I never thought I’d see the day when I implied that Richard Nixon had a shred of decency, but at least Nixon had the decency to commit his crimes in secret, whereas Bush commits his openly, and so far, with impunity.

1. There’s a lot I’ve always hated about the United States: the culture of waste and stupidity most people living there are so saturated with they can’t even perceive, the chauvinism, rednecks, corporate power and general greed and a couple other things. It’s not why I left, over 20 years ago, but it made being away a lot easier. But I still have my U.S. passport because I love what the U.S. stands for – the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, mostly, liberties unequalled in most other countries of the world, and the current attack on those liberties by people claiming to defend them sickens me. People who, if someone else did what they themselves are doing, they would call radicals and terrorists.

2. The U.S. media are so fucked in the head it amazes me, and I’ve always been cynical about the media. I mean, what is their product that they’re selling? An audience. You, being sold to advertisers. (Not me, pal, because I don’t watch television.) The media have always been biased, in every country in the world. I read 5 newspapers a day as part of my job, and each one has its bias, I’m reminded of this daily. But this has reached scary proportions now. Well, it’s always been scary, now it’s threatening. The media in the United States do not inform, they entertain and lull. It is Brave New World all over again, with a little 1984 thrown in. The U.S. media, actually, piss me off more than W. himself. Because W. has from the beginning played with a completely open deck, doing nothing more than faithfully serving his clientele – transferring the federal government’s $20 billion or so surplus to the military industrial complex via the bombing of Afghanistan, and installing a government there that will comply with the oil industry’s desire to build a pipeline through the country, which the Taliban opposed. I wish I could say there was some secret Bush conspiracy, but it’s no secret. The man is alleged to have pulled strings during the Vietnam War to avoid active service and eventually gone AWOL from the Texas National Guard for the last 2 years of his service; he’s alleged to have violated securities laws four times, abused drugs and what else? And what do the media say? Nothing. Why aren’t they asking him about this? Why is there no dissent in the mass media? Why are only bloggers dissenting?

Happy Independence Day, United States.

Hyperfiction

I was telling Beta about this website that has a form where you can type in your name, and it shows you your name in Egyptian hieroglyphs; but she already knew how to write her name in hieroglyphs.

I won’t mention, though, what grades she got this year, because there’s nothing more irritating than someone bragging about their kid, is there? If you want to know, send me a mail.

Do you aspire to coolness? Or cuteness?

Was it Frank Zappa who said that the American ideals of coolness and cuteness are, respectively, male and female versions of stupidity? Something like that.

I am reminded of that every time I try to be cool, or cute.

Xkot posted a good Alice Walker poem today, you should really go read it.

Happy Fourth of July, everyone.

When I get to work I open the window for fresh air and hang my suit jacket from the back of my office chair. When I leave the office to go someplace – out to lunch, to the WC or to another office, I pick up my jacket, put it on and go on about my business.

Only today when I picked up the jacket to put it on, a big honking black/grey spider was crawling around on it. It was not only big, it was extremely fast, which is nearly as bad as “big” in terms of spider threat. My first thought was, This explains the crawly, itchy sensations I had around my head and neck on the way to work today, and the odd, worse-than-a-mosquito-bite-and-itchy-in-a-different-way things on my hand. Then I held the jacket over by a pile of documents and herded the spider off with some sheaf of papers and he disappeared. He, or she.

Oooh, maybe it was a she and she laid a nest of eggs in my jacket!

Anyway, I was hesitant to put the jacket on after that interlude. In fact, I just went to the john, then returned to my desk and remained here without going out to lunch at all.

Later on, I was filing documents and picked up a stack and the fucker – whom I’d completely forgotten – crawled out and darted into another stack, triggering severe chest pains in yours truly.

One bad thing about this suit is it’s nearly black, roughly spider-grey in color. Great hiding place for arachnids…

To be continued?