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Next Review: College Fiction Journal Previous Reviews:
Aficianados of tightly-planned,
meticulously orchestrated violence have long been fans of the zine
"Cleaning House". Each issue Abraham Gratz -- talented zinester and
world class psychotic -- interviews another professional in the
security business. He takes them out to lunch, gets them a little
drunk, and then asks the following question. "If you wanted to take
out alot of people -- I mean _alot_ of people -- how would you do it?"
Each of them has some pet scenario they've thought about for years,
and are happy to explain, often sketching details on a cocktail
napkin. Abraham takes these answers and supplements them with every
piece of possible pertinent information: building schematics, weather
reports, second-by-second time tables, ordering information for all
products involved. Now, most of "Cleaning House"'s back issues have
been compiled into one volume, deliberately designed to parady the
look and feel of the entire '... for Dummies' series.
Here's a sample, from an ex-secret service
man: "In my hometown, Firstar bank shoots off fireworks downtown every
New Year's Eve. Thousands of people pack into the area around the
state capital called 'the Square', many of them too drunk to move. I'd
get up on top of the bank with a sniper rifle with a nightvision scope
and start picking people off. The fireworks would block out the
gunshots. Sure, a few people would notice, but the fireworks would
block out their screams, and it's too crowded for them to flee
quickly. I figure I'd have my run of the place until the fireworks
were over -- ten minutes maybe. I'm sure I could get more than thirty
people, fifty or sixty if I tried hard"
Abraham helpfully collects building plans
for the bank, excerpts from sniper rifle catalogs, clippings
describing past celebrations, aerial photos, and a brief primer on
decibel levels to supplement the basic plan. It's that attention to
detail that really sets "Cleaning House" apart.
But there's more. Other scenarios include a
Japanese-cult nerve gas attack at a Minnesota Timberwolves basketball
game; a reprinting of the classic _Progressive_ h-bomb plan issue,
combined with maps of the twenty largest US cities together civil
defense nuclear attack causualty estimates; a plan to bomb the Liberty
Tunnels in Pittsburgh with a fertilizer-bomb laden truck. The scariest
scenario, from a civil engineer, involves leaving a concentrated
mutagenic agent in a bucket with a hose left in it -- under the right
conditions, the water from the hose will back up into the
resevoir. Thousands of people will be exposed to the mutagen, which
leaves its victims untreatably cancer-ridden in a month -- too slow
for the authorities to realize what's happening until it's too
late. In a note of black humor, Abraham (who has several relatives who
are Holocaust survivors) calls up a German company to consult on the
best way to kill of several thousand diseased cows. They suggest --
you saw this one coming -- gas chambers and incenerating ovens.
The zine also features a letters column,
which is half filled with insightful comments about the feasibility of
some of the plans, and half with ranting letters telling Abraham to
stop before somebody loses and eye, metaphorically speaking. Abraham
usually offers a cryptic defense: "Is there not some quality of
aesthetic appreciation among abbotoir designers? Is there not beauty
in recounting the great battles of the past? Should we ban talking
about the Holocaust for fear some tinpot dictator will say, "Gas
chambers! Now why didn't _I_ think of that!"? Is not forewarned truly
forearmed -- wouldn't you rather know which belltower the psycho is
likely to be in when you hear the shots, instead of guessing
randomly?"
This is bound to be a hate-or-love
product. Either you will find it sickening and an egregious abuse of
the first amendment, or you will be unable to put it down. It's only a
matter of time until one of these scenarios gets played out to some
extent in real life, and everyone involved with _Cleaning House_ gets
sued back to the stone age. I have news for you: people would kill
without it. Enjoy the book while it lasts.
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