There are juxtapositions so startling and surreal that we must gaze upon them again and again to grasp what they tell us about our world.

The revelations are rarely pleasant.

Witness the televised chat between a Saudi Executioner and his primetime hosts.

Abdallah Bin Said al-Bishi may be Mecca’s mightiest court-appointed exterminator. He is a manly man. His sword is swift and deadly.

Which makes him a superb guest for anyone’s television show.

But Al-Bishi is not easy to track down. There are limbs to be severed and sinners to be slain. He’s extremely busy with his work.

Television loves busy men.

One can argue that America’s two greatest gifts to the modern world are weapons of mass destruction and the TV talk show format.

The former gets all the attention, but the latter enjoys
equally widespread and lethal employment.

What is the marvel of the modern television interview?

Nothing ever seems incongruous. The exquisite banality of the format
cloaks any sense of creeping insanity.

The interview with Al-Bishi then is hardly different than ones
you’ve seen with Paris Hilton.

Or Donald Rumsfeld.

This show, which first aired on Lebanon’s LBC network in 2006, is an
excellent reminder of how television journalists in the Middle East
possess similar insight and integrity to those in the West.

Their inquiries are deeply philosophical.

As for Al-Bishi, he seems like a nice guy. Family man. Fun at picnics.

But it’s probably best to avoid him when he’s working.

Even though Al-Bishi might be considered dangerous, don’t think these interviewers are afraid of asking tough questions.

Because they’re not. They want to get the story. The real story.

For all of the glamour and fame of Al-Bishi’s position, he is a modest man.

At the end of the day, he says, his work is just like anyone else’s.

Only his job involves ritualistic dismemberment with its expulsion of internal organs, tissues and brain matter, and yours probably doesn’t.

But that’s not part of the show. This show anyway.

He’s just a regular guy with a regular job. On television. Talking.

Television: Modern culture’s greatest instrument for manufacturing the Normal.

[Watch the interview or read the transcript here. Originally caught on Metafilter.
For accounts and explicit images of what men like Al-Bishi actually do
on their jobs, you have only to search the Web. It’s out there.]

For Valentine’s Day…

You want to give a gift that will be warmly remembered?

Give the gift of a Kalashnikov AK-47.

You want to say “I love you?”

Say I love you with a Kalashnikov AK-47.

There are lots of things people want. Some of them they actually need.

But few they’ll treasure.

Listen to us.

They will treasure a sweet little Kalashnikov AK-47.

What brings people together?

A Kalashnikov AK-47.

Cops love them. Gangs love them. Terrorists and armies love them.

So will your sweetheart.

And guess what? Kids love them too.

As the poet said….

“Happiness is a warm gun.”

And there is no gun quite as warm as the AK-47.

Many years ago, in a moment of sacred inspiration,
Ivan Kalashnikov dreamt up this wondrous weapon.

And the world has never been the same.

100 million AK-47s around the globe.

And counting!

Can you afford such a splendid instrument?

Of course you can.
It’s cheap in every land.

Do you have $100? Then buy one,
buy two. Spread the joy!

Don’t worry if your beloved
isn’t able to shoot straight.

700 rounds a minute, comrade.
Trust us. Trust the AK-47.

She’ll hit something.

But what’s that you say?

You don’t have a true love? No one will be your Valentine?

Then give yourself a little kiss.
Give yourself a little love.

Give yourself a little Kalashnikov AK-47

for Valentine’s Day.

Perhaps our deepest desires float blindly along
in the dark, adrift from our conscious mind.

Perhaps from time to time these desires merge
with the secret dreams of other dreamers…

And rise to the surface like lava, taking ashen shape
in visions most sublime.

These images may appear as the product of this artist or that.

But we might rightly consider such visions as nothing less
than the aching manifestations of our collective unconscious.

Our own hopes, wishes, fantasies, unknown even to ourselves,
now thrust into the open with the brazen swagger of truth.

It is a mark of this world that the expectation of justice
shocks the imagination.

Justice?!

Justice becomes a clever joke among clever people,
but no one does much laughing.

Still the longing lingers.

And the hidden hope, once exposed, seems awfully…

Sweeeeeeet.

Book ’em, Danno.

And get them out of my sight.

The artist’s subjects are enormous.

He is fond of fleshy souls and depicts them in all their immensity.

Born in Columbia in 1932, Fernando Botero
took the figures of his boyhood and his imagination,
and inflated them, endowing his dancers, husbands,
bullfighters and lovers with comic and mythic proportion.

The images are widely beloved. Botero’s art hangs in museums
around the world. He is incredibly famous. He is incredible wealthy.
He has made thousands of paintings, each one worth
more than most make in a lifetime.

“I like to paint pleasant things…All of my life, by conviction,
I did subjects that were rather pleasant.”

As a young artist, Botero left Columbia for New York.
In the 13 years he lived there, he painted only his private Columbia.
He moved to Paris and resided there for more than 30 years.
But Paris was never his subject. Only the quaint, charming
figures from his mythic Columbia made the canvas.

All this time, the real Columbia was mired in disaster.
There were massacres, kidnappings and torture.
Guerillas, paramilitary groups, government forces and
vicious drug cartels vied for control. Life was cheap.
200,000 Columbians were murdered while Botero painted.

But decade after decade, the popular artist portrayed only a sweet,
whimsical world of perpetual innocence.

Then something happened.

We do not know what.

All we know is that as he approached his 70th year,
the artist began painting things most unpleasant.

He had heard and read the news reports.
He had imagined the countless horrors of his homeland.
Now he took paint to canvas.

The fat images were no longer funny.

The world famous artist did not sell these paintings.
He gave them to the people of Columbia,
donating the work to the National Museum of Columbia.

Botero seemed to be changing.

When he read of the crimes at Abu Ghraib,
he said he felt he must do something.
So he began to draw. He began to paint.

His prisoners carry the voluminous corpulence that is his trademark,
but now they wear their flesh as a kind of stark testament
to their tortures. The images are emphatic, insistent.

“I wanted to recreate the atmosphere in the prison with scenes
that were not scenes in the photos, to make some idea of the feeling,
so that I could communicate some idea of the horrors that were going on…
In painting there is this concentration of emotion through time,
leaving out everything that doesn’t concern the subject,
and this makes the images in painting have special meaning….

Art has the capacity to make us remember a situation for a long time.”

The artist who found fame and fortune creating
amusing figures from a quaint land of the past
now turns to our world and our time,
and says terrible and unjust events must not go forgotten.

“It has to be remembered….I could not stay silent. The power of art
is to make you remember something. I hope that will happen with my work.”

Patrick Power has left.

Chronicler. Visionary. Web Guru. Wild Man.

He jumped into Niagara Falls.

And was gone.

Many no longer notice the sky and stars,
the wind and light and shadow,
the creatures and the creaking poles,
the electric flare and the mechanical doodad.

Patrick noticed. He was always looking, seeing.

He never saw the same thing twice.

He took thousands of photographs and videos.

He saw the things that others missed.

And considered their energy, their presence.

In the year before he left, he wrote of these things:

“The false binary of creation destruction.

Matter never created or destroyed.

It comes from a higher place. It changes as it falls.

This is constant.”

He wrote this too:

“Foolishness as the ancestor of wisdom.

Stopping as a way of moving forward.

Circles moving within circles moving within circles.

The evolutionary narrative.

The endless mystery as it unravels across time and space.

These things never happened
but always were.”

Americans are often criticized for being oblivious to the sufferings of others. Here at SurfingtheSpectacle, we say, “No. No, you’re very wrong.”

We care. We care very much.

But what can we do about the pain and injustice in the world?

It’s all so confusing and irrational.

It’s not our fault. And besides, could we really make an impact?

For instance, millions of children die each year from malnutrition.
But could we ever help any one of them? Not really.

They would just live to die of something else. We wouldn’t really be solving the problem.

But there are problems that we can fix!

Look how sad and forlorn this woman looks. Can she ever be helped?

She sure can! And how!!

You see, it’s all thanks to this man. Jason Grunstra. He had a sacred calling.

Following the path of Mother Teresa, Saint Grunstra started a charitable organization called myfreeimplants.com that rescues women in deep distress.

The group is dedicated to the idea of giving every needy woman bigger breasts.

Using the glorious power of the Web, they transform the lives of suffering souls
(see left) to paragons of fulfillment (see right).

It’s powerful! And any man can help! He just goes to the website
and donates money for this crucial procedure.

The man is given the title “Benefactor.”
And the women send him pictures and chat with him and everything!

But their pain is all too real.
And their tearful testimonies can break the most hardened heart.

“I really want a boob job because I want to look good in a bikini and I just have always wanted and dreamed of finally having big boobies.”

For the love of God, who will help this poor thing?!!

O, the world sorely needs our compassionate souls.

[Fox’s Geraldo Rivera tackled this story in a powerful segment called “Hooter Heaven.” Alas, it no longer seems to be available online.
The photographs on top are from unknown sources, save for the
photograph of fleeing Palestinians taken by James Lukoski.]

The daily drive to work involves countless checkpoints and ID checks. One day, something new. The uniformed man stares hard at her, insisting he recognizes her as a doctor from a hospital. She panics. And must hide the panic. In a city where doctors are targeted and killed, this mistaken impression can mean the end of her days.

The guard’s face is serious, angry. He speaks intensely to a superior while she waits, her life now in the hands of strangers. Abruptly she is dismissed. She drives off, afraid to look back. She knows she can never take this route again. She continues on to work. Still shaking.

Such are the incidents and impressions we find on a remarkable blog called Inside Iraq. For most Westerners, war in Iraq brings tales of bombers and mayhem, soldiers and strife, upheaval and fanaticism. The human face is rarely revealed.

Americans know little about Iraqis that hasn’t been conjured from old films, political propaganda and televised news scraps. The Iraqi people exist merely as abstractions, words, numbers, so the idea of ten or forty or one hundred thousand Iraqi civilians dying from the conflict there means, for all too many, nothing.

But of course, no person is an abstraction. Each holds her own share of desire, despair, pleasure. Each has his own story. Through Inside Iraq, the reader is given a brief glimpse of Iraqi life, as the blog offers the personal thoughts and tales of Iraqi journalists working for the American newspaper chain McClatchy Newspapers.

Their dispatches convey the daily tedium and sporadic violence of life in a broken nation. The tone is informal, direct. The voice feels familiar – it is impossible to read their struggles and not imagine your own life in their shoes.

Many of their problems are mundane. Monotonous. Fixing a third-rate generator in scorching summer heat. Waiting in endless lines for gas. Securing clean water for one’s family. The tiresome pace of life in a new Iraq amid empty promises and widespread confusion.

Homes are missed. Daughters are missed. Bookstores and restaurants are missed. The old life, now forever gone, is missed.

One writes of seeing a fearful old man in the market and recognizing him as an old schoolteacher. “He looked so afraid.” Another tells of children, once playing together and now apart, the growing recognition that some are Shiite, some Sunni. “A wave of deep sorrow engulfed me.” A third recounts a ride with a taxi driver who talks of the crippling of his daughter, the murder of his brothers, a harrowing escape from a gun pointed at his temple. “I was unable to say anything.”

The unbelievable becomes normalized. Riders on a bus discuss mortars, IEDs and car bombs the way they might speak of the weather. A mother decides on nylon sheets instead of glass for her windows – less danger for her children in an explosion. Survival tips are passed along like recipes. Keep the car in working order. Keep eyes averted in the presence of occupiers. Become pliant or, better yet, invisible.

Make absolutely no errors.

These Iraqis may endure their chronic proximity to violence and occupation, but for some it comes at a price – inner distance, retreat.

“How can one continue to be human, filled with human feelings and not withdraw into that inner place were no hurt can follow?? Driving faster than usual, feeling quite unreal, I feel like testing my humanity against some blast wall – just to see if I’m still human.”

In such a world, wit, irony and humor still persist. One remarks that it’s a shame all the cardiologists have been driven from Baghdad, with everyone on edge, they would make a bundle. Another observes that living amid the harrowing chase scenes and gunfire of everyday life is like being a character is some great epic film. The writer would prefer a role in a romantic comedy instead.

There is sanity in this. Life of constant weeping is not life.

“Less than five minutes after the explosion, everything was normal and we started talking and laughing again and why not, its just an IED in Baghdad, So what? Its not the first and we are all sure its not the last. Its just one more day in Baghdad.”

[The Inside Iraq blog can be found here and particular entries referenced are as follows: “Go”1, “Not Enough”2, “One More Day”3, “Watch Out!”4, “To Be a Part”5, “Look of Fear”6, “One Question”7, “Play”8. “To Be Part of a Movie”9, “Hot Day”10, “Be Calm, Don’t Lose It”11. All the images are from the early paintings of the great Gerhard Richter.]

There are few bright episodes in the national endurance of an American vice president who has advocated torture, diminished civil rights, silenced opposing views, and conspired with corporate heads against the interests of the American people.

But there have been moments of modest relief.

In September of 2005, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of the Gulf Coast, and the administration’s belated and inept response to the disaster, a brilliant moment in TV history occurred.

Vice President Dick Cheney was on a brief visit to Mississippi, hoping to create the impression that he and the administration actually care for the plight of suffering Americans. As Cheney is interviewed by reporters, we hear the voice of a passerby with a message for the vice president – a message that, much like a Greek Chorus, seemed to reflect the deep tensions and ire of the democratic citizenry.

Since our leaders are utterly shielded, sometimes by the media itself, from the slightest voice of dissent – regardless of how corrupt and heinous their abuse of power may be – authentic expressions like this provide deep resonance.

The voice belonged to Ben Marble, a Mississippi local, a rocker, and a physician at a nearby hospital. His subsequent ballad of the event (listen to it here) is equally rewarding.

Of course, the good doctor’s words were inspired by Cheney’s own statements. The year before, Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont dared to criticize Halliburton, Cheney’s old company, for war profiteering. This irritated the 47th Vice President. When he next saw Senator Leahy on the Senate floor, he gave him this message:

“Fuck Yourself.”

As it happens, on that very day, the Senate had passed legislation described as the “Defense of Decency Act.” The Act sought to “protect children and families” by increasing fines for the broadcasting of offensive and indecent incidents.

Such are the laws that powerful American leaders spend time on in Washington.

Our most morally upright citizens know that the biggest problems in the world are bad words and boobies.

That’s where Kevin Martin comes in. He is chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, or FCC.

You might imagine that running the FCC would entail serving the people of the land by insuring democratic access to the airwaves, and preventing a handful of wealthy corporations from controlling all mass communication.

You would be wrong.

Mr. Martin spends a good chunk of his time as national decency policeman, on the prowl for bad words and boobies that tumble onto broadcasts.

Oh, he’s qualified for the job. He first proved his integrity and moral splendor in 2000 as a lawyer on the Bush-Cheney recount team in Florida. Since taking the top spot at the FCC in 2005, he intensified the FCC’s crackdown on decency with much higher fines for every accidental “shit” and “fuck” that might emerge in a public broadcast.

Last month, however, a federal appeals panel may have finally curbed Martin and the FCC’s great crusade. The court struck down the government policy that fines stations and networks huge sums for the broadcasting of words that Martin deems offensive.

The court reasoned, in part, that if these words were good enough for Cheney and Bush to utter, then they’re good enough for the rest of us.

Amen.

But it’s important to remember that there are indecent things.

Take, for instance, the American Vice President, who has used elaborate deceptions to construct and conduct a bloody and senseless war that has led to more than 100,000 dead Iraqi civilians, more than 3,600 dead American soldiers, the acceleration and strengthening of Islamic terrorism, and the loss of some half a trillion dollars. He then, as late as last February, characterizes this very same war as a “remarkable achievement.”

Yes.

There are indecent things.

[To sample two offensive songs, click here to hear Eric Idle’s “FCC Song”, and here to listen to RX’s immortal “Dick is a Killer.” You can see the entire video of Ben Marble’s encounter with Cheney here. The illustration of Cheney comes from Amanda Kavanagh, a marvelous artist whose work can be found here and here.]