Sunday, September 10, 2006

Blogging While Famous


Being famous carries with it much responsibility. As a celebrity of dubious influence, it is incumbent upon me to examine closely the state of affairs of this world and make public my observations, as seen through the eyes of one who sees things sometimes just a tad differently than most. If my observations seem obvious to you, then go to the head of the line and collect your prize. If not, then think a moment, evaluate what I have said against all available evidence, and go from there, secure in the knowledge that you have been exposed to a possible epiphany. Am I right all the time? Is my outlook gospel? Of course not. That would be incredibly boring, if for no other reason than I know everything and have nothing left to do and might as well off myself. Besides, you soaking up what I have to offer and providing your own interpretations help me to fine-tune my wisdom so that the truth I do claim to know is somewhat closer to the ACTUAL truth. I already know that 4 plus 4 equals 8, but 4 of what, and what effect does the nature of the 4 things I added to the other 4 things have on the actual sum of the 2 sets? Ya never know..........

Now that I have that peculiar disclaimer out of the way, I can proceed to illuminate the dark corners of todays' occurrences, the state of matters as they exist, and how all these things might kill us all in some unknown future.

One thing I'd like to mention with a bit of smug hilarity is the fact that if I get pulled over for a DUI, not many people will know about it. So, Paris, you go girl! Be FAMOUS! Me, I'll just rest in the comfort of my second rate infamy. And drive my vehicle sober.

The space shuttle FINALLY got off the ground today. I personally do not mind if a launch is delayed, because I'm in no big hurry to see another group of brave astronauts get fried because someone was in a hurry to get things going. We still have a long way to go before we come up with a way to get from here to there as easily and carefree as we here down on the ground do with our automobiles, and even vehicles stuck to the ground have a sad habit of killing us, so safety first, I say.

We are coming up on the 5th anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy, and Osama Bin Laden is still safely hidden away in some decked-out cave in Northern Pakistan. The man who claims to be president is still trumpeting how safe he and his cronies have kept us since that horrible day, despite the fact that we have now lost more lives in Iraq than we did on 9/11. Tell me, don't you normally lose more lives fighting a war than you do cleaning up the mess afterwards? Is Dubya reading the "how to fight a war" manual backwards or something? He did say, "Mission Accomplished", didn't he? Well, didn't he? I was asked how history would look back upon these days and describe them. Well, you have to remember that history is written by the victors. Only when you go back and dig up private memoirs and hidden accounts of events are you able to truly assemble an account of events untainted by political distortions. I remember the pap I was fed in school back in the 60's, history that left out the trail of tears, the oppression of segregation, the radiation that drifted throughout the country from the nuclear tests. Even now, if you tune to talk radio with a clear partisan bent, you will hear such a twisted and one-sided description of current events you might be tempted to wonder what planet these people are on. When you listen to the news my friends, please remember that there are always two sides to every story, and you usually have to blend the two accounts together to arrive at any semblance of the truth. One day, white haired old veterans of Iraq are going to tell stories of what happened there to their grandkids. I suspect those stories are not going to be pretty. But they will be the truth.

The man who claims to be president actually came out and admitted that there are "secret prisons" scattered about, places where we can interrogate terror suspects without having to worry about all those inconvenient rules against torture, circumvention of due process, etc. I suspect he must have been convinced that smoking gun evidence was about to be leaked and so he beat them to the punch, acting like it was no big deal. This man is pissing me off. Bill Clinton was impeached because he got a blow-job. Dubya is making a mockery of everything this country has stood for. Am I the ONLY goddamn American who thinks this son-of-a-bitch ought to be charged with treason? Sigh, I must be fucking mad if that's truly the case.......

With all this acrimony over terror suspect detentions in places like Guantanimo, I would like to bring up an observation which threatens the complexity of the whole process. Look, since time immemorial, it has been understood that the only people who have any carte-blanch to carry weapons and attack other people are those sanctioned as warriors or policemen by an established government of a sovereign state. Any one else who acts to kill people, be it by machine gun or bomb, is outside this definition, and are simply criminals, or more precisely, murderers. Terrorists fall easily into this category, whether or not they are supported covertly by some state or are harbored within them. If the guy you capture shooting at you or setting off bombs in market places does not have a military ID, then you haul his ass to jail, you put him on trial, you find him guilty based on the evidence, and then you put him away forever or fry his sorry ass. It's that simple. Just because he's crazier than your home grown gang banger, has access to heavy weaponry, whatever the case, he is still outside the code of military justice, but falls under civil law, and can be dealt with just as easily. You don't have to torture him to get a confession, you don't have to hide the evidence that proves him guilty, you don't have to keep him hidden away incognito without access to a lawyer. The only reason you would want to go to such extremes to deal with such people is some kind of desire not to have to abide by the rule of law, which is the only thing which separates people like us from people like them. By acting this way, you BECOME them. And we don't want THEM running this country of ours.

I hear alot of people are upset that Pluto has been downgraded from planetary status to mere planetoid. Well, it makes perfect sense that a celestial body barely the size of a moon should not be considered a planet in the truest sense of the word. There are plenty of objects that orbit this star that are just as worthy as pluto if you want such things considered as planets, and there are just to many of them to invite them all in for no good reason. I suppose the scientific department of naming things should have thought about all that before they allowed Pluto to be considered a planet to begin with. Well, I say let's just keep cute little Pluto in our hearts as a favored celestial body and leave it at that. I'm sure it's not going to effect the astrologers all that much.

I'm already late with this post so I might as well shut up now and get it published. Thank Bob I'm not being paid for this, having to meet deadlines and having my content picked over by lawyers and bean-counters. That would REALLY derail my train of thought, and believe me, you wouldn't want a train loaded down with what's in MY brain running off the tracks! Till next post, merry meet, merry part, and merry meet again.

11 comments:

Time said...

So THE Michael had an eiphany.
I'm worried about Pluto, though. What are Mickey and Minnie going to do without their dog.

Alex Pendragon said...

Tim, they can always visit the pound and get another.

Anonymous said...

For the record, you are NOT the only American who thinks that way about our current president. I just wish there were some way we could all band together and do something about it. I know...vote. But who would we vote for that we could trust to do a better job? With only two parties in this country, pickin's are slim, which is why I didn't vote for either candidate in the last election. Worse or worser, couldn't decide, so didn't. I just hope both parties can come up with someone this time around to give us a better choice than the fire or the frying pan.

Alex Pendragon said...

For one thing, we have to get over this alergy to third party offerings. We all claim to hate politicians, yet when someone tosses his head in the ring that ISN'T a politician, everybody disses him for not being a politician, and that doesn't make one bit of sense to me. Nobody seems willing to give credence to different ways of approaching our problems, so what do we get? More of the same, every four years. Next time a Nader, or a Perot, or some other non traditional person is willing to have his life put under a microscope, listen to what he has to say and ask yourself if what he's suggesting is really any worse than what we've been handed thus far, THEN take a chance and cast your vote. Either that or just shut up and suffer. However, if a Democrate or Republican can act like an American for once, I say give him a chance too. Only impeach his ass in the first year if he pulls another Bush on us.

Alex Pendragon said...
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Alex Pendragon said...
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Whitesnake said...

thank goodness I dont live there

Anonymous said...

gawdamn BLOGGER! HI from Homo Escapeons, for some reason Blogger won't allow me to comment! aaarrrrggghh!

Bush has to spend the rest of his time in office trying to salvage the chances for another Republican getting in the White House.
Dubya's legacy is written..and it ain't pretty.
From the stunned expression on his face on 9/11 as he sat in that classroom conveying 'calm' to his Top Gun appearance in front of the Mission Accomplished Banner he has eliminated the last vestiges of American Good Will.
The disdain and mistrust of the global community for anything American that your country now almost universally enjoys will prevail for generations to come. We Canadians have been dragged into the muck with this half assed venture into Afghanistan so we're in it too. Another terrorist attack would ensure a GOP president..America will go off of the deep end..after all we've done for those bastards this is how they treat us?!.

The mountain range between Afghan and Pakistan will be carpet NUKED..just get it over with.

What if you didn't have term limits like up here..you could have Dubya in orifice until 2011!

anna said...

I'm no American, but I definitely agree with you. I STILL can't believe Americans out him in office for two consecutive terms. That just boggles my mind. I remember visiting Vermont a few days after the last election and every Vermonter I met told me they were considering moving to Canada.

Paul said...

Americans lead the world with their economy, their military and their stupidity! Germany had Hitler and we have Bush -- and I'm supposed to be proud to be American????

Alex Pendragon said...

Anne, fully half, and probably more now, can't think what the other half was possibly thinking, so don't blame all of us.

Paul, don't forget, Russia had Stalin, China has Mao Tse Tung, and Serbia had Malosovich. There are large segments of many societies that feed into some pipedream that a powerful leader is going to make their trains run on time, but fail to think beyond that. And so the trains run on time, loaded with bodies on their way to the death camps.