Survivors

Forty years ago, I sat in the Boulder High band room, transfixed. Lance, a junior, was recounting for two of us lowly sophomores a shot-by-shot retelling of Halloween. We sat, rapt, in the middle of the day as this gawky friend of ours gave us every spoiler, every grisly detail, and then proceeded to walk down to the piano and plunk out the infamous theme.
And yet, when we went to see the movie, we were even more terrified than we might have been without any preview. And when we walked out into the darkened streets behind the theater after our screening, we were certain that it would only be a matter of moments before the Bogeyman leaped out from the shadows and -
Now it's forty years later, and I have seen a lot of horror films since then. A lot. A few have had the same kind of creep factor that was inspired by John Carpenter's slasher classic, but not many. And yet I continue to seek out those experiences that take me to a place where I actually fear for my life. Like those insurance policies sold by producer William Castle for showings of his film Macabre that offered to pay off one thousand dollars for any viewer who died of fright. Or the night I came home from seeing The Blair Witch Project, and my dog kept going to the window and staring off into the darkness. Thanks, Maddie.
Even before that, I had made a study of horror movies. I continued this exploration through college, examining all the reasons we put ourselves through this. Why hop on the roller coaster in the first place? To survive, of course. Which is why you spend the entire time in line talking about all the near death experiences we have had and how likely it is that after a certain number of trips that car is ever more likely to jump the track.
We are after catharsis. Right up to the edge, peeking over the edge, and stopping. There's a wire keeping us from falling into the abyss. Which isn't really an abyss. It's a painted backdrop. And all of those monsters are infinitely easier to deal with than angry customers or politicians or telemarketers. Watching the bored detachment of the survivors in The Walking Dead as they dispatch yet another crop of zombies reminds me of the reason we watch horror movies. We watch them to remind ourselves that we are still alive. As awful as things may be, whether it is a plague of giant grasshoppers or a bloated Creamsicle becoming President of the United States, we can walk out of the theater. Into the light.
Until the inevitable sequel.

What Price Glory?

Who do I believe won the one and a half billion dollar Mega Millions Jackpot?
Doctor Evil.
Austin Powers' arch-enemy is precisely the kind of math genius that I would expect to be the recipient of all that money. Then the discussion about just how to take it all in can begin. Would you rather have the whole one and a half billion (nine zeros) over time, or take a single cash payout of eight hundred seventy-eight million dollars? As a point of scale, you could pay the fine owed by Michael Avenati's law firm eighty-seven times and still have eight million dollars to pay down some of his back taxes.
Or maybe you could buy a few F-22 Raptors. You would still have a little left over to buy some fuel and a pilot. Or buy yourself flying lessons. And a few dozen air sickness bags.
I have a friend with whom I have joked with, over the years, about the ability to buy the world a Coke. Since I have given up that brown elixir for health reasons, I might instead choose to teach the world to sing. At around twenty dollars for a half hour lesson, I don't think I could get everyone in, but maybe if they came in groups of three or four, we could get it done. This might affect that perfect harmony, but we could give it a shot.
All that money is, reportedly, a chore to handle. We have all heard stories about the burden of being a brand new gazillionaire. Suddenly everyone is suddenly your friend or relative, and every one of those has a hand out. In this case, you could toss a thousand dollars at a million people and still have half a billion dollars to waste on yourself.
Over time.
If you were silly enough to choose that cash option, your choices would be limited by six hundred million dollars or so. Fewer singing lessons. Fewer cans of Coke. Only a couple of Raptors.
Or maybe do some serious damage to that Dollar Menu at Taco Bell.

Infinite Combinations? Thank You, No

Oreos.
Milk's favorite cookie.
The reason I don't mind sitting for fifteen minutes in the canteen after I donate blood.
The number one selling cookie in the United States.
Why mess with it?
I ask this because of Pumpkin Spice Oreos. Mini Oreos. Football shaped Oreos. Double Stuf Oreos. Big Stuf Oreos. Mega Stuf Oreos. Golden Mega Stuf Oreos. And the list goes on. Triple Double Oreo. Triple Double Neapolitan Oreos. Triple Double Chocolate Mint Oreos. 
As you can see, we have begun to stray far afield from the traditional  creme filled chocolate cookie sandwich. Orange Ice Cream? Blueberry Ice Cream? This is not Baskin Robbins, this is Nabisco. Or Mondelez International, if you're keeping corporate score. Before that, they were one of the Philip Morris Companies, but since milk doesn't have a favorite cigarette, things got shuffled. 
It has only been in the past ten years or so that this need to generate permutations of a favorite. With the possible exception of the amount of "Stuf" inside, Oreos have been pretty much the same for more than one hundred years. 
Why are we suddenly so challenged by our snack food attention? 
I can remember when I went to work at Arby's, back in the mid-eighties. I was a happy and proud purveyor of America's Roast Beef, Yes Sir! I became proficient at making the basic menu of sandwiches: Junior, Regular and the Super. Each came on a bun regulated by its name and size, and the Beef 'n'Cheddar with it's onion bun and cheese goop required mild additional attention. For those who showed up at a roast beef restaurant craving something other than roast beef, we offered the Hamchy (microwaved ham and Swiss cheese) and the Turkey (a cold sandwich without a clever name). Somewhere in my third year of working in the brown polyester world of fast food, it became important to create more variety in the menu. That's when the Subs showed up. Not long after that, we brought in a fryer for boiling chicken planks in grease. Not long after that, I left that world for good. I could not abide by all of those non-beef items being sold under the guise of Arby's. 
I have a similar feeling as I stand in the cookie aisle and look at all those "Oreos." 
What hath we wrought?

The Path

Okay, let me see if I follow the logic here:
Our "President" proposes that we cut off aid to countries in Central America because of a human caravan heading north toward our border with Mexico. "Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador were not able to do the job of stopping people from leaving their country and coming illegally to the U.S." These three countries received approximately five hundred million dollars last year in aid, and since the "President" tweeted his threat, it wasn't clear just how much of that aid would be cut. 
If any.
Part of the problem stems from the way this "President" generates policy. One imagines early morning trips to the White House bathroom during commercial breaks on Fox & Friends. Or just after he has finished finger lickin' once he has devoured a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Ideas like withdrawing from a nuclear missile treaty with Russia ought not to be arrived at on a whim, but that seems to be standard operating procedure currently. 
Did he consider that even with half a billion dollars in aid that there are thousands fleeing those countries because their living conditions have become so desperate? Did he consider that the United States is the place from whence that half a billion dollars of aid came from, and if you were of a mind to flee the desperate living conditions in your country that the source of that half a billion dollars might be a great place to head?
Maybe if we tried physics, which suggests that an object in motion tends to stay in motion until acted upon by an outside force. In this case, the outside force seems to be a mish-mosh of threats of military and law enforcement or legal action with a cry for Democrats to stop obstructing and start bending to the "President's" agenda which includes a wall being built and more severe penalties for those stupid enough to buy into that whole "bring me your tired, your poor" routine. You know that the Statue of Liberty was a gift, don't you? From the French. And we know how that turned out.
Don't we? 
Sorry. I seemed to have strayed a little from the topic: We were trying to follow the logic of the "President's" decision to cut off aid to three countries in Central America. It's not really a linear exercise. More of a fractal, really. 
I'll get back to you.

Represent

“If we don’t defend Western civilization, then we will become subjugated by the people who are the enemies of faith, the enemies of justice.” Not a member of the Klu Klux Klan. Not a Proud Boy. These were the words of a sitting United States Congressman. If you are unfamiliar with the life and words of Steve King, Representative from Iowa, this . is the gentleman who asserted, “We can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies.” And there was this gem about immigration from a couple years back: “For everyone who’s a valedictorian, there’s another hundred out there that — they weigh one hundred thirty pounds and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling seventy-five pounds of marijuana across the desert.” Or perhaps you're a fan of his comments about African American women experiencing the "tragedy of abortion: “They chose to have an abortion. I would give you even money that a vast majority of mothers who say they can’t afford an abortion have an iPhone, which costs more.”
These statements weren't recorded  surreptitiously. They weren't taken out  of  context. They are representative of the work Congressman Steve has been doing for  the people of Iowa's fourth district since 2003. Which may be why his interview  with the Austrian far-right propaganda site Unzensuriert didn't initially ring any alarms. He told his  host, “The U.S. subtracts from its population a million of our babies in the form of abortion. We add to our population approximately 1.8 million of ‘somebody else’s babies’ who are raised in another culture before they get to us.” This double dip into two of Steve's favorite topics is referred to in far-right circles as The Great Replacement. White European culture is in danger from  someone else's  babies. Got it. 
Meanwhile, back here in the United States of America, Steve King is up for re-election in a couple of weeks. He has won his past five contests by more than twenty points. He is currently ahead of his Democratic challenger by ten points. Which I suppose is mildly refreshing, but the percentages won't  matter if this is truly representative of  the folks in the Fourth District. Can that be right? Is Iowa so red, or so white, that this ideology can carry the day? 
Hard to believe. 

Ask Mister Science

Mister Science, can you tell us a little about yourself?
"Well, I was born in the year of our Lord 1948, just about five hundred years after the last dinosaur."
I see.
"I was raised by a loving, conservative mother and father and the help. My nanny used to read me stories before I was strapped into bed."
Stories?
"A lot of it was fiscal policy, but there were also a great many tales of adventure in high finance."
So how did you come to your interest in science?
"I don't think you would call it an 'interest' so much as a passion. I come by that from long weekends staring out the window of my bedroom, trying to figure out how things work."
Such as?
"Clouds, for example. I've looked at clouds from both sides now, and still somehow it's life's illusions I recall."
Illusions?
"Like climate change. All those days and weeks turned into months and years, and I can tell you that every year when the snows came, Smithson would be out there shoveling the walks, until it was time to mow the lawn again. See, the climate has always changed. There's no need to panic."
What about the way temperatures have risen across the globe over the past century?
"Isn't that great? It makes things so much more cozy for us all. It's like someone knew that what we really needed was room temperature everywhere. Just take a sweater."
Someone?
"Do I really have to spell it out for you?"
No. I guess you don't.
"Besides, there are so many other things we can talk about."
Like what?
"I have recently turned my laser focus onto subjects that affect us all: Crime Scene Investigation."
Really?
"Like that poor man in Saudi Arabia, Jamal Khashoggi."
The journalist who was murdered?
"Murdered? Is that what the lame-stream media is telling you? It was an unfortunate cooking accident."
Cooking accident?
"It's what can happen when you don't come prepared and use the proper tools."
Proper tools?
"Well, obviously he shouldn't have been using a bone saw to filet halibut. I tell you, he's just lucky those nice young men were there to help him. It could have been so much worse."
Nice young men? The eighteen assassins who intercepted him in the embassy?
"Assassins? Is that what they're telling you? A tragic accident. He must have fallen on that bone saw a dozen times. Just a bunch of fellow foodies trying their best to make lemonade out of lemons."
Right. Thank you, Mister Science.
"Thank you,."

Light The Fuse

Once upon a time, there was a punk band called Fear. If you're of the generation that watched Saturday Night Live in 1981, you may recall this was the group that closed down the show on Halloween after being invited by John Belushi to do just that. Coming just a month after Rod Stewart had been crooning "Hot Legs" on the same show, Fear was a warm breeze blowing in off the trash heap. They were a harbinger of the discontent that lived just below the safety and homogenization of Ronald Reagan's America. Here are some lyrics from their best known song, their "hit single," if you will:
Let's have a war
So you can go and die!
Let's have a war!
We could all use the money!
Let's have a war!
We need the space!
Let's have a war!
Clean out this place!
If it sounds severe, that's because it was. It is now. The rancor we Americans have for one another at any given moment is so severe that we have become numb to it. As we tear into each other as if it were some sort of organized event, the rest of the world must wonder if, as the poet once suggested "our time at the top could be coming to an end." Having gone so long without an  actual adversary, we continue to eat our own and make a spectacle out of the way we waste opportunity. 
Let's have a war!
Jack up the Dow Jones!
Let's have a war!
It can start in New Jersey!
Let's have a war!
Blame it on the middle-class!
Let's have a war!
We're like rats in a cage!
And if we lose, we can take our place on the list of failed empires. Thousands of years from now, archaeologists will unearth a Starbucks and wonder how it all went wrong, and the answer will become clear: Pumpkin Spice Latte. 
Let's have a war.