No No No!

It's not like Vietnam at all, so stop comparing the two, would you? In Vietnam, Americans actually cared about the people we were trying to save. In this war, the people we're trying to help are blowing our soldiers up. After Vietnam, we said, "Oh, those poor innocent people, they never even had a chance." For Iraq, we're saying, "Fuck those fundamentalist, head-chopping assfucks! We should have bombed that whole region a long time ago!" They were killing themselves before the war, they're killing themselves (and us) throughout the war, and they'll be killing themselves after the war. We hate Iraq because Iraq hates itself. You can only intervene for so long before you have to throw up your hands and say, "Well, I've done all I can do." It's time to let go, and allow the Iraqis to tire themselves out on civil war. You and Dick may have a rough time cutting deals with whoever ends up in charge, Mr. Bush, but I doubt that the rest of the U.S. will have any problems sleeping at night.

Sore in the Shoulders

Have you ever remembered a safe, comfortable time in your life, and then longed for it? Sometimes the hurt is brought on by an image, other times a song, and still other times a person. When this happens to me, strange memories return to me. I remember sensations, such as comfort, hopelessness, or fear, and sometimes I remember details, such as a smile or a laugh, or a view through a doorway, or the position of the sun. Indeed, some of my sharpest, most poignant remembrances are marked by their time of day.

Sometimes everything gets mixed and jumbled, and that's when I feel sad, because without cohesion, these memories lack meaning. I look at the scattered mess of my past and wonder about my motivations. Were my days ever my own, or were they ordered by someone else? Did I seek the things I really wanted, or did I just dodge the things that frightened me? Am I doing what's right, or am I just playing it safe?

Everyone is younger than me in my current job, and I'm not used to that. I was always the ineffectual little boy that no one talked to or cared about. So long as I was playing Nintendo, it was assumed that I was safe, and I was left alone. I'm a grown man now, and I still just want to be left alone. No one will do that anymore, though. Everyone wants a piece of you when you get to be my age, and it's never for the reasons you want them to.

I'm too old to break free from my shell and do the things I wished I'd done as a younger man. Those opportunities are gone. Where is the reward for my abstinence? When does my civility and restraint pay off? I believe that Heaven must be made on Earth, but it's hard to create paradise without some daring, and it's even harder to maintain it. People don't often share personal visions of Heaven, and then they want to take it away when they see someone else in it. The hunt for Heaven, therefore, must be a solitary pursuit, and the price of paradise, therefore, must be a chronic loneliness.

We toil daily, searching for satisfaction, and when our time is up, we look back and lament happiness as something very distant. Somewhere along the road, we forget where we're supposed to be going, and we get sidetracked. Then the sun sinks behind the clouds and we never see it again. What is this distraction that pulls us off to the wrong exit?

Perhaps I can distract myself back, using the memories and joys that keep calling out to remind me of who Daniel is. Precious people may have disappeared, but perhaps are there more.

Birthrights and Entitlements

So, it's finally happened: we've witnessed the dubious debacle of a debate dominated by dolts. By "dolts," I refer to those folks who clog the bandwidth of our precious internet at YouTube. Those rich and powerful candidates, while hardly flawless themselves, were forced to address the concerns of a rabble of self-centered, unenlightened, me-me-me lightweights who effectively revealed the half-tech-savvy for the campy, pretentious kooks that they are. I imagine the rest of the country took in this event with slack jaws and crooked brows.

Smug, snide, and only vaguely creative, the Liberal Elite lined up to make fools of themselves on television, our new national pastime. Two plump, short-haired lesbians, who apparently thought they were being cleverly sarcastic in broaching a controversial topic, submitted a video in which they asked if any of the Democratic candidates would object to their getting married...to each other. They then kissed each other...on the mouth. Gurgle! Gasp! Recoil!

Whatever.

While I appreciate an earthy assault on the ivory tower as much as the next monsieur, I consider this question to be the truest example of why the United States, my home for as long as the tectonic plates beneath it stay in place, is devolving to sludge. I'm not talking about the issue of homosexuality as sin here, I'm talking about the elevation of it from old-fashioned American prejudice to humanitarian crisis. While good kids are bleeding the sands red in Iraq, we have fat, man-hating women complaining about how they can't get married and have more kids to send off to die.

Weren't the Democrats hired into the Majority to stop this war, or am I just wrong about that? Young Americans are being killed and tortured daily for the fourth straight year, and we're still wasting our time on gay people and global warming? People try to say that you shouldn't belittle their problems, but the simple truth is that these issues were born for the back burner.

There is only one problem this country should be focusing on right now, and he's sitting in the White House, laughing his empty-headed ass off and eating healthily. Instead of fussing over what lobbies they're taking money from, the Democratic candidates should be uniting to decide who'll ride this idiot out, and who'll bring the rail. If they can't accomplish this, they will only prove their membership to that great club of tax thieves who put us in this mess to begin with.

To Catch a, uh, Stealing Person

Hello all. Travis here again, and have I got a story to tell ya today, boy howdy.

Y'all know how Mervyn's looks so pretty and clean and invitin' when you come inside to buy things, right? Well, in the back of the store, where customers don't go, things are pretty different. Back there, things are ugly, disorganized, and, well, just plain yucky, to tell ya the truth. It's gray, it's dim, and it's cramped, and it's easy to get lost back there. It's already happened to me a couple of times. I made sure to take a picture of the store map with my cell phone so I could refer to it whenever I'm back there.

Anyway, even though I'm assigned to the office, it seems like Mervyn's is always aching for help with inventory, so I'm often sent into the dark corridors to fold things and box things and stuff things on shelves. I was on one of those little runs when I saw something weird.

Alberto is in logistics. He's one of the guys who gets inventory out of our shipping trucks and makes sure that they're put on the sales floor in a timely manner. Some people call this product flow, because he keeps the products flowing, ya know what I mean?

So I'm edging around the tall metal shelves in the back of the store, on the hunt for a bag of towels, when I see Alberto, hunkered down between two piles of boxes. One pile is a batch of brand new appliances, meant to be put on display in our home department. The other pile is a bunch of empties, meant for the trash. He's opening the new boxes and transferring the contents to the old ones. Then he tapes them up real tight. He does it all real quick-like, too. He's moving faster than I've ever seen him move. I don't say anythin', I just kinda hide behind one of the shelves and watch. When he's done puttin' the appliances into the unmarked boxes, he takes the originals and tosses them in a trash cart. He shoves them deep into the cart and covers them with some of the garbage that was already in there. Then he comes back, hefts the now-filled unmarked boxes, and tucks them behind a locker near one of the exits. He shoves them back a bit, so they're obscured by the shadows. Then he looks around and walks away.

I came back a few hours later, when the store was closing, and just kinda took a peek behind that locker. I doubt you'll be surprised when I tell you that those boxes were nowhere to be seen.

Now, I don't like to use such a harsh word as "thief" if I can avoid it. I'd much rather use a phrase like "person who took something that isn't theirs." Even so, it's not fair for me to make any assumptions, so if anyone asks about the missing appliances, I'll just say I have no idea. Rumors and hearsay, that's all that is. Hopefully, I will have gotten over the nosebleeds I usually get when I tell a lie by the time that happens.