Across Difficult Country

To the White House for an “ Evening of Poetry ”. Scanning the East Room, I don’t see any actual poets. I mingle about, carefully avoiding Billy Collins. I chat with that girl from 'Til Tuesday . She's overcome severe cat allergies to become a fixture on “adult alternative” radio (or so I'm told).  I ask various people if they've seen Edward Williams, and receive blank looks. One of the guests is a rapper . I try to explain to him that “frabbajabous” isn’t a real word. He gives me a blank look. Eventually the President gives a speech. I give him a blank look. Some doggerel is read. A comedian plays a banjo (why?). As the festivities wind down, a Secret Service agent approaches, and quietly asks me to follow him. After an elevator ride, we walk down a lengthy hallway, through a door, into a martial arts dojo. Standing there is the First Lady, with a pair of aides slathering oil on her nude body. My mind whirls. I realize she wants to engage me in hand-to-hand comba...

I spend the morning in Bihar, photographing the poor and lawless state’s various large ditches. (Expect to see some of the images in my forthcoming book, Various Large Ditches of the Third World .) In the afternoon I join Bihar’s Governor Devanand Konwar for lunch. We discuss the  plans to build toilets throughout Bihar , so women and girls no longer have to “defecate in the open.” I warn him giving in to one demand only encourages women to make more demands. He insists on moving forward, saying the toilets will be installed by the year 2135, at least if everything goes according to schedule.

I get word of the Greg Mortensen scandal while visiting the Tieraufstapelung Academy, a school I founded in the poor and lawless state of Bihar which teaches wayward girls the ancient art of animal stacking . It’s sad the deceptions of a man I've never met cast doubt on my legitimate travel accounts and charity work, but that’s the world we live in now.

In a lengthy treatise I have not read, Bradford W. Scharlott ( journalism professor, potential sex offender )  argues Sarah Palin faked the pregnancy and birth of her fifth child , of whom she is actually the grandmother. It’s an interesting theory. A more interesting theory: what if Sarah Palin traveled back in time, to give birth to Barack Obama? It would explain why he’s gone to such lengths to conceal his long form birth certificate. We know for a fact, courtesy of the FBI,   USG recovered crashed flying saucers .   Lt. Col. Philip J. Corso  has stated the craft were not spaceships from other planets, but  time machines from the future . Corso, I just realized,  kind of looks like  Brad Scharlott. How many layers are there to this thing?

Spiritual fires like the ones that bedeviled Malaysia are now breaking out in Botswana : A family of eleven is begging for help after a series of mysterious fires destroyed their property and left them homeless.  The latest in a trilogy of devastating blazes occurred this week when a remaining storeroom and the police tent in which they had been sheltering also went up in flames.  The unexplained fires that have been tormenting the family in the Southern District village of Goodhope since January, has baffled police investigating the incidents...  As suspicions abound that the fires were the cause of a demonic curse, a Pentecostal church leader was expected to visit the family on a spiritual intervention mission. The Malaysian spiritual fires, you may recall, were impervious to the prayer recitations of ten ulamas . Given the trajectory of the phenomenon, FEMA should consider setting up spiritual fire monitoring stations on the East Coast, as a precautionary measure .

A Bear-Wolf prowls Wisconsin : Steve Krueger was doing his job...removing road-side deer carcasses overnight for the Department of Natural Resources. Krueger said he had just made a pick-up along a remote road near Holy Hill about 1:30 a.m., and he was in the cab doing some paperwork. When his parked truck started shaking, he looked in the rear view mirror and got the scare of his life. He said his flashing lights illuminated a huge hairy beast standing on its hind legs -- dragging a deer off the open tailgate . With luck, the beast will make its way to Madison, and feast on the hippies infesting the Capitol. I’ve spoken before of Nature’s moral degeneracy , the existence of a Bear-Wolf is another example. In an important new essay , noted historian Ian Kershaw says Fascism is on the rise in Europe. 1 Or something of the sort, I read no further than the following paragraph: Though the immigrants were actually important to the continued economic growth of the wealthier nations,...