What truths do the fictions that the Bush administration propogates reveal that reality obscures?
Annals of National Security: The General’s Report: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker
“Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not ethical."
PAW PAW, Mich. – A 21-year-old man was taken on a wild ride Wednesday afternoon when the wheelchair he was in became attached to the grille of a semi-truck and was taken four miles down a highway at about 50 mph.
My name is Ken. Is there a bathroom anywhere nearby?
I assume you mean how I ended up taking a wild ride in front of this semi down the Red Arrow Highway and not how I got myself into my more general predicament--the wheel chair--in the first place. If you want that story, it's a good one and someone ought to write a book. I'm sure it would bring you all to tears and make you want to support Jerry's kids or something. I suppose what you want me to say is that I was simply crossing the street here from my nature walk along with my caretaker, Joyce--say hello Joyce--when I found myself lodged in the grille of this semi-truck. It's like something from a bad b-movie, isn't it? But there's much more to the story than I'm sure you actually want to hear or report.
Well, let's just say sometimes accidents happen and sometimes what appear to be accidents aren't really accidents at all. Have you seen "Jackass, the Movie"?
Make of it what you will. It was kind of like a ride at the fair. You can quote me on that.
Who said anything about a prank? Aren't there more important things you should be reporting in the newspaper? I suppose this will now make the national news, which reflects poorly on us all doesn't it? We've got genocide in Sudan, we've got a never ending war in Iraq, we've got the Cubs winning four of their last five and the NBA finals and you want to report on a highway wheelchair ride in Paw Paw? Why not stick to important things like Paris Hilton's jail sentence? I mean, I can see it now... "National Attention to Man's Weel Chair Adventure Draws Oprah and Letterman."
I hadn't realized that media persons were this perceptive. I have a few things I would like to say to the world, now that I have your attention. My fellow Americans, I want you to remember three things when you think of Ken, the guy who got his wheel chair stuck in the grille of a semi-truck and ended up taking a four mile carnival type ride down the Red Arrow Highway in Paw Paw. First, I want you to remember that semi-truck drivers are people too. Sure they drive giant death machines and pump countless tons of pollutants into our air, but they have important things they deliver us across country like highly flammible fuels and cancer causing pesticides. They just wanna serve you. Second, I want you to remember the importance of getting the potholes filled on all of your roads. I was just one big pothole from doing a pretty serious face plant out there today. Call your local and state officials and remind them of the importance of smooth roads. Third, and finally, I want you to remember that the handicapped are capable of biting irony. The news media is not. Too often you have looked to the handicapped for sincere and inspiring stories of overcoming the odds. And by and large we have played along. Today, you have witnessed another inspiring story of a handicapped boy overcoming incredible odds. Send cash contributions to the Ken Henderson foundation, care of Ken Henderson to see that these inspiring stories can continue to be told. Thank you.
The autobiography I had been writing was organized around certain events in my life that either a) mysteriously matched the experiences of characters in great books or b) happened to occur at a time when I was reading some novel or story and made some connection or personal application giving me the tools to deal with my immediate reality. About 175 pages in, I got stuck. It seemed I’d run out of interesting facts to share about life, and facts are everything in autobiography. So I went to work looking to live some more and to read some more, hoping to find or even manufacture more material–more experiences of literary characters that matched my own or instances in novels that I could connect with and apply. I read and I read. One morning a couple days ago I read these lines.
"Every man has within his own reminiscences certain things he doesn’t reveal to anyone, except, perhaps, to his friends. There are also some that he won’t reveal even to his friends, only to himself perhaps, and even then, in secret. Finally, there are some which a man is afraid to reveal even to himself; every decent man has accumulated a fair number of such things. In fact, it can even be said that the more decent the man, the more of these things he’s accumulated. Anyway, only recently I myself decided to recall some of my earlier adventures; up to now I’ve always avoided them, even with a certain anxiety. But having decided not only to recall them, but even to write them down, now is when I wish to try an experiment: is it possible to be absolutely honest even with one’s own self and not to fear the whole truth? Incidentally, I’ll mention that Heine maintains that faithful autobiographies are almost impossible, and that a man is sure to lie about himself. In Heine’s opinion, Rousseau, for example, undoubtedly told untruths about himself in his confession and even lied intentionally, out of vanity. I’m convinced that Heine is correct; I understand perfectly well that sometimes it’s possible out of vanity alone to impute all sorts of crimes to oneself, and I can even understand what sort of vanity that might be" (Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes From Underground).
This was the inspiration I needed. What this was saying was that an autobiography need not be entirely free from lies. I was perfectly free to make things up. At least I think that’s what this was saying. At any rate, this is what it was saying to me.
I keep a blog, as well. A few minutes ago I stumbled upon another blog by some guy somewhere in Indiana who claims, and I quote, “all blogs are fiction.” He seemed to suggest that each blog entry begins with the creation of a narrator. I think he may be on to something. I had been confused about this in my autobiography. You see, all along, I had been thinking of the “I” in my book as actually me–the author. But the “I” is, in fact, just the narrator I’ve created to tell a story. This truth has set me free.
I must, since I can’t write dead Dostoevsky (or his narrator), send this blogger a note thanking him for setting me free from the prison of writer’s block and the hell of facts.
Typically, he jumps rope a few minutes before stretching and then taking his jog. He runs for a set number of minutes, then turns around and retraces his steps along the country roads of Baugo Township. Today’s set number of minutes was twenty; he turned around at a nondescript point in between a corn field and a soy bean field on C.R. 22., and ran home again. That makes a forty minute jog.
Normally he does not rifle stones at the back windshields of passing cars, but the wildly grinning wiseguy showing off for his girlfriend made the mistake of pretending to swerve at him just as he – this minding his own business jogger – happened to be passing a gravel driveway. He saw it coming; made eye contact with the driver, even noticing his goatee. Of course the driver had no intention of actually hitting him, just a hardy-har-har near miss for poops and giggles, hoping to get a flirtatious smack from his girl in the passenger seat.
The jogger was already bent over and grabbing an egg shaped rock as the back bumper of the blazer whizzed past him, missing him by a foot or two. The driver could not have known that he – this shirtless jogger – had pitched in the minors for a couple years and was known for having “a lively arm."
An egg shaped rock traveling at 78 mph (had his arm been warmed up, it might have been more like 90 or 91, had it been warmed up and ten years ago during the middle of baseball season, 95 maybe) thrown at an SUV traveling at 40 mph in the same direction but with a 30 or 40 foot head start doesn’t have the force to smash through the rear window of said vehicle. But it has enough to get the attention of the driver. That is, if the thrower of the rock has an accurate arm.
What might have followed had this former lively arm also had pinpoint control is anybody’s guess. This toss, like far too many others in his too short career, was just a bit outside.
www.xanga.com/robbyprenkert