While My Guitar Gently Sleeps (Day of Rest)

I got up early on Sunday so I could do my shopping while most other consumers were at church, asleep or both. One of my first purchases was a new set of blood-red bedsheets. Before starting my chores, I placed my guitar out of harm's way on my newly- adorned mattress and after doing so I couldn't help but think that my B.C. Rico is one sexy instrument...sadly, the largest hole on my guitar is 1/8" across and 3/4" deep, otherwise I'd marry it. I think I'm hoplessly romantic.

Next, I set about preparing dinner. The previous night, I had taken a package of frozen chicken breasts out of the freezer and placed them in the refrigerator overnight. This left them in a half-frozen/half-thawed state that made it easy to dice them into cubes for better marinading.

ALLAN'S SPICY NAMELESS CHICKEN


- 1 package (1 1/2 lbs. to 2 lbs.) boneless, skinless chicken breast, partially frozen, trimmed and diced

- 2 smallish onions ,chopped

- A really big green bell pepper, chopped

- 2 habanero peppers, finely diced

- 2 red chile peppers, diced

- Fresh garlic, minced

- Enough Cheep-O Brand Italian Dressing to cover it all ( but not drown it).

Avoid using 'light' dressing, you'll need the oil in the 'hi-cal' stuff for cooking; the extra sugar/corn syrup in the 'lite' will burn and ruin everything...
Throw this stuff into something big enough to hold it all, add some thyme, rosemary, white pepper and cayenne pepper, stir, cover and refrigerate. It should look like this:




I can't do housework without music, so my next step was a bit of simple stereo maintenance- ever have a stereo/radio etc. that makes "crackling" sounds when you adjust the volume and other knobs? Perhaps one side of the stereo cuts on and off unless you jiggle it "just right"?

Dirt is likely to be the culprit.

I removed the top casing of my amplifier and set to cleaning...in my case, the volume fader was cracking and buzzing and generally annoying the hell out of me, so that's where I started. First, I used some canned air to blow out the dust from the front (below) .



That solved nothing. It was a total waste of time. The real dirt was on the inside.



That little grey rectangle to the left of the air nozzle is the backside of the volume button. It slides along a metal rail that regulates voltage (a potentiometer or 'pot' for short), so the next thing to do is to clean the pot. The slight electrical charge that runs through the pot tends to attract dirt and other particulate matter, such as smoke and cat dander, so it's a good idea to clean it at least once per decade.

First, blow canned air along the rail while sliding the fader back and forth. You can actually see the agitated dust specks clinging to the red nozzle- there was some serious grime inside!

Next, moisten a cotton swab with 100% anhydrous (without water) alcohol, which you can obtain from any electronics parts dealer- stick the wet end of the swab inside the pot's groove and gently slide it back and forth, in and out, slowly at first, then faster, repeating as needed...aaaahh. Now we are getting somewhere!

Important: Do not use rubbing alcohol on your electronics, ever. Look at a bottle of rubbing alcohol- it says 70% alcohol on the label. The other 30% consists of water and mineral oil, two things that will ruin your delicate electrical wotsits.

Do you remember VCR tape decks? If I had a DVD for every VCR that I have seen destroyed by the careless application of rubbing alcohol, my name would be Netflix.



The flash bleached this photo- in "real life" , this swab was filthy. All told, it took nearly half a dozen swabs before I was satisfied.



Problem solved! I put on CD #2 of the Peter Tosh boxed set, 'Honorary Citizen', made a quick trip to the laundry room and began cleaning and re-arranging my humble (read: humiliating) abode.

The first thing I did was carry my broken old futon frame out to the trash. My landlord is renovating one of the other units in the building and had piled up a load of cabinets, carpet and furnishings for a City pick-up, so my timing was perfect, I merely added my jetsam to the flotsam that was already there...I also dragged my dysfunctional 1975-ish Zenith console TV to the pile...I had entertained vague plans of converting it into an aquarium one day, but some things are just not meant to be... the TV belonged to my late grandparents and carried a lot of emotional weight, but holding onto a 150-pound, six-foot-wide TV cabinet for sentimental purposes is kinda crazy, even by my standards.

After ridding myself of these large, useless items, I pushed my remaining belongings to one side of the room and went looking for furballs and dust bunnies along the walls that had been covered by said useless objects. I found plenty.



The view from the other corner:



That painting is of me, back when I was fat, naked and had (some) hair on my head. I'm thin and bald now, but I still get naked on occasion, as necessity dictates.

Speaking of naked, when my male cousin died this spring, his sister gave me his surprisingly bizarre collection of pornographic DVDs. I didn't have the heart to tell her that bi-sexual midget porno is not exactly a boat-floater for me, so I graciously accepted them, but I need to get that shit out of my house- dying is natural and not to be feared, but I would rather not leave behind a collection of bi-curious dwarf porn- people might get the wrong impression- so I boxed it up and tossed it into my neighbor's trash can. My neighbor is a Born Again Christian midget who attends 12-Step meetings at Sexaholics Anonymous, so I doubt he'll mind, after all he's probably seen it all before...ick.

Strangely, by the time I took out the trash, the old Zenith was already gone, someone had carted it away...I wonder if there's a market for 30-year old broken televisions? Perhaps the heavy metals in the cathode-ray tube are worth something.

Speaking of paintings, I decided to "retire" the one pictured below. It was done by Ralph, one of my all-time least-favorite people; a drug-dealing, pedophile leader of a cult of teenage runaways and a "friend" of my parents...he once ripped my mom off by selling her a forgery of a Salvador Dali print. That's a whole other story...fiction, of course.



Thinking about kicking Ralph's ass made me hungry, so I placed my marinating foodlets into a sauce pan and sizzled them until the chicken was cooked through, then I added some water, flour and butter, whisked it until the sauce thickened and thenserved it over brown rice. Spicy yum! I made another laundry-related trip and then I sat down with a plate of my 'whatever' and some garlic bread...fantastic!




Speaking of "retire", today is my last day at my current temp job, so I snuck my camera in and took a snapshot of the chair I've been filling since June. People used to stick their heads into the doorway and ask me rhetorical questions such as: "How can you stand it in here?" and "Don't you feel claustrophobic?"




I am not going to miss those questions.

After

This is me.



This is me on drugs:
























The guitar is still the same.

Chicken Little Was An Optimist

Whoops. I was wrong. I thought that the catalytic event that shifted an idling WWIII into full gear would be the assassination of Pakistani dictator 'Pervy' Musharef- I hadn't anticipated the return and subsequent murder of former Prime Swindler Benazir Bhutto.
Bhutto- who was a politician, not a saint- was Pakistan's best hope for 'moderate' rule- a chance to build a corrupt democracy instead of a corrupt military dictatorship.



A good example of a corrupt democracy would be America.
A corrupt military dictatorship might resemble North Korea. Or Pakistan.

In politics, corruption is inevitable- the price of doing business as they say- we will always be given the choice of lesser evils; the choice of lesser evil must be made with the greater good in mind- money will get stolen, lies will be told, favors will be granted- of greater concern are issues such as: do the people have food?
And: Are we still fighting?

General Musharef has been playing 'double agent' for years...taking billions of US dollars to 'fight terra' while simultaneously allowing the Taliban and al-Queda to become resurgent in the remote Pakistan/Afghan border regions- and Osama bin Laden* is, of course, still a free man.

Pundits and politicos have started asking questions regarding what exactly we are getting in return for our generous material support of Pervy's regime. Ostensibly, he's fighting terrorism, but his nation's most popular leader was just killed on a crowded street in a military neighborhood- overlooked in the uproar was the sniper who killed at least four people at another political rally earlier the same day. The news of the suicide bomber who killed nine on 23, Dec. didn't seem to reach the American media , but it did happen.
Such incidents are increasingly common in Pakistan.

In short, it doesn't look like Pervy is very good at fighting terrorism. He may, according to recently released emails from Bhutto, be committing terrorism... I imagine we will learn the truth about Bhutto's murder at the same time we find out who killed JFK.

Anyway, why are we giving Pakistan so much money? Hmmm...

Pakistan, you probably know, has a nuclear arsenal. Bombs with upper-case B's.

I haven't heard anyone ask the obvious question regarding our 10 billion dollar aid package to Musharef: What if the payments are nothing more than a shakedown? Protection. I mean:
Give us tanks, guns and money and we will make sure Osama doesn't 'accidentally' get his hands on one of our shiny nuclear weapons, you see what I'm saying?

There was a time not long ago when overwhelming American military superiority could deter tinpots like Pervy and North Korea's Lil' Kim from ever becoming serious threats- but that time is past. Unfortunately, at the moment our military is busy elsewhere and would be hard-pressed to fight an actual 'war of necessity', should one occur. I hope it does not.
Iraq, Afghanistan (and potentially Iran) are not wars of necessity- no matter how many times you say "9-11" and point to Afghanistan, it doesn't change the fact that the large majority of the 9-11 murderers were Saudi Arabian- as is Osama. It also doesn't change the likelihood that Osama is comfortably holed up in Pakistan. Nor does it change the fact that the Taliban have regrouped and are more influential than they have been since 2002.

In any case, it's long been a simple matter of time before a suicide bomber gets strapped to a nuke- this inevitability has been hastened by recent events...when? Where?

Another possibility is the establishment of an openly anti-American theocracy in Pakistan. (See notes on nukes, above). Our troops in Afghanistan would suddenly face an overwhelming number of hostile fighters on their border. Historically, this sort of scenario tends to end poorly.

There's a possible upside: These events may lead to our military being pulled out of Iraq.

The downside: They will be pulled out and re-deployed to combat duty in an all-out war on the Afghan/Paki border.

--------------------------------------
An Unrelated Note of Appreciation

I'd like to say thank you to everyone who has sent kind wishes for my grandmother; at the moment there is nothing new to report. These ER trips are serious, but not uncommon for her- some are more severe than others. She is stable and resting at the moment, tomorrow I will drive back home and learn more. Assuming that we haven't been nuked, that is.

------------------------------------
*who?

Meme-Thing

It must be Christmas- I am doing a meme. Christmas makes me do crazy shit.

New Year's Resolution: No more memes...wait, that was last year's rez...and the previous year's as well...fuckity, it's for YDG and I'd do almost anything for YDG- including moving to Texas. Maybe.

Anyway:


Favorite X-mas Memory: Spending Christmas Night alone in the back of a Mexican restaurant in Eugene Oregon, where I was working as a transient busboy, circa 1990. I used my tips to purchase a 40-ounce bottle of Schlitz Malt Likker and a pair of Spider-Man comics .
This particular memory isn't mine, but it is my favorite.

Favorite X-mas Song- Rudy the Redneck Reindeer: In the early 90's I played in a punk/metal/space-rock band called Mister Sensitive...at one pre-Christmas gig, I dressed as Santa and was given a bottle of Tequila by my Lesbian Fan Club- I carried it on stage with me, Santa chugging fer the worm between songs- during a pukey, belching fit, the rest of the band started playing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed..."- after my belching subsided, I ad-libbed the lyrics...I am told I was brilliant. I barely remember it.

Favorite X-Mas Movie: This would be an untitled home movie I made with my Utah girlfriend, Natalie, back in the winter of 1985...it's in freaking Beta. Do you remember Beta tape?
I sure do.

Favorite X-Mas Ornament: Played a featured role in the aforementioned movie.

What are your X-mas Plans?: I don't have a job or any money to buy gifts, so I plan on fixing a really good home-cooked meal with all the trimmings and feeding my small family until they expand...this all depends on my grandmother's health. She may be in the hospital on Christmas, which will change all of our plans.

If I can have one gift, it would be to have my Granma at home on the 25th.

To all my Blogpals: Happy Everything to Everyone!


........................................................

Next: Who Knows? Life is Nuts.

Mary and Matthew

I stood on the crest of a moonlit hill, looking down at the sea of graves that separated me from my lover and I asked myself a question.
Is this worth it?
I didn't know, so I hopped the low iron fence and started across the cemetery that served as a short-cut to Mary's house.

Our house, but not for long.

------------------------------------------------------------------

I met Mary when I was 19 and she was 30. It was at a club that no longer exists. She was short, auburn-haired and rather plain-looking; a brooding, neurotic drug dealer with a violent temper and a half-wild wolfhound named Gwen. My kinda gal.

I don't recall what was said when we first met-the music was horrible and loud- our first words were probably: "what? huh?" , but she grabbed my hand, pulled me out of the crowd and announced her intentions very clearly. We walked to her nearby house and , three or four months later, she decided that I should move in with her. I was living in a Dude House at the time, so I was ready to accept this offer. I told my roommates to rent my room to the next Dude in line and my belongings started making their way to Mary's home, one backpack at a time. Neither of us had a vehicle, but I didn't own much that wouldn't fit into a rucksack, so the move was made one day at a time, over the course of a month.

In the 30 days before I moved in I started not noticing a number of things that I should have noticed...Mary, for instance, had plenty of her own cocaine- yet mine was disappearing at an alarming rate- and Mary, who was a cook at a fancy hotel during the day, suddenly started working a lot of nights- but with no extra pay to show for it. In fact, the more she 'worked', the more money she had to borrow from me and the more of my blow vanished. Hmmm.
But I was 19 , stupid and unwilling to accept the fact that my girlfriend was trying to destroy me. And herself.

One afternoon I noticed a strange new painting in her living room. There was something familiar... had I seen it before?. I asked Mary about it. She gave me a curious answer:
"Oh, that. My friend stole that from the Museum. I'm holding onto it for him until things cool down."
It started to dawn on me that not only was my girlfriend a drug dealer, she was also a criminal.

-----------------------------------------------------------

The day before the move was complete, Mary called me at a friend's house.

We need to talk. Now.

Why?

I am in trouble. We are in trouble.

Are you calling from jail?

No. Just come over now. We won't see each other again until Sunday and this can't wait.

When I reached the other side of the graveyard, I crawled through a well-used hole in the chain link fence and stood at the end of Mary's street. I made a slow, circling approach, looking for police or FBI vehicles...the neighborhood looked normal. Mary didn't.

Mary looked insane. Her normally narrow eyes were wide with cocaine intensity as she told me the news: She was pregnant. I thought we'd been careful, but...

Wow. I was only 19 and I had some serious misgivings about making a lifetime investment with a woman who was revealing herself to be more and more dangerous every day. I was terrified, my mind was wrapped in tentacles of fear and doubt...this wasn't happening...couldn't be...oh, my God...
Suddenly, I knew.

Am I the father?, I asked.

I don't think so, she replied.

------------------------------------------------

With those words still ringing through my head, I found myself on the squalid basement doorstep of my friend Matt, who lived nearby. Matt was a junkie and he had knowledge that I needed.

"Matt, I need you to show me how to shoot up."
I threw a bag of coke on his table.

"Whoa...why? Are you sure? What's going on?"

I started telling him the whole sorry tale, but he stopped me.

"I know", he said. " She has been coming over here with that guy and shooting up. I didn't know it was your stash. Sorry."

"Wh...why didn't you tell me?"

"What would you have done?"

I thought about that question. "I probably would have hit you", I answered.

"You see?", said Matt.

"Well, fuck that bitch...just show me how to use the fucking needle and I'll be on my way- you can keep that bag." I had plenty of coke, more than enough to OD, which was what I wanted.

Matt looked at me and for a moment the jaundice seemed to lift from his eyes.

"No. I won't help you with this. Look at my life- is this what you want?"

As if on cue, a large rat crawled out of his kitchen sink and into a cupboard. It acted as if it knew the route well.

"Allan", he continued," nothing is worth this. Mary is a lost cause. I am a lost cause. Don't be a lost cause. Don't get into this shit...I will not help you do this. Put your coke back in your pocket and stick it up your nose or up your ass, but you are not sticking it in your arm, not here."

---------------------------------------------------------------

I didn't see Matt again for over ten years; I assumed that he had died, but he hadn't. During an afternoon stroll , I passed a house and Matt was perched on the porch, painting the windows. There was a ladder leaning against the side of the building.

"Climb on up!"

So I did. Matt had been clean for years and he looked great. He was getting married- or maybe he already had- I forget the details, but his life had turned completely around. Things were looking up for him.

I was doing pretty good too...I hadn't done coke for years and the drinking hadn't caught up with me yet. I was enjoying life. It was nice to see Matt. I had something to tell him.

"Matt", I said, "you saved my life back then. I never told you that, but you did. I don't know how to repay you."

"You don't", he told me.

"You don't?"

"No", he tried to explain. "I didn't do that for you. I did that for me. You don't owe me anything."

I didn't quite understand that at the time, but I do now.

It's never too late to say thank you.

Thank you.

Rumors of War

June 28th, 1914. Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austrian Empire, made an unwise visit to Sarajevo, Bosnia. There was a growing Bosnian separatist movement, calling for Bosnian autonomy from the Empire and there had been numerous threats and rumors of violence directed at the Arch-Duke.

Ferdinand, intending to demonstrate that the Empire still had firm control of the region, kept his plan for an automobile parade through the Sarajevo streets.

Almost immediately, a hand grenade was thrown at Ferdinand's motorcade, killing an Austrian soldier in another car. Ferdinand's convoy changed course, but took an unfortunate turn and became lost- soon, his car was stopped by a man named Gavrilo Princip- according to some accounts, Princip was the same man who had thrown the grenade earlier. In any case, he took advantage of the chance encounter; Princip shot Ferdinand and his wife, killing them both.

And World War 1 began.

Austria accused Serbia of aiding the Bosnian rebels, specifically that they had sponsored the Black Hand Gang, a slavic nationalist society that had carried out the assassination.
Austria warned Serbia that it had had better get it's act together. The Austrian army began mobilizing in anticipation of an invasion of Serbia. Diplomacy failed when a 10-point treaty fell through over the issue of Serbian sovereignty. War between Austria and Serbia seemed inevitable.
Serbia, lacking the might to confront Austria-Hungary alone, asked it's long-time ally Russia for help. Russia obligingly agreed and began to mobilize it's own forces.

Austria, not wanting to engage the Russians alone, called on it's ally Germany for help. Germany agreed.

This alarmed the French, who called up their army.

Germany had been secretly working on the Schlieffen Plan, which detailed a two-front war against France and Russia in the event that Russia were to begin marshaling it's army- which it had just done. The German command believed that it had a six-week window of opportunity to conquer France (which was supposed to a cakewalk) before it would have to face the Russians.

On Aug. 14th, the Germans invaded France via Belgium;Belgium had a defense treaty with Great Britain and the 1839 pact was invoked- Britain began preparing for full-scale war. The rest is, as they say, history.

Clearly, the framework for this war was in place for years before the assassination of the Arch-Duke provided the catalyst, but one has to wonder what might have happened had Princip and his Black Hand Gang failed in their murderous plan.

It was WW1 that ended the reign of the German Kaiser, which led to a tumultuous period in German politics, a period from which Hitler's conservative National Socialist Party emerged triumphant, which of course led to World War Two- the second "War to End All Wars" waged during the first four decades of the 20th century.

An ill-advised visit. An errant grenade. A bad turn down the wrong street. A chance encounter between an assassin and his target. Two shots.
A series of accidents, violence and blunders that irrevocably changed the course of human history.

In that context, the fate of this man seems crucial to the current global crisis of violence:

Pakistani dictator General President Pervez Musharraf is no stranger to assassination attempts- his outwardly pro-USA stance has caused him to be quite unpopular with a significant portion of his own population...unpopular enough that Pakistan is currently under a state of military lockdown as Pervez struggles to remain alive and in power.

Should Musharraf fall, a number of things could happen. The possible outcomes run the gamut from 'so bad that I am afraid to write about them' to 'so bad that I am afraid to think about them'. What will the USA do when two or more of it's allies go to war with each other? Which side, if any, will the US support publicly? Will it be the same people that we support privately? It's very hard for us, as citizens, to know. This problem is compounded by the fact that we Americans, as a society, don't really care, despite 5,000 years of history that provide clear examples of what happens when the citizens of a powerful, overreaching empire become complacent towards their leadership- which they always do. Always.

Empires fall. Egypt, Greece, Persia, Rome, Ottoman,France, Russia, England, dozens more...all had one or more empires, all have fallen. I'm trying to console myself by thinking that America is not an Empire - but that's a lie and I know it.

These are interesting times.

Kurds And Why

It's time to start imposing mandatory drug and alcohol screening on all three branches of Government. Let's start with Nancy Pelosi. I would like to know exactly what combination of chemicals makes this seem necessary or timely:

House speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday said she planned to put the bill before the full House of Representatives. The House foreign affairs committee last week branded the Ottoman Empire's World War I massacre of Armenians a genocide, angering Ankara.

Armenians say at least 1.5 million of their people were killed from 1915 to 1917 under what they describe as an campaign of deportation and murder by the Ottoman Empire. Turkey bitterly disputes the number of dead and the characterization of the killings as a genocide.

Well, duh. This genocide is a matter of international historical record. The Democrats finally take control of Congress and they use their new clout to catch up to Woodrow Wilson?
After WW1 and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, President Wilson cited the Turkish massacres of the Armenians when he recognized the need for an independent Armenian state in a 1920 message to Congress:

May 24, 1920. — Read; referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and ordered to be printed.

Gentlemen of the Congress:

On the fourteenth of May an official communication was received at the Executive Office from the Secretary of the Senate of the United States conveying the following preambles and resolutions:

Whereas the testimony adduced at the hearings conducted by the subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations have clearly established the truth of the reported massacres and other atrocities from which the Armenian people have suffered; and

Whereas the people of the United States are deeply impressed by the deplorable conditions of insecurity, starvation, and misery now prevalent in Armenia; and

Whereas the independence of the Republic of Armenia has been duly recognized by the Supreme Council of the Peace Conference and by the Government of the United States of America: Therefore be it

Resolved, That the sincere congratulations of the Senate of the United States are hereby extended to the people of Armenia on the recognition of the independence of the Republic of Armenia, without prejudice respecting the territorial boundaries involved...

He also invoked Christianity as part of his declaration. We need to protect Christians, said Wilson:

...I make the suggestion in the confidence that I am speaking in the spirit and in accordance with the wishes of the greatest of the Christian peoples. The sympathy for Armenia among our people has sprung from untainted consciences, pure Christian faith, and an earnest desire to see Christian people everywhere succored in their time of suffering, and lifted from their abject subjection and distress and enabled to stand upon their feet and take their place among the free nations of the world.

Two years later Armenia was swallowed up by the godless Soviet state and subjected to the tender mercies of Joe Stalin. Wilson could have sent US troops into Armenia and started the Cold War thirty years early- with the US and the USSR waging a proxy war on Armenian soil- but he didn't.

What he did do was publicly acknowledge the genocide committed by the Turks. Doesn't Pelosi know this? If not, why doesn't she? The term 'genocide' was not in use at the time, but the size and scope of the massacres and atrocities were well-known when Wilson condemned them. It was not a secret in many countries not named Turkey.

Why is Pelosi introducing this bill now? It does nothing but modernize the language of Wilson's lip service- and piss off Turkey, our ostensible ally. We have considerable strategic resources at risk and seemingly little to gain. Among the people who do stand to gain from this action are the oil companies, who can jack prices and increase profits again as soon as this stupid debacle starts fucking up the world's oil markets- which happened about an hour ago as of this writing. It would also make the rich Armenians in Pelosi's district happy- at the consternation of everyone who isn't a wealthy member of the Armenian Diaspora movement.

Here are some facts about Armenia, courtesy of the CIA:

-Armenia is an aggressor nation. Armenia has been militarily occupying 1/8th of neighboring Azerbaijan for over ten years. This has displaced nearly a million people, perhaps more.

-Armenia was the first nation to declare itself insane, circa 300 A.D.

-Armenia is a Christian nation in a Muslim neighborhood.

-Armenia has no oil.

-Construction of a natural gas pipeline between Iran and Armenia has been completed and it is scheduled to be commissioned by April 2007. Economic ties with Russia remain close, especially in the energy sector.

-Nuclear power plants built at Metsamor eliminated the chronic energy shortages Armenia suffered in the early and mid-1990s, but those plants are under international pressure to close.

--------------------------


Why are we sticking it to the Turks now?

Could it have anything to do with Turkey's decision to attack Kurds in Iraq, Kurds who are also ostensibly on our side? This development seems to have gotten almost zero press coverage despite the fact that it threatens to make Iraq even more unstable than it already is.

It gets more interesting. Muslim-dominated Azerbaijan- the same Azerbaijan that has been at war with Armenia since, well, forever- does have oil. Lots of oil. But it's been hard to develop because of geographical difficulty and political instability- getting the oil to the West is a real problem. Currently, the oil is being pumped via a pipeline that crosses Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, who share in the revenue. Not surprisingly, corruption is rampant in all three nations.

Now take a look at the map below. Imagine that tensions between Turkey and the US lead Ankara to shut down that pipeline. Georgia isn't a very stable nation either, so events there could disrupt flow as well. Do you see any alternative routes to the West?

Which country would you have to invade?

Hint: It starts with an I.





Hopefully, that won't happen.

According to breaking news, we have just won the Iraqi war!

It's been said that our reason for staying in Iraq is to fight an organization imaginatively called 'Al-Queda in Iraq'- an organization that didn't even exist until after we invaded.
Apparently, AQ in I are close to becoming non-existent again, which means we can bring all of our troops home right away.

We won! That's about the worst news BushCo could hear. It means they no longer have an excuse to snowball their for-profit war machine. I expect Bush will make a speech tomorrow announcing our victory and promising that our troops will be home by Christmas. Right?

I'm kidding. He won't do that.

The funny thing is, if he did do that, his approval ratings would soar and and the GOP's 2008 chances would rise with them- but it would shut down the Blood Money Machine.

If Bush's loyalties are to America and it's troops, he will use this face-saving 'out' and start a military withdrawal even if it means that a lot of corporations will lose money in the short term.
'Turn your swords into plowshares', Bush could advise the disgruntled war profiteers.
It's not a bad concept.

If his loyalties lie anywhere but with the American people, he will keep us in Iraq indefinitely.

What's your guess?

Roots of Bitterness

This is the school paper of Warren County High School, circa 1984. I was on the staff of the paper but my teacher didn't like any of my ideas, hence I rarely participated in class.

My first proposal was to change the lower-case 'o' in the masthead to upper-case and remove the useless dash between 'Co' and 'HI': WA-CO HI-LIGHTS.

It's still an eyesore and illiterate as fuck-all , but at least it's a little more symmetrical.

Better yet, we could change the name to anything but 'WA-Co' - howza 'bout 'The Warren Piece, or Warren Speaks', you know, a pun on the book...by Tolstoy...that one. No, we don't have a copy in the school library...in fact , our school library is a 'hand-me down' collection from the old, shuttered middle school and is largely comprised of juvenile fiction and textbooks from the 1950's and 60's.
I would like to do a news article about our suck-ass library.
May I do that?

No.

May I write an article questioning the validity of my 8 am American Government class? Most mornings we watch a live broadcast of the Phil Donahue Show until the bell rings. I suspect that my teacher, who is also the girl's basketball coach, knows absolutely nothing about American Gov't and I think that the student body is poorly served by her lack of knowledge.
May I interview her and find out just how much she does know about the subject she allegedly teaches?

Yes, but you can only ask her about sports.

Oh. Well, may I do a series of articles on how to play hooky without getting caught?

No.

May I write a 'fluff' piece about fuzzy animals and how cute they are?

No, because Melissa is already writing one. But that is a good idea.

Can I buy ad space in the HI-LIGHTS and use it to sell my old term papers and book reports that I wrote for my other schools?

Are you trying to get me into trouble?

No, I'm looking for a story. I don't have any assignments. Can I at least re-write some of these articles?- they are wrong. Even the layout is a mess.
(Note: This was an Honors class, not the "special needs" project that it looks like- I think the headlines speak for themselves)
Look:


Have you read this part? , I asked. It's nonsense.


This doesn't mean anything. Even in high school, this sort of sloppy writing drove me nuts...
I recall pointing out just a few of the flaws in the 'editorial' piece" quoted above:

-How can the something be both "elementary" and "not basic at all?"

-The " basic needs" are food, water and shelter. Those have never changed and they never will.

-"Thousands of years ago, Greek and Latin were the basics..."
I thought they taught History here at Warren County...'thousands of years ago' is absurdly vague, but if you were lucky enough to have been 'educated' then , there's a good chance you were instructed in Hebrew, Tibetan, Sanskrit or hieroglyphics...and isn't Latin essentially a Roman corruption of Greek, the latter being the last of the Hellenic tongues and the former being the first of the Italic ?
( Please, no umbrage from the Umbrian crowd)

There should be classes for this stuff, I opined without welcome.

- "Instead of the basic needs being reading, writing and arithmetic, we need more computing, communications and calculations to succeed."
According to my calculations, your communication fails to compute. If writing and arithmetic are NOT communication and computing/calculating, then what exactly are they?
Please don't use words to answer that question, as you obviously do not understand words.

-There is no such thing as a fractional high school diploma; one cannot obtain a "diploma in fractions."

Can we please publish some articles that don't make us look like we just fell off the DogPatch turnip truck?

I am getting frustrated with your attitude.


I was at least as frustrated as my teacher.
Every time that I said something that was true, correct, or made sense, I would be ignored , laughed at and/or shunned.

The class was called Journalism. Weren't we supposed to be concerned about facts, accuracy and truth? Boy, I sure did have some dumb ideas back then...

All I was really doing was pointing out the obvious, but that was enough to separate me from my classmates- they even did an article on me:

I didn't have many friends at that school, but I did have a mustache that allowed me to buy beer for the kids with money.

Eventually, I became bored and stopped attending class altogether and started spending my days drinking beer in the woods with the same illiterate rednecks that I mocked in my interview.

After a few weeks of absenteeism, I was called into the Principal's office , where I was told that my chronic truancy was a show of disrespect for my teacher and for the school in general.

I asked my teacher if he had ever read his own paper. If he had, he'd have seen that the Feb. 1984 issue contained an interview with me in which I insult the school, the students and the entire town- my disrespect is public record-any 'real' journalist should know that.

After that I didn't have to attend Journalism Class any longer. I was given a grade of "D-" and banned from the newsroom. I was told that I was not to communicate with my teacher for the duration of the school year.

That D- grade knocked me off of the Honor Roll and ruined my dream of writing a series of self-help articles tentatively titled: "How to Make Honor Roll Without Attending Class."

That same year, I traded my Atari video game to a classmate for a cheap electric guitar and a Boss DS-1 Distortion pedal. I lost interest in computers and starting writing angry punk rock songs about my classmates.
That trade may have been the biggest mistake of my life. Had I not done that, I'd probably be richer than Bill Gates instead of being an unemployed guitarist.

----------------------------

Next: My First Gig.

Selling Jack

I recently inherited a new PC at work- one that runs on an 'operating system' known as 'electricity' . The old one used a system of springs, gears and wires and was 'booted-up' by turning a hand-crank for several tedious minutes each morning. This is how automobiles were started back in my childhood years, but shouldn't something as futuristic as a computer have an internal, electronic 'ignition' mechanism?
Like a button you could press or something?

Here is how a car was started back in my day, except instead of a smiling maiden doing the cranking, it would be me; standing barefoot in cold, ankle-deep mud:

Look at the date: Sept. 1911. By 1911 , advertisers were already using sex to sell cars - a technique apparently discovered before the invention of the automobile battery and 'hot-wiring'.
There is nothing accidental in the erotic composition of this picture, but please don't make me explain it.
I'm already distracted enough.

Check out what Crank Babe is wearing- in 1911 America had some really bizarre standards of dress for women- a repressive puritanical desire to cover everything.
Not unlike current Islamic standards, really:



Hmm...a little ankle , but no sash to emphasize the waist and I like the white gloves on the American lass better...
I have a crush on the model from that ad. I wonder what she's doing today?
Here she is in another ad.
This 1911 advertisement starts off by insulting the reader:

"Are You Lazy ?" it screams at them in the text.

If that ad were produced today , it wouldn't ask that question. It wouldn't have to.

Today, we are all lazy and we all know it, so why should we waste what little energy we have answering rhetorical questions?

Today the text would promise to help you lose weight or to overcome depression.
It would sell.

Again, there's nothing accidental in this picture.

Early Late Stories

I am nearly finished with a project that I only recently became aware that I was working on.
I've been learning my mother's story.

She and dad divorced almost as young as they married; Mom remarried (and later re-divorced) and moved to Evanston, Wyoming.
She spent most of her life living in the West- Montana;Utah;Wyoming- pursuing bad marriages and abusive relationships; alcoholic partners and cocaine husbands.

I didn't know her that well in life. I loved her and a peace was made before she died but I never really thought I understood her.

But I do. A little.

Mom spent entire years in near-total seclusion , a self-imposed estrangement from her children and siblings that lead me to believe that she had stopped caring, that she had abandoned us in heart as well as body.

I've been reading her letters and journals, sorting and scanning photographs that she had carried with her for as long as thirty years and it's clear that, if anything, she cared too much. Her pain caused her to withdraw into physical and emotional isolation, months spent drinking alone in remote Montana cabins or ramshackle Wyoming cottages.

Through it all, she maintained a somewhat erratic correspondence with friends of hers that I barely remember- it seems that my mother really liked to write letters, she received so many. I
I wish I had the letters that Mom sent but the ones she received have quite a bit to say; it's my choice to leave that for another time. I've heard their story and that is enough.

The few possessions she kept have their own tales.

In the X-mas photo, there's a painting, two figures on a road (a copy of a 'real' painting) that my father painted for her. It's on cardboard, a square cut from the corrugated side of a box.

The date stamp on the photo says "Jan.67", placing the setting as Christmas, 1966. I was 3 months old.

Today, ten years after Mom's death, I have finally finished sorting through her belongings. I have thrown some things away, donated others and some I will keep. My brother will get the rest.

One of the things I will keep is that painting. It's in a portfolio case of prints and pictures that she somehow managed to cling to through thirty years of drifting and drinking.

The painting reminds me that my father- whose whereabouts are currently unknown- once possessed a capacity for art, for hope and for love and that he has long since squandered those precious gifts.

It's a warning to me to never, ever take the things I care about for granted. It's too easy to lose everything if you do. Not knowing that simple truth very nearly cost me my own life, but I held on and I am not following my father's path. I hope.

The painting also tells me that although Mom told me to never forgive my father for a certain deed, that she must have forgiven him in some way or she wouldn't have kept that painting. She saw something in my father that I have never seen, but if she saw it, it was once there.

My mother is dead and my father is lost, but the painting is still here and so am I.

I've made many of the same mistakes as they, yet I'm here and they aren't. I like being here.
I can still feel the passion of art, the breathless touch of love and the driving force of hope that they must have once felt. I thought I had lost those things but I was wrong. They are with me.

I found something new in myself while I sifted mother's papers. I found forgiveness.
I can't forgive my father- there are limits to everything, and some trespasses I just cannot abide- but I can forgive her for telling me what he did and I can also forgive her for doing what she had to do.
Which was to leave her children behind.
It wasn't easy for her. She never got over it and neither did they.Until now.

Getting over it is my gift to her and to myself. So this year my Mother's Day gift is a few days early and ten years too late.

Mom, I forgive you. Can you forgive me?




Love,
Allan

Dr. Furter's Smoking Cure

The Rocky Horror Picture Show affected my life in at least two significant ways :

1) It made sure that I never became addicted to nicotine.

2) It confirmed my adolescent suspicions that I was a
heterosexual.

Let's start with the cigarettes... when I was 15, I got invited to go to the Midnight showing of RHPC at the Key Theatre in College Park, MD.
I was invited by some of my older friends who were , in my young eyes, 'supercool'.

They had weed, acid, booze and Susannah. I didn't really do a lot of drugs at that point, but I liked hanging out with the older stoner loners anyway. They made me laugh- they were all misfits and readily let me into their little group of outcasts.

Susannah was the older sister of one of my friends; she was a really old 17 and , I was to learn that night, she thought I was hot.

That's why I got invited- Susannah wanted me along.
I didn't know much about women then ( some things remain constant) so I was blind to Susannah's deft manipulations- as our group gathered around Andy's GMC Pacer, she waited until I got in the back and then pushed her other pals aside and plopped herself on my lap. There were seven or eight of us, so the lap-thing was mandatory- but she chose my lap.

Well, guess what?

About five milliseconds after she planted her nubile buns on my lap, I started experiencing this certain swelling sensation...at this point, I was still a virgin but I was pretty sure what was going on.

This uncontrollable swelling kept poking itself upwards, like it knew exactly where it wanted to go and nothing- not my Levis, not her panties, nothing- was going to stop it.

"This thing has a mind of it's own", I thought for the first, (but certainly not the last) time.

Of course, Susannah could feel this insistent, repetitive pushing against her fine, fine derriere. She knew what was going on alright- she wiggled around so that she was almost facing me , turned and gave me one of the most intense tongue-kisses I've ever had; grinding , grinding down, keeping perfect rhythm with her hips- it occurred to me that maybe she liked me better when I was swollen, so instead of trying to hide my condition, I pushed back.
So did she.
Repeat.
Repeat.

Aha! I was starting to understand what this was all about...all I could feel was my tongue sliding into the beautiful darkness of her mouth and this unknown ,but wholly natural-feeling pelvic combat taking place- completely out of my control.

There were six other kids in the car and we didn't pay any attention to them- someone tried handing us a joint, we heard them laughing at us but we didn't care- teenagers have been horny and shameless a long, long time before they invented myspace, you know...anyway, it was about a 40 minute ride to the cinema but I didn't make it that long.

Susannah could tell what was happening and she was right there with me...why are you speeding up ? I remember thinking...ah, the innocence of youth...anyway, when we got to the theatre, I headed straight for the restroom so I could discard my ruined underwear and maybe clean myself up a bit...

The Men's Room was full of transvestites.

See, at the Rocky Show, the audience dressed as the cast of the movie and the movie was full of campy cross-dressers (and some Meatloaf) - a lot of pre-movie 'costume' adjustments were done in the restrooms.

Here I was, barely 15 years old , still recovering from my first assisted orgasm and suddenly I was in a toilet full of trannies, looking for somewhere to ditch my scummy shorts.

Hmmm...well, almost everyone else in here has their pants off, I thought- and not all of the men were men- so I might as well get it over with...I dropped my jeans, pitched my nastified FotL's into the wastebin and used a wet papertowel to clean myself as best I could.

People were fucking in the stalls and sniffing blow off each other's body parts...nobody even paid me any attention. It was truly anti-climactic.

So I strutted back to our seats, dazed but needing more Susannah...I had never known that the inside of someone else's mouth could taste so good...I wanted her for every meal, forever and ever...ech. Sappy.

I was sure that after the movie, something very special was going to happen and it was going to be the best, most important thing ever...ergh. You know how kids are.

"I threw my shorts away", I told her.

She laughed and kissed me.

The sweet woman-taste was gone.

She tasted like tobacco, but honestly, I didn't care. I was 15 and all I wanted was more bouncing and grinding- I was pretty much oblivious to everything around me, which is no mean feat considering where I was.

After a long make-out session, she lit a cigarette.

Very sophisticated, she was.

She offered me one.

I accepted it and she lit it for me, using her own cigarette.

Then she kissed me and exhaled deep into my lungs.

This was a night of firsts.
That was my first cigarette.

It made me feel funny. Not in a funny-good way, like Susannah made me feel. The smoke made me feel funny-sick.

Very ill.

I puked on Susannah. All over her plaid skirt and her Doc Martens.

After that, Susannah was done with kissing me. She didn't even want to talk.
If Andy hadn't been a nice guy, they would have left me behind, 30 miles from home.

I missed my first lay because of a cigarette.

The only cigarette I have ever smoked.

Stay Out

Three radio shows this weekend- details in the sidebar--->

Local legends The Cashmere Jungle Lords will be interviewed during the second show- back in the 1990's I used to play in a band called Mr. Sensitive with the Jungle Lord's drummer- it'll be nice seeing those guys again.
I found an old Mr. Sensitive cassette from 1997 a while back and just finished transferring the songs to my computer. I can barely remember playing or recording this stuff- that's how wasted I was- in one of the songs I sing:

I wish I could get up
off of the ground
and wipe the yellow foam
off of my mouth
how come nobody told me
this is all there was
I'm floating up
throwing up
toilets full of blood

I wrote that in the mid 1990's.
In September of 2005 it came true.

Not only was my toilet full of blood; my tub, sink and floors were all generously coated. I was projectile vomiting little bits of my esophagus and upper GI across my bathroom walls.
I had drank myself to shreds and was bleeding into myself.
Badly.
I drove myself to hospital and fainted in the ER.
They let me out a week later.

Hearing myself singing about my own future death really freaks me out. It's as if I knew what I was doing to myself and I knew exactly what the consequences were, yet I kept going.
And going.
And going.
Until I had nowhere left to go but death.

I had to decide if I wanted to live, which meant a lot of work- harder work than I'd ever done in my life- and I'm a freekin' ant when it comes to work...

OR

I could grab a 12-pack and a 1.75 of Vodka and be dead inside a week.


I haven't had a drink in eighteen months.

Listening to that old song reminds me what alcohol has to offer. That it's never going to fully go away.

It's not coming back into my life. I have too much to do.

Great Gift Ideas

( New Note: This post is from last year and the year before and probably next year too...)


Christ, is it almost St. Valentine's day already? What a useless holiday. If you're in a happy relationship, you should be doing nice stuff for each other every fuckin' day without being forced to prove your affection by dropping Hallmark cards, chocolates and flowers on your lover's doorstep like a cat dragging home a dead mole to please the human.
Do any of you even know what Valentine's Day is about? Don't believe all that Catholic Claptrap about Romans and imprisoned martyrs and whatnot. As usual, count on the crackerjack Camelsback research staff for the real stories behind our false holidays.
Way back in ancient times, the evil American Sun Kings and Queens of Temperance declared that the rabble should sober up. This didn't sit well with the rabble, who quickly defected to more 'spirited' personality cults, led by charismatics like St. Bugs (Moran) and the legendary St. Alphonse (Capone). In the course of establishing the only religion honest enough to call itself Organized Crime, the two beatific bootleggers became fierce, bitter and violent rivals for the lucrative tithing of the parched and desperately sober masses.

Like any viable religion, Organized Crime soon sparked more than it's share of competition, internal conflict, warfare and corruption; and so, on Feb. 14, 1929, missionaries from the Capone Church, aided by Centurions on loan from the Chicago Police Legion , decided that the Bugs Boys needed some competition-stifling Reformation. They took a half-dozen or so Moran followers into a garage on Clark Street and nailed them to the wall with hundreds of .45 caliber Theses. We celebrate the gruesome deaths of these pioneering Mafia martyrs with roses and candlelight dinners. This makes poetic sense if your love life resembles mine; for your sake I hope that it doesn't.
If it does, I'm truly sorry. Maybe it'd help if I offered some priceless gift alternatives. By priceless, I mean worthless. Buy them for yourself, it's the only attention you'll get on the 14th. And no refunds.

THE CAMELSBACK SAINT VALENTINE'S DAY MASSACRE CATALOG FOR THE UNLOVED AND DEPRESSED:

EMOTIONAL TRAIN WRECK

No lights. No tunnel. Just derailment, gravity and inertia. You probably thought that you'd never need to wear a parachute on a train. You thought wrong.

A real bargain for only 76 cents!

EXPRESSIONS OF UNREQUITED LOVE

This could be that letter you wish that you'd torn up when you had the chance. Maybe it's that necklace you knew that she'd love-the one you purchased the day before she told you she wasn't looking for a relationship. Perhaps it's three weeks of unreturned phone calls. It might be a horribly embarrassing love poem or song that fell into the wrong hands.

Two lousy bucks.This item knows no limits , so don't be such a cheap-ass.

A LIFETIME TOGETHER

Well, you got what you wanted. Too bad it turned out to suck, but hey, there were some good times, weren't there? Weren't there? Live the same miserable day over and over for the rest of your pointless life while you brood about the way it could have been. Even your children will pity you.

If you have to ask, you can't afford it.

LONELY ALCOHOLIC MELANCHOLIA

He doesn't deserve you. Take another shot.

Buy yourself something nice. No one else will.

ENDLESS SEARCH FOR LOVE

Remember how your friends used to tell you that there was someone for everyone , and someday, somebody special will see you for the irresistibly sweet, kind and golden soul that you are?These days, they don't call you very often since they all got married and had kids. If they did , you'd call them liars.

Maybe throwing your money away will make you feel better.

BUY NOW!! TIME'S RUNNING OUT!

.

Can't See the Forest

Cool. A NYT travelogue of Flannery O'Connor landmarks. I love her stories but I don't think I've read her correspondence - for instance , I didn't know she was nearly incapacitated with illness, or that she wrote for three hours each day...interesting stuff.

This is a good description of notable O'Connor characters ( I have helpfully added the story titles w/ links) :

O’Connor’s characters shimmer between heaven and hell, acting out allegorical dramas of sin and redemption. There’s Hazel Motes('Wiseblood'), the sunken-eyed Army veteran who tries to reject God by preaching “the Church of Christ Without Christ, where the blind don’t see, the lame don’t walk and what’s dead stays that way.” Hulga Hopewell ('Good Country People'), the deluded intellectual who loses her wooden leg to a thieving Bible salesman she had assumed was as dumb as a stump. The pious Mrs. Turpin('Revelation'), whose heart pours out thank-yous to Jesus for not having made her black or white trash or ugly. Mrs. Freeman, the universal busybody: “Besides the neutral expression that she wore when she was alone, Mrs. Freeman had two others, forward and reverse, that she used for all her human dealings.”
( Also GCP, here's the entire short story-ed.)

The writer of the article lacks O'Connor's eye. The next paragraph continues with this:

People like these can’t be real, and yet they breathe on the page.

Later, the writer is describing his own travels through the 'modern' American South-(emphasis mine):

Strip malls have long since filled the gap between town and farm, and you now find Andalusia by driving past a Wal-Mart, a Chik-fil-A and a Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse, where a man shot his wife and killed himself a few days before I arrived. You pass a billboard for Sister Nina, a fortune teller who reads palms in a home office cluttered with votive candles and pictures of Catholic saints. (To judge from one consultation, she is capable of divining that a visitor is a bearer of dark sorrows, but not exactly skilled at pinpointing what those sorrows might be.)

These are the kind of characters and stories that O'Connor wrote about- the author of the travelogue denies their existence in one paragraph and describes them in the next.
He's surrounded by the modern version of O'Connor's world and he doesn't recognize it.

People like that can be real- they are real- and they are all around you: at work; in stores; at school; in mirrors- they are everywhere- if you know how to look.

WWHD?

After hearing Bush telling 70% of America to: 'fuck off, I'm the decidinator and I'm gonna invade Iran too!' it's become clear that BushCo never intended their conquest to end at Iraq, that indeed it was just the first step in a regional campaign encompassing the greater Middle East; and that the entire PNAC plot collapsed when Iraq didn't turn out to be the 'cakewalk' that the neo-cons claimed it would.
Well, duh, we all know this now...so:

Let's go back a bit to Sept 1, 1939. That's the day Germany invaded Poland, which caused much of the world to declare war on Germany.

They declared war on Germany because it is wrong for one nation to invade and occupy another nation merely because it wants to do so.

That's the reason we, as an international community, went to war with Iraq in the first Gulf War- they invaded Kuwait.

Anyway, back to 1939- by the time the nascent Allies got it together, it was too late for Poland, which, ironically, would have to wait a long, long time to be 'liberated' , as it went directly from Nazi to Soviet domination.

But imagine if the USSR hadn't attacked Poland from the east and that Germany was unable to
roll over the Poles and instead of easily taking control of Poland and going on to wage WW2 for the next 5 1/2 years, the bulk of the German Army had become bogged down in Warsaw, waging an endless defensive war against a fractious civilian resistance .

Let's say that after about four years of escalating German casualties and no tangible results in the Poland war, the German people start to wonder if their leader knows what the hell he is doing. Perhaps the German public becomes informed that one of the major reasons for the invasion was actually staged by the Government in order to justify the war they wanted so badly? Perhaps they would start removing the 'H' bumperstickers from their Volkswagens and start declaring their dissatisfaction by taking to the streets in angry demonstrations of what is now the majority opinion?

How would the German leader react?

First, he'd remind the civilians that he was The Boss.

Then his minions would insinuate that pointing out the Emperor's Clothes was tantamount to treason .

Then he'd declare war on Russia.

Filler

Child safety seats sure have come a long way since 1967...not that it really mattered when you were in the back of a VW Bug - the 1960's was an era of Big American Cars and a VW was unlikely to survive even a minor collision with one of the popular behemoths of the period...

I am not sure which Volkswagen this is- I remember one that had a large hole completely rusted through the rear floor and every once in a while we would lose a favorite toy on the highway.
Don't get attached to material goods was the lesson...

The space in the back of the car is where the beer cooler was kept. By the time I was six I could use a can opener ( you needed one back then) to punch two holes in a Schlitz can and hand it forward to the adult at the wheel.

After the adult had a few Schlitzes and the VW began weaving between lanes, my brother and I would watch the painted highway stripes appear and disappear through the gap in the car's floor. It was less frightening than looking out of the windows.

If we saw gravel or grass through the floor it was time to brace for impact.

In hindsight , it wasn't the safest childhood but at least we could go to school without getting shot (unless you went to Kent State) and almost nobody had to worry about getting gunned down in a shopping mall, as there were almost no shopping malls to be gunned down at.

Of course, if you were a young adult male , you stood the risk of being conscripted by the military and sent to Southeast Asia to stop the Communists from playing theoretical dominoes...eventually the Communists won- Communist Vietnam now makes cheap consumer goods that are exported to stores in American malls- malls which were just coming into fashion towards the end of the 'Nam war.

Ironic, isn't it?