News of the Day: Dead is Dead

I am confined to quarters and Khaddafy may be dead.

These are the moments you do not want to be caught watching msnbc.  The early morning somber-faced wonks are clueless in matters such as bullets-to-the-head or the national identities of NATO air forces.  They seem delighted to find themselves coincidental to this event, quite pleased with themselves, as if they possessed some sort of agency in it.  Liberals preening, pure-dee ugly.

Still, after one gets over the need for facts, the morning joe crew has successfully launched a sophisticated discussion about a new phase in the war on terrorism.  The details of the actual news story fade from their forebrains.  I confess, I am wondering what Khaddafy's hair looks like today and what his last indignant thought might have been.

Each msnbc speaker trolls for the memorable phrase, thinks ahead to the day of commentating and opining, and one suddenly strikes gold with the phrasing "the NATO strike complicates the narrative." I know what Little Jack Horner looked like now -- him, his thumb, and the plum.  He's right, of course, what a good boy!  The NTC needs to have been the author of this denouement, not the West.  And, somehow, the story line shifts again, Bedouin sands, and I am contemplating "an Obama success, a validation of 'leading from behind.'"

There is General McCaffrey, and yes, I am feeling more and more rotten, and all I ever think of is how I wish his dentures were a finer fit.  The man angers me, and succeeds in confusing me, as well.  For a good background on Pentagon punditry, give this Center for Media and Democracy's PR Watch article a read.  While it is not exactly chilling, his performance, it serves to remind me of the power of propaganda and I listen to him give blatantly revised statistics, such as the number and extent of NATO air sorties.  On the spot.  It's amazing.

He even explains to the less Machiavellian in the audience that the NTC will have to "overdo" the distribution of any pictures or video documentation of Khaddafy's corpse, as a solution to what he calls "their credibility issues." Wow.  Sham wow!

Jeez.

I am spiking a fever and the head aches.  For lack of a better word, I am experiencing neuropsychiatric disturbances.  My axons and dendrites, alas! My neurotransmitters, fie upon them!  I momentarily lose control and, forgetting the wealth of its disparity, I enter "spelling variations of Khaddafi" into Google search and promptly receive my least favorite sort of computer quip:

Showing results for "spelling variations of Gaddafi"
Search instead for "spelling variations of Khaddafi."

These are the moments I peer at my web cam, which I maintain in a pristinely disabled state, sure that some one at a remote Google location is watching my irritation and snorting coffee up her nose.

Part of the problem here is that there's no universally accepted authority for transliterating Arabic names. Normally, news outlets will just go with whatever spelling the subject prefers, but this particular subject hasn't settled on a single Roman orthography for his name.

Instead, Libya's Brother Leader lets a hundred flowers bloom. The banner at the top of his official website spells it, "AL Gathafi." But if you go deeper into the site, you'll see it variously rendered as "Al Qaddafi," "Algathafi," and "Al-Gathafi." Adding to the multitude of his spellings is the increasingly ironically named "Al-Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights."

And that's just the surname. Variations on his given name include Muammar, Moammar, Mu'ammar, and Moamar, and many others. Once you've settled on how to spell his first and last names, you then have to decide whether you want to add the Arabic prefix "al-" before his last name. Which can also be spelled "el-." And then you have to decide whether the prefix should be capitalized.

In any event, he's dead and can no longer confuse us with his wily spelling deceits.

{time lapse}  i cook a pot of small red beans.  that's what they are called:  "small red beans." it is a package of three sorts of beans, two of them ruddy enough to be called "red," but the third is clearly a squiggle-marked brown pinto.  i bought these dry beans by accident once, the accident being their inexplicably low price.  i celebrate their mystery and cook some up every few weeks as a... well, as a bean treat.  
sigh.

i begin but do not complete five emails.  in lieu of completing them, i tuck them inside my cozy draft file.

i add ibuprofen to tylenol, even though i am not supposed to and have promised not to.   i really just don't care anymore. {/time lapse}

I turn on the telly again.  I am listening to this very recent history, Khaddafy maybe-dead-maybe-wounded, just hours old, being recast.

The Talking Heads were prescient.

The rebels need to be credited with killing Khaddafy, as they need the legitimacy of the kill.  Despite this, reports continue that he was made dead by an air strike as he sought to flee Sirte in a motorcade.  The rebels now claim, however, that he was really captured by them as he cowered in a hole (like Saddam).  Or a drainage ditch.

One thing is sure:  There will be no need for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission -- like the restorative justice process in South Africa after the fall of apartheid -- or the national angst of a trial.

Why I keep using the word "national," I dunno.  AL Gathafi's oppressive genius both reinforced and exploited ancient tribal "organization," and yet we persist in believing this revolutionary struggle has been, neatly, between loyalists and rebels.

I listen some more, peer at grainy photos, flashing vids.  Suddenly the despot seems to be dead because NTC guns went off that sent bullets into his heart, brain, and abdomen.  The bullets went into him in much the way women can stumble and fall, pregnant.

I hate when that happens.

My brain hurts and I imagine a bullet to my head.

**********     *****     **********     *****     **********

I'm sure there is an obvious reason for it, but the obvious escapes me right now -- Now being yesterday's tomorrow, with its obligatory edit for spelling and opacity --

*Anyway* -- I ended up not reading aloud from Mon Bel Oranger, which has been a recent comfort of a habit. Instead, there I was, careening around my office, digging out a scruffy copy of Camus' L'Etranger.

Beyond remembering, with the accompaniment of a sharp cranial pain, what a freaking masterpiece it is, I got lost inside the memory of the first class discussion of its very first line, and how my palms actually had sweat.  It's maybe the only bit of fiction that succeeded in making me nervous.   Then, of course, I fell into a revery of appreciation for my last stand of neurons, my mental Alamo, with its reservoir of quaking, shaky heroes -- appreciation for the small part of me that recollected where I should be and what I should be doing, my museum of replicas.

The first paragraph of Camus' The Stranger:

MOTHER died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can’t be sure. The telegram from the Home says: YOUR MOTHER PASSED AWAY. FUNERAL TOMORROW. DEEP SYMPATHY. Which leaves the matter doubtful; it could have been yesterday.

I cannot leave the English translation sitting there, alone, pretending to be sufficient (so typical of English! {snobbish snark::snobbish snark}). This text demands the original French -- Yes, in spite of its oft-proclaimed "simplicity" of language, the reason most given for its assignment as a French language learner's first "novel."  The opening sentence alone, in French, contains worlds:

L'Etranger, édition Gallimard, 1957

And that, my friends, is all I have to say about Qaddafi, still dead one day later.