Ah, How Quickly We Forget

A Message From the President:
In light of the terrible events in Haditha and elsewhere in Iraq, this administration has decided to distract you with bread and circuses, naked emotional appeals, and more outright lies. This disturbing image represents the Mobile Biological Weapons Production Facilities, used by Saddam's evil regime. They have lots of them, staffed by Sandmen and Jawa renegades. They patrol the limitless wastes of Arrakis, and are trying to stop Spice production, and destroy Disneyland, and the American Way. Iraq, AmWay, and the Jehovah's Witnesses represent an Axis of Evil, that only a gang of old GOP cronies like this administration is morally equipped to deal with.

Never mind Colin Powell's whitewashing of the My-Lai massacre, when he was sent to investigate in Viet Nam. Never mind Dick Cheney's multi-billion dollar collusion with Haliburton in Iraq. Never mind we were going to invade Iraq, anyway, before 9/11 ever happened; never mind any of those pointless things--look at this picture!!! Just look at it! Why, the safety of our sons and daughters comes first...unless, of course, I want to send them to Iraq..then they become martyrs (oops) I mean, heroes...anyway, their sacrifice, is well, hell, how am I supposed to fight a war without getting some people killed? Heck fire.

...now, we may have determined, after four years, that these here vehicles never even existed, which sure makes you want to ask, who drew this thing? Where were they getting their ideas, and information? Well, we'll just sweep that under the rug with the rest of it. Go watch American Idol, or survivor. Yeah, that's it, go back to sleep. Now that you're used to the idea of war, I got a doozy planned for you. It's called World War Three! You'll really like it. It's got China and North Kora in there, and the rest of the Mideast, too. Hell, everyone's invited...just don't go reading 1984 or The Sheep Look Up. Nothing but crazy ideas in them books. Global warming; endless war... What a laugh!

You got to love a society where you don't have to censor dangerous books, on account everybody's too dumb now to read 'em. I know I am! Oh, well. Just remember when you are crouching in a city swallowed by rioting, or clutching your rifle in some blameless foreign land, surrounded by dead buddies and crazed native scum hell-bent on your death, Freedom demands sacrifice; and I am free to demand yours!
May God continue to bless America.

Good night.

Alas, Babylon

Here, on the edge of a ruined landscape, in the shade of the dead city, that we sold everything to build, so that we could in the end tear it down; here, in the evening of my kind, the clock of our era almost run to a stop; here, let me set a few words down, for those who might come after, if this tired planet will ever again bear fruit.

We went insane. We became so blase about our own killing of each other that we could watch, dry-eyed, while the images of the slain were paraded before us as entertainment. We could eat our Subway snadwiches, that were somehow magically supposed to make us thin while making us fat, talk on our cell phones and sleep with people we met online about whom we really knew absolutely nothing, kill each other over traffic mishaps, and let our children grow into ruined and helpless human beings so we could have fun until a later age.

We went insane; we spat out three generations in a row that couldn't see the point or the value in any of the institutions, values, and intellectual exercises it took to give them Game Cubes and Email, iPod and Grand Theft Auto. The forward momentum of our culture all but ceased. People who do not know the value of a thing, ultimately will lose the thing. It was long ago written, and it is true, "make yourself a sheep, and the wolf is ready."

So we let it slip out of our grasp; the barbarians were before the gate, and we had long ago given them the key. The infidels stole into the temple, and the temple fell. Metphors from a lost civilization at the end of an age. So, if you ever read this, future people, take heed; never let your children grow into insolent, uneducated, small-minded adults with no propensity for anything but their own instant gratification.

There, in that selfish little urge, lies the end of centuries of toil; of ill-picked leaders, of rampant crime; apathetic hordes who care nothing for law and order; of people who care nothing for education, so that the lamp of knowledge gutters and dies; so that other people from other lands must do your work for you, since you no longer know how. Beware; this is the warning from a civilization long gone to dust.

Days of Future Past

Where are you, Paul Wicklund? Where are you, Philip Wheeler? Where are you, William and Marty, and where are you, my long lost youth. Oh, I know, well enough. You spent yourselves out like a fisherman's line, every sweet face, sharp comment and adolescent dream; and beneath the shoulders of the green hills we all dreamed, some of cosmic battles, some of simply leaving, and it was the cosmic fighters who took too long to realize that the great plateau upon which the godlike battle would be raged lay inside, and in no other place.

If you find this little missive, this message in a bottle, my Long Lost Ones, pray that those of us still looking find a light, after so much darkness. And be well.

Back off, man, I'm a blogger

Hey, I have a blog on the Internet, so I must be a deep-thinking, well-informed, renaissance man, who knows everything, right? Right? I mean, you realize that every opinion I post here is the correct one, okay? If you don't, you must be some kind of noob, or uninformed idiot, or something that only cool guys like me know the insult for, right? ...and just remember, in my plan for world domination, everyone gets a free t-shirt.