I'm sure some of you already heard that Kenny passed away recently.

It's left me quite disturbed and melancholy. I didn't really know Kenny; he was a hard man to truly "know." But I had many encounters with him. He was such an integral part of my memories of Blackpoint Faire, and his passing feels to me as if a happy watercolor of my past has just been smeared into a wet, brown puddle.

One year at Faire, I took a required advanced improv workshop from him. It was, from an acting standpoint, doubtless the most useless workshop I ever experienced. Kenny was not a natural teacher, and his rambling, disconnected manner of speaking often left people scratching their heads. He was very shy with such direct communication, barely made eye contact, and often mumbled. Whatever lessons he wished to impart were lost on us, his would-be students.

But this experience did give me a tiny peek into the window of his true personality, so rarely seen in performance. He was clearly a very kind, warm-hearted, gentle guy, with never a bad thing to say about anybody, and his shyness made him smile constantly, as if he was somewhat embarrassed, though greatly pleased, by our attention.

His true improv lessons were gotten only by watching Kenny in action on the dusty streets of Faire. Kenny channeled true dada, a mixture of nonsense, zen foolishness, and macabre humor. He was a creature of the dirt, like an archetypal Hopi mudhead clown, and was typically found cross-legged on the ground, his rumble-pot churning out a flatulent counterpoint to his gleefully un-sane chanting.

Like many, I took him for granted. Kenny, so much larger-than-life, felt at times more like a fixture than a person, as dependably present as the black oak around us (which we also, mistakenly, took for granted -- but that's another story).

He died, sadly, just like his peasant persona lived -- as a pauper.

I'll miss you, Kenny.

- - -

Details of Kenny's life and passing, as well as his upcoming memorial, can be found here:

tubertalis.blogspot.com/2008/0...ll.html

We were talking in the Cyberpunk tribe about how William Burroughs influenced William Gibson. Then I noticed this spam in my inbox that is a perfect example of the Burroughs/Gysin cut-up method at work -- it's like computer-generated cyberpoetry that covers current events, the fleeting nature of celebrity, and even a Burroughs-ian ending with a dash of self-depreciating homoerotic sexuality! There are also some great Joycian invented hybrid words and misspellings that create double meanings. Even the title is rife with meaning and humor!

I wish all spam were this interesting.

* * *

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I can't say I was a big Saddam fan, as his Hitlerian tactics certainly didn't win anybody over, and though I'm anti-death penalty, to a certain extent I believe you reap what you sow.

The problem I have with his execution stems from a different kind of unease. His hanging came at the end of what was clearly a show trial, put on by barely competent judges at the beck and call of their American overlords. There was no jury. Three of Saddam's lawyers were assassinated; in the U.S., the first death would have resulted in a retrial. In short, Saddam did not, as Bush claimed after the execution, get the kind of justice denied his victims. He got the same kind of hasty, civil-rights-violating treatment that supposedly moved the U.S. to invade. American forces, we were being told, were going to be like the democracy fairy, bringing fairness and impartiality to everything they touched.

Saddam's stage-managed trial and execution were a laughable display of corruption and U.S.-controlled ventriloquism. What the process should have been was a public model for what imported democracy could look like. Saddam should have received the carefully applied full due process of law to demonstrate to all Iraqis (and by extension the Arab world) that things could be different. If that process also resulted in his execution, then so be it; the end result was not the point, but the process -- a glaring truism that has been absent from the entire invasion. Process matters.

As it is, Saddam's trial is merely a reflection of the parody of "justice" that ordinary Iraqis are getting. As reported in last week's NY Times, the judicial system in Iraq is broken and overburdened. Most defendants don't even get legal representation, and are convicted with scant evidence. Trials are held without juries, and sentences are long and typically unduly harsh.

So now the tyrant is dead, through direct action of the Bush administration; though they've been careful to publicly stay away from the process, there was never any question who pulled the levers of power. And Iraqis now have reason to feel even more cynical than before, since the version of jurisprudence we've given them isn't any better than what Saddam himself dispensed to his long-suffering countrymen.

America has sold Iraq a lemon, a limping wreck sprayed with canned new-car-smell to disguise the stink of old blood staining the seats. And as it breaks down to the point of stopping altogether, they're realizing the extent of the shameless rip-off they've endured.

Is it any wonder they're angry?

"Watch out for the Tingler!"

- loudly declaimed by an alcoholic homeless guy on my street