Presidental Thinking

Today, Nicole, (you’ll remember her of the Sponge Bob episode) was blowing up helium balloons in her cube. You can buy helium in tanks now at Costco. I mean, tanks you keep. You don’t have to return them. I never thought of that: --personal helium, in large quantities. Where was that when I was 13? Instead of taping Coke cans cannons together and shooting tennis balls across the school soccer field, we could have breathed in helium and talked funny all day. Hey, it wouldn’t have come down to stealing balloons from a party every six months. With a five-gallon tank of compressed helium could have kept us talking silly till we were 15. But your probably wondering what this is got to do with the President. I’ll get there.

First there is the whole issue about Bay Area vegans. I made the mistake of hanging out with one recently. “Hanging” being the operative word. “Hanging” because I have an apprehension to vegans. Much like right wing fundamentalists. I allow only casual acquaintance to minimize trouble between us. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking vegetarians, I mean vegans. You the know people who don’t eat “anything animal”, even if was just excreted by an animal. This philosophy relegates them to a lot of soy based dishes and stuff that tastes like its been seasoned with a slight hint of dirt. Now there are two reasons to be a vegan. First, you could have advanced heart disease and are trying to get your cholesterol down and unclog your arteries. Second, you could have lost sense of reality. This vegan had a cholesterol level of 135, which was great, but this vegan had disconnected a few neurons in the process. Okay, that was a little harsh. Let’s put it this way, vegans are sort of a fringe element in society. They are like a political minority. Like the Green Party, Libertarians or people that think worlds only six thousand years old, they don’t have a lot of people who will listen to them very long, so the seek out others who will: other vegans. I had met this vegan several times over the last few years. We frequent similar places of Sunday afternoon entertainment. (Places the play 70 music and serve fair beer.) In passing we had struck up conversation. For some reason in a moment of neural disconnection (read a few beers) this summer, I got the idea it might be interesting to date this vegan. Okay, maybe five beers. After all, I was a vegetarian once for a few months (okay weeks). I mean I don’t eat that much meat and my doctor did say I should lower my cholesterol. (It was 202, doctors don’t really yell at you till it gets to 250 or so. But what the heck.) This vegan and I could sauté soy together and lick the dirt off raw turnips or something. So we went on a date.

Dates are where you discover the difference between vegans that chew on dirty vegetables because they want to live to be a hundred and ones that do it for political reasons. Political vegans tend to do socially challenging things, like forgo deodorant. You tend to discover this at the most inopportune of times. Like when you have gotten too close without five beers to dull the senses and you have to avoid turning up your nose whilst the vegan is looking longingly into your eyes. They also let loose with some really naïve opinions about how the world works. For instance this vegan told me, “Wearing wool was cruel to sheep.” While I avoided the turn up of my nose because of body odor, I could not avoid the furrowing of the skin between my eyebrows at the sheep oppression statement.

Sorry, I’m open minded, but I spent enough time around sheep in England to know, they pretty much just chew on grass and figure out which direction the dog wants them to go. Then once a year, they get a haircut.

“Where did you get that from?” I blurted.

“I read it in a magazine.” Was the retort.

“Was this magazine published by animal activists or something?” I said.

“No, it was an article in a vegan publication I was reading.”

I voiced my opinion to the contrary, telling stories of my youth, of creeks and apple trees in Oxford, and hiding in cedar wardrobes full of wool clothes. Oh yeah, and the fact that sheep from the pasture behind the house didn’t seem the worse for being flipped over and given a haircut. I mean they just went back to grazing afterwards. They didn’t need to discuss it with an analyst or anything. Their hair grew back too.

But the point to all this is, I was talking to Nicole yesterday about this vegan hang out. She’s a wool wear’n vegetarian, not a vegan. We kind of joked about the whole sheep thing. Then, today as she was blowing up the balloons and she reference vegans. The reference and the balloons just set off a whole series of what I could best call “vegan thoughts” in my head. I mean, I looked at Nicole and said, “You know I’m not sure I’m comfortable with your use of helium in an office setting. After all, helium is the product of nuclear fusion. And fusion on earth has only netted us one thing: oppressed people. People suffering under the tyranny and threat of total Nuclear Annihilation.” Yeah I capitalized “Nuclear Annihilation” when I spoke it too. My employees laughed.

What’s helium and vegans got to do with the President? Well not much on the surface.
But vegan thinking comes from hanging around too many vegans. They all think the same. Sometimes I think George Bush thinks like he does cause, he hangs around a bunch of people that all think the same. No, I’m not talking about his cabinet. I’d take any of them over him any day. (Well, probably not John Ashcroft. The guy who's attorney general cause he got beat by a dead guy in an election. Course, the president got beat by a live guy. So I guess its about the same. you get into government nowdays by being beat in an election.) No, I talking about the nuts Geroge Bush hangs out with who think the world is only six thousand years old.

Sponge Bob Died and I murdered him.

Today, at work, I murdered my Spunge Bob play toy. It wasn't and accident as much as an oversight. It wasn't murder, it was sponge slaughter. Nicole gave me the little plastic squishy Spunge Bob last year. It had certain soothing properties on confernce calls. When my peers were picking on me (my team) in mindless bueracratic banter they use to make their lack of willingness to solve a problem look like someone else's fault, I'd give old Sponge Bob a clinch. He was flexible and elastic, so I was alway's amazed at how no matter how hard I squeezed he just bubbled out somewhere in between my fingers. Plus if people were just going on about nothing, I could always watch the really cool clouds of sparkels that were in the liquid inside him. That's what Sponge Bob was for. I abused him, so I wouldn't take my frustrations out on my coworkers.

But for particulars I won't bore you with, today somebody said something that made me give ol Sponge Bob a little too much of a squeeze and his guts burst out all over my desk, and onto the computer, and my phone. To Sponge Bob, who gave is life so that some unnamed manager at SBC may live.

For those on futre phone calls, you better hope Sponge Bob is still in stock at the stores.

The Cashwanox

In mourning for Johnny Cash I have been playing all Johnny Cash, all the time, in my CD player. I've listened to Cocaine Blues at least 30 times in the last week. To make up for the sin of that song, I've listen to Gray Stone Chapel nearly as many times.

But when the Equinox ends, I will end also the Cashwanox. Had I had my shit together I'd have gotten some of my freinds involved. But the most likely person to participate would Captain Ian Clunies-Ross who is currently stuck on the banks of the Euphrates. (A situation he reminds us regularly: "That Sucks")

But its just as good as the morning for Johnny Cash is a personal thing. He was the first recording artist I really paid attention too. His death has brought back childhood memories of Christmas 1971 in England when my parents gave me a cassette tape recorder. I made little waste of time flipping through their album collection and putting the Ring of Fire, Folsom Prison, San Quenton, and the Johnny Cash show albums to tape. How ridiculous was that, that a 10 year old with three tapes to his name had two and half hours of Johnny Cash? The other half hour was Simon and Garfunkel. The even more ridiculous thing was that I didn't spend anytime goofing around just recording my or my friends voices. But what can I say I was a military brat, and I didn't know there was any other kind of music but country. Well at least that you were allowed to listen too.

To Johnny who kept a small boy's mind occupied while he sat in a cooker apple tree in a small mildewed village in England, yearning for a return to a country where Country music even existed, I give thanks that you existed.

9-11

Well its been two years since I got stuck in St. Louis for a week because a bunch of guys from Afganastan decided to fly some airplanes into some buildings.

Some weird things that have happened since then:


I didn't know anyone on the planes. Though I have since met a lot of guys who knew Mark Bingham. I even helped pass out leaflets and flyers for the Mark Bingham Rugby Tournament in SF last year. We apparently both lurked in the same places but never talked to each other. So I've found that coincidence a little wierd. I also found it weird that next spring when I climbed onto a 767 for the first time since 9-11 and sat up in First Class. Up till then the flying thing had not really bothered me. But that day the surroundings did, and I started thinking of Mark, a guy I never met. He kind of haunts me now. One of these days I'll get that thought out in a poem.

The other weird thing about 9-11 has been coming to grips with the war in Iraq. Don't get me wrong. I suppose we had to do it. But you have to wonder about old George Bush. He's cited just about every reason for the war but the real one. We all seem to ignore Iraq war reason, mainly because its to complicated to explain.

The Explanation:

Al Qaida attacked the US because we had our military in the Islamic Holy land. Why was the US Military there? Because we had to protect the Holy Land against Sadam Husein. The hope: someday Sadam the nut would self distruct. But that never happened. Ten years of inspections, sanctions, bombing and overflights had not budged him a bit. Rightly or wrongly a good deal of the Arab world resented us being there. They were divided between the devil that was Sadam and the Devil that was the U.S. You can question the judgement and logic of Al Qaida for attacking their defenders, but we are talking fanatics here. Back in the the U.S. Sadam indirectly cost us 3000 lives. The President had to get his people out of danger. If the main reason Al Qaida attacks us is because our soldiers are in Saudi Arabia, we needed to get the soldiers out of Saudi Arabia. Course, that little irritating Sadam might decide to attack Saudi Arabia, and it has all that oil we want to buy and we'd just have to send our soldiers back. Solution: get rid of Sadam Husein, and you can get the soldiers out of Saudia Arabia and Al Qaida doesn't have a reason to attack us. We win, Al Qaida wins.

Kind of a simplistic answer huh? Well, that's really why George Bush wanted to invade Iraq. That's why 9-11 connects. But thats a little more than he could articulate in a speech. Besides, its pretty hard to tell the world, we want to kick Sadam Husein out of Iraq so Al Qaida will leave us alone.