[UA] What do you make of this chap?

[Timothy Toner]

Haven't gotten anything from the list in quite some time, so I'll try to 
bump up the signal.

I came across advertisements for a book called Raw Deal by Ken Smith, a 
collection of biographies about Americans who were really badly shafted 
by 'the Man'.  Among these is the sad tale of Jerry Tarbot, who awoke in 
1923 in an asylum suffering from amnesia as well as numerous injuries 
(including exposure to mustard gas) that could only have been obtained 
during the First World War.  A 'Living Unknown Soldier', he tried to get 
compensation for his injuries, but because he had used a false identity 
to sign up, and because further exploration of just how substandard 
record keeping was at the time would only make the Administration look 
even worse, he was denied and disavowed.  So vehement were the denials 
of the government that even private charity support dried up, and the 
public turned on this hero.

Now the reason why I bring this up is that so seldom do we get a story 
this interesting with the all important UA twist--and he vanished off 
the face of the earth.  He could have killed himself, he could have 
drank himself to death on Skid Row.  All those things are possibilities, 
yes, but we can do better than that.

Looking it over, I see that the case screams for a new Archetype, 
dealing with the betrayal felt by many Veterans after the Great War 
ended.  Several seem likely, but for giggles, I popped Jerry Tarbot into 
the Internet Anagram Server, and got no real love.  I 
reconsidered--maybe Jerry is short for Gerald?  Subsituting this for 
that gets us

garbled tarot

NICE!  So, basically, various members of the occult underground see this 
guy.  He's ripe for Ascension--heck, he could unseat someone, such is 
his plight.  He's large in the public consciousness, and he could pop at 
any second.  But as what?  No one knows how to spin him, right and 
proper, to their own ends, so a bit of a turf war breaks out, 
culminating in the usual UA mayhem.  Which way did he go?  Who's to 
say?  More importantly, what would happen if an amnesiac ascended?

tt


-- 
You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do. 
   -Anne Lamott, writer (1954- )