Entries Tagged 'War' ↓

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 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.

Billy was not as old as he looked. Torn down as he was by hard and foolish living, Billy was young in his mind, enough so anyway to suck in the gut and flirt with girls too pretty and far to put together for an sad old clown like Billy.

Ah. Poor old Bill gave the girls the creeps, with his broad hints and never ending attempts at illicit romance. That large and sloshy gut, the rotten teeth, that thin and greasy hair, the smile that made little girls hide behind their Daddies. Divorced. Lonely. Hanging onto a job where no one really liked him, but no one really minded, either. An inconsequential speck, nothing to nobody except for the guy sitting next to him at Hooters on $1 Buffalo Wings night.

Billy is all about going through the motions, shadow-boxing his life along and hoping to land a blow. So it’s a curious thing, then, that someone as stilty and repressed as he could have such a moment of clarity, of clear thinking, of lonely logical and brutal honesty. We all get lucky, we all get that tap on the shoulder and the whispered words in the ear. And so — there he was, minding his business on the train platform, watching for the bright white light to bounce off the waves of heat dancing down the line.

Thank God, thought Billy. There it is. Only three minutes to wait. This train business is more stressful than driving! He looked around, saw a blond waiting at the edge of the track, and sidled up.

“Are you waiting for the 416, too?”

“Yeah.”

You bet, sweet cheeks. Billy got the message, and the converstation died like a whale in a bathtub. He inched away, away of the chill, not wanting to get cold. Brrrrr, he said. I will need to make a mental note of her face.

4:13

Damn. Why does it take so fucking long for the train to get here? He checked the schedule, making sure the time printed was 4:16 and not, 5:10 or something – which would have made him really happy. What made it worse was that it was really damn hot and bright on this platform. Made of white concrete and brushed aluminum, the platform shone like a brilliant concentration camp, and, unless you had dark sunglasses, it seared into your corneas and made you never, ever want to come back. Billy could feel a bead of sweat working its way down his back, dancing around moles and powering through hairs. God, how he wished he was home, to his dog, or back at work, or, better yet, at the bar. Stand here on the train platform or go to a bar and get drunk.

He turned his iPod up a little more.

Shit. He could barely afford the train fare. Since his car got impounded, his life had been shit, His girlfriend left, the boss was giving him hell, hassling him about the job he was doing, the Ex wanted her freaking child support, on and on and on it went until he just felt like he was gonna blow. That’s when he took the crowbar to the Ex’s Lexus – freaking whore, married with another kid on the way, it’s only been two years. Shit. She didn’t have to go and call the cops, either, she knew I was good for it. Fuck her, Billy thought. She knew better than to mess with the bull. And now she gets the horns – no child support for that bitch.

4:14

Oh fuck me!! Where is that flipping train! The light is still there! Arghhhh! Billy was ready to blow. Where the hell is it? Where is it? Billy was pacing inside his brain, and it was urging his feet to go along. Nah, I can’t. I have to look cool. Those dudes who pace, they end up jumping off the platform and screwing everyone. I can’t do that, besides, I have too much to live for.

Billy smiled at that thought.

Learned something new today: I am a talking head. That’s right. I who have spent 25 years writing have been tossed onto the vacuous nincompoop heap, an empty brain with chattering gums, spouting off and doing a little dance for the amusement of others. Pull a chord and watch me go – wheeee! I Am the Talking Head!

It was a casual comment, made by a man who meant nothing by it and who barely knows my name. And perhaps it was just a flip comment in general terms. But it makes me wonder how such a judgment was rendered, and why, when that person knows me only from what others have told him, why those others would attempt injury to my reputation as a knowledgeable person. Sadly, I do not wonder by whom, or for what reason.

But perhaps being classified as such should make me proud. After all, David Byrne is a talking head — I take deep comfort in that. And, really, I am far too ugly and bloated to ever qualify in that group. But if I am, then based on the apparent criteria so is every other expert brave enough to sit under lights, stare into a camera and share his or her knowledge. To me, a Talking Head is told what to say, one of those who gets a script written by others and mouths the words, parroting some anonymous writer’s thoughts and getting paid to do so. I do my own research; write my own stories. I come up with my own ideas, and the opportunity to be a Talking Head comes from writing and studying those things that people want to know more about.

And by the way, it’s not easy – at least, if this really is the definition of a Talking Head.

It’s a bittersweet thing, all in all, to enjoy a moment of victory, to enjoy the result of your labor, yet to be met with silence, evil stares and snide comments. I’m guilty of it too, as are we all, and I suppose that it is just part of life. People are jealous by nature, and when jealous, they do and say things to undermine and betray. The competitive world is full of people who get ahead by making others look bad on purpose, who are not content to allow their own quality to rise and be recognized. I felt it today when I walked through the doors; felt the negative energy, the hate and anger pointed toward me. There are things I do better than others, and there are things they do better than me. For a long time, the realization that this could never just “be” made me sad, and angry too, and I spent many hours thinking about how I could even the score. But I remembered some of the workplace trials my father went through – and they were the same. The jealousy, the maneuvering. The games, and the unquenchable thirst to control the board on which people play out their lives.

That’s what I’m doing. Just playing out my life, and my mandate to provide for my family. When I die, I will not think of the 15 minutes of fame I got on television – I will have forgotten all about it, should I be blessed enough to live a long and happy life. The success I achieve by doing that is a happy byproduct of hard work. I’m not smart, or even very clever. But sometimes I put it all together, and I get to enjoy the results. For those who resent that, I’m sorry, and hope that one day you can be content in your own skin, and leave mine – or someone else’s – alone.

It’s bad enough that MySpace has become a sort of happy hunting ground for old men weirdoes. Now, kids have yet another danger to wade through: sales pitches for our nation’s military. Yep, the Marines have landed on MySpace.com with the enthusiasm of a hungry sarge waiting in line at the Hometown Buffet. According to the AP:

“The Marine Corps MySpace profile — featuring streaming video of barking drill sergeants, fresh recruits enduring boot camp and Marines storming beaches — underscores the growing importance of the Internet to advertisers as a medium for reaching America’s youth.”

All in all, it’s not a bad thing – it beats hanging out at the mail and browbeating some neer ‘do well into giving a good chunk of his or her life away. At least, one would hope, recruiting on MySpace.com may dampen the financial and racial profiling that goes on in recruiting offices. Then again, maybe not. But don’t despair, kids. Just think: you can get yourself a new Toyota Yaris, a Verizon phone – and an all-expenses paid trip to the Middle East — just by logging onto MySpace. And your parents thought the Internet was a dangerous waste of time. Just imagine Mom and Dad’s reaction when you tell ‘em that your Iraq-bound! They’ll sure be proud – and happy – that you spent all your time getting pitched by a marine on MySpace.com.