House of the Rising Sons

Turning onto the highway, heading to work. Thick fog is all that I can see.

Everything is a misty blue-grey color. There is no sky, no surroundings... just a patch of road that stretches about 100 feet forward then disappears into the same nothingness. I set the cruise control at 70, turn the stereo on.

No-skip-

No-skip-

Ah... perfect..

The Doors, the intro to Apocalypse Now, off the soundtrack, complete with the heavy bass of helicopter props thumping slowly into hearing range, then so loud the car, and me, is thrumming with their sound. Drifting down the road, fog parting slightly for my passage through the ethereal wasteland.

No sunrise for me this morning... Every morning I make the thirty minute drive to work. When I was younger, I'd have been pissed off just having to do it. Now, it's a blessing. I have half an hour to wake up, mentally log on to life, and adjust my attitude for the day. And heading east from my home, that is thirty minutes that I get to dwell on the sunrise each morning.

Not today. The Sun is gone, all light is filtered through the beads of mist, bathing my surroundings in illumination which is not illumination. Objects appear out of the fog, pass by, and are swallowed up again, as I am swallowed up again, to them.

Drifting, the wet road feels different to my feet on the pedals. There is less vibration and I can feel the slickness, the lack of connection between the earth and my car. Everything feels disconnected, lighter than air, less real.

Finally the song is over, and The End shifts into War Pigs by Black Sabbath- it's such a perfect segueway that I think for a moment that I must have purposely put these two songs together on this CD, but I know I did not. When I make a music CD, I just throw together a jumble of songs that fit my mood for that moment, and the CD burner organizes them according to the filenames, so as I drag and drop them to a list, they go into their own order. The Chaos IS the craft. Because when I start listening to the songs, I never know what is next. But the eerie despondence of the Doors gives way to the eerie anger of Black Sabbath and it fits perfectly into this moment.

Reality is not only the concrete. And winding my way through the heavy clouds on the ground, I understand this. It's an abstract illusion that provides clarity as you go into the clouds. And when they slowly wisp away and are gone, and the colors and harsh light once again exposes the world around us, I feel loss and not gain.

As I shake my head, as if waking from some dream- I don't feel as if I am more aware- but less. I pull into the parking lot, and step out on pavement that is now dry, with no evidence that the fog was ever there- and I wonder what else I am missing from this reality.

Blaming Saddam for being what he was is like blaming a rattlesnake for killing. That's how it lives, and it's what that Crocodile Hunter guy would've called "a bee-YOO-tiful ambush predator." Saddam was right for Iraq the way a Sidewinder is right for the Mojave. The NeoCons scared us by shaking his fangs in our faces, as if Saddam planned to bite every single commuter in LA, when all he wanted to do was stay alive and in power -- because those were the same thing for him -- in the Iraqi desert, where everything stings, sticks or bites. We may as well have gone on a crusade to wipe out all the snakes and spiders in the desert for being what they are. Only difference is, we wouldn't have lost 3000 soldiers that way.

...

Until we hooked him out of his burrow, the only thing Saddam had really done to America has hand us our most glorious victory since Inchon, in Gulf War I. He was like a lot of Third-World rulers: great at internal security but hopeless at conventional war. Like a rattler, he was totally harmless to anybody with the brains God gave a stray dog.

Meaning, anybody but Bush and Cheney. Those dudes remind me of this Darwin-Award winner who went to the hereafter on Lake Berryessa. He was fishing, noticed a rattler swimming beside his boat, grabbed it -- and when his fishing buddy told him to throw it away, this genius said, "Oh, no, it's harmless -- look!" and held it up to his face to show how harmless it was. The snake did us all a favor and took his genes out of the pool by biting him right on the nose, and he died before his buddy could power back to shore.

That was Saddam's last favor to us: showing us -- the hard way, no denying that -- how flat-out stupid our bigwigs really are. Bush is standing up at the podium every press conference with that rattler dangling from his nose like a mega-booger, yelping, "I'm fine, I'm fine!" but one of these days, and none too soon, he'll pass out and pass on, thanks to Saddam.

We did Saddam an accidental favor in return by giving him a rare old-school death. Maybe that's not important for some of you moral-types but it would be to my heroes. It would matter to John Paul Jones, it would matter to Alexander, it would matter to Subotai, and it matters to me. I wish I could have a death like that. Instead I'll die the same way you will, tubes coming out of my fat carcass, leaning over to watch the cardio beeper zig when it's supposed to zag, scared out of my head and ashamed to look down at this civilian belly hyperventilating its last chickenshit breaths.

Not Saddam. We may not have meant to, but we showed him the ultimate respect

Fuck me. War nerd doesn't mince the shit does he?

from Ted Kennedy.com

George Bush plans to announce his intention to escalate the war in Iraq by sending tens of thousands of more troops to pursue his flawed strategy. But if he wants to ignore the advice of the military and the findings of the Iraq Study Group, he's going to have to make his case and get the consent of the people through their elected representatives.

Thankfully, escalation is not President Bush's decision to make. He must have the people's consent.

Senator Kennedy has introduced legislation that makes the issue plain. It states that any substantial new commitment in Iraq requires a plan from the administration and explicit authorization from Congress.

Iraq has become George Bush's Vietnam, and it's every American to ensure that history doesn't repeat itself any longer. The Iraqi people need to take responsibility for their own future. But our only hope for change over there is if we, the American people, take control of our own destiny here at home.

http://despair.com/watchmore.html

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