A FINGER IN THE WAZOO FOR THE REVOLUTION!!!

Here it comes again. The revolution. Wake me up when it's over.

Spit out your coffee. Gag not simply one maggot, but an entire civilization of them. Cry into your hands. Look forlornly at the television set as agitated people in the Middle East gear up for the Revolution of the People, Phase II, sponsored by Daiwoo! For this is the revolution, it's coming back, right here to your home town, and if you thought Pancho Villa was dumb, you ought to take a look at the goons coming up the block. They're the best whiners in the area, hand picked by the previous generation of whiners, and they've been hiding out. Speaking in whispers. Keeping a low profile. Sitting in the back of the room. Got it paired down to the core revolutionary cells. Using the "Great Negro Telephone." Don't laugh; this is important! You can go ahead and laugh at the urban cowboys who wear black hats and drive huge pick-ups with monster wheels. And you can laugh at the fundamentalist minions who try so hard to be touchy-feely as they talk about the Rapture. Those folks might be copping feelings of importance that come from being a part of something big, but the Something Big they're part of is dwarfed by the Something Big of the revolution, because the Something Big isn't only big, its FREAKING UNDERGROUND! And there are people in the world who have to go underground to feel important. They don't like the government, they don't like the corporations that are eating the government alive, they don't like Christian fundamentalism, they don't like Islamism, they don't pretend to know anything at all about the supposedly former Soviet Union, and they don't like emo music--whatever that's supposed to be. When you ask them what it is they do like, they'll look at you and blubber something about Noam Chomsky...because Noam Chomsky was some book they tried really hard to read, can't remember the title, dude, but it was a really hard book....

Yes, if books are "hard" it means they're probably true. After all, who'd bother to write a "hard" book if it wasn't true? Would a liar do that? Would a liar come up with this "alternate view of American history in Central and Latin America," for instance, simply because he was trying to, like, do something? Besides, the present role of the revolution in the capitalist-pig countries is to run interference in a big distracting effort and--of course!--buy Chinese goods! Noam Chomsky is their godhead.

So you're sitting around, minding your own affairs, trying to get a little happiness out of your life, reading a book about the post-Bolshevik poet and widowed revolutionary sweetheart Anna Akhmatova, and trying to decode a little Pasternak on the side, given he wrote literally about "lilacs" when everybody from the GPU on down knew he was using some kind of "code" his fellow dissidents could crack in an instant, when you're hit hard by some kind of INCOMING. It seems they're organizing for the Big Revolution, although nobody really knows who "they" are, and those people don't like the Bush Administration, those people don't like the War in Iraq, those people don't like America bullying everybody else, those people don't like spending cuts for the rich, those people don't like all this money going to some strange organization everybody refers to as "the military/industrial complex," although you've searched the web for hours and hours, never once finding even one picture of the organization's headquarters....shoot, man, it's a conspiracy!

But the INCOMING, in many past INCOMING conversations like the INCOMING one you'd like to duck, insists that, though taxpayer money goes to this complex, the complex never spends any of the money after the manufacture of Daisy Cutters and Microwave Crowd Dispersing Beams, mainly because, although the complex employs millions of people, those people apparently never need food or shelter or cars or even summer vacations. How do you know the INCOMING says this? You've met the INCOMING many times. The INCOMING wears many faces. In science fiction terminology, the INCOMING is a shape-shifter. Whatever the single issue of the moment is, you'll soon find the INCOMING sucking on it like a greasy piece of raw chicken. And the INCOMING is convinced in a fundamentalist Christian kind of conviction that the ALL SEEING EYE OF THE INCOMING never lies.

And there you are, in a coffee bar, listening to soft music, reading the newspaper whenever you get tired of reading about Akhmatova and five thousand starving women standing in silent protest outside Levchenko Prison where their lovers and husbands and children are imprisoned, when the INCOMING bursts through the door like a bad idea: You are expected to either join the revolution or the INCOMING is going to do what the INCOMING can do to destroy your happiness. Right now! If this means silencing you, lying about you to your friends, putting you to perpetual sleep from sheer boredom, the INCOMING infers, it means that, well, that's what we gotta do, dude, if we wanna keep this revolutionary cell going. And you're the target. Why? Who else, dude?

Huh?

This is happening everywhere! They're marching forward--like horses! Clip-clop! Clip-clop! From Sheboygan, Wisconsin all the way to Frogcrotch, Georgia! Clip-clop!

We gotta alternative press to provide cover for us when the revolution starts, says the INCOMING. We gotta couple radio stations so we can, like, keep up communication when the Man tries to shut us out. We had CNN, too, says the INCOMING--until Jane Fonda defected and became a Christian. But that could be a signal! We're too low on the curve to know for sure, says the INCOMING. We gotta keep the poetry readings pure, too, dude. No ideological backsliding! Who cares if nobody listens! That's not the point! Dude! This is, like, it, dude. And we've got to infiltrate, infiltrate, infiltrate! Just like the capitalist-pig people sell, sell, sell! Besides, there's lots of beer and pot! Our revolutionary sweethearts will even fuck you if you go in the right direction! Otherwise, they'll tease you until you're forced to make your bed in lieu of the real thing!

Will we have coffee after the Revolution? No, says the INCOMING. Coffee has been America's means of exploiting the peasantry of half a dozen Central American nations for over a hundred years, man. Don't you read Noam Chompsky? Chompsky? you ask. That's right dude. Chompsky. Chompsky says that by freeing the Latin American peasantry from the quotidian, like, task of picking little red berries off these evergreen bushes in the jungle, dude, those dudes will be able to go to the University of Nebraska. Or something like that. Hey! Don't look at me like that, dude! I forgot to bring my notes on the subject.

So what'll we do about coffee? Pick the beans ourselves?

The INCOMING says this: When the Revolution comes the proletariat, knowing it is the duty of the proletariat to provide liquid stimulation, dude, for the rest of the proletariat, or something, the proletariat will be happy to pick little red berries off those bushes, dude.

What if the proletariat wants to go--as one big communal unit--to The University of Nebraska? Will the El Supremo or the Generalissimo or whoever have to pick his own coffee beans?

Dude! That'll never happen! You've gotta get back into reality, dude! The genius of the proletariat will develop sophisticated machinery to pick those little red beans off the big green bushes! This is love, dude! Love will make the red beans fall off the branches automatically!

Dude, I say, I'm so sick of hearing the word "dude" I'm just about to join the revolution so I can kill those freakazoids who say "dude" all the time.

But dude is like "comrade" dude!

But what about this Chompsky dude? Wasn't he an award-winning linguist? Seems like I read a book of his--something about how the U.S. mainstream press is more interesting in protecting the state than it is in telling the frigging truth! Man! What a bunch of hypocrites! Don't they know that journalists are supposed to be objective? Who cares about the state when the truth is at stake? Isn't journalism all about the absolute truth? Dude! It's not about how we measure truth! The truth is absolute to us, dude, and the truth is always measured from where we hold the frigging ruler! Got it dude? We're the ones who hold the ruler! Who cares about protecting the state when the truth is...well, fill in the blank: 1) People in the Third World are eating their hearts out because they can't afford iPods; 2) They've got to be eating their hearts out because their standards of living a bountiful life apparently don't fit what we're seeing suggested to us on shows like Entertainment Tonight!; 3) Man! If I had to eat rice and fish all the time, I'd want to go out and kill everybody!

The INCOMING goes to the coffee shop barrista (CLUE: Latino terminology for Dude! Rhymes with "sandalista") and orders a "Chocolate Suicide Double-Mousse With Cookie Dough Cheese Cake." No, says the INCOMING, make it two. I'm hungry! Dude! Ain't everybody hungry for something?

The INCOMING turns to you and hisses: SHHHHHHHHHH, dude! This is top secret information! We're being fattened up for the kill, dude! You wanna be on the wrong side of that or what?

Oh well. So the INCOMING and I had gotten down the the so-called brass tacks of postmodern deconstructionism and the rise of the philistine culture (NOTE: New Left code word for backing the Palestinians as a single issue group). Dude, from here on out, was to replace "comrade" as a supposedly subtle means of identifying the revolutionary backbone from the rest of the population, most of whom, it was suggested, tend to wear golf shirts and cotton dockers, or wear pink pastels and dye their hair either blonde or red--depending on what Vogue Magazine says is the raddest. Dude. The uniform of the dudes, by the way, has to consist of just about anything one can buy at the thrift store, mainly because those clothes are used and the profits cannot be used to contribute to the riches of the huge corporate manufacturing and distribution networks that feed off the labor of thousands. Can one wear used cotton dockers?

Thus sayeth the INCOMING: Dude, only if you're going undercover or something. Our fearless leader, dude, in case you haven't met him, wears used cotton dockers because it's hard to find used bluejeans that'll fit a dude with an ass wider than the axel-width of an 18-wheeler. Most of the time, dude, dude-chicks use those to make purses and crap.

Then the INCOMING and I got down to the conspiracy theories. 1) PROXY WAR--Everybody knows, dude, that religion is the opiate of the people, dude. So it's been a long-standing strategy of us dudes to cause political and cultural friction in the Middle East, arm the dupes, get them into a fight with the ruling capitalist-pig powers, and then stand back and watch the cat-fight. But isn't that exploiting people? I ask. No, dude! Those Islamists are opiated! We don't want to waste the dudes by going to war with the capitalist-pig people of the world! What'cha think we are, dude? Idiots? 2) WEARING OUT THE ENEMY--By making the capitalist-pig peoples wear themselves out fighting opiated zealots in the Middle East, us dudes will be enriching ourselves off bootleg DVDs and knock-off designer clothes, dude! Ever wonder why us dudes are spending seventy percent of our gross national product on building weapons? Dude, because when the time's ready, we'll be able to go in and kick us some capitalist ass, that's why! 3) THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION IS PRECURSOR TO THE POLITICAL ONE--Dude, everybody knows Pat Robertson is a dupe, dude! He's pushed everybody to the right! That's where us dudes want them! But it'll be easy to push those people into a political opposition once they've become poor and desperate enough! That way, we'll have opioids of our own to fight our revolution for us, dude! Besides, we have the alternative press! They're our secret weapon!

Huh?