Veterans of Stupid Wars

My bestest friend JdP recently told me he is unimpressed with Vleeptron, which he says is nothing more than a whole bunch of my old stale rants. He hurt my self-esteem. I have left instructions with Vleeptron Homeland Equanimity & Justice that if he ever shows up at the Akira Kurosawa Zeta Beam Drome, he is to be relieved of his travellers checques, forced to withdraw his life's savings from the ATM, old motor oil will be poured all over him, and he will be shoved back in the ZB Kiosk and sent to Chester, Pennsylvania.

Also this bum has been to Tierra del Fuego, and I have not. He says they sell a lot of nifty t-shirts and tourist souvenirs after the 7-hour bus trip south from Buenos Aires. Soy muy verde con envy.

Last year I took my beloved website into the backyard and shot and buried it. It was starting to rot and smell bad, and a woman started writing me nasty e-mails telling me I was Evil because I had made a narrative collage, "The Cowboy and the Dutch Tulip Girl," which included an FBI wanted poster I stole from the Post Office of a middle-aged CPA and bank embezzler who deserted his wife and children and probably ran off to Paraguay with Anika, and is still missing. He wears thick glasses. The FBI considers him unarmed and undangerous.

As through this life you wander
You meet some funny men
Some rob you with a six-gun
And some with a fountain pen
-- "Pretty Boy Floyd," Woody Guthrie

I tried to kill my website, I tried to make it vanish entirely from the Internet, but that is surprisingly impossible in Cyberspace. Without ever asking my permission, some strange Archive Site just mirrored it and it will remain Ungoogleable and Accessible Only To The Very Clever for the next 11,224 years.

Say it wit' flowers
Say it wit' mink
But whatever ya do
DON'T SAY IT WIT' INK!
... a-dinka-doo
a-dinka-dee
a-dinka-die ...
-- Jimmy Durante

If you are Very Clever, you can find where AMY identified the Mystery Molecule du Jour and won herself a free meal at the (formerly) Fabulous Miss Florence Diner. There is also my Homage Page to the Fabulous Miss Florence Diner. Aimez-vous tripe?

Here is some Old, Stale Wine from my website. There's a new war on, a war as stupid as the war I got hosed up into 36 years ago, a new War Without End. I think it's time to crank up my Original Veterans' Organization again ...

Veterans of Stupid Wars

(est. 1998)

We're Veterans of Stupid Wars
We got the clap from foreign whores
We drink all night, we're really bores
And now we vote for more new wars!

Greetings, all veterans of the world's armies, navies, air forces and coast guards, and hi! Welcome to the first really new idea in Veterans' organizations --

The Veterans of Stupid Wars!

All veterans' organizations until now have been devoted to getting their members drunk and then, after their critical faculties and judgment centers have been destroyed, hypnotizing them into voting for the most rabidly warmongering, saber-rattling, jingoistic, right-wing candidates available. (This is called Patriotism.) The purpose, of course, is to make it a political breeze for the lawyers and bureaucrats who run these countries to cook up new wars all the time, and the purpose of that is to make all these sleazes rich and powerful while our kids get the crap bombed and shot out of them.

In the USA, all major veterans organizations have also been devoted to fostering violent fistfights between World War II veterans and Vietnam-era veterans, so Vietnam vets stay politically fragmented and powerless, and completely abandoned by older generations of veterans.

Likewise, traditional Russian vets organizations have helped their government abandon Afghanistan War vets to drug and vodka addiction, prison, suicide -- the same program as Vietnam vets. (This is called Patriotism.) Because they're sick, politically fragmented, poor or homeless, and abandoned by the WWII vets, the official government name for Vietnam and Afghan veterans is "bums."

The Veterans of Stupid Wars is Different!

1. If you say your war was stupid, that's fine with us, come on in! Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, Panama, Grenada, Desert Storm, Somalia, Haiti, the former Yugoslavia, the occupation of Southern Lebanon, the Iran-Iraq war, the British occupation of Northern Ireland -- if it seemed stupid to you, that's good enough for us.

2. We don't really drink beer all night, but if you want, you can smoke reefer all night (if you give us some). You get a vote about what songs to put in the juke box, but no Barry Sadler and no Kate Smith.

3. If you're fucked up on anything worse than pot, the Veterans of Stupid Wars will do whatever we can to get you medical treatment without giving you a lot of shit about it. We'll also do what we can to get or keep you out of jail. Our motto:

Bring 'em back alive!
(or don't send 'em in the first place.)
Then keep 'em alive!

4. Men, women, transgender vets welcome! You can wear any silly hat or uniform you want (I'm particularly fond of puttees), or you can do the whole thing in civvies, or, if it's warm enough, in the nude.

5. We swear never to make any cushy sweetheart corrupt deal with the Department of Veterans Affairs or any of its mirror veteran-killing bureaucracies in any other nation.

6. Our Community Outreach will do everything we can to keep idiot high-school kids from joining the military, and to keep military recruiters out of high schools.

7. Our Legion Hall has a Flag-Lite policy. And no guns! Don't bring your creepy souvenir guns and grenades around here! Also, we don't do funerals. We just do parties, barbecues and tailgates to rock concerts (like the B52s/Pretenders/Royal Crown Revue Time Capsule Tour).

I'll think up new Constitution articles as I go along.

Let's all go balmy
And join the army
See the world we never saw!
When we get feelin' down
We wander into town
And if the population
Should greet us with indignation
We chop 'em to bits
Because we like our hamburger raw!

-- Bertolt Brecht, "Soldiers' Song,"
"The Threepenny Opera"

I'm thinking of restricting the VSW to enlisted personnel and excluding commissioned and warrant officers, and restricting membership to vets who were either drafted or served no more than three years before the lights went on in their head and they got the hell out. I don't want a lot of old Lifer Volunteer types hanging around the Legion Hall. Let me know what you think about this.

So ... if you ever had to do time in anybody's stupid military, during anybody's stupid war, drop us some e-mail and let us know what's up with you, how you're getting along, why you think every scum official of the Department of Veterans Affairs ought to be brought up on War Crimes charges, and in general how you think we can stop having wars -- or at least have them fought by the same psycho assholes who start the wars. We'll print your comments here and see if we can get this ball rolling.

Yours sincerely,

Elmer Elevator

(SP5 US Army 1969-1971)
Founding Grand Poobah
The Veterans of Stupid Wars

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