Strange Things Done in the Midnight Sun
No moiling, no gold. But more sex than a monkey house.
© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
http://zeppcommentaries.com/
9/06/08
Right wingers are hypocritical, sanctimonious toads, and while this
often makes them intensely annoying, it also makes them a mother lode of
amusement, especially since they tend to be self-important and utterly
humorless.
In their intense efforts to bury questions about Bristol Palin and the
baby Trig, they accuse everyone who asks anything of attacking “that
poor innocent girl” and a disabled infant. Tch, tch.
So I just very politely say, “How about a DNA test? It’s very simple,
just a cotton swab on the gums, and all the questions are answered.
Wouldn’t that make me go away and be quiet?”
Of course, I’m not actually demanding a DNA test. It really isn’t any of
my business. I just enjoy watching as right wingers turn bright red, and
steam starts shooting out their ears, and the eyes start revolving, and
they start screaming that personal lives have no place in political
discussions. At which point I mention Clinton or Edwards, and they melt
down entirely.
Now, granted, I’m like the nasty little kid at the zoo who bangs on the
bars of the monkey cage with a stick to make the monkeys scream and
fling their feces, except I have far too much respect for monkeys to
ever do such a thing.
But there is an excellent reason why, no matter how straightforward and
true the Palin narrative about Trig might be, they would never ever have
a DNA test done to determine the child’s ancestry.
You see, they live in a small town.
Now, you might think of a small town as being like Pleasantville, with
white picket fences and friendly neighbors and a strong sense of
community, and that’s all true so far as it goes.
It’s just that in areas where choices and opportunities are limited,
sometimes neighbors are a little TOO friendly, and that sense of
community gets a tad too communal. Palin has to know that, and
doubtlessly suspects, or even knows that a DNA test would not only show
who Trig’s parents were, but also a whole bunch of other relations, many
of whom probably aren’t related by benefit of clergy, or even high
school sex. And there’s a LOT of high school sex in small towns, since
the kids don’t have much else to do. There are shots of Bristol with
friends and a large bottle of Jack Daniels that suggest that she wasn’t
the demure librarian type. Not that Sarah Palin would ever have a
librarian in her family.
If they ever did the results of DNA testing on a typical American small
town, and released the results showing who was related to whom at noon
one day, you would probably hear the first gun shots by 12:15, the
opening rounds in a 300 year civil war with twenty sides.
It isn’t just American small towns, of course. They just tend to be
deeper in Puritanical denial in the red states, is all.
But you have a relatively small number of people who don’t get to
consort much with anyone other than the people they attended elementary
school with, and marriages sometimes compete with friendships, or other
love affairs, and of course, there’s always boozy nights at the local
flat-roofed bar with the pickups in the parking lot, and the result is a
lot of babies whose birth certificates have more fiction – and are
sometimes more lurid – than a Stephen King novel.
One small town around here had a particularly ugly variation – and
hopefully, this is NOT typical. About a dozen adults were arrested some
15 years ago for what was called “a child prostitution ring” in the
local paper, but in reality was a sex club where the parents passed
their kids around. Just the sort of thing to brighten those dull winter
days, right?
But I hope that was an exception. Most towns are better then that, even
though child abuse and young sex are fairly common when there’s nothing
else to do. I’m not judging these folks – they’re only human, after all.
But I would be a whole lot more sympathetic if they didn’t spend the
time when they aren’t fucking their cousin’s brains out lecturing us on
how intellectuals, the media elite and big city folks don’t have any
family values.
There is one more element, and there’s nothing funny about this one at
all. I’ve heard various people describe Wasilla, Palin’s home town, as a
“meth town.” Now, I don’t know if there’s any truth to that or not.
Obviously, some folks wouldn’t mind slagging Wasilla if it meant they
could take a shot at Palin. But not only do meth towns exist, but it’s
safe to say that a majority of American small towns are meth towns these
days. And Wasilla, semi-remote and with a played-out economic engine,
sounds like a prime candidate.
Crystal meth has had an absolutely horrible effect on small-town
America. The shit is easy to make, dirt cheap, addictive as hell, and
incredibly nasty. It can take a high school prom queen and turn her into
a toothless crone in five years.
The Republican economic miracle hasn’t helped. With no safety net or
training, all a played-out small town has left is grudging charity, a
circling of the wagons and subsequent siege mentality, and that
gawd-awful stifling pseudo-Christian morality that sneers at anyone who
isn’t well off or well adjusted.
Meth is often the main economic activity in meth towns, and given the
general poverty and lack of industry such places have (meth towns tend
to be places where the mine played out, or the local forests were logged
over, or the freeway passed ten miles west of town), the main coin for
meth is sex.
Meth heads aren’t exactly fussy, and don’t bother with such things as
condoms or pills. Or bathing or brushing teeth, for that matter. The
result is a lot of babies get born out of multiple casual unions, and
there’s no guessing who the father was. A lot of informal “adoptions”
take place, because the mother isn’t capable of taking care of a
goldfish, let alone a baby, and the kids grow up with no clear idea of
who might be a first cousin and who isn’t, and far too many wind up as
meth heads themselves. The result is that small towns are becoming a
genetic nightmare.
So the next time red staters want to lecture on morality, and prattle on
about Clinton or Edwards or whoever, they stand on notice: we know
better. We know what they are. And we aren’t impressed with the moral
chest thumping.
There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the women who toil for meth;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would freeze your living breath;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was under the lights in the parking lot of Sleazy Blights’s
When April Quill forgot her pills.
Apologies to Robert W. Service
Poem: The Cremation of Sam McGee
by Robert W. Service
There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.
Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam ‘round the Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he’d often say in his homely way that “he’d sooner live in hell.”
On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail.
Talk of your cold! through the parka’s fold it stabbed like a driven nail.
If our eyes we’d close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn’t
see;
It wasn’t much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee.
And that very night, as we lay packed tight in our robes beneath the snow,
And the dogs were fed, and the stars o’erhead were dancing heel and toe,
He turned to me, and “Cap,” says he, “I’ll cash in this trip, I guess;
And if I do, I’m asking that you won’t refuse my last request.”
Well, he seemed so low that I couldn’t say no; then he says with a sort
of moan:
“It’s the cursed cold, and it’s got right hold till I’m chilled clean
through to the bone.
Yet ‘taint being dead—it’s my awful dread of the icy grave that pains;
So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you’ll cremate my last remains.”
A pal’s last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I would not fail;
And we started on at the streak of dawn; but God! he looked ghastly pale.
He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee;
And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee.
There wasn’t a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror-driven,
With a corpse half hid that I couldn’t get rid, because of a promise given;
It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say: “You may tax your
brawn and brains,
But you promised true, and it’s up to you to cremate those last remains.”
Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code.
In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed
that load.
In the long, long night, by the lone firelight, while the huskies, round
in a ring,
Howled out their woes to the homeless snows—O God! how I loathed the thing.
And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and heavier grow;
And on I went, though the dogs were spent and the grub was getting low;
The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I would not give in;
And I’d often sing to the hateful thing, and it hearkened with a grin.
Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay;
It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the “Alice
May.”
And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum;
Then “Here,” said I, with a sudden cry, “is my cre-ma-tor-eum.”
Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire;
Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher;
The flames just soared and the furnace roared—such a blaze you seldom see;
Then I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee.
Then I made a hike, for I didn’t like to hear him sizzle so;
And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow.
It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don’t
know why;
And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky.
I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with grisly fear;
But the stars came out and they danced about ere again I ventured near;
I was sick with dread, but I bravely said: “I’ll just take a peep inside.
I guess he’s cooked, and it’s time I looked;” . . . then the door I
opened wide.
And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar;
And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said: “Please close
that door.
It’s fine in here, but I greatly fear you’ll let in the cold and storm—
Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it’s the first time I’ve been
warm.”
There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.
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