When you say, “Support the troops,” what you really mean is “Don’t criticize this war.” When you say, “Don’t criticize this war,” what you’re really saying is, “Fuck the troops.”

I’m an American. I love my country and want the best for its future because it’s my future, my family’s. There is no other country quite the same nor as free though I don’t think it’s nearly free enough but that’s a cat for another skinning.

The troops are not protecting me, my family, or my country. Iraq was no threat to the US. The President, his puppeteers, and a chorus of sycophants filtered, distorted, and manipulated the information at hand to suggest otherwise. It was lies. You heard half of them yourself. The whole incident, the whole cabal, will be remembered as a horrifying joke. Historians will run races against James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Franklin Pierce, and George W Bush to select the worst US President in history.

The troops are not eliminating terrorism. They are spawning it. Massive amounts of it. There were no terrorists to speak of in Iraq before the war. It’s now a breeding ground for it. Just like Afghanistan was when Russia invaded there in 1979 and the CIA propped up freedom fighters. One you know by name: Osama bin Laden.¹

The troops are hurting me. They’re taking my tax dollars to live 6,000 miles away and expend expensive ordnance. They’re making it unsafe for me to lay my American passport down when I travel in places like Indonesia or Africa. They’re teaching the world that American soldiers can shoot an unarmed, wounded man to death on camera and it’s not a crime. They’re implying to the world that I somehow support that instead of lynching the morons who get away with it.

The troops are hurting Iraq. Hussein was a beast but he was, of late, a stable and relatively innocuous one. The Baghdad morgue is taking in more than 1,000 murder victims a month and the number has been steadily rising since the war started. It’s also a minimum because many murders go unreported and unrecognized. This is a single city in Iraq where 20,000 civilians will be murdered this year. It will be called civil unrest but 20,000 dead in one city is a combination of anarchy and civil war. In New York City, 1.6 times more populous than Baghdad, there will be around 600 murders this year.

The troops are decent men killing innocent people because the situation backs them into corners they can shoot through but can’t see around. They’re getting hammered with things that cause post traumatic stress in strong men. As the news from Abu Ghraib, Ishaqi, Haditha, and even the American soil of Guantanamo Bay suggests, they’re being turned into monsters by these forced situations.

Far above reasonable averages, they’re coming home to divorces. They’re coming home unemployable, unable to function in normal society; damaged goods, psychological splatter damage. They’re coming home to kill their wives. They’re coming home to kill themselves. They’re even coming home with the potential to be the exact thing they’re supposedly stopping, the worst single terrorist we’ve had.

The price you think the war is exacting on them isn’t just a couple of body bags stuffed in flag-wrapped oak boxes a day. The price of this is a book of blank checks without so much as an expiration date. Stop signing them.

Support the troops? Bring them the fuck home and give everyone who wants it an honorable discharge so they can get back to taking care of America in person. Then everyone here could support them in ways that aren’t a twisted piece of jingoism tied to bumpers with yellow ribbons.

United States seen lagging on stem cell research

And that’s not the worst of it. We’re a full decade behind in falsifying stem cell research data.

Girls overtake boys as binge drinkers: study

Boys overtake girls passed out in the guest room: hump.

Prehistoric ecosystem found in Israeli cave

Doctor of biology Hanan Dimantman remarks, “Every species we examined had no eyes which means they lost their sight due to evolution.” Lack of vision turns out a well selected quality thereabouts.

Prince Albert says he’s father to girl, 14

Do you have Prince Albert in a can? Well, that was your first mistake. You should have him in a rubber.

US rejects North Korea invitation

Dog soup and spicy pickled cabbage cited in reluctance to participate in closed-door talks.

Anna Nicole Smith: “Yes, I am pregnant”

And in a first ever, the sonogram revealed the fetus pleading for a mercy abortion.

Michael Moore Sued by Iraq War Vet

Apparently someone led Sergeant Damon to believe that arms could be reattached at $42,000,000 apiece. Or perhaps that his suffering, being worth only a human oil change or two at the VA, is worth more in Hollywood bucks.

Women gaining on men in advanced fields

In a related set of data, women are nearly at parity for plagiarism and cribbed exam notes.

Study wants nuclear weapons outlawed

Great idea! Now we just need a couple of countries with the might to enforce such a restriction. If we only had some sort of ultimate consequence with which to threaten violators we’d be guaranteed complete compliance worldwide. Ah, the paradise of world peace always just an angstrom out of reach.

Study wants nuclear weapons outlawed (take 2)

Website wants anthropomorphized nouns taken out back and shot.

Man severs penis to prove faithfulness

Woman pulls out own eyes to show she can stay on a diet.

New Orleans levees repaired

Yay! Now the local officials can finally get back to redirecting those monies where they were going for the 20 years previous they were supposed to be spent fixing the levees: untraceable slush funds and kickbacks.

Vargas exit provokes debate, unease

Cohn pull-out garners skepticism, doubt.

Montreal jazz festival unveils lineup

Dictionary unveils definition of jazz invalidates festival lineup.

New technology probes ancient Greek manuscript

Web satirist probes “Greek” joke. Finds gag still holds its own. And that of its younger male companion.

What’s the emoticon for a rim-shot?

Oh!

And if so, don’t you think you should ask before you try to fuck me?

Their site

My site

At least it’s not some retarded Canadian satellite scam artist stealing from me this time. I appear, at least, to be coming up in the world.

Sorry this wasn’t ready for Mother’s Day. I’ve been busy… uh… with important things. Like the Mercenaries mini-game in Resident Evil 4.

Reuters lately reported as news a marketing gimmick from salary-dot-com—and plenty of normally sober men with nice wives picked it up—detailing the imagination-time earning power of the average US mother. [Ed: note to Canadian moms, the dollar figures are in money, not in snow pesos.]

So, U.S. mothers are apparently worth $134,121 in salary.

To reach the projected pay figures, the survey calculated the earning power of the 10 jobs respondents said most closely comprise a mother’s role — housekeeper, day-care teacher, cook, computer operator, laundry machine operator, janitor, facilities manager, van driver, chief executive and psychologist.

Okay. See, I’m at the playground, or the store, or the park, or the aquarium, or the zoo, or the kid’s museum almost every day. I know how well these moms are doing their “jobs.”

Housekeeper. You mean put dishes in the machine and wipe up? Run a vacuum around now and then? Turn a washing machine on and move a load two feet to the dryer? Maybe you’ve been in a cave and the whole illegal immigrant thing hasn’t reached you but that labor is worth minimum wage without benefits. So that’s 2 hours a day—tops!—by $5.00 an hour. $80 a week.

Already up to $5,000 a year. See! Finishing high-school was totally worth it.

Day-care teacher. You mean turn on Nick Jr? Buy another cartridge for the V-tech? Teacher… teacher…? Aren’t American kids the ones who can’t find Mexico and Canada on a map? Isn’t this the country where barely 13% of children understand that all animals, including humans, arrived in their present form via evolution?

Cook. Happy meals, snacks with 35 grams of sugar a serving, and ice cream for 1 year-olds? 15% of American kids are overweight. I ate at most all my friends’ houses and none of them is in the Michelin Guide because they don’t give fractions of a star. Mulligan’s Stew is just not served.

Computer operator! I worked in a technology company’s customer service email and call center. A computer operator is someone who doesn’t need help with a computer. A typist you’re trying to replace before she can do any more damage is your mom.

Laundry machine operator. See “housekeeper.”

Janitor; ibid.

Facilities manager. Oh, lord. Well, at least I got a laugh out of the list. Moving the couch and changing a light bulb doesn’t make you qualified to run a “facility.”

Van driver. Yeah, that’s right. They actually didn’t make this job sound as hard as it really is what with putting on make-up and telephoning Oprah-friends while tailgating at 15 over the limit. Thank the Lord for air bags.

Chief executive. Well, when you consider luminaries like Kenneth Lay I suppose most moms are entirely qualified for this role. I wonder how much they increase the profit in the company each year. I heard your mom was bringing in like $100-$200 a night, one Jackson at a time.

Psychologist. Here’s a recent example overheard on the playground–

Girl of 5: Why did he do that?

Mom: Boy’s just do stuff like that, honey.

Malpractice insurance and perennial suits wipe out that portion of the income.

So, what’s a mom worth?

How about Andrea Yates or Susan Smith or any of the garden variety backwards twats I see hitting their kids in the mall parking lot every weekend?

We seem to talk a lot about fathers being poor parents. About this leading to problems in later life. We seem to forget that mothers are still the primary caregivers for children. We seem to forget that most every murderer, molester, petty thief, and even American president had a mother. A mother who had thousands of days to steer a child right.

How many children do you see on an even keel today? Making it to adulthood happy and prepared for life? Answer that and you’ll know how much mothers are worth.

Even when they force things full circle.

When you and I saw the news on television together of the slaughter of peacefully demonstrating students near Tiananmen Square you made a joke about it. I understand that humor in the face of horror is very human and very healthy. That day however I went straight to the shower, without a word, in all my clothes—which I’d never done before nor have done since—and cried for an hour while the water beat down on me. Cried like I was 10 and the dog that had been my best friend from the crib had just died again. Cried like I was choking to death. Wishing only that I could.

I got married on the same day years later, in part, because I knew in my entire life it wasn’t an anniversary I could ever forget.

I saw a photo of Bill Gates toasting the president of communist China today.

No one has any interest whatsoever in seeing either Elizabeth Berkley or Tiffani Thiessen with clothes on. No one. Not even heterosexual women. I personally have even less interest in seeing any of Dustin Diamond, Mario López, or even Mark-Paul Gosselaar outside the pages of The Smoking Gun or next year’s hot new HBO title, Celebrity Autopsies.

What the fuck is the matter with you guys? You used to have dignity. Savoir-faire. Your stupidity was affected, it wasn’t genuine. It was cool. You could watch an hour of Space Ghost Coast to Coast without needing to get high.

Was The Herculoids prohibitively priced? Was Snyder holding out for more money to re-syndicate Dr. Katz?

Does it actually cost more than $50 and take more than 2 hours to produce an episode of 12 Oz Mouse or Tom Goes to the Mayor?

And another thing: program directors are not editors. Editors edit things—rejecting or correcting that which isn’t up to scratch. Program directors sort through whatever pile of tapes their budget bequeaths in a frantic bid to keep their jobs for another six months. Good news everyone: UPN is looking for interns.

Happy Hitler Day indeed.

Even when I don’t even know in which family they belong.

The AP reports today:

“Chronological Oddity to Hit Digital Clock”

WASHINGTON - Call it a coincidental sign of our digital times or a reason to stay up late and stare at the clock. Either way, early Wednesday morning the time and date will be 01-02-03-04-05-06.

No it won’t. It’s not the year 6, jackasses. It’s the year 2006. The time and date will be “1:02:03 4/5/2006.”

Ooooooohhhhh. Spooky!

See also.

I won’t be around much for awhile. I’ve rediscovered the fact that I have a MOTU 896, Digital Performer, and a handful of multi-track tapes from 13 years ago. While you wait to hear it—to begin to appear here a few days after the DP 5 release—I offer a juxtaposition taken directly, without editorial, from the Yahoo News most popular page.

Oh, okay! Here’s the editorial: the more things change…