Just Us

We Speak, They Act

Friends, it appears as if the Swill is on a roll: subsequent to our posts earlier in the week, even more Marines and one sailor have been charged with murder. Bad for them, good for abstract notions of justice and the mildest gesture toward the rule of law, yes yes yes you know all that. But you're not here to be reminded of symbolic gestures (what else is the rule of law, after all), you're here to lend a hand, to pitch in where the pitching is welcome, to help a weblog on a mission. We call for indictments, indictments are handed down (strictly, they're handed "up," but you're not specialists and we don't want to make anyone feel unwelcome). And you're here to make it all happen.

Accident? While reminding everybody that correlation is not causation, we'd also like to remind everybody that We Think Not. You're a part of this juggernaut, friends, so hold on while we spill some unfortunate beans about an internal shake-up.

Yes, even with such a string of demi-successes (we'll say Justice succeeded when the last king is hanged by a noose made from the guts of the last priest: until then, there is no such thing as lone justice), we've decided neither to rest on our laurels nor to make more waves in the military-justice system, but rather to take care of some metaphorical and literal housecleaning. Taking the cue from Our President, we'll be abandoning our official duties and spending the next week engaged in a ceremonial rite known only to a select few: not the cutting of mesquite brush, not the sick Yalie veneration of stolen bones, but rather the Exorcism of an Apostate.

Upon Our Infinite Tolerance

Due to our own indolence (and a typist who was out sick with a scabrous finger -- believe us, you don't want to hear that story) we didn't share the story of the dinner we shared last week with a real-live Episcopal Priest. Don't laugh: we have dinner guests, and sometimes our dinner guests have dinner guests, and their guests become our guests, and the next thing one knows there's a goddamn Priest sitting at our table, eating our hummus and drinking our wine (unfamiliar with the niceties of theology, we forbade him from any transubstantiating: not because we object to the magic, but because one of us is a vegetarian).

Because the laws necessitating hospitality toward strangers overrode the laws commanding us to poke fun at Priests, we were sweet as pie. That doesn't mean it's not fun to poke fun at priests, just that it's too easy, and that in the end a good dinner served with ample wine and light, suggestive banter with affable folks is our own form of evangelism. We therefore refrained from pointing out the very basic illogic underlying his reasoning, smiled wanly when he ordered us to stop reading the Rituale Romanum (specifically the exorcism rites contained therein) for Latin practice, and enjoyed another glass of chilled rosay. Nice guy, somewhat overfond of calling for the High-Five. We imagined it was a vestige of youth group.

Anyway, friends, he offered up heart-chilling tales of parishioners who have recently been beset by demons, spirits, imps and whatnot, and sad tales of his attempts to exorcise those demons. Turns out the demons were too tough for him -- they may well have been unionized -- and he's resolved to call in the big guns: in his words, "I've tried everything, and it's beyond me. I think it's time to call The Catholics."

We agreed, sent him on his way, and opened another bottle of rosay. Everybody happy.

Exorcisms, Parallels Are Drawn, &c.

Why the fuck would we admit -- to you, of all people? -- that we allowed a priest at our table without attempting to arouse any liberation-theology envy, without quoting Bertrand Russell, and without even saying "Look, we like you, have more hummus, people can believe what they want to and associate with whom they like, but -- between us -- you have to admit that Christianity is pretty stupid. C'mon, you can tell us. Our lips are sealed." Are we patting ourselves on our own back, crowing at unprecedented civility?

Non.

No, friends, what we're trying to say is that it doesn't take a Priest or a Demon to call for an exorcism. Despite our best efforts, despite our vigilance and support and ideological purity, despite our love and our hate and our genuine attempts to ensure that everybody who's on board remains above board, a key member of the Swill staff -- a Swillian Senior Grade, if you're keeping records -- is not only defecting, but defective.

Despite the air of world-weary insouciance, we long detected a faint whiff of corruption emanating from this person, a trusted friend and colleague at our too-small compound. Turns out the innards and outards were just fine, but there was nonetheless a rot of a most serious socio-economic-political stripe; after some keen detective work, we discovered that this person had abandoned most of the principles by which we here stand, and Purchased Property.

You know as well as we do, friends, that all property is theft. But we have no word low enough for thieves taking possession of a tidy two-bedroom ranch with original oak floors, small fireplace with pine hearth, woods in front and behind, definitely needs some aesthetic adjustments but that's what wallpaper stripper is for, right? No words, and most importantly, neither phone nor internet whilst we engage in our stripping, swabbing, drilling, laying, pounding of both tongues and grooves, etc. Plus, by long tradition, cameras will be checked at the door.

We will therefore be reporting back to you intermittently on the process by which we expel a formerly trusted member of our select order. But it may be a few days. Bear with us: in the meantime, did you ever think that perhaps we'd like to hear from you? Jesus.

A Question for Potential Recruits

Thanks to The Masses.

GWOT is a Marathon, Not a Sprint

6/20 UPDATE: Fucked. And it gives us no pleasure.

6/19 UPDATE: An hour ago, three Marines serving in Iraq were indeed charged with murder. Man alive, is it ever satisfying when our weblog journalism produces such immediate and drastic results in the military courts. No word yet on whether the two guys who got captured by masked militants will be treated as prisoners-of-war or as "enemy combatants". . .

To the two U.S. soldiers who have been captured by masked militants near Yusufiya, Iraq: you've been busy doing other things, so you may not have kept up with the theoretical minutiae in the GWOTorture.

Don't Worry.

The Bush Administration considers the Geneva Convention's ban on cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners of war to be, well, "quaint." And, Bush appended a signing order to the Congressional torture ban, which legal scholars agree gives him a sort of "get out of torture ban free card." And, lots of detainees have been kicked, beaten, or suffocated to death while in U.S. custody, and none of the kickers, beaters, or suffocaters have been convicted of murder.

But don't worry. I'm sure that the masked militants hadn't noticed. Even if they had noticed, I'll bet you can count on them to uphold the standards of conduct set by the United States government.

Seriously, though, you're fucked. Sorry.

Healthy Brews

At last. Amidst all the kvetching, quailing, bailing and wailing that passes for commentary around here, once in a long while we feel obligated to spread a little bit of the Good News. (Spoiler alert: if you arrived here looking for baby-jesus-good-newses, there's no real reason to continue). To wit:

Seems that a new study by some of those scientific types confirms what any moderately balanced person already knows: alcohol and coffee go together splendidly. Not just in the many delicious varieties of hot toddy, but in that weirdly bilious / delicious organ known as one's liver. That is to say, alcohol and coffee go together to make you a better person.

Literally.

See, it turns out that each cup of coffee you drink today will decrease your chance of developing alcohol-related liver damage by 22%. This means that the editorial board of the Swill has, in addition to a pointed and well-publicized regard for Old Style beer, a minus-1076% chance of developing cirrhosis over the course of our lifetimes. We drink so much coffee we're pretty much a walking fucking antidote to liver disease.

Yep. If it weren't for the fact that the country is lousy with dumbfucks, we'd be tempted to find in these results the first glimmering evidence of Intelligent Design.

He Hates Those Cans!!!

Howdy Friends. We're Back. More or less.

We'd like to say that our long absence is due to the fact that our cousin took a lot of pills and died, which she did.

We'd further like to excuse our absence by remarking that she killed herself after her husband, a deacon in their evangelical church, admitted to playing hide the tabernacle with her twelve-year-old-daughter, which he did.

We wish our twelve-year-old cousin's words upon learning of her mother's death hadn't been "If I hadn't told, she would be alive." But they were.

Sadly, that's not why we've been gone: we've been gone because we just don't have much to say. We'd like to reflect upon our cousin's death by quoting extensively from Hume's essay "Of Suicide," or from Nietzsche's touching remarks on the subject in Twilight of Idols, or perhaps even just by saying something funny about Seneca or Petronius, two guys who knew something about the art of dying. But we're sick of Hume, we're not grieving for her, and furthermore we're not really grieving at all: we just haven't been feeling very garrulous.

If there's still anybody out there, and you have any thoughts about things we might say, the suggestion box is hereby open. Until then, consider the beach.

Yes, friends, the Israeli army scored a huge victory today in their ongoing war against beach sand. A family on a picnic somehow got in-between the artillery shell and the intended target; The Guardian UK just reported that

The shells struck a large crowd at a beachside picnic, killing six people and wounding more than 30 others, the Palestinian health minister, Bassem Naim, said. A woman and two young children, six months old and 18 months old, were among the dead, medical officials said. All of the dead were believed to be related.

We are unsurprised: sand has long been known to employ human shields.