WEEKLY SOUTHERN ARTS
"Sometime the boogaloo 
  • Home
  • From The Publishers
  • Summer 1970 - Fishing with Alligators
  • The Fire-Starters
  • Jimi Hendrix Was The Roy Buchanan of Rock & Roll & Other Rural American Stories
  • Real Genius
  • Guns, Faith and Murder
  • A Blue World
  • Nova Explains
  • Satan's Jr. High
  • The Million Dollar Store
  • The People Who care
  • Jesus and The Red Words
  • Sniffing Out White Supremacy
  • Artistic Con-cepts
  • “The Word From The Streets”
  • A Voice from the Crowd
  • How a White-man Became a Black-man In Order To Find His Whiteness—His Alright-ness.
  • Camille Bertault: 2 Views of a Secret
  • Judy Garland - "Soul Singer"
  • Robert & Jimi and the Twenty Seven Blues
  • The Last Vestiges of Mueller’s Collusion Case Just Died...and Nobody Noticed
  • The Great Pretenders
  • Imagine
  • Me and Junior Parker
  • The Republican
  • "Kill The Pigs!!!"
  • "Another of Trump's Henchmen Falls!!!"
  • Saving ISIS, Killing America
  • Cyrus The Great Strikes Again
  • The Big Lie - "Fear Russia Love China"
  • “The Russians are Coming!” (again)
  • "Impeach This!"
  • “Trump Backs Turkey Down”
  • Congressman Elijah Cummings Died last night at the age of 68.
  • Sweet Home Chicago (The Obama Shakedown)
  • Blind as a Bat
  • "I cannot Tell a Lie"
  • If Only Obama Was Still President, Syria Would Be Swell
  • Impeachment Fever
  • The Ballad of Hunter & Joe
  • "God Will Do It!"
  • Jeffrey Epstein & The Mysterious Case of The Infinite Pedophile Monkeys
  • The World is Insane: pt 4095 - “What is Less Than Zero?”
  • The Magic Bullet and The Lonely Death of Jeffrey Epstein
  • The Facts about Illegal Immigration
  • Chicago
  • Liz Warren Hits The Road
  • Traitors & Lies
  • “If The World Was Fair”
  • "The Few, The proud, The Insane: The Democrats"
  • "GOD & UNCLE SAM"
  • A Minor Complaint
  • Murder in The Meantime
  • The 22-yr-old Bottle Blonde
  • “Jerry “The Toad” & other Sesame Street Lessons”
  • "Riffing in Tongues"
  • The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence Revisited
  • The Few The Brave The FBI
  • Jesus and Liz Warren Want to Forgive You
  • The Witch Hunt Ends? Not Even Close.
  • Divine Guidance
  • The Crocodile & The Politician
  • Uncle Joe Apologizes
  • Why I Hate, Hate Crimes
  • It's Only a Matter of Time
  • Let It Rain
  • Dumb & Dumber
  • ....of Poets & Scientists
  • Goodbye Pork-Fried Rat
  • Hearing Duane Eddy
  • Is It Alright...To Be White?
  • "Hell is Real!!!"
  • Mauled by Reality
  • The Cult of The Secret Unknowing Marxist
  • Resist the Devil and He Will Flea
  • The Unwitting Socialist
  • Personal Stories
  • The Magula Report 2019
  • "The New Blood & The New Deal"
  • “The Wall"....and other, mostly silly conversations.
  • The War for the Soul of Mankind: “Stan Getz vs Eric Dolphy”
  • The "Others"
  • White Cracker-Ass Niggas
  • New York Gives The Thumbs Up To Mass Genocide
  • Rudy & Nat
  • A Close Shave With The Well-Intended Bigot
  • This is What Happens When My Favorite Band “The Mellow Herb” Comes To Town
  • The Hemispherical Brain Activity of a Wayward Somnambulist
  • Gun "Race With The Devil"
  • “Half Of All Millennials Think Barack Obama is More Important Than George Washington!!??”
  • "The Dow Posts The Biggest One Day Gain In History."
  • Good Morning Comrades
  • Sharks, Zombies & God
  • A Road Home
  • You're Getting Sleepy....Very Sleepy
  • Stupid People
  • Jezebel and Ahab Make a Comeback
  • Stevie Ray Vaughn: Derivitive Hack or Genius
  • Music & Reminiscence
  • “The Giant Facebook Id-Monster Attacks”
  • “Bullshit...it’s a Damned Invasion!”
  • Bobby-Jack
  • Lowell George searching for authenticity
  • For The Love of Krazy Kat
  • How I Came To Understand That Fighting The Power Was Useless. Unless...You Fight The Power By Giving Power to The Power To Fight The Power
  • Within the Lifetime Of The Average American...The U.S. Population Could Realistically Exceed That of China & India
  • The Problem of Blasphemy In a Secular Society
  • The Waitress and The Power
  • A Message From The Democrats After The 2018 Midterms
  • On This Day Before Election Day, These 5 Things Should Be Remembered As You Vote
  • A Lie Is As Good As The Truth....as long as it's a good lie
  • "Evil Republicans Suppress The Minority Vote"
  • The Enemy of Mankind
  • The Mob
  • Why Chinese Tariffs?
  • A Caravan To Nowhere
  • Ant Farm
  • “They’re Coming For Your Social Security!”
  • The Witchfinder Speaketh
  • Eating Sawdust & Voting Democrat
  • Muslims Kill Washington Post Journalist”...and other stories best left untold
  • Orwell's Nightmare
  • The Sobbing Walrus
  • A Telling Lie
  • Tribal Marxism
  • A Pimp and His Stable of Political Whores
  • "Evidence?.... I Don't Need No Damned Evidence!"
  • A Post Modern Lynching
  • Talkin’ Blues: A White Social Justice Warrior Meets a Bluesman
  • Pocahontas Wants To Impeach President Trump
  • A Belated Tip of The Hat To John McCain's Funeral
  • "Colin Kaepernick Fights The Power. My Brothers!"
  • Jack Ryan: Promoting Jihad & The Brotherhood of Man
  • Rediscovering Willie "The Fruitbat" Johnson
  • The Allegation
  • Message in a Bottle
  • A Coven of Witches
  • The Communist & The Exalted Cyclops
  • America vs Satanic Goat Worshipers
  • Forcing Transgender Penis Cakes on America
  • The Iidots Lament
  • Irritating Post: no. 529
  • Irritating Post: no. 642
  • My Brain is a Liar
  • My New Rap "Alligators"
  • Helpful Hints in Logic
  • The Unredacted News
  • A Loss of Composure
  • The Myth of Objective Fact Checkers
  • Surviving Politics
  • The Pit or The Pendulum
  • Do Not Forsake Me. Not For a Dollar. Not For a Dime.
  • Repeller of The Amorites
  • Sometimes I feel Like a Motherless Child...but only sometimes
  • Welcome To The Freakshow
  • Part One: The Monster Is Summoned
  • A Sideways Glance at Reality....
  • The Ballad of Trey Gowdy
  • Lies, Spies, and Thighs at The FBI
  • The Ballad of Charlie Crockett
  • Children in Cages
  • A Poem For Clifford Odets
  • Anthony Bourdain
  • Like Billy Eckstein Singing to an Empty Club at 1:00 AM on a Saturday Night in 1975.
  • A Letter From The Democratic National Committee
  • Bent
  • "There Were No Spies in The FBI and Other Fictional Tales"
  • The New Rules For Radicals
  • Blood In The Water
  • "3000 American Businesses Colluded with Russia For Profit"
  • I Spy (For The FBI)
  • Free Shit—and Bears
  • Cute Dog Videos
  • How The Press Aided and Abetted Terrorists
  • The Iran Deal Myth
  • The Scouts
  • Pinko Muthafuckas
  • Kelly Joe Phelps
  • Johnny Winter and, 1970
  • Happy Days Are Here Again
  • RAGe Against The Machine
  • Carlos and Buddy
    • How The Bird & Darwin Took Flight With a A7#9 Chord
  • Just a Few Glaring Examples Of Media Scummery
  • They Call it Stormy Monday
  • "I Gotta Take A Wiz" or, "How Starbucks Destroyed the World"
  • Who Needs War?
  • Why The Devil Don't Come Around No More
  • 2+2 Really Does = 4
  • The Tangled Web
  • Shadow Banning
  • What Changed?
  • Oblivious But Concerned
  • "Give Up!"
  • Jesus: The Spirit of Man and God That Illuminates The Darkness
  • Mickey Baker: Goin' To Kansas City
  • "Washington Saves America from Pot-smoking Mass Murderers"
  • Nontraditional Thoughts
  • Attack of The Trillion Dollar Omnibus Bill
  • Hearing Junior Wells “On Tap'' one more Time
  • Just Words
  • Muddy and Me
  • Racist Debtaes About Terrorsim
  • Fidel's Utopia
  • Unwitting Hypocrisy is The Best Kind of Hypocrisy
  • Excess Baggage
  • Excess Baggage pt. 2
  • Fake News Is The New Real News
  • The Death of Billy Graham and Manufacturing Consent
  • American Youth: The Rise of The New Media
  • Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Talk About Slavery and Shit
  • Just Smoke
  • Monkey in a Box
  • How The Children of Sal and Dean Destroyed The World
  • On This Cold Winter's Morn
  • The Crime of the Century
  • Evidence: What The Hell Is It?
  • They Were Pissed: America, Jack Kerouac, and the Beats
  • Negotiating The Maze Of Life and a Blues Shuffle.
  • Everyone Is Hitler (In their own Way)
  • The Mystery of The Giant Balloon Shark
  • Subterfuge and Its Discontents
  • God Debunks Global Warming
  • Day Two: God Continues To Debunk Global Warming
  • Strzoking Russia
  • The Al Franken Effect. Or, How to Destroy America and Lose Elections
  • The Big Maybe
  • The News Apocalypse
  • The Guitarticle (Guitar article)
  • The Nation of Lucifer
  • Slurring Pocahontas
  • Why Everything Good Said About Net Neutrality is a Lie
  • .....and behold, The Cause of Your Demise Is Upon You
  • The Trans-boy That Cried Wolf
  • Believe Nothing
  • Donald Trump Blasts The Heads Off Of Tiny Woodland Creatures
  • The Problem of Hypocrites
  • Roy Moore: Serial Pervert
  • I'm So Frustrated
  • The Devil's Whisper
  • Science Can't Dance
  • You're Gonna Have To Serve Somebody
  • Louie C. K.
  • Common Sense
  • Hunting For Witches
  • Living in The Age of "tRump"
  • The Devil is a Hustler
  • The Skinny
  • Eric Dolphy
  • ISIS Rode in On a Donkey
  • "The Manafort Indictment"
  • The Truth About the Middle East
  • Dennis Budimer's "Alone Together" Revisited
  • The Halloween Edition
  • The 20th Century Was Groovy
  • The Salesman
  • The Dossier
  • Elmore James
  • Isle of The Poor
  • The Patriarchy is Alive and Well
  • Moving Napoleon
  • Guns and Guerrillas
  • Playing Four
  • Hollywood and Scumbags
  • Why Everything You Think, Is Wrong
  • Killing Yourself With Terrorism
  • Being Liberal
  • Laced With Hate
  • A Message From Occupy Democrats
  • A Taxing Dilemma
  • What Really Happened with Aid in Puerto Rico
  • Colin Kaepernick and Beyoncé are geniuses. Part 1
  • When the Levee Breaks
  • The Second Coming of Anthony Weiner
  • How to Never Lose a Fight
  • Creating Chaos out of Meaning
  • Crime and Punishment
  • The Man in the Mirror
  • Guitar Gods of the Sixties
  • Entopy: A Play in One Act
  • The Ragged Tale of a Poverty Stricken Economic Genius
  • The Dreamers
  • Hey There Georgy Girl
  • This Is Not a Defense of Joel Osteen. Or is it?
  • The Ballad of Poindexter Glockenspiel
  • The Big Dummy
  • More Florida in Pictures and Text
  • How Do I Hate Thee
  • Florida in Images and More Images
  • "How To Solve The Healthcare Crisis and Why It's So Damned Hard To Fix"
  • The Big Lie
  • The Demise of the West
  • “Good Times! Good Times! You know, we talkin’ bout Good Times!”
  • "Justice My Ass!"
  • Wolves in Sheep's Clothing
  • The Coming Apocalypse and How to Avoid it: a Historical/Biblical Perspective.
  • "Muthafuckin' Chains!"
  • Lies Our Father's Told Us
  • Poetry and Politics - a few mixed verses
  • The Inner Man
  • The Vampire and The Carpet Salesman
  • Comey Speaks!
  • A Word From Nostradamus about the Comey Hearings
  • The Towering Babble
  • Chain of Fools
  • I Got Ramblin' on My Mind
  • Telling Ourselves Stories
  • Shit! Make Me Wanna Holler!
  • Even More Reasons Why The Paris Accords are Total Horseshit.
  • When Life Imitates Satire
  • Jethro and Becky Sue Come To America
  • Random Apocrypha
  • Why The Paris Climate Accords Are Total Horseshit
  • Urban Stories
  • The Kingdom of God: a personal rant
  • Urban Week @ South Beach
  • Serpico Revisited
  • The Road To Surf-dumb. Or, is it The Road To Serfdom?
  • This is Not a Political Article
  • My Hometown
  • What Does This Mean?
  • We're All Fools Sometime
  • One Pill Makes You Larger
  • "What a Maroon!"
  • Secrets and Lies
  • A Tale of Wine and Murder
  • "White House Under Siege!"
  • The Amateur Narcissist
  • Like a Rock
  • The Greatest of Ally of a True Idiot is.....
  • How To Prove someone's a Witch
  • Jesus Was a Sly Dog
  • An Open Letter From The Democratic National Committee
  • The Power of Language
  • The Existential Croûton
  • Random Facebook Thoughts
  • A Play "The Poverty Racket"
  • The Demise of the 4th Estate
  • Love To Hate My Enemies
  • Feelings, Oh, Oh, Oh, Feelings
  • Art or Reality
  • The Prison Yard Blues
  • Who is Richard Spencer and Why Does He Matter?
  • __an excerpt from "The Power of Voltron "
  • A Plea From a Progressive
  • ANTIFA - The Anti Fascists, Fascists
  • Conspiracy Theory
  • 4 More Poems, 4 More Pictures
  • "Are You Freaking People Insane?"
  • 4 Pictures 4 Poems
  • The Ballad of Carlos Slim
  • Pretending What's in Your Head is True
  • The Cognitive Dissonance of a Faithful Democrat
  • The Human Snakepit
  • George Freeman - Unsung Master of the Jazz Guitar
  • The Price of Milk
  • Suspicious Minds
  • Bill O'Reilly Sexual Predator?
  • The New Soldier
  • Orwell Revisited
  • Larry Coryell - The Godfather is Dead
  • A Tiger Beat
  • South Florida - HOT & COOL
  • Jean Paul Sartre & the Existentialist Mojo
  • Culture Matters, Immigration Matters, Sharks Matter
  • Thomas Sowell
  • A Tree Falls In Central Park on a Gay Banker
  • Black Codes From The Underground
  • Does an Idiot know they're an Idiot?
  • A Poem for Pooh
  • It's All or Nothing Baby!
  • Racism is Alive and Well
  • "Shut the Hell Up!"
  • Jerry Seinfeld - Social Pariah
  • A Man Must Nurture His Pet Peeves
  • Not the Usual Immigration Article
  • Man Talk, with Donald Trump pt. 1
  • Man Talk, with Donald Trump pt. 2
  • The Bad Seed
  • Dogma Never Sleeps
  • Trump and Clinton Debate
  • Was Jesus a True Pacifist?
  • Brexit Was the Shot Heard Around the World
  • Obama, How Great Thou Art
  • War is Good
  • The Willful Ignorance of Intellectual Children
  • What about All Those Peacful Muslims?
  • Terror! What Terror?
  • Biff and Shorty Play The Blues
  • Forty Miles of Bad Road
  • How Obamacare Became the law of the land: And Other Fairytales for Adults
  • Genteel Republicans vs The Alt-Right
  • Should Drugs be Legal?
  • The Prophet Speaks
  • The Dream Sequence
  • Voting 3rd Party and the Moral Low-Ground
  • Sayonara America
  • What does Never Trump Mean?
  • Barack Obama is the Most Brilliant Man Ever to be President?
  • If God Created War, Does That Mean That War is Good?
  • Never Let Your Enemies Define You
  • Facebook, Science & Religion
  • Bullshit by the Numbers
  • Bullshit by the Numbers - part II
  • The Heated Quest for the "No Information Voter"
  • I Love The Dead
  • Those Who Lurk
  • Battered, Bruised and Beaten
  • Trump and Hitler
  • America in Black and White
  • Trans-Athletics
  • Playing a Rigged Game
  • Who was that Mass Murderer?
  • The Kidnappers
  • The Game
  • Terror in Nice: A Variation on a Theme
  • The Idiots Guide on How to Destory the World
  • Terror in France
  • A Fictional Conversation Between a Pastor and a Historian About the Bible
  • The Immoral Necessity for Scapegoats
  • Who Really Shot Those Eleven Cops? Was It Donald Trump?
  • Killer Cops and Cop Killers
  • Happy 4th of July
  • How Do You Cast Your Vote When You've Only Got a Few Bullets Left?
  • "Yes, She's a Lying Sack of Shit....but She's our Lying Sack of Shit."
  • All Apologies
  • Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up
  • Goodbye Scotty Moore
  • If a Bluebird Plays the Blues Why Can't it Play Free Jazz
  • Terror in Turkey
  • When David Slew Goliath
  • The Life & Death of a Global Fat Cat
  • Intentionally Censoring the News
  • The Brits Leave the EU
  • Chick, Christian, Roy & Kenny G
  • Who Really Committed Mass Murder in Orlando
  • The Tale of the Prince and the Shrew
  • A Dying Father's Last Father's Day
  • Mass Murdering, Terrorist's Father is Obama and Hillary's Best Friend
  • Why Cream still Matters 50 Years Later
  • Misguided Anger and Partisan Politics
  • The Deep Guilt of the Religious Left
  • Radical Islam! What Radical Islam?
  • Denial is a River in Egypt
  • A Response to all the Haters
  • Why Muhammad Ali was my Hero (in spite of being a Racist)
  • Why Trump Matters
  • The New Progressive Racism
  • A Tragedy in Cincinnati
  • The Evil that Men do (Women too.)
  • Differences? What Differences?
  • Racism Revisited
  • Battling Immigration Straw Men
  • Blood Quantum
  • Fighting Transgender Straw Men
  • Logical Fallacies about God and Money
  • Progressive Straw Men
  • Everybody is Robbing You Blind
  • On The Road To El Donaldo
  • Dear Mark: About Donald Trump
  • Identifying the Enemy
  • Why I Will Vote For Trump
  • I Totally Agree With Myself
  • Teaching Americans Where to Pee
  • Goodbye Lonnie Mack
  • Bernie Wants You To Pay His Fair Share
  • Bruce Springsteen vs. North Carolina
  • Mr. Smiley Is an Idiot
  • Why Does College Cost So Much?
  • Black Power and Bad Vibes At Whiteness History Month
  • How Facebook Showed Me That We're Doomed
  • Muslims kill Muslims by means of White People
  • The Slap
  • America Wants a 3rd Party Candidate
  • Jesus Loved Everybody
  • Call it what it is.
  • Belgium vs. Turkey. Which One is Worse?
  • Barack, Fidel and Che
  • How He Gonna Get His Money pt. 2
  • How He Gonna Get His Money
  • The Turn of The Screw
  • Dear America: Now, about Trump....
  • The Attack of the Anti Trumpers
  • Did You Know that America is Socialism....and boy, ain't it Swell
  • Trump - Prophet or Blowhard?
  • Black Lies Matter, All Lies Matter
  • The Donald and the Debate
  • Leonardo and The Bear
  • The Thunder Rolled and the "Trump" Blows em all to Hell
  • Fragmented Fairytails
  • Cars That Never Were but Should've Been, Part 6
  • Building The Perfect Beast
  • America: A Tale of Two Cities, Part 1
  • Uncle Bernie in New Hampshire
  • The Big L
  • The Diary of a Former Leftist
  • Free Speech not Hate Speech?
  • State of the Union
  • Losing My Religion
  • Don't Take Our Guns Away Until We Kill Those Honky Bastards
  • Bye Bye Europe
  • "Trump is a Racist!"
  • "Hell Yeah! I've Got Obama Care!
  • Trumponomics
  • Woman of the Year
  • Malicious Intent and the Art of the Microaggression
  • Muslim No-Go Zones - Myth or Reality?
  • Donald J. Trump and the Muslim Migration to America
  • There Is No God But Allah?
  • Roadhouse - The Reboot
  • Sometimes You Just Can't Win
  • A Few Thoughts Regarding Trump
  • Cars That Never Were But Should've Been, Part 5
  • You Can Have My Steering Wheel When You Pry It From Cold, Daed Hands
  • The Great Debate
  • Al, Thomas and Paul - Malthusians Then and Now
  • A Prophet Debates Global Warming and other retated Dogma
  • Memes, Scapegoats, Propaganda
  • Little Hillary and Her Monsters
  • A Prophecy for America
  • The Basketball Metaphor
  • Vladimir Putin: An American Hero
  • Little Things
  • The Democrats Debate
  • It's All Ablout da Benjamins
  • Remember When?
  • Mass Shooter
  • Cars That Never Were But Should've Been: Part 4
  • Should A Muslim Be President in America?
  • The Strange Case of Ahmed Mohamed
  • Debt and Other Devious Angels
  • Bernie Sanders is Caesar not Jesus
  • An inconvenient Truth
  • Who's really a Native American?
  • The Rebirth of the Silent Majority
  • Money That's What I Want!
  • The Syrian Crisis and the Memeing of America
  • Why Societies Have Generally Valued Men More than Women
  • The Problem of Evil
  • A few Thoughts on a Few Things
  • The Authentic pose of a Black White Man
  • Sweden: Socialist Utopia or Progressive Madhouse?
  • Why Dogs Matter
  • Guilty Until Proven Innocent
  • Was Jesus a Socialist?
  • "The Donald" A Man for the Ages
  • Harvesting the Wheat - or - Karma's a Real Bitch
  • Cecil The Lion
  • Cars That Never Were but Should’ve Been, Part 3
  • Secrets and Lies
  • Can Minorities Be Racist?
  • I Was Just Thinking....Hmm?
  • Iran Deal - Good or Bad?
  • Jihad or Not Jihad? That is the Question.
  • "Let's Do Lunch" with Planned Parenthood
  • America The Contemptible
  • Marriage, Bigotry and Cooties
  • The Things We Care About
  • The Simplicity of it All
  • A Dissenting Opinion
  • Cars That Should've Been, But Never Were: part II
  • Live Now, Pay Later
  • I Am, Whatever I Say I Am!
  • Bernie Sanders is the Dumbest Bastard on Earth
  • Cars That Never Were But Should've Been
  • Bruce Jenner
  • The Good Society
  • A Personal Jesus For My Own
  • Take a Ride on a Hell Bound Train
  • Requiem For a Car Show
  • Obama Channels Neville Chamberlain in Dealing with Iran
  • The Short Life of a Political Lemming
  • The Strongman
  • The Broken Window
  • The Selective Outrage of The Anti Israel Left
  • When the Blind Lead the Blind
  • Top Brass With Class
  • Living In A world On Fire
  • Lying Liars and the Lies They Tell
  • What The Hell Is Esotericism?
  • Unicorns, Free Healthcare and other Mythological Creatures
  • Heroes and Dunces
  • A Few Thoughts On a Few Things
  • The Return Of Super Fly
  • Should You Ever Bet On A dead Horse?
  • Money For Nothing
  • Across The Great Divide
  • Tom, Jerry, Eddie & Sydney
  • The Folly of Foibles
  • Who really killed Eric Garner?
  • The Art of The Sale
  • Political Bullshit and All That Jazz
  • Oh, The Horror of It All
  • To Torture or Not To Torture, That is The Question
  • Selective Justice
  • Executive Action
  • Give Us Your Tired, Poor and Ambitious
  • Johnny Winter, Ahhh-Yeahh!
  • Homeless and Transgender "Let My People Pee!"
  • Are We Insane? You Betcha!
  • Ebola and Racism
  • You're a Racist, Just Admit It!
  • To Discriminate or Not to Discriminate, That is the Question
  • The Life of an Imaginary Historian
  • Why Most Debates About The Minimum Wage are Bullshit
  • The Return of the Infinite Monkeys
  • Politically Correct Genocide
  • Language and the illusion of Meaning
  • Obama vs. Reagan
  • Is Barack Obama our Most Successful President Ever?
  • White Racism Black Racism
  • The Race
  • Should People Be Free to Discriminate?
  • Science, Religion and Brother Neil
  • Welcome To America
  • The Reincarnation of Jimmy Carter and the Return of Scarface
  • SCOTUS, Condoms and Collateral Damage
  • The American Dream
  • Attack of the Bloated Leeches or "Why Does the Economy Suck pt. II"
  • Why Does the Economy Suck?
  • Jaco Pastorius - A Passage in Time
  • How can we save the world, from people who want to save the world?
  • A Short Political rant: pt I
  • Jerry Reed, Tom Jones and the Original Guitar Heroes
  • Part Two: The Politics of the Eloi and the Morlock
  • Angel: part 7
  • Wayne Cochran "Going Back to Miami"
  • Blessed Assurances and other Iron Clad Guarantees
  • James Brown & the Art of the Indefinite Rhythm
  • If the Bible Say's it, I believe It!
  • Go For a Jog, Go to Jail
  • Life as Theatre and The Well-Intended Sociopath
  • Rory Gallagher & Taste
  • Utopia and the Militant Socialist
  • Matt Damon & the Teachers Union vs. the Capitalist Pigs
  • The Fight of the Century
  • The Last Damned Healthcare Article You'll Ever Need
  • The Gospel According to Mark
  • You Might Be an Idiot if.....
  • How To Interpret Political Speech and other Forms of Gibberish
  • Polygamy and the Search For Morality
  • The "Big" Gulp
  • When a Lie is the Truth and the Truth is a Lie
  • Jim Hall - The Subtle Radical
  • Making Deals With the Devil in Iran
  • Dennis and Mary
  • Thank You Lord For the Good Things You have Done
  • Excersise In Futility
  • Is Obama The Antichrist?
  • The Case for Limited Government (and that includes a limited military)
  • The Weekly Southern Blog
  • Angel: part VI
  • The Esoteric Agenda
  • Ted Bundy & The Hunt For The Devil
  • Things I wish the President Knew Pt. 3
  • Really Now, I'm Syria
  • What Will You Do?
  • Charlie & Clint: Dead & Deader
  • God Loves Me and Has a Plan For My Life...Right?
  • Trayvon & George : An American Hate Story
  • Is God's Grace Ecclesiastical White-out?
  • Jury Duty
  • The Left's Contradictory Love Affair With Gays & Muslims
  • Hee Haw and Grandma and Grandpa
  • Little Tommy & The Blues Kings
  • Gay Marriage: Part II
  • Kayaking "The Big Cypress" with Crocodlies
  • The Birth of The Jazz Guitarist
  • Running With The Bullshit In Pamplona
  • Divided By Abortion
  • Gay Marriage
  • Life on the Fault-line
  • Out of the Wild
  • A Generation Out Of Touch
  • Morning Faith with a Cup of Joe
  • For The Children
  • Made up Facts & True Beliefs
  • The Unforgettable - Nat 'King' Cole
  • Slavery Was Big Business....and It Still Is!
  • Garage Band - The 1960's
  • A Man's Best Friend is his Dogma
  • Voting With Our Private Parts
  • Investors of the World, Unite
  • Good Intentions...bad results
  • The Plural of "You"
  • How to Get God to Give You What You Want: Redux
  • We Have Not Yet Begun To Fight
  • Polls–Divination or Manipulation?
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              The New Soldier

Picture
​The New Soldier

By Jeff Vanderslice

Even though the heat of the alien sun blazed down on Private Immanuel Bedford and heated the air around him to 123°F, the soldier was completely comfortable, at least as far as his body was concerned.  His state of mind was completely another matter.  The squad had been assigned the unenvious task of clearing the enemy from the village that commanded the pass over the Huegar Mountains.  Unfortunately the rebels were dug in, using hardened posts for their defense.  But that was no excuse, the generals back in the capitol wanted that pass taken and the insurgents uprooted.

Bedford constantly scanned the heads-up display in front of his eyes for any new information that his sensors picked up.  The system’s brain had already been loaded with all the information the skirmisher drones, satellites, and human spies could provide.  The squad approached what had been assumed was the command bunker’s entrance, a former grain silo that led to a series of tunnels under the ground dug into the mountain.

With a flick of an eyebrow, Bedford cycled through all of the scans his sensor equipment could provide, but no new information was forthcoming.  All looked quiet on the hillside.  Then his external cameras automatically dimmed when a white-hot flashed erupted to his right.  His squadmate, Eugene Hendricks had been vaporized by a stealth anti-personnel mine that had lain dormant and undetectable until the presence of the soldier activated it to fulfill its only purpose.

Immediately rounds of spent uranium began to fly through the air at the soldiers from the hillside as automatic defense gun arrays sprang to life after lying hidden under the turf.  Every fourth or fifth round was a tracer like a white hot ribbon of fire arcing across the sun-drenched sky.

“Take cover!” the sergeant shouted uselessly through the squad-level communications network.

Everyone, even the rookie recruits, were already doing so, finding whatever protection was at hand.  Bedford dropped behind a low wall of native adobe, but the automatic tracking system of the remotely fired guns had already located him.  The wall behind which he squatted began to disintegrate under the relentless pounding of the 13mm rifled batteries.  As the wall was chewed up, Bedford rolled to the right to seek shelter in the lee of a villager’s home, also made of adobe.  The thicker walls of the house, built to withstand the extreme heat of the local summer as well as cold of winter, offered better protection.

“Return fire!  Take out those guns!” the lieutenant in charge of the operation shouted into the comm net.

The communication was splotchy as enemy jammers sought out the transmission frequencies of the squad.  The comm network automatically changed into a frequency-shifting paradigm already programmed into each fighting and auxiliary unit to defeat the rebel efforts and soon remote command and control functions were restored to their smoothly flowing state despite the fact that each byte of the transmission was broken up and spread throughout several alternating frequencies to be picked up in proper order and placed back into intelligible form by the brain of each combat unit.

Without exposing his entire body, Bedford reached an arm around the corner of the building.  The automatic sights on the gun arm gave Bedford a good view of what the cameras mounted on the body could not see, projected onto the screen in front of his eyes.  They also scanned and locked on the nearest and most dangerous gun array to Bedford.  With no more than a flick of a gloved finger, Bedford activated his arm cannon and sent round after round of explosive tipped mini-warheads that detonated on impact.  On the heads-up display Bedford watched his load of cannon shot steadily decrease until the nearest gun battery was mangled and fell silent.  But there were many more still active, seeking out him and his companions.

“EMP pulse in fifteen seconds, batten down and shut down, set auto-wake for seven seconds after burst,” the lieutenant ordered.

With barely a twitch of his left wrist, Bedford entered the command.  His armor completely sealed itself, drawing all essential equipment carried on the outside into internal bays before closing off the surface.  All onboard electronics, including the entire brain, shut down, save for a single, hardwired, mechanical timing circuit safely encased in a Faraday cage.  For Bedford, his world went dark and dead, with no sensory input or information relayed to his eyes, nerves, or head.  In the heat of battle the seven seconds seemed like several lifetimes before the timer awoke the sleeping circuits one by one in a prescribed order, starting with the most basic functions first, each one tested for any failures or malfunctions before it could be brought online and integrated with the rest of the unit.  Even though all this took place in a few milliseconds, to the soldiers it seemed like slowly awakening from a deep, dream-filled sleep.

Bedford found himself still crouched behind the wall of the adobe farmer’s house, his weapons, cameras, sensors, and other exterior gear already extending from the holes where they had been withdrawn before the EMP bomb had been released.  Using his eyes, Bedford manually checked all systems to be sure they were online and functioning properly, not that he didn’t trust the brain, but because he had known of other soldiers who had been unintentionally damaged by a friendly EMP burst and didn’t find out about it until it was too late and their units were fried.  All of Bedford’s systems aligned in the green save for a small glitch in the motors that supplied power to his right leg, which in Bedford’s experience probably was the result of some sort of mechanical problem instead of an electronics system failure.  It was nothing that should slow him down but would have to be repaired once the unit could get back to a base or field maintenance facility.

The EMP pulse had silenced most but not all of the defensive perimeter around the rebel’s hardened command center, suggesting they had hardwired the controls to the underground bunker using mirrors or fiber optics.

“Report,” the sergeant ordered.

“Blue two online,” the corporal replied.

The rest of the squad on down the line answered the required roll call, although the sergeant and lieutenant could see for themselves on their own command data displays that all of the remaining units had survived the burst relatively intact.

“Sergeant, shut those guns down and advance on the silo!” the lieutenant commanded.

“Aye, sir,” the sergeant acknowledged.  “Squad concentrate fire on remaining guns, acquire and locate on my command, three, two, one, now!”

As one, the entire platoon rose from their concealed positions, the integrated command circuits automatically assigning the nearest soldier to the best target, so that all of the guns were targeted with enough fire power to disable them.

Bedford used the gatling rifle in his right arm to lay down fire at a damaged but still firing gun array that was rotating and gyrating wildly, sending rounds in nearly every direction as it spun on its base and its barrels raced up and down in their tracks.

At the same time, in the lower right corner of his heads-up, Bedford noticed the external temperature of his titanium-alloy armor rise under the direct assault of unseen microwave broadcasters.  This was accompanied by an increasing drain on the power supply unit to compensate and keep the internal temperature within toleration limits, using the internal cooling system.  The miniature chillers located throughout the body of the exoskeleton were designed to counteract the effect of tremendous external heat in violent and inhospitable conditions and though they could not withstand a nearby thermal blast, they could withstand a barrage of microwaves or other radiation for hours before failure.

As the big guns were silenced by return fire from the squad, a second layer of defense that had lain sealed and protected from the expected EMP bomb rose from their concealed hiding places.

“Lasers!” someone on the squad’s net shouted.

Piercing beams of red light shot from helium cooled barrels.  In one of the side cameras mounted on his shoulder, Bedford saw one of his squadmates take a hit in the abdomen area.  The searing charge of superheated gases ignited the grenades held in the central cavity and though initially the blast was held inside by the unit’s armor, eventually it blew up, sending bits and pieces flying all over the battlefield.

“Blue four’s down!” someone shouted unnecessarily, because even if they weren’t near enough to see it in person, they saw the dead soldier’s position on their area grid go from green to red.

“Lieutenant, we can’t take this, you’ve got to call in an airstrike!” the sergeant pleaded.

“Okay,” the officer agreed.  “Done.  ETA five minutes and change.”

“Withdraw to safety perimeter,” the sergeant ordered.

Bedford used the cover of the farmer’s house to shield him from the enemy lasers as he retraced his steps and sought deeper cover within the abandoned village until the system told him he was safe.  Then he sat and waited.

That was the hard part of the job.  Several seconds of extremely intense activity, followed by prolonged bouts of inactivity.

“Here she comes,” someone said, and then Bedford could see the drone on his outboard sensors before he could see the sleek shape high in the sky coming in at supersonic speed to thwart any surface-to-air missiles that might be launched at her.

This too was over in a fraction of a second, one instant the drone was flying in overhead at an impossible speed, the next it was gone already, far on its way to the other horizon.  All Bedford saw in its passing was what looked like a small ball of light that dropped from the belly of the bird and zeroed in precisely on the top of the silo.  It penetrated the roof of the structure with a small cloud of dust and then there was nothing but silence.

Bedford waited for what he knew was to come.  First, through the sensors in the soles of his feet he could feel the ground beneath begin to tremble.  Then an area roughly thirty feet in diameter around the silo erupted in a geyser of superheated rock and soil thrown skyward to come rocketing back down like charred, black hail.

Even where he was, deep back in the town, bits of rock and fused soil rained down on Bedford, though the impacts on his titanium-alloy armor were nothing more than minor sensory input.  Through the external audio inputs he heard a high-pitched screaming and raised the cameras atop his head to gaze at the sky.  He saw a car-sized chunk of rock fall from the heavens to demolish a hovertruck belonging to a farmer or a transporter.

His attention temporarily distracted by that, Bedford was brought back to the battle by the voice in his ear from the comm net.

“Holy cow, look at that, they’re boiling out like fire ants.”

Checking the area grid on his heads-up, Bedford saw purple tagged enemy units rising from the impact crater of the drone’s bomb using short-range jumpjets, automatically targeting and firing as they came in clumsy but controlled leaps.

“Hold your ground, the cavalry’s coming,” the lieutenant assured them.

Small pings began to ring off the armored exo-skeleton of Bedford’s unit as he was targeted by two rebels who landed in the town square near him.  He used both right and left arms, sending out his own hail of both cannon and rifle fire to defend himself, watching his store of cannon rounds slowly diminish towards nothing.

One of the rounds, however, found its mark and slammed into chest of one of the insurgents, buckling the armor inward and sending the unit flying backwards into the wall of a store on the town’s main square, demolishing it.

Too late he saw a shoulder-mounted weapon on the second rebel’s unit fire out a small homing missile trailing a fine wire.  He knew what was coming and using all the power he could coax out of his servo-motors prepared to jump himself.  That was when the nagging problem in his right leg failed him.  He could almost feel it in his own leg as something snapped deep inside the armor of the combat unit’s leg.  The series of motors, transformers, and power-boosters shut down as a safety precaution when the affected unit shut itself down, leaving Bedford helpless and unable to move.

He continued to fire his right arm gatling gun at the enemy unit, knowing it was ineffective but hoping for some sort of miracle or fluke that would disable his opponent just as he had been disabled by a faulty motor or routing unit.  But it didn’t happen.

Precisely two feet from him, the small, bird-like missile sprung open with a net.  Small weights on its perimeter spread the net out to its full diameter, and like a thin spider web, the fabric attached itself to his chest.  An electric shock circulated throughout his entire being and then everything went black as all systems short-circuited and died.

With a start, Bedford found himself back in the waking world as all connections automatically shut down and disengaged with the death of his unit.  With his gloved hands, he removed the visor over his eyes and looked at the quiet, sterile, white room.  Under harsh overhead lighting, the rest of his squad still rested in their couches, only slight, subtle movements of their arms, hands, feet, and legs betraying the fact that they were still fighting while Bedford had been knocked out of the action like the other two members of the squad before him.  Cool air blew over him from the air-conditioning vent overhead.

As per protocol, a medical attendant rushed over to him to see if everything was okay.  Bedford brushed the man off, after all he was only a civilian under contract to the Republic, not a soldier.

“Give me another unit!” Bedford shouted to one of the technicians who monitored the equipment.

“There’s no more in reserve,” the tech told him harshly.  He himself had his hands full carefully scrutinizing the readouts on all of the other units located miles away doing the actual fighting under waldo-control of the soldiers in the command ship.  He and his crew continually made minute adjustments to their own control boards to keep the fighting units operational at a distance.

Bedford knew the only way he could get back in the fight was if one of his squadmates physically took ill on one of the control couches and needed to be replaced, in which case, with a flip of a technician’s switch, control of that man’s fighting unit could be switched over to any other couch not already occupied with an active participant.  That was very unlikely.  Soldiers never got hurt anymore, although some went mad or had breakdowns.  Only their remotely controlled, robotic, fighting units got damaged, put out of action, or destroyed.  The soldiers themselves rarely died except in direct attacks upon their command bunker or station by similar enemy robotic units.

“What happened to my unit?” Bedford demanded, as he began to strip away the command wires still attached to his muscles that controlled the movements of his now disabled assault unit.

One of the techs deigned to answer him without even looking up from his board.  “Lost a server in your articulation and locomotion band.”

“Welcome to the walking wounded,” said one of the other soldiers whose unit had been lost.  He returned from the refreshment dispenser with a cup of coffee and sat back down on his couch, completely relaxed.  “There ain’t nothing you can do.”


Bedford wanted to be back in the fight, but without another able unit to patch in to his control couch, the other soldier was right, there was nothing he could do.  So he followed the example of the second disabled soldier, the one whose unit had been vaporized with the first mine.  Reaching for the visor resting in his lap where he had dropped it to demand reassignment to a different, undamaged unit, Bedford put the eye-blinder back on his head and rejoined the battle.  Although all he could do was observe through the squad’s intact command net, instead of actively participate.