Untimely #21 – Five Views of Greatness (Now with more dogs!)

So hey! Hey! Yeah, it’s going to be really great! Why don’t you come along? We are going to be fulfilling the plan of the great projects. Yeah. Yeah! I know! You are so going to love it. I think we are going to start with a parade. There’s going to be a band – several bands, but one at the front with really big fuck-off instruments that will take like eleven people to carry and about six to play, all blowing hard and working levers and huffing and puffing and cetera. And then we’ll have some dancing bears, yeah! And then we’ll have some fighting bears after that. And then the dog and cat show, which will be a sort of parade within the parade, led by children from the school for the blind, deaf, and dumb, so actually maybe some of the animals will lead some of the children. Which will be fine and really beautiful and heartwarming for everyone who’s watching anyway! And then will come the dancing children. In traditional dress! With different costumes for each of the regions they will represent! Which is all of them! And they will do traditional country dances and throw flowers and candy to the people on the sidewalks. And following them will be no less than ten thousand troops from our glorious army marching in close formation and the streets will tremble and ring with the clicking of twenty thousand boots and they shall know our might and see the greatness of our projects! And that’s just the beginning!

And as they gain on us may we summon the spirits of our holy fathers that we may wreak impossible vengeance upon the hollow bodies of their crepitant dead. And that we may have horses and wear capes as we ride them in the night, so flying like bats through the streets and banging on pots like gongs we scare the sissy children and women and scorbutic dogs. Bombast! Bombard! Bombard the dogs! We shall crush the dogs, the Imperialist dogs, the cretinous dogs, the dastardly dogs, the enteric dogs, the fallow and filthy and filarial dogs with their fustian, the godless dogs may howl and rasp and die. May they keel over dead before we get to them and make them choke on the dust of a thousand pusillanimous ancestors.

OK, so maybe we could start everything with a parade. I’m sure we could get the permits, get the streets closed down. At least one of the central avenues. Or if they can’t close it all the way maybe we can at least get a police escort. You know for traffic, and crowd control. Or just to keep the cars off the street while we’re on it, you know? Like police cars in back and in front driving real slow and keeping the cars away just while we pass. OK, how about we march in the bike lane? Yeah, we could do the sidewalks. Fine, we won’t call it a march. OK, so we’re just going to go for a little walk, and we’ll just keep it to the sidewalk. Great. No, no, it’ll be good, really good. Really, really good.

The greatest of the great plans is of course colonizing the moon. And this will be great because we will be able to found anew the socialist workers’ utopia that has so long eluded us on this cold, hard planet. Except that the moon is colder and harder! But we will not worry about that. The thing about the moon is that if it’s so great how come we’ve never been back? Don’t you think our technology is so much better now? Don’t you think we’d be able to get there in half the time with half the gas? Our fuel efficiency savings must be enormous! Because the last thing we want is to get to the moon and start littering and polluting and mining everywhere. Oh my god! If they discover oil on the moon we’re screwed! Can you imagine that? Suddenly there’ll be a whole other space race and wars to colonize bits and pieces of the moon and then wars in space and moon battles and the whole thing’s going to get really nasty. Urgh.

The shots rang out in a volley like firecrackers, fast as raindrops, loud as thunder. And then after it was silent and we none of us could see for all the dust. We lay still where we had fallen, some daring only to peek through slitted eyes, looking to see if they were still alive. The silence was otherworldly. Some wondered if they’d gone deaf, so close to the firing. And then we heard it, a low mournful whine, and we looked behind us and saw a dog trapped under the bodies of two men who had fallen from a balcony onto the crowd below. We could see where the wooden railing had cracked open wide under their weight and then we saw the red streaks down their cheeks and the hole in the forehead gaping into blackness. You forget just how heavy a body is until you try to move one. Bag of bones, sack of stones. They’d fallen one two right on top of the dog, broken its back. It must have been hemmed in by the crowd, trying to squirm through legs when the firing started. It had nearly made it, too, just a few meters from the alleyway, when poof! from above and any chance it had was over.