One afternoon in ’Burque betwixt the churning Konica 7090s someone brought up one Ms. Taos First-Time. I admit that even several years after the fact, it was still a name I didn’t want to hear. And it would take some pages to describe why you shouldn’t mind what I said and why it wasn’t just about seeing her on top of what’s-his-name at Kristi’s party, so we’ll just let you mind. Though if you care, it was rooted in my first tortured stab at pillow-talk becoming fodder for Trent’s same.

I said, “Don’t even talk about that fucking bitch around me.”

The copier repair guy fresh in town from 3 states and 15 cultures away said, “Hey! Don’t you talk about her that way.”

I turned to him, put my hand on my hip, and said, “You know Erin?”

“Yeah.”

“You know Erin Solari?”

“Yeah. She’s a friend of mine.”

I shook my head: “You fucked her, didn’t you?”

He had nothing to say. I said to the room, “See, this is exactly what I’m talking about.” And we stopped talking about it.

It wasn’t the last time I talked with him, though. That came a few weeks later when a stunning black girl walked past the shop’s bay windows. And I said, “Oh, my God! Did you see that girl? She was so gorgeous.”

He said, “Ew, sick! You just like those baggy lips.”

Here’s a pop-quiz:

How many Americans did Iraqis kill last year? Zero.

How many Americans did peanuts and lobsters kill that same year? More than 100. It has been going on for decades! And it is known for a certainty that they are going to continue the slaughter for years to come.

So I’ve got to ask, why aren’t we at war with Georgia and Maine? Haven’t enough American lives been lost?

As I already wrote, I’m against the current conflict in Iraq even though. And I know Hussein is a bad man. I would like little more than to see him dead. And anyone who has murdered an innocent person for that matter.

It’s the cost:benefit ratio that is off as I see it.

A friend of mine wrote something about me and my stance. Everything basically comes down to me feeling for the innocent who are getting caught in the gears. I think people have trouble feeling that. Lord knows all I wanted on the afternoon of September 11^th was to personally paint every grain of sand in the Sahara red. I think there is still a lot of want for that. And every time the French open their filthy flaps it makes more people want recompense. And every time someone says something as ludicrous as, “Make love, not war,” and every time you worry about the unemployment line and $2/gallon gas and so on and suchlike.

And I think it all obscures the cost. Makes it a vague intellectual understanding of:

WAR = KILLING * ( guilty + innocent )

Americans are the luckiest people in the world. And I mean luckiest. I can show you. The current generation of Americans could never rebuild what’s been handed to us on a silver platter. All we can do alternate between chipping away at it and trying to minister to its manifold sickness.

Because we’re lucky, we have a hard time understanding. I’d like to help you understand the cost.

This is an American daughter, mine actually.	She looks a lot like an Iraqi daughter, I think.
Here are some more Iraqi children. All my life I’ve preferred to make points with words but I really think you don’t understand and words won’t do it for this. I’m sorry, but either way, you need to know and see more of it. If you’re for the invasion of Iraq, okay. It’s hard to argue in absolute terms b/c the world would be a much better place if Iraq had a different government. Hussein has murdered thousands in horrific ways. But you damn well better understand the cost. This is on the bill that you are writing a check for right now. And if history is any teacher, these are just previews of what the cost is going to be in the end.

I don’t like George Bush. Either of them. The senior said in effect that only Christians should be allowed to be US citizens. He also was the one (or someone on his staff) who coined the term voodoo-economics. This term became known as Reaganomics at which point Mr. Bush was quite glad to eat his words. A lying hypocrite toady.

Junior is not as stupid as many say. He was at least smart enough never to take a physical in the Air Force while his bloodstream was full of cocaine. Losing active flight status is a big deal, you know he was high, and AWOL often too. Now commander in chief and ordering folks to die and kill. Formerly Governor of a state where blacks, Chicanos, and a few Anglos rot in prisons for the self-same indulgence his Yaley status let him visit freely. At least his daughters are paying him back a little.

So, you can see. I have no love of this sad unit. If I were in the military, which nearly happened, both my grandfathers were Air Force officers and coincidentally, one went to Yale Medical— Anyway, if I were in the military and serving under that sad excuse for a suit… I’d almost wish Gore had won.

Now this is the fucking point and I cannot believe how stupid you are. You. No, not the persons you say are stupid. You. You’re the stupid one. As usual, I can prove it.

Because you couldn’t stay awake during civics, you don’t know what the Electoral College is. It’s how we elect Presidents in the USA.

Because you don’t vote and your IQ is about 97 you probably forgot this next part too.

This is the percentage of the popular vote GW Bush got when he won the Presidency via the Electoral College: 47.9%.

Wow, you noticed it’s less than half. You can do math! Congratulations!

This is the percentage of the popular vote Bill Clinton got when he won the Presidency: 43.0%. Even Dukakis did better than that.

So, to you, stop staying Bush is not the President, or not the valid President, or won the Presidency illegally. Besides being stupid, which I take it you’re used to being by now, you’re wrong. Surely that must sting a little.

Call him what he is: just another bad President.

No one is going remember in 10 years that Sci Fi made a little extra money in the 2004 season. Knowing how TV works, no one is even going to remember in 3 years. They’re only going remember that you cancelled “Farscape” in favor of “Tremors: The Series.” And maybe they’ll remember that you called your core viewership too stupid to support sophisticated shows.

Strunk and White says it’s good style to be direct and repeat a point for emphasis. You cancelled “Farscape” and are airing “Tremors: The Series.”

Your recent website revamp and flashy new ad campaign must have cost as much as an entire season of “Farscape.”

But

you cancelled “Farscape”

and you are making “Tremors: The Series.”

I’m not a religious man but at times like this, I hope there is a Hell.

majenta is actually the right place for this but what are you gonna do?

When a suspected felon is surrounded by cops and they are sure he just had a gun a second ago but now can’t see it anymore, and said suspect refuses to show his hands or hold still… that dumb bastard is gonna get shot. He deserves it just like some poor sap stupid enough to stand in front of a bull-dozer in a country without an arm’s length of punitive litigious precedent.

As a condition for ending the affair begun 12 years hence, Iraq agreed to generally disarming. No more gassing of Kurds and so on. That hasn’t happened and Iraq was never in compliance. So, what’s gonna happen isn’t exactly unfair from a geo-political or legal standpoint, however…

We already have the oil and have long been able to control OPEC to an acceptable degree. France and Russia, oddly enough seem quite keen on preventing the war so they can get their grubby fingers in the cracks (their agreements with Iraq are with the current government, not future ones).

Iraq was not a major sponsor of the September 11 crew. Saudi Arabia was but their government likes us to an acceptable degree. Besides — I made the point before but it’s worth making again — 115,000 people have died from smoking in the US so far this year. Let it go.

Iraq bears no direct threat to the US at all. If you think they do compared to say, the rich disenfranchised, traditional Islamic families of Saudi and the UAE and Yemen and Syria and Egypt… you need to learn to read. The Philippines is a greater threat to the US than Iraq.

We already killed 100,000+ Iraqis 12 years ago. It didn’t do much of anything except kill a few real soldiers and a lot more innocent people, including the conscripted, who were stuck with no where to go but dead. Soldiers in Iraq are already trying to surrender to live-fire training exercises happening across the border in Kuwait. That’s how terrified and mistreated the Iraqi army is. It wasn’t a conflict either. It was a turkey shoot. The majority of US casualties in ’91 were from accidents. It was a stone cold slaughter whether or not the whole world was behind or it needed to happen to save Kuwait. It was what it was.

It’s too fucking expensive. If I have to pay 30% of my income in taxes, I’d like to have better roads, more teachers, more art and music and fewer dead foreigners. One Patriot missile in ’91 cost a couple million dollars and killed dozens of Americans shooting down a Scud on top of a base camp. I don’t want dead Americans even more than I don’t want dead Iraqis.

So — the only possible benefit is to the Iraqi people (and the related minority groups in and around Iraq that have long suffered). I don’t care about that. Neither do you. I mean even during WW II some of the French tried to defend themselves. If Iraqis are to have a free Iraq, there needs to be a Farouk Paine and a Thomas Jafisma. Any peace or freedom imposed on a nation always goes to shit. What you don’t pay for, you don’t respect.

It’s not our job. If it were our job we could damn well start in Africa where there are countries with real problems and mini-genocides springing up semi-annually.

We’re hypocrites. President Hussein is the problem and I agree he’s a monster who should be at a Nuremberg style trial before being riddled with thirty-aught-sevens. But we don’t want to kill him. We just wanna kill all those poor bastards he’d kill if they didn’t stand up to be killed by us. Nice.

Lastly, I’ve been to 15 countries in my life. I’ve never experienced any antipathy toward the US in person. The single bad thing I’ve ever heard about the US in another country was in Venice where a young Italian man said, “Fuck Reagan,” to which I replied, “Right on.” Otherwise it was 1,000 days worth of what amounts to “Hey, great to meet you, USA #1.” If that changes over this whole thing, someone is gonna answer to me for it.

And another thing, I don’t care if he’s fucking Adolf Hitler, you fuckwad newsies show some respect while he’s the leader of a country and stop calling him by his first name without a title. It’s disrespectful to everyone.

I want you to ask yourself something.

If all the people that know how to do things (like grow food, build houses, defend themselves, use basic math, make fire, and so on) disappeared tomorrow, do you think you could survive?

And if you have trouble answering for yourself, I can help a few of you. If you believe crop circles are made by aliens, you would not make it.

In 1968 many bad things were happening in the world. Many more than today, by volume and weight. In March of that year some frustrated, tired, bloodied US soldiers came across a town in Vietnam called My Lai.

Those soldiers were looking for VietCong soldiers. The ones who had been killing their friends and mining the roads and fields to maim those who didn’t die. There were no VC in the village. Those US soldiers killed everyone there anyway. Systematically, in some cases with rape, and in most cases without haste. They murdered 300-500 civilians. Old men, women, babies. Just like the SS or the MKVD.

Of course not all US soldiers were like this in Vietnam. My Lai was nearly successfully covered up, however, so it’s a certainty that at least a few more US soldiers were just like this but never caught.

When a bunch of Saudis and their Bible-group friends destroyed the World Trade Center towers and part of the Pentagon and a plane full of brave individuals in a Pennsylvania field there were TV cameras around the world. The cameras largely showed what amazing friends the US has in Canada, England, and many other nations. The cameras also captured Egyptian cabbies in Cairo applauding the act, waves of Palestinians partying in the streets, Pakistanis gloating while applying for student visas to study in the US. Muslim citizens of every predominantly Islamic country loudly crying out in joy.

Not all Muslims. It only looked that way b/c it was almost impossible to find an Egyptian who would say he found the act deplorable or a Saudi not in the royal family who didn’t heartily endorse the day.

When Americans found out our people had been raping and slaughtering Vietnamese civilians, we spit on them. We jeered them. We made them unwelcome, unemployable. We disowned them, even the honorable innocent who’d risked everything for the love of their home, merely by association with the isolated horrible acts that had come to light.

I’ve lived with lots of people. There’s only one I never got into a fight with. I’ve even avoided gun play with better than 93% of them. That’s an A-. Just like my blood type. Symmetry is a fantastic thing in life. Ties it all up. Who cares if it’s completely unrelated.

The one person I’ve lived with and never even got in an argument with was Shawn Kelly. I put his name b/c he welched on a deal so I’m a little steamed after all and I’d like him to look me up so I can complain.

Shawn and I lived together in I’Chon, ROK when we were both teaching at Kuk Je. I saved him from drowning in a rice field once, more or less. I full on saved him from sleeping in his sewage soaked clothes by making his drunk ass strip after I dragged him out of the stinking water and walked him home. Man we drank a lot of OB Lager together till he got thrown out of Korea.

He had a crush on a wonderful young lady who went by Sunny. Close enough to her real name to work well. Her brother had the best little dive in I’Chon but that’s another story.

Shawn wanted to give her some flowers. I supported the venture b/c she seemed so damn terrific. He was too timid though so wanted me to go with him. Ho! Sure, I said. But I put a condition on it. If they ever got married, he had to ask me to be his best man. I’m a child of vision you see. I’m also a child of Loki. When we got to her I pushed him and his roses at her and I ran.

He exchanged pleasantries and more or less asked her out. Then he ran after me intending to kick my ass or at least throw one shot. But God love him, he may be Canadian but he’s no Ben Johnson. He never even got close.

They got married but I never got an invite, let alone a best man request. Always a bride’s maid. I was in the states by then, though, so it saved me at least $1,000 US. All told, he was the best roommate I ever had. I’m not even really steamed about the wedding. I just wanted an excuse to have him find himself here via Google and write me one of these days.

But back to the Singaporean girl. After Shawn got kicked out of Korea he went to Singapore. I visited and we even went to Thailand together. Swanky old city-state the Lion City. Koh Samet ain’t half bad neither.

Shawn taught English in Singapore too. He had an 8 year old student curious about his occidentiality (to coin a term) ask him one day, “Are you a Christian or a free-thinker?”

Upon entering the world of corporate America there is only a single piece of advice I feel every initiate should be given and take as a grail.

Get yourself a micro-cassette recorder and tape record every conversation you have with your manager.

It is simply amazing how fast memories and communications improve when confronted with proof of the veiled threats, badgering sighs, insinuated chauvinism, and menacing tones that look so very innocuous on the written page of a legal document.

One more astronaut in
Black skin of universe
One more traveling man with
Heavy tired eyes, feeling cold
Feeling cold

Thinking around the clock of
Drinking on the job
Of the powdered food and piss bags
Never having sex, growing old
Growing old

CHORUS:
Headspace, alive and painless
Weightless and almost sane, I
Close my eyes, I
Become the sky, yeah
Headspace, alone and shameless
Can’t wait to find the faces
Left behind
In a troubled time back home
Back home, back home, back home

It gets so lonely you know
Weeks and months alone
Chasing sleep and space junk
And the dying stars I’ve known and loved
Known and loved
Through true decline of the
5 billion minds or so
Through mud slides and earthquakes
Blue one hold and rolls along
Rolls along, rolls along

[CHORUS]

One more astronaut in endless old universe with
One more second chance and
Wondering why he’s here at all

[CHORUS]

Bold are the ones who
Come over the line to fall over
The horizon
Never ones to fade away

And then it hit me
This cosmic pull and energy
It kind of makes me wonder
If I’ll ever make it
Back home

—I Mother Earth, Scenery and Fish, “One More Astronaut”

If one thing is wrong, this does not make its apparent opposite right. There are no linear scales in the physical world past mean old Daddy Time. They are convenient for us to draw graphs but they don’t happen in nature. Circles do. When you apply a supposed linear scale to a circle the opposites are the same point. Now, strictly speaking this is not the logic I want to use but I think you get the picture.

If someone puts a cup of piss and a cup of vomit before you and says:

The vomit tastes awful but it’s fairly nutritious after all. The piss is easier to swallow, and it’s cleaner from the ammonia in it anyway. Which would you like to drink?

And you say:

“Yuck! no way.”

And the reply comes:

“You have to pick one, that’s all there is.”

Well, don’t miss the point this time. Just because one is wrong doesn’t make another right. Just because there’s no obvious alternative does not mean there are no alternatives.

I cannot possibly imagine a more uninteresting subject. I simply must stop letting the hired help put suggestions in the topic jar.

Cocksucker is an insult that was terribly popular when I was very young. I remember how much I hated to hear the kids in the older grades say it and words like it. It was years before I would willingly use expletives. I hated to hear them so much, I think, because they are potent and have the undeniable gutter poetry that makes them difficult to shake off. They have fallen out of favor in recent years. I would like to help one of them make a come back.

I am going to attempt this end with an open letter.

To every foreign national who is screaming “racism” b/c you are now required to be photographed and fingerprinted to stay in the US:

You have never heard me bitch once about getting photographed and fingerprinted in Seoul b/c I was a foreign national living in Korea. I watched them let all the Canadians go through without having the same treatment but fair is fair. I know that Americans are more likely to do something bad in Korea than a Canadian is, so I never will bitch about it even though I didn’t like it. It’s time for you cocksucker Pakistanis, Arabians, North Koreans, and Moroccans to quit acting like little girls and admit the same thing.