Non-Person Of The Year

Time Magazine has a tradition of recognizing (though not necessarily "honoring") a person or persons deemed most influential and significant in any given year.

In the spirit of fairness and balance, I humbly offer the distaff side of this "recognition"--the least significant and least influential person or persons of the last twelve months:


May I present "The Non-Person Of The Year"


For tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% and tax breaks for the wealthiest business that placed an $100 billion dollar a year immediate burden on the majority and added approximately $30,000 in future debt to every tax paying individual whilst social services and infrastructure investment were cut.
For the millions spent on a 60-day tour touting Social Security "reform" despite obvious public awareness that the scheme would cost more and deliver less.
For the administration’s continuing claims of ties between Hussein and Al Qaida and Iraq’s threat to the US despite a majority of the public finally recognizing that lies led to the war and occupation.
For the purely political and simply vindictive "outing" of a CIA NOC whose duty was specifically to prevent the acquisition of nuclear materials by terrorists who wish harm the US.
For the firing of government officials performing their public duty of ensuring that taxpayer dollars are spent wisely.
For the refusal to provide verifiable election results and the continued use of flawed purge lists.
For the planting of propaganda and the manipulation of the "free press"
For having personal religios beliefs used as a means of oppression and manipulation
For the preferential provision of flu-vaccine to Congress
For sending troops to battle in insufficient numbers, with insufficient armor, bullets and supplies
For refusing dead soldiers honor guards and shipping them as freight
For cutting veterans benefits and healthcare
For leaving Hurricane Katrina victims to their own devices
For spying on peace groups and labeling at least half of US citizens as treasonous, unpatriotic, un-American.
For reserving the right to incarcerate, convict and torture by presidential fiat, without due process, representation or appeal
For eviscerating the separation of powers, the separation of church and state and public representation in favor of ultimate executive power

For all these reasons ( and others that could be mentioned), for being ignored, manipulated, burdened and suppressed I nominate the average American Citizen the "Non-Person of the Year".

International Rice Skating

In the world of ice skating national champions compete for international recognition. They are judged on a combination of skills—the confluence of technical and interpretive skills that culminate in a memorable and worthy performance.

Condoleezza Rice is currently America’s ice skating champion, lifted into the international arena by overwhelming partisan support. But out on the ice she stands alone, save for an isolated partisan crowd, and faces European judges inherently critical and wiser and older than she.

As the music swells she begins her routine cautiously, defensively but then quickly builds up her energy. Starting with some easy but crowd pleasing double toe-loops and salkoes she gathers momentum before launching into a spin. The pace now quickened she proceeds to the footwork section, traversing the ice with dazzling changes of position and direction before finally lining up for a double-triple combination capped with a camel spin.

The scores are posted. On both technical merit and interpretation the European judges are less than impressed. Rice’s "Rendition Rhapsody", and her originality, though recognized counted against her.
With disappointing scores Rice’s response was to attack the judges—not a tactic that will turn them around any time soon.

Will she be back next year to finally clinch worldwide acclaim and financial nirvana? Or will she be relegated to the exclusively American professional ice-skating circuit, performing "oil’s Well That End Well on Ice" or "Rendition Rabbit Saves Christmas"? Only time and millions of wasted dollars will tell.

The (Military) Children Are Our Future

Apparently it’s not enough for President Bush and Dick Cheney to justify their Iraq policy to captive audiences of serving military personnel, now they have to appeal to their kids too.

But instead of the childlike POTUS or the scowling "VEEP" delivering the message, it is Mrs Cheney who has been tapped to explain to elementary school children at two Washington-area Marine Corps bases in Quantico and Fort Belvoir, Virginia how 21st Century Iraq is just like 18th Century America.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-5476471,00.html

Who better to explain to these likely future recruits the historical importance of their parents’ mission than a woman best known for a novel about barely concealed lesbianism in the Wild West?
``Two hundred and seventeen years ago, we held our first vote under our Constitution,'' Vice President Dick Cheney's wife said. ``We started then on the path the Iraqis are walking now.''

Never mind that the new Americans didn’t have to risk their lives to cast their votes, that they weren’t under occupation, that the Constitution specifically rejected the role of religion in both government and law.
The new Iraqi Constitution does( in common with the US Constitution) allow for amendments—an aspect that Lynne Cheney said provides ``a very important historical parallel'' with America's early democratic struggle.

``We did much the same thing in terms of our Constitution,'' she said on CNN.
``Many were reluctant to ratify (it) until they were told there would be amendments. ... So there are indeed many parallels and I look forward to talking with kids about it.''

Well that much I suppose is true: the paths are parallel…meaning they don’t converge in any way whatsoever. But draw two horizontal parallel lines on a chalkboard and any elementary schoolchild will recognize it as "equal".

It seems we can no longer rely on the old adage "History is written by the winners". From today it seems it should be replaced by "History is written by those who write it first, and re-write it later". As the military kids grow up and stumble across another old chestnut "those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it" which history will they remember? The history written after the fact or the history crafted before the fact?

The Iraqi Free Press (a $100 million value!)

Rumsfeld Praises Role of Free Press in U.S., Iraq, Afghanistan (23/04/2004)
"Washington -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says the emergence of a free press in Iraq and Afghanistan is an important current event in both countries but one that is under-reported by the media."

Military Admits Planting News in Iraq (New York Times/Eric Schmitt 12/03/05)


From The Baghdad Bugle ( "All the news that fits" )
A Special Investigative Op-Ed by Daoud Rumsfaud.


As-salamu aleikum and al-hamdu lillah as we 100 per cent genuine Iraqis like to say.
And as I like to say; Is Allah great? You bet! Is Allah doing a terrific job? Absolutely!

But enough of my unimpeachable camel-jockey credentials. There has been a disturbing trend lately of only bad news coming out of our great sovereign colony of Iraq (may its oil supplies last for a hundred years!).

Saah? (Is this really true?) Indeed my friends it is true, yet such things that are said are clearly false! These lies are spread by snakes and dung beetles unfit to drink my camel’s pizzle! Who you ask is behind these lies and rumours?

Is it the Jews? Yistuwi (it could be), who knows?

Is it the liberal lefty, godless communist democrats who want nothing more than to steal our oil and build permanent theater workshops and giant tofu-outlets on our blessed land? Absolutely!

My friends, heed not these illegitimate sons of mosquito poop who would as soon sleep with a camel as steal it, or trade their donkey for an elephant and then complain about the bargain!

Ubashshirak (I have good news for you), al-kheir fi batin ash-sharr (good is in the belly of evil). Just consider these "known knowns" ( i.e. facts)

The number of our brothers and sisters who WEREN’T blown up, shot or kidnapped in the last few weeks (may god keep them safe) are numbered even as the stars in the sky.
By Allah’s will, pre-owned cars and car parts can be found on almost every street corner.
Schools and hospitals have been rebuilt, some of them every other week.
Public demand for medical care has shown rapid growth with no end in sight (here’s a hot stock tip; Al Faid Prosthetic Limbs LLC) .
Iranian, Syrian and Saudi tourists are crossing our borders in record numbers.
The electric companies now provide every Iraqi at least 110volts, just like in the US!
Iraqis have embraced the new legal system so wholeheartedly prosecutions have increased 125% in just the last year! If that isn't progress i don't know what is!
Iraqi industry produces almost no "greenhouse gases"—so who needs a "Kyoto treaty?" Take that, Tojo!
Oil production is back to pre-war UN sanction levels of 2 million barrels a day--to the extreme happiness of the guys who make those barrels .
The interim government now enjoys the same level of respect from the Iraqi public as the US government does from it’s own people. Truly freedom and democracy are on the march!

And of course Iraqis now finally have a well-financed press.

So remember my friends not only is Allah great, but so is Iraq! So don’t let the crazed followers of that Hollywood Babylon whore Barbra Streisand (who is Jewish, you know) tell you any different.

Allan Akbar!—I mean, Allah Akbar!

Disclosure: Allan Akbar contributed to this article and is not in any way willingly associated with the DoD, the Pentagon, the Office of Strategic Information or the Alberto Gonzalez Academy for Recalcitrant Ragheads. Daoud Rumsfaud has appeared in hundreds of Al Jazeera news reports and is the author of "Rumsfaud’s Rules"—a guide for minions).

THE STRATEGY BEHIND THE ‘STRATEGY’

Yesterday George Bush gave a speech at Annapolis Naval College in which he offered up the shiny new ‘National Strategy for Victory in Iraq’.

The partisan pundits and clueless commentators then exercised their jaws about the quality and content of Bush’s turgid performance instead of analyzing and discussing the strategy document itself—even though Bush himself invited everyone to do so. .

The fact that this ‘strategy’ now exists isn’t due to the administration’s initiative, but instead due to the likes of Cindy Sheehan, Congressman Murtha and the overwhelming and obvious truth that the White House was fiddling whilst Baghdad burned.

Nearly 3 years ago the Iraq Experts Group offered the White House a comprehensive strategy for the Iraq war plan which Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle, Libby, Rumsfeld, Rove and Rice pointedly ignored. Every dire prediction that the IEG made were its recommendations not followed has since come true.

So has the White House finally "wised-up"? No, of course not. Given the challenge of acting responsibly for once and diligently addressing the deadly serious issues of Iraq’s present and future (and thus that of the United Sates too) Bush and company have once again sacrificed policy for politics.

You have to read it for yourself but here are some highlights that I have gleaned and would like to share:

Firstly, this document was clearly cobbled together purely in response to recent public pressure. Nice to know that the futures of two nations and the "global war on terror" can be organized in just a few weeks.
Secondly, this "strategy paper" has no author! NOT ONE! No attribution whatsoever. Shouldn’t Rumsfeld’s name be there? Or Rice’s? Bueller? Anyone? Ah ha! With no attribution there is no responsibility, no accountability, nor is there any authority.
Thirdly, the document begins with a couple of lies (actually by default because it opens with a quote from George Bush speaking a few weeks before the invasion of Iraq) :
"The United States has no intention of determining the precise form of Iraq's new government. That choice belongs to the Iraqi people. Yet, we will ensure that one brutal dictator is not replaced by another. All Iraqis must have a voice in the new government, and all citizens must have their rights protected." (February 26 2003)
Every country requires a leader if not a government. Chalabi was hand-picked by the US to replace Saddam Hussein and form a new US funded government.
As for citizens’ rights, need I mention Abu Ghraib?

And then the lies and bullshit continue:
"Our strategy is working" (Infrastructure, services and even oil production are still behind pre-war conditions)
"Much has been accomplished in Iraq, including…restoration of full sovereignty" (except that the Iraqi economy is being subsidized by the US, the police force was once again placed under the control of the US army just a few weeks ago and the Iraqi "Army" is just one battalion)
"Coalition troop levels, for example, will increase where necessary to defeat the enemy or provide additional security for key events like the referendum and elections". (The Spanish quit, the Poles, Italians and British are drawing-down and the rest of the coalition have no plans of increasing their troop commitments).

How about some "fun facts"?
"Hundreds of judges have been trained since the fall of Saddam Hussein. These judges are now working and resolving cases under Iraqi law. In 2003, approximately 4,000 felony cases were resolved in Iraqi courts. In 2004, they resolved more than twice that number. This year, Iraqi courts are on track to resolve more than 10,000 felony cases."
Actually Iraqi law hasn’t been codified; it doesn’t exist. Bremer’s statutes are still on the books but the legal system remains undefined because the constitution hasn’t been ratified.
As far as the processing of felony cases is concerned are the courts now more efficient or have the number of felonies increased? And how exactly are these cases being ‘resolved"?

One of my favorite sections is entitled "Progress On The Economic Track".
Here’s a typical example:
"Since April 2003, Iraq has registered more than 30,000 new businesses, and its stock market (established in April 2004) currently lists nearly 90 companies with an average daily trading volume over $100 million (from January to May 2005), up from an average of $86 million in 2004."
Note the benchmark date of 2003, specifically April which closely approximates the end of the invasion that destroyed the Iraqi government and its economy. With whom have these businesses been registered? What types of businesses are they? How many Iraqis do they employ?

I’ll spare you the rest.

This strategy paper is nothing more than a cut and paste collection of meaningless verbiage and promotional pieces crafted by political advisers collated by anonymous interns as a pathetic sop to public outrage in a desperate attempt to shore up a failed presidency.

This isn’t a strategy for "Victory In Iraq" it’s the same old strategy of hanging on to domestic power through lies, obfuscation, manipulation and misdirection.

As an alternative to this highly polished turd, here’s my strategy for "victory" in Iraq:

Remove the President and his political cronies from policy-making and set up a bi-partisan task force to address the realities of this particular issue and arrive at a policy based on intelligent consensus.

Unfortunately for our troops, Iraqis, the American public and the world there’s little chance of that happening before the 2006 elections.
Bush and the Neocons have three more years to go and their strategy is clear--to ignore their moral and might I add legal and constitutional responsibilities and instead use their current power and position solely for their own ends. And that's the strategy behind the 'strategy'.

I Declare a Dumb War!

According to John Gibson and Bill O’Reilly but most especially John Gibson the US is engaged in a WAR ON CHRISTMAS
Apparently this WAR ON CHRISTMAS threatens the US like no other war the US has ever known because the WAR ON CHRISTMAS is being fought from WITHIN!
On the front lines of this war stand O’Reilly and Gibson. Actually O’Reilly isn’t so much on the front lines as back in HQ, issuing orders such as "boycott Sears!" and "buy my mugs and loofahs!"
Gibson however has decided on a more active approach in warning us all of a vast lefty liberal secularist army intent on destroying Christmasâ and thus America, simply because that’s what liberals want, more than anything else in the world.
Channeling the spirit of a perverted Paul Revere, Gibson has mounted his high horse and galloped off into the night yelling "THE SECULARISTS ARE COMING, THE SECULARISTS ARE COMING!" to all who will listen by writing a book called ( approximately) "The War On Christmas And Why It Is Worse Than You Think".

As a practicing secular liberal I must say I’m a bit miffed at not having been clued-in on the WAR ON CHRISTMAS . I regularly get e-mails from "Friends of Hillary" and "Move-On" and even Michael Moore once in a while but apparently all that doesn’t even qualify me as a simple camp-follower to the vast lefty liberal progressive secular army that has been amassed to destroy Christmas . Despite my adoration of Janeanne Garofolo I guess I’m just not that hard-core.
Yet despite this obvious snub from the lefty intellectual elite, I’m still keen to join this vast army of anti-Christmasites so that together we can crush the dangerous notion of "peace on earth and goodwill to all men" once and for all.
Perhaps my being overlooked as a potential stormtrooper in the WAR ON CHRISTMAS is simply a result of the inherent lefty-liberal fault of bad organization; it is entirely possible that someone forgot to mail my invitation.

In order to shake off my obviously clerical error-driven 4F rating and to prove myself worthy as a frontline liberal elitist secular America-hating defeatist, I chose to go independently behind enemy lines and infiltrate the ranks of the Pro-Christmasites in the hope of gaining valuable intelligence to serve our WAR ON CHRISTMAS.
Cleverly disguised as an Internet "user" I penetrated a target-rich environment which I will call "Amazon" and acquired my subject, codenamed "Review". What I uncovered raises more answers than questions.

In reviewing John Gibson’s book about the "War On Christmas", Julie Wood of DeatsVille Alabama (boasting approximately TWELVE streets, half of which are dead-ends, yet still having Internet connectivity) offered the following:
Quote: " How very sad that people feel they must bash this book due to what they perceive to be grammatical errors, yet their (sic) very own review contained spelling and/or grammar errors! The point is NOT to find grammatical errors, it IS to see that in America, there is a great falling away from what our wonderful country was founded upon - belief in the God who made us. Although this falling away was predicted in the Bible millions of years ago (emphasis added), it is comforting to know that there are those of us, like Mr. Gibson, who are not afraid to stand up for the tradition of celebrating the birth of Christ. I commend Mr. Gibson for taking a stand, and I pray that others will follow his lead".

Oh Julie! How very sad that you can’t tell the difference between "perceived" grammatical errors and actual grammatical errors, such as you yourself have provided. And FYI Julie, America WASN’T founded on a belief in God, but rather in rejecting the imposition of intransigent religion on public life.
As to the Bible predicting a "falling away" MILLIONS of years ago, you’d have a hard time explaining that particular belief to your fundamentalist leaders whose calendars begin 4004 B.C. The term "millions" simply isn’t in their vocabulary, and it shouldn’t be in yours either. Methinks you are a false Christian and a blasphemer!

With a "review " entitled "Get a life, losers", reviewer ‘Freethinker’—"not afraid of diversity of political thought" writes:
Quote: "Here's a revolutionary thought-how about all you hate-filled, closed-minded intolerant liberals quit writing reviews for a book you haven't even read???? Go to Michael Moore's website if you want to spew hate. This forum is for people who READ!!! Is this how you form your beliefs, through blind ideology, without even examining the evidence???

Whereas "riceburner117" with a review entitled "whats wrong with all you liberals" offers the following
Quote: "Ok, let me start off by saying that I'm 15 and probably have more sense than most liberals out there. Any one who says that this book doesn't preach the truth is blind. Have you noticed how Coca-Cola didn't put Santa on their cans this year? Have you noticed that most stores aren't allowed to say "Merry Christmas" because it might offend some minority that no one has ever heard of? People dont understand that we are the silent majority. We dont stick up for ourselves. Even our schools marquee's don't say Merry Christmas, it's "have a happy holiday" or "have fun on winter break". That I know of, we have one Jewish kid in our school. I talked to him, and he said that he's even part Christian. It makes me sick, and the Liberals who are so blind by their own ego's, beleive that it's propaganda set out their by the Republicans. We should start sticking up for ourselves, and if you dont like it, you can move over with your French buddies and riot in the streets".

What can I say? If these are the defenders of Christmas then our lefty-liberal progressive tree-hugging fag-embracing godless treasonous communist forces are assured of victory in our glorious WAR ON CHRISTMAS!

I just have a few questions: Who is in charge? When do we charge? How much can we charge? And once we succeed in destroying Christmas, do we still get presents?

Security Detail

Ever since Richard Reid’s attempt to blow his feet off in the hope of killing his fellow air travelers was thwarted by an observant flight attendant, the majority of airline passengers have been obliged to remove their shoes for x-ray examination before boarding a flight, domestic or international.
Since the shoes-off policy was initiated no one else as far as I know has attempted to blow an aircraft out of the skies with their shoes, so could this be an example of an actually successful security procedure?
As I watched the four-year old ahead of me submit to the procedure I’d have to say, mmmmh--not so much.

Instead of a security procedure we have an institutionalized reaction to the lunatic scheme of a lone nutcase. If this procedure really worked why not apply it to say, shopping malls which we have been repeatedly told since are also potential terrorist targets? Of course causing an explosion (however small) on an aircraft is potentially disastrous, but then walking into a mall with a machine gun causes a bit of mayhem too—and didn’t that happen just the other day, for about the umpteenth time?

Reid was caught whilst trying to light the fuse to his shoe bombs. The subsequent shoes-off policy was accompanied by a "no lighter and no matches policy"
Presumably if x-raying shoes eliminates the concealment of explosives in them, the means to light the fuse is surely irrelevant, so why ban lighters and matches too?

Unless x-raying shoes doesn’t actually guarantee the discovery of plastic explosives that can be lit by a fuse, in which case it would make sense to ban lighters and matches, just in case.
But then if x-rays DON’T provide a guarantee of discovery, why are lighters still banned but matches are now acceptable?

How is it that the x-ray operator on my flight to Washington didn’t note the lighter in my coat pocket (I voluntarily handed it to a TSA official after the X-ray)? On my return flight from Washington it was also missed and this time I carried it on the plane.
Having no explosives in my shoes, being allowed a lighter makes logical sense, yet regardless it was a contravention of the security procedure in place.

Personally I find this whole security procedure only mildly irritating, but its implementation is clearly suspect. I wonder what that four year-old ahead of me thought?

America's Giant Balls: A Larger View.

(An Examination of Ownership, Handling, Size, Use and Importance of Physical and Metaphorical Balls in 21st Century Washington D.C by Professor Splink, Dean of Spherical Studies, Hopped-Johnkins University). Published by Universally Pressed; contains over 100 color photographs of physical balls, 22 examples of metaphorical balls (Scott McLellan, Dick Cheney, Rick Santorum, Paul Inhofe etc.) as well as a handy illustrated "How To…" pullout guide. $49.95


Not only is the Bush administration juggling more balls than any in history, its balls are much, much bigger. So big in fact that they are literally in your face, every single day.
Now, just because you own enormous balls and are used to playing with them it doesn’t necessarily follow that you know how to handle them skillfully. Indeed to have your balls properly handled it’s best to find a professional to give you a hand.
Anyway, it is a simple fact that when it comes to juggling your balls, the smaller they are the less likely it is that you will drop one.
Lately this administration has discovered that simple and often painful truth; to their recent dismay they’ve begun to drop some of their enormous balls.

Every flim-flam artist, clown and illusionist knows that to continue to mystify the audience and maintain the illusion it is essential to be well versed in the art of redirection. As soon as the artiste is aware that he is dropping a ball he immediately draws the audiences attention to some other balls. With the audience distracted the illusionist can grab his ball and then either juggle it again or put it in his pocket for future handling. At least that’s the theory.
Unfortunately when juggling or handling really enormous balls the redirection trick requires even bigger balls, bigger than any one man (or woman---don’t want to be sexist here) can handle.
If the group needed to properly handle the even bigger balls is not utterly disciplined the balls will also be undisciplined and before you (or you---don’t want to be sexist here) know it the illusion will be shattered and there will be enormous balls in plain sight all over the place.
Clearly the handling and prominent display of really, really big balls is essential to the performance but is also inherently risky. When these big balls are mishandled the required redirection of the audience to maintain the performance may be better accomplished by the use of "virtual" balls or more properly "metaphorical/theoretical" balls rather than just bigger physical balls.
Metaphorical/theoretical balls have the advantage of being infinitely adjustable in size to suit almost any situation. Though more convenient to handle than huge physical balls, metaphorical/theoretical balls are inherently unstable. Metaphorical/theoretical balls injudiciously exposed to the audience can in fact rebound and slap the performer in the face, sometimes repeatedly.
They key to using the handy but sensitive metaphorical/theoretical balls lies in understanding the audience; in particular knowing whether the audience possess any balls of its own or whether it can distinguish between different types of balls. Most performers, their managers and agents agree that for insurance reasons and to comply with certain national security regulations it is best that audiences check their balls at the door 2 HOURS before the performance-NO EXCEPTIONS!
Once the audience has been shorn of its own balls the enormous size of the performer/illusionists balls will be that much more impressive and they will accept those balls as a standard. Herein lies the performer’s dilemma; to maintain the audiences interest and secure their applause the performer/illusionist must logically present bigger and bigger balls until the show reaches it’s climax. The most adroit performer will thus expose to his audience bigger and bigger physical balls and then (usually by instinctively gauging the audiences gasps at the size of his balls) cleverly switch to the metaphorical/theoretical balls.
The audience, having followed the performer’s balls all along and having no balls of their own will probably never notice the switch. But to determine the true success of the performance and the illusion an exit poll of the audience is recommended.
Just as the performer/illusionist controls his own act, he should also control his audience’s response; therefore the exit poll questions should also be controlled and, just like the balls, carefully handled.
The audience reaction exit poll questions should follow this type of format:
"Have you ever seen such enormous balls?
"If you had any balls, would you like them to be just like the ones you just witnessed?
"Do you think you could handle as many enormous balls as the performer did?"
For the younger crowd one might pose the question:
‘Would you describe the performer’s balls as being ‘in your face’?"
If we are to draw any lessons from Intelligent Design, one of the most significant is that the Lord gave some people more balls and bigger balls than others.
It took lot of balls (or perhaps two really ginormous ones) to create the biggest ball in the world (our planet Earth) in just seven days (okay, it was six days--but you are missing the big picture).
So it only makes sense for the man with the biggest balls on the planet to want to personally handle the biggest ball on the planet---that of course would be the planet itself. And if so-called ‘science" has taught us anything (which I doubt) it is that really big balls are naturally attractive. So it only makes sense that God’s chosen representative on Earth has ball’s almost as big as God’s and like God he intends to use them and to share his gigantic heaven-blessed balls with the rest of the world.
And if that’s not enough to convince you, consider this; what are the three most popular sports in the US? FootBALL, BasketBALL and BaseBALL! Am I right? Of course I am! Wake up my friends, gird your loins, grasp your fellow man "under the thigh" and shout it out, loud and proud…"America has the biggest, the best and the most balls in the world and the rest of you can’t touch ‘em!. (unless you really want to of course….no go ahead, go on, touch them… careful now…..yeah that’s it… just like that… )
About the author: Professor Splink first became interested in balls at his bar-mitzvah. He personally owns two of slightly different sizes. He had them encased in lucite and likes to stare at them occasionally. He is not now, nor has ever been, married.

I'm Not Dead Yet!

After a few weeks of blog inactivity and unanswered e-mails some fellow bloggers began to wonder if something extraordinary had happened to me.
I might have been ‘renditioned’ to some foreign state and denied all communication with the outside world.
Conversely I might suddenly have won millions on the lottery, bought myself a South Pacific island and been lying about smashed out of my gourd on coconut hooch whilst lissome dusky wahinis attended to my every whim. Or perhaps I’d fallen down a well.

However, in the reason-driven liberal world those who expressed concern regarding my whereabouts and condition universally conjectured that I’d probably been hit by a truck.
To the larger world I’d ceased to exist. Yet I still existed, I was just temporarily almost invisible.

Let me explain:

In late May my widowed mother was rushed into an ICU.
My eldest brother Ian flew back to the UK within hours of the news. I had to wait four days before I could take an "affordable" flight, my other brother Julian had to wait six days. None of us knew how the future would unfold.
Our mother was released from the ICU but was confined to a bed with a modest number of tubes stuck into her and oxygen as needed. If she recovered she would obviously require 24 –hour care, or she was simply We three going to die. After two weeks of daily visits our mother said she’d had enough and asked the doctors to let her die.
No evangelists showed up to fight for her "right to live". No lawyers for the hospital filed any motions. No Member of Parliament offered a diagnosis and Tony Blair did not comment or interrupt his schedule one jot.
We spent the next week and a half dealing with the funeral, the requisite municipal and governmental notifications and the estate. It was like ‘wedding-planning’ in reverse.
With everything organized as best as we could manage we left the probate process in the hands of the lawyers and returned to the US.
Living in the UK was not cheap. To give you an idea, ten gallons of gas cost $40. At the time Britons saved money by flying to New York to shop just for jeans and sneakers!
Every day spent in the UK cost us twice what we'd spend in the US and as we also weren't earning anything the effect was doubled yet again.
When we returned to the US the three of us were not only broke, we were in mor edebt than we had ever been. We three brothers could barely help ourselves , let alone each other. I no longer had a job, I couldn't pay the rent, my phone was cut-off and I was overdrawn.

When someone dies they cease to exist. But one can cease to exist without actually dying. In many respects I had ceased to exist.
It doesn’t take a spectacular event such as war or earthquake or flood to make it happen.
The only thing that maintained my existence was the concern of others—a few close friends and some sympathetic strangers with the wit to relate to my particular situation. Humanity and common cause prevailed over the rules and dogma that in general define our individual and collective lives and the nature and quality of our respective existence.
Though I ceased to "exist" for a while, I was not completely dead. Just because a person disappears, it doesn’t mean that they don’t still exist.

The Dukes of Hazard County

On September 11 2001, Government was already back at work. Bush was doing his job as the hood ornament for the automobile of state whilst Cheney steered, Rove worked the pedals, and Condiscentia Rice waved from the back seat.

On August 29th 2005 the entire Government was still on vacation.
Having achieved the historic record of being the fittest yet most relaxed President ever, Bush finally got off his buns of steel and went back to his job of looking good at the front of a powerful, glossy and expensive machine.

Unfortunately for Bush there was no one behind the steering wheel, the car was in the wrong gear and the brakes had worn out. The “good ol’ boys” had bailed-out, the “General B” was out of control and headed straight for a swamp! Heavens to Betsy! What was Dubya to do?

Well, after a lot a hootin’ an’ hollerin’, Dubya figgered it was time to ass-wage the reg’lar folk and un-extended the hand o’ friendship to Mike “Cooter” Brown whose maintenance of the General B had clearly been lacking.

Even so, the General B was still up to it’s STP stickers in the bayou ooze, and it warn’t goin’ nowhere ‘ceptin some he’p from a friendly quarter. Unfortunately cousin ConDayzee (who could charm the pants off Strom Thurmond) had to visit her podiatrist Manolo Blahnik in Jew York on account of a rare shoe condition and was unavailable, but good ol’ suthern hospitality reared it’s deformed inbred head in the form of Karl Rove.

See, nobody knows more ‘bout how to “fix” things than good ol’ Karl, so naturally ol’ GB asked him to fix up this whole mess, by appointin’ him in charge of the recovery effort. Now Karl may be quiet, but he does know which end of the rope needs to be pulled when an overpowered and badly driven vehicle needs to be hauled out of the muck, and above all he knows slimy grease like no one else.

So in the end, everything’s working out. The General B is being restored, the swamp had been drained to prevent it from being a continuing hazard, Condayzees foot condition is cured and Karl’s got a new job. And as for the “revenooers” well they got their hands full just figgering out the dollars an cent’s of it all so they don’t have the time to stop the General B delivering the moonshine.

Sure it can make you blind, but what do you care? The gumment shore don’t. So, “oil wells that ends well” as the saying goes. See you next week, until then we’ll keep the grits warm for y’all.