A friend of mine sent out the following last night. I never have any problem writing arguments, but arguments are overwhelmingly done, now. The emotional chaos now that the war has begun? I'm not so good at writing that. Curtis, the author of the following, has captured a piece of that chaos. Thanks for letting me reprint it for the world, Curtis. I'm not going to italicise, because there are internal italicised portions - instead, it's time to introduce a new HTML code to the site:
Ponderings at 1:00am on Thursday, March 20, 2003:
I sit here on a war night, a night to end all nights, and there is angst in the air tainted with CNNitis. I feel a very itchy misshapen malignant lump of �isms coming on.
Happy war day! The fun begins � George Dubya�s �Operation Whoop-Ass� is brought to you today by General Electric. Tune in next minute for a cool image of a smart bomb going KEBLEWY! Anticipation builds in the liquid blue glow of evangelical warmongering. Beware those speaking in tongues. Ever noticed how Yeeha and Jihad sound almost exactly the same? I figured out a way out of the mess. Saddam needs to join the NRA. Shouldn't be a problem - every time I've seen a picture of him in the past six months he has had a gun in his hands. How could the US really invade a card holding member of the NRA. "Look guys I need to defend my home and this is a bad neighbourhood so of course I need a few Weapons of Mass Destruction." Everything sounds like a clich� thrown in a blender with urban myths and a jigger of tequila. Nice and frothy and ever so bitter - just add a little umbrella skewered through a headline. It feels like nineteen twelve complete with a Serbian assassination � it ain�t no Archduke but hell we don�t kill royalty anymore. I need a hug. I won�t turn my back on love.
An odd digital alignment seems to be taking shape. It is as if the fractal engine is grinding out code seeped in chaos theory and half-baked irony. My online horoscope reads:
Unexpected activity snaps you out of your dream state. Something could be making waves in the usually tranquil pond where you live. People shape events and people are driven by desires that aren't always evident. Whatever the cause, you're already seeing its effect. An integral part of a permanent structure seems to be changing its shape. Feelings are shared even if ideas differ. You have to talk about this. There's no other way of getting to the bottom of it.
No shit! As I sit here typing this my MP3 player cycles on random and what songs come up back to back? "Praise The Lord And Pass The Ammunition" a WWII propaganda song by Kay Kyser and then "One Tin Soldier (The Legend Of Billy Jack)" by Coven. Check out these lyrics...
"Praise The Lord And Pass The Ammunition and we'll all stay free... We're on a mighty mission"
"Listen children about a story that was written long ago ... Go ahead and hate your neighbor/Go ahead and cheat a friend/ Do it in the name of heaven/ You can justify it in the end / There won't be any trumpets blowing come the judgment day / On the bloody morning after ... One tin soldier rides away"
Too much weird coincidence for one night. No shit Batman! Seems to me a big bad rubber suit would make sense about now. As long as it comes with a sound effects generator for those special KAPOW! moments. Dan Bern says that he has a, "dream of a new American language.� I have a dream that someone will start up the silence. That someone will stop the stale rhetoric or at least make it a little livelier. If we are heading to war the least we deserve is some good old-fashioned moving rhetoric. Where are you MLK? Where are you JFK? Where are you PET? We need you. Where are you Mr. Rogers? I want to come to your neighborhood.
Love all y'all,
Curtis
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