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The Austin Kamikaze

God still looks out for the little guy. For months now, I’ve been collecting unemployment, working occasional odd theatricals hither and yon, and despairing over finding an issue or an event that I could bring some unique perspective to in the face of the ever-expanding blogosphere.

On Thursday, February 18, I had just finished the morning joint I dedicate to each day without purpose, surfing away on my endless quest for The End Of The Internet, when I stumbled across the breaking story of Joseph Stack’s amazing kamikaze attack on the IRS in Austin, Texas.

My first thought upon reading of his daring act and examining the suicide letter he left online was from Fight Club: “His name is Robert Paulson.” My second thought was “Damn! Another promising career option forever closed to me!” For years I’ve fantasized about stuffing my car with fireworks purchased at roadside stands and driving it into the lobby of Blair House, the swank Park Avenue residence of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City. I’m too old to be a serial killer, the cutoff on that pursuit is 45, and besides, serial killers were over a long time ago.

I figured a great legacy for my friends and associates would result from my being America’s first homegrown suicide bomber. They’d get book deals, talk shows, they could cut all kinds of marketing deals and basically be set for life. I am not merely blessed with a weird and provocative surname: my personal history is riddled with obscure and suggestive convergences, not quite the full-on nexus of worlds embodied by Lee Harvey Oswald, but close and considerably more obscure. In all modesty, I can say that I’m the kind of subject that conspiracy theorists drool over. That dream is ruined for me now. I have no desire to be any kind of “copycat.”

I guess my last options are stand-up or talk radio. I’ll bet I could really light up the phones with a radio show. Joseph Stack beat me to the punch on the whole American suicide bomber thing. It’s okay. I’ll get over it.

The language of the state is violence. Joseph Stack perceived that, and stated it as clearly as one can expect from a software engineer in his final missive. His post is a bit clumsy, no doubt owing to his passion, maybe a touch of Asperger’s, but his final couplet was sheer brilliance: “the communist creed: from each according to his ability, to each according to his need. the capitalist creed: from each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.”

ALAN CABAL lives in Mountain View, California. He can be reached  at al_cabal@yahoo.com