Back.

What’s a red herring? It’s when you take something most people don’t remember and throw it into the mix to distract people from the original intent. Apparently, the Defense Department has enlisted the help of country music superstar Clint Black to help link the war in Iraq and the events of September 11, 2001, once again.

It’s being labeled by Allison Barber, deputy assistant secretary of defense as “the perfect marriage of both sentiments: commemorating September 11 and the importance of our freedom." Pentagon officials are hoping that the walk – which will be performed only by DOD prescreened walkers – preferably ones that don’t mind walking along a route for a free t-shirt and metal pin as long as it gets you a free concert and flag to wave at the end of it – will be emulated in all fifty states.

At some point it became classy to link the war in Iraq to 9/11, but the reality is, most Americans who believe Saddam Hussein had ANYTHING to do with the war in Iraq also believe that Wal-Mart is really looking out for the best interests of their customers; that McDonald’s hamburgers are part of a normal, healthy diet; that gastrointestinal bypass surgery is harmless, and that there’s bridge for sale in Brooklyn. The supporters of this theory also seem to overwhelmingly support Bush “no matter what”, and the continued dependence on foreign oil is driven by their SUVs – still purchased in record numbers.

And they’re also most likely to buy Barber’s story that while the people who organized and built the 9/11 memorial at the Pentagon hope to raise a bit more money for the fund, it’s going to be somehow un-American to protest the policies of the administration during this walk…because “supporting the troops” comes first on the agenda.

According to Barber, protesting the walk would be tantamount to "protesting the events of September 11 or protesting our veterans."

Yeah okay sure. This is from the same person whose chain of command said that domestic criticism of the administration’s policies by the news media inflames the insurgency in Iraq. This is from the same chain of command that sent Marines, Army boys, and plenty of civilians to die in rattletrap Humvees armored with the military equivalent of tinfoil. This is from the same chain of command that recommended a light invasion, that Iraqis would gleefully open up and shift over a new leaf.

It’s from the same chain of command that still seems to be trying to link 9/11 and the war in Iraq together – to justify a military quagmire that will, in the short and long term, destroy the economic and political power the United States has had in the world. One fudged assertion, one Downing Street memo proving unequivocably that George wanted to invade Iraq, one psychotic little boy with the power to annihilate anyone he felt like at his fingertips…

…no wonder people hate the United States. In a nation where a “Free Speech Zone” is topped with barbed wire and surrounded by chain link fencing; where speeches by public officials are interrupted by people demanding to know the truth; where the word freedom is stated so often it could possibly pass for “nonfreedom”...

Well, I want the freedom from the $3,500 every man, woman, and child in America owes for Bush’s folly. I want freedom from the increase in terrorist acts. I want freedom from the infringement of my personal liberties by the United States government. I want freedom from the rule of a tyrant. I want freedom from an oil industry gone mad with wealth and power. I want freedom from Halliburton and Bush and Cheney.

Make no mistake, this is not a freedom walk. It will be attended by pork-bellied pigs in too-tight t-shirts with men and women overfed to bursting by their fast food nation. This event will be carefully scripted and attended by the right kinds of people. There will be the right kinds of speeches made, the right kind of songs sung. This event is NOT American.

This “freedom walk” celebrates everything unholy about this president. This freedom walk continues to try to link 9/11 and Saddam Hussein. This freedom walk, in other words, is perhaps as far from “freedom” as you can get.

I love my country. I hate the terrorists who run it.

I never quite understood my best friend’s obsession with all things military. From the time he was a teenager through college, he watched military films, but as a pinko environmentalist from the Left Coast he was first intrigued by the military. Our first years in college were spent in liberal arts while Kerry got up at four AM every morning and drove the hour to the nearest ROTC center. But even then, my experience, direct or indirect to his military service, was the tax-free cigarettes and liquor available at the Class Six on the base, and the cheap – oh, how incredibly cheap – military clothing that was available to me via him. Even now, as I poke through the large numbers of coffee mugs from the various bases he was stationed at, I still wonder how our personal disconnects – me to civilian life, him to the military machine to figure logistics and (currently) to care for burn victims as a nurse managed.

But that’s nothing compared to the disconnects I have found between the cheap, flimsy support for the nation’s military that shows up and the people who actually have “supported” the troops.

From the minute that the order was given for the United States to enter Iraq, I have been chafed by the bumper stickers that say, “United We Stand” or “Support Our Troops” or the yellow ribbons plastered on windshields and side doors and tied to aerials. Historical accuracy aside (the yellow ribbon tied round the old oak tree was for an ex-con coming back from prison to know if his sweetheart still loved him and wanted him, not for the kids fighting in a war, as some would revision it). Chafed because, again, there’s been a disconnect.

I can’t pretend to understand military life. Though two of my cousins, two of my best friends, and my grandfather went through it, it’s a career choice that has never appealed to me. The cousins were Marines; my grandfather was Air Force. Greg was a tanker in the Army, Kerry was both an Air Force logistician and an Army ICU Burn Unit Nurse. I don’t comprehend the mechanics of living on or near a military installation – but I do know that communities tend to support the economic base. In many smaller cities around the country, that happens to be the military – from Tucson’s Davis-Monthan to Omaha’s Offutt, the closing or the relocation of a base eliminates jobs in the community. Wal-Marts fold, Burger Kings close down, and the clubs and the hot spots dwindle. Car dealerships lose their business. And many, many single mothers find themselves without a late-night job that gets them tips for doing very little, clothed in very little. So for a community that has a large military population, I understand why yellow ribbons would be so popular.

But why, then?

I got a chain letter last week from a co-worker, whose current mission is to send huge amounts of toys and goodies to an Air Force Squadron stationed in Iraq. The list of things is very specific – ketchup, mustard, barbecue sauce, foot powder, socks, candy bars, DVDs, CDs, anything “treatlike”. Reading through it, and having spent a good chunk of money on items for a food drive, I got irritated reading through it. I couldn’t understand why, though.

Why should I feel resentment at being asked to send military personnel a few things to keep them occupied? Was it because I felt their families should be the ones sending them candy and CDs and DVDs? Was it because I knew you could get Gatorade shipped by the crate? Was it simply because I knew in my heart that the war in Iraq was wrong; that the number of happy things I sent to boost the morale of the troops would never adequately prepare them for the ways in which they would die or lose limbs?

Or was it a purely selfish selfless thing – I was running a canned food drive, and the military “needs” were horning in on my charitable giving program. MY donation drive took a big hit – simply because it’s hip to love the troops. It’s cool to enjoy the look of someone in uniform. It’s considered “patriotic” to follow the line of the commander-in-chief.

When faced with two options, we take the one less traveled, by and large. “Support the Troops With Stuff!” is perhaps more appealing than “Make sure the kid on the corner has dinner tonight” – simply because that kid on the corner will be hungry every day for the rest of his life, and Supporting the Troops With Useless Plastic Junk only has to happen once in a while. It’s sexy to be Yellow.

And, realistically, the support of the military by buying and sending knickknacks is a safe way to express concern – either against the war or for the war. People can still say they’re against the war but trying to make the lives of the troops easier. People can use it as an expression of their fierce loyalty to a party line. And they can sneer at those who don’t give – like the people who didn’t see any reason whatsoever to stock up on plastic sheeting and duct tape, or who don’t have a “ready terrorism action kit” in their car or truck or home.

The fact that the Air Force Squadron – part of the supposedly best-equipped military in the world – needs “incidentals” to make their lives easier, like foot powder and gummi bears…that wears on me. It especially wears on me because it’s been three years with no end in sight to the mess we’re in. Each time I’m asked to support the troops reminds me that the people who demand support had been slowly eroding all the protections that the lower-class income brackets of the United States citizens who make up most of the military enjoy. National Guardsmen are being deployed for record tours to make up the shortfalls of the regular Army – and they are losing their jobs when they return home.

The assumption many of the Yellow Ribbons make is that everyone wants to support the military. And by and large, we do. However, the problem is, the distinction of supporting the military by SAYING you support the military, and the actuality of it through the payment of taxes and benefits to servicemembers are two entirely separate beasts. By supporting progressive reform, by supporting tax deferments and employment programs, retrainings, and social and health services for all Americans WITHOUT privatizing their health care…

With tax season just around the corner in the United States, supporting the military might mean not taking that tax deduction on your H2 Hummer vehicle that you use “exclusively for work”. It might mean not supporting military systems that are designed for Cold War applications. It might not mean “tax relief” for anyone. It might mean sticking by the military through the times of crisis. It might mean remembering that it takes more than a chain letter professing to support the troops through a meaningless request to “Send this to everyone you know! And Pray For Our Boys!” attached to some liberal-bashing “funny” paragraphs cribbed from Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter.

In some ways I wish I could say, “No, I don’t support the troops”. But I can’t say that – I have friends and family who are troops. I have former significant others who wear green underwear. Two of my acquaintances through the arts community are stationed in Afghanistan. I pay my taxes. I don’t cheat on them. But first and foremost, I’m still a native of this land, and bound to the rock and crag and wood and valley and stone. I have more love for the land where I was born than anywhere else. Put me in the headwaters of the river that flows through my hometown and I can navigate my way through every small crook of that riverbend, point out the places where the salmon and otters live, and tell where the orchards are. But the difference between loving the country and “supporting the troops” who are not directly fighting to preserve anything as concrete as the sandbar where we swam in the summertime, or the fresh sweet mountain runoff, well, there it is.

So I’m between Iraq and a hard place when it comes to the yellow ribbon. Should I ignore it and drive on, or is there something else I’m missing? I am beginning to think just no longer that interested in giving my all to the home team. I am right in thinking that the yellow ribbon – and the Yellow Bandwagon Patriotism movement that shows up whenever the military has a new extended conflict – are just justifications by an unwilling public to the problems of an ill-timed war, and a quick method to defer the tough questions.

Like why we went in the first place. Why we are getting our kids killed. And why, when they come home, they come home to a country that no longer has jobs or the interest to support them…or the problems they carry back with them.

This little puppy was written as a generic response to people who keep sending me chain letters.

if you find yourself thinking that I might reply with this to you, please fucking stop sending them.

You’ve received this because beyond all karmic impossibility, you’ve sent me a chain letter that asks me to forward said chain to as many people as I possibly can. Rather than do this, permit me to share with you a little story.

Years ago, I lived in Eugene, where there was a sizable homeless / alternative lifestyle group that enjoyed living in the downtown core. The best way to describe many of the kids who went onto the streets voluntarily is, “Loser”. Loser not because they were homeless, but because they chose homelessness – chose to leave their parents’ house and strike out on their own. And finding that said home cost a lot more than they were generally willing to stake out, many of these kids never figured out that stealing – especially from people with wallets, or barring that, college students – was wrong.

Usually I’d carry my wallet in my front hip pocket. Left, so that when I got out of the car I’d put my keys in my right pocket and the wallet in my left. One day, I bought a NEW wallet and finally replaced the old nylon-and-velcro number I had had since I was nine. The new leather wallet fit neatly into my front pocket, so I left the old one (which had some receipts and movie stubs in it) in my back pocket.

Within ten minutes it was gone – lifted, pickpocketed But what amused me was not that the thief had gotten my wallet, but rather the wallet that had gathered grime and grunk from sitting in my pocket for the past fifteen years. And my receipts for movies. And stubs. And grimy handwritten notes. And all the other crap that gets thrown away. I had a beautiful image of my friend the little thief digging through my wallet to desperately find nothing but trash – in a crappy old wallet. No credit cards, no money, no ID, nothing but receipts for Taco Time and sixty-five cent bagels.

Seriously, when was the last time you NEEDED a receipt for your bagel? Yet every time I get a bagel from my market down the street, I always have to get a receipt. It is either pressed into my hand along with the little white bag containing my cream cheese or it’s handed to me. I actually had to buy a bagel and coffee with a credit card one morning – didn’t think anything of it, except that somewhere my bank is looking at my receipts and thinking, “We should sign this man up for our Bagel Credit Card.” I’m sure Capitol One has a program for it.

But once I get that bagel receipt, man, do I hang on to it. I have this irrational fear that if I don’t get my bagel receipt, maybe men in blue uniforms with a BAGEL POLICE badge on will stop me on my way out the door. “Where’s your receipt?” I’d look back at the cashier, who would have suddenly disappeared. I wouldn’t have my receipt! No proof that the bagel I held had been paid for! My bagel, my precious bagel would be confiscated, and I would have to cough up another sixty-five cents, which I wouldn’t have, so I’d have to go back to call the bank to show that I had authorized a two dollar and eleven cent transaction for one cup of coffee and one raisin bagel with cream cheese in a seedy back room…or at least one that hadn’t been cleaned up after the last batch of poppy bagels. These two big Bagel police (I always envision them as oversized, younger versions of Mel Brooks, with yarmulkes, or bulky Dr. Ruth Westheimers) would sit me down with a bowl of chicken soup and begin the intense questioning.

“So, thought you could get a free bagel, eh? What a schlemiel.”

“You know what we love around here? Tough schlemiels like you.”

“What, you think you can get a bagel like this just by walking in?”

“Uh, no, see, I paid for it and got my cream cheese…”

“You got cream cheese? Of course you got the cream cheese, all goys get the cream cheese, but where is the lox, schmart guy?”

“What, he stole the lox??”

“Of course he stole the lox, you think he stops at the cream cheese?”

“Yeah, but the lox, I mean, I get the cream cheese, but why would you steal lox? I mean, the lox. That’s precious.”

“No no, see, I just bought a raisin bagel.”

“You put lox on a raisin bagel?”

“No, no! I prefer my bagel without lox.”

“You don’t like lox?”

“How could a nice bagel-stealing boy like you not like lox?”

“Are you geschmicket?”

“What the heck does that mean?”

”We’re asking the questions here, Mr. Schmartypants. We don’t ask you what you mean, eh, you don’t ask us what geschmicket means. What do you mean by that, anyway?”

“How should he mean, with my hip?”

“Enough with the hip, already!”

Eventually the cashier would come back and everything would be cleared up, and we’d all have a good laugh, but then I’d screw it up by asking if I could have a Bacon Lettuce and Tomato sandwich instead of the bagel. This is what goes through my mind as I get my bagel in the morning. Maybe I don’t get enough sleep at night. I don’t know. I do know I’ve been considering scones, which are more expensive but don’t carry the same kind of penalties if you forget your receipt. I mean, what type of person, really, would steal a scone? And at the very least, the Scone Police would be nice and ask me if I wanted a cup of tea and a good English Player before they beat me senseless with their handbags.

At any rate, this is why I collect my bagel receipts, and being lazy, I usually just stuff them right back into the wallet I used to take out money to buy the bagels until I remember to haul them out and let the cats play with them. Which makes the wallet nice and thick, but seeing as the ratio of paper with value to paper collected to prevent arrest by the Bagel Police is about the same number as independently wealthy Mall-Wart employees to ones at the poverty level, it doesn’t really mean a whole lot as to my personal value. One thing’s for sure – I have a paper trail, so I can always prove I bought my bagels fair and square.

So the point is, I took every chain mail letter, email or otherwise, that I would get that month, print them out into ten copies (just as instructed), and place them lovingly in a cheap dime store wallet. The paper fattened the wallet nicely. Then I’d walk around the area where you were likely to be mugged unless you spent $50 or more a day getting your hair into just the right shape to piss off your parents, and dance with glee every time one of them stole my decoy wallet.

Then I’d go buy a bagel and save the receipt and watch through the window as the kid would frantically try to get his friends to take the copies of the chain letter. It was a little like watching a leper try to convince people to let him give them facials, except without the rotting skin bit. But the expressions on his friends’ faces were priceless.

I’ve always been like this, though. I wave, smile, and call in to the highway hotline if you cut me off and slow down repeatedly. I prefer seeing somone lose their temper over something they did to themselves than to strike out in righteous retribution. I’d rather see the people who bother me step on a rake and give themselves an all-body ice cream headache than to sue them for using a leaf blower (true story, my old neighborhood had some pretty litigious folks in it). I’d rather see someone suffer from bad karma than to develop some of my own in an enforced dealing of it. Which leads us to the rationale of my sending you this response.

Why are chain letters bad karma? Well, for instance, they’re incredibly arrogant. Preying on the superstition of people, they always request you forward to X number of people or SOMETHING TERRIBUL will happen. If you do, then something GOOD (your dog gets his teeth flossed for free, your wife and kids come back from CSD, you get a new gas-guzzling SUV, those nasty charges get dropped against you, and maybe even something SPECIAL might happen.) But they’re incredibly arrogant because their originators believe that somehow their words have so few socially redeemable qualities that they would ordinarily be ignored – except for the “If you agree with this forward it on to everyone you know kthankxbye oR BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO YOU!!!!101!!!” tagline. Welcome to Superstition Wonderland – enjoy the ride and keep your fingers crossed or BUNNIES WILL DESTROY YOUR CAR TIRES!

But these aren’t the worst offenders of the bunch. Better yet are the heartstring tuggers. Listen up, kids. She’s had a brain tumor for twenty years. Chances are it’s either not going to get better or she’s been REALLY good about faking illness to stay home from school. Break the chain. Let her die. The Make-A-Wish Foundation nearly hired people at Walt Disney World to kill her on the Dumbo Drop after the fourth trip to Disneyland. It’s her TIME. Let her go. And STOP SENDING ME THE STORY ABOUT HOW SHE LOST HER SPLEEN TO A RABID GIRAFFE! I don’t care. I don’t want her to get better. It may make me a horrible person for saying so, but maybe there’s a REASON the doctors can’t cure her. Maybe if she grows up she’ll become the Giraffe Hunter and hunt them to extinction. There’s no telling what evil this child is capable of.

Most recently in the irritating list are those Patriotic™ emails that encourage you to:

“Support the Troops!”

“Pray for Jessica Simpson as she goes on her multimillion-dollar tour to support the troops (and gets paid for it)!!”

“Remember, God needs to be returned to schools and government!”

“Those damn liberals are changing our American way of life! If you think that wholesome American values mean dog tags, not dog collars, forward this to all the people you know!”

“Pray for the President in His Time Of Need!!!”

For the record:

Supporting the troops means paying your taxes and voting for presidents who don’t start frivolous wars. You want to support the troops? Pay your damn taxes, sell your H2 Hummer, buy a Honda Accord hybrid, and quit supporting businesses that headquarter themselves in Barbados to avoid paying corporate taxes to the United States. Revive the system of checks and balances that keeps power out of the hands of one man. Challenge the elimination of your civil rights. Hold the men and women of the armed forces accountable for their actions. Make sure you elect leaders who send them into battle fully equipped.

Jessica Simpson is doing just fine – anyone that has that kind of hair can’t be living a miserable life. And getting paid to hop around the globe and lip-synch to a crowd of people is nice work, if you can get it. Heck, I can lip-synch to just about anything. I suppose it takes a special kind of dedication to lip-synch to Jessica Simpson songs, though. Even if you ARE Jessica Simpson. There are some things nice girls just shouldn’t have to do in this world. Hell, I wouldn’t want to force anyone to lip-synch to Alanis Morisette’s songs.

Next: God is probably just fine not doing anything in the government (The Man is probably a lot happier in civilian life than he would be working the crowds, disciplining unruly kids or passing bills he didn’t read – chances are he’s got a full-time job trying to keep us from screwing up his Creation without getting directly involved in the screwing-up process. Involving The Big Guy in politics is just asking for trouble, and not the kind that involves self-righteous idiots running around worshipping grilled cheese sandwiches that someone decided looks like the Virgin Mary. More like the Old Testament Smite Your Butt type.

And last, if your way of life DIDN’T get changed, you wouldn’t have this wonderful avenue of harassment (namely, EMAIL!). How did the Internet get built? Originally, it was a network of computers designed to keep the country running in the event of nuclear war. But when that turned out to be pretty unlikely, the Department of Defense turned it to a much more profitable purpose – porn websites. That’s right – depravity and naked flesh doing interesting thing with gardening implements for the gratification of sweaty people huddled in front of a computer screen built the Internet into what it is today. So go ahead and pray nightly that the sins of the world will be washed away, but remember that without chaos and entropy, nothing changes, and there’s no room for progress.

Your way of life changes each time you buy a new motorhome, or you install cable television, or you go up in personal net worth. If your “way of life” is changed dramatically every time I put on a kilt, you’ve got a very unstable life indeed. I, a self-professed damned liberal who enjoys changing our American way of life, am not the originator of the Cultural Butterfly Effect. (Although in some way I do wonder if the Amazonian butterflies are angry ex-patriates Democrats wreaking vengeance upon Florida…)

If I DID have the power to change the American way of life, I’d probably just have everyone stop shopping at Mall-Wart (Always low wages! Always!) and prevent them from buying cheap Made in China crap they don’t need.

Oh, and for every person praying for the president, there’s a whole lot more praying for a repeat of the pretzel incident. (Even the dogs – they were licking him for the salt. God forbid anyone tells him about Cheetos.)

And don’t for one second believe that sending it with a one-sentence tagline that says, “Some of his stuff is kind of out there, but I agree!” mitigates any kind of responsibility on your part. That does nothing for nixing your bad karma in the form of a chain letter. In fact, you know what? I don’t care if you don’t agree with everything the writer says. You can’t have disagreed that much – you forwarded his tripe on, and you didn’t make commentary on it other than “I AGREE!” Here’s your fleece. Go join the others. The guy with the crook will tell you what to do.

So here’s what I want to say, really.

1. I don’t have to forward this on. In point of fact, my breaking the chain of this letter is probably the best thing for it. By refusing to forward this crap, I’m raising the bar of discussion. I’m making sure the marketplace of the mind isn’t getting contaminated by the equivalent of the Weekly World News.

2. I am under no obligation to you, to the little diseased wretches who continue to suffer from rare afflictions and want attention because they’re dying, that kid who writes the incredibly bad poetry with the disease in the hospital who was featured on Oprah, Dr. Phil, or anyone else to use my Internet connection to pass along your dogma. There is no onus; there’s no “Dittohead!”, there’s no miserable Men And Women Of The Armed Services out. Go out and DO something to change the world if you don’t like it. DO NOT send me a damned email in the delusional hope that by hitting thirty keys you’re going to make one lick of difference.

3. There is no Microsoft miracle email tracking device. The French are not really going to be hurting if you pour out all your French wine, and you stop eating French fries (they actually call them fried potatoes, and they get most of theirs from Idaho. Go figure). If you really must let the world know that you believe the president is a really swell guy, do so in the privacy of your own home, and at the very end, scream, “AND GOSH DARN IT, PEOPLE LIKE YOU, GEORGE!” That’s great. You’re welcome to your opinion and/or delusions of grandeur. KEEP IT OUT OF MY INBOX.

Yeah, I may be pretty rude about it, but I’m tired of this crap. I’m tired of filtering my email for FWD: FUNNY! I’m tired of biting my lip every time someone sends me a crappily-written “joke of the day” that’s a vicious dig at someone else. I’m tired of racism masquerading as “concerned patriotism”. I’m tired of listening to people rag on about how horrible 9/11/01 was. Get over it. Get over yourself. Get over the role you think you play in this world, and get over the fact that you can spread YOUR message out to the people. Ever wonder what would happen if you amplified a German shepherd barking? Wonder how annoying it would be if everyone had an amplified German shepherd in their backyard? Maybe German shepherds wouldn’t be so scary or effective any more.

So. I’m breaking the chain, but I’m breaking it in such a way that the onus is on YOU, dear sender. If, within ten minutes, you DON’T share this little story with the chain of people you have distributed it to, I’ll simply note that it’s fairly easy to backtrack through the email addresses listed on this email and find every single person who this was sent to and who forwarded it on. And using that list, to sign you all up for Amway Sales Presentation Scheduling.

I’m not vicious, I’m just retributive. You send me useless, annoying, irritating spam, I’ll forward you to the Nigerian Minister of Finance as a potential customer.

If this is your first time getting this response from me, don’t worry, I still like you. You, however, are the lucky recipient of my vitriolic anger towards a trend of American society that has cheapened the political process – and cheapened the way we interact. I would dearly love to get a nice long conversational email about your life. Instead I get, “SUPORT TEH TROOUPS! IF YOU DON’T AGRE U R A TERRORIST!!!”

It bugs the hell out of me. So quit it. I’m a rational, intelligent human being with plenty of interest in world politics. I have my own way of contributing to society. This is one of them. Send me no more chain mails. Send me no more “I AM A PATRIOTIC SHEEP!” chain letters. Send me no more “OMG THIS IS SO IMPORTANT!” I do have a subscription to the New York Times and the Washington Post. I do have functional eyes, and I distinctly remember being able to read. I believe those sources are a tad more factual than rumors forwarded around on the Internet.

If you’ve read this far, you get a cookie. Thanks, and just don’t forward me any more of these things. It took me a lot more time to write this (by a factor of three hundred) than it did for you to hit “Forward” and send me that crap. So thanks for reading. And I’ll get your cookie as soon as the Nigerian Minister of Cookies sends me those guaranteed million cookies the Nigerian president is hoarding from the rebels in his country and sending to me for safekeeping.

<>I belong to a Tribe.net tribe called Cheap Mac and Cheese HOOORS. Basically, we get together, go out once every two weeks to a restaurant, eat mac and cheese, and leave. It must be macaroni of some kind with a cheese topping. Nothing else can be consumed. Anyway, about a month ago we went to a bar in downtown Seattle where we were told we would have mac and cheese.

<>It was not so.

The tribe began to contemplate violence – not just any violence, but the violence that can only be inflicted by a petite 30-something professional woman on three vodka martinis and an unsteady pair of stiletto-spiked three-inch heels. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, just nod, smile, whimper, and pretend like you’ve never seen a grown man in a chef’s uniform cry. I don’t pretend to comprehend this girl, but believe me, if you see a perky little customer service manager heading your way with a big smile and one hand behind her back, it’s time to rethink exactly how innocuous a pickle fork could be.

As soon as it became readily apparent that Angel of Mac and Cheese had scared off the chef with dire threats of surgery (using common dining utensils, an uncooked bratwurst, and a martini shaker as props), we settled in for burgers and fries (with tons of cheese on both). Once they arrived, Angel and her minions began watching the Seattle Storm championship (being held not three blocks away from us at Key Arena) on the television screens. Red Sox fans were grunting in their native tongue off to the side, trying in vain to get the bartender, a beefy woman named Grunhilde (I’m not kidding) to switch the channel to the baseball game. “It uhd bee weecked smaaht, yeh, dat baw gawme is aganna make hestory.”

Finally Grunhilde, in the midst of shaking yet another martini for the Prada-clad masses seated at my table, threw the shaker right up in the air. Robear, a balding man dressed far too stylishly to be considered potential husband material, clapped hollandaise-sauce encrusted hands and screamed like a nine-year old girl, “THEY WON!” After much ribbing from the grunting males at the other end of the table, Robear coughed and pointed to the empty helium balloon he’d inhaled right beforehand.

Not five seconds later does a HORDE of women, sensibly dressed in unbelted blue denim jeans come storming (heh, like the pun? Get it? Yeah? Good.) through the front door, bellowing, “SEATTLE STORM, BAY-BEE!”

The Red Sox look up, the Mac and Cheese HOORS whip out their cameras, and immediately begin documenting an urban legend in the downtown area – the spiky mullet. We had never seen such a clan, and what magnificent specimens! From the subtle, quiet Melissa Etheridge 90s look to the in-your-face mulleting of a tiny long-legged woman with a giant Styrofoam (We’re #1!!) finger still deliriously stuck on her hand, all forty of the forty-somethings sported, in one way or another, a Mullet.

Now, it should be mentioned that Red Sox fans – at least these Red Sox fans – were Southies. South Red Sox fans are the diehards. They are the boys on the docks. The ones for whom moving across town is something of an adventure. And to say nothing of moving to Seattle, where the most dangerous part of your day was when the espresso hit your bloodstream and your heart jumped a little from the shock of it. No no, the Southies are a decidedly aggressive bunch. What was good enough for their fadda was good enuff fa dem.

Which means haircuts, too.

So immediately, once the Red Sox won THEIR game, all of the hats of the Red Sox fans went hurtling into the air, splattered with aerosolized grease particles and the remnants of Angel’s last martini. And suddenly…

A nightmare not commonly known in America, in this tiny little mahogany wood bar down the corner, before I had time to consider an escape from the horde, or even just mull it over…

The bar had become a multitude of mullets. Multiple mullets, indistinguishable from each other. <>

The Mac and Cheese HOOORS, dumbfounded, looked frantically for an escape. None was to be found – even Grunhilde had whipped off her hairnet and was letting loose the curls. I could almost hear the buzz of the clippers and the drawling voice of a Southie barber saying “Shawt on tawp, Long on da sides, right mac?”

I found myself asking for a Budweiser. Robear held a buffalo wing quizzically. Angel’s face had gone white, her nails clenched as her hair nearly flipped in stress, her bangs making a fighting attempt to stand straight up. We cautiously paid our tab and began sidling to the door before we were engulfed by the Horde once more, and began speaking strangely about lobsters and Samuel Adams beer being too expensive, or worse yet, describing the latest Indigo Girls’ CD as a seminal work of feminist musical theory.

Once outside, the HOOORS legged it up the street in doubletime, our half-eaten meal of burgers and buffalo wings rising in a gorge of a fashion designer’s nightmare. Could we dare tell the tale? Would we ever be able to face each other? Would Angel’s hair go back down anytime soon? And would Robear ever put down that damned buffalo wing?

Once at our cars, we quickly said our hurried good nights, and went home.

But to this day, you can still show Robear a picture of Toby Keith, and you may well see a man who faces grave danger each and every day grow weak and pale. For the mullets. The mullets have returned. And they grow ever more powerful with their allies.

Beware the Mullet. It wishes you nothing but harm.

Buffalo wing?

Huh. Interesting.

Seems this thing got popular all of a sudden. Six people asked me to trade links with them in the last few days. Specifically, to different blogs. From the escort in New York to the guy living in Japan on a schoolteacher's salary.

The closest thing I've found about this sort of thing lately is not so much that this is a flashy pretty blog with lots of neat stuff and wild writing. Truth be told, this is an overflow - if I haven't gotten my 2,000 words in a day, this is where the rest of them go.

So, a grand experiment. We'll do an honesty counter. If you read this, drop me a line, as indicated by that neat little link to the left. Say anything, from "You suck" to "Yeah, I read it. You still suck," to "OMFG!!!TEHterorist r getin ENCRuged by ur Stopd BLOG!!!! LOL10101! U ned 2 quti givn thm $pprt!!!"

Although sending the last one will probably result in the karmic equivalent of getting smashed in the head with a lead brick. (We don't use gold bricks to smash people in the head. The evidence locker tends to lose them. Lead bricks - cheaper, and just as heavy. Plus you can then melt them down and turn the murder weapon into little soldiers.)

So write and tell me if you read this thing, goddamnit. Because if you do, then maybe I'll clean up the pizza rinds in the corner and keep this from being the redheaded stepchild of my writing portfolio.

From the “No, no no, we’re a totally partisan newspaper that just really LOVES George W. Bush and his nepotist nest of ne’er do wells” Washington Post came this snarky attack on their rival, the actual factual “We Don’t Make This Up Or Let Condi Lead Us Around By the Nose” New York Times…

After disappearing to an undisclosed location around the time of the Abu Ghraib scandal, acerbic SecDef Donald Rumsfeld was seen prowling the Pentagon's fifth corridor on Thursday en route to do some radio interviews. When he passed a couple of reporters, including the New York Times' Thom Shanker, Rumsfeld quickly unsheathed his much-missed rapier wit.

"Thom, what are you doing here?" Rumsfeld asked.

A rather confused Shanker replied, "What do you mean, Mr. Secretary?"

With his sly smile, Rummy teased as he strolled on by: "I thought all the New York Times reporters were out working on the Kerry campaign."

Wit? Well, at least half of it.

Besides, who wants to be around a SecDef who rubberstamped the New American Torture Deal?

<>Ask the kid in the ICU burn unit whether the securement of 380,000 pounds of conventional explosives in the first moments of the Iraq War was really unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Consider carefully, though. The question may be answered the long way round. Because with anything else, and as every world leader has said about the Iraq conflict, it’s just not that simple. The answers just aren’t in black and white.

Specialist Dixon was the All-American kid in the middle of the best years of his life. A football star with a prom queen girlfriend, a good job back home and the plan to get out and go to college for five years, become an architect, and design multiple-family homes that people could afford in the tight housing market of Boulder, Colorado, Dixon knew that he was in the Army to not only do his part, but to do the job he signed up for.

The morning he and his buddy rolled into the center of Baghdad on a mission to escort a convoy of supplies, the same day that George W. Bush put a supplemental budget request for over $87 billion dollars to “supply our troops with what they need”, a bomb went off in the street. Five gallons of gasoline, mixed with dish detergent got detonated by a cellular phone in a roadside bomb with a pound of HMX as the main explosive device. Steel ball bearings, chunks of rebar concrete, and nuts and bolts were packed into the crude device, designed to blow outwards to a thin-skinned Humvee.

Dixon doesn’t remember it. All he remembers is seeing his best friend, Jay, who enlisted with him right out of high school; assigned to the same company, and his brother in arms suddenly missing most of his face. He doesn’t remember the chunk of shrapnel carried on a wave of homemade napalm searing his lower stomach muscles, or the body of the Humvee collapsing from the blast. He doesn’t remember the medic vomiting as he held the charred intestines of the blue-eyed blonde All-American boy with the picture of the pretty girl in his wallet – now soaked in chemicals and blood.

Specialist Dixon was a great, natural leader. Even as his medics hurried him to the helicopter, he argued with them to take his friend Jay first, since “Jay was pretty messed up, and that’s all I could think of.” He didn’t think of the pain that would come, dancing throughout his spine in rictus waves. He didn’t know he’d never taste Mom’s chili again, or that his face was splintered by small shreds of metal, or that a small bolt was still lodged in his skull – neatly installed, like a picture screw at the frame shop he worked at through high school to help pay for his sister’s private school tuition.

None of these things Dixon really thinks about now. Dixon fully admits to being an alcoholic and a morphine addict – because when you’re in the hospital and there’s nothing to take the edge off of the pain, morphine sounds really good. And the alcohol is the one drug he can take himself. His nurse gets it for him on prescription precisely because if he doesn’t have at least three beers a day, he gets the delirium tremens. It’s the good stuff – Sierra Nevada Bigfoot Barleywine, with a 10% alcohol content. Most of it seeps out of his upper intestine and into a small plastic container, cloudy with bile and stomach acid, but what he can get out of it

Specialist Dixon is missing his lower intestine – the small, curly bits of gut that process the rest of his food. His liver is gone; kidneys nearly failed, and the diaphragm that allows him to inhale and exhale on his own power is gone. His mother has quit her job to fly to take care of him, to hold his hand at his bedside. His face is still blistered with purple and red. He jokingly refers to himself as “The Human Pizza”.

Two months ago the love of his life told him she could not be with him any longer – and it was only after he had told her it was his fault that she moved on with her life. She had an abortion during his absence – after discussion that neither of them could be a parent, with him in Iraq and she going to community college and working during the day.

Four days later Specialist Dixon was coated in homemade napalm, and saw his best friend’s jugular spray-paint the inside of the vehicle.

It is ironic, Dixon tells me, that Jay and Dixon told each other that they would die to protect each other. Even after Jay said he worried he wouldn’t make it through, they forged a bond and slept together in the same tent, ate together, and did everything they could throughout the day as a team. Jay wrote to his wife that the pair of them were almost married, they did so many things together – from watching DVDs in the barracks to joining George W. Bush for Thanksgiving in Iraq. They watched each others’ backs. They talked a lot about politics and why they were there. And the both of them agreed that it was well worth it – worth the money they spent on their own body armor, worth the accessories, worth the new boots, the time away from family,

Then there was fire and red hot bolts searing through the cab of their Humvee, and without ever thinking about it, Jay held true to his word – he flung himself across the line of fire to protect his friend Dix, collecting over six hundred foreign objects in his government-issued body armor – without the ceramic plates that may have saved his life had they been issued to all soldiers before they were deployed.

Officially, Jay died from massive blood loss and fourth-degree burns, but unofficially, Dixon remembers cradling his friend’s hand and knowing that he was dead – not least because Jay’s hand was no longer attached at the wrist to the rest of Jay’s body.

Some of that might be nightmares – the delirium tremens hits Dixon every now and again, and combined with the Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, Dixon has nightmares. He sometimes doesn’t know what’s real and what’s not. But then he will reach down to the cavity of his stomach, where the muscle grafts from the backs of his thighs were taken to remake his belly. He feels the warm plastic of the catheters and the intravenous drips against his skin and sometimes they burn, and he screams, and his nursing team helps him remember he’s in the states, in a burn unit in San Antonio, Texas, recovering what he has left of his life.

Dixon’s mother told me she was preparing to bury her son. Not in the next month, or in the next two months, but in the next year, because that’s how much time her blue-eyed baby boy has to live. The doctors have been explicit about life expectancy. She started saving for a funeral, and has already bought a neat plot. She is a former project manager for a small firm, and she knows how to do things correctly. She is holding on, a small, tightly-wound person with wiry gray hair shorn in a sensible short cut, with a small, simple gold wedding band. This is her only son.

I only know Dixon and his mom because I write letters – letters that say, “I know that you are angry. I know you’re hurting. I know that nothing I say can bring you any peace – indeed, nothing that your leader did, or is doing, currently makes any sense or difference to what you’re going through.

I know that the last thing you want to hear is platitudes about how to win the peace or the war or the fight against terror. The only thing I know is that even though the government is ignoring you, and the body politik has swept you under the rug, you are not forgotten.”

Dixon and Jay are two casualties of the Iraq war. Jay is listed as a United States Marine Corps casualty on the Department of Defense’s website. If he dies, Dixon will never mark on that wall – because he came home.

But they are two of the lambs sacrificed on the altar of one man’s ego. They know it – their parents know it. They gave their lives because they believed in the greatness of America – not that Saddam had to be removed. They went and they fought believing their leader, George W. Bush, would make good on the promises that he would give them everything they needed to win. He believed so strongly in the promises of his commander-in-chief that everything would be okay for the military – from the supplies they needed to the bullets they had to ration out during engagements - that Dixon took out a Humvee they knew wouldn’t stand up to small arms fire, let alone a homemade incendiary bomb made from one pound of HMX explosive, four pounds of scrap metal, one container of Tide, and five gallons of American-taxpayer subsidized gasoline.

<>Dixon doesn’t blame George W. Bush for the lack of armor on his Humvee, or that his buddy’s body was the only shield between him and the bomb blast. Between hits of the morphine that get him in and out of painful coherence, he explains to his mother that Bush wasn’t there; couldn’t have seen the bomb. <>

But this morning when she turns on the news, she’ll see that over 380,000 pounds of explosive – including the HMX that shortened her son’s life expectancy from sixty years to eighteen months – vanished from an Iraqi munitions depot in the first few moments of the war. And she knows she’ll be alive long after she receives a folded triangular flag.

Specialist Dixon’s mother isn’t saying anything while her son seeps his food into a plastic bag, and the bedding is slowly stained by pinkish fluids so that she must call a nurse to change the sheets every four hours. She doesn’t say anything while her still-handsome son’s eyes glaze over as the television images from Iraq flow over them. She, a lifelong teetotaler, doesn’t say a word when her twenty-two year old son gropes for a smooth glass of strong beer and drinks it down in one go.

But she has said to me in a private email of her own, that she is simply waiting until she knows her voice will no longer destroy what little life her son has left. She said, simply, that she is waiting for her son to die, as she waited for his father to die, and then she will be free to tell the world exactly what she thinks of George. W. Bush.