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Mim Udovitch and Mick Farren

the breakfast table
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from: Mick Farren

George W. Bush, War Patsy

Posted Tuesday, Oct. 5, 1999, at 10:48 AM ET

Dear Mim:

Good morning again. This time it's coffee and two cigarettes. I've been writing all night on some kind of destructured Burroughs roll out of which I have yet to make sense, so I guess this serves as a return to comparative sanity.

I promised that I'd explain why so much money is being heaped on George W. Bush to make him president, and here goes. If the predictions don't actually pan out, and I actually pray they don't, it's also a classic example of how to build a high conspiracy theory from the ground up. The trick is to combine totally separate news stories as factors in the same scenario, and take it from there. In this case, the first clue was provided by Paul Beaver of Jane's Defense Weekly reporting on the massive proliferation of a class of cheap, post-Scud, surface-to-surface missiles with limited range that are ideal for wars between adjacent countries such as India and Pakistan, North and South Korea, and most of the Middle East. The missiles are designed to deliver conventional weapons, but can be easily adapted to carry a payload of anthrax or a small, dirty atomic bomb. The matching piece of the puzzle was served up on CNN's Worldview. The Middle East is seemingly about to hit a catastrophic water crisis. Rainfall in Syria, Jordan, Israel, Iraq, and South Lebanon is down a frightening 85 percent, the Sea of Galilee is at a dangerously low level, and the River Jordan could be a trickle by the end of the year.

All peaceful solutions would require immediate cooperation by the nations involved, but I doubt we should hold our breath on that. The alternative is drought, famine, and ultimately war over the entire area. What better U.S. president to have in power during this unfolding scenario than a completely malleable nonentity, totally in the pocket of corporate oil? The true face of the alliterative compassionate conservatism? This may sound a little wild, but what other reason is there for heaping so much funding on a self-admitted boozer and cokehead, whose road to Damascus was provided, at age 40, by Billy Graham? After the entire area has decimated itself, some compliant commander in chief has to be in place to send in the troops to secure the oil if it's not too radioactive.

Any thoughts on Pokémon? I've been sifting through the reports of all the lawsuits against Nintendo claiming that collecting the Pokémon trading cards, with their built-in scarcity factor, is a form of insidious infant gambling. I sympathize with the family whose kid blew a thousand dollars on the cards. (I always sympathize with the irredeemably stupid.) I wonder, however, having now watched the show, that it may be its impenetrable Japanese-ness is what really scares parents. Let's not forget that the zombie-teens on the current Gap television commercials were raised on Power Rangers. Whither the Pokémon tots?

I was also going to mention David Bowie and the new California license plates that carry a picture of Ronald Reagan in a cowboy hat, but I fear I've run out of space and will have to save these gems for later.

Love,
Mick

the breakfast table
entries
12345678910111213141516
from: Mick Farren

George W. Bush, War Patsy

Posted Tuesday, Oct. 5, 1999, at 10:48 AM ET
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Mim Udovitch has written about pop culture and other premillennial topics for Esquire, Rolling Stone, and the New York Times Book Review. Mick Farren is a writer, musician, and author of the novel Jim Morrison's Adventures in the Afterlife, to be published next month (click hereto buy the book and hereto buy his band's CD).
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