I have lapsed into the sloppiest style of essay. Practiced by most everyone who writes for the New York Times and of course one Ms-scratching-all-the-way-down Coulter. I have neglected that all points, no matter how reasonable or obvious, have rebuttals and they must be addressed for one to be right as well as maintain the appearance of being in the right.

While firmly against genocide I must admit to a healthy emotional enjoyment for the mainstay of it: the macheté. I’d have to look up the figures to be sure but I think I’m within reason to say that the most common method of genocide after forced starvation and Zyklon B is the macheté. It makes sense when you think about it. All three methods are extremely cost effective. Guns, bombs, and even bullets aren’t cheap. Several million in Africa in the last 20 years alone were chopped down. Hell, there was a period of just a few weeks where 100,000 men, women, and children in Rwanda were hacked to pieces.

I just spent an hour in the rain clearing a half acre of creekside of invasive species. I did it with a macheté, mostly right handed but I’m quite good with the left too. Swinging the whole time, leaving the fallen blackberry and knotweed where it landed. Rarely have I so enjoyed physical labor. Wrists aching. Boots soaking from within and without. Brow steaming in mild spring weather. Feels fantastic.

A common theme in literature and film is that it is actually difficult to kill someone with one’s hands. As opposed to one’s fingers, the American method, with a joystick and a dizzying array of death-dealing buttons. I think it might be hard to kill someone who bravely, calmly, without anger looks you in the eyes while you raise your arm to swing your blade for the first of several necessary blows to the neck. But come on! That means murder is difficult once in 10,000 strokes. Within the predatory mammal nothing incites ire, and the urge to strike, more quickly than begging and frenzied scraping for escape.

Genocide must be the easiest thing in the world. I recommend finding a still, beautiful center of self-respect to at least make yourself a few degrees harder to chop down.

I used my drop slip yesterday. When my contractually obligated silence
expires in a few months I may have some stories to tell about
Amazon.com’s vaunted service.

Hope things are great now that you’re a dad, just like me. Here’s some money even though you and your wife each make more than I did at your age. I especially hope that the boundless dread and anger I gave you for your 11^th birthday is coming in handy now that you have a child in your arms! Bet you didn’t think it would all come back to you with such facility after 10 years of peace. :) It’s like a bicycle!

I have had the same job for exactly five years. That’s not true, strictly. I have been employed at the same company for five years where I have held 6 jobs and a coven’s dozen hats. I never had the same job in my life for more than a year and a half before this and I’ve never been fired from a job.

Five years ago a clean sheet of paper couldn’t stare me down and make me embarrassed that my name had to go on a thing before I was allowed to leave the fucking room.

From: such-and-such <so-and-so@monkeys-r-us.org>

Date: Fri May 23, 2003 18:30:48 US/Pacific

To: “Guy, That” <you-know-the-one@corporate-america.com>

Subject: Re: RE:

commie!?!?!? why i turned my own grandmother in to the mccarthy re-review committee just days ago for having a suspiciously toned cadillac and not supporting our troops with baked goods.

should see you at least once next week. maybe twice. three times a lady.

i half made up my mind last night to quit. but i think i’d like to see one more christmas at the ’zon and see what it might mean to me fiscally.

i miss being amusing more often. veri doesn’t get my Fractured Take™ on the hizbollah style of child rearing. she simply refuses to keep her ordnance ship-shape.

oh, dear. just when i decided to come back i start writing email that could get me canned again. or caned. singapore is very nice this time of year when the temperature and humidity stay in perfect tandem in the mid 90s. much like unscrupulous securities agents and the republican party. ouch!

i haven’t even had coffee for two days.

I graduated from highschool when I was a junior, sort of. That is to say, I had all the requirements and then some to graduate but no one bothered to let me know or give me the info to figure it out myself till I was half through my senior year. I found out at almost the same time I had this encounter:

Her: You will sell tickets for the theater and debate group.

Me: I’m not in that group this year. I’m not going to sell tickets for it.

Her: You will or I’ll fail you in Humanities.

Me: You do and I’ll take you to the school board and get you fired.

Classroom: «gasp» [mumbling and staring at shoes commences for rest of period.]

I went and got a drop-slip for all my classes the next day. I had well over the credits I needed so I could quit school anytime I wanted. I carried that thing every day in my pocket waiting for another such episode, or just a whim, to take it out, slap it down, and say, “So long, suckers.”

I never did that. The slip was enough. And being there was better than being at home. Never told anyone at school about it either. It was my private peace.

In two days I’m scheduled to return to work after a nice long break. My stock options finally are in the black and nowhere near the houseboat money they were at before but still at nice car money, or year off from all work money.

I thought that was my new drop-slip. The way I could go back to work and take it for another year or two. Two meaning the options would probably be back up to houseboat money. Now I’m not sure at all.

I used to be a big fan of omens in those drop-slip days. This is the one I was greeted with today.

You shot the biggest, most amazing looking grizzly that’s probably walked the earth in 2,000 years. For a photo and bragging rights. You would have had a lot more to brag about if you’d let that thing mosey on so the rest of us could see it animated and not propped up on a rock in a crappy picture you took home to have masturbation material on those nights your mom is indisposed.

Retraction [07/30/2003]

I was totally wrong and I owe Mr Winnen an apology and a beer. As one of the only decent Presidents in the last 100 years said, to justify criticism of his own proclivity to hunt (roughly paraphrased): Being shot and killed is a tremendously speedier and more humane end than most animals meet in the wild — where they either die of starvation or being eaten alive, as a rule.

He was right, even for trophy hunting, if it’s not a threatened or endangered animal. However, this same President is responsible for the “Teddy Bear” specifically because he once refused to shoot one as a stunt.

The theory of evolution is not. It is fact. Gaps in the fossil record are no more relevant to its veracity than gaps in the Periodic table meaning fusion and elements don’t exist. Jesus!

And since it’s impossible to discuss something constructive with those who are unable to understand that evidence is required for making points, let’s just go back to name-calling. Refer to the title as a pop-quiz on your religion: Who am I?

And if you think name-calling is all we’ve got, refer to evidence. Homophobic: Leviticus 18:22, Romans 1:26 — Baby killing: Exodus 12:12, Revelation 2:23 — Suicidal: Matthew 26:21, 27:46 — Jew: 5:17, 27:37. Ad nauseam.

You can thank George aWol Bush’s latest venture into anti-science for this rational venom.

Danielle is a gorgeous, intelligent and kind young lady from Taos. Not like you nobodies née New York. We all called her Dani. We all thought she was terrific. I never tried to lay a hand on her over-developed-self, unlike some of the boys. You know who you are. She was the smart little sister in the group. Never mind the buds gone to flower pre-legal.

I heard that Dani thought and said some quite terrible things about me. This hurt and confused me. As I said, I thought the world of her and never did her harm. I was confused for a year or so. Recently it occurred to me what was probably going on.

Long time back, I was down hanging around with Cort and Barnaby at my house I think. I can’t remember anything about what I was doing but that it was the kitchen phone I answered. We were probably playing music. I just know we weren’t up the canyon at Barnaby’s house because Calvin called from there.

We all owned knives. It was the thing. And unicycles. That was the other thing. Northern New Mexico could only be more boring for adolescents if it were more difficult for them to purchase alcohol and narcotics.

It seems Calvin and Eliam were playing with one of the toothéd representatives of the pantheon of 440. Calvin called and told me Eliam had stabbed himself in the leg while poking at a Popsicle stick on his thigh. He called me in part b/c everyone else in my family with my name was a doctor at the time.

I asked how bad it was and got a vague answer which led me to believe it was like all the other knife wounds I’d had and seen lately: not that bad. Calvin said he was going to use hydrogen peroxide to clean it. I told him that it wouldn’t do any good on a puncture wound. He said he’d try some liquor then. I volunteered that this was also not efficacious or particularly lucid. I said, “If you’re worried about it, you should go see a doctor.” This didn’t sit well with him. I said something along the lines of, “Okay. But if it still hurts or is hot or really red in another hour, he needs to go to the emergency room to get looked at.” And we hung up.

Calvin is now one of my good friends and Eliam is a great guy. At the time they were fucking stupid 14 or 15 year-olds. And at that particular time, they were both drunk off their asses. That was the other reason they called me instead of a parent and why they didn’t want to have anything to do with a doctor. And why Eliam passed out for the better part of the day, didn’t see a doctor, and ended up with blood poisoning that came pretty close to killing him.

Eliam’s sister is, you guessed it, Dani. Dani probably never heard that version of the story. She probably heard the one from her mother: Reb Judith.

Orthodox Judaism and Christianity are antiwoman in that they are patriarchal. God is He. Woman, first in sin, is made not even of mud but of a piece of the mud pie. You can’t reclaim it. It’s an antithesis. A woman becoming a Rabbi is a bit like a black man trying to become a Grand Dragon. Revealing.

When Eliam lay in the hospital that moaning old bag of cat bones did what she always did. She kvetched and wailed and blamed everyone else (she fired poor Harry once for something he didn’t do either) for her son’s brush with the great Lexicographer. She even threatened to sue me, a minor at the time, or my parents. I can only imagine what she said about me to Dani. I can only imagine that Dani might still have the notion that I nearly killed her brother.

If you start your own copy shop, do not undercut Kinkos. Cheap copy shops attract the kind of customers that cost a lot more money than not attracting as many customers b/c of high prices.

Xerography, as the kids say, is today primarily the domain of sub-cultures who can’t afford or learn to operate a $400 Gateway and a $75 Lexmark. The people who feel the need to completely document and duplicate their lives, thoughts, dreams, so on, tend to be the people who lost their mental-care situations when Reagan got his first swing at signing some Bills in 1981.

One woman in particular would bring her suicide notes in for copies. She would have us copy them, even though self-service was cheaper. She would leave them overnight, even though the job took all of 40 seconds. She would linger at the counter the next day, sure we’d read her missive to the great Unknown and all things Cruel, waiting for one of us to intervene. Waiting, waiting, waiting.

One day she came in for six sets of a new letter; presumably another suicide note. She’d been refining them.

She went to the counter and bantered with Barnaby about who would make the copies. We or she. Barnaby was, quite appropriately, as if he’d been trained at home by a psychologist, non-committal and unwilling to make the decision for her.

He provided the pros and cons but didn’t volunteer an opinion until she leadingly asked the third time, “Or I guess I could just make them myself?”

In a moment burned deeper in my silver paths than any birthday or first-kiss, Barnaby leaned across the counter to her, looked her square in the eyes, and said, “Go crazy.”

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.