Thought That Came Unbidden

We’d been at war a full 60 minutes before I found out about it last night. Except for the 5 hours of patchy, broken sleep it has been constant war coverage from both the television and the myriad e-mails sent to all staff at my office. Links to copies the psyops flyers we’re dropping on Iraq, links to alternative media coverage, links to pictures of the devastation of the ’91 war.

And Peter Jennings is on ABC telling me that we now have the first confirmed U.S. and British casualties, not of direct conflict but of a helicopter crash (21:36 U.S. ET, 20 March 2003).

Yesterday’s Washington Post reported that 71% of Americans surveyed were in favor of war with Iraq. This brings up a couple of question:

1) Who the fuck are these people and where do they live? No one I know has been contacted by a pollster at all. Yes, the U.S. has a lot of population but still…no one at all. The paranoid part of me thinks they surveyed 1,500 people in Kansas and extrapolated statistically.

2) Why do these people support this war and do they realize that we spent the 1970s and 1980s funding or otherwise supplying Hussein with weapons?

What makes me ambivalent is that countries with officially sponsored state religions give me the creeps. More damage has been done to humans by humans in the name of God than for all the other reasons combined. I freely admit that I’m particularly biased against Islam. Any religion that so fundamentally denies the basic rights and humanity of more than 50% of the population simply because those people are female inspires in me the most visceral desire to violence I’ve ever had.

What makes me ambivalent is that we are, to a greater or lesser extent, responsible for the mess in the Middle East. We funded, directly or indirectly, the continuation of Saddam Hussein’s government in just the same way we funded the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Is there an easy solution? No, but who the hell promised us life would be easy?

The January 2003 issue of Runner’s World reported the results of a study which indicated that obese children tend to score lower on standardized tests than children who are physically fit.

OK, let’s think about this for a minute…Nutritious food is expensive. Fast food is not nutritious, and it’s cheap. Since poor people have a tendency to eat large amounts of fast food it is easy to see why obesity is a major problem among people in lower income brackets.

OK, let’s think about this for another minute…In the U.S. public schools are largely funded by property taxes. Since people in lower income brackets tend to rent rather than own the neighborhoods they live in are not gold mines when it comes to property taxes. So, schools in poor neighborhoods receive less funding than schools in richer neighborhoods. This means the kids who attend those schools have fewer resources — older library books, no money for art or music classes, outdated textbooks, less or no funding for lab equipment — which makes it harder for them to learn, which makes it harder for them to score higher on standardized tests.

OK, keep thinking now. Kids who live in poor neighborhoods are frequently unable to play outside because of street violence. Street violence, not a particular problem in richer neighborhoods. Let’s add to that the fact that often, poor kids don’t have access to gyms and pools, and frequently can’t afford the fees to be on sports teams. Add that together with the fact that poor kids are eating less nutritiously and you get obese poor kids.

So, really, what this study tells us is that poor kids score lower on standardized tests than rich kids.

Boat drinks. Boys in the band ordered boat drinks.
Visitors just scored on the home rink.
Everything seems to be wrong.

Lately, newspaper mentioned cheap airfare.
I’ve got to fly to Saint Somewhere.
I’m close to bodily harm.
— Boat Drinks by Jimmy Buffett

Yes, that’s right. It was the annual Presidents’ Day vacation…for nine glorious days. This year’s boat drinks were had in St. Thomas, part of the U.S. Virgin Islands, at the Bolongo Bay Beach Club.

>cue sound of rolling waves and rustling palm fronds< The folks at Bolongo were, as their web site claims, just about the friendliest people we met in the USVI. Our trip began on Friday, February 14th at an hour way too early to even claim to be morning. National Airport to Charlotte, NC for a 45 minute layover that turned into 3 1/2 hours. Unfortunately, this meant instead of basking in the sun for three hours and then turning in early I didn't get my first cocktail until nearly 6pm Atlantic time (yes, boys and girls, the Virgin Islands are on Atlantic time, which means they are Eastern Standard + 1 hour). It didn't matter so much, though, as the 85 degF temperature and the breeze from the east was the equivalent of a long lost lover's caress to this summer person who has been cold since November. Saturday morning brought what was the first of a string of "yet another horrible day in paradise" days. Clear, blue sky and puffy white clouds as far as the eye could see stretched out over white sand beaches and blue water. A quick note about the U.S. Virgin Islands: The USVI is composed mainly of St. Thomas, St. John, and St. Croix -- there are some smaller islands but they're uninhabited. The U.S. Virgin Islands are part of the United States. If you go to them, you haven't left the U.S (inexplicably, though, you must go through Customs and Immigration before you can leave St. Thomas...more on this later). St. Thomas is an interesting mix of tourism, local life, and just about everything that is both right and wrong with the Carribean. Most of the retail business in Charlotte-Amalie, St. Thomas' largest city, centers around duty-free shopping catering to the cruise ship business. This means that you can find all the jewelry, liquor, and perfume you could ever want. Since St. Croix is home to the Cruzan Rum distillery and the Virgin Islands Brewing Company it sort of makes sense that you’d be able to purchase a lot of liquor in the islands. What was scary, though, was that all the stores had, basically, the same merchandise with a varying degree of depth in their stocks.

St. John, by contrast, is largely private homes and natural parks. The shopping there includes galleries of locally produced art as well as the sorts of stores you find in a tourist mall catering to an “upscale” clientele.

Possessing the only casino in the USVI, St. Croix is home not only the aforementioned distilleries but also to the largest oil refinery in the Carribean. Most of the Venezuelan crude imported into the U.S. flows through St. Croix before being tanker shipped to the mainland.

So what did I learn on my winter vacation? That sometimes you just need to lay on the beach and do nothing. Especially when this

is what you come home to.

Only 25 days until the first day of summer.

Today’s edition of The Washington Post included several articles about the current “threat status” as determined by the office of Homeland Security. The one that I love pretty much sums it up: Vague Fears, Real Concerns: Residents and Businesses Prepare — but for What?.

As a native Washingtonian I’ve always known that I live at ground zero. Back when the Soviet Union was our worst nightmare it became a given that in the event of a nuclear war anyone in DC was pretty much dead. Hell, if they aimed for New York and hit Wheeling, WV we’d all be toast. This is why I don’t understand the fuss.

There are runs on supplies here. Bottled water, duct tape, and plastic sheeting are flying off the shelves like the stuff is going out of existence. This is the same 3M plastic sheeting designed to “winterize” your windows. You know the stuff…it doesn’t even keep cold air out.

People are panicking. There are thousands of people walking around with wads of cash in their pockets, following the recommendation of the geniuses at Homeland Security (is it just me, or does everyone have the sudden urge to put on jackboots and a brown shirt when ever someone says those two words together?).

I’m supposed to have liter of water per person per day on hand for how long? Ever?

OK…scared people, no supplies, big wads of cash…does this sound like a recipe for looting? Add media hype, stir, simmer for two days, and you’re done!

Friday is the last day of the hajj and the government believes this would be a prime opportunity for an attack on the U.S.

Just what Muslim holy day was September 11, 2001?

USA Today has told all its reporters and support staff to work from home on Friday. So…being in Fairfax or Alexandria or Gaithersburg is going to materially improve the chances of survival over being Arlington?

The DC area is a sardine can folks. If something is going to happen, it’s going to affect all of us. Spending thousands of dollars on unnecessary supplies is not going to save you because the reality is that if something does happen, there’s no way you will have been able to lay in enough supplies, or develop the survival skills you’ll need in a world without city water and grid power in the two days the Bush Administration has been having its jumped up, monkey suited excuse for thugs scare the shit out of everybody.

We’ve all got to die sometime. Let’s just have some fun before we get there.

In other news, I think we have proven that there is a God, or at least that someone out there has a very sharp, very twisted sense of humor.

I admit it. I watched the Michael Jackson documentary on 20/20 last night. It opened rather innocuously with the interviewing journalist asking Jackson “So, how do you write a song?” It was a good way to open because as a writer, I completely understood why Jackson couldn’t explain his artistic process in any way more coherent than that he “gets out of the way of the music” and it just “comes to him from above.”

It was all downhill from there.

In some ways, Martin Bashir’s documentary was the perfect meditation on the perils of our celebrity culture. This is not to say the external forces are completely responsible for the mess that Michael Jackson is now; for, if something in his personality hadn’t been ripe for it I very much doubt that fame would have impacted him the way it has. However, in many ways, I personally believe that pop-culture is largely responsible for Michael Jackson the adult.

As a child star his cuteness was encouraged — hell, it was demanded of him — long past an age when it was appropriate for him to be cute. To maintain his stardom it was necessary for a certain part of his personality to infantalize, to cease developing so he could maintain that 12 year old state of mind he had when the Jackson 5 first rose to fame.

As an legal adult, celebrity culture has allowed Jackson to maintain his fantasy world because, quite simply, we treat the famous differently. Special rules for special people. Professional athletes get off on murder charges. Lesser known rap stars take the fall so the mogul doesn’t have to go to jail. Actors get to go to rehab in some $12,000 a day resort as punishment for that DUI when the rest of us would be doing hard time and walking every where for the rest of our lives.

Has Michael Jackson chosen to indulge in what celebrity culture has to offer him? Hell yes! After all, what person is going to turn down priviledge? So who is more responsible: him for taking what is offered or our culture for offerring it in the first place? Perhaps both. I don’t know. All I know is that the idea of him raising children (as if he’s actually raising them, not the nannies) frightens me. After all, you are only as good a teacher as your teacher was, and frequently not even that good, so if you look at the way the Jacksons were parented what do you suppose they are going to pass on to their children?