Just farcical: “The Good Putschist’s Handbook.”

Just farcical: “The Good Putschist’s Handbook.”

Mr. Iu Forn, funny man for the excellent Catalonian newspaper “Avui” (Today,) writes in a gag article (dated January the twelve 2006...)


The Good Putschist’s Handbook


“We are afflicted also by an awful pandemic of military personnel drunk with power (and probably absinth) whose dislike for the Catalonian New Statute attains degrees of high dudgeon almost impossible to withstand. Their nervous anger is such that nothing but the menace of sudden aggression, in the shape of armored vehicles sent posthaste to crush the population, allays albeit a little the intolerable pain of their nail-biting angst.

“Whatever. The point is, put up or shut up — are you coming or are you just bantering like hens…?

“This I’m telling them, as a friend, in case the first option is the chosen one, as it has historically been often enough, the option of coming in with the full forces of aggression:

“First, if coming into Barcelona by the Diagonal Avenue, better leave the flaming panzers at the end of the road, and take the tramway instead. This is a self-renewing city and we don’t want to make the mess irreversible, do we?

“As you advance forward up the Diagonal, look at your right hand and see a banking see, a big edifice called The Box (la Caixa,) where some eager Catalonians are darkly plotting to take over another of the asspaining economical pillars in order to deprive Asspain of its nationalistic resources. That dastardly building obviously deserves to be assaulted and reduced… Careful, though! If in the process of wholesale destruction, you happen to find in one of its cubicles a tall blonde girl, better leave her be. It could be one of the your king’s daughters working for the diabolical firm!

“Later, when, during the ransacking of the city, you happen to get the brilliant idea of taking away to your asspainish land the official papers of the Catalonian people better wait a little more, as it seems that some of those that were already stolen by your predecessors in 1939, are only now in the process of being returned. Taking them all together will doubtless save both a trip and a few moneys, always useful for other chores as worthy of these.

“Do not forget also that the new so-called civic ordinances forbid for the city the practice of certain forms of prostitution. In consequence, it would be advisable that the martial junket would rather be performed without the assistance of your saintly mothers.

“Here is an important message: please be advised that the Financial Times, this pink daily that last Tuesday said that an article of your hallowed national constitution (the article number 8) contains “failures,” that for a people to wish to name themselves a nation is democratically suitable, and that the attitude of the francoist party rallying behind a putschist general “surely represents a worse danger for asspainish unity than the Catalonian ambitions,” please be advised, I repeat, that this is not a Catalonian daily. In consequence of which, before you bomb it to oblivion you better inform yourselves of its whereabouts, maybe through a call to the British embassy.

“Let’s not forget a last item. Once the invasion has been successfully established, do not fail to follow the recommendations of the justice of the supreme court who the other day pretended that Catalonian is a folkloric curiosity akin to dancing flamenco. Better in that case that as the occupation progresses all you heroes write yourselves in in courses to learn flamenco dancing. Better that obviously than having to learn Catalonian.”


—————————————


[A smidgeon of background to the jolly article: A neurasthenic fascist general (by the name of Merdós de Mena) blinked first, and announced the invasion and wholesale bombardment of the Catalonian Lands. After being sacked by Mr. Mono, the secretary of war, probably for giving away too soon the intentions of the francoist military — whose great feats of arms are the conquering of an inhabited island rock, called the island of the Parsleys and the Goats, and the unending torture and blackmail of its own disarmed nationals — the Financial Times, the Economist, and other independent media laughed at the reasons given for such a sacking:

“—It is ludicrous that a nationalistic fascist given to all kind of ridiculous jingoistic shenanigans sacked a fellow bellicose idiot for the same reasons the same simpleton of a war secretary never fails to show himself in performing in his clownish interventions in the fascist nationalistic TV of that fascist nationalistic circus called Asspain... He must have been hating the one-upmanship of his silly inferior.”

Now even that harmless article has ruffled the nationalistic feathers of the valiant hens.]

Catalonian — language of choice both for the giants of yore and the heroes of today

Catalonian — language of choice both for the giants of yore and the heroes of today



Isn’t it ludicrous…?
A hanging judge of a creep called Khernand-oh,
Another of those hideous fascists from Asspain,
He who speaks spic (the ugliest, more useless, sounding shit
Imaginable,) another fascist in a high place in Asspain
(The fascists never having been purged, still hanging in there
After all those years… And where,
Oh, where, is the Nuremberg
In order at last to rid Europe of such pestilence…?
Seventy years of fascist dominance in Asspain and counting…)
Pretending (the fascist creep with the ludicrous speech,
Speaking spic, the ugliest, more despicable spiel ever heard
From turdsucking lips,) pretending Catalonian is
No longer a language fit for the heroes of today,
Just for the giants of yore…

When in fact, of course, Catalonian is
The richest and most convincingly
Beautiful language out of Europe,
And is (as Anthony Burgess famously said) the real koine
(Or shared language) of the whole Mediterranean.

Catalonian, when spoken at regular speed,
Is understood all across the vast lands
Belonging to the Occitans (whose language is twinned to
Catalonian since time immemorial,) and understood,
When spoken apace, by the French, and the Italians,
The Portuguese, the Rumanians, and so on, every intelligent
Human in classical Europe…, while the sad
Garbled unbearable shit of spic is understood
By nobody in Europe — and in the world just by a few
Worthless too-far-gone garbage-sifters,
Sorrowfully, desperately disinclined to better
Themselves…

Catalonians — from Eivissa to Perpinyà, from Alacant
To Tamarit — speak Catalonian most proudly…
Plus, as a second language, they all are knowledgeable
In American (or English, so-called, quaintly, in Europe,)
As the serviceably international tongue it is…, plus, thirdly,
Chinese, as the world language of the future…

Catalonians are all trilingual (or soon ought to be,)
While that clueless folkloric stinking sick shit, spic,
Only “fine” for asininely hee-hawing and stupidly
Cavorting about during those vile sessions
Of horrors called flamenc-oh, or for savagely screaming
During those cowardly murderous archaic types
Of torture, cow-killing, has, wisely, been
By all Catalonians definitely cast off (or soon should,)
As the gruesome pollution it is.

Revolting spic, flamenc-oh, cow-murdering…, nothing else,
No, comes off it — the Inquisition not being any
Longer in order — and hey, let’s not resuscitate it
By any means…

Don’t we all hear the rattling of rusted dog-chains,
The rabid uniformed killers at it again,
Again plotting their coups…? — (Please, hasn’t anybody
Got a spare atomic bomb handy enough to drop
Over there, where the murderers fester…?)

(For how else shall the Catalonians — Catalonia, as
The pinnacle of civilized countries, being loath to dirty its
Hands by dealing with such filth — be ultimately free from
That millstone-like vise round their necks,
The thieving grasping avaricious claws of the
Fascist spic beast trying to garrote them
Once and for all…?)

No, but you fucking tell me.

Mena the Menace, Zapped

Mena the Menace, Zapped


In Asspain, a country of fascists,
A general called Turdsucker Mena,
Dubbed “Mena the Menace” appropriately enough
By the stupid rank and file,
Has been zapped by that famous zapper,
Zap-a-taro, the pres of the fascists
In Merd-Is, their lugubrious abode.

The sin of general Turdsucker de Mena
Wasn’t so great — only saying aloud
What the rest of ‘em killers dares not quite
Say, but what the rest of ‘em fascists
Yell everyday from the radios, the pulpits,
The tvs, the papers, and whatnot,
Namely that the Catalonians
Deserve not only annihilation by the regular
Fascist methods at hand, as, say, suppressing
Their culture, and forbidding their
Most basic rights, as is use of language, and so on,
But, again through panzers and bombers,
By bloody and massive physical elimination too,
At once and once and for all…

Turdsucker said: “We, the fascist guardians, must
Enter as a conquering army into Catalonia
And leave no stone unturned,
After we’ve left no stone over stone of what used
To be their doomed country. We are armed and they are
Not. We’ll win that fucking war for sure. We’ve
Never won another, ever. Either the fucking frogs
Or the nazis and Mussolini’s thugs have won
The wars against Catalonia for us, or we’ve lost
Them fucking all. Time to retaliate!”

Zap-a-rutabaga, the pres, confronted to such
Obvious candor,
Had to zap him. “Boy,” he said, “don’t you fucking
Know those kind of silly words
Aren’t fit for the fetid mouth of a
Turdsucking military officer…?
You’re fried, my friend, at least momentarily,
Until the dust and the ashes settle;
In the meantime, zap, go to hell…
Boy, don’t you understand?
Or else our hidden strategy becomes too apparent,
We might frighten into action some vacuous
European organization,
Let’s say, who knows, in Holland,
Where they sometimes take a closer
Look at human rights…
Or even, who knows, Slovenia, Poland…,
Countries used to resist annihilation from neighbors
Too avid to zap them to oblivion.”

Then Zap-a-Horseradish said:
“Not even that piece of soft shit, king One Callous,
Would dare say as much as you did.
He’s not saying let’s enter and bleed them to death,
He’s much more diplomatic, he’s saying
Let’s stay united, meaning let’s bleed them to death
By peaceful means, let’s annihilate them
By bleeding them dry, as we were so smoothly doing
Since they lost the war against fascism,
And always, of course, with the cowardly
Complicity of the Europeans: They don’t see
The blood on tv, that’s good enough for them.
They don’t see that the work of Franco and his
Fascists is kept on track by us “democratic
Nationalist asspainers”; they don’t want blood,
They like the extortions clean.

Whom are you waking up, you creep…?
Fuck the Catalonians,
They are nobody, can’t do shit, unarmed,
Broken up, untongued, unrepresented,
Slovenly slaves, rightless, in the vile shackles
Of an alien constitution, filthy beggars all… And
Do you want to kill off such a source of cheap
Parasitical bloodsucking… Whom the fuck
Are you trying to alert…? Let’s hope
The inured Europeans heard nothing;
In any case, here you are, dormant — zapped!

Worry nor, my lovely.
Little lullaby on the side — here’s me zapping
You, dear honeypot, with my harmless magic wand…

Now take a few winks, at least
(As I was saying,) till the fatherland
Your loyal services
Doesn't indeed need again, of course…”





[A song sung by plenty witty Midge Omission.]