Howard on an Anti-Terror Kick

I've been working so much lately that all I can think of is work. I've even had dreams about it, being a guest in a hotel but not knowing my check-out date then running into Stephen Harper but not being able to find his reservation folio. Today it is sunny and I went for a jog and felt like things were nicer. The world is in harmony, at least here. Once they hire someone else I won't have to work so often. In the meantime they are talking of putting me on a salary. Anyway, when I got back from the jog, I found another parcel from Howard with a few monkey bones and other things all the way from Timbuktu!!

He is still as nuts and entertaining as ever. This time he seems to be a little worked up about things and I pity Amman for having to put up with his belligerence. Nevertheless, I'm happy to hear from him and thought perhaps you would be too:

Good day good sir!

My Waywardianess compells me to divert myself from my rope-making and write you to say hello and ask how are you? and to make the most of this paper. To summarize the past few months, I must say that were the viccisitudes of my life a geological landscape, they would be valleys and mountains.

Though I may be old, I am not completely impervious to the events that have transpired on our international stage. Also, though I am hidden away in Africa, it is not as if I am completely cut off. Perhaps Amman would like me to wear a face of perfect politeness and assume an apolitical attitude and pretend ignorance and sit with my legs crossed and do a curtsey and amount to no more than a deaf, blind, mute, perhaps taking the poodle for a swim while tolerating monkeys chewing at my hair but I am no clown and I can speak when I feel the need! It is not as if there were cotton stuffed in my ears, rubber plugs put in my eye sockets and a cloth stopping my mouth, which is why I will say a word or two on the controversial topic about the latest scuffle between the Arabs and the Jews.

I can say just as any simple bumpkin that this war on Lebanon is terrible. However, so are salespeople. So, please, I entreat you: do not take me erroneously to assume that I would side with communists and anarchists against war. As Mr. Bush well understands: war IS terrible but is that any reason to avoid it? Of course not! If anything, they need to be engaged more vigorously and quickly so that they can be fought away before there is too much peace to compete over. Now that the West has no real enemy from Russia, we must hurry to seize one in Iran and Syria. If this means war, so be it! A man has to have principles and if not, he must have limits (women also must have limits, such as a limit to how many lovers they may court at once, how promiscuously they may act, whether they will be incontinent or no etc). The limit for Israel was the kidnapping of corporeal Shalit. I know something of the anger that strikes a man when something has been taken from him, especially since I have had my shower head stolen from me not once, but several times by unidentified thieves, so when I see that Israel bombed the Lebanon to ruins and killed and displaced millions in several weeks because they had something taken from them, I can understand that it was not an irrational response.

The worst part of this particular war is that it didn't start sooner and that I am not able to fight alongside the ushers of democracy and humanity. Were I in the field at this moment, you can be certain I wouldn't stop until every Hezbollah fighter was crying like a little schoolgirl. Someone should have smashed these hoodlums back in the eighties! They are getting their full dose of their own medicine now though, these bloody terrorists! Israelis have suffered time and again the barbaric onslaughts of fanatical beasts trying to impose their inflated doctrines on them, to make them modest and passive, so that they can quietly celebrate their glory instead of serving as a ruling elite! So now if they are going to bomb the daylights out of Beirut and the whole of South Lebanon, let them have them have a few weeks of recourse.

In our discussions concerning these events, Amman and I do not always agree. He would seem to think that that the best way to deal with murderers is to let them do what they please -murdering and terrorizing villages, hoping that they will exhaust themselves or die of old age. As a peaceful Muslim, he suggests that the Arab world align itself with peaceful, if not somewhat complying Egypt and stop drinking such flammable liquids! Howard is very empathetic and patient when it comes to listening to his idiotic opinions and it is only because I know that he doesn’t know better that I take my time with him to entertain his childish whims. Howard is not completely insensitive, nor does he like to see children and innocent women die. For this reason, if I am to watch the news on a television, I close my eyes. However, if there is anything that we have learned from the great wars of the past, it is that innocent civilians need to be obedient when it is their turn to die. The positive result of all of this is that not one of these innocent children that have been killed by rockets and bombs will have the temptation to grow up as a terrorist. The danger of them becoming brutal killers and jihadists is completely stripped away.

But enough of war. I have tried to be peaceful though terror and violence surround me. You will remember my attack sheep which I trained for the express purpose of ensuring my safety against Janjaweed militiamen? It appears that someone has played me a sick joke. Although my sheep were meant to attack others and thereby secure me from outsides forces, it appears they were the subject of attack by them. I could hear poor Balthazar, a smaller sheep who is chronically lost, bleating his little head off (though, it was actually quite amazing how it stayed on) as he came running to the compound. I went outside to see what was the matter and found, like a horrific image burned into my skull, that someone had all the others decapitated and impaled on wooden sticks! Their heads were formed in a macabre arrangement around my hut, staring at me with their dead eyes. I broke down and cried out, inquiring why anyone would slaughter my beloved sheep. They were too young to die!! Balthazar also bleated quite a sorrowful bleat to see all his brothers and sisters treated thus and nuzzled his head close to mine. Then I saw that with him he bore a message. In between his sheepish teeth had he a ripped piece of cloth. On closer inspection I saw that it was of the polka-dot fashion, red and white. Discerning with my Howardian mental apparatus, I concluded that my valiant Balthazar must have successfully defended himself from his interlopers and ripped the ass-end of their trousers and boxers right from their seat!! I am so proud of my attack sheep, the grandmaster Balthazar. Even if he couldn’t save the ninety-nine other sheep, he saved himself, and found his way just in time. That’s an attack-sheep of my own training if I ever saw one!

Amman and I spent the greater part of the day weeping and digging a large mass grave for the others. I tried as best I could to match each head with its respective body, then I laid their wooly carcasses to rest. My one consolation is that before I lay myself to sleep tonight, I will count each one as it hops over the fence, knowing that the grass is greener on the other side.

I am now in the midst of studying booby-traps, hoping to involve some of my knowledge and innovation in making Rube Goldberg contraptions into a macro version of my other models -an alternate, unmanned and automatic security system for my perimeter. I do not leave my Balthazar one moment alone but he stays in our abode with Amman and I, lest he be attacked again while his defenses are down. (Sheep may acquire post-traumatic stress syndrome like any human can, and Balthazar’s nerves are certainly shot). One thing is certain: we will get whoever did this.

On the positive note, Pamphilia has given notice to me from California where she is wrapping up some performances in street theatre to say that she is finally ready to make a visit. I will be overjoyed to see this splendid woman. She is such a striking actress, My little actress, and I long for her on starry nights. If it were up to me, she would stay here where she belongs, though I empathize with her adventurous spirit. In fact, I believe it is what tied our twin souls together and made us instantly recognize the capacity for a life-long affinity together.

In other news, Amman and I have been too busy to go on a holiday yet although I am still planning on taking him somewhere cooler so that he can experience snow. At night sometimes I tell him stories about big fluffy flakes of snow and how they cover the ground. He becomes like a child at Christmas time with big wide eyes, full of curiousity and awe. He is learning English at a rapid pace, although it is a dangerously rapid pace at that. He knows too many words that he shouldn’t. I made the mistake of renting some action movies starring Sylvester Stalone with guns and violence and foul language and now Amman will mimic his actions by air machine-gunning me down as part of his regular routine. It seems that something is always missing at the Wayward residence and this time, just when I needed to supervisorily edit the movie, it was the remote control. As a result, Amman now employs the F-word with alarming frequency. Since the movie, whenever he needs to add adjectives to any of his sentences, not finding an appropriate alternative, he will talk about the “f—king camels” or the “f—king Hutus getting their f—k on all over this g-d—ned country!” or “that beer f—ked me last night.” It is a vulgar, and irksome trait. This morning, for no reason whatsoever, he kicked me out of bed then had the additional rudeness to ask: “Hey Howard, how the f—k are you?” Sore in the ribs was what. I nearly throttled him then I realized he was genuinely curious. He is sometimes hard to interpret although I treat him with gentility because he is a valuable resource when it comes to bartering with others when I cannot speak the tribal languages or Farsi. The one thing that scares me is when he uses the F-word in anger. I can tolerate it being used lovingly though in our arguments about war he once told me to “go f—k a tree” and that was too much. So Amman’s vulgarity deserves a mouthful of Dove sanitizing lotion. I suspect that for the most part, or at least the greater part of the lesser part, he doesn’t know what he is saying and simply favours the response it provokes. In keeping with the Howardian problem-solving legacy that I have tried to maintain, I have tried to extract some strategies from my child psychology studies, maintaining neutrality throughout his cursing escapades as not to encourage negative behaviour, though sometimes he sees through it. Certainly, I should never have exposed him to Western cinema but it is too late now, he has already seen Jaws, Terminator II, and Dude, Where is my Car? My one secret pleasure is that although he has gotten the idea that the F-word can be used in almost any way, he will still incorrectly use prepositions, as in, when noticing a piece of furniture which is either unique or dilapidated, he will ask: “Hey Howard, don’t you think that couch is pretty f—ked on?” (instead of F-ed up). On the other hand, it disturbs me to consider that he may actually be using the F-word accurately and wonder who was on our couch.

So that is all the news I have until this second. I have promised the town that I would lead the children in a play. It is about a man who learns the importance of gaining cooperation from others and becoming better at agricultural techniques. I also authored this play called: The Inconsistent Gardener, so I must be off to instruct them now. When my dear Pamphilia comes, I will update you on our tours. Until then, remain strong, committed, energetic, full of good health, focused, mature, dynamic and pure.

To toppling terrorism once and for all,

Howard Wayward

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