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Blow me down! It's the Rime of the Ancient Unabomber
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August 26, 1999 |
His story, with the evocative if not quite original title "Ship of Fools," is a tale of a ship being taken north by a maniacal Dr. Evil-esque captain and an insane crew. The passengers, however, are so consumed by bitching and moaning about various minor injustices they observe on the ship that they can't get it together to prevent the nutter driving the thing from racing into -- as Kaczynski so belletristically evokes it -- "more and more perilous waters" filled with "icebergs and dangerous floes." Gosh, Batman! Could the ship symbolize the world, the passengers symbolize the citizens of the world and the captain and crew, like, the government and corporate leaders? Whoa, and they say the ocean's deep! OK, so it's a bit clunky as parables go, but then subtlety was never Kaczynski's strong suit. As the story reaches cruising speed, we see the mad bomber's gift emerge -- a fine ear for authentic dialogue: "'Shiver me timbers,' said an able seaman, "if this ain't the worst voyage I've ever been on [Shades of "Sloop John B"!] ... Every time I reef the foresail I blamed-near freeze me fingers.'" You can almost taste the salt air, can't you, matey? Kaczynski, it turns out, has a hitherto unheralded flair for portraying the sexual demimonde. Here we have a bosun complaining about being taunted for his proclivities: "Yesterday the first mate called me a 'fruit' just because I suck cocks. I have a right to suck cocks without being called names for it!" Well, blow me off the fo'c'sle! (And let's go easy on the exclamation marks, shall we, Ted!) The doomed hero of his story is an innocent and enlightened cabin boy -- a non-biting, ocean-going Mini-me, you might say -- who tries to put things in perspective for the wayward seafarers. "You all have good reasons to complain," the young feller says brightly. "But ... if we keep going north we're sure to be wrecked ... and then your wages, your blankets, and your right to suck cocks won't do any good, because we'll all drown." (Frankly, Ted, we're already drownin' and there are several more pages of your story to go.) "But no one paid any attention to him, because he was only the cabin boy," Kaczynski continues in winning, woebegone fashion. Then why not plant an explosive device in the damnable limeys' rum rations and blow them to kingdom come, huh, Ted? Ahoy! It would sort of kill two birds with one stone (to use a phrase you may wish to employ in your next literary outing). It would give your story some frickin' action and at the same time get rid of the Dr. Evil captain and his crew of hell-bent psychotics racing into the ice-blue maw of eternity. Ah, well. Be that as it may, junior-college psychology classes should have a field day with Kaczynski's foray into fiction. What remains of his subconscious is working overtime throughout. The cocksucking bosun keeps poking his head up: "Why should I have to keep cocksucking in the closet? Why should I be called a fruit? Ain't I as good as everyone else?" Of course you are, Ted, but you're also a loony maniac murderer, see, which is why your Holden Caulfield- But whatever points he may have to make about the breakneck pace at which society is sailing into oblivion get lost in the humorless, chug-chug tedium of his little literary Titanic. Also Today The art of crime Spoiler alert! Stop reading here if you want the surprise ending to be just that. Ted being Ted, there's not a happy ending. The ship crashes and all are drowned. Why? Because the passengers allow themselves to be bought off by Dr. Evil, who remedies their minor complaints while pushing the ship full-steam ahead to icy catastrophe. Even our fellating friend the bosun, who'd been granted the right to "suck cocks publicly after dark," goes down into the sea's eternal darkness. Ted, you landlubber, you -- in fiction as in life, you're a killer. Meanwhile, have you seen it? I refer to the widely published, unsettling and dream-like photo of a large moose standing in a partially filled oval backyard pool. It's wonderful -- looks like a still from a David Lynch movie, with a heavy dose of Dali and Buņuel. But the event it depicts is just further sad substantiation of what we've all been dreading: Moose crime is on the rise in the northeastern United States and threatening to envelop the nation like a raging wildfire. To pose for the picture, the renegade ungulate leapt a 4-foot fence and dove into Larry and Deborah Adams' Athol, Mass., swimming pool. According to an AP report, the horse-sized female Bullwinkle was doing the Australian crawl in the deep end when the Adamses discovered it. "I always wanted to see a moose," Mr. Adams chirped with satisfaction. Fortunately, the Athol police and fire departments, in collaboration with the state environmental police, managed to extract the creature without injuring it. It was released on its own recognizance. Environmental policeman Anthony Brighenti later said, "It was one of the most interesting things I've done, actually." Brighenti should have been a few seconds south by modem, in Panama City, Fla., where we have a lactatingly lurid tale to tell. It seems a gal named Creamer (Creamer!) and a guy with a milk snake (a milk snake!) in his pocket crossed paths in a pet store in a sublimely appropriate convergence of cosmic logic. "He was doing all kinds of strange things and trying to keep it in there," explained Creamer, a clerk in the store. She was apparently talking about the snake. But to hear James Collison, 46, tell it, he was just trying to return a pair of 3-and-a-half-foot snake escapees that he'd stumbled on while browsing in the pet shop. (The other was a boa constrictor.) Collison claims that he "placed them into his pocket for safekeeping until he could find an employee," according to one cop. But last week Judge Dedee Costello failed to credit Collison's Good Samaritan gesture and sentenced the Trouser Snake Bandit to two years of house arrest. He also must memorize the complete works of Ted Kaczynski -- and adhere to a lactose-free diet.
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