In-Terror-Gating

Sounds like President Pinhead's new terrorist interrogation guidelines may have been written by Bruce at the University of Walamaloo: "Rule Two, no member of the faculty is to maltreat the Abbos in any way at all - if there's anybody watching." This is a scary Pinhead. The one you don't want to meet in a dark alley. Check out this interchange between Matt Lauer and "Master P":
Matt Lauer: I don't want to let this "within the law issue" slip though. I mean, if, in fact, there was water boarding used with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and for the viewers, that's basically when you strap someone to a board and you make them feel as if they're going to drown by putting them underwater, if that was legal and within the law, why couldn't you do it at Guantanamo? Why did you have to go to a secret location around the world?
President Pinhead: I'm not going to talk about techniques. And, I'm not going explain to the enemy what we're doing. All I'm telling you is that you've asked me whether or not we're doing things to protect the American people, and I want the American people to know we are doing so.
Ladies and gentlemen, when he says he doesn't want to talk about techniques, I think it's best that we take him at his word. Lauer mentioned that the head of Amnesty International said that these secret sites are against international law. Pinhead replied, "Well, we just disagree with him. Plus, my job is to protect you. And most American people, if I said [to them] that we had who we think is the mastermind of the 9/11, they would say, 'Why don't you see if you can't get information without torturing him,' which is what we did." And if that didn't work? Again, probably better not to ask. Wasn't it always the bad guys with the bamboo splints under the fingernails? The Nazi dentist with the drills and "Is it safe?naive not so naiive to believe that America has always played by the rules, but I want to believe that when we get caught breaking them, that we will own up and make every effort to work within the law: International, Geneva Convention, or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It's like what Wilford Brimley used to say about Quaker Oats - It's the right thing to do.

In Dreams

The past couple of nights have been tough ones. The night before last found me leading a group of fourth graders through a cityscape that was very reminiscent of downtown Boulder, Colorado. The children were walking, according to form, in a single-file line and I was hard-pressed to keep an eye on both ends of it, as I had stragglers and sprinters. This caused the line to increase to an altogether unmanageable length, and I found myself jogging back and forth to encourage and impede progress, alternately. Suddenly, from the front of the line came shouts of "Hey, Mister Caven didn't tell you to do that!" and "Get back here!" When I looked up I saw a small band of kids crossing four lanes of traffic. It was precisely at that moment that a power line snapped and fell down in front of me, blocking any hope or chance I had of reaching the children on the other side. Oncoming traffic, high voltage: horrifying combination.
Last night I was driving up the road to what I surmised was my childhood home. I had been told that there had been a terrible fire, and as it came into view, I could see that the entire front of the house had been burned off, leaving it exposed to the elements. Night was falling, and I could hear sirens approaching from the distance. This seemed odd to me, since it appeared that the flames had been extinguished some time ago. That's when the nose of a 747 dropped from the sky and landed just yards from the fire scarred remnants of my house. The fire trucks had been dispatched in anticipation of this fresh, new disaster. Very proactive for chaos, I thought.
Both mornings I woke up thankful that the new day was starting. That was the up side. The down side was the lingering feeling that something awful was on the way to happening. Maybe I'm just too sensitive. Maybe I'm not quite awake yet.

Down The Rabbit Hole

Curiouser and curiouser. Out there in the world, sides seem to be choosing up for a croquet game with flamingos for mallets. For the second time, The chief judge in Saddam Hussein's genocide trial was replaced Tuesday amid complaints from Shiite and Kurdish officials that he was too easy on the deposed Iraqi leader.
`The trial cannot proceed,' said the King in a very grave voice, `until all the jurymen are back in their proper places-- all,' he repeated with great emphasis, looking hard at Alice as he said do.
Alice looked at the jury-box, and saw that, in her haste, she had put the Lizard in head downwards, and the poor little thing was waving its tail about in a melancholy way, being quite unable to move. She soon got it out again, and put it right; `not that it signifies much,' she said to herself; `I should think it would be quite as much use in the trial one way up as the other.'
Meanwhile, across the border, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insisted Iran's nuclear activities are "transparent, peaceful and under the watchful eye" of United Nations' inspectors and reiterated his nation's commitment to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty as it faces accusations that it is seeking to develop atomic weapons.
`I see nobody on the road,' said Alice.
`I only wish I had such eyes,' the King remarked in a fretful tone. `To be able to see Nobody! And at that distance, too! Why, it's as much as I can do to see real people, by this light!'
Earlier in the day, President Pinhead said to the people of Iran, part of the "axis of evil," that he looks to a day when the two peoples "can be good friends and close partners in the cause of peace."
In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:
Ever drifting down the stream --
Lingering in the golden gleam --
Life, what is it but a dream?
- with many thanks to The Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson

2,686 - If You're Keeping Score At Home

Sergeant. David J. Davis, 32, of Mount Airy, Maryland, died in Baghdad, Iraq, on September 17, of injuries sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his Stryker Armored Vehicle during combat operations in Sadr City, Iraq. Davis was assigned to the Army's 4th Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment, 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, Fort Wainwright, Alaska. This brings the United States' total casualty count (as of September 18, 7:48 Pacific Daylight Time) to 2,686.
So let's take a moment for some perspective: Even while the "official tally" of the deaths that occurred on September 11, 2001 continues to expand and contract (some say more than 3,000 lost their lives that day, the revised government number is 2,792 for the World Trade Center attack) we can finally find a connection between the events of that day and the war in Iraq. At some point, and perhaps the ambiguity surrounded an exact death toll for the day may be connected to this, there will be an exact corollary between the number of Americans killed on that one infamous day and the number of Americans killed in combat during our prolonged "slog" (Donald Rumsfeld's word) into the heart of Darkness once known as Mesopotamia.
So? How about a point of reckoning? At what point will the cost in human lives be worth defending Iraq's freedom? At some point the number of combat deaths will exceed that of the lives lost on September 11. It's accounting, after all. Numbers don't lie? People do.

Picnic in the Woods

Yesterday afternoon I stood for three hours in front of a charcoal grill, moving meat and meat-like objects over heat in order that the attendees of this year's Sequoia Elementary School Welcome Back Picnic could (in the words of Beldar Conehead) consume mass quantities. This has become something of a tradition with my family, ending the summer with a sun-baked gorge-fest under the towering redwood trees in the park up the street. As I stood there, spatula in hand, I began to reflect on summers long since past.
The summers of my youth ended with a family reunion, my mother's side of the family, at our cabin in the mountains above Boulder. The Johnson Family Picnic was a gala affair, attended by generations of cousins that I still cannot name. Weeks ahead of the actual event, I created dozens of hand-drawn invitations for relatives whose connections to me were always more clear in the abstract than in reality. Then, with just a few days to go, my brothers and I would make signs to point our town-based folk down the twisting mountain roads to our cabin in the woods. The morning of the picnic came and we were up early, loading tubs ice with soda and beer. We kept the overflow cool in the creek that ran just down the hill from us. And then we waited.
Sometime before noon, we saw the dust kicking up at the bottom of our driveway, and we knew that it had begun. Hugs were exchanged, coolers were unloaded, pictures were snapped, and "my how you've grown." There were tables full of salad, but we all held out for the burgers that came from one of two grills that filled the air with the smells of late summer. When everyone got fat and happy, we waddled on down to the meadow for a game of volleyball, while some of the old-timers worked out the horseshoe pit. Back up on the front porch, stories about the olden days filled the late afternoon.
Then it was time to go. The soda was gone, the cans waited to be crushed in a barrel next to the front steps. "Oh take that home, it'll keep in the fridge." Coolers were shoved back into trunks. More hugs, and promises of return the next year. We walked to the end of our driveway as the last car backed down slowly to the road and picked up the sign pointing the way. Maybe we could use it again next year.
Back in 2006, I awoke from my reverie in time to watch the water balloon toss, and then went to join in the kids-versus-dads tug of war. Then I went back and had a burger. Summer's almost over.

Drop That Call

California on Friday banned motorists from talking on cell phones unless they use a headset or speakerphone, although the law will not take effect until July 1, 2008, to allow time to educate the public. Wait a second - or a year - time to educate the public? To teach them that driving while you're ordering Thai food or screaming at your housekeeper with one hand while you gesture wildly and try to shift with the other is a bad idea? Okay.
I confess: I own a cell phone and have found it very convenient for making connections from places and situations that might have proved inconvenient at best without one. I have also made cellular phone calls from moving vehicles. I am proud to say, however, that I have not been driving any of these vehicles (including the Monorail at Disneyland). This makes me just pompous and smug enough to holler, "Hang up and drive," at drivers who are periodically oblivious to the world outside of their rolling phone booth.
It's reminiscent of what I've always felt about the world inside your car: Once the door closes, the engine starts, and the radio comes on, the inviso-ray takes over and you can no longer be seen behind the wheel. This is how nose-picking and singing at the top of your lungs to REO Speedwagon happens to good people.
So, come 2008, you won't be able to have one-handed conversations with your optometrist. You can use a headset or a hands-free speaker attachment, but you will have to pay a fine for driving with your phone stuck to the side of your head. The exception to this rule is if you are making an emergency phone call. I wonder if calling Moviefone to find out the next available showing of "An Inconvenient Truth" counts as an emergency.

Predator and Pray

I must have been about nine or ten years old. My friends and I were making boats out of scrap lumber to float in Farmer's Ditch, an irrigation canal that ran just across a great open field above my house. My best friend, or what I understood to be my best friend, provided the hammers and nails, and a great deal of the criticism that went into the creation of our vessels. His father was a carpenter, and he made sure that we all understood that, regardless of the features or unique traits of our boats, his would be superior.
We worked for some time, until almost noon. Then we went to our bikes and road to the concrete bridge. We decided to ride as pairs: one on the front pedaling while the other balanced carefully and clutched a pair of boats to his chest. We rode the quarter mile to the ditch, laughing and trying to keep from crashing into a fence, or a bush or simply toppling over from the sheer exertion. When at last we reached the bridge, there were six of us - three bikes full. We each made careful last minute adjustments to our crafts and then, with little or no ceremony, set them loose on the rushing torrent of the creek in May. As soon as they started to disappear downstream, we raced to our bikes and began to speed down the trail after them. Our pursuit was hindered by numerous shrubs and twists in the rutted path. We could still see all six boats as we neared the first culvert where the water went under the street. We had to stop and get off the bikes to walk them up to the street level where we had to wait for the traffic to let us across. I could feel the boats slipping further away from us. When we got to the other side of the street and got back on the bikes, my best friend asked me, "What are you doing?"
Since we lost sight of the last boat, I had been muttering under my breath. "Praying," I replied without the hesitation that might have saved me everlasting torment. My pal, my best buddy, my neighbor and friend since Kindergarten stopped the bike.
He nearly fell over laughing. "Praying?" he snorted. "For what?"
I felt myself go red and wanted to disappear, but answered, "For the boats." The rest of the guys had caught up to us by then, and they joined in the guffaws. "I was praying that the boats would be okay."
I don't remember how I got home that day. I want to believe that I walked home alone. Alone in my embarrassment. Alone in my shame. Alone in my theological quandary. I want to believe that I wrestled with the questions of faith and God and Man, but I know that's not what happened. I rode back to our neighborhood on the back of my tormentor's Stingray, gripping tightly to the bar at the back of the banana seat so as not to exacerbate my already imploding self-esteem by holding on to another boy's waist. We didn't laugh on the way home.
Over the years, as the situation presents itself, death, birth, crises or varying proportions, I have been asked by some more caring individuals if I pray. I tend to avoid the question, preferring instead to keep my discussions with higher powers strictly between myself and the deity of my choice. I still pray, just very quietly, and always to myself.