In the fight between good and evil, two gremlins, surprisingly, play a significant role. The benevolent gremlin, Tommy, is a writer who takes a convoy of pickup trucks to the frontlines to deliver supplies, since mere writing or dancing is insufficient. The malevolent gremlin, Prighozin, also moves in a convoy, but his motives and destinations remain unclear.
I am delighted that on my side, the right side, the writers for the second time in history realize that writing is not enough. The first time, they only needed to sign up and did not literally drive pickup trucks to the frontlines, but progress calls.
Writers Jaap Scholten, Jelle Brandt Corstius, and Tommy Wieringa have delivered aid supplies to the army in Ukraine. In the Netherlands, they collected cars and medical supplies, and last week they departed in a convoy of seven green-painted off-road vehicles to Ukraine.
Hold on – they collected cars and then ‘painted’ them green. To resemble military trucks, of course, which is handy when entering a war zone – you wouldn’t want to be perceived as a civilian vehicle, the Russians shoot at those. Or was it for camouflage? Did they have to break through enemy lines by the woods? Mysteries. I think they just liked to spray . You’re going to the frontlines, so let’s start to spray.
It is the zenith of the useful writer that triumphs here: three writers in seven green-painted off-road vehicles full of women’s clothing.
And then, did they return on foot, or did they drive those ‘collected cars’ back and were they recollected? Did they scrape off the green paint? Or are these gentlemen now driving around in green-painted off-road vehicles in the Netherlands, from library to library, giving lectures about their perilous adventure everywhere?
We at least did something other than dancing or writing books.
One of the writers closely follows Biden’s agenda: he argues in an article that making peace would be ‘criminal.’ And is the cluster munition indeed democratic?
When Prighozin began his famous one-day rebellion, and the entire West stared captivated at their screens, it certainly had more impact than when these three writers drove women’s clothing in green-painted off-road vehicles to the Ukrainian border. I attribute this difference in impact to another secret service – it’s the difference between a solid Hollywood production and a play in a converted barn with Frank Lammers.
Would Tommy have waved and honked as he crossed the Polish border in his green-painted off-road vehicle? Yesterday I wrote about other bald-headed individuals who don’t want to see the Ukrainian refugees arrive at my mother’s old nursing home in Geldrop.
Can’t KlusterTommy come honking in his green-painted truck?
These are the times, times when writers and the arms industry hand in hand go to war against evil.
Let’s hope that the genetically modified grain and the enormous meat factories in the ‘dirty zone’ that Ukraine should become – meat that is all driven back to clean Netherlands where the civil servant can tick a box for achieving a nitrogen target – let’s hope that all these huge abuse palaces full of miserable pigs were worth a 20-year war, because the ideals of our cluster writers no longer limit themselves to celebrating pedophilia.
Useful writers, useful times
It reminds me of the COVID-19 times, do you remember, when the entire bullshit job division of the civil service FINALLY managed to be useful. Knights, heroes, joyously coloring cards, graphs of ‘vaccinated’ versus ‘unvaccinated’ – after decades of useless misery, the great utility celebration broke out in all its glory upon us.
I felt sorry for those people. They’ve been useless all their lives, and suddenly the shining role appears, the provisions call with an angelic voice!
Hand in hand comrades! Closing borders against the cold that’s already everywhere. Code Red, Code Orange! Making formulas! Science!
But unfortunately, it was not enough to completely defeat the evil. It suddenly stood with its army at the border.
Writing is not enough.
Even in poetry, we have useful poets who strive to burn the political images better into the people’s minds. Ingmar Heytze wrote this useful poem during COVID-19, in which he glorifies state violence against protesters, people who did not want to participate in a medical experiment for which the manufacturer was absolved of any responsibility:
The desire to attribute a religious function to the government’s water cannon, the glorification of violence against protesters: our Ingmar wrote it a day before the Great Useful Lockdown was about to begin, and even tagged the poem with ‘Publisher Podium.’
When will it dawn on Our Ingmar that writing poems is not enough? When will he start hosing down demonstrators himself?
I think that step is actually just a tiny one. For all this useful fuss exists by the grace of the bullshit that necessitates this usefulness. Without a bullshit job, all that utility is dumb and intrusive. I think that KlusterTommy will stand honking next to Ingmar’s Water Cannon when the devil crosses our borders and it’s time to show that writing muscles can also have utility.
But, everything is solvable. We’ll solve it all together. Sometimes you have to get your hands dirty to achieve a result. Be sure not to read my piece about corona signs in crisis time: in the Great Airbnb of poetry, you’ll get far with a slogan on a wall of water.
Martinus Benders, 17-07-2023
