painted whores, praying

On Sundays, because the public library shuts its doors and turns off its wireless router, I buy a hot tea and blog from a chain eatery that provides Internet access at no additional cost. This week, while re-posting the shit out of tumblr and tweeting POTUS beseechingly, I got a real treat when a skinny girl with an attractively-muscled upper back and shapely legs who was wearing a low-cut halter top and skin-tight shortshorts sauntered past me on laced-up high heels to sit at a booth a few down from my own. While I frequent this eatery primarily to feast my eyes upon the tight bodies of such dolled-up professional women and attention-hungry milfs who regularly grace its nonslip tiled floors, this girl and her twenty-something companion seemed worthy of more than just a few perverted and sidelong glances. An equally skinny girl wearing a similarly revealing upper and shortshorts that left little to the imagination, the companion's eyes were made up a bright aquamarine blue to offset the relatively subdued paint-job on the rest of her face, with a clunky necklace and a pair of reflective metal discs shoved into her perforated lobes rounding out her ensemble.

Having observed whores at work in Berlin, Bangkok, and Tijuana, I have scrutinized done-up street walkers and down-and-out alley rats alike, and upon seeing these two young ladies, my first thoughts were, “Oh brother, these ladies-of-the-night are out during the day and not even trying to hide the nature of their business.' Regardless of my tendency to avoid buying sexual favors, I was mulling over the prospect of getting a Billy Joel in one of the bathroom's stalls, or paying for a Howard Johnson in the back of the one girl's car, when the girl facing me – the one with the painfully-bright, aquamarine-tinted eyelids – set a tray of food onto the table, distributed the various dishes, bowed her head, crossed her hands, and prayed for a good thirty seconds before digging in.

This is a religiously-conservative area, one in which the local Catholics stand out on the square in the center of town for five weeks at a time protesting abortion and birth-control and generally trying to revoke a woman's right to her own body. Therefore, I was not expecting – early on a Sunday afternoon at just about the time when churches here let out – to see two girls dressed in the manner of prostitutes praying over some hastily-constructed panini sandwiches and meager cups of chicken tortilla soup. I even feared for their safety, since the Old Testament of the Christian bible instructs true believers to kill or at the very least banish and persecute persons painted in the manner of whores (Psalm 51:4). I have seen Thai girls stop to pray at alters to their god, asking Buddha to send them a man who will support them financially; I have no problem with prostitution, even supporting its legalization here in America; I wonder, though, if those girls had dressed up in the manner of cheap sluts in order to make a statement, as a reflection of the latest trends in mainstream fashion, or out of a misguided effort to make themselves look pretty. However things shook out for them that day, though, at least they supplicated to their god in a socially acceptable way, praying quietly and otherwise keeping their opinions to themselves, unlike the anti-abortionists and their nuns and priests, who make a terrible stink any time anybody even looks like they might be going into Planned Parenthood.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

guerrilla tactics - squared

(This update covers the first and second of November.)

  On Wednesday, I arrived on the square around noon, and skipped diagonally across it to my post opposite the anti-choice crowd, leaping high in the exact center to click my heels. Once entrenched, I bowed to them, low to the ground and proper-like, to initiate the day's bout. Among my counterparts were new faces, most of them boring except for the blatantly sex-deprived young man who recited his religion's slogans at high volume, continuously. There was also a curious older man who walked up carrying a cane and pushing a wheelchair (briskly), only to sit in his device and to prop his PRAY TO END ABORTION sign on his seemingly all-too-functional legs.

  My dear readers, the foes of freedom are pulling out all the stops in their battle against the right of the American adult to make a decision. While their minor offenses of blatantly and continuously obstructing foot traffic on their staked-out sidewalk and of jaywalking in full view of the world (to escape proximity to me), their major offense is their continued struggle to force the American People to live according to one set of religious rules among the thousands practiced here every day. Such actions, honored friends, constitute religious oppression by any rule and measure. Hence, my newest sign, END THIS RELIGIOUS OPPRESSION.

  Regarding the name of this article, my guerrilla tactics have proven very effective. (I would like to thank Sun Tzu, and Mao Zedong.) Instead of just waving at the people who give me thumbs up, I have begun waving at everyone who honks or waves, without exception. This has led to a general decrease in honking, and to many upset anti-choicers who try to convey with any hand signal but the middle finger that they in no way support me. This has also led drivers who happen to be watching to think that I am waving back at my supporters, which helps them to override their fears, whereupon they give me a nice broad smile or a secret nod of approval.

  As I am taking from my opponents their (open) public support, so have I taken their slogans. My signs, (DEFEND FREEDOM | END THIS RELIGIOUS OPPRESSION | WHAT'S NEXT? PRAY TO END FREE SPEECH), when used properly, in thirteen words are capable of changing the mind of the wary passer-by, whom I can watch evolve from impartial spectator to full-blown, horn-honking supporter. If I am lucky, I actually witness the beginning of long and potentially deal-breaking conversations between romantic couples who probably should have talked about the whole abortion thing before they read it on some crazy guy's signs.

  As an effort to maintain a level of self-mockery, I always come dressed in different costumes. This confuses my foes and robs them of the power to offend my pride. (Pride is a huge factor in participatory democracy: maintaining a stable emotional state is crucial, so my distinctive lack of self-respect is really coming in handy.)

  In line with the ancient tactics of long-deceased military minds, I am flexible where my foe is stagnant, my message fresh, entertaining, attention-getting, their message one-sided, fixed. I have side-stepped the false prizes my counterparts have offered (calling the cops of them, responding physically to harassment by priest or parishioner), striking instead boldly to the crux of the issue. One of the most important victories I have won is the ability to control the dialogue. By addressing my opponents directly (when they are trying so hard to ignore me, and to shut me down), and by cutting to the honest core of the issue, I have exposed the cruel, thinly-veiled heart of their message: YOU WILL BOW TO OUR GOD. To force the American People to live according to the rules of one god in particular is to rob us completely of our freedom. If we ease off, and allow religious fanatics to erode just one of our Constitutional rights (such as a woman's right to her body, which is her property), we will forsake all of our rights, we will destroy our inalienable protections, and we will make a mockery of a once free People.

  I was in the middle of my dramatic farewell bow, when, righting myself, I turned to find a quasi-homeless man (with whom I have spoken previously) smiling at me from a few feet away. “Why don't you leave those poor crazy people alone?” he said. A note to the anti-choicers: if homeless people are calling you crazy, then your message is in serious trouble. Our foes are shaken, their position increasingly untenable.

  Long live the forces of freedom!

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp 

counter-protesting, day #6

  Pretty routine day today in downtown Hanover, Pennsylvania. After having played at Codorus State Park fourteen holes of speed disk golf (when you're not throwing, you're running), I showed up with some new signs I had made last night: MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS | IT'S NOT A BABY 'TILL IT'S BORN | WHEN THEY GO HOME, I'LL GO HOME | KEEP YOUR MORALS OUT OF MY BOWELS | ABORTION – SOMETIMES, IT JUST MAKES SENSE. With these as well as my other signs in hand, I was able to express quite a bit in a few minutes, without saying a word.
  Immediately upon my arrival, two of the four pro-lifers on hand, both women, rushed to their minivans, where they proceeded to conduct lengthy telephone conversations while staring at me continuously until I looked their way, whereupon they pretended not to have been looking at all. The only contact I had with the police was when an officer putting plain paper bags over the parking-meters noticed me trying to switch messages. He said, “You've got a lot of signs.” “Yeah... I've got a couple,” my reply. One passing driver hung his head out the window to shout, “If your mother had gotten an abortion, we wouldn't be in this situation.” Thanks for that, sir – I will pass on your sentiment to my dead mother.
  What was the main thing I learned today? That “mind your own business” (MYOB) goes over very well with the people of this region, and with those who pass through here. (This town being at the nexus of a handful of major connecting roads that point to all directions of the compass, thousands of cars come through the square every day, all of them exposed to my horrific and potentially insulting signs.) Old and young they waved, male and female, most with huge grins on their faces as they gave me thumbs-up and sped happily into the distance, confident that someone was out there fighting for Liberty.
  MYOB, moreover, also ties in with my greater message: a woman's body is her business, and trying to make abortion illegal violates the business of her body, which is her property, which is protected under not only the fifth, but also the fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
  When I returned from making more signs (over a nice lunch of smoked oysters, jasmine rice, and broccoli pieces all cooked up together in a rice-cooker), a neighbor of one of the families in town that I hang out with was on the square, her young daughter in tow, the child poorly dressed given the foul weather (the look of shock on her face almost sending me running until I clamped down on the Fear). Soon, it started to rain harder, and I was left on the square, alone, holding up a sign that said: THIS SIGN COST: $0.57
  I had almost rolled up my sign – the pedestrian light was taking forever to change – when a fat, young, two-pack-a-day grandmother leaned out of her daughter's car, and said, “Why don't you take your own advice, and mind your own business?”

  Well played, Gam-Gam; well played.

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

on abortion (counter-protesting)

  I am just come from counter-protesting the abortion protesters who have been infesting the central square in the small, rural town where I live. For weeks now, I have driven past them day after day, middle-aged men, grandmothers, and nuns standing out in the cold, standing up for that in which they believe. They carry professionally-made signs that say, PRAY TO END ABORTION, or, LIFE IS PRECIOUS. Some of the signs bear pictures of aborted fetuses, some pictures of cute and cuddly little babies.

  The first sign I made, at two Saturday morning with a head full of booze and a heart full of indignation, said, CHOICE = LIBERTY – KEEP ABORTION LEGAL. Having spent the day playing disk golf at Codorus State Park, I remembered the sign I had shoved into the trunk of my car the night before, and made it out to the square just before dusk, Saturday evening. Within a few minutes, two separate drives had either booed me or given me thumbs down, while one of the protesters, a young, sporty-looking woman, had waved to me at least five times. Fortunately, my disk golfing partner was there to back me up, and to take pictures for posting to the socialverse.

  Once again fresh from disk golfing, today I debuted my new sign, this one with two sides, and two messages. The first: CHOICE = LIBERTY – DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION. The second: KEEP YOUR PRAYERS OUT OF MY VAGINA. I made sure to hit the square around lunch time, this time without backup, to catch the midday traffic. Immediately, there were honks and jeers, thumbs up and down, brief conversations with drivers stopped at the light where I stood, and many, many people looking away in shame or embarrassment. More than one driver agreed that it was “only a matter of time” before someone did what I was doing. The sporty young woman waved once or twice, but her companions, two women in their seventies, never ceased shooting daggers at me, their looks dripping with malicious contempt, their polished little signs no match for the giant piece of spray-painted cardboard upon which I had clumsily scrawled my counter-slogans.

  I caught a half dozen drivers taking pictures, and a trio of proto-hipsters approached me at one point, to have their picture taken next to the vagina slogan, but the highlight of my hour on the square was the local rapid-transit bus that circled the block so that one of the passengers could take a picture of the vagina slogan, the bus's driver laughing and signaling to me with her hands to flip over my message-board.

  I believe strongly in my messages. According to just about every doctor on the planet, a fetus is just not a baby until it emerges from the mother's body. Until such time that it emerges, the fetus is the property of the mother – she has the inalienable right to do with it what she pleases. In the fourteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution, each person is granted the right to life, liberty, and property, rights that pertain to the body specifically, that property without which life is impossible.

  If one thinks that the fetus during the first trimester is human life (when it is only a cluster of cells), then abortion activists surely oppose (on moral grounds) surgery of any kind. During liposuction, living human tissue is removed from the body. Similarly, a cancerous tumor is living human tissue – when it is removed from the body, it dies. Who is protesting publicly to end the removal of cancerous growths? No one. When my pancreas is issued a passport, or when my trachea obtains the right to vote, I might agree with the protesters, but these internal tissue clusters are part of me, not separate entities: they are mine to dispose of as I please.

  No country of which I know issues a certificate of conception, whereas most countries issue some sort of certificate of birth. I think this shows us what modern, enlightened society understands: that anything growing within your body belongs to you. Our Constitutional rights must be guarded continuously from attacks by persons and groups that wish to take them from us. So stand up, speak out, and keep your prayers out of my vagina

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp