The End of Knowledge

Donald Trump has lambasted the intelligence community and stated that daily security briefings have not been a priority for his White House.

"I don't have to be told everything, you know, I'm, like, a smart person. I don't have to be told the same thing in the same words every single day," Trump said in a Fox News interview. "I don' t need to be told ... the same thing every day, every morning; same words. 'Sir, nothing has changed. Let's go over it again.' I don’t need that."

I agree with the Donald.

The CIA lost all credibility by running torture camps to cover up their ineptitude on 9/11 and the NSA's covert surveillance of everyone is another assault on our freedom. The less said about the squares of the FBI and the criminals of the DEA the better.

Intelligence briefing.

Only if it's about torturing one of his competitors, otherwise Donald doesn't need yesterday's news.

"What for?" asked Donald, who once said, "I would love to read a book, but I don't have the time."

Most of America agrees with Him.

Reading anything more other than Twitter is a waste of time.

Too many words.

ps I still hold a grudge against the CIA rejecting my application in 1980.

Osama Bin Laden WHO II

Osama Bin Laden was fingered by the CIA as the mastermind of 9/11. The CIA declared he had ordered the attacks. In 2016 his name on Google had 124,000,000 results. The Al-Quada fugitive was # 1 on the FBI's Most Wanted list. He had evaded capture and death for over a decade and three president. In 2011 Barack Obama greenlighted his assasssination.

"Kill the motherfuckah."

He succeeded where his predecessor had failed, however teenagers around America hit the Yahoo search engine to seek out the 10-4 on the name blazing across TVs and newspapers.

The top ten searched were the following;

1. Is Osama bin Laden dead?
2. How did Osama bin Laden die?
3. Who killed Osama bin Laden?
4. How old is Osama bin Laden
5. Who is Osama bin Laden
6. Where was Osama bin Laden killed?
7. Is Osama bin Laden dead or alive?
8. How tall is Osama bin Laden?

On Yahoo 1 in 3 searches for "how did osama bin laden die" and 40% of searches for "who killed osama bin laden" were from people ages 13-20.

It came as no surprise that most teenagers had no idea who the fuck Osama Bin Laden was, because 66% of searches were for "who is osama bin laden?"

This information came as no surprise, for as HL Mencken said, "No one went broke underestimating the ignorance of the American public."

More true now than then.

Then again the corpse of Bin Ladin was buried at sea.

So he still might be alive.

Some where.

With his family and friends like the Bushes.

Just chilling on the Riviera__

Sixty-Two Nine Years Later

Today no one in Montauk had mentioned JFK’s bad day in Dallas.

Neither the BBC, New York Times, nor Al-Jazeera wrote a single line about the November 22, 1963 tragedy, proving the old adage that as you get old you forget and as you get older you are forgotten.

Sixty-two years might be a long time for some people, but I can remember exactly what I was wearing, as Sister Mary Honore sobbingly announced over the St. Mary's of the Hills intercom, “The president has been shot dead in Dallas.”

The standard uniform for St. Mary’s of the Hills was a blue tie, white shirt, and navy blue slacks for boys. We were in shock and even more so, when the nuns sent us home early, but people recover fast from tragedy, because on the bus ride home 5th Grade Paul O’Conner said, “Well, I guess that settles what the Kennedys are getting for Christmas. A Jack in the Box.”

The older boys beat him up for his bad taste, because even 8th Graders understood that America had been changed forever and not necessarily for the better. School was cancelled for the rest of that week and I hung my school uniform in the closet till that next Monday.

There was nothing on TV throughout the weekend.

No cartoons.

No movies.

Only the dead president's funeral, although CBS showed NFL football on Sunday. The upstart AFL cancelled their games, which was the turning point for their league.

In the following months the Warren Commission concluded that Lee Harvey had acted alone. Conspiracy theorists have refuted this finding as well as the official Single Bullet Theory, attributing the assassination to the CIA, Castro, the Mafia, Cuban exile groups, and anti-communist Pentagon cliques.

Of course my theory runs counter to the mainstream in that I think RFK arranged his brother’s death for having ordered the murder of Marilyn Monroe by J. Edgar Hoover.

I wrote recently that I had only been in two movies; THE LAST SONG and a foot fetish short, however three years ago my friend Randy Koral came out to Thailand from Paris to film a version of my short story THE TRUTH AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH. We changed the setting from Michigan's Upper Peninsula to Thailand and the fat man was on the run to Cambodia instead of the Inuit nation. I played the lead and Nik Rieter starred as the black operative hitman.

My screenplay centered on a long monologue of my JFK assassination theory. The day of this scene I had a 103 fever. Every attempt to complete this three-minute piece ended in failure further proving the wisdom of my never having pursued an acting career.

Nik on the other hand was great.

Cockney accent and bad teeth.

The film was never edited to a rough cut. Randy was soon diagnosed with brain cancer. Two operations in France had him in remission. He was supposedly coming to New York this winter. Maybe we can reshoot the flubbed scenes then.

I miss JFK, especially after seeing the film 13 DAYS, which shows how a real president should act in a crisis.

His last words in Dallas were in in response to Governor Connelly’s saying, “You can’t say the people of Dallas don’t love you.”

“No, I wouldn’t say that.”

Four shots proved them wrong.

Here's to you John, We barely knew you.

MISSILE AWAY

During our youth my older brother was a pyromaniac. Frunk nearly burned down each of our houses and those of our neighbors. Each time my mother punished us both with a wooden spoon and my father sternly admonished our incendiary behavior, yet my older brother was undeterred by cracks across the knuckles and hard words.

The early 1960s were the height of America's Space Race with the Soviet Union and Frunk abandoned his fiery endeavors to conduct missile experiments with discarded hair spray cans collected from garbage cans in our neighborhood. Our blast site was a secluded sandpit not far from our suburban development on the South Shore of Boston, Chuckie, my next-door neighbor, Frunk, and I taped the cans together and positioned the ersatz V-2 of Aquanet hair in a bonfire.

The fuse was a bundle of sparklers. Sometimes the cans exploded in fiery separate burst, but occasionally the strapped cans arced across the sky at low altitudes spitting out toxic flames.

None of us suffered injuries from these experiments, however the town police warned our parents that we were a danger to the community and my older brother obeyed their orders to abandon our emulation of NASA's failed rocket launches.

At my parochial high school I resisted the draw of the Rocket Club.

Instead I ran cross country.

The five-mile course passed an abandoned mansion. Our competitors were never forewarned that their runners had to leap a stone wall to cross the estate, giving us an edge and my school won two consecutive state championships in 1967 and 1968, however our dominance was challenged by a mysterious government agency's purchase of the mansion. The men occupying the estate wore white shirts and black ties.

Chuckie Manzi said they were CIA experimenting on apes and we listened for the shrieks of chimps, as we panted across the fields for the start of the 1969 season. They were none.

Upon our arrival back at the gym, our coach informed us that the grounds were off-limits.

"What about the wall?"

"No more wall," said Brother Jude.

Later that month we lost our first race in years.

"We want the wall."

We protested to Brother Jude. He sided with us and the principal asked for special access for these bi-weekly races.

The men in the white shirts refused this request.

Every practice session we passed the mansion calling them 'assholes', then trained harder to regain our edge.

Few of our fellow students cared about the track team.

Our school's football team was State Champs. They had cheerleaders from the nearest Catholic girls school

Our only supporters were the Rocket Club, who said that this matter was not over.

None of us paid them much mind.

They were nerds and wem worried that nerdiness might be contagious.

We won our next race, although I barely beat out our rival's 5th runner.

Afterward the Rocket Club glared at the distant mansion and the cross-country team exchanged a conspiratorial glance with them. We nodded 'go for it'. Whatever they had planned was more than all right by us.

The next day the school's Rocket Club announced a test of their missiles and the brothers assembled the students in the field behind the high school. The principal instructed the collective classes to stand a good distance from the launch area, because these rockets were not small.

One of them was at least ten-feet long.

After running a series of tests, the Rocket Club held up a flare and lit the rockets. A score of missiles soared into the sky.

Even the football team applauded the nerds and the brothers beamed with satisfaction, thinking maybe one of these boys might end up at NASA.

Off in the distance a few of the men in the white shirts stood outside the mansion.

The rocket club aimed this final missile, the ten-footer, at the estate.

The men shouted and the president of the rocket club lit the fuse. The men ran for cover.

The missile covered the half-mile between the field and mansion in less than a second.

The explosion was muffled by out our applause.

Afterwards the men in the white shirts filed a complaint with the town police.

They ignored the filing, since some of their kids were on the track team and a week later we regained permission to run through the field and won the state championship for the third time in a row.

No one ever said anything bad about nerds in our school again.

Not because they were heroes, but they were dangerous, although not to anyone on our side and that's the way it should be when you're young.

There are us and there is them and them don't mean nothing to us.

ps my older brother was really pissed that he hadn't been there.

Free Palestine

NO REST FOR THE WICKED - Boston - 2008

Eleven years after leaving the USA for good I departed from Thailand in May of 2008. My internet business had been wiped out by the shrinking dollar. Being broke in New York was not fun and at the month’s end I bussed up to Boston to celebrate my birthday.

Written 1/9/13 2:51 PM

That night my brother-in-law, she, and I ate homemade pizza and drank wine. After bidding the two good-night, I lay on the guest room bed, tossing and turning in fits. I had four children north of Bangkok. The cost of living was less than in the USA, but nothing was free in Ban Nok in the Western Forest of Thailand.

“You sleep okay?” my sister asked the next morning in their kitchen.

“Not really.”

I told Gina about my situation. My brother-in-law was expecting to be hit up for a loan. His wife sighed with sympathy and went online.

“I’ll find you something.”

“A job?” I hadn’t worked in Boston since way back in the last century.

“No, a medical experiment. Dave did three of them for toothpaste.” Gina typed out words in the Google search engine.

“$100 for each and all I had to do was test their product.” Her husband smiled with bright white teeth. He had retired from his executive position two years ago. “And it didn’t take long either.”

“I like the sound of that.” $100 wasn’t going to solve my money problems. I had four young children back in Thailand.

“This looks interesting.” My sister took off her glasses and squinted at the screen. “Beth Israel Hospital is conducting a sleep deprivation experiment. They will pay $1500 for a 6-day session culminating with a 60-hour session of staying awake. They have a trial starting next week.”

“Are drugs involved?” I exchanged a glance with my brother-in-law. We were brought up in the 1960s.

“No drugs.” My sister burst our bubble.

“I stopped drugs year ago.” Ja-bah and Ice were the only intoxicants available in Thailand and I wasn’t into crystal meth. “But if I eat garlic I can’t sleep.”

“Really.” Gina like my dearly departed mother loved garlic. “I eat it and I sleep like a baby.”

“Different vibes for different people.” If I was accepted to the experiment, then I would have a pocket filled with garlic to help me through the end stretch.

“Call them now.” My sister handed me a number.

“Yes, boss lady.” I went downstairs and called the Sleep Deprivation Unit or SDU. An operator answered my call and scheduled an interview for that afternoon. Gina was heading into Boston to teach at her university.

“I’ll drop you at the hospital.”

“You wanna join me?” I asked her husband in their day room.

“Last thing I need is to be deprived of sleep.” Dave was lying on the couch and lifted a thumb. The 59 year-old retiree was destined for a mid morning nap. “But you have my blessing.”

“No sleep for six days.” It sounded like a CIA rendition test.

“But $1500 at the finish line. Keep your eyes on the prize.” Dave was already heading to the Land of Nod.

My sister and I discussed our children on the way to work. Her daughter was living up in Maine and her son was working in Washington. Mine were on the other side of the world.

“I wish they were closer.” I actually wished that I had never come back to the States, but there was little work for farangs in Thailand other than running go-go bars or teaching English in up-country schools. The worst rather than better I was stuck in the USA.

My sister dropped me at Beth Israel.

“Good luck.”

“Thanks.”

I walked into the reception area and the woman at the desk handed me a special pass for the 7th floor.

“The research labs are closed to the public.”

The magnetic strip on the pass allowed access to that floor. An armed guard stood at the glass doors. He examined my ID and escorted me to a small office with a view of Fenway Park. He pointed to the forms on the desk.

“Fill out those and a doctor will be right with you.”

The door shut and I filled out my age, DOB, weight, medical history, and checked that I had no allergies.

An attractive female doctor entered the office. She shook my hand and read my application.

“Everything looks fine.” She held up a syringe. “You mind if we take a blood sample?”

“Not at all.” I rolled up my sleeve and allowed her to draw blood from a vein. She buzzed in the guard, who took the syringe to another part of the lab.

“The tests begin on May 30th.”

“That’s the day after my birthday.” I planned on drinking flagons of wine that evening.

“Congratulations.” She picked up a form and read out the schedule for the test. “The first two days are for observation and cleaning out your body. You’ll be fed and can do most anything you want, except drink or smoke.”

“That’s fine. Can I bring books?” I was reading Peter Hopkirk’s THE GREAT GAME and ON THE ROAD was next on my list.

“Yes, but once the experiment begins, you’ll be put in a room without any stimulation. No books, no TV, no music.”

“Alone.” Solitary confinement was a punishment for rebellious prisoners.

“No, there will be a nurse with you and the room will monitored along with your vital signs. That stage will last sixty hours. Still interested?”

“Yes.” I was in this for the money and reckoned that I could stay up two and a half days without any artificial stimulation. “And do I get paid at the end of the test?”

“$1500 upon completion. Less for a shorter period.”

“Sounds good.”

“Your blood work should be ready later this afternoon. Call us around 4.”

“What are these tests for anyway?”

“To test the endurance of a body and mind under stress,” the young doctor said with the politeness of a camp commander at Dachau. “Is that a problem?

“No.” I exited from the office and then the hospital steeled for the task ahead.

I rode the trolley back to my sister’s house in Boston’s western suburbs. Dave was kneading bread. I phoned the hospital at 4. I was accepted as a guinea pig and we drank a glass of wine on his porch.

“Easy money.” We toasted my windfall.

A half-hour later my youngest sister turned up on her way back from work. The defense lawyer had a bottle of wine in her hand. Dave and I were in no condition to refuse her generosity and raised glasses to toast the wonders of modern medicine. Pam asked, “What’s that about?”

I explained about the upcoming test. The sun lowered into the trees across the street.

“You’re joking, aren’t you?” She put down her glass.

“No.” I planned on sleeping twelve hours a day or more until May 30.

”You have to be crazy.”

“Jesus fasted forty days and forty nights.” As an atheist I hated quoting the Bible, especially since I felt like I had confused the Mesiah's fast in the Wilderness with Noah’s Flood.

”A client of mine did something like that for Harvard and she’s still not right.” Pam punched up the devastating effects of the experiments on Dave’s computer. She was good with research as every defense lawyer should be for their clients. “Some student from California stayed awake without any drugs for 264 hours. The doctors claimed that it didn’t bother him.”

“So I’m good to go.”

“No." She shook her head reading further from the 1964 report. “The monitor said the subject suffered from moodiness, problems with concentration and short term memory, paranoia, and hallucinations.”

“I can deal with that.”

“At one point thought he was the winning quarterback in the Rose Bowl game.”

“That’s better than being the loser.”

“No, but it says here even moderate sleep deprivation can result in psychosis.”

“You don’t want a broke head.” Dave was also kibboshing the idea.

“I need the money.” I had less than $20 in my pocket. The Fung Wah bus to New York was $15. No one hitchhiked on the highways anymore.

“Not that bad.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Cancel it.” She held up my phone and I obeyed her command.

“Here’s a check for $300.” My sister wrote it out without hesitation.

“Thanks.”

“And I’m driving you to the bus station tomorrow.” Pam wasn’t risking my doing the test anyway.

“Ha.” Dave knew my ways too.

“I’m not going to the hospital.”

“Yes, you are.” My youngest sister was adamant.

“Not before my birthday.”

“He’s got you there.” Dave opened her bottle of wine. It was a nice Pinot Grigio.

“And I have to stay for your birthday.” Hers was June 1. “We’ll drive down to Hull and have lobsters on Nantasket Beach.”

“You’re on.” Pam handed the bottle to Dave.

“That’s what great about family. They know you better than you know yourself.” Our host raised his glass and we clinked to his toast, as I pocketed her check.

$300 wasn’t $1500, but it was better than losing my mind.

That I could do on my own for free and that night I slept the Sleep of the Dead. It was almost better than life itself. At least until I woke the next morning with the smell of bacon wafting up from the kitchen. My brother-in-law would be cooking breakfast.

Oh, what a lucky man I was.

Not CIA

Phillip Brook came from Tasmania. We met in Paris during the 1980s. He was a journalist and hardcore junkie also a little queer, not that I minded, because queers were much more fun than straights in Boston, New York, or the City of Lights. We worked together for several magazines and journals. He was a better writer, but he never criticized my typos.

"What can you expect from a man with a lisp, a stutter, and dyslexic fingers?"

I didn't have an answer for him, but we were good friends and right before Christmas of 1991 he came to New York to interview the head of the UN. He asked where we should meet for drinks.

"The Sheraton on 6th Avenue. The ground floor bar's decor is pure 1960s."

"Perfect."

That evening I met Phillip in front of Rockefeller Center showed up at the aging hotel. Thousands of demonstrators surrounded the Hilton. They were protesting the visit of President George H. W. Bush. He was running a war of genocide in Guatemala. Hundreds of riot police manned the barricades.

"Maybe we should go someplace else."

"What for?"

We were both wearing suits. I approached the cops. One asked, "Where do you think you're going?"

"To meet two hookers in the bar." I pointed to the Hilton.

"I like an honest man." He pulled on the steel barrier. Shouts harangued us. Phillip and I ddin't care, but he asked, "Are there hustlers too?"

"Only the best for the Hilton."

We had several drinks and I told him how my sister-in-law had worked for Bush during his time as Director of the CIA.

"You know everyone in Paris thinks you're a spook."

"I have a rejection letter from the agency. 1980."

"Further proof you are what you say you're not. They probably dosed you with LSD and then planted you as a mole to blossom in the sun decades later."

I realized brook had been holding out of drugs and I body-searched him for three seconds.

Success.

"I was going to give you."

Yeah, right."

I did a little of this and more of that.

We entertained the working boys and girls at the bar. Phillip told them I worked for the CIA. They believed him too. I pimped them to the hordes of GOP supporters awaiting the President. I asked for nothing. They all bought me drinks. Way too many for comfort and I told Phillip, "I have to go to work tomorrow."

"I do too, but how are we going to get through the mob."

"Mob?"

Shouts chanted profanities outside. People were angry. I could pass for GOP, even though I was 100% anarchy. We were going out the same way we came in and I said to Phillip, "We'll leave by the garage."

"I'll follow you."

We left the bar. The security was lax. The first line was fat cops working overtime. The second line of defense were State Troopers. Dumber than a bucket of mud. The garage was ahead. A few SAecret Service agents glanced at us. They deemed us harmless. AS we arrived at the exit, a limousine hauled up to the curb. Everyone snapped to attention. Someone opened the rear door and out popped the President of the USA. Taller than I thought, but I called out, "George."

He turned his head with alarm and I approached him to say, "My sister-in-law worked for you."

I mentioned her name and he relaxed.

"I love that girl."

"And she always says good for you, Mr. President."

We shook hands and he entered the hotel. An agent came up and asked, "Who are you?"

"A citizen of the USA."

Phillip and I exited from the hotel.

"Not CIA. Bullshit."

"100%"

He didn't believe me and there's some times when I don't believe myself, except I have the proof.

RIP George H W Bush.

Sleeplessness 101

Five year ago my sister and I were sitting at her kitchen table. She handed me a newspaper clipping and pointed out an requesting volunteers for a medical survey on sleeplessness.

"Beth Israel is paying $1500 to those candidates completing the 10-day experiment."

"$1500. That's a good wage for two weeks."

I was broke and called the clinic. The receptionist scheduled an interview at noon. My sister taught at a college down the street from Beth Israel and drove me into the Fenway. I walked over to the hospital. I had been born in its Richardson House. This was my first visit since that day.

On the fifth floor I was met by the doctor directing the test.

"Basically you have to stay up 60 hours straight. Someone will be with you. This experiment is to see how far a human can go without sleep."

I agreed to the test, however I failed the physical. My liver readings were redlining from a session of drinking vodka with my brother-in-law. We had been celebrating a Celtics victory.

My younger sister later informed me that 60-hours sleep deprivation could cause lasting mental problems.

"And possibly death."

"I could have used the $1500."

"Enforced sleep keep deprivation can lead to Diabetes, Stroke, high blood pressure, amnesia, skin damage, and number of cardiac problems."

"Okay, so I didn't need the $1500 that bad."

My younger sister gave me a c-note.

Two days later I bussed back to New York with $80 in my pocket.

I read the newspaper on the Fung Wah bus.

The CIA was under investigation for 'enhanced techniques' used by the CIA on the thousands of suspects passing through the off-shore torture camps.

One of them was sleep deprivation.

Vice President Cheney had always insisted that losing a little sleep didn't hurt anyone and neither did standing on their feet for eight hours at a time.

I beg to differ, because later that month I traveled to Russia.

JFK-Moscow-Kiev-Moscow-St. Petersburg-Moscow-JFK in eight days.

Too many flights in to few days.

Normally I crashed for a good 8-10 hours a night.

I barely caught three in Rodina.

My vim was shot, but this was nothing.

The CIA had kept detainees up for weeks on end.

Without any cocaine either.

Give me a little blow and I'll stay up for a week, but my nerves would be very frayed, despite previous Vice President Cheney's protestation that a little torture was a good thing.

I love my sleep.

Plus I'm old-fashioned about my dreams.

Cue up Cindy Crawford, please.

I am Old School.

Drones Over DC

It's winter in the Hindu Kush. The high temperature in Kabul will hit 42 F around noon. Sunny skies will afford the US drone operators excellent down-ground vision over Taliban territoryty. They are also seeking targets throughout the world to exact a deadly toll on the enemies of America with a lethal tool. According to Wikipedia the drone Predator can fly up to 400 nautical miles (740 km) to a target, loiter overhead for 14 hours, then return to its base. Many of these drones carry Hellfire missiles. THey have been featured on CNN, Fox News, and Hollywood movies as an effective weapon against 'reputed' terrorists. The Pentagon has spent billions on this project, which is a refined version of General Curtis LeMay's 'Bomb them into the Stone Age' strategy, and the main architect of this policy has been nominated for CIA Director. I worked over twenty years as a physionomiste at night clubs. My job was to decipher people at a glance, John Brennan, the White House counterterrorism chief, and I say fuck you. He had supported torture and assassination without oversight. I like that he can speak Arabic, but my gut feeling is that he has sat in dark rooms and seen what darkness is within the heasrts of men. It is never a pretty sight.

No Sleep In Space

NASA conducted the first fly-by of MArs in 1965. The Mariner 4 orbited the Red Planet sending back photos as well as measuring factors of Space for future missions. Communications with the satellite ceased on the winter solstice of 1967, however the US space agency continued to explore the distant planet with unmanned robots. At present five spacecrafts conduct experiments both in space and on the surface of the fourth planet from the Sun. A manned trip planned for 2020 has been pushed back to 2030 by NASA, while MARS ONE, a private space enterprise, announced its intent to land a man on the planet in 2023. Every two years the proximity of Mars and Earth shorten the round-trip journey to 450 days, requiring half the energy of a longer trip. A major challenge to this voyage is the stress on the crew having to live in cramped quarters for over a year and the tedium of never seeming to get anywhere. "The monotony of going to Mars and coming back again is something that will need to be addressed in the future. You don't want your crew hanging around doing nothing," said the man in charge of the mission. The pseudo-astronauts slept even more on the 'return leg' Russian scientists discovered that more than half crew members suffered from insomnia on this trip to nowhere. I know the feeling. After I eat garlic, I can't sleep, but not sleeping for weeks on end in Space would drive people crazy and crazy is never good when you have nowhere to run. Beware of HAL.

A Little Secret

Washington has expressed shock over the resignation of CIA director David Petraeus after his affair with a biographer and a former army officer came to light. At first I thought that the former general was ousted by a cabal of right-minded thinkers seeking to avenge his wrong-doings in Afghanistan and Iraq, however Petraeus's meandering from his wife was part of an ongoing investigations into abusive emails by the general's paramour to a friend of his wife. There is something really funky about this story. Firstly any CIA director who can't keep his affair secret should be fired by lack of discretion, but Paula Broadwell doesn't seem the type not to hold her sand. This scandal has all the hallmarks of the hacked phone and internet. And only one group of people do that. Newscorp. Personally I'd greenlight his affair faster than okaying the assassination of Osama Bin Ladin. 'A Collosal mistake'. I don't think so. There is something else to this story. What?

Chappaquiddick Incident

'Chappaquiddick' conjures up a nasty car accident to the American psyche older than fifty. The story of a drunken senator abandoning his lover to a watery death is unknown to Twitterites agog at Tom Cruise breaking up with his wife. The senator in question was Edward Kennedy, the heir to Camelot. The victim was Mary Jo Kopechne. The 1969 incident permanently damaged the youngest Kennedy's chances to sit in the White House, especially after he told the press.

"When I got to the car. Mary Jo wasn't there."

The famous accent said that sentence with conviction, however police divers found Mary Jo Kopechne in the overturned car. A later inquest speculated that the drowned office worker had lived for 2 hours. Ted Kennedy settled with the family and the Massachusetts voters re-elected him to office by a landslide. He was a bad boy, but he was our bad boy.

Some conspiraphiles have attributed the incident to Teddy being drugged by CIA agents, thus explaining his erratic behavior. As much as I faulted that agency for participation in the deaths of JFK and RFK, Teddy does not get a free ride from Chappaquiddick. He fucked up and fucked up big time.

Even if he was set up by the CIA too.

He should have seen it coming.

No Rest For The Wicked

Upon my return from Thailand in April of 2008 my finances were in ruins. My savings had been wiped out an individual sub-prime melt-down minus the many zeros. I went up to Boston to see my sister. She commiserated with my situation to find an experiment on sleep-deprivation at the Beth Israel Hospital. The experiment paid $1500 for a 6-day session culminating with a 60-hour session of being awake. No drugs. Only the company of a doctor. Having successfully survived 3-day binges in the 1980s I called up the number and went into Boston to take the preliminary tests. The hospital said that my health was fine and the doctors scheduled me for a session at the end of May. May 30th to be exact, which was one day before my birthday. "What are these tests for?" They sounded suspiciously similar to the CIA torture techniques used on captives in the War on Terror. "To test the endurance of a body and mind under stress." The doctor was a young woman. Her outfit was spotless. The office was banal same as the camp commander at Dachau. "Is there a problem? "No." I needed the money. My sister and brother-in-law celebrated my hitting an age in the 50s with wine and pizza. The night almost felt like a last meal and in the morning I woke ready to take the trolley into the hospital. My younger sister came by for breakfast and upon hearing about my proposed involvement in this experiment said, "You have to be crazy. A friend of mine did something like that for Harvard and she's still not right." She punched up the devastating effects of the experiments on her computer. Psychosis and nervous breakdowns were the least of my worries. After 22 days death was eminent. "I need the money." I had less than $20 in my pocket. The Fung Wah bus to New York was $15. "Not that bad." and my younger lent me $500. It wasn't $1500, but then I didn't have to go through with the rendition treatment for my country. Oh what a lucky man. It's good to have family.