Author: gottlieb

While we watch in admiration, many in Iran take to the streets to protest what they perceive as a fraudulent election and a severely authoritarian government. The irony seems lost on us.

As we know, 75% of the American population supports a “public option” health plan. But we see the will of the people shoved under the bus for the sake of corporate profit and political expediency.

Imagine an election where one candidate enters the day with a 75% to 25% lead in the polls and comes out of the voting booth lost in a landslide. Were the polls wrong or was the election rigged? Do you take to the streets, like a people, or swallow another mouthful of resentful bile as the fat cats win again in a game where they always win and you always lose?

Last November we won the election handily with a magical candidate with a mandate for change. And since then we have not seen any change but more of the same business-as-usual. Sure, noises have been made, gestures extended and words, words, words expounded to urge patience and perseverance and prepare us to tighten our already tightened belts to save the corporate super-structure of a global Borg which regards humanity as chits in a game of power and domination.

Perhaps Obama was naïve about power and us along with him or perhaps he knew the score and his ambition outstripped his integrity to tell us the truth as he said he would always tell us the truth. Does it really matter? The point is our President is either less than we imagined or he was sold as something he’s not – an agent of fundamental change.

Or perhaps he is not less or false but simply powerless as a leader of a public in a privatized world.

Our global system of governance and finance has made bit players of great statesmen. Political rhetoric is no more than sugar Frosted Flakes sold to kids as health food. Change appears a mirage. There is an idea of an oasis ahead; one can almost hear a bubbling brook of fresh, clean water. Thirst for change is palpable and you want to believe as long as you can relief is in sight. But, alas, as with all mirages, you finally get close enough you can’t wish reality away any longer and you realize the date-nut tree and the watering hole is just more desert sand.

But perhaps Obama is crawling along the sand looking for answers like the rest of us. Considering the credibility gap between Obama’s political rhetoric and real-world results so far, one imagines the President is the most disappointed of us all. At this juncture Obama looks like just another empty suit with a teleprompter soul. Personally, I don’t believe Barack is that, but he sure looks that way along with Brown, Sarkozy, Merkel, Berlusconi and the rest of the First World born of Empire and murdered by hubris.

It is not a conspiracy theory to suggest the public world is run by financial power held in private hands.

FDR really did say to Colonel House:

“The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson… The country is going through a repetition of Jackson’s fight with the Bank of the United States — only on a far bigger and broader basis.”

Has anything changed? Did you get the memo which said, “Hooray! Finally the US Government is no longer owned by the money-power?”

Hell no you didn’t receive the memo because the truth is the PEOPLE are beholding to the BANKS and this is why the People with a 75% policy consensus can be ignored with scorn.

It’s not rocket science. And as long as the people continue to grumble but not fight back business will be business-as-usual until the apocalypse. There is a difference between “mad as hell” and “not going to take it anymore.” We’re all mad as hell, but we keep on taking it.

And I suggest to you the Public Option is the last straw on the camel’s back. If the Public Option goes away in the middle of the night by corrupt congressmen and corrupting lobbyists, let us take to the streets and stay in the streets. When the people finally see the people are fighting against corporations for what’s best for the people in a government of, for and by the people then change will come. But not before.

Obama is a good man. I believe that. But he is impotent in a centuries-old system which over time has usurped demotic power and national sovereignty. When people must be “managed” to agree to what is not in their best interest, then, transparently, the people have no power. And when people have no power in a government of, for and by the people then who are the people with the power?

The truth is self-evident.

There are real solutions to these systemic failures which plague our society today. The problem is these solutions require systemic changes to a system which has morphed into a religion and to attack the system is to attack God.

And in our system, God is that which controls the money. And in a system where all money is debt, then God is who owns the debt. And in our system the “public” debt is owned by private, for-profit corporations. In a very real sense, the United States of America is nothing more than a “company town.” The idea of an active citizenry in a vibrant republic – above and beyond tweets and twitters – is a joke. We are receivers of news and information; consumers of dashed hopes and bitter ironies. We sit there and take it and we grumble and gripe but don’t ever do anything about anything. And so we get generations, centuries of deja vu all over again.

The Public Option is the public’s foot back in the door of our own government. If it goes away then the door is closed for good. And what does that make us but homeless in our own house.

This whole mess isn’t about politicians but the corporations who own them. Period. End of story.

Isn’t it time we found our voice against the real impediments to progress?

If the Public Option goes away consider it a declaration of war. Are you ready to fight?

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon plans to create a new military command for cyberspace, administration officials said Thursday, stepping up preparations by the armed forces to conduct both offensive and defensive computer warfare.

Uh-oh.

“We are not comfortable discussing the question of offensive cyber-operations, but we consider cyberspace a war-fighting domain,” said Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman. “We need to be able to operate within that domain just like on any battlefield, which includes protecting our freedom of movement and preserving our capability to perform in that environment.”

All right, listen up! We’ve got our marching orders. We’re under attack from some kids in Pacoima and we’re going to take them out. Someone ready the Operation Cyber Freedom worm-bomb thingy.  

Those little twerps won’t know what hit them! They call themselves Hackers! Hah! We’ll show those mother…uh, sorry, forgot WWL Radio was here doing a story on Cyber Terror and why a new new Pearl Harbor may be necessary to restore order and the rule of law in a territory which is akin to a virtual Wild Wild West shootout at the OK Corral. I didn’t say that out loud and you didn’t hear it from me, but there’s no room for outlaws in a global economy.

Let me tell you something about battlefield strategy, if you can handle it without spitting up a little in your mouth and the importance of protecting one’s freedom of movement within the battle-space. In other words if it’s in your way, you knock it down. And if you want it you go get it. Two kids from Pacoima? Blow-up their computers and send them to reform school prison until they learn the Internet is for shopping and email and not screwing around with proprietary databases. And no that is not on the record hotshot, but there is no difference between the Internet and TV – both are made to sell stuff: Period, end-of-story. If it’s necessary to shut down the Internet in order to protect it from a Cyber911 perpetrated by alien cyber-terrorists and foreign governments, not to mention the occasional electromagnetic coronal mass ejection from the sun, then by gumbo that’s what we’ll do. The military created the Internet; it’s our ball; it’s ours to pick up and take off the field of play unless you play by the rules we say. And that don’t mean it’s a game. This is life and death. Privacy and anonymity are not possible in a cross-dimensional battlespace. All suspects must voluntarily submit to surveillance to demonstrate innocence. To mistrust the government is to make you a conspiracy theorist which makes you insane. We may lie to protect our guilt, but we always have consumers’ best interests at heart. So you don’t have to believe us but you must always trust us or it’s treason.

Now, just because we have a zero-tolerance strategy against privacy doesn’t mean we’re going to be watching your every move. It’s like Lincoln said, “You can watch some of the people all the time and all the people some of the time but you can’t watch all the people all the time.” Which means, come on, we’re only going to watch you after the fact. Post-crime. Not pre-crime. We’ll use your electronic trail to hunt you down when you’re being chased and not a moment before. And when we do catch you, it doesn’t mean we’re going to get all Guantanamo over your ass. America follows the Geneva Conventions except when we don’t which is classified which it should be because otherwise it endangers the troops and private contractors and the whole manufacturing consent project which gets harder and harder the more voices are heard.

We’re not going to torture our enemy anymore to get them to stop making breaches in the hull of our national cyber-security infrastructure, which if you want to know what that means in plain American, it means the security of transactions. In order to maintain the security of state secrets, you’ve got to give up yours. Is that asking too much? Like the UFO geek from England. We don’t want to torture him. That’s not why we want him so bad we’ll stop at nothing to get our hands on him. We don’t want to punish or retribute him. We want to wipe his memory clean through drugs and electroshock, lock him up forever and that is all we’re asking. Space Command is not something we like to talk about or remember even on the holidays. Once you understand everywhere is a battlefield then everything clears up pronto. Where do you think Cheney’s secret bunker was? And you did not hear that from me. So forget about all that, except to say, and this is the final word on the subject, but who do you think is going to clean up all that orbiting debris; all the space junk, huh? And who is going to protect you from killer satellites, huh? Not to mention the alien menace, uh, I mean asteroids, comets, rocks as big as stadiums which you can only see about 5 five minutes before impact. There are all kinds of heroes you’ll never hear about or even imagine they exist. And, like the Space Command, Cyber Command is a land of unsung heroes.

We protect your credit-card information and your financial statements and we follow your every move to insure your safety from enemies known and unknown from within and without, real and virtual, terrestrial and…but you didn’t hear that from me.

Our only mission at Cyber Command is to ensure battlefield supremacy in a war between privacy and security. Privacy means you’ve got something to hide and security means we have a right to know what it is. It’s not rocket science.

The kids in Pacoima are just as dangerous as…well, that would be classified now wouldn’t it potato-head?

Anyway, do you know how many billion barrels of bubbly crude it takes to power the internet each and every day? No one does! Does that sound like sound management practice to you? The Internet is a national security risk. It’s a drain on our energy supply; it exponentiates our carbon footprint and exacerbates our prime directive – Omniscience. Too many open secrets. Too many sock-puppet blabber mouths and chronic contrarians. Not to mention organized crime syndicates, political action committees and FBI Agents posing as pre-teens out for a good time. The internet is not a right but a privilege and you’ve got to give up your anonymity to prove you’re worthy of privacy – it’s that simple. Call it Orwellian if you want; I call it an Imperative.

Now, let’s go scare the hell out of those punks in Pacoima.

This is a true story. Almost. And it’s almost a work of fiction, but not quite. I should know. I was there.

I’m sitting in Harry’s Bar in Cuervonaca. It’s a play-land for the rich and famous a couple of hours from Mexico City in the same direction from Baghdad Rumsfeld said all the WMDs were hiding. It’s a mingle of corrupt politicians, patrician families, drug lords and business executives on long weekends with mistresses. And then, of course, there’s the assorted ex-pat community made up of old fart gringos, hippy-artist-vegan-soulmaster-freespirit types and me. And then there are the Mexicans who’ve lived here for centuries who now work for all the money the rich and famous bring to Cuervonaca.

Anyway, I’m sitting in the bar at Harry’s, nursing a Bloody Mary and waiting on a Chicken Club with chipotle mayo. Sitting next to me is Joe on one side, a soon-to-be ex small time drug dealer and Miriam on the other, a 92 year old ex-Roxette who married well more than once, and we’re all commiserating about the state of the world.

And the reason I’m telling you this story is because Joe told me this story:

About 3:00 AM Joe, a barrel-chested teddy-bear of a guy with a speaking voice like Mel Torme sung was asleep in a velvet fog at his house in the middle of a quiet neighborhood on the edge of town. Joe provides weed to scores of ex-pat potheads, present company not-excluded, who live in Cuervonaca. I don’t know where he gets his stuff but I know it’s not from the cartels. Because at 3:00 AM the cartels paid Joe a visit. The cartels pulled up in a big black hunk of a four-wheel drive SVU and guys with guns got out and pounded on his door. Joe answered the door because he didn’t want to embarrass the neighbors with a chaotic scene in the middle of the night and the cartels pointed a gun to Joe’s head and told him he was “out of business.”

Joe quickly agreed. And Joe is telling me this story because he’s saying:

“Sorry, gottlieb, but my life is a little more important than money. And, sorry you’re going to have to find someone else to get your stuff, but I am out of business effective immediately.”

“No problem, Joe” I say, “I’m just glad you’re alive.” Joe is the third gringo this week harassed by the cartels for small time dope-dealing to ex-pat gringos in Cuervonaca. I’ve been getting calls. “Do you have anything? My source dried up. What’s going on?”

The cartels are moving into Cuervonaca. This is like al-Sadr moving into the Green Zone. When organized crime reaches down to the small time independent dealers to elite clientele then you know the world has changed and not for the better. The pot trade was much better with hippies in charge and not criminal drug gangs. If there is any lesson to be learned from America’s oldest and most pathetically failed War on Drugs, it is this: Hippies good; criminals bad.

And Miriam says, “You think you’ve got problems. Another friend of mine stopped eating yesterday. They’re dropping away like flies now. It won’t be long before I’m with my Jonathan. So, you are coming to my cocktail aren’t you, gottlieb? Small, intimate gathering of the fun and interesting. Juan Carlos is going to be there. I know how you like the inside scoop from the top-of-the-top.”

“I’d love to Miriam,” I say, “But I’ve got a previous engagement with a pretty lady in a seedy bar.”

“Your wife told me,” says Miriam, “It’s your anniversary. Just testing.”

Too bad. I do like Juan Carlos, a very, very wealthy Mexican power-broker. During the flu crisis the other week, I was at Miriam’s, who will not be dead anytime soon god-willing, for another of her ubiquitous cocktail parties, begging his permission and asking his humble apologies ahead of time I asked Juan Carlos if the panic over the flu wasn’t blown out of proportion to quell all the huge political rallies which were planned against the Calderon government over the Mexican Labor Day Weekend which is May 1st.

A hush fell over the small table where five or six of us sat drinking and munching. Juan Carlos who is handsome, smart, charming, dashing and many things I do not want to know for my own safety takes a moment to wipe his mouth with a napkin. He smiles a million watt Hollywood movie star thing. I feel the women swoon.

And he says, “Yes, but aren’t all governments doing that now? It is what governments do. They protect themselves from the people.”

At every gathering of the elite you’ll find philosophers and artists. To lend legitimacy to entitlement. And, after a time of poverty, most philosophers and artists, screwed up people galore, will sell out for a free gin and tonic and some munchies, present company not excluded.

But now I’m sitting at Harry’s with Joe and Miriam commiserating about organized crimes and getting old. My Chicken Club comes and I order another Bloody Mary. I call my friend Jorge on my cell, a small-time Mexican drug dealer and ask if he’s got some stuff.

“Tons,” he says, “And more coming in tomorrow. By the way I learned how to make cold fusion hash out of the all the dust – the flake and stems and crap. I had like four kilos of the stuff. It boils down to a few grams.  It’s pretty good, though. Might be a good brand-extension.”

“Save me some,” I say, “Where did you hear about this cold fusion thing?”

“Uh, you know, the internet.”

“So, can I come over later? I have a business proposition.”

“Sure. I’m just weighing and packaging and doing the cold water fusion filter thing with all the dust. It takes about four hours a batch. It’s really cool. “

I’m thinking, the cartels, and I call it plural because who knows whose territory this is, but I’m thinking the cartels cracking down on gringo dealers leaves an opening for distribution to the gringo customer who are getting more anxious by the minute. I figure I run bags for Jorge at a 50 peso surcharge per bag and I subsidize my bi-weekly commiseration sessions at Harry’s Bar.

“So, what are you going to do for a living, Joe?” I ask. Poor guy.

“Well I ain’t going to fucking sell timeshares to losers in Puerto Vallarta, that’s for damn sure.”

“I know a guy who is looking for a security guy,” I say.

“A body guard? Look at me dude. I make silly putty look like rubber cement.”

And Miriam says, “You want to be my personal shopper?”

And there was silence all around.

I wonder at our little ex-pat community as the world goes to, uh, pot.

Lots of folks living longer than they financially planned for and plenty of others leaving the rat race without the means to sustain. I see desperation behind fairy smiles every day.

To get a disgruntled and alienated underclass to foment violence and rebellion is low hanging fruit. America is the only nation on earth which does terror by sting operation.

“Penny for your thoughts sweetie-pie,” says Miriam. I carry gloom like Pig Pen’s overhead dust-cloud, I guess.

“Ah, nothing,” I say, “I’m just thinking how lucky I am to have ended up in Cuervonaca.”

And Miriam, who has been here for 40 years, smiles and nods like Yoda.

And Joe says, “It’s a Cartel world,”

And I look at my watch, pay my bill, give Miriam a kiss, Joe a hug and head off to Jorge’s. One man’s misfortune is another’s lucky break.

Hot, Hot, Hot…

Wow, Dick, just wow. You’re the man. We’re going to create a whole new circle just for you and your ilk. Imagine – using torture to extract false confessions to use as truth to get your war on. Just absolutely brilliant. Comparing you to Pol Pot is like comparing Rodney Dangerfield to Soupy Sales. One is pie in the face and one is shiv in the gut.

And the Murder Inc. you had going out of your EOB office, well, the devil is in the details and you certainly took care of that didn’t you Dick, because you didn’t leave the details to others you micro-managed every target and kill yourself. Words cannot convey my admiration. You walk the walk, Dick, you don’t just do Sunday TV shows you actually put contracts out on entire villages sometimes and watch them get blown up in real time on big screen TV like a Super Bowl of splatter. Has there ever been a greater showman than you?

You bring tears to my eyes. Really. You do. Hot red tears. And that’s saying something. You didn’t just dip your toe into the Dark Side like a foot fetishist or something you drank in the deep-end of the Dark Side and transmogrified into a full blown dominatrix on steroids with a really cranky streak. It’s breathtaking. Magnificent. Awe-inspiring. Dick you are the role model for all future tyrannical madmen. And you don’t have to rant and rave. That’s your genius, Dick, you come off almost cold. Heartless but with a passion for the kill. You are a force of nature. A quiet force. You’re like a glacier of evil – that’s why you like the idea of a long war. Long for who? Hell, my long war has lasted 10,000 years.

To call you an Evil Genius is a belittlement, Dick. If somebody calls you that slap them across the face with Freddy Kruger’s fingernails because that person doesn’t know what genius is. If you weren’t human you’d be a god like Mars or Ares or if you had a sex drive, Zeus.

Can we just talk about the torture thing, Dick? Everyone is asking. And I know. I know. I read you like My Pet Goat. But they want to know from you. Either way you’re a war criminal, isn’t that delicious? Because the thing is, if you really believed there was a connection between Osama and Saddam and you tortured to get it, well, it’s kind of understandable you might torture someone to get the truth and stop the march of evil across the world. On the other hand, if you used torture to get lies to sell war, then, that is just, well… do you see why genius does not quite capture your essence? You are a Master Mind, Dick Cheney. The Masons would have to create a 34th degree just for you. Not that they would. Masons like secrets but they draw the line at pooping on the Geneva Conventions. Pussies.

And isn’t this whatever is the opposite of ironic: Some guys were tortured to find WMDs and you didn’t find any and some were tortured to find Osama and Saddam kissing in a tree and you didn’t even find a tree, and some were tortured to understand how ‘they’ did 911 and we still don’t know squat about 911 and some were tortured to expose the massive, ubiquitous and invisible International Network of Terror and it turns out it all traces back to CIA Cold War games and finally some were tortured just for the pure joy of it and those are the only results which met their goal. If you’re of a mind like mine, torture is pure entertainment. American Idol can’t hold a candle to Abu Ghraib.

It’s like a Sonata or Symphony. Beauty incarnate. All those innocent people screaming themselves to death and calling on their god in despair, and just the whole sordid miserable scene and I just have to give you a standing ovation, Dick Cheney. And this went on for years? Just, really…wow. You’re like family to me Dick, you really are.

Secret torture prisons all over the world extracting lies to sell as actionable intelligence to advance a long war against evil. If I didn’t know better I’d say I was having an out-of-body experience as you. Delicious. You make Hannibal Lecter look like the Pillsbury Dough-boy. One eats live human flesh and the other freshly baked cookies. Dick. No wonder you’re so trim.

Someone says, not true of course, but sometimes nasty rumors are hard to knock down, like yellowcake and mushroom clouds, but someone claimed you ordered the hit on Bhutto because she spilled the beans about Osama being dead all these years and the Two Minutes of Hate does not work without an Emmanuel Goldstein. Again, there is no proof, Dick, but still if you run Murder Inc. out of your office, then speculation is bound to run rampant about who you whacked. Don’t worry your secrets are safe with me. Delicious rumors. How about the scientist, Kelly, in England, was he one of yours?

And how about all those Iraqi scientists who were whacked? Prudent. You don’t want Iraq reconstituting dangerous programs like clean water lines, electrical power grids and sewage treatment plants.

And, you know how rumors are Dick, some of them are really, really hard to knock down, but is that a naked dancer reflected in your sunglasses or not you little devil.

And hell, Dick, when you look back on your recently departed life and see the panorama of death, degradation, destruction, deceit and, well let’s just deliciously say it – moral depravation; don’t you think you deserve this honor for a whole new circle? Wouldn’t you be pissed if you were merely cast into Ninth Circle and be done with it? Hell yes you would.

So, dear boy, welcome to the Tenth Circle of Hell. You’ll be alone for a little while. This place is reserved for the best of the best. For human beings devoid of any humanity. And your eternal punishment? What befits and befalls a man who is not a man but a monster?

Soupy Sales Reruns for an Eternity. Pies in the face every 30 seconds. Hi-jinx and hoodwinks. Slapstick and hilarity for all eternity. But there’s no laugh-track though there’s a sound track. As the pies fly and the jinx go haywire you’ll hear an angels’ choir of every voice you’ve ever extinguished. Their screams and cries and their song is one and it fills your spiritual marrow with the knowledge you tortured more angels than terrorists and all your surmise and premise were dead wrong.

Isn’t that the ultimate poetry, Dick? All that death and destruction because you were Punked and couldn’t stand the shame?

And now look at you. Speechless at the honor. And right where you belong. At the Apex. Spoken in the same breath with the greatest names of infamy humanity can muster.

All I can say Dick Cheney is, “Well done sir, and welcome home.”

Wow, this Oval Office is pretty cool.

Hey, guys, listen up. We’ve got a little PR problem. Not a big one. Hey, we’re America, right? We’re too big to fail. We can weather this storm. This wasn’t on our watch. But, guys, listen up, we cannot release those pictures from Abu Ghraib. And it’s not about endangering the troops, though use that old canard if you want, what endangers our troops is being a troop in occupied territory, but guys, Mr. President, please, these photos, raping kids in front of their parents and the like, well, sirs, it just wouldn’t go down well with, well, with anyone with a conscience.

These photos prove one thing; “ick, sick, dick,” which is German for Eww!. And yeah, while the snapshots are good to blackmail the little camel jockeys, pardon my French, in the photos once they get back to their villages and you show the Tribal Elders little Mohammad straddling little Ali and oops bye-bye Mohammed and Ali, but it’s not so good for our image you know. And as Andre Agassi said, Image is Everything.

America is beloved all around the world and these photos could enflame anti-American sentiment and THAT is not acceptable. The world doesn’t care if we, in our pursuit of extremist terrorist America haters, we kill a few score of innocent people a day. It’s expected. Collateral damage is chic. Why else do we pursue it so feverishly? But, sirs, what was conceived by the mind of the Frick and Frack torture experts makes inhumanity look like charity.

So here is what we do. We do what every good government does; we obfuscate, delay and deny. Now, Mr. President, this is especially difficult for you as, you know, you promised all this change and stuff, good move there, but this change we cannot tolerate. There might be riots in the streets and the burning of American flags all over the world and while this is good business for the American Flag manufacturers in China, it’s not good for our image.

Now, sir, you know more about image than any politician since, uh, well, sir, the previous president’s chief advisor, may the Lord save them all from The Hague, and you cannot undermisestimate the damage to our image as the world’s beacon of truth, justice and integrity, albeit a tiny bit tainted by the silly water-boarding thing, and the silly wars under false pretenses thing and of course the Truth thing which the previous administration was so adept at hiding at all costs – good on them – but sir, these photos, sir, these photos portray evil being done to the evil-doers, except, sir, almost all of them are completely innocent.

Well, perhaps not completely, sir. They are Arabs and Muslims and Jihadists and by definition in the post-911 world this makes them guilty by religion and region, but sir, these photographs, which looks like they were dreamed up by Caligula and Freddy Kreuger, instead of our own vaunted CIA, US Military, paramilitary contractors, Rumsfeld, Cheney and the producers of The Fear Factor – these photos go beyond acceptable brutality, bondage and bestiality, which, you know can be sexy if you’re from Georgia. But, billions of people around the world in their frenzied over-imaginative heads will switch out the victims, uh sorry, terrorists, in these photos with their own children, wives and brothers. Empathy is the enemy, sir.

We’ve all heard the phrase a picture is worth a thousand words. Well these pictures are absolutely biblical in their verbosity. Talking about torture is one thing, but a shot of a woman being sodomized by a gun barrel is the kind of thing not even Goldman Sachs can recover from.

Now, you’re going to take a lot of flack, sir, from the ACLU, Amnesty International, the International Red Cross, Greenpeace and the lesbians from Code-Pink. But sir, these are all far left, Gay & Marxist organizations and we can make broad inferences about National Security and, uh, you know proprietary information about our torture techniques, which have saved billions of lives all around the world from Osama bin Laden, who is probably dead but has lots of wives and kids roaming the world looking to shore-up his legacy. He attacked us sir. And his ghost is still out there. And anyway sir, these are Arab Muslims whose first sexual experience is probably with a sheep or a goat or whatever else they herd over there. To them this isn’t torture as much as foreplay sir.

Well that’s about it sir. America doesn’t torture and these photos prove it as long as they are not released.

Three Self-Evident Truths:

ONE; Fantasy is always better than reality

TWO; Life is always better than death

THREE; Sex is a drug

Who dares to disagree?

I try to get my wife to do stuff. Sometimes. Not all the time. Hardly ever. Once in while, you know to spice things up. I say, “Honey, let’s have a little fantasy.” And she rolls her eyes, gives a sigh of ‘oh god’, then closes her eyes, puts her arms across her chest and says, “Fine.”

Not what I had in mind. And I’d been fantasizing for days. It was hot. Yum.

But reality has a way of trumping fantasy. Like how so much better to watch the NFL on TV than in a stadium. Or meeting a hero who is so much shorter than you imagined and whose eyes are running away from your humanity.

Fantasy is good I think, a diversion, entertainment, but reality tests our mettle while fantasy indulges our weaknesses.

I wonder as more and more of our fellow citizens manifest as human time-bombs and take out their families, fellow-employees, and/or other objects of dark passion; how one’s evolution goes from “Well, John was just an ordinary guy, you know. Quiet. Kept to himself. But ordinary, you know…” to killing your children before blowing out your own brains – I wonder at the degree to which fantasy takes over the thoughts and energy of a person’s glide toward explosion.

Killing your own kids. Greek Tragedies should be left for Heroes and normal folk should humbly make their way and raise a family without becoming tragedians themselves.

There is this woman in Florida who premeditatedly shot her grown son dead in the back of the head as they enjoyed a play-date at an indoor shooting range. And then she shot herself. The woman believed she was the Anti-Christ who had to sacrifice her son and herself to save the world.

Human time bombs explode almost every week now. So numerous they often fail to make national headlines. How many more stories do you want to read about another parent murdering his own children in cold blood?

What is the trajectory of the great hopes and expectations (fantasies?) we have for our lives versus those dreams dashed on the rocks of reality – no money, no house, no wife, no kids, no job and voices in your head telling you to save your children from an evil world by shot-putting them into the next. How many of these human time bombs have gone down some deep end of fanaticism or are under medication for ‘depression’ or have become so impersonalized in an impersonal world, their own children are ambivalent objects in a clash of realities? What is the chatter of internal dialog which drives a human being from daddy to monstrosity?

“What is the frequency, Kenneth?” Dan Rather was famously asked by just another nut.

But it’s better to live in a crazy mother-fucking world than to be dead and out of it. Am I right? Life is always better than death. Well, poor Mrs. Schiavo is a perfect example. Death is so bad everything must be done to prevent it. Death is Evil. Isn’t that it? Original Sin. Something like that. Anyway, it’s not that life is so great, because obviously unless you’re one of the billion or so out of six billion on the planet who can make a go of things, life totally sucks. And yet, a human being will struggle to survive like, well like any animal really – to the last breath.

Ironically, we have this apparently withering Culture of Life which watches in silence as billions starve and vomit to death in human desolation, a holocaust by poverty if you will, while a human vegetable in a hospital bed must be saved at all costs.

And hence, we have hell on earth, hell in hell and paradise for nutjobs who murder their own children to save the world from themselves.

Death is one of our great mysteries. Perhaps it will be our last mystery. Death is a secret. And because Death isn’t saying much people like to put words in death’s mouth and explain the secrets of life through death’s shadow in Plato’s Cave.

All of us interpret life and death in our own way and take comfort where we choose. Is to choose life always better than death because fear of the unknown is so great?

So I say to my wife, “Honey, I’ve been reading a woman can have an orgasm for an hour.”

And she says, “Only before I met you, Sweetie.”

“So a woman can have an hour-long orgasm?”

“It’s not something you put a clock against,” she says.

“Huh. Wow. An hour. That would literally kill a man.”

“That’s the point,” she says. “If an hour-long orgasm didn’t kill a man what the hell do you think the world would be like then, huh? A smoldering ruin.”

“Hmm. Still. An hour. Maybe it’s worth death to experience something like that.”

“Men,” she says.

“What do you mean, before you met me? I thought you loved me.”

And she gives me this long Jack Benny look before the big punch-line. I see her going back and forth between retort “A” and riposte “B” and finally she says, “Honey I didn’t marry you for your dick. You make me laugh.”

“Huh?”

“Do you want women to choose their mate based upon who they have the best sex with?”

“Uh…”

“Hell, we’d still be in caves. Your sex is fine but I’m starting to worry about your brain which was one of your major attractions for a long time.”

“Sex is fine?”

“It’s fine. You give me pleasure. I love you. So shut the hell up and stop reading about fantasy orgasms which don’t exist!”

“They don’t?” I ask, “Before or after me?”

“Look Prince Charming with hair growing out of your ears and love handles more like love caskets, the first time I saw you my knees got weak, I swooned, I got wet in all the right places and I wanted you right then and there more than any man I’d ever met and I feel that way to this very day so shut the hell up and go do something productive with all the extra energy you have reading about sex instead of having it.”

“Do you want to do a little fantasy thing?”

“Yeah,” she says, “Let’s pretend I’m Dorothy and you’re the Scarecrow and we’re off to get you a brain in the garage which needs a spring cleaning.”

Fantasy is always better than reality. Life is always better than death. Sex is a drug.

Anyway, that’s the humane way to execute a man. Forget death by injection or gas chamber or electric chair – death by orgasm. That’s the way to go. On the other hand, there’d probably be a big crime spree wouldn’t there…

ONCE UPON A TIME…

ONCE Upon a Time:

In the days when Chicken Little was still a yolk, Henny Penny was bustling about her yard thinking of all the frantic important things Henny Penny always thought like “It’s only a matter of time before Farmer John sees I don’t lay eggs anymore and have been stealing them from the Pechuga Sisters during the 30 minutes of hate each morning before the meds and it’s only going to be a matter of time before my head is on the block!”

Poor Henny Penny always so frantic and sad. Stealing eggs from others to prolong the inevitable. And who is to say a wolf won’t come by and eat her long before Farmer John gets wind of Henny Penny’s subterfuge.

And it was right about then which is right about now, Henny Penny at that very moment felt a piece of sky fall down and hit her on the head like a small but definite thing which hits and runs and is never heard from again but can only mean one thing.

And Henny Penny says, “Oh my God! It’s Obama! It’s so clear! If we don’t stop Obama the sky will fall!”

And just as apocalypse means revelation so too did Henny Penny’s epiphany about Obama have repercussions like a small ripple of hysteria can turn a calm sea to a raging orgy of crashing angst with just a few hours of talk radio and cable TV and internet virality.

Because my goodness, if the sky fell, then what would happen to the sun? And the stars would fall too! And all the kings horses and men and Lego blocks, everything and all because Obama is the president and he’s giving all our money to the communists and he pals around with terrorists, and is the real father of John Edward’s lust-child because it’s been clear since the 2004 debate with Dick Cheney John Edwards was impotent!

“Hi Henny Penny, what are they saying about me?” says Sarahcuda. Not really a barnyard animal, Sarahcuda was more a lab experiment gone bad. It wasn’t the number of personalities which gave pause but the number of them who were sluts which boggled the mind of psychiatric statisticians. Sarahcuda slithered rather than sauntered and lumbered rather than danced and if casting a Garden of Eden passion play for Church or for porn, Sarahcuda would not be Eve.

“Oh,” says Henny Penny, “You startled me. Where on earth did you come from?”

“That’s for me to know and you to find out, Precious. It’s gossip anyway. Idle, bitter, jealous, hateful and hurtful gossip. I am the mother of all my children. And I do not eat them.”

“Well,” says Henny Penny, “A piece of the sky fell on me like the first snowflake of an avalanche of terror. Obama wants to destroy the sky and with it all of creation!”

“Like, tell me something I don’t know sister,” says Sarahcuda, “Obama is a radical Muslim sleeper cell which makes 911 look like the Holocaust. No. Wait. That can’t be right. Damn. These logic and reason classes have been damn hard and I hate my teacher. A little prick from Hollywood who wears a cross and swears he’s not gay but I have my doubts. Obama does not make 911 look like the Holocaust. Obama makes 911 look like a cherry-bomb in a mailbox on Alaska Independence Day! Obama is the Holocaust!”

“Well,” says Henny Penny, “I don’t know about that, I’m just a chicken. My only concern is unless we stop Obama and the Democrats the sky will start falling faster and faster and before you know it all that will be left is…well, can there be anything left without the sky and didn’t God create the sky on the very first day and now look what Obama has done!”

Then like the Phoenix resurrecting from the ash-heap of short-attention-span-politics, Newt-the-Hoot flies down from a withered perch of a whispering willow and says, “It fell on me too. A piece of the sky fell on me too! And since I was higher off the ground than you, I felt it first, so it’s mine by rights. I should herald the demise of Western Civilization from a more erudite and owlish point of view. Wisdom. By the grace of my Catholic God and the love and redemption of Jesus Christ and the gift of tongue’d truth which is gravely placed upon me like blood on the Eucharist.”

“Uh, okay, whatever,” says Henny Penny, “You be the herald or the One or whatever the hell you just said; I just want to save the sky.”

“Well, Newt-the-Hoot,” says Sarahcuda, “We thought you were dead. I thought the worms crawled out of you back in ninety-nine.”

Newt-the-Hoot eyes Sarahcuda with casual pseudology. He says, “I don’t know whether you’re the Whore of Babylon or a dropout from Village Idiot High. Regardless, people will not believe you when you tell them the sky is falling because the dumbest woman on the planet before you was Katie Couric! And the third thing is what species are you anyway?”

At which time all three, Henny Penny, Sarahcuda and Newt-the-Hoot are hit upside the head by a piece of the sky. They all look up.

“Hi kids,” says Foxy Woxy, “What’s up there?”

Henny Penny, Sarahcuda and Newt-theHoot say together, “The sky is falling!!!”

“How’s that?” asks Foxy-Woxy, “The sky is falling? Well it’s always falling isn’t it? Like skin. It flakes off as new sky emerges behind it.”

“Hey, who are you anyway, stranger,” says Newt-the-Hoot, “I knew the sky was falling first. I have the gravitas and sober ability to dissemble and disassociate and convince others of my core values which are your core beliefs which are based upon my understanding of the universal truth which is passion balanced by reason and common sense in service to labor and productivity.”

“Are you running for Sheriff of the Forest there Newt-the-Hoot?” asks Foxy-Woxy with a chuckle.

“If not me then who?” retorts Newt-the-Hoot in a revelry reminiscent of Napoleon at Waterloo.

“Well,” begins Sarahcuda, but is interrupted by Henny Penny who says,”Well, whoever you are, you sure look familiar. You look like a fox but you have the eyes of a…” and then Henny Penny’s eyes open wide and as she is about to scream Foxy Woxy steps out of his fox costume and President Obama stands there like Superman and without a word, which in retrospect says so much about character and commitment, grabs Henny Penny by the throat and tosses her to Bo-Bama the Wonder Dog who snaps her neck in a merciful nanosecond and trots off to the White House kitchen to give the chef a thrill.

Sarahcuda and Newt-the-Hoot stare in awe and contempt. Every superhero needs a villain but the Republicans can only dredge up tired old tabloid tigers; narcissistic moral relativists preaching universal truth with a legacy of disaster as their proof of success.

And Obama says, “You need chickens to breed your contempt Newt and Cuda. And I am going to take you out one Henny Penny at a time. BOO!”

Sarahcuda and Newt-the-Hoot run and fly off the handle in opposite directions somewhat like headless barn yard chickens in the last throes of a Cheneyesque apocalypse which means dark revelation which means they can run but can’t hide from the truth of their destiny as political road-kill.

Obama turns to me, hands on his hips with a little impatient disgust and says, “This is the only Fairy Tale of yours I’m showing up in you got that? You think throwing Henny Penny to Bo for the kill is really suitable for my little girls? Huh?”

“Well, kids grow up pretty fast these days sir,” I say. “Just like we did. And, I did make you the hero sir.”

“All right, well just this once. I did Leno. I’ll do Idol. And I did you. And believe me you need me a whole lot more than I need you. I can make a fairy tale. And you’re a complete unknown.”

“It’s more of a parable, sir,” I say.

“Well, you started it off with Once Upon A Time,” he says.

“Point taken, sir.”

“A parable, huh? It looks like a bunch of cheap shots at low hanging fruit. What’s the moral of your story there, son? Republicans are cartoon characters?”

“Uh, you can’t rule by fear any more, sir. Remember the Greatest Generation, sir, the 60s? Well they said “Question Authority.” Well, now sir, Authority is beyond question so we’ve got to question its tactics which fear is the alpha and omega choice, sir. We’re not going to be afraid just because you tell us to because George Bush did not restore dignity to the White House, sir.”

“Dude, chill out,” says Obama, “Do you play? Let’s discuss this over some hoops.”

“You can’t bowl me over with a charm offensive, sir.”

“Chicken? Bwock, bwock, bwock.”

“Okay, one game, sir. To ten by ones, gotta win by two, no harm no foul and, sir, I just have one question. It’s been more than a hundred days. You must know by now. Who really did kill Kennedy?”

Let the fairy tale begin.

THE TORTURE OF DICK CHENEY

A Play in Two Scenes

Caution; the scene of interrogation might seem a tad bit harsh.

The Play begins below. Please turn off your cell phones. No flash photography. Thank you and enjoy the show.

THE TORTURE OF DICK CHENEY

SCENE ONE:

The Torture Room. Two Torturers await the arrival of Dick Cheney.

TORTURER #1: He’ll never crack. He’s tough as nails. He’s a believer. A zealot. A Good Soldier. He makes Ollie North look like Perez Hilton. He makes G. Gordon Liddy…

TORTURER #2: (Interrupting) …He’s had twenty-seven heart attacks. He gets arrhythmia thinking about a Beretta 391. We just show him slides of a menacing Grizzly Bear and he’ll be wetting his jammies to get out there and blow some blood and guts to smithereens. He’ll tell us what we want to know.

TORTURER #1: Well, whatever. But, I’ll bet you fifty bucks when he gets the cattle prod to the nuts he laughs right in our faces.

TORTURER #2: You’re on. But, we’re never going to get to the cattle prod because we’re not going to torture him with pain but with lust. He’s a busy man. Doesn’t like to be tied down. We just say, “Tell us what we want to know and we let you go.”

TORTURER #1: And what is it we want to know exactly?

TORTURER #2: The same thing Olivier wanted to know from Hoffman in the Marathon Man: “Is it safe?“

Blackout.

SCENE TWO:

The Torture Room. Dick Cheney is strapped to an upright board like Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs but without the ball-gag. A single light-bulb illuminates the room. CHENEY is undergoing Chinese Water Torture and about every ten seconds we hear a single drop of water fall from above onto Dick Cheney’s bald spot on the top of his head. The water is room temperature tap-water. The Two Torturers stand by his side in the shadows asking the occasional question or making the off-hand remark.

DICK CHENEY: Is it safe? You’re asking me is it safe? We’ve got tens of thousands of radical, insane terrorists around the world trying to bring me to The Hague on war crimes and you’re asking me if it’s safe? Safe for who motherfucker? Your Aunt Clarissa who is still alive because I chose the dark side because somebody had to after we were attacked? Never forget that. We were attacked. And we chose to fight fire with fire. We didn’t have to. We could have been civilized about this but where is the fun in that. We want to beat the enemy at his own game. Total destruction. It means, like them, we don’t care what we do to meet our objectives. The ends justify the means. If you’ve got information I want and I think if I point a gun at one of your kid’s heads and start trash-talking Allah, it will get me the information I want then I’m going to do it.

TORTURER #1: What if it doesn’t work?

DICK CHENEY: Then you blow the kid away and move on to the next kid. Start youngest to oldest.

TORTURER #1: That’s barbaric.

DICK CHENEY: Never bluff. Eventually after all the kids and wives and family are lying around like Mai Lai and he still doesn’t tell you what you want to know then you move on to the next house and begin again.

TORTURER #2: Prudent.

DICK CHENEY: The important thing is you scare the living bejesus out of as many people as you can. That’s the important thing. Dehumanize, degrade and debrief. S.O.P. Torture is not about truth, don’t make me laugh. I’ve got a tape of a guy confessing to eating his own mother in an Irish stew on St. Patrick’s Day. He didn’t have a mother and never heard of Ireland. It’s not about information. It’s about teaching someone a lesson they’ll never forget.

TORTURER #2: Amen.

DICK CHENEY: You see all these Madrassa things they got over there, these religious school things that whip up these young thugs into whirling dervishes with all this anti-American hate calling us weak and decadent and infidelish, well, after a while, these kids start to believe it and start thinking they can declare holy war on us and we’re just going to take it because we’re Satan’s spawn and we’ll die easy because we’re evil. And the next thing you know we’ve got al Qaeda kids flying planes into buildings and attacking London and Spain and Bali and Iran is the biggest sponsor of these schools if you don’t think too hard or long about the matter and so we really have no choice but to round up as many of these Muslim haters as we can and teach them the truth about America. We are not weak. We are not decadent. We are not Infidels.

TORTURER #1: What are we?

DICK CHENEY: We are the biggest, baddest motherfuckers on earth and if you fuck with us we will kill you, your family, your friends and anyone who has ever or might ever know you. You think we’re weak? We will snap you in two like a twig. You think we’re decadent? We will shove the Koran right up your ass. You think we’re infidels? We will cram Jesus down your throat until you convert or choke to death.

TORTURER #1: It’s holy war, sir.

DICK CHENEY: Well that’s what they believe so that’s the game we play but this isn’t about God.

TORTURER #2: Hell no! It’s about Communism. The Chinese are taking over the world and they got these little camel jockeys holding our oil hostage over there doing their inscrutable bidding. Muslimism is just the newest ism and all isms are Communism.

(Dick Cheney rolls his eyes and spits on the floor.)

DICK CHENEY: Are they pulling twits right out of the TSA for torture duty now?

TORTURER #1: Technically sir, it’s not torture unless it kills you and then it can’t be torture because then it’s negligent or accidental homicide. Torture is only a crime while you’re alive. And anyway, America does not torture. You may die accidentally or on purpose but you were never tortured. And if you didn’t die, and you get back out on the street then obviously you weren’t tortured because you are still alive but it’s possible you were treated somewhat harshly but harsh is not torture because America does it so elegantly. Evil, with all due respect, is strapping a suicide belt onto a pregnant woman and telling her to go buy a loaf of bread in the market square or you’re going to shoot her mother in the face. Big difference.

DICK CHENEY: I remember when we got Gonzales and those Lawyers in the room and they asked what torture was and I said, “If it doesn’t kill you it’s not torture and if it does kill you then you had it coming because what were you doing there being tortured in the first place if you weren’t guilty or wanted to be?”

TORTURER #1: Genius. (To Torturer #2) I told you he wouldn’t crack.

TORTURER #2: This good-cop/good-cop thing is a new strategy since Obama took office. We don’t think the results are any better but there is less screaming and convulsions. That gets on your nerves after a while. “Just die already,” you want to shout sometimes.

DICK CHENEY: Obama. Don’t get me started on Obama. Safe. Is it safe? Obama. You feel safer with that big-brained Harvard yuppie with funny ears than me and crazy George? Well just wait. AfghanPaktan is like an atom bomb inside a death star. Iraq is the Hatfields and McCoys on a Hal Lindseyian biblical scale. The people of Iran are led by apocalyptic nut-jobs from Jihad Central. And those kinky Saudi Arabian Princes makes those crazy Mormon cults look like a Martha Stewart campout.

TORTURER #1: And the Israelis sir?

(Silence in the room. A long moment.)

DICK CHENEY: And have we been attacked again? Huh? Have we? Huh? Huh? NO!!! We took the attack to them and now we fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them here plus we’ve taken away all their frequent flier miles so they can’t even get here if they wanted to and what does Obama do? Cuba.

TORTURER #2: A zombie island of commies, sir. Worse than China.

DICK CHENEY: After 50 years of staunch bi-partisan support of the Cuban exile community, Obama loses Cuba in his first hundred days. Can the Caymans be far behind? In my day we treated Banana Republics like Banana Republics and invaded first and asked questions later. Now what; a Cohiba in every humidor and a tax-shelter for every Tom, Dick and Harriet who can afford a Princess Cruise? Obama is a…

TORTURER #2: Two words, sir. Manchurian Candidate.

TORTURER #1: That’s a bit much don’t you think? He was elected fair and square.

DICK CHENEY: Just like me twice. Fair and square. (Cheney laughs eerily like Burgess Meredith as the Penguin in the old Batman TV show.) I say torture; you say suture, let’s call the whole thing off. Wait. Do you hear something? A water fall. Or a babbling brook. Some dripping, dropping, running-off-at-the-mouth new-age fountain sound. And a sense one has to pee. Is it safe? You ask if it’s safe? Of course it’s safe. It was always safe. 911 does not an Armageddon make, but we had you going there for a while, huh? Mushroom Clouds over Manhattan. Osama and Saddam sitting in a tree. Aspen trees. The Glory Days…

(Dick Cheney falls peacefully asleep.)

TORTURER #1: Yup. Classic text-book case.

TORTURER #2: It’s the only way to get the truth really. When you think about it torture is the most unreliable truth getting device in the world. Irish stew.

TORTURER #1: Yup. We got the truth alright. What was it again?

TORTURER #2: Dick Cheney is the biggest S.O.B. who ever lived.

TORTURER #1: Yeah, well, you didn’t need torture for that. Most times the truth is self-evident. Should we wake him up? Give him a little sleep deprivation just for shits and giggles?

TORTURER #2: Nah. Let him rest. He’s got nothing more to say of any relevance.

TORTURER #1: Right. Well? We’ve got crazy George right down the hall; want to do him?

TORTURER #2: Hell no. He starts squealing like a stuck pig before you get the door closed. What’s the fun in that?

(The Torturers prop Dick Cheney’s head up with a comfy pillow and give him a Linus blanket. Cheney snores loudly from a deep sleep as the light fades to black.)

Curtain

WASHINGTON, DC — April 19, 2009 — Retired navy captain and Apollo XIV astronaut Edgar Mitchell today called for the U. S. government to disclose to its citizens and other Earthlings what he asserts are the realities of long-standing extraterrestrial visitations and interactions with our planet.

Like duh, my parents ate totally from outer space. But it’s like God don’t you think? Don’t you think if She existed She’d have show Her face by now? Merciful my ass. The world used to be full of gods and now what? Now demagogues are all we can muster.

And the same with aliens. What the hell are they waiting for? Is there really a secret agreement between our Reptilian Blue-blooded World Government and the local chapter of the Galactic Empire to keep the Galactic Empire secret while the Reptilian Blueblood World Government is merely a conspiracy theory? Or are they here to eat us.

Speaking this morning at “X-Conference 2009” in Gaithersburg, MD, a suburb of the nation’s capital, Mitchell told several hundred attendees and a phalanx of video cameras that, with our planet confronting population pressures and critical questions of environmental and energy sustainability, the need for disclosure about extraterrestrial involvement with Earth is critical.

Mitchell contends that the dispersal of knowledge about what he believes to be the end of Earth’s apparent quarantine from other civilizations, and advancement of planetary culture beyond its present fragmentation and incoherence, are desirable results of the widest public release of information about the extraterrestrial presence he believes is real.

The X-Conference is not a Trekkie convention, you know. Not to denigrate the trekkies or anything. They’re people too like Jehovah’s Witnesses but that doesn’t mean you trust them with stress tests if you know what I’m saying.

This is a man who had the Right Stuff. He went to the moon. He knows things. Dr. Mitchell says alien technology is required to heal the planet and the acceptance of the Galactic Empire is a pre-requisite for humanity to shed its small, narrow-minded provincialism in favor of assimilation to the greater galactic good.

At least that’s how I read it. Between the Aliens and Venezuelans I can’t keep up with the threat matrix. The Aliens might eat us and the Venezuelans might beat us in arm wrestling or some such.

Anyway, I’ve long been as advocate of disclosure. I’ve known since I was a kid about aliens. They abducted me and taught me things. I don’t know what. It’s sublimated. They never hurt me but they can’t take a joke and have no appreciation of irony. Or slapstick. Pratfalls? Might as well be at Buckingham Palace. Dr. Mitchell says our quarantine is about to be lifted. And, well, I guess like Cuba, pretty soon we’ll be a vacation destination on the Galactic Safari circuit. Or maybe it’s like agave. It’s takes years to bear fruit. Maybe they’re lifting the quarantine because we’ve grown big enough, like bass in a stocked lake, to eat.

It always comes back to the food chain doesn’t it? The top of one food chain is the bottom of another. Except for lions, tigers and people. But what if people taste better to aliens than lions and tigers? And there’s sure a lot more us than big cats.

That’s why I want to be cremated. That “worms crawl in” song really got to me. I got this thing about being eaten alive or dead. I don’t want someone to enjoy me like Haagen Dazs chocolate ice cream. I was somebody. People loved me and I loved them and I don’t want to be a lump digesting in some alien’s double-stomach.

So you see. I have issues with aliens. I’m not against them, per se, but an advanced civilization is hardly going to take our dishwashing and housekeeping jobs are they? If I was an alien traveling a few lights years through a wormhole I’m coming for a great job or a good steak.

Maybe they’re coming to help us build the new Jetsons cars. It’s possible. Dr. Mitchell didn’t talk about their agenda. We could use like the galactic version of the World Bank or something right now that’s for sure. A galactic loan. I wonder what the interest rates are in the Orion System.

And even if they’re vegetarian and eat our plants then how will we breathe? They’re here for something. Maybe they’re here for the dolphins. Or California girls. Hard to say. Tourism or Conquest. It’s a thin red line. Spreading culture or harvesting drones.

Anyway, I wish Dr. Mitchell and everyone in the disclosure movement well. I’m sure ‘the truth’ is right around the corner after the economy rebounds and the wars end and Bush and Cheney are sent to The Hague and about three days after the Mothership lands on the South Lawn of the White House.

Whatever. It’s okay by me. I can wait. Because the sooner we realize we’re not alone the sooner we’ll see ourselves for the primitive, clownish buffoons we are.

On the other hand, maybe we’re a delicacy like Kobe Beef.

This is a true story. Almost. And, it’s almost fiction. But not quite. I should know, I was there.

I’m in La Paz. Not Bolivia. Baja Sur. I’m sitting in the back of a taxi with “my friend,” Jeff, heading out to score some coke and some weed. What’s new, right?

“Jeff” is living with his young, lithe, sexually provocative girlfriend on a small pocket cruiser in the slip across from me in the Palmira Marina. I’m ‘boat-sitting’ for a friend’s Passport 40, called Tumbleweed. That’s the story.

Jeff and I ran into each other on the docks because we’re neighbors. It doesn’t take long to get his story. He was a millionaire software developer, with “THE Killer Ap of 1999.” He cashed out early and has spent the last ten years bumming around, collecting scalps, if you get my drift, and developing a major league drug habit.

I learn from Jeff if you want drugs in Mexico all you do is get in a taxi and tell him what you want and he’ll take you someplace, go get it, and drive you home all for just a nominal surcharge over the normal cost of the cab ride. Well I was amazed by this. Any taxi in Mexico?

“Well,” says, Jeff, “Maybe not all of Mexico but that’s how it works here.”

“Well,” I say, “Next time you’re going to get some stuff let me know.”

“How about an hour from now? I hooked up with this taxi driver last week outside of Cinepolis and he scored some stuff for me and Angela, so he’s cool, why don’t you come along? What do you want?”

“Oh, a little pot, maybe a little coke for an Auld Lang Syne lost weekend with a senorita or two.”

“No sweat,” says Jeff. “I’ll knock on the hull when I’m ready to split.”

Coke addiction is a dreadful habit. It helps to be rich. Not many can keep it recreational. It always avalanches down to tweeker-dom. From the power of a god to a cockroach needing a fix of Raid. It’s getting strung-out which is the embarrassing part of drug addiction. Jeff’s a millionaire and he knows how to score. He’s not strung out.

Actually, he’s a sweet guy. Funny. Caring to his girlfriend. Yet he has the attitude of someone at the top of a game which has passed him by. Wistfully arrogant. Maybe he’s a soul-mate.

I’m sitting in the salon of the yacht making some notes, sending off some emails and arranging an exit strategy. The knock comes. We go.

The taxi is waiting in the marina parking lot. The driver’s name is Cuahutemoc. I’ve seen the name on nametags in restaurants and hotels, but can’t pronounce it to save my life. Jeff calls Cuahutemoc, Chucho, and off we go.

We head south from the marina toward the center of La Paz. It’s a sprawling city; a flat, hot, dusty desert oasis on the Sea of Cortez. We drive for about twenty minutes through town and then we are out in the campo, driving into the boonies. A desert moonscape. Tiny houses made of what looks like old clothes, with tin roofs. The richer folks have brick construction hovels and the super rich have plaster over the brick. We drive for another 20 minutes and the scenery becomes more isolated and bleak.

Jeff buys big quantities to fuel his habit and the crack-pipe-fuck-bunny party he’s got going with Angela in the forward berth of his small but sturdy yacht. I’ve got 500 pesos to score some weed and a bit of coke. Jeff has a brushed aluminum briefcase full of money. He opens it with a wink. Dollars. Lots of them. I’m thinking how much blow can two people do?

Finally, we pull into this apparently unfinished abandoned house with tablecloth curtains flapping in open windows and rebar sticking up and out of the construction to signal an ongoing project. If the house isn’t finished the government doesn’t charge property tax.

The roads have been dirt for miles and the house we’ve pulled into sits on a barren landscape of dust, stray dogs, the ubiquitous rooster, and men with guns. Invisible moments before, now you see silhouettes in doorways and behind window curtains.

Cuahutemoc gets out of the car and tells us to wait. He asks me for money and what I want. I hand him the five hundred peso note and say, “Some mota and some coca,” in toddler Spanish. He nods and turns to Jeff who hands him the case of cash.

“Get as much as you can,” Jeff tells the driver in much better Spanish than mine.  

We are both sitting in the backseat of the taxi like the stupid gringos we are. It’s hot. Horseflies buzz the car and a few hungry dogs come over to give a sniff and wait in the shade of the undercarriage for a possible meal. Minutes go by and nothing. Jeff and I really don’t have anything to say to each other. The sweat is dripping down my back. More minutes go by.

Cuahutemoc reappears and walks toward the car. He carries nothing. Behind him a few steps come two really tough looking kids with what look to my untrained eye like Beretta M92s. Old U.S. Army issue. The driver motions us out of the car.

“Please,” he says in broken English, “They are scared. When a gringo gets in a taxi and wants drugs, he usually wants a few joints to smoke on vacation. Like him.” He looks at me and I smile a lame thing like, “Yeah, I ‘m normal. Don’t point those guns at me. Please.”

“But you,” says Cuahutemoc, looking to Jeff, “There is $10,000 U.S. in your case. They think you’re D.E.A. and it’s some kind of set-up” Jeff lets out a huge laugh.

He says, “I’m not drug enforcement. I’m a druggie. Dude, I go through two grams a day, okay? My girlfriend does even more. I’m heading out of port tomorrow and going south to Guatemala. I’m going to be at sea a while. I need to stock up. Search me. Search him. It’s on the level, I swear.” Jeff wasn’t afraid at all. It was like, “Valet dude, go get my car.”

I hear a helicopter. At the same time I see a vehicle approach our location, a pickup truck kicking a trail of dust behind it. The sound of the helicopter dies away without getting closer. The truck pulls up next to us. We had not gotten out of the car yet and were both still sitting in the backseat. Trapped. Three more of these kids, late teens, with guns jump down from the truck. It is rusted through. These kids seem better trained than the others as they deploy a perimeter around the taxi. Cuahutemoc is very scared. He’s clean. I imagine, just a few years older than the joven soldiers confronting us, he has a wife and three kids waiting on him to bring home his ten dollars a day or whatever the hell he nets after paying the owner of the cab for the privilege of driving a taxi for 12 hours a day.

Cuahutemoc says, “Please get out of the car now. Slowly.” We do.

I put my hands up. They laugh.

Jeff says, “Listen you motherfuckers you’ve got my money, if you can’t get it up, then give it back and I’ll give my business to some other pieces of shit who know what they’re doing.” He says this in English, but the hombres get the gist. The pistols are cocked in unison. The guns are raised.

The Jefe of the operation steps out of the truck and says in perfect English with a Spanish accent, “Do you have any idea why you might have been followed here gentlemen if you are not the police?”

“Who followed us?” asks Jeff. The Jefe, in his mid-thirties, lean with a mustache and light-colored cowboy hat, looks up in the sky and says, “The satellites.”

“What?” Jeff is startled. “I swear, I’m just a buyer. I’m a user. This is for my own personal use.”

“No doubt,” says the Jefe. He makes a swift gesture with his head. One of the gun-kids brings the case of cash. “Unfortunately, we cannot help you.” Then he says something quickly to Cuahutemoc who dashes for the car. “Get in, get in,” he says in a frantic whisper.

“Fuck you motherfucker. You piece of shit,” Jeff says and I realize what a death wish is. This guy is trying to kill himself. With drugs or stupidity. Another quick head flick by El Jefe and before I feel any time pass whatsoever the kid who’d brought Jeff the case of money takes the barrel of his gun to the back of Jeff’s skull and lays him out cold. Another dude joins the first and they toss Jeff into the back of the taxi

The Jefe stands there and looks at me. He is curious and bemused. “This isn’t about drugs is it?”

“No sir,” I say.

“You asked for the satellite surveillance. What is this about?” he asks.

“Software,” I say. Here is the moment of delicate truth when professionals recognize a situation and go their separate ways as one operation brushes up against another in the long war.

“Software,” he says thoughtfully. “He’s a pirate?”

“He’s a genius,” I say, “Or he was.”

“Well whoever or whatever he was or is he’s your problem.” Another quick flick of his head and the front door of the taxi is opened by a polite young man with killer’s eyes. Before I disappear into the taxi I say, “I did give you 500 pesos of my own money for a little mota and some coca you know. Do you think…” and before I can finish, one final subtle flick of his head and something is placed into my hand. I get in the car and Cuahutemoc leaves in a rush of spinning dirt and flying rocks.

Jeff is completely out. Cuahutemoc and I have nothing to say to each other. It’s a long dreary drive back to the marina. When we arrive I run down to the dock and get Angela who is looking sleepy bedroom-eyed and high as a kite. I get her into the cab with Jeff, hand Cuahutemoc another five hundred pesos and tell him to take Jeff to the hospital.

Ten minutes later I’m sitting in the salon of Tumbleweed making some notes and sending some email and calling off the exit strategy. A few more weeks in paradise it seems. Maybe a taste of Angela. Waiting. Wanting. For what? Good question. Then it hits me.

My head raises in revelation, “Shit,” I say. I was had. The case of money. Switched. Shit. I was had. I race out of the salon up into the cockpit and jump off the boat onto the dock. I perform the cardinal sin of going aboard someone else’s boat without an invitation to find their boat stripped of all their personal belongings.

It wasn’t a drug buy. It was a software sell. Jeff never cashed out and retired; he went rogue. The Jefe, the smooth bastard, was the buyer. Advanced A.I. Encryption software to shield wire transfers of cartel money to the prying eyes of the NSA money-laundering squad. Transfers which reach into the nexus where crime and government become one. The rabbit hole. The unspeakable.

The whole thing was street theater performed for my benefit by the genius and his benefactors. A nose tweak. 40 years of drug war and they’re always two steps ahead us. Almost makes you think the drug war was designed to fail. Jeff, or more precisely his customer, was on to me from the beginning.

And I presume because I’m sitting in this salon with a few lines laid out and a few joints rolled with tequila shots and beer chasers to make a balanced meal, making some notes, sending emails and executing the exit strategy, I presume everything happened the way it was supposed to happen. The bad guy got away. The good guy was played the fool. And Power enjoys its perpetual win-win game.