Sunday, January 29, 2006

Uh...

Okay, I don’t know what that was. Woke up on the kitchen floor, my head glued to the linoleum and that post on my page. Guess something tripped my trigger about whatshisnuts but whatever... Thought about taking it down but decided to leave it as a cautionary tale against drunk posting -- Don’t let this happen to you. ‘Course most of you probably aren’t narcissistic rage-aholics with an unquenchable thirst for the firewater and a vocabulary consisting of nothing but four-letter words. For that, we are all grateful…

Oh, and I lied. I did start doing this for the fellowship. Went a little James Frey there with the tough guy act. Like I've said before -- I'm not really right in the head and drinking f's with my meds. Hope you're feelin' me on that...

What time is it, anyway...jesus...

Guy named Offensive posted a comment on my bro’s blog Fight To Survive and I sent him a post back and I fucking well meant it. If we can’t embrace those amongst us that are most fucked up then what the fuck are we doing here? I didn’t join this goddam brigade for the fellowship, did I? No. I joined because I’m pissed. I’m pissed like Offensive is pissed. Maybe he is some right-wing joker out to have a laugh at us. Who fucking cares? All I see is words on a screen and he’s got the right to say what he wants. If any of you out there think I’m taking sides on this fucking debate, come corrected. I have only one point of view – MINE. And I’ll go toe-to-fuckin-toe, balls-to-the-wall with anyone who thinks he can change my mind about anything. Offensive’s an asshole and I’m glad he’s out there. We need more people stirring the shit. Fuck the Left and the Right and the fuckin’ Middle. I HATE EVERYTHING. Yeah, maybe the best of us have a sense of decency and a sense of tenderness and a sense of “that’s not really appropriate” but that doesn’t mean I’m gonna tell this asshole he can’t sound off. Takes a lot of weirdness to come at these guys the way he comes at them and I’m a fan of weirdness. Misguided though it might be, it never gets weird enough for me. The lunacy of it is the fucking point. Are only the ShortTimers among us supposed to survive… or not… or become acceptable victims to the miserable circumstances? I bleed for all of them, the least among them. Bring to me your idiots, your misanthropes, your duped and tired and wicked – BRING THEM. My army is comprised of the smartest AND the dumbest. The BEST and the WORST. I just hope Offensive has the balls to put his/her shit down and let us comment on his page someday and if not, then FUCK that pussy…


Hamas wins. What the fuck did you assholes think was gonna happen? Dipshits…


Oh, and another newsflash – we fucked up the Iraq reconstruction project – yeah, shoulda spent more money gettin’ the lights put back on and the water runnin’ – oops – so, we outta here yet or what?


Drunk, pissed, and no end in sight… Stay off the streets tonight cuz I’M DRIVIN’

Monday, January 23, 2006

Douglas Barber

A friend of mine wrote me this morning and told me about Douglas Barber. I went online and read The Heretic’s post on Fight to Survive and it was the first thing I’ve read about it. A Lexis-Nexis search turned up zilch on the story. Big surprise there, huh? Guess some vet with a shotgun in his mouth isn't the kind of thing that's gonna get a lot of press. Still, you'd think somebody'd be paying attention. Somebody'd want to get this story out. But then again, who am I kidding? I went over this whole apathy thing a few weeks ago here and to me, it’s still the biggest problem facing this country. All these flag wavers with their yellow ribbons and there’s nobody willing to advocate for the troops. I mean, where are the suburban moms picketing the White House in the name of the vets? It’s like when you’re in theater, you’re a hero, but once you rotate stateside, you’re just another fucked-up vet no one wants to touch with a ten-foot pole. Hell, we know the cabal in Washington is responsible for getting us into this mess but where is the accountability? Where is the follow-through? WHERE IS THE GODDAM OUTRAGE? Seems to me if I’d voted for W, I’d be raising a lot more hell than the hippies about wanting to know what the fuck is going on...

Seriously, you red-state Bushbacking pricks are so fucked up. You send’em off to fight and die in your name and then when they come home, you tell’em you don’t want to hear what they have to say unless it jibes with the approved White House talking points. You’re so blinded by your nationalism and misguided loyalty to the King that you’ve chosen to ignore THE FACTS. You’ve chosen to ignore THE TRUTH. You’ve chosen to forsake the very people who do your fighting for you. How can you sleep at night knowing you’ve allowed these assholes to pull the rug out from under our veterans? How can you look yourself in the mirror every day? You maggots make me wanna puke. You think I don’t support the troops? Fuck you – YOU don’t support the troops. Because if you did, Douglas Barber and every vet like him would get top of the line psychological care when they come back; the VA wouldn’t have their budgets slashed so Uncle Sammy can save money for more bullets; guys like Rummy, Cheney, and Bush wouldn’t be allowed to run wild killing every living thing they see, enemy and friendly alike. How much blood is it gonna take for you guys to put a rein on these monsters? How long does this shit have to go on before you people start voting with some conscience?

RIP, Douglas Barber and all your bros out there who couldn't deal with The World and took that final step. You guys deserved better. On behalf of all us who were here in the rear with the beer while you were having your lives turned inside out, I’m truly and deeply sorry. It never shoulda gone down like this…

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On a different note, I saw this thing on the TV the other day how they were gonna have a blogger soldier from Iraq on CNN and I was stoked. I just knew it was gonna be somebody good, you know since the press is all lefty anti-war and whatnot. No way they were gonna put on some soldier who actually supported this thing, CNN’d blow their cover. Nopes! The guy they put on was sure enough gung-ho and go get’em and full of rah-rah spirit. So, what does this guy say when he comes on? How the press is getting it all wrong! What the…?! Dude, they put you on! How can they be getting it wrong? I mean, honestly, it didn’t surprise me that they put on some guy who was totally on-board (what’re they gonna do, put The Statistics on at 10 a.m. Sunday morning?) but then he comes out and tells them they’re not doing their jobs right. Shit, if I have to hear one more goddam time how the press isn’t telling about all the “good” things going on in Iraq… Man, the press don’t say anything they’re not handed! They’re fucking embedded! Do people really think they’re going out of their way to avoid telling us about all the schools we’re building and all the TP we’re handing out and all the totally excellent work we’re doing? That’s insane. Since when has the press not been behind this war? They helped get the ball rolling for crissake. They blew the horn and waved the flag and everything was hunky-dory until the CPA dropped the ball and the insurgency spiraled out of control and no one could get the lights on, and now suddenly the press isn’t “telling it like it is”? “The press is losing the war”? You gotta be shittin’ me…

Sometimes I think you need a degree in quantum physics to keep up with how unreal the reality of this thing is. The varying levels of idiocy, ineptitude, avarice, greed, corruption, and pure evil are astounding. Just when you think you can put a finger on one small part of what’s going on, you realize you don’t know shit. This thing is so out of control and what do we have instead of leadership? A president who’s never not on vacation and when he speaks says shit that makes absolutely no sense…

Sunday, January 22, 2006

The Road to the SuperBowl

20 nuclearly-hot chicken wings, a case of Bud, half a gram of Bolivian flake, two blunts of NYC Ice, and a 20-mg Vicodin for dessert – put on the big screen with the volume turned to zero, crank Helmet to 11 on the stereo, and I’m ready for some motherfuckin’ football. Not that I really give a shit one way or the other who wins (I tend to tune out once the Cowboys hang it up) but something about watching giant violent men beating each other senseless for sport while I’m completely twisted off on drugs seems so… I don’t know, American. And I don’t mean American in the geographical of-course-you’re-an-American-you-were-born-here-dipshit sense. I mean American in the kill-em-all-and-let-the-replay-sort-it-out sense. American the way war and hubris and arrogance and greed are American. Not that we got the market cornered on greed or hubris or violence but we can definitely fuck some shit up for you if you think you might need some shit fucked up. Hell, we’ll even go to the cradle of goddam civilization and bring some pee down to bear there. Won’t even look back, just lock and load, light’em up let’s move out, third and long end around touchdown, God is on our side, how can we be wrong? That’s our style, if we have a style. Shit, you can’t stop the machine. Only thing to do is keep it greased with the blood of the willing and make sure it don’t come unplugged. Football as metaphor is as played out as metaphors are in general but that don’t mean I can’t feel a rush of patriotic pride when I hear some teenage Nashville queen working her way through the Star Spangled Banner and then watch those monsters go at it. I love this fucking country.


So, my bro’s down in New Orleans building FEMA trailers for the reconstruction effort and he says it’s the new Gold Rush – they’re handing out contracts fast as they can. Build it, raze it, haul it, bring it – you got the want-to, they got the bread. He went down with a friend of his a coupla weeks ago with two pick-up trucks, a flatbed trailer, and a fifth wheel. They got some kinda fourth-generation subcontract to frame houses and they were doing two a day, making good money. Now they got a crew of 15 guys and a contract to build 20 trailers a day for a grand per. How’s that for some boot-strappin’? On a personal level, I’m happy as hell for my bro ‘cuz he’s never been anything close to rich and he’s as good a guy as I’ve ever met and his family could sure use the money. On a more objective level, I can’t help wondering who’s getting screwed on this deal. ‘Cause you know if Hally-burton’s got their paws on the project, it’s as crooked as the Mississippi is long. For every good ol’ boy like my brother making his, you know there’s some poor schmuck out there with Uncle Sam’s fist in his ass. Maybe I’m jaded but I haven’t seen anything decent or humanitarian from any of these government contract fuckers yet. I know one day we’ll wake up and the whole city of New Orleans will just be one gigantic casino and all the employees will be Hally-burton foreign nationals making 2 bucks a day and ol’ Ima Dick Cheney can just leave behind the mess in D.C. and go down to the Big Easy and get his old job back. Maybe he’ll even start some kind of employment opportunity PR thing for Iraq vets. “You havin’ trouble dealin’? Hell, we’ll teach you how to deal… and valet park.”


Went out with some bros of mine the other night and we got all fucked up. Jameson shots and Bud longnecks – too many to count and who counts that shit anyway? We stumbled out of our local Bucktown watering hole at 4 in the a.m. and the last thing I remember hearing is “Aw, hell, fuck the rest of ‘em. American Short-Timer’s the best thing I’ve read out of Iraq since the fuckin’ thing started…” Woke up the next day with my head in the vise, happy as shit I got the kind of friends who like to get drunk and talk about AST. Makes me feel kinda sorry for those that don’t…

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Do Yer Part for Nashnal Sekurty

Let me get this straight – I read in the papes the other day that the Eff-Bee-Eye says doing shit like tracking down the last known addresses of liberal New England schoolteachers and tracing calls from New York City cabbies to their ancestral homes in Punjab is somehow slowing down the effort to cull meaningful intel on terrorist activities in this country. To tell you the truth, I don’t know if these guys are really as far off the mark as they think they are. I mean, have you seen some of those teachers? Yikes. And don’t tell me about cabbies because I’ve been in an NYC cab going 90 miles per on the BQE while my kamikaze driver was carrying on some unintelligible klick-klack desert-speak phone call to the homeland and let me tell you, I was fucking terrorized. However, to keep it all in perspective, other than my own f-d up fear of ruler-wielding WASP schoolmarms and my occasional pant-shitting Yellow-Checkered ride home, there haven’t really been any attacks in this country since Nine-Double-One. HAVE THERE? The answer, of course, is NO. There haven’t. So, maybe what the FBI and the NSA and the CIA and the PTA and ELO and whoever else have been doing is actually working. I mean if the powers that be be tellin’ me they’re gonna protect me from those who would do me harm and no harm has really come to me, (except maybe for the time on the train when that dude kicked me in my nuts and took my iPod or when those NYU frat boys stomped me outside that 12th St. bar even though I was pretty much asking for it that time), am I right to say the powers that be are doing it wrong?

Now, common sense would tell you that all this energy might be better spent by the powers that be on, say, working up legitimate terrorist profiles on known rogue elements such as seeing if the guy in the Taliban T-shirt with the expired student visa sweating his way through Florida flight school is really just nervous about acing the big landing exam; or, say, maybe taking a peek at a couple of those thousands and thousands of unchecked cargo containers sitting unguarded on our docks to see if they contain some kind of fuck-you-up nuclear device or maybe they could spend a few hours doing something about our thousands and thousands of miles of un-patrolled border or… hell, I don’t know, ANYTHING ELSE. Common sense, however, has no place in the starched and triplicated world of American Intelligence and if you think for a minute these guys aren’t doing everything they can to keep YOU and YOUR FAMILY safe, then maybe you need a little re-education. Maybe you’re a fucking terrorist yourself and a few days at Gitmo swinging from your elbows with rabid Rottweilers snapping at your privates might help you to remember whose side you’re really on here. Get with the program, jump on the team and come on in for the big win, etc.

Domestic surveillance is just another way of sayin’ “catchin' the bad guys” so if you’re not doing anything bad, then you got nothing to worry about, Osama. That’s not to say I want them to necessarily know how many times I’m hitting BigFatTits.com every month or busting out my weed delivery man but if that’s what it takes to make sure I don’t get blowed up then that’s what it takes. Besides, how funny would it be if the Eff-Bee-Eye showed at the door and started askin’ all kinds of questions about internet porn or whether Diesel is better than NYC Ice? I could tell’em for sure that you don’t ever want to give your girlfriend’s credit card number to no BigFatTits.com and you’re way better off going for the Ice because it’s a much more mellow high, more chatty and sociable, than Diesel which’ll just sink your ass into the couch for the next six hours…

See? I got intel, bros. All kinds of useful 411 that this country needs in its War on Terror. I’m too old and crippled to enlist and I never did get no college education but that doesn’t mean I can’t make my contribution to Nashnal Sekurty. Think what all of us could do together if we really put our collective mind to it…

Shee-it.

Monday, January 16, 2006

The Big ONOFF Switch -- It Is Kaput

They may hate each other but they do have at least one thing in common…

Read in the paper the other day (don’t remember which one or where but I read it so I know that shit’s true) about how USMAC-IRAQ is fueling the beef between the nationalist, straight-up anti-American, we-may-be-Muslims-but-we-don’t-want-to-sell-our-asses-to-the-Ayatollah insurgents and the hard-core, 70-virgins-in-the-Great-Beyond, I Heart Osama insurgents, and it made me think what a great fucking idea this is. Why start a civil war with a US pull-out when we can start one RIGHT NOW while we’ve still got 150-grand worth of boots in the sand? Draw-down? Draw-down some nuts in your mouth, you hippy faggots. We got front-row seats to the Mass Murder Spectacular. We’re quarterback for both teams in the world’s most dangerous pick-up game – what happens when they decide they don’t want us to play anymore for real? What happens if they decide that the time to settle their shit is AFTER they settle ours and they start working together to kill us? Not that they haven’t been hitting it from all sides the entire time but they spend a lot of energy on this whole Shia v. Sunni v. Kurd v. Yer Mama v. Whoeverthefuck tug-of-war. What happens if that energy becomes focused, coordinated, a reason to get along if only for a while? I mean, it’s a stretch – they’re some tribal motherfuckers and the grudges they got don’t recognize lines on a map. But why push’em? Do the geniuses at the Pentagram really think they’re going to be able to run it down the middle without paying for it in bodies? Do they think Kay-Da’s gonna run out of guys? Do they really think we can beat these people with Predator drones and bunker busters and hi-tech ray-guns, that our technology and know-how and gung-ho can-do corn-fed Democractic Ideology is really gonna cut it? See ya in ten years… See ya in a hundred… Never happen… Doesn’t matter when we pull the plug, sandbox is still gonna be the sandbox and whoever’s in charge will be whoever was gonna be in charge anyway and chances are it won't be Rummy's first choice...

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Wish I could shut this shit off… Think, think, over-think, think again, twice, fast, on your feet, outside the box, before you speak, before you act, of all the people living for today, of the tender things that we were working on, about puppies or flowers or little brown babies with fistfuls of chicle something nice for a change jesus you’re driving me crazy… Can’t stop the intake or the output, the ebb or tide. Nothing left for it but to ride the wave until it crests and settles on soft sandy shores stretching away into desert and sky and purple mountains majesty. Mothers can’t wait to get in, lining up for miles, swimming, rafting, flying, crawling, waiting, hell yeah we’ll go, Border Patrol, Coast Guard, coyote, Chinese captain, traders, trappers, the Tong, mules, mulas, Minutemen, inner tubes, test tubes, grow your own or import it’s really up to you. A winning ticket in the Great Ocean Lottery, suitcases filled with cocaine, Yanqui dreams of a thousand future small businesses, Open Anytime We Deliver 24-7 Camels 2 for $5 Minute Maid Orange Juice 32 oz. 4.99 Regular 278 No Bill Larger Than $20 Amerikkka the Booteefull Land of Rape and Money Coming Soon To A Theater of Operations Near You. Don’t worry about jumping the pond or the river or the line in the sand just get a job behind the wire at the closest Disneyland and it'll be like you been here all along…

Friday, January 13, 2006

Going Out of Business Sale! Get Your Abortion Now!

Oh, to blow the load of all loads deep inside the Far Right and then leave them in the middle of the night while I run out for a pack of smokes for about 20 years. They're all crying and shit wanting to know "Why? How could you?" I shrug, mumble something about needing my independence and then score crack. Baby Daddy no more. Left with no options, a weepy Far Right goes to the local clinic and SURPRISE -- Adoption is a wonderful alternative! Or maybe you should've thought of that before you let that creep fuck you without any protection! 9 months down the lonesome highway and out comes Junior with a 2-pack-a-day habit, ready for the front lines in Iraq, Iran, Korea, pick an -Istan, any -Istan. Many years later, I read about my bastard child in the newspapers, feel a brief pang of conscience and then check my winning lotto numbers...

The Democratic Party should be destroyed and re-built bigger, stronger, faster, and one helluva lot meaner. Our last line of defense against the fascist right-wing and they can't even take the moral high ground when they're sitting on it. Retreat and surrender. Drop your guns and run! Whitey's coming and he looks pissed. Now, wait. Stop and pray. And make sure you tell all the flyovers how big your cross is and how you don't want the restless hippy scum to take over anymore than they do and shit, maybe those guys on the right really do have the right idea when it comes to, you know, Christianity and all that. Why do they even try to play the Jesus game when all it ever gets them is bent over at one Congressional hearing or another? Fuck Jesus. What we need now is Satan, rock-and-roll, and some good ol' fashioned righteous indignation. We need to take these worthless douchebags out to the street and curbstomp every last one of them. Don't you think if there was a Jesus and he was here right now, he'd be kicking somebody's ass? Shit, motherfucker got so pissed off about moneychangers at the temple he almost lost his spot at the Big Table in the Sky. He'd blow a gasket if he saw what was being done in his name today. Do they really think Jesus hates poor, un-educated, over-burdened, under-privileged girls? Last book I read on Jesus, they were just his kind of people. Seems to me he'd kick Pat Robertson in his nuts before he'd ever break bread with that clown. Maybe we read different Bibles at the Southern Baptist Church I went to...

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Man, it is shit like this...

MARINES WITHOUT ARMOR

THE NEW YORK TIMES
TUESDAY, JANUARY 10, 2006

American Marines are a proud, tough bunch. They expect to be sent into the most dangerous battles and expect enemy fighters to come at them with everything they have. But they also expect, and have every right to expect, the Pentagon to provide them with the most effective armor available to maximize their chances of staying alive and in one piece. An investigative article in Saturday's New York Times by Michael Moss makes painfully clear that the Pentagon has let these brave warriors down.

A secret Defense Department study reveals that more extensive armor, of a kind available since 2003, could have saved the lives of some 80 percent of the Marines killed by upper body wounds in Iraq between 2003 and 2005. That amounts to scores of needlessly lost lives - hundreds of Army deaths attributable to inadequate armor are counted as well. The ceramic armor plates in question cost about $260 a set.

Marines in the field have been clamoring for additional body armor (and vehicle armor) almost since the Iraq war began. Military officials initially turned them down because of concerns that the added weight might constrict movement. Once the study results came in last summer, Marine Corps leaders belatedly reversed themselves and started speeding armor to the troops.

Still, as of last month, less than 10 percent of the 28,000 sets of armor plates on order had actually reached the Marines in Iraq.

Similar delays have plagued deliveries of improved vehicle armor. And the much larger Army contingent in Iraq has faced even more extensive delays.

The Pentagon buys some truly wondrous space-age weaponry with its half-trillion-dollar annual budgets. If the Cold War ever resumes, the American military will certainly be prepared. Meantime, surely enough spare change can be found in that vast budget to accelerate deliveries of lifesaving armor to the Marines and soldiers coming under fire today, and every day, in Iraq.


Nice, huh?

Dear American Soldier,
Thanks for signing up and volunteering your strong, young American body and mind for the ready defense of your country. In honor of your sacrifice, I decided the least I could do would be to send you to fight with about half the shit you need including, but not limited to, armor for your body and trucks and enough guys to get the job done. Never mind that I’ve managed to totally fuck this up from the get-go and I’ve got you playing super-cop in the middle of some bullshit 1,000-year-old Islamic pissing match. You just need to get out there and catch a few for the folks back home and stop bitching about getting out. If you have any problems, please feel free to go fuck yourself.
Hoo-ah!
Uncle Sam


I know it’s nothing new to the guys on the ground but I wonder sometimes how clear it is to Carl & Cindy Citizen watching some CNN crawl during Anderson Cooper about another (or two or a dozen) American soldier getting killed that what we as a country, with all of our yellow ribbons and flappin’ flags and heartfelt speeches, are doing to our own soldiers is so fucked up, it defies logic. Soldiers from the dawn of time are used to getting the shit end of the stick but does that make it okay for us as civilians to say, “Eh, they knew what they were getting into. They’re tough, right? Shit, they probably love it. Gettin’ to fight in a real war? Man, they’re lucky is what they are. Armor’s for pussies. American boys don’t need armor. They’ve got DEMOCRACY, FREEDOM, and LITTLE BABY JESUS on their side. Towelhead motherfuckers don’t stand a chance. Get some, Johnny... Let's do Italian, honey. I'm so over Chinese. What's on the Tivo? Did you tape Bachelor?"

It doesn't matter if you voted for Bush or Kerry or Kermit the Frog, whether you hate this lousy war or love it like a sister, if you want to blow Osama up or suck him off -- we, as citizens of The Great Satan Five-Ought, are all dirty on this thing. Just because you didn't want it doesn't mean you don't own it. As if it's not bad enough those fuckheads in Washington Dee Cee are doing this shit in the first place, they're doing it in such fine fubar fashion as to NEEDLESSLY LET OUR GUYS DIE SO THEY CAN SAVE A FEW BUCKS. But fear not, Patriotic American, I'm sure they'll pass that savings right onto you as a loyal customer.

We should have our SUV-driving, WalMart-shopping, Starbucks latte-drinking, Sunday-Times-in-the-park-hey-you-wanna-see-the-new-Brad-Pitt-movie-I-heard-its-awesome asses kicked for allowing this shit to go on like it has. Through our collective inertia and apathy, we've let the single most important event of our decade become page 10 news.

Seriously. What the fuck is wrong with this country?


ON ANOTHER NOTE:
Check out my friend Leon's video clips (Leon's Reportages under LINKS). I love him, the crazy Dutch bastard...
You have to check out the Week in Review at Harper's.org
and
HAPPY HAJJ!

Waterborne




This is a movie one of my bestest friends Chris Berry is in. It's part of Google's new video thing. They still have a few kinks to work out it seems but the movie's hot. Enjoy.

Sunday, January 08, 2006

Call it Saturday...


I got an e-mail from American Short Timer today and it made me really happy. As did his new post. Number one, it means he’s still around to post and number two, it’s like getting an e-mail from Gustav Hasford or somebody. Eyes and ears in Iraq complete with all the juicy rocking and rolling words that make it such sweet symphony, fine-tuned for the irony and sarcasm and good ol’ fuck yous.

See, I’ve always had this thing in my life where I like to apply war/military lingo to my everyday life and for the most part I’ve been informed by Vietnam books. When I waited tables, our customers were always “gooks” or “zipperheads” and we were “grunts” and “short-timers,” and the waitstation was the “DMZ” and our bar was “Dogpatch” or “Gookville,” and we said shit like “Don’t mean nothing” and “there it is” and “get some” and tried to one-up each other on knowing the names of military hardware while we got stoned and drunk and cried about our girlfriends or why the new waitress wouldn’t blow us. Now, thanks to ‘Raq guys like Colby Buzzell, AST, and Big Neal, I’ve found a whole new lingo and now when I’m at my bullshit office job where the most dangerous thing I’ll face all day is a paper-cut, I get to call people I don’t like “insurgents” and “haji” and quote 4th25 lyrics. This is my idea of fun. Send American boys to war and they’ll create their own fucking language. Is this a great country or what?

I had this fantasy when I was a kid, like junior high through college-y age just after the phase where all I wanted to be was a soldier, where I was going to be this bad-ass war protester when a war happened, right? I read all the ‘60s books and watched all the movies and knew all the songs and I was gonna do it, man. Burn my fucking draft card. Hell No I Won’t Go. Give the finger to The Man. Etc. But, the thing was, I was a little war-light there in the late ‘80s. Wasn’t a whole lot of shit going on where people were taking to the streets, you know? I mean, the first Gulf War was kind of over before it ever got started and since I didn’t know any war protesters and I lived in a little redneck Texas city, nothing was really happening anyway. I’m sure there were a few hippy kids in my little city who did some protesting and they probably got their balls stomped by drunk frat boys and now can say “Yeah, I lost that nut protesting the war in ‘91” or something, but to me that wasn’t a good enough reason to lose a ball and I was selling those frat boys drugs anyway, so it would’ve been awkward for everyone. But this war, oh boy! Now this war, this here Iraq war, this is something totally else. This is an invasion followed by an occupation and we’re in the third year of this shit and there’s not an end in sight. Guys getting back-door drafted through stop-loss and involuntary enlistments and National Guard units with more body bags than swinging tags and 2,000+ dead and counting -- this shit is off the hook. I mean, this is a WAR! The war protester’s fucking four-year long Super Bowl World Series wetdream kind of war! So, I was gonna do it, right? I was gonna get out there and protest the shit out of this war! Fuck yeah! I made the move to New York City, it’s 2004, the war, Bush, all that shit – man, I am gonna get out there and scream and yell and get tear-gassed and fight with the fucking pigs and it’s gonna be AWESOME. Except when I did get out there and start yelling, I looked around and noticed that I couldn’t really stand most of the other protesters. And I’m not talking about Grannies for Peace or the Vets Against the War or any of the older, more respectable folks. I’m talking about the hippy-dippy, so-called socialist/anarchist/whateverthefuck-ist kids. They all spouted this rhetorical bullshit and they all looked brain-washed and since when does taking a bath mean “selling out” and I said “You know what? I don’t want to be associated with these kids in any way, shape, or form. God love’em. I hope their team wins if they've even got a fucking team, but I just can’t do it.” So, I pulled out the camera and became a cockroach “journaliste” and that kind of sucked, too, because no matter how many pigs I cursed or how many flags I burned or how close I was to the girl who caught a rubber bullet in the face, I knew the stories about protesters on the streets were never going to be as good as stories about soldiers in the field and it was pointless to pretend I felt otherwise.

This is not a new history we’re writing in Iraq, anyway, so why should the anti-war movement be exceptional? No, this is the same ol’ history on both sides, repeating itself in real-time HD. Talk about not being able to read writing on walls -- how many of these fucking stunts do we have to pull before we realize the bottom line does not change? WE CANNOT KILL ALL THESE PEOPLE NO MATTER HOW HARD WE TRY OR HOW MUCH WE WANT TO. You can make bigger bombs but there’s always gonna be more people. Average age of an Iraqi is like 19 or something, right? Are you shitting me? By statistics alone, we’re fighting an army comprised mostly of children. Talk about punk as fuck. Now, those kids are pissed. Maybe if Johnny Rotten had had an AK, huh? Coulda seen some real rock-n-roll. Give those kids grenades! All of ‘em! And guitars! Yeah!

20-Ought-6 and time to realize we still have at least a couple more years of this shit. Same presidential circle jerk trying to keep all the money shots in the mouths of those with the deepest pockets. Same fat, white fuckers turning blood into oil and catastrophe into contracts and fucking the poor and giving the finger to most of the Rights they keep saying are worth getting killed for. “Seriously, that pile of bloody clothing that used to be your daughter? Worth it. Hey, cheer up and have some freedom, Haji” or “Sorry about your Specialist son who got IED’d on his way to the airport to pick up some general’s gay porn. It was so totally worth it, though. Check it out. Posthumous commendations? Huh? Yeah. And freedom. Don’t forget freedom. Your kid died so the ‘Raqis could finally get some freedom. ‘S good, right? Knew you’d like it. So, anyway, here’s his personal effects and don’t worry, we edited his diary for you. It was pretty upsetting stuff. And, frankly, off-the-record? Not too patriotic. So, there’s that… uh, can I use your bathroom?”

Thursday, January 05, 2006

We Win

TEXAS 41, USC 38

Tuesday, January 03, 2006

Love Stories

More than one way to skin a cat, make a move, pull a trigger… The time for words is all but over and then we’ll all be stuck here humming our favorite songs, making believe we still have the time for making things right. The days run away like Bukowski’s horses and on a cloudy afternoon in September, it’s easy to pretend you know what you’re doing. But when the sun goes down at 4 pm in January, all bets are off unless you’re holding aces…

A friend of mine came to town to visit over the holidays. His girlfriend fucked his best friend and just like that his world exploded. They couldn’t have done any less damage if they’d used a grenade. Never seems to be any end to the ways people come up with to hurt each other. As if it wouldn’t have been just as painful to fuck a stranger, she had to compound the fracture, twist the knife a little deeper so he wouldn’t think it was an accident. Not to mention the guy she boned was engaged to her best friend. Fucking insurgent bitch blew up everybody on the bus. Pathological. The kind of move you get to make only once in this life because once you know you’re capable of that kind of destruction, you run the risk of never being able to trust yourself enough to love again. I wonder what went through her head when she wiggled out of her bluejeans, let her bra and panties fall to the floor, looked into that dumb fuck’s eyes as he lowered himself into her. I wonder if it was a rush, if it felt like she had her finger hooked through the pin or pressing down on the Big Red Button. It’s seductive, that power. The undeniable pull of destruction, passive aggression turned outright aggression, all that anger turned up high until it singes everything it touches. She should have hit him in the head with a bat, stomped his balls to jelly, set his house on fire. But I guess those things aren’t the same as putting one right through his heart, leaving a giant hole where all that good shit used to live.

I’ve done my share of putting hurt on people, left a few amputees in my own wake, so I don’t have the vantage point of the moral high ground. No, I’ve been right down there in the muck with the rest of them, wading in a pool of shit and blood, blinded by rage and overcome by desire. It never hurts as bad as it does that first morning after, when you wake up and know that nothing will ever be the same again and there’s no take backs, no second chance to put things right, nothing to do but drink, cut yourself, bang your head on the wall until you black out. It’s a disease, pain. It calls out to you on those long winter nights, your only friend. And what a friend to have. It’ll never leave you alone until you cut it out like a cancer. But even the dumbest surgeon knows you can’t operate on yourself and every stab you take with the scalpel only leaves you with more holes, and the cancer just grows, the beast inside you.

I’m one of the lucky few. I found a woman with a taste for scar tissue and an eye for the long game. I got my second chance, and my third, and more since then. I’ve tried to put the pain in a place where it can’t get to me, or her, and it’s only when I forget it’s there do I fuck up and allow it to escape. It’s better to take a long look at it every now and then, pay homage to its power, leave a small sacrifice of self to sate its hunger. Can’t turn your back on the bitch or she’ll take a chunk of your ass. Better believe that.

Everybody’s built differently and who am I to say my friend won’t go back to that same girl and re-build it all from scratch. Better than me have been denied a shot at redemption so I do sincerely wish them the best of luck. I know it’s a tough pill to swallow, though, and no matter what kind of Phoenix rises from the ashes, there will come a night when he’ll roll over and watch her sleep and wonder when the hell she’ll do the same shit, or worse, again. Maybe his pain will decide it can’t wait to see what happens and he’ll hurt her back just to feed the maw inside him, put her out no matter how loud she screams or how many tears she cries. I hope it doesn’t go down like that. I really do.

I moved away after my wife fucked my best friend. It was over a decade ago and to tell the truth, I was sick of her ass anyway, looking for a way out from the jump. It was a fucked-up way to do me a favor, though, and I’ll never forget the hurt those two idiots gave me. It wasn’t so much that I loved her or even that I loved him (though I did, as much as I’ve ever loved anyone), it was that I let my guard down, never saw it coming, was too blinded by my own cool to see the tracer rounds streaking toward my position. I liked to think I was some bad, dope-smoking cat, all my angles were covered, no bitch was going to get to me. I’d never had a broken heart, couldn’t imagine it. I’d done all the suffering I was going to do in this life. Truth was I didn’t even know what real pain was until that year. And the shitty thing was I couldn’t even hurt her back. There was nothing left to take from her, no way to make her feel the way I felt. I just had to eat it, my plate of shit, every last bite. Ate it until I made myself sick and then I turned that sickness into a weapon, pointed it at every friendly in my sector and cut loose. I couldn’t hurt the ones I hated so I just kept hurting the ones I loved. Spent the better of a decade wondering why I even bothered with getting up in the morning, the only thing each day promised was more of my misdirected animosity. I was too chicken shit to kill myself, too weak to do the right thing by anyone, feeling sorry for myself for being so totally fucked up. It’s a wonder I have any friends left at all. But in the end there were a couple who survived those angry black days, and maybe they’re better for it. It’s hard to tell now because I’ll never know how good they could’ve been if they hadn’t had to spend so much of their time protecting themselves from me.

Maybe it all comes back to how much power we give our pricks and cunts. Maybe if we didn’t care who fucked who or why or when and just concentrated on the love of it all -- taking care of each other, treating each other with genuine respect, protecting each other from harm. But who among us, save for the swingers and the new-agers (who I’m convinced don’t believe half of their own shit), can separate sex from love? When you feel yourself inside another person, a person whose heart you want to eat, a person you really truly love, it’s hard to say that it’s just sex, that it doesn’t matter. Because it damn well matters and we all know it. It’s human nature. I don’t want some scumbag’s dirty paws all over my woman, his sweat mingling with hers, his breath on her skin. That’s the physical of it. What I want even less than that is someone fucking with what’s mine. That’s territorial pissing and it’s the biggest part. We all want to think we’re special. And when you find out you’re not, it can really set you off.

I guess the only thing I’ve really learned is that you can’t change the game, you can only change yourself. And if your choice is to go hard, you’ll live hard. But if you do have the sack to trust, the amount of pure joy your heart’s capable of can only be equaled by the absolute pain of having that trust broken. That’s what it's all about. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.