Metaphysical Stuff 13

McHajj 
by
Jaye C. Beldo

Netnous@Aol.Com

*Please note: The McHajj series you are about to read came to me 
directly via a series of disturbing dreams, dreams which continue to 
haunt me at present. These dreams, more like interminable nightmares, 
have resulted from life long exposure to advertising in the 
relentlessly predatory, capitalistic society that I'm haphazardly 
posited in. In order to deal with the severe psychological trauma 
such exposure has caused me, I have translated what my unconscious 
mind has directly conveyed to me into the story below. It is the only 
way I know how to cope with the constant trespassing into my psyche 
by the corporate powers which loom about in a most menacing and 
merciless fashion. Thank you for understanding my dilemma. BTW: I am 
currently starting a twelve step support group for those who may 
believe that they are victims of a similar kind of corporate 
psychological terrorism. I will provide more information in the near 
future...if there is one. Thank you!


McHajj: Part I

Ronald McDonald saunters through the range country all alone, exiled 
from Playland. He comes upon the Marlboro Men, all maudlin, yet 
steadfast, sitting around a campfire. He tries clowning but cannot 
even eke one single grin. One offers him a smoke. Ronald reciprocates 
with Big Macs for all. They eat hamburgers and smoke, staring into 
the embers. Ronald lets out a conciliatory chuckle, but the others do 
not respond.

The next day, they mount the steeds and set out. In the course of 
their round-up, they encounter Joe Camel, the Pillsbury Doughboy, 
Colonel Saunders, California Raisins, the Hamburger Helper Hand, 
Charlie Tuna, Palmolive Madge, The Tidy Bowl Man, Mr. Clean and other 
iconomorphic cuties traversing the desert in search of greener test 
markets. All caravan across the wastes, drawn towards a mirage of the 
eternal milk pour shot. The posse grows in legion. They tour cancer 
wards, deforested tracts in South America, fished out oceans, tobacco 
farms with spent soil and carked farmers. They pass out campaign 
pamphlets to Jivaro Indians and work their way down to Tierra Del 
Fuego. A vote is to be cast for the next Messiah, since the first one 
(anthropos) cannot return, cannot get his sandaled foot or staff into 
Ogilvy's Madison Avenue door.

A vote is cast. Ronald wins. The Golden Arches of Triumph remain.

The division works its way towards Mecca. Upon reaching the ka'ba, 
Ronald ventures an entrance. With a grin he greets the twelfth Imam 
who patiently engraves upon a piece of plutonium the size and shape 
of a bowling ball. The Imam reads aloud what he has inscribed on 
Allah's favorite alloy:

In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate,

Praise belongs to God, the Lord of all Being,

the all merciful, the All-compassionate

the Master of the Day of Doom.

A television in the North West corner runs a Prime Time Shi'ite 
Evangelist special. Oppenheimer makes a guest appearance. He quotes 
the Bhagavad Gita. The t.v. casts a debile numinosity, reminiscent of 
decaying isotopes over the interior of the ka'ba. The splendor of a 
thousand suns, however, lay dormant in the Imam's plutonium. Ronald 
offers the Imam a Big Mac, but is solemnly declined as the final 
filigrees are added to the stanza. Mr. McDonald shrugs his shoulders, 
skips over to the Southeast corner, kisses the black stone and savors 
its meteoric flavor. A tongue emerges from the stone. The stone tries 
to sing Allah's glory but Ronald begins to French kiss the stone. 
Allah's eyes open but he cannot recognize who is kissing him. Ronald 
tears his wig away and smears the make up off his face. The clown 
introduces himself to Allah and demands a sacrifice of every child 
watching Saturday morning cartoons in America. Cheers can be heard 
from as far away as Algiers. Outside, the Marlboro men gallop their 
horses around the Ka'ba, tossing cartons of cigarettes to the 
pilgrims, while Van Allen asteroids with angel wings hover above like 
Hummingbirds, forming a double helix pattern.

 
Joint-Chiefs-of-Staff in the War room at the Pentagon. A satellite 
picks up the action over in Mecca. All chiefs ponder the 
implications. 'Flexible Response' is briefly discussed.

 
While Ronald and Allah make out, the Imam carefully places the 
scripted ball into a missile's warhead compartment concealed directly 
beneath the center of the ka'ba. Ronald just laughs, fluffs his wig 
out and puts it back on. He fixes his make up and steps outside. It 
dawns on him that he forgot to takes his clown shoes off upon 
entering. But no one outside notices his disrespect. His secret would 
not be betrayed. The pilgrims fervently, ecstatically kiss the 
Pillsbury Doughboy, the Hamburger Helper hand, and the California 
Raisins. Joe Camel lets them take turns riding on his back. He 
circumambulates the ka'ba seven times. The Imam steps outside and 
climbs up the minaret and sings to the sky and all activity below 
stops. He holds in his hand the remote control launch button. 
Palmolive Madge noticed that the cuticles of the Middle Beast were 
hardened.

 
The legion works its way over the Great Wall of China and marches to 
the center of Tienanmen Square. All the cowboys, clowns, fuzzy little 
denizens of the west sit in front of a giant statue of Mao. Ronald 
runs his tongue over the plinth. It too tastes meteoric. Soon 
refugees from slave labor camps, both Tibetan and Chinese, clutching 
onto Mickey Mouse dolls are paraded past the icons. Ronald feels 
something. Yet his make-up won't betray his sorrow. The Pillsbury 
Doughboy deflates a little. The four fingered Hamburger Helper Hand 
offers to help but cannot grasp the situation. The Marlboro Men hand 
out cigarettes to the refugees but they are refused. All wait.

============


McHajj: Part II
by

Jaye C. Beldo
Netnous@Aol.Com

*Please note:  The McHajj series you are about to read came to me 
directly via a series of disturbing dreams, dreams which continue to 
haunt me at present.  These dreams, more like interminable 
nightmares, have resulted from life long exposure to advertising in 
the relentlessly predatory, capitalistic society that I'm haphazardly 
posited in.  In order to deal with the severe psychological trauma 
such exposure has caused me, I have translated what my unconscious 
mind has directly conveyed to me into the story below.  It is the 
only way I know how to cope with the constant trespassing into my 
psyche by the corporate powers which loom about in a most menacing 
and merciless fashion.  Thank you for understanding my dilemma.  BTW: 
I am currently starting a twelve step support group for those who may 
believe that they are victims of a similar kind of corporate 
psychological terrorism.  I will provide more information in the near 
future...if there is one.  Thank you!

    Joe Stalin nudged Ronald McDonald, grateful that the clown had 
the chutzpah to invite him to his stag party.  The cadre was a bit 
beaten and weather worn after the China tour. Mao never even showed.  
Ronald then made the announcement while passing through Cambodia that 
he was to marry. So a stop was decided, in Berlin, to celebrate 
before going back state side to the jubilant swarms. 

On a stained and battered movie screen that had seen the likes of 
Caligari, Dr. Mabuse and Nosferatu, a flick starring Goddess Kali and 
the Virgin Mary played,  for the umpteenth time that evening.  In it, 
the Pope, all dolled up in a leather Teddy once owned by Madonna and 
clutching onto a sequin covered Crozier, watched the gals carpet 
munch each other.  Kali's garland of severed heads, consisting of 
card carrying members of the United Nations  trembled as she 
climaxed: each head speaking in tongues while an entourage of angels 
above listened in ears.  Mission accomplished,  the Virgin appeared 
demure, scanning her Rolodex, trying to decide which country next to 
infiltrate with Marian visions via NASA holography.  Star Wars 
indeed. 

"Jimmy Swaggart....eat your evangelical heart out.", was the Pope's 
only line.  He delivered it deadpan enough to pass, but who pays 
attention to dialogue in skin flicks?

Down below, the cadre of commercial icons took on a luminous hue in 
the porn film light.

Pol Pot announced that the cake would soon be wheeled out.   The 
Marlboro Men tossed some confetti.  Joe Camel popped some champagne. 
All the lights were turned off and silence ensued.  A Menorah floated 
in the darkness beneath an exit sign dimmed below code.  It hovered 
around the theater, leaving sevenfold trails of candle light, which 
streaked and then formed into Hebrew letters : yod-he-vau-he, UFO's 
far more convincing than anything Spielberg has cinematically 
conjured for the masses. The candle flames/letters grew brighter 
causing the darkness to finally yield up its secret: A Golem had been 
guiding the Menorah all along.  Instead of seven candle sticks there 
was a septet of finely molded, perfectly uniform wax Porky Pigs with 
wicks protruding from their snouts.  But were they really 100% wax?  
They sizzled and crackled like some kind of animal fat, a fat which 
ran down and melted into the cracks in the Golem's thick earthy 
flesh.   Ronald climbed up on the stage, made a wish and blew out the 
candles and chuckled.  But an actor dressed up like Rabbi Loew came 
out of the wings and chided him.  It wasn't a god damned birthday 
party.  Ronald chuckled, bore the brunt of the catcalls from his 
fellow icons and signaled for the real cake to be wheeled out. An 
angel handed the Golem a trumpet and noticed the clayey android's 
breastplate: A Masonic pyramid with an eye in the apex.  

Pol Pot signaled his military band to start playing along and the 
sounds of a million Cambodian skulls cracking in a hydraulic vice 
washed over the theater like a sonic flood.  Joe Stalin wept as the 
ossified sonority echoed over the Siberian veldt of his soul.  

The Golem sounded the first note on his horn, thus breaking Seal 
Number One: From out of the cake popped Barbara Walters in a bikini. 
There she was, the carnal frosting on the cake of test market 
destiny.  Soon Berlin Gynecologists dressed like the sorrowful Young 
Werther, rushed in to see if the Hymen was still intact.  It was.  
The real Mecca was finally reached. All were glad.  A sacred 
pilgrimage spot was declared. Soon they'd be flocking to ABC's New 
York T.V. Studios and not to cleanse themselves of iniquities with 
the leftover bath water of Hugh Downs. 

A mini-resurrection ensued in the cemeteries surrounding Berlin.  All 
the young men Goethe conned into suicide rose from their mother's 
graves and began heading towards the theater.  Would Gabriel lead the 
way for them?  Or would it be Heine?  Maybe Kafka himself would show 
them the short cuts through Berlin's sewage labyrinths?  No, no 
compasses... they honed in merely by instinct.  Once they arrived 
they were amiably greeted, but relegated to the last rows where the 
footlights from the stage barely shone.

The film ran again.  Yet this time three dimensional like a 
holographic dodecahedron.  Each facet contained an image, a precisely 
focused promise of salvation.  On one facet of the screen was the 
land of the Houris, on another facet: the New Jerusalem, on another 
facet: Ashtar Command and other cinematic variations of the Chosen 
People Syndrome. Each promised land refracted kaliedoscopically like 
a disco light in which that scientologist John Travolta danced under 
so soulessly.  The dodecahedron floated higher and higher up into the 
rafters and out through the roof and hovered over Berlin.  Soon there 
were Muslims, Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus all flocking to 
take in their personal slice of the flick.

Inside, the Rabbi pulled the plug on the projector and searched 
within the machine for what could possibly fabricate such a hideous 
illusion. All he found was a crystal, where the projector bulb should 
have been, a crystal holding the form of some kind of eschatological 
fractal yet to blossom.

The Marlboro Men ignored the No-Smoking signs and lit up.  Barbara 
and Ronald did a little tango up on the stage in celebration of their 
union.  No one would arrest them.  No one would ask for their 
papers.  All was steamy, sultry collusion across the board, that 
evening. There would be good stories to tell , yes, back on the 
range, of the strange pariahs abroad.  

to be continued