Speak Your Mind

When a multi-millionaire superstar shows what he really plays for - to win, as a team - why, anything is possible. In an era of pouts and steroids, this is why sports still matter: because anything is possible - just keep moving toward your goals!

The little girl looked up, Smiled, said thanks and the man was puzzled

Confused

Thanks for what, he said, and she smiled

Again

And said thanks for horseyrides, for bike rides and big hugs for night time kisses on cheeks and foreheads and strong arms that carry me up the stairs

Thanks, she smiled the word

For going to work every day and coming home every night for getting on big jet planes and phone calls

for picking up the pieces of your heart every time you go away just to go away and come back and do it again

And again

Thanks, she said

For me

He looked down and shrugged, the weight of petty life things falling off his shoulders and floating away on the soft breeze of her words

Don’t thank me

Thank you

For that small voice in the dark

thanks

and for horseyrides and big hugs for night time kisses on cheeks and foreheads and the privilege to carry you up those stairs

For a reason to work every day and come home every night

And for big jet planes that carry me home

again

Thanks.

For the smile that puts all those tiny pieces back again

When they get around to it, they’ll hang poor old Sammy high on the tallest tree left standing in Baghdad. The people will see the soles of his shoes, and he’ll sway like a bag of laundry in the hot desert breeze until they take him down – which could be hours later, after the soldiers snap their pictures and the enraged Shiite mothers are finished beating the carcass with brooms. Perhaps they’ll burn him, like they did those security guards, leaving the mutilated body for jarheads to parcel up and mail off to wherever we send the bodies of despots who go up against us.

It’ll make great TV. That much is sure. So the sooner they do it, the better. Hurricane season was a flop; we thought God was gonna finish off New Orleans, and the nightly news about deviant conservative preachers and politicians is getting tired. Male prostitutes, meth and Page Boy Love is good for a day or so, but it reminds us about how stupid we were; we can’t exactly point the finger and laugh when we put them in the spotlight. There’s the nightly body count from Iraq, but there are only so many 22-year-old bodies we can cry over until it becomes just another part of the long, sad news of how we’ve screwed our own nation’s future.

It’s time for a hangin’. And until we get our hands on that queer little Korean dude, Sammy will have to do, so hang him high, fellas, and leave the body up there for a good long time. The last tree standing in Baghdad is rooted on the bodies of thousands of young American bodies, after all, so hang him high, way up on the top branch so the world can see just why it is that we sacrificed so much in a land full of people who never wanted us there, and now won’t ever let us leave.

The ape was clearly having a good time. Putting on a show, shouting and flailing his long arms, climbing up the branches of the Big Tree in his glass-encased little paradise. He was the joker, it was clear; the King being the fat one with his back to the people, sitting on the ground and eating leaves. The people, safely crammed into an auditorium on the other side of the glass, were pressed up against the window, taking movies and gawking at the show. It was their highlight of the day, to be sure. Most of the time, the animals at the zoo were content to lie around. At most, they’d flick away flies, get up, stretch and plop back down again. They seemed to know that it didn’t really matter what they did, they were stuck in their compounds anyway, and doing something like, say, walking around or making noise, why that would only attract the weirdos – crowds of ‘em — all popping pictures and squealing like the chimp who was putting on the show up and down the Big Tree. Most of the veteran animals really had no time for that sort of nonsense. They got their three hots and their cot whether they scared the little kiddies or stayed planted on their rumps all day.

The chimp was clearly too young to understand this. And the people were delighted, after a long day spent trudging up hills and standing in front of tiger dens and panda exhibits, only to glimpse the occasional emancipated tiger lift up his head and yawn. Predators are the worst for doing nothing at all, because they don’t have to and because, well, the meanest group of any species is inherently lazy and arrogant. They’re the ones with the big teeth and the raw attitude. That in itself will get you farther in life than a nice personality and a good show routine, something the Democrats have yet to figure out. Republicans know all about Big Teeth and bad dispositions, which is why they win most elections, then lie down and dare the little Dems to do something about it. They don’t, of course, because of those teeth, mainly, and because little chimps are apt to run away and hide when talk gets down to raw meat and white bones. Yea, this time around may be different, for the chimps can sense that the jackals are bleeding and the crowds are mad because, after all these years, they’ve been waiting for the damn dogs to do something – anything – to show how they’re still Meanest of the Jungle. It gets to the point where they’d rather go to the chimp exhibit and watch the funny ape making faces in the glass, until, of course, he does what he always ends up doing – drinking his own pee or flinging his own poo.

When that happens, the people shut off the cameras and head back out to the jackal compound, waiting, hopefully, for that damn mangy dog to get off his ass.

The Freak got his fifteen minutes. And we got to talk about JonBenet Ramsey for a couple of days, and drench ourselves in the dirty rain. He didn’t do it. But no one really cares about that. Ironically enough, The Freak will never go back to his little Asian love shack. Instead, he’ll get the anonymous and justified hell of being jailed as a child pornographer in Sonoma County, California.

Have a glass of wine, Freak. And give yourself a toast. Because with all your posturing and preening, all your weird boy antics, you revealed something far, far worse about us and our unquenchable thirst for that dirty, dirty, rain.

I carried a case of wine from South Africa to America. No one checked it, no one stopped me. All the way from Capetown to Atlanta to LA, I carried that case in a bag on wheels. It was good wine, too – glad I did it, though by the time I got home I needed a drink from huffing that darn case all the way across the world.

Looks like I’ll never do that again. Nope – looks like the next time I fly, it’ll be dry goods and candy bars. Not content with making millions of people take their shoes and belts off every day, those darn terrorists are now gonna make us stink and parch our throats. They must have stock in Rite-Aid – I wonder if anyone has checked on that. It’s amazing – mothers drinkin’ formula in front of security guards, people tossing out toothpaste, deodorant and water bottles because a wild-eyed and wooly-bearded terror prince has a jones for virgins in heaven. Give me a break. Better yet, give it a break.

Hey – stupid — here’s the thing: you can keep trying all you want. And maybe you’ll even get lucky, God forbid. But we have all the money, and we want the oil that sits under the ground of your filthy little desert homes. So no matter what you do, we ain’t leaving, we won’t stop flying, and we sure ain’t gonna say “oh golly, we better do what they want.” Fact is, there are no virgins in heaven, just a bunch of skinny Flos pouring coffee, slinging hash and singing country songs.

Sorry. And then – even though you’ll fail miserably at your goal — our government will round up all the Muslims and put them in camps. Sure, everyone will cry and cry. But our government likes putting people into camps. We find it distasteful and evil, but it’s what they do when they get really, really pissed off. Then they’ll subsidize the airline industry so that people still get paychecks. And they’ll strip search us. But that’s okay – I’ll wear a speedo on the plane if it means that I can make my next meeting in Des Moines. Really, we won’t mind. At first we’ll grouse a bit, but then we’ll see the funny side and just carry on. That’s us. Sooner or later we see the bright side. But oh, yes – our government. They don’t find humor in many things. They like to lie in the tall grass and wait for the right time to act like global bullies.

So – what next? Ah. Then George, or Jim, Condi or even Hillary will basically erase Afghanistan. Pakistan. If it has a Stan, one day it will be there, and the next – poof. Not that it will be hard; those places are pretty much just another empty desert as far as we’re concerned. For a minute or two, we’ll feel bad about it, so they’ll send Laura and the girls out on a mission of hope. And we’ll move on to the next reality show. Saudi Arabia would be next. Yep — your Mother Land. And our government rep will sit down with your fancy pants prince and ask for some support very nicely, but with a predatory “I just smelled blood and it’s comin’ from you” glint in the eyeballs. Princey will sure help – he most surely will.

All this is like Barney Hour compared to what will happen next. In fact, you already have a taste – we’ll get the Brits hopped up and mad. Not sure if you studied world history in Mosque School, old chum, but the English are among the worst people when they’re irritated – just ask the Irish, or the Scots, or the Aussies, or the Canadians, or us, or the Indians, or, well, just about anyone. So we’ll give them a billion pounds and they’ll turn your little region of the world into a colony.

The ending is not good for you and your brothers. You’ll either wind up in a camp somewhere outside of Billings, dead on some London street with your nose cut off, or you’ll be living with Osama in cave city. We like it when we drive you into the ground, because we still get our enemy – keeps us from thinking about serious things — and you really can’t do anything to hurt us when you sleep in a spider hole and chase goats for food.