The Great London Fire of 1666

And why I wish George Bush would stop playing with matches…

I pulled these out of comments I left over at Mr. Gilliards’s some while back: they have been meticulously repurposed and carefully re-branded to serve YOU the blogging public better.

When I take off my literalist glasses, strap on my Perspex fiction writer’s goggles, this is exactly how the Bush Administration looks to me…

I had these roaches.

Filthy, plague-bearing exoskells, made my allergies worse, and the little cockblockers would pop out every time I lured a nice lady back to Castle Driftglass & send her screaming. So it was time to send the roaches off to periplanetary Valhalla.

The city had a guy they hired – Jorge Bush – said he knew all about roaches. Now talk to Jorge for five minutes and it’s pretty clear that – how shall I say this? -- alcohol has take more from him that he ever took from alcohol. Low, animal cunning, but not bright. Has some kind of Ganser Syndrome problem – gives only these weird, vague, approximate answers to direct questions. And even though he’s just hired help, he gets really bitchy when you tell him, “Hey, Jorge. How ‘bout just answering the fucking question?”

Big, disturbing gaps in his knowledge, although at the drop of a hat he’ll talk your ear off about lovin’ Sweet Baby Jesus, which is kinda creepy, and I really don’t know what that has to do with killing roaches.

Even though we’ve corrected him a million times, he still pronounces “nuclear” like Homer Simpson – which doesn’t exactly diminish the overall impression you get that he’s one of them “little bus” kinda guys -- and will spontaneously shout “You Forgot Poland!” for no reason.

Basic addition and subtraction seem to baffle him.

Still, his daddy got him this gig, and he swears that he knows all there is to know about roaches. Best intel in town, he promises. Gonna be easy. Won’t cost much. Gets this feral gleam in his eye when he talks about “smokin’ ‘em out their holes.” OK, he does tend to complain a lot about his job being “hard work”, but he really gets off on the uniform.

And his enthusiasm for killing things is undeniable

He was an exterminator in Texas before the city hired him here: “pulled the switch” hundreds of times with a smile, and during the interview he said he had never, ever made a single mistake when it came to “killin’ thangs”.

So I get home from work yesterday and, holy shit, my building’s on fire. And the building next door. And the one across the street. As I pull up I see Jorge is out front with a bunch of his scary friends – Donnie and Condi, Karl and Dickie – who are also the local volunteer fire department. They’re running a bucket brigade, which I think is laudable, until I get a little closer and notice that they’re dousing the houses that aren’t on fire…and that the buckets are full of gasoline.

Fuck.

“What the hell are you doing, Jorge?!”

“Killin’ roaches. Tha’s my job: killin’ them roaches.”

“Yeah, but you’re burning my house down!”

“Wassa matter. You one a’ them roach lovers?”

I waved at the other houses that were ablaze, and the people running out of them. Women and children. And the houses further down the block that his stooges were soaking in gas.

“What the fuck, Jorge?”

He shrugged and giggled in that Richard Widmark in “Kiss of Death” kind of way he does.

“Coulda been roaches in ‘em. Never can tell. Roaches it purdy clever critters. Better off bein’ safe is what I say.”

Donnie and Condi and Karl and Dickie were all nodding, smiling, dancing, and in the cherry-red glow of the firelight you could see how completely unhinged they really were. Now I was getting scared. I took a couple of steps back and asked in as calm a voice as I could manage, “Uh, Jorge, how exactly do you know whether or not there are roaches in those other buildings.”

“Oh, ah go with my gut. An’ with what Sweet Baby Jesus tells me, and Sweet Baby Jesus ain’t never wrong.”

They he started to walk towards me, brandishing a Jerry can of gas and a Zippo.

“Ah don’t like all these questions. I’m thinkin’ maybe you got roaches inside YOU.”

That’s when I ran.

That was over two years ago, and the fire is still burning, which is certainly disturbing.

The total cost of this "low, low cost service" is now at around 200 billion and rising, which is even more disturbing.

Tens of thousands of innocent people have died in the conflagration -- friends and strangers -- which is tragic, but I think the most disturbing part of the whole nightmare is this:

The city council has finally, grudgingly admitted that the situation is a mess, but then quickly insisted that “assigning blame isn’t helpful.” In fact, they struck several special medals and awarded them to each of the arsonists.

They say that whether or not Jorge is responsible for the destruction and carnage is really beside the point: agree or disagree with the whole napalm-the-neighborhood-just-in-case strategy, we’re stuck with it, they say, and now we just have make it work.

This is the same city council that just voted 5-4 to re-hire Jorge and Donnie and Condi and Karl and Dickie to “finish the job.”

And most astonishingly of all, this is the very same city council that tried to impeach and fire the last guy for taking an extra 15 minutes during his lunch break.


(Coming soon: “Jesse Helms – You mean that Paleo-republican ratfuck isn’t dead yet?”)