Thursday, December 29, 2005

Christmas 2005

Stacks of steam rise over the cityscape, lost angels hovering over the urban landscape. Lights in windows far away twinkle at me, watching behind my window. I wonder who is in there at this hour. Industry never sleeps. Someone is in there, creating, cleaning, or closing. Are they looking out their window back at me? Are they wondering who is behind that window? Who lives in a third floor flat near Lafayette Square?

If they could dive right into my space, what would they think? Off to the left I have my Christmas tree. I only turned it on three times; all three times when my daughter wanted to see it. Since she has returned home the tree has stood there, quietly, patiently, waiting to be illuminated. I moved it from one corner to the other, a little more out of eye sight. Now it is after Christmas and the tree knows its fate. It will not be illuminated again until next year. It will be stripped of its decorations, folded up neatly, and pressed into a box, and buried with other items that no longer serve their purpose.

In the space between our windows cold air settles gently over everything. It sits on tree branches, it glides past windows, and it binds the dark corners together, and whistles where no one can hear it. I press my face to the window and seep through and glide upward into that void. The stars come into clearer focus and draw me to them with their magnetism.

I wondered how it would feel, to be in the middle of that darkness that joins everything between it. Would your senses stretch out like a tendril into all things? Would you expand to fill the space and then know everything? Would it fill you with sorrow or exuberance or both? For a moment I am whipped between windows of people creating, cleaning, and closing.

The light in the window is switched off and the circuit is broken. I am back in my flat. I find the box for the tree, and lay it down. I take the decorations off and place them into their own boxes. This tree’s purpose was to entertain my daughter and now she has gone home. So I lay it down in the box, and shut the top, and place it behind old coats in my closet.

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Please Hammer Do Harm Me

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful--and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people--and neither do we." - George W. Bush, 43rd president.

Ahh, good ol Dubya. We laughed when he said this, another Bushism, during his campaign in 2004. We turned out and re-elected the dumb bastard and sent that weenie Kerry packing. But who really would have thought Bush was so serious about making good on that campaign promise? I thought campaign promises were just for sound bites and votes, not pledges to be followed up on. But I was wrong.

Making good on his campaign promise, Bush has managed to continuously harm Americans. Of course his first term was full unimaginable ways, starting with ignoring terrorism until four airliners were hijacked and used to kill 3000 Americans, to directing that terrible flop, Vietnam the Remake. His second term has been no less harmful: from nominating Michael “Brownie” Brown to run the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to nominating Harriet Meirs to the Supreme Court.

We know how the Brown selection turned out: just as planned. Hurricane Katrina showed up and flooded New Orleans. Brown checked his tie while thousands of Americans—mostly black—waited for help. And waited. And died. A big victory for harm.
Brown’s nomination, which stank of cronyism, was so disastrously harmful that the Harriet Meir’s was forced to withdraw her nomination for similar reasons, under the “unqualified lackey” clause. Had Brown not done his job so well, she may have been confirmed. Ah well, you can’t inflict harm every time.

But now your president is engaged in far more shadowy and secretive ways to harm you: by spying on you. No, it’s not legal for someone to bug your phone without a warrant, but the president will do so anyway. The constitution? Civil liberties? These are the very things that may get you killed by terrorists, and must be circumvented for your own safety, right? How is the president supposed to properly harm you if he has to discuss his methods before-hand and get the approved by a judge? Are you crazy? This is what you asked for—a determined and unrelenting president who will use even powers he does not have to harm you--and now you’re going to flip-flop?

Luckily, the NSA has been illegally spying on hundreds of people since the days after 9/11. Thankfully, this represents a dramatic shift in policy. Up until this time we had limited spying on American soil only to foreign embassies and ambassadors’ hotel rooms. What’s the point of that if you can’t harm real Americans?

Thankfully, what you may not know can get you spied on. What most Americans don’t know is that we have a special court, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which gives its permission before intelligence officers can conduct surveillance on US soil. This is because of the whole checks and balances nonsense to keep the executive branch—the branch you rousingly re-elected--from just doing what ever it wants. Basically the courts keep you from doing what ever you want. Can you believe that? In America?

But since the administration’s motives are pure, the judicial branch need not be involved. The judicial branch is only for impure motives. Administration officials have issued a robust defense of the spying, saying they have prevented several terrorist attacks. The alleged bugging program is reminiscent of the widespread abuse of power by the security services during the Vietnam War. If it was important to illegally monitor peace-loving hippies during that time, how much more important is it to illegally monitor you, as possible American with terrorist ties?
Thankfully, due to this reasoning, the special court has been completely circumvented so your president can get on with what he does best: harming.

Sometimes I just can't believe it, this man is our President. I have to Google it just to be sure. And my concerns are subsided when I type in "43rd president" and this comes up.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html

And some day your kids will open up their history books, the ones with all the previous presidents on the inside cover, and George W. Bush will be there among the others: Washington, Lincoln, Nixon, and Reagan. He'll be couched between Clinton and Clinton and your kids will ask about him. "Was he a good president?" And you'll remember whistfully, "Yes, he was a true American. He harmed us."

All that flack about the President’s un-Christian Christmas card would have been nothing compared with the fallout that would have occurred if he had not been harming us diligently, if he had actually gone to the courts who probably would have denied such an outrageously harmful request. Thank goodness we have a crafty and clever guy in place to find every loop hole to harm you, and a president who will do what ever the vice president says.

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

And Suddenly Another Arises

Let me introduce your next motivational speaker

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051213/ap_on_re_us/skydiver_s_plunge

My Take on Baby Boomers Turning 60 (from a bitter Gen-Xr)

The baby boomers are turning 60!

The baby boomers are turning 60!

Wow, this one is all over the news. How exciting! What does it mean for you and me?

10. Every show you watch will be surrounded by commercials for prostate medicine, erectile dysfunction, and balding.

9. If you are the child of a baby boomer Social Security will not be around when you turn 60.

8. I predict older people will become hideously more grotesque due to increased plastic surgery. Have you seen Joan Rivers? Her face is tighter than a snare drum. It looks like one of those Planet of the Apes masks where only the lips move. Wait until they start using cybergenic implants.

7. Cybergenic implants will become available, leagal, and fashionable. Many boomers slowly become more machine than man.

6. Stem cell research will become legalized. As the benefits of stem cell research will be able to curb the very things that strike old people, Baby Boomers will make this one legal.

5. Abortion will become illegal. In an attempt to shore up relations with the Almighty before departing this world Boomers will strike down Roe v Wade.

4. Boomers will invade and annex Canada. There are 75 million Boomers and 32 million Canadians, and the Boomers want that free health care, the pharmaceuticals, and vaccines baaaad.

3. After consuming Canada the Boomers will move south and invade Mexico. Since there are 105 million Mexicans the Boomers will have to settle for only Northern Mexico, creating a giant entitlement and retirement wasteland from Miami to Guadalajara.

2. Boomers will become self aware. It's difficult to tell whether they will consume the captive human race or merely enslave them.

1. Boomers will sow their genetic seed into the stardust of supernovas the wonderous process begins all over again. (We are stardust. We are golden. And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden.)

What I have seen speaks for itself. The world will be taken over, conqured if you will, by a master race of highly intelligent, and immortally robotic Baby Boomers. One thing is for certain, there is no stopping them. And I for one welcome our future Boomer overlords. I would like to remind them that as a trusted internet correspondent I could be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.