, als wäre sie diese beachten, sie sich den Kopf zerbrach, um den Zusammenhang mit der Tatsache herauszubekommen, daß dieser der vierte Fall ist. Also was hat die Hauptkommissarin nur gesagt? Daß der Pinkler auf die, also die betont, Parkbank gemach-- >>Ach ja, es heißt Akkusativ der vierte Fall! Und der Mörder muß der Pinkler sein!<<

  >>Vermutlich, meine kluge Kripomeisterin. Super abgeleitet! Aber laß uns nicht vorschnell handeln. Und sei ein Kalauer eins zuviel, bitte ich um Verständnis.<<

__

Was wir bisher nur noch wissen?
Im stehen Parkbank Pinkler pissen.

____

Kapitel I << -- >> Kapitel III

We all drink from a yellow cake canteen

The lawman seeks the most likely suspect. Unless... unless the most likely suspect - the one with the motive & opportunity & wherewith-whatnot - is indispensable to the lawman, like the lawman's bosses' benefactor and various parties between those apostrophes and, of course, the lawman his own self.

Sure, there are plenty of peddlers within the executive infrastructure of influence who end up scandalizing this notion - getting busted & paraded around to disprove that power is above the law. These are the alleged makers & breakers who find themselves having to sit out the game for a while or, for the less fortunate, in want of an answer to their one phone-call or, more pathetically, sitting on deathrow awaiting one or, the most tragic turn, dead in the dirt at the scene of the last loose-end about which no-one really gives a great goddamn, at least not enough that you'd think somebody felt the need to whack 'em for it. But maybe if you really knew what they'd gotten whacked for, you'd know why they'd gotten whacked. Also, there are sports that involve whacking.

So there's a proportional relationship in there somewhere, regarding who is and who isn't above the law; I'm not sure if it's inverse or direct, but imagine it's both an and/or & either-or kind of theorem involving the complexity of a self-regulating system. But what are the factors? "Indispensable" is so subjectively relative that there must be some subordinate coordinates to help make better sense of the real rules of what it takes to be best-connected.

The mob rules - by which everybody has so much filth on everybody else that one finger dare-not finger the other finger - are fine for the mob, but how do they so effectively keep the non-due-paying members from forming a mob of their own and storming the spaghetti restaurant? Or, more importantly, how do they keep everyone playing along?

Complacency? Indifference? Fear?

Maybe a little reverse-engine-theoring is in order: Who are the people who get away with the most of the most capital of all capital crimes, the crime of murder? To answer this question, you have to know about the murder, obviously, and to know the identity of the killer. As sheer numbers go, "military personnel" comes to mind, but they derive their authority from more than just a gun. While we're all responsible for our own actions, time & again we encounter the proposition that the people with the most blood on their hands are the ones calling the shots without ever having to pull a single trigger.

With apologies to the legacy of the Nuremberg Trials, there is for me no more notorious an example of striving to hold accountable those who call the shots on the one hand, and exclusively those who pull the trigger on the other, than Vincent Bugliosi with his successful prosecution of Charles Manson as puppet master, and his authorial allegation of Lee Harvey Oswald as independent assassin, respectively.

Vinnie Boogs, Esq. has brought out almost as many books as he has indictments, where here he also indites that George the Younger should face tens of thousands of counts of murder for misleading the poor innocent US Congress into authorizing war.

Warning: four-paragraph parenthetical!
(If only Manson had used the I was tricked defense: "The lyrics to Helter Skelter are misleading! Censure the Fab Four! You can't bury Paul, man. He's already dead."

That'd be silly, of course, when you listen to the actual lyrics of the song and not just use the generally threatening tone of Helter Skelter to justify itself while leaving in-depth analysis to those who either refused to go along with the crime, or stayed back at the ranch with Charley smoking weed because they knew there were enough to cover for 'em.

Of course, covering for them involved the outgoing & incoming secretaries of state going along with the rest - out to Sharon Tate's house where Senator Clinton held her down while Senator Kerry stabbed her 16 times as she begged for mercy for herself and her unborn child. I know what you're thinking: You thought Hillary did the stabbing.

But, ya see, they were lied to! If only they had listened to Tipper Gore and had that little sticker put on the cover of the intelligence report: Warning: Contains the case for killing people!)

Back to Bugliosi's book
Furthermore, the page-turner penning prosecutor purports premeditation based on a Memo from another Manning - not the whistleblowing pawn of American princes, but a triangulating knight of the British crown.

Conclusion? Covering a prime minister's ass increases the likelihood of landing a royal title, whereas uncovering your state's misdeeds will likely be your ass (I really put that a lot more mildly than I might've).

Interestingly, the Manning Memo includes a nugget about Beta Bush's suggestion that they provoke a pretense for an attack, to preempt the preemptive pretension of it all (the preemptive-ness itself being just another pretense anyway). Hey, at least he tried to go the traditional route of phony-flagging it first.

So who's beat the rap so far? George W.? George the Prince Regent? Sirs George Harrison and George Martin? Some other George?

Warning: not just another Beatles related digression
Is it utter anti-irony that The Catcher in the Rye snagged as separate traveling companions two May 1955-born Texomans who exactly 16 weeks-to-the-Monday apart from each-other put a bullet in the left lung of their respective targets, the second incident of which - even had it been mere copycattery - had the luck o' the limousine & the bullet's resulting ricochet on its side? I wonder, had Lennon had President Reagan's luck and not taken a direct hit (been more of a Teflon John, if you will) whether he might have finagled his way into a live duet of "Police on my Back" with Mick Jones or "Washington Bullets" with Joe Strummer. The Clash's triple fantasy album Sandinista! came out four days after the night he signed his last rights on the cover of Double Fantasy. Considering the twisted twist of fate of that album, maybe he and Strummer are singing "Career Opportunities" on a sidewalk somewhere in an imaginary heaven.

So who hasn't beat the rap so far? John Hinckley Jr. Mark David Chapman. Lee Harvey Oswald. Osama Bin La-- hey! How'd he get in there? Okay, I threw him in because of his three names, and that, like Oswald, he never stood trial, and because of his status as "the Manson of the group" (capable of sending others to slaughter), but mostly because of what he & Hinckley have held in common: Interfamilial Bushwhacking.

Soylent Yellow is Sheeple!
You know what they say about children who get away with shit: they keep on and on and on. What are adults except children of greater experience? Let's say, for example, that you're a bigshot international trade merchant with longtime familial connections to the court of your kingdom, but you don't like the way the current king meddles in your business, so you and a few other members of the court conspire to murder the king, which is, admittedly, an incredibly bold move. But it's also really simple because the masses hold two disparate beliefs simultaneously: 1) Everyone desperately wants to believe that no-one could do such a thing. 2) They're pretty sure this kind of shit has always gone on.

You don't get torched by an angry mob or spend the rest of your life in the citadel dungeon because nobody cares enough to question the cover stories of the royal court, who were, after all, confidants to the king, now freshly cremated. The loud skeptics' convoluted complaints are met by a kingdom who, correspondent to 2, are weary, and 1, maintain that such a secret could in no way be maintained, but don't take seriously anyone who tries to reveal it, and remain happily unaware of the clusters of those not lucky enough not to die in a car crash or fall from the 20th floor of a nut-house. The luckier losers are tossed into a pool where they figuratively drown with the roundly ridiculed and outright ignored. Certainly a lot of people in that pool are worthy of ridicule or best ignored, but who can tell the difference, adults always lie, and isn't it nap-time?

So wouldn't it only be a matter of time before you tried to off another king? Hell, he doesn't even have to be meddling in your business, it might be that you just think that he might some day, or that you heard that he was thinking about it from somebody else with mutual motive & opportunity & wherewith-whatnot. Maybe now you're nearer the throne. Wouldn't you love to be king? And this time all you gotta do is say, "Just get it done, I don't wanna hear about it."

Now, naturally the Hinckley's being big Bush boosters is a coincidence, or, rather, it's a coincidence that a renegade Hinckley would try to shoot Apple Pie's most be-hallowed Gipper. Even if VP Bush had eyes on the throne, the last thing he would do is use one of his prized political patron's creepy kids to make the hit. Ah, but that's the beauty of having the freedom to brazenly shoot whoever you want in the face; the more obvious it is that you did it, the less willing your kingdom's to admit it.

So we have an inverse proportional relationship here, and an oddly beautiful self-regulating one at that. Not that it didn't take time & effort to set things in motion, before which the same relationship might have tended direct or something. I dunno. I wasn't around for the big bang of deep politics.

But I remember nine-eleven. So does this guy, Philip Marshall, who last year wrote this book, which qualifies him as a Truther, which means he's in the pool with the ridiculed & ignored, or was until last week, when he cleanly executed his two kids & dog and, you guessed it, offed himself.

I never read the book, oddly enough, it's not really my genre of preference. It apparently goes heavy on the Saudi angle, which is indeed, the most incontrovertible aspect of any of the theories. I know there are a lot of people peddling crap out there and have no idea whether this guy was or not & if he was, for what reason. If you don't believe him, then you wouldn't believe his story that he was one of the pilots who flew missions in and out of Nicaragua and Mena. You know, Contras, guns, drugs.

The local newspaper quotes some seemingly randomly-chosen & ostensibly e-queried professor at the University of Pennsylvania, who writes that a "quick read (of news clips) and my experience suggests he might have been in a downward spiral of mental illness,” and cites other studies which profile Marshall as one who'd commit familial multi-cide: a White gun-owner who slapped his sister-in-law four years ago and is undergoing a divorce after a freaky separation period with tales of pain-medication intrigue, which may or may not have also involved child-custody issues. Hell, sounds like a typical cop or, indeed, a spook from Langley as well as a guy who would make up being one; frankly, there's a fine line between the personality of spies and pretend spies. Either way, it also sounds like the profile of a guy who knew he wasn't above the law.

The article's takeaway, however, was this comment from its author: "Whether the full details of the crime are ever revealed or not, those who sympathize with Marshall’s theories about a malicious covert government will likely never be satisfied."

Add to their obstinacy the countervailing certainty that, covert government or not, they could never succeed at such maliciousness, and you got a kingdom worth fighting for. Apparently. All that and public tv.