DRINKING TEQUILA WITH A GIANT RABBIT

ANTI-WAR PROTEST, SATURDAY JANUARY 27TH.


Saturday's protest against the Iraq war, President Bush's troop surge, the era of globalization, the Israeli occupation of certain territories, and the union busting actions of Hornblower Yachts was attended by around two-thousand people.

Not including the dozen or so who showed up to protest the regular daemonization of Israel by the two organizations behind the protest: ISO and Int'l ANSWER.

Both organizations have long called for the eradication of Israel.


Most people who attended did so because of the anti-war thing. And were happily unaware of the antecedents and other agendas of the organizers. Even though a little research would've turned up some surprising stuff, which very well could've persuaded them to look elsewhere for ultra-progressive thrills. Anti-Semitism, support for terrorist groups, advocacy of the violent overthrow of the government, ethnic irredentism, and a number of other hairy things.


Go ahead, put my contention to the test. Look up the name Snehal Shingavi (a grand poobah of ISO in Berkeley and Oakland). You will find out that the gentleman in question, one of the key organizers of Saturday's little rant-fest, has quite a chequered history. Formerly a nice quiet Jain from Houston (where his father is a successful Indo-American businessman fast approaching retirement age), he has developed into a well-known radical Berkeleyite nuisance and fringe-anti-Semite. Probably a prolonged rebellion against parental mores. A squawk of teenage rebellion, if you will.
[He has not been a teenager for a decade. A different person would've gotten it out of his system by now. Therapy would help.]


I do not know the names of many other remarkable people who attended the love-fest.
So I'll describe them.


The first one is the decrepit old anti-Semite who always gives us the finger. Sometimes he gibbers and shouts, or foams at the mouth with trails of sputum flowing from the corners of a permanently slackened jaw, but this time he had taken his medication. Or maybe he can no longer formulate his usual broken sentences. He just stood there holding his sign, gape-mouthed, looking vacant. Occasionally mono-digiting in our direction. He is no longer as near-functional as he was a few years ago. I do hope that by the time he fouls himself they won't let him out any more. It's sad.


Near him was a hyper-stimulated young man who screamed and swore at us from his perch on the bus-island. Who angrily put on and removed his greenish knit cap repeatedly to mark his rhetorical flourishes. The police finally warned him to calm down and stop foaming when he moved in to bite.


A plump sixteen year old Edomite temptress, shaking and yelling. Oh yeah baby, oh yeah.
[I know she was sixteen because I heard her yell so. No, I didn't go up and ask.]


An anarcho-syndicalist. Or rather, a happy ignoramus with an anarcho-syndicalist flag. With the benefit of hindsight, resisting generalissimo Francisco Franco was indeed a darn fine idea. I think most of us would agree with that, so I'm not quite clear what his beef with us was. Neither was he.


A hippy speed-freak with a talent for loudly, repetitively, irritatingly, and at great length oversimplifying everything. The cops warned him a few times too.


A hateful old woman who told me that the wall killed people and I was responsible.
[I'm not sure I followed her logic, but honestly, I wasn't trying.]


An elderly gentleman who told me that he was ashamed, ashamed to have once supported Israel. We were worse than the Nazis. And he knew Nazis.
[I'm sure he did. He struck me as the type. He may have even courted one, when he was still compos mentes - a nice blond with a pert tuchus and a tan.]


But the star of the show was the snake-hipped young man wearing a two-foot tall drum-major fur hat, a tight little mesh shirt that left his stomach bare, and teensy hot-pants, who did an amazing revolutionary peace and love bump-and-grind all the way down Market Street. When I saw him later amid a crowd across the Embarcadero in front of pier 31, I could tell by the fur hat thingy sticking up over the mass of heads that he was working up a sweat. Either that or having a fit, but I think it was a sweat, because the fur hat thingy gyrated and wobbled for over forty minutes to oompah music. If it was a fit, they would've gotten the paramedics, surely?


What's a protest in San Francisco without some senility and mis-guided sexuality?


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You're wondering about the title of this post?


Well, a friend mentioned that there's a pet rabbit in the house. Which datum does have a connection with my standing there among the pro-Israel signs and Israeli flags, counterprotesting. Much more of a connection to the event than many of the signs at this event, and certainly a more valid connection than the anti-Israel agenda espoused by several of the 'anti-war' protestors.
A house rabbit. Some people are disconcerted by a rabbit.

I, however, once spent from eight in the evening to six in the morning at a "Jim and Tammy Faye Appreciation party" lying on the couch drinking tequila with a giant rabbit on my stomach, watching Clockwork Orange on permanent loop. I will consequently not be disconcerted by the rabbit.

Urban rabbits are way cool.