| EXHIBIT 10c
October 16, 2004
To: Mr. Bob Hobbes, regarding that land and your horseshit
ranch-style house on it, destroying a man’s life (mine).
From: Cal Stolveig, owner of a bundle of blood rights right
under your goddamn house, which is why I’m writing…your
house is on my goddamn land – I don’t give a shit
that the lawyer sold it to you when my dad died and I was
locked up in an insect jungle prison in Cambodia. They thought
I was dead. I’m not dead. I am risen from the dead. That
can never be your land, even if you paid for it.
Dear, Sweet Mr. Hobbes, Who Smiles When I Yell At Him:
Hobbes is an interesting name. Hobbes? Have you heard of
the “Natural State,” Hobbes? A war of all against
all, Mr. Hobbes? You make me so angry I could kill you, which
proves the point.
Ownership of the land. Territoriality.
The rights implicit in the ownership of land under the Constitution
are written in response to human nature. People love land.
And somebody would definitely kill you and take your land
if given easy access to your damn neck, which the law prevents.
And thus, you should applaud the Framers of the Constitution,
Bob Hobbes, for certainly I would be in your kitchen right
now, sitting at the counter with a Coca Cola, claiming your
kitchen to be my kitchen if it weren't for property rights
(and, of course, the bureaucratic structures with the virility
and legal legitimacy to rain violence on those who take private
property, which support those rights). I would be holding
a gun in your kitchen and saying to you and yours: this is
my land…get off (don’t think I can’t hold a
gun – I can). And then you’d have to kill me before
I kill you and that would decide it.
But that’s not how it works. The STATE would get involved
and if I killed you I’d rot in jail and I’ve spent
too much time in a prison already. And if you killed me the
STATE would slap you on the back, give you some kind of commendation
for protecting your land, which you have a right to do, since
you paid for it and it is legally yours (though not spiritually),
especially if you’re faced with an armed intruder. The
outcome of a shoot out in your kitchen is balanced in your
favor and I’m not positive I like my chances, but I love
my land…would it be enough just to kill you to make me
feel like my land is my land?? Labor on my land. Kick out
the scum-sucking foreigner even if I’m in the BIG HOUSE
for the rest of time?? I have to think on that, Hobbes.
See, Mr. Hobbes, I don’t get it. Property rights are
so often explained by using free market economics as their
basis. That’s bullshit from where I sit. I mean I don’t
give a shit about money. I just want my land.
Of course, certainly, many people treat land as a commodity
(You do, Bob – What’s your price again? It’s
very high, isn’t it? They’re going to build a golf
course right next to your damn ugly house, Bob… I don’t
have much money and you’re making me angry, Bob).
Listen: people who treat a parcel of land as commodity and
depend on its exchange value to become rich are not the same
ones who would kill you for your land. You don’t need
the State’s protection from a capitalist (in this case).
Killing is too expensive to most capitalists (transaction
costs are high – a killer might get killed in the process
of killing – that’s a high price to pay for a commodity).
Capitalists would rather find a willing seller to screw ass-wise
than to have to kill (and perhaps get killed in the process).
No, no…property regimes arise from something more rudimentary
than economics, something more primitive. They come from the
Natural State, Bob, to protect us from that war… Property
regimes are not about exchange value, or even use value for
that matter. BLOOD! (Did you hear me shout that in your head?)
Blood lust and chauvinism regarding particular plots of property,
or forests, or fatherlands, have little to do with the economics
of scarcity, the economics of exchange, the economics of wealth
building. Chauvinism, blood lust – they come from desire.
A desire for our dead mothers and fathers, a desire for that
biological imperative: sex. Yes, sex. And love of land is
more about pornography (or romantic love, if you believe in
horseshit) than economics.
I’m a sex addict, Bob. I have a disease. I want my land.
Oh my undulating land. Land that births a people. My people,
Mr. Hobbes.
Land lust, which is what I’ve got, is a desire for sexual
gratification, in a sense. Guys like me don’t care about
amassing wealth (I’m a quadriplegic and my dick doesn’t
work – why do I need money?). Guys like me want to see
the sunrise and smell the moist grasses and touch the faces
of their forebears and feel connected. That’s all the
sex I’ve got left in me and the only way I can get it
on is through being on my land, in the place where my parents
produced me – a biological imperative they took seriously
– in the place where my father’s parents did the
same for him, the place where we farmed and hunted and killed
chickens with our hatchets for generations, Bob. That’s
sexy to me. Sweating, toiling with the body, digging in the
dirt, tasting the grit on your tongue, slitting the pig’s
neck, eating a hot meal while the sun goes down, humping the
little lady because that’s what we animals do, Bob. That’s
fundamentally sexy. I got it real bad. Your land under the
law is my blood and guts, filled with my seed and toil (you
remember John Locke and how ownership is gained through labor?
You build that ugly house yourself? No. And you don’t
know shit about John Locke, do you?).
I live outside of the rational world, Hobbes.
Rational structures like corporate economies, with all their
legal mumbo jumbo in support thereof and mammoth tax codes
containing gigantic loopholes, get in the way of most people’s
preternatural comprehension of land as a sex object (or object
of romantic love, for sissies who can’t handle nature,
the truth). People start thinking life is about making money
and houses are meant for selling at a hearty profit, right,
Bob? But think of your own home country (wherever that may
be). It never goes away completely, this comprehension of
land’s sexiness, does it? Think of the twentieth century,
Bob. Great political movements in Europe, super-charged populist
regimes – they pricked buried sexual desires and made
those good Germans and Italians want to protect their land
with their own essential oils (BLOOD!), fight to take back
their land, kick the scum sucking foreigners off their land
(for they are syphilis on your mother).
Think about the U.S. embroiled in another war driven primarily
by economics (at least the war I got shit stacked in was about
ideology – something pure – not a commodity). We
as a Nation-State are engaged in commodity lust. We need oil
bad. We need it. But don’t think for a moment the Sunnis
and Shias are going to let us have that land, tame it, remake
it in our image: oh great rivers and swelling sands…
That’s me Bob. I’m a Sunni Jihadi in my holy Fallujah
(your kitchen). I’m an impoverished Shia dreaming of
Paradise down in Sadr City (your bathroom). You’re sitting
on top of my holy place every time you take a shit and it
makes me crazy, Bob.
On one level, I'm revolted. I hate myself, hate my own thirsting
flesh, hate myself for caring so hard, for being a territorial
animal and desiring to protect my sexy homeland. Disgusting.
Can’t I transcend these bloody ties?
No. Nothing changes the truth – the facts of the case
aren’t any different due to my attempted rationalizations,
Bob, my attempted artifice. I am what I am and I would off
you and yours for that land, my land… and all that’s
stopping me so far is a fragile calculation regarding jail-time…
I love my land: oh Fertile Crescent between creek and road,
oh Great Knobby German Burr Oak casting its jointed shadows,
oh Feathery Grasses riding Glutean Swells… Oh Christ,
Bob. Oh Heaven.
Think I have to kill you? Probably. I can hold a gun in my
mouth and fire it. I’ve known how to do it for years.
I’m a better shot than I am a writer and I’ve written
this whole goddamn letter with my mouth, Bob.
So what do you think? Can you picture me in your kitchen
with a gun dangling out of my mouth, your wife crying, your
grandkids playing Barbie in the basement?
How about you make that image part of your calculation of
the sale price and we’ll talk turkey before this little
dispute gets out of hand.
Mr. Bob Hobbes: let’s not let this sucker sink into
the Natural State. You don’t want to join me down here.
Yours in Truth,
C. Stolveig
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