Magic Bullet

[Michael Bailey]

Like September 11th, there is so much weirdness around the JFK
assassination that it makes for interesting reading/viewing to a) get a
picture of American crisis management itself in (still-ongoing) crisis, and
b) get the flavor of those times.

Eg, reading or watching videos about Nov 1963 brings back memories of black
& white TV, schooldays, Buster Brown shoes, Vaseline hair oil, cigarettes
everywhere ("show me your Lark pack"), three TV channels (or four for
northerners with CBC) those cars people drove back then, Camelot, Life and
Look magazine, LBJ saying "my fellow Americans" etc etc

Also, the extensive research available online makes it obvious that there
were, on those days, and - by very reasonable extension, are at any given
moment - a whole lot of weird things going on that often go unnoticed,
waiting for a major event for awareness to crystallize around, whether they
add to what the particular authors say they add up to or not (one would in
general prefer they didn't)

With the JFK assassination as a "hook" or loss leader, conspiracy nuts have
the opportunity to evolve into at least amateur historians by exercising
more appreciative fact-gathering and a bit of restraint w/r/t what it all
means - as Bob Dylan reminded in "Wicked Messenger" but also in "Queen Jane
approximately"

"When all of your advisers heave their plastic
At your feet to convince you of your pain
Trying to prove that your conclusions should be more drastic
Won't you come see me, Queen Jane
Won't you come see me, Queen Jane"


Whoever Queen Jane might be...


If someone hasn't already, all the conspiracy stuff could be fed into AI
and really make some chaotic pronunciamentos - "hey Siri, ask chatgpt to
collate all the 60s assassination stuff and the 9-11 stuff & tie it all
together"

Although human authors have made some respectable efforts in that direction.

Shea and Wilson in the _Illuminatus!_ trilogy did some yeoperson collation
on numerous conspiracies, spinning them off into memorable images like the
bumbling British agent "Fission Chips," John Dillinger and several other
gun-toting malefactors on the grassy knoll, and the "Dealy Lama" on Dealy
Plaza.

Pynchon in _Bleeding Edge_ focuses - is "focus" the right word? Maybe
"includes" is better...includes a lot of the nostalgia aspects, and - less
frantically/antically than Shea and Wilson (having maybe left his
"hysterical realism" hat on the rack for this one) - a panoply of
far-fetched possibilities, presented artistically with humanistic values.


Still, a computer loaded up with enough memory to not forget any of the
details...there are so many...

That still wouldn't solve the problem of what to do about it, would it?

As in the Luddite essay, how to countermand the imperatives of "various
psychopaths with power - including the power to do something about it" -

On Christmas Eve, they shall be visited by 3 ghosts?

Stephen Daedalus's smithy?

Deus ex machina?

Solvitur ambulando?

Solve et coagula?

Chop wood & carry water?

Or was it Burbage in "Shakespeare in Love": "things will work out - they
always do"





I got paywalled at Vanity Fair - did the retired agent mention what he did
with the extra bullet?



On Sun, Sep 10, 2023, 10:47 AM rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:

> Howdy
>
> I can't be the only person fascinated by this
>
>
> https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/09/new-jfk-assassination-revelation-upend-lone-gunman
>
> In a new book, former Secret Service agent Paul Landis, largely silent for
> 60 years, says he found a bullet in Kennedy’s limo. A sometime presidential
> historian explains why that’s so significant, if true.
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>