Me and the Devil Blues

Listen to the Arch Appeaser #2 

Good evening. My name is Elisabeth Rehn. I bear no family ties to Olli. How I wish people stopped asking me that. How I wish that some day we were remembered for what we were, not for our namesakes in the European Underworld. 

Breathe. Smile. Okay. 

My job, dare I say my calling, is to bring peace into your lives, into the lives of people everywhere, regardless of their race, their sexuality, the sexuality of race. The smoothness of their skin, or the the lack of thereof.

However, there are other forces at work in the world. More and more so, I'm afraid, with every passing day. There are those who think that a display of force is a solution to every problem. They worship strength, violence, brutality. They worship the Devil, whether they admit it or not. Say... ton. Get behind me! Stay! I didn't call for you. I'm just trying to educate these good people.

Tonight is a special night, a live episode of my TV talk show, The High Hat, generously sponsored by Rotenberg & Son. And we're going to dedicate tonight's episode entirely to the Old Nick and his followers. They come in many guises, you'll be surprised. So. It's time we welcomed our first guest: a long-haired boy with an unhealthy-looking gunshot wound to his head. Good evening. Who are you?

I'm Dead.

I can see that. What's your name?

Dead.

That's not very nice. What's your real name, the Christian name you were given by your parents? He won't answer. Wipe that smirk off of your face and speak! This is a talk show, you know. Why did you agree to appear, if you aren't going to say anything?

I wanted to take a peek.

A peek. At what, exactly?

This... whole... thing.

Well, now you've seen it. Be gone then, back to your Master!

Music, please. "Satan is Real" by The Louvin Brothers, if you you have it nearby. 

What a waste... that smoke, it gets to you... and mirrors, where are they? Tucked away, hidden, of course. Let's move on, shall we? Our next guest is a respectable, educated gentleman, another fellow with his head blown off. Who shot you, sir?

I did.

May I ask why?

I did it in a holy place, in Notre Dame de Paris, in front of hundreds of people... Why? To wake you up.

Me? I'm fully awake, thank you.

That's what you think.

 I do. And what is your connection to the Black Metal scene?

What? There is none.

No scene, you mean.

I wish. I want nothing to do with those people. I’m a traditionalist.

That’s nice. What does it mean?

Varg Vikernes is a traditionalist.

He is?

A tad over the top, perhaps, but basically, I respect his views. Then again, if you're going to discuss these other Norwegians, those pussies, I'm out of here. Them fuckers wouldn't recognize the Devil if he kicked them in the balls. Which they don't possess, apparently.

No foul language at my show! Go to Hell! Now, after a message from our sponsor, we'll be back with a clip from the upcoming blockbuster movie, which was produced by the video chain store, I believe. The movie is called Lords of Chaos, after the book. The names of the characters have been changed in order protect the guilty. Enjoy.

INT. RECORD STORE TAMBURLAINE - DAY.

ANEURYSM is on the phone, talking to ANVIL.

ANVIL

So. What’s up?

ANEURYSM

Same old shit. How’s your Mom?

ANVIL

The same. B and B. I was just leaving.

ANEURYSM

Where?

ANVIL

Whaddaya think?

ANEURYSM

No.

ANVIL

What?

ANEURYSM

You can’t go there.

ANVIL

I ask your permission now? Can I go home?

ANEURYSM

Cops all over the place.

ANVIL

How…?

ANEURYSM

Ghost has gone home.

ANVIL

He’s what? To Sweden?

ANEURYSM

No. He blew his brains out.

ANVIL

Oh.

ANEURYSM

With my shotgun.

ANVIL

Shit.

ANEURYSM

Man, you should have been there. There was blood everywhere, his brains all over the room.

ANVIL

You were there?

ANEURYSM

I went in, through his window. He couldn’t answer the door in that condition.

ANVIL

Yeah. Would have been hard, I imagine.

ANEURYSM

I took pictures.

ANVIL

You did? Cool. When can I see them?

ANEURYSM

Listen, we shouldn’t talk about this now. Like this, I mean. You understand?

ANVIL

Yeah. Little birds and shit.

ANEURYSM

See you at the store, when you get back.

ANVIL

All right.

ANEURYSM

V is coming to town. He was so excited, said he’d steal a car if he couldn’t borrow one, and drive down right away.

ANVIL

Awesome.

ANEURYSM

I've never heard the bastard so delighted over anything before.  Sick fuck!

They laugh for a second.

ANEURYSM [contin’d]

This is big, you know. We can use this. But first, let’s celebrate.

ANVIL

I hear you.

ANEURYSM

Toast the ghost who’s a ghost for real now.

ANVIL

Okay. See you in a bit.

ANEURYSM

See you.

ANVIL  Bye. 

ANEURYSM and ANVIL hang up. ANVIL disappears in a puff of smoke. Enter GHOST, carrying a shotgun. He’s wearing jogging pants, a denim jacket over a white T-shirt with the text NY on it. ANEURYSM starts painting his face white. 

GHOST  Did you hear that? He couldn’t say, “Bye,” because that would have been a symptom of weakness from him. He had his image to worry about, even now, Aneurysm did. Dude’s the guitar player in Hemorrhoid, the band where I sing, used to sing. His day job is posing as the self-appointed second-hand Führer of our little tribe. Cum metal, he calls it. Don’t ask why. He’ll tell you more than you’d care to know anyway. He’ll put on his corpse paint and tell everything. That I died for clothes, for a fad, for instance.

Done with the white paint, ANEURYSM puts the finishing touches on his mask with strokes of black around the eyes. This is his “corpse paint.” Exit GHOST, disgusted. Music: Paul Westerberg, “World Class Fad.”Enter V.D. and GUTTER, dressed as Moses and Darth Vader, respectively.

ANEURYSM  What the fuck? Who the hell?

GUTTER  How now...

V.D.  Brown cow, or Aneurysm, as I've heard you prefer to be addressed as. A real badass you are, or so everybody keeps telling me. And I let them, though I don't know why.

ANEURYSM  V.D., you sick duck! You were fast. What's with the outfit?

V.D.  Gutter here drove. May I present: Skywalker, Anakin—Aneurysm. He plays guitar. That goes for both of you. Handy.

ANEURYSM  And who are you, my friend? Moses?

V.D.  Fuck you.

GUTTER  I told him it wouldn't fly. He's trying to be Sauron from The Lord, but there weren't any evil wizards available.

ANEURYSM  Isn't Moses the most evil of them all?

V.D.  He most certainly is. Man, it's nice to see  you.

ANEURYSM  Nice to see you. Oh, now I get it! You're in for the Conference.

V.D.  We were on our way when you called. Should have seen your face, "You were fast!"

ANEURYSM  Oh, cut it out. Role playing, dead or alive, is for punks and little girls. You should have picked up a princess costume.

V.D. hits ANEURYSM in the face.

ANEURYSM falls on his behind.

V.D.  How’s that for a little girl? Got knocked out by a little girl!

ANEURYSM  Knocked…

GUTTER  Easy.

ANEURYSM  … out?

V.D.  Yes, knocked out! Goddamn queen, that's what you are. Look at you, painted like a whore. I should fuck you like a whore, that’s what I ought to do. Aneurysm? More like Brain Damage, if you ask me.  

Enter ANVIL.

ANVIL  What’s going on?

V.D.  And just for your information, I don’t larp any more. I’m bringing it into real life, into the streets!

ANVIL  What?

V.D.  I’m so outa here. [To Gutter]  You coming?

Exit V.D. and GUTTER.

ANVIL  What was that?

 ANEURYSM  [Getting up.]  Nothing. Artistic disagreements. Let me show you the photos.

ANVIL  Okay.

ANEURYSM  Mark my words. That Jew is so dead.

ANVIL  Jew? Who?

ANEURYSM  Moses.

↹

Well, I don't know about you, but that didn't look too diabolical to me. More like little boys playing with dolls. The boy with his forehead leaking. What do you want? Learned to speak yet? Brought me a piece of paper. Is this your way of communicating now? Is it a poem?

No movie studio except Sony could use Jeff's music; if another one did, it couldn't use more than two of his songs. More important - and equally standard both for Sony and the music business in general - Jeff had to pay for nearly everything: his producer, half of the independent radio promotion, and half of the cover art (another victory on Stein's part, since most acts had to pay for all promotion and art). All of these costs - as well as his $100,000 advance and any money Sony would spend on making videos and tour expenses, such as paying for a band, equipment and buses - would be added to a fund called recoupable. Only after his record sales matched the recoupable amount would Jeff begin making royalties of his own work.

It says that was from a book called Dream Brother: The Lives and Music of Jeff and Tim Buckley, written by a David Browne. Never heard of any of them. Did they play the Devil's Music? Jazz, I mean. I like jazz. When we were in New York for the General Assembly, we went to a club to see Woody Allen himself play the fiddle. I don't think that was from the Devil. That is just nonsense.

I'm getting rather desperate here. How hard is it to find someone who worships the Devil, let alone believes in him?

I do.

The refined gentlemen has reappeared! Have you washed your mouth with soap?

I'll behave.

Good. Your wound has healed nicely. A bush of professor-like silver hair has grown on top of it. I'm glad. Please have a seat.

I can't.

Why not?

The Devil Travels.

He does, doesn't he?

It's an agency.

Like NSA?

No. "Will travel, destroy the world." That kind of an agency.

You mean, you mean... a travel agency?

Yes, indeed.

Oh, goodness. I never thought about that.

You should have. Let's watch another clip. 

If you need a soundtrack for your Satanist hobbies, I suggest you forget those Norwegian pussies. Try this instead: http://open.spotify.com/album/1TjncssmpzxUYTZic79o7T

Mañana Republic

THE OTHER DAY I wrote about a Finnish journalist, Jussi Konttinen, calling him a Russophile. It's just about the worst thing you can say about a Finn, and I'm happy to say it again. This time, I have something to back it up with. Earlier, I'd read only one article by Konttinen: an FSB-enhanced propaganda bash about the Operation Storm, in which Croatia took the Krajina from the Serbs, and the subsequent trial of Ante Gotovina, who was in charge of said operation. Gotovina was acquitted at the Appeals Court of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), and Konttinen couldn't live with that. The Serbs had suffered so much! Already! Enough, he said. It had to stop.

True to his Zombie Marxist* ideology, Konttinen didn't wait for an unprecedented attack of creativity, as he went looking for the culprit. The Croats couldn't have achieved the acquittal by themselves. This had nothing to do with facts. You had to lay the blame on somebody bigger to preserve at least a shred of credibility... somebody a lot bigger than the four-million strong Croatia.

So, the United States had corrupted the ICTY, Konttinen wrote, extorting witnesses and bullying prosecutors and judges and just about everybody who had anything to do with the Gotovina trial.

Why, of course, Jussi. That wasn't enough, anyhow. Faithful to the Serb spirit he celebrates so vehemently, Konttinen launched another attack against the Croats just a week later. He writes for the Sunday edition, so he can't do this every day, as much as he wished.

Now the deputy chief of Croatia's Military Intelligence Agency had ordered his subordinates to spread dirt about the prosecution witnesses for the Gotovina case - all 113 [sic] of them, we were informed - the former Presidential candidate of Finland, Elisabeth Rehn, included!

We were, of course, dumbfounded as a nation. Elisabeth Rehn was the pride of Finland, the embodiment of a Swedish-style pathology, where every person and every nation is always equal, in war and peace, in innocence and in guilt. To stray from this trodden path was a gateway drug: at the end of that road lay a shotgun-toting beer-guzzling redneck from Texas or someplace, a member of the NRA, in short, an American. And, Herregud, we didn't want to wind up like THAT.

What caught my attention, however, in the midst of this superpower-sponsored conspiracy, was the fact that my outrageously irresponsible fabrication, that Slav Lover stamp on Jussi Konttinen's forehead, proved to be... like, accurate.

As my good friend and esteemed colleague S. Laurila has said:

Konttinen hates the Croats' guts, and worships the Russki... the Serbs as well, as a byproduct of that Slav fetish he has.

No. It can't be as simple as that.

Actually, it can. Read the latest effort by Konttinen, in which four pages of the Sunday edition of Helsingin Sanomat are trashed to shamelessly drool over Roman Rotenberg, a very rich Russian. And why? I'll be fucked if I know! Because Rotenberg bought a sports arena? Because Konttinen is gay?

No, sorry. That was uncalled for. My deepest apologies to all the LGBT people out there.

And the say the newspapers have fewer and fewer pages these days, because....

Let's just stop now, before I say something I'll regret. Lest I reveal that the Croats are Slavs, too. I suppose they wouldn't have much appreciation for Jussi's loving any more.


Being cock-happy** with the Slavs is no laughin' matter.

I want to make myself absolutely clear on this:
Nothing wrong in having the hots for Russian guys.
Masquerading that as journalism, there is.

Maybe I'm being harsh here. It must be hard to work your way up in the Putin Youth Network. They must have BOOT CAMPS.... Who knows what you have to do to become a member of the Nashi Press Corps? Konttinen does, but he won't tell.

His writings, then again, speak volumes about it, the cost of a little Nashi hazing to your brain and to your soul. They go bananas. You become a banana republic of one.

There's no known recovery for that yet. Scientist are working around the clock on five continents to find one. I don't think they will, in another 1 000 years or so. But, hey, we can always pray.

Mañana, maybe... Or, as the Muppets say it, "Mana Mana." Which was a Finnish Doom/Gloom band, but that's another story, and the singer killed himself.

Let's think some happy thoughts for a while, shall we?

"One question is..."

"One question, 'Who cares?'"  

"Oh. Okay."

"Maybe he'll buy our paper too, if you suck his set of pears some more!" 

"All right."

"Let's do it! You, I said, 'You.'"

[Man, I could write scenes like this all night, but it wouldn't be Good for me. So, buenas noches, everybody!]

Epiphany #1: The Sun and Srđ

________

*) I wrote a book about Zombie Marxism. You can buy it the cheapest here.

**) Found the word "cock-happy" on a delightful site, here.

HVALA VANCE OVEN:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNXtr7NwAio