Ghouls or Phi on the Loose

If you ask Thais if they’ve seen a ghost, most will timidly say NO, indicating the fear that any mention of a spirit might endanger their luck, yet Thais love horror movies popularized by such famous ghosts such as Phi-pop who eats livers, phi tai hong who died due to violence, and phi kraseu who has a head of intestines.

Thai movies' make-up and FX are naive, but scare the bejesus out of my wife, however these Asian film horrors have nothing on the real people in the USA.

This is a true story.

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On their way to dig up a grave in rural southwestern Wisconsin, the Grunke brothers and a friend stopped at a Wal-Mart to pick up some condoms, authorities said.

Three days later, on Tuesday, twins Nicholas and Alexander Grunke, 20, and Dustin Radke, 20, were charged in Grant County with attempted theft — and attempting to have sex with a corpse.

“In different schools that teach you about bizarre behavior, necrophilia is one of those things that you hear about, but never think you’ll have to deal with,” said Grant County Sheriff Keith Grovier. A Cassville police officer arrived at the St. Charles Cemetery on Saturday night after a neighbor alerted police to suspicious activity, according to a criminal complaint filed Tuesday.

The officer found an abandoned vehicle parked near the cemetery. Minutes later, the complaint stated, the officer saw Alexander Grunke walking toward the vehicle, dressed in black and sweating profusely.

After being questioned, Grunke told the officer his brother and Radke were trying to dig up a grave, according to the complaint. The two drove into the cemetery to find the partially dug grave of a 20-year-old woman who was killed in a motorcycle accident Aug. 27 in Cassville. The diggers had only managed to reach the top of the grave’s concrete vault.

Nicholas Grunke and Radke were arrested Sunday morning in Beetown, about eight miles from the cemetery. The complaint said Radke told police that Nicholas Grunke had asked him to help dig up the Cassville woman’s body and take it to Grunke’s house, so that Grunke could have sex with it. On the way to the cemetery, Radke said, they stopped by a Dodgeville Wal-Mart to buy condoms “because Nick wanted to use them when he had sex with a corpse,” the complaint added.

Grovier said the three did not know the woman but had seen her picture in a newspaper obituary.

Grovier said the woman was “very well-liked, very popular” in Cassville, a Mississippi River town of about 1,100. “The community is very upset,” the sheriff said. “They can’t believe it.”

What’s amazing about these boys is that they used condoms for safe sex.

I told several Thais this story.

They didn’t believe me, but said the town should have a mor phi or ghost doctor come to save the town from any ghoulish episodes.

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Necrophilia is a crime in most states but not all.

Wisconsin is one of them.

Necrophilia should be beyond the pale, however OTTO IV, the Holy Roman Emperor, reputedly slept with his deceased wife for over 17 years. Many courtiers of the Holy Roman Empire said she was faking sleep.

I found a wicked account of a necrophiliac at a bookstore along the River Seine.

THE JOURNAL OF LUCIAN H

This romantic novella about a French man’s exploration of love with the dead doesn’t appear on any Google searches. The tale tells of his falling in love with them after they are dead. He doesn’t abuse them. Sad is his mood, when he has to leave them once the bodies are too far gone. Of course that’s a far cry from Hollywood movies glorifying the dead, but then teenage boys would have to depend on sappy love movies to get girls to hug them in the cinema.

Yech.

Dawn Along The Petrusse

Last Sunday dawn rose fast on the City of Luxembourg. Only two days before I had arrived with the sun's first light on the flight from London and jet lag prevented my sleeping till noon. It was 1AM back in New York.

Madame Ambassador was in her bedroom. No other human was in the embassy.

Only her cat in the guest room.

I pressed my hand to the window.

The lower pane was icy and I dressed accordingly for the cooler weather of Mittel Europa.

I exited from the embassy. The morning was quiet even for Luxembourg.

The ancient city was sleeping outside the embassy, which was perched on a cliff overlooking the chasm of the old fortress. Not a single car was on the viaduct and pedestrians were absent from the sidewalks of Boulevard de FDR. The city's residents were sleeping in warm beds, I had Luxembourg to myself and the crows swirling around the spike spires of Notre Dame Cathedral.

I wandered down the narrow streets of the old city, hoping to find an open cafe.

The only sound of humans was my breathing and I thought to myself, "How could you have spent six months here?"

Madame Ambassador and I had a good time during my sojourn as resident writer.

Parties at the Aston-Martin dealership.

A soiree to commemorate the Battle of the Bulge.

And a great dance night with the RAF.

Come to think about it and that half-year in 2011-2012 were a good time and I headed over to the ramparts. The sun was rising over the EEU buildings in Kitchenburg, but offered little warmth. Thankfully I was wearing my tweeds and became my descent to the casement, fortified against siege until 1862. A few tourists were shooting the valley of the Alzette River. I stepped on a broken wine bottle. The noise startled the two of them. They were Japanese.

Te famed military architect Vauban had expanded the fortifications in the 1600s and the city withstood a siege by the French for seven months earning it the name 'the Gibraltar of the North'.

Not one solider guarded the city this morning. They too were in bed.

People in Luxembourg like their sleep.

My heavy boots crunched on the gravel path along the old mill stream. I imagined myself an Irish exile serving the Prussians. That ghost was only in my head, but closing my eyes the Alzette's babbling vanquished the years. Life was this moment now connected to back then my my daydreams.

Opening my eyes I saw that the Bock casemates glowed in the dawn as they might have to the Roman legions to have come upon this craggy plateau. It was a good site for a fight.

The plaza of St. Jean de Grund was another empty space.

Except for an exquisite Daimler.

Luxembourg is a rich city.

One of the richest in Europe and rich people get to sleep in late on Sundays.

I yawned and said to myself, "Time to join my pillow."

Madame Ambassador and I would have breakfast later.

She had promised me a proper English Breakfast, although she would be up for another hour.

I could wait that long.

The bells of Notre-Dame were ringing out the hour of Eight.

After all I was still the resident writer in Luxembourg and dawn was still five hours away from New York.

Magic Carpets Over Persia

As a child I had been entranced the the legend of the magic carpet. My mother thought I was funny sitting on the carpet in the living room, trying to fly it like a plane. I was not kidding, so when my father came home from work in April of 1965 to say that his company, Ma Bell, had offered him a transfer to Iran.

"Persia?"

"They call it Iran now."

The oil-rich country needed skilled communication engineers and my father was one of the best in New England. He sat down my mother and his six children at the kitchen table and proposed that we go overseas for several years.

"It will be a unique experience and the money will be better than here."

"When do we go?" My enthusiasm was sparked by having read THE RUBIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM and the Arabian Nights as well as my eternal desire to get the hell out of the suburbs and dreamed of flying on a magic carpet. Iran used to be Persia. The ruler was called the Shah. The religion was Islam. We would be infidels, which was fine by me.

"We'd leave in the summer." My father unloosened his tie and looked to my mother.

"What about school?"

She had okayed our move from Maine to be closer to her family and have us attended parochial schools.

"There are first-class schools set up for Americans. There are tens of thousands of us there."

My father liked to travel. Every other weekend he packed us into the family station wagon for a trip to an historical site or mountain or beach.

"What about our friends?" my older brother asked the question which I had been fearing.

My younger sisters and brothers chorused the same demand.

"You won't remember your friends in five years," I shouted at them. I was the biggest son. My older brother was only older.

"Like you forgot Shane." This was a cruel blow. My older brother knew how to play dirty.

"That's different." Shane and I were best friends. He had drowned five years ago in Sebago Lake. We had vowed never to go swimming if we weren't together. I had yet to forgive myself.

"No different. Friends are friends." My older brother liked our hometown. He was attending the best all-boy's parochial high school next year. "I didn't get straight As to go to a school half way across the world.".

"I know." My mother expected the same from me. She wanted me to be a priest. I had yet to tell anyone that I was an atheist.

"But Dad said the schools are very good in Iran."

I looked to the Maine native for a dictatorial mandate, except my father had fought in WWII to save democracy and he said, "All those in favor of going to Iran, raise their right hand."

My father and I were the only two in favor.

"All those opposed."

My mother, brothers, and sisters formed a bloc of five. My father refused to veto the majority vote and he put down my mother's arm. She was never going to leave Boston. The change of season was in her blood and our family finished out the19 60s on the South Shore.

My first excursion off the North American continent was to London in 1978. My girlfriend was a blonde model from Buffalo. Some nights she stayed out late with the fashion photographers. My next-door neighbor was an Iranian. His father had been executed by Savak. Mustaf and I drank beer at a bar in Fulham. His friends educated me to the evils of the Shah. I joined them in demonstrations against his regime without telling my girlfriend. Lisa didn't like Muslims, because their mistreatment of women. Mustaf was a communist. He believed in rights for everyone.

I believed the same, until the Shah was overthrown and the student radicals seized hostages at the US embassy in Teheran.

America was America and I was an American.

"Bomb 'em."

The Pentagon tried to free the hostages and failed in the desert.

Jimmy Carter was defeated by Ronald Reagan, who had backdoored an agreement with the mullahs to withhold release of the hostages, so that he could win the presidency.

"We do not deal with terrorists." Old Dutch swore to the country, as his underlings sold arms to the Revolutionary Guards, while supporting Saddam in a desert war.

GW Bush declared Iran to be an Axis of Evil and their president's constant barrage of threat against Israel has racketed the tension of war in the Gulf to a code red danger zone. CNN, NBC, Fox News and all the other right-wing news organization are reporting the build-up of forces to prevent the Iranians from having a nuclear bomb, as if Armageddon was a fait accompli.

"We have built a wide range of options to give the president and we are ready... We are ready today," Vice Admiral Mark Fox said at the headquarters of the 5th Fleet in Manama on Sunday.

"We were ready yesterday." Iran countered on their TV.

And the price of oil soared over the $100/barrel mark enriching Big Oil.

There is no such thing as a free magic carpet ride, although Steppenwolf came close in the late 60s.

To hear MAGIC CARPET RIDE please go to this URL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dFgZy5dRVo&feature=related

Trump Bully Pulpit.

Donald Trump has never made his love for beautiful women a secret.

The avid golf cheater even ran beauty pageants.

He once said he would like to date his daughter.

Trump has always leaned toward blondes and once hit on my cousin, who was a Broadway actress. If I had been in the room, I would have whacked the scamming billionaire in the head with a sox filled with pennies and then kicked the ogre while he was down, however this week an audio recording of Billy Bush from 2004 changed my thinking.

The blonde Nazi deserves a bat beating for what he said about Nancy O'Dell, co-host of Access Hollywood.

TRUMP: "I moved on her. Actually, she was down on Palm Beach. I moved on her and I failed. I'll admit it. I did try and fuck her. She was married."

BUSH: "That's huge news."

TRUMP: "I moved on her. Very heavily. In fact, I took her out furniture shopping. She wanted to get some furniture. I said 'I'll show you where they have some nice furniture'. I took her... I moved on her like a bitch. I couldn't get there and she was married. And all of a sudden I see her. She's now got the big phoney tits and she's totally changed her look."

BUSH: "Sheesh, your girl's hot as sh**. In the purple."

TRUMP: "Whoa! Yes! Whoa!"

BUSH: "Yes! The Donald has scored. Whoa, my man! It better not be the publicist. No it's her, it's..."

TRUMP: "Yeah that's her in the gold. I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You know, I'm automatically attracted to beautiful... I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything."

BUSH: "Whatever you want."

TRUMP: "Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything."

No trial for Trump.

Just a beating.

But Dick Cheney gets a bullet to the head.

Mafia style.

Kissinger too.

No mercy, because they are mass murderers.

Trump's Health Care Poor

Obamacare is not perfect.

Monolithic insurance companies control the market.

Their executives aberrantly raise the costs of medicine and hospital care.

Donald Trump excoriated the health system by stating with vehemence, "Obamacare is a total disaster and I promised to replace the ACA with the finest health-care plan there is."

Trump failed to elaborate on his scheme, but it's probably a combination of the GOP's traditional policy on health ie "Drop dead." and Trump's propensity for declaring bankruptcy.

It's his forte.

Although Captain Picard of the Enterprise has a question for Trump.

Also take note that Americans are illing more and more from bad food, compromised water, and polluted air.

More of the GOP's Drop Dead philosophy.

AG For Trump - Mr. Stylin' Of The KKK

GOP presidential candidate swaggered across the state like a coked-out Mussolini and interrupted his opponent's answer to a question by the crowd by pointing a finger at Hillary Clinton and gloated in saying, “I didn’t think I’d say this but I’m going to say it, and I hate to say it, but if I win, I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation because there has never been so many lies, so much deception, there has never been anything like it and we’re going to have a special prosecutor.

His supporters broke into a hooting applause.

Many Americans don't like Hillary.

She voted for the War in Iraq, She's cozy with the banks, and nothing Hillary says sounds like the truth.

Donald speaks he believes his lies are true and the Democratic contender said, “We have literally Trump, you can fact check him in real time. Last time, at the first debate, we had millions of people fact-checking. So I expect we’ll have millions more fact-checking because, you know, it is, it’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country."

Donald played to his base and retorted, “Because you would be in jail.”

Trump is dead serious about going after Hillary.

Revenge is a drug for a bully and Trump has announced if elected his Attorney General will be Trey Gowdy, even though Trump accused the four-term congressman from South Carolina's District 4 of blowing the Benghazi investigation against Hillary Clinton.

Gowdy dresses Cool White Southerner these days.

It wasn't always that way

The KKK cracker look.

The greasy blow-dried look of a shag.

Pure politics in motion.

Reading - Fort Tilden, the Rockaways - Peter Nolan Smith

This Saturday evening I will be reading the first chapter of my punk novel THE END OF MAYBE at the Rockaway Artist Alliance in Fort Tilden.

Free Parking.

I go on at 8ish.

CHAPTER 1

The November sun flashed off a West Village window and the wavering reflection stalked the Christopher Street pier to a lone youth tuning a battered guitar. His skin pallor rivaled the pale moon and no suburban mall stocked his ripped black leather jacket, torn T-shirt, or battered engineer boots, but the blonde leather boy broke into a sly smile, as the sapphire shimmer transformed the twenty year-old into a fallen angel regaining his halo.

1976

Peace and love

Peter Nolan Smith

Laughing Fire

She smiles like she just burned a mortgage-ridden house.

insured to the hilt.

Take that you filthy bankers.

Burn Baby Burn.

Mad Matthew

Last week the weather was cool in New York and I thankfully thought, "Another year without a hurricane hitting the East Coast."

I had said the same thing before Tropical Depression Sandy had its way with New York and now Hurricane Matthew hovers off the coast of Floria, threatening destruction should the storm makes landfall as it had in Haiti.

Over 800 dead and whole cities leveled by the Category 4 hurricane.

The governors of the lower Atlantic states declared an emergency and the citizens of Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina evacuated the low-lying lands in fear of a 9-foot surge off the ocean.

Luckily Matthew stayed at sea and Floridians are returning home after the scare, however government officials are cautioning residents against settling cack to normal, since a high pressure system will block Matthew's northern progress and the hurricane may boomerang back to the Sunshine State.

Shepherd Smit of Fox News announced dramatically, "“If this moves 20 miles to the west, and you and everyone you know are dead — all of you — because you can’t survive it. It’s not possible unless you’re very, very lucky. And your kids die, too.”

Smith lived through Katrina in New Orleans.

He has seen the worst.

And Matthew should hit Northern Florida tomorrow.

It is no joke.

Pastrami On Nothing

This week the Carnegie Deli's owner announced the closing of the nearly 80 year-old kosher restaurant. Marian Harper Levine's family has owned the fabled knoshetria since 1971, but a battle with ConEd over an illegal tap on a gas pipe and the long hours have taken a toll on the 60ish operator.

"At this stage of my life, the early mornings to late nights have taken a toll, along with my sleepless nights and grueling hours that come with operating a restaurant business."

New Yorkers mourned the news.

Few ate at the 7th Avenue establishment, which has been overrun by tourists seeking the true heart of the City by consuming 4-inch high sandwiches in one go.

Another piece of New York will disappear into our memories and this afternoon I mentioned the closing to my London friend, Sara Silver. She stopped there on her way back from MoMA and came to my jewelry store on West 57th Street with a heavy brown paper bag.

"Is that what I think it is?"

"Pastrami on rye."

Only one, which is more than enough for a normal human.

I licked my my lips.

We each took a half.

Heaven.

If I'm lucky I might go zum Himmel one more time before the New Year, because you have to say good-bye to greatness more than once.

Yee-Hah Texas

In 2010 Texas executed 18 men. Their punishment was ordered by the state for the crimes of murder. The next up on the injection table deserved the ultimate punishment for the heinous murder of a black man in 1998.

His crime had been to man to drag his victim behind a Ford pick-up truck to the nearest black church to inform the community of Japer that the KKK was back in area.

Jasper, Texas had been founded in 1824 as a lumber town in the Deep East Texas.

By 1998 the population split evenly between black and white. It was not a rich town, but Jasper was not Philadelphia, Mississippi and 1998 was not 1964 when the Klan killed 3 civil rights workers.

Lawrence Brewer and his partners begged to differ. They committed murder, expecting to escape justice, however both Brewer and another partner received the death penalty. The third got Life. He must have been the snitch.

On the day before his Reckoning Brewer ordered his last meal.

A big one.

Two chicken fried steaks, a triple-meat bacon cheeseburger, fried okra, a pound of barbecue, three fajitas, a meat lover's pizza, a pint of ice cream, and a slab of peanut butter fudge with crushed peanuts.

Once the food was in his cell, Brewer declared that he wasn't hungry and went to his death without taking a single bite.

His loss of appetite was not uncommon and the state prison chaplain said many men declined to eat their last meal.

"Very few - I'd say less then 10% - ate all that we brought to them."

A state senator was appalled by this murderer getting such a feast and called for the abolition of the an ancient tradition dating back to the Greeks and Romans. The director of Texas prisons shared his opinion and since then the condemned man will be served the same as any other inmate on death row at Livingston.

The following year Death Row went on a hunger strike, because of bad food in their unit.

One way or the other Texas will kill the dead men walking, especially when Rick Perry had been governor.

His favorite food is popcorn.

Yee-Hah Texas.

Popcorn In A Hoodie

I love popcorn.

I hate Bud Lite.

despite this conflict I'm impressed by this man's ingenuity.

Popcorn, beer, and looking at the wall.

Paradise.

Too Much Too Soon

His last words were passing out was a mumble.

"I've fallen, but don't worry I'll get up again."

Too much fun is sometimes too much to take in one sitting.