I'm Back, and I Hate Twitter

A round of applause for Simon Dumenco, who inspired me after an eight month hiatus to write. What outrageous act lifted me from complacency into the painful performance of tapping my fingers into a gunky keyboard? 

Read it here: adage.com

For the past eight months some virus has festered under my skin, attacking my brain - abstract and disgusting. Then Dumenco put it into words. There is something fundamentally wrong in the latest developments of the information age. I've always hated the hyper-activity caused by mass instant access to electronic type, and now I can see the gooey cell: and it's name is Twitter. 

What's wrong with Twitter, besides the financial aspect outlined in Dumenco's article?

Twitter is Yuppie Crack. 

Computers are the pipe and cell phones the flames for white people's addiction. Unable to join society due to their workaholic alienation, they seek escape, some easy, cheap, constant delusion. They Twitter. The twitter a hundred words and call themselves modern. The carve away at grammar, style, analysis, and say they are informed. 

Why hail these lazy idiots as brave riders of a new technological wave? All that's new is not good. Let's say there's a new trend that dyes your shit green. Will we praise those who do so? No, because it's a useless, mindless trend. 

That newspapers and reporters are "grasping" this trend, which is little more than a toilet  for word spewage, shows how desperate the older generation is to connect to us kids and our damn-fangled new contraptions. If news sources want to compete in a larger market, they should focus on more IN-DEPTH coverage, with context and analysis, rather than this shallow notion of constantly being connected. I could repeatedly lick my fingers and stick it into an electrical outlet, but that doesn't make me a scientist. And reporters or citizen journalists or student journalists can repeatedly be witnesses to the news, typing out simplistic sentences to cover the events; but it doesn't actually make it journalism. 

It seems counterintuitive to use blogging, a product of the internet and a favored yuppie hobby, to issue a tirade on another product/hobby. There's a difference, however. Blogging has been accused of showing a journalistic facade while containing only opinion, has been accused of lying, bias, and lazy reporting. All of these are true. BUT, bloggers are also capable of the highest caliber of journalistic integrity. Just like a blank sheet of paper can be used to either create a Tom Clancy novel or a Shakespeare play. Twitter is only capable of one thing.

 

Guess.

Twitter is yuppie crack, the product of an age that pushes  kids to take SAT prep courses by age 10, snort adderall to get through high school, and live your adult years constantly wired to the news, markets, and consumerism. It's an Ultra-Puritan drive for hyper-activity. Gotta be perfect, gotta blog, gotta Tweet, get on the Blackberry, check your email, check your stocks, LIVE IN FEAR WHEN IT ALL FALLS APART. 

The problem is this drives creates single-minded, one-dimensional people. I fear the new age of human beings, the ones that'll make the Diana Christensen character from Network look like a Renaissance woman. 

I know every generation has berated and feared the next for its idiocy and laziness; that's not what I seek to do here. I am drawing a line in the sand:

on our side is the internet, blogging, cell phones, and digital television. On the other side:

Twitter. 

New York V. Berlin

New York...

-didn't meant to hurt your feelings, but has to figure out a lot of things right now
-can't commit
-doesn't want to be tied down
-didn't know that was contagious

Berlin...

-is slightly drunk and ready to make out
-is so fucking hot
-just wants you to have a good time
-likes to party
-will still feel like it tomorrow
-wants you to make the first move

Excuses, excuses...

Dear Prof.,

WasRaw cannot come to class today, as she had a seizure, produced from a 10-hour marathon session of watching electro-indie music videos.

As you know, WasRaw had previously spent a semester in Berlin, where extensive clubbing and exposure to electroclash turned her brains into undelicious cereals. She has been in a state of constant deterioration. She struggled with simple mathematics - no longer knowing the value of a hard-day's work.

This led to a series of bad decisions, including a desperate but vain search for a place to "dance" in NYC, and dating several drug dealers for a constant supply. A steady diet of coffee and cigarettes, along with youtube access, lead to over-stimulation.

We all knew it was over when she formed the band DRUGWOLF, an "avant-garde-electro-terrorism-experiment," as she coined it. It did her in.

WasRaw is not kept on a hi-def life support of CSS, The Knife, Justice, and Simian Mobile Disco; just long enough to harvest her organs.

After that, she will be given a cocktail of crushed-up adderall and ecstasy, and let loose on the German capital. It is suspected her soul-less, organ-less body will haunt such death magnets as Kaffee Burger, Cookies, Weekend, Cafe Moskau, Berghan, and Tresor. If she has any sort of sense left, she will abstain from Watergate, and keep in mind Cake is really only a bar.

Pity WasRaw, another victim of the scene

Citizen's Cafe

Who said New York is lonely?
There are so many blank pages here.
So many ink pens.
I would say this place is rather crowded.

***

The old man removed the pipe from his mouth before continuing to berate conventional wisdom, and the Victorian adages that left his reproductive system crooked.

He wanted to be part of the mime show, part of the circus. But you know how parents are and how life takes you, and one day you end up a professor.

Nacht in Munchen

There's music in the back room/
an ugly face behind the bar.
The glasses are dirty/
the women, old.

It's another night in Munich/
I never thought I'd be so alone.

Sans Title

I once had a girl/
she told me she loved me/
but I don't know what love is.

She couldn't keep her shirt on/
I still don't know what love is.

She said,
meet me in Buffalo/
but I've never been to New York.

Mountain Man

I was depressed.

Then I discovered Nick Cave,

and God,

and a stack of old cassettes in the back of the closet.

Now I've forgotten where I placed my book of T.S. Eliot poems.

I want to keep it that way.

Reading by Candlelight

I spent Christmas in the mountains of Tennessee. It's not romantic. It's not Johnny Cash's Chattanooga. It's the boonies, with too many white faces and rugged beards and camouflage hats.

That is just where my Aunt and Uncle live, and if nothing else proves that I'm stupid enough to go great lengths for family. But that is where I spent Christmas.

Specifically, I endured Christmas Eve in a basketball gym. The hoops were stored away, a stage was set, and a cheap manger arranged. A golden cross hung, overlooking the court. Out front, the socially awkward pastor/priest (?) shook hands with everyone entering, asking me personally where I came from.

My Aunt and Uncle are Lutherans. They're religious. They go every Sunday. I felt like Damien from The Omen just coming near the make-shift site of worship.

As I sat on the cold metal folding chair, I reasoned: it's for family, it's only an hour, just singing and a little story time. At the door, perky, middle-aged blondes handed out to each Christian the pamphlet of songs and a white candle. I was upset; not only was I forced to listen to some inbred country girl up on stage playing an off-tune clarinet for the new-born baby Jesus before the service, but now I had wonder why Lutherans go around with candles during mass.

The singing/chanting commenced. When I was young my parents tried to raise me Catholic. I remember fidgeting on the wooden pew in a yellow Sunday dress, not understanding a word that was spoken. I remember kneeling. Latin chants. Back then, I stressed over the part where I had to shake hands with strangers. "Peace be with you, Peace be with you..." It was gross, and I dreaded it coming...

Over 10 years later, I still hesitated to touch a stranger's skin.

The real fear, however, was in the wine and crackers. Once blessed, the flesh and blood of Christ. I only did it once, for Confirmation. For every service after that, I was expected, by the 10-foot crucified Lord that hung over the alter and stared down upon the congregation, to once again, consume the flesh and blood of my Lord and Saviour. For every service, my stomach turned, the cold sweat began, and I never worked up the nerve to perform that very intimate act with my lord.

How could I? He was monstrous! When the priest told us to bow our heads and pray, I would sneak terrified peaks at the crucifix. There He was, with bloodshot, agonized, accusing eyes; hands and feet nailed to wooden planks, small rivulets of blood trickling down; his skin taut against each bone of his ribcage; exposed; barely a loin cloth to cover his sin. It was horrendous - an image that haunted me for years.

Over 10 years later, there I was thinking about the Eucharist and that dreadful image of Jesus - now, however, the Damien inside me slightly relished the cannibalistic act.

***

I was still fidgeting with that damn candle. We had gone through 30 verses of 10 songs, the ritualistic sitting and standing, sitting and standing on command, shaking hands with the sweaty-palmed strangers behind us, and eating out God.

The Lutherans split off from Catholicism. The Catholics believed one can buy their way into heaven. Martin Luther, according to some notes he pinned to the front door of a church, did not. Luther, however, did not have a problem with Catholic obsession with symbolism. This is where the candle came into play.

After passing the collection basket, the lights dimmed, mood music played, and the bearded white men of Farragut lit the candle of the person sitting at the end of each row. That person lit the next person's, and so on, until I sat in simulated darkness, with nothing but a flickering flame to read the word of God.

And for a moment, something clicked.

I had never read by candlelight. It was beautiful. I wondered who else had never experienced this either... or was it just me? For centuries, reading by candlelight was the only way to see the written text past sunset. In the darkness, there is nothing but you, and the page; the rest of humanity is hidden, the dripping wax the only reminder of the physical world. With the onslaught of electricity and modernity, this intimacy with the page was mostly eradicated.

50 years from now, the only people who will have experienced a flame illuminating text will be the ones in third world countries, dirt-poor citizens of banana republics.

I try to fight off this terrible future. Now, I do all my reading at night, by candlelight. This is my religion - words, script - those are the blood, the flame, sex, the Eucharist, with the page. Hard binding. the altar.

Typing, I pray.

When the Dog is Wild

When your debt
must be consolidated,
consider
drowning in your
credit cards.
Bite the mailman who
mocks you with the bills,
spit the blood and
yelp for freedom;
a lifesaver in a
sea of increasing interest.
When debt is the problem
Speed is the solution.

When 4am strolls
onto you
standing in a dank
apartment hallway that reeks of
chewing tobacco,
tripping on guilt for spending twenty dollars,
which is that much less to pay off your bills,
pull up the hoodie and hold up your dealer--
he don’t give a damn about you anyway.
When debt is the problem,
Addiction is the solution.

When you bust out in tears in supermarket aisle 5,
consider drowning in your own misery,
or credit cards--
hang up on your phone calls and spit out the will
free yourself of your debt to time.
When debt is the problem,
Madness is the final solution.

Perspective

I thought I knew stress. I thought I knew what it meant to be on deadline. Constantly watching the minutes tick away on the clock, working furiously to finish one assignment, trying not to think of what was due next, and after that... stomach-twisting, nightmare-inducing stress. Paper after paper, assignment after assignment, hours slipping away, days ripping after like a cheap paper calendar, the paper coffee cups building up along the text books...

I thought I knew stress.

And then I watched the Patriots and Giants game.

It really puts things in perspective.



PS. Go Dolphins.

That's the Spirit...

I cut my legs shaving again.

The running red mixed with the white
shaving cream lathered around my pale skin, the red ran... turned, swirled
with the white like oil over water. Watching,
entranced, in the twirls...

for the first time in years, I felt that Christmas spirit.

You

When I was 14 I was suicidal. There was nothing to keep me going from one day to the next. I'd see older people, an older couple walking hand in hand, and wonder how they could live so many days and stand the monotony. I saw no connection to the future, no possibility of a bright light ahead.

The school nearly Baker Acted me. I was forced to go to a psychologist, and pull out my bloody intestines.

When I was 14 I thought if there was any chance I had a soul mate, he'd be dead by now. I imagined him, about my age, black shirt, listening to Bush or Nirvana.
If he was anything like me, he had already slit his wrists.

I thought life must be so horrible, wandering from one year to the other, searching for that one true love, never knowing he was rotting in the ground. That's the definition of a sucker.

So I was determined to kill myself first. I wasn't going to be the sucker struggling through a lonely life. I wasn't going to let his selfish decision wreak havoc on my future.

I took 20 sleeping pills and laid down in the tub. Under the water, the crystalline water and light refractions, I rejoiced. I won. He would cradle a lifetime of pain and solitude, not me... not me...

That's what I wanted to do to my soul mate.

Imagine what I want to do to you.

Whiskey, Berlin, and Jim Morrison

It is difficult to connect the three but the point hinges on Kurt Weill.

Weill is for the most part an obscure artist. His life story can be found here: Wikipedia.

As a German Jew, he was forced to run from the Nazis - he went on to work in Paris and New York, even composing the score for a Fritz Lang movie.

He gave communism the finger when after some collaboration with Betrolt Brecht, a Marxist playwright and East German ass-kisser, Weill found the tune to the communist party an unmanageable bore.

Before breaking away from Brecht, Weill composed his most popular song, "Die Mortitat von Mackie Messer." For those lacking in the German department, this song is the original "Mack the Knife."

Now don't worry, the best part is coming up, Frank Sinatra covers aside...

If you're privy to any copies of live Doors shows (imeem), you might notice a strange little intro to Alabama Song...an intro that sounds a lot like, wait, it is, lyrics to Mack the Knife.

Oh he shows his pearly whites, yes he does, that sailor Mack the Knife, and Morrison moves like a shark through the red waters of Weill covers from Mackie Messer to Alabama Song, another Weill cover.

One of the most beautiful and succinct Doors songs, with those timeless lyrics:

Show me the way to the next whiskey bar,
oh don't ask why, oh don't ask why
because if we can't find the next whiskey bar,
tell you we must die...

That is pure Weill. Listen closely, and you can feel the wet counter of the Berlin whiskey bar, hear the creaking wooden floor below your feet. That deep, bassy sound, almost bavarian om pa pa, a longing for Weimar, for the loose women....

Show me the way to the next little girl....

For the cheap liquor of pre-Hitler Germany, the con-men and social deviants come alive from Berlin Alexanderplatz...

Morrison sings of losing his mother, and oh, he must have that whiskey tonight...
but imagine Weill, who lost all of Berlin to blood-suckers and mother-killers, to the brown-shirts all to quick to raid the Whiskey bars of the Deutschland Stadt and throw everyone who looked funny into prison and camps...

Oh moon of Alabama.... wir mussen whiskey jetzt trinken!

The Roulette Table

When I lay in bed, there begins an inconspicuous chorus of insanity.

Chronic insomnia is a beast. It strikes at the first scent of blood - stress, depression, addiction - all open wounds leaving me vulnerable.

This time, however, I'm on medication. Self-prescribed, off course. Venezuelan sleeping pills... I'm not sure how they got into the country, but I know how they got into my system...

After days of not sleeping, or at best stealing some quick fits of REM, the first thing to go is my rationality. Hallucinations start. Low level, in the beginning, auditory... Later, they'll get visual. Later, I'll get paranoid - sudden movements in the periphery, a cat, or... no.

For now, it is night, it is dark, and there is little to see except the glow of my computer.

And the sounds.

I turn in my rough sheets, trying to cover my left ear, trying to cover the sounds of a casino. That's right, I know it's only a hallucination, but there is a casino in my head. For now, I know it's only a hallucination.

As my mind rummages through the events of the past day, the smells and sights and pains, as my eyes flutter in the black evening, the casino opens up...

There is a sound of hard, constant contact, spinning...
I am at the roulette table. I don't know if I've placed my money on red or black but the dealer has spun and that ball is going round and round on that spinning wheel....
I look up - red vest, gold name tag: Stacy. She rests the cuffs of her white, long-sleeved shirt on the edge of the table, her blond hair tumbles across her shoulders.
Spinning, spinning....

The wheel keeps spinning and the ball never stops. I turn. Spinning, and spinning, and spinning.... the anticipation of the wheel slowing down and finally seeing that white ball come to rest... builds.... spinning... Stacy,
Stacy is silent. I toss. Stacy, spinning.... spinning...spinning....

One more pill, I just need one more pill, and the white ball will land on red or black, and Stacy will hand me my chips.

I get up, night.... just one more....

Without Flag, Without Country

I stopped writing when the problems confronting me in the mirror were murkier than I had a vocabulary for. Nothing prepared me; no previous coverage. The reading lists at Broward Community College were base, television too insensitive, and newspapers tip-toed around the subject.

Race.

When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?	60
And how should I presume? -"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," by T.S. Eliot.

I was 16 years old and in an identity crises so overwhelming, my pen ran dry. Even today it putters and pats out ink erratically like a smoker's cough. Even today I'm at a loss at how to confront myself.

My English was as sharp as a razor's edge, my skin as pale as porcelain, and my hair curt short to hide the wavy, thick wild. My look betrayed nothing. I wore band shirts and listened to punk. My friends were all white.

I wish that could be the end of the story - that's who I was. Just a teenager, just who I was and nothing more. But then came the state standardized tests. There were bubbles, asking philosophical questions. Male/Female? Well I'll just go by genitalia for that one... Grade? Easy... Race?

Race?

Um..well...I stumbled. How fucking old was I? How could this issue have not yet been settled?

Race? Well, what are my options?
Latina? I don't speak Latin and I've never been to Rome.
Hispanic? I don't even know what that means! Sounds like a cocktail.
White? I...I guess... that's my skin color... so yes, yes I'm white. Right?

It was the most difficult question on the test. I began to sweat. All I wanted in the world was for this not to be a Scantron test, so I could simplify it all by writing:
I'm a 2nd generation immigrant. My father's Cuban, my mother's Colombian. So just leave me alone about this stuff already.

But of course, it didn't end there; when the world finds a wound on your flesh it loves to pick and pick...
There was nothing I hated more than when some stereotype just off the plane from Tackyville, Colombia dropped her jaw, chewing gum stuck to teeth and in plain view, and said,
"Oomygawww, I didn't know you speak Spanish!"
"Yeah well considering I'm Cuban-Colombian, I should."
"No way! You're Spanish?"
"No, I'm not from Spain. I said I'm Cuban-Colombian."
"Yeah yeah you know what I mean. You don't seem it."

And that's the part that stabbed me every time. I don't seem it? I wasn't playing the role. I didn't have the big loop earings you could stick a fist through. I didn't have the necklace with my name written in cursive gold. I hated those - I know what my own name is, and if someone else needs to know it, they can ask. I didn't wear the tight Brazilian jeans one size too small, showing off the excessive Latina thighs. I didn't listen to Raggaeton - fucking horrendous, talentless, disgusting, shitty, uncreative, repetitive, music.

The world was confused. What was it do with me? Like if I wasn't some tacky stereotype, I gave up all rights to my heritage. As if the richness of Cuban music, the mysticism of Santeria, and the independence revolutions of South America all came down to me pouring 30 pounds of gel into my hair and an entire bottle of mascara on my eyes.

Where was I to stand, straddling both worlds, accepted fully in neither? My white friends didn't understand why I ate so many black beans and rice, why my mother spoke a foreign language in front of them, why I grew up with my grandmother. In the middle school court yard, where everyone wore a patch on their backpack to clearly indicate what country they stood for, and at lunch divided among nationalist lines, no one could grasp why I withheld myself. Those middle school peanut-butter sandwiches I packed were eaten with resentment for the entire concept of flags.

What good is a flag? It just a cloth that indicates physical boundaries. That piece of territory is meaningless. What's that piece of cloth ever done for you? It's something you're born into; your love for it is completely disingenuous,
I'd say.
They'd roll their eyes and continue chewing their gum.
I've always had a hard time connecting.

Now there I was, 16 years old, hating flags, listening to bands like Stiff Little Fingers and Sham 69 and Crass, and the whole world is telling me to choose:
I could either change my wardrobe and personality and retain my claim to my Cuban-Colombian heritage and history
or I could just cross camps and have my race match my interests.
One. or the Other.
No middle ground. No Buena Vista Social Club without Daddy Yankee. No Gabriel Garcia Marquez without telenovellas.

Is there a Spanish word for "Uncle Tom?"
Perhaps Tia Tom fits.

And where I turned to books for consolation, I found emptiness, an utter dearth on the subject. Where were all the 2nd generation immigrants of the world? Why did none turn to literary means, didn't they know there are millions of them, looking for help?
So I looked around the lush campus of Broward Community College. Maybe my assumptions were wrong; maybe there weren't millions looking for help. There they were - the 2nd generation, all lumped evenly into their camps. They had all made the choice, long ago. It was just I, standing there, in front of a mirror, straddling two worlds, comfortable in none. Not white, not Hispanic. Not really American, especially not in these patriotic, post 9/11 times. Not actually Cuban, nor Colombian. A woman without flag, without country to call home.

And when my father listened to Guantanamera, I wondered if I had the right to shed a tear.

It is only now that I've learned how to properly resent a world that would question my blood and skin; that would put conditions on listening to the words of Marti.

No Exit

The plans went wrong.
Perhaps I read the blueprint backwards or, ...

Now there's panic. What am I to do?
I built this elaborate fort.
Linoleum moat, cardboard drawbridge,
pillow dungeon.

And there's no exit.

This blog is my only means of communication to the outside world.

P-L-E-A-S-E H-E-L-P
Need flashlight and book of ghost stories STOP

The Dream's Dead, Boys

Sometimes, late at night, when too much coffee or one too many cigarettes keep me up, when insomnia lurks in the back of my eyelids, haunting me with tasks left undone, I turn over and stare at my computer. It glows white in the darkness, and on the cover dances the images of half-empty word documents, scribbled notes in the text pad, barely coherent ideas.

I wonder where I went wrong. Where I gave up on the dream.

When I was young and idealistic I told myself I'd be a writer. I'd read Gingsberg, Orwell, Burroughs, Thompson, Rimbaud, and my heart filled with jealousy - jealousy, the prime mover of my whole being - and I said, I too will write. It will be like all the romantic stories: I'll move to New York, go to school, impress the teachers with my pure talent and crass attitude, drop out to travel on a motorcycle, be dirt poor, work as a waitress, and by famous and published by 22. Complete stardom and mobs of fans by 25, at the latest. Stumble into a rock band, reach Jim Morrison-proportion, change the entire concept of poetry and fucking and death. Tragic motorcycle and drug-induced death by 27, like all the greats.

Where did it die? When did I give up? When did the blank page beat me to submission, to a hopeless inertia?

I've mulled over this question for ages, along with self-pitying tears and woes of "I shall be no Poe, I shall be no Rimbaud."

Was it the pressure? All my high school teachers gazed at my with a starry-eyed look and told me of the talent I had. Sometimes I could hear their internal thoughts, "this will be the one I reach, this will be the one that makes 30 years of this shitty public school job worth it." Maybe it was the razor lace of my parent's encouraging words: Writing? Well you damn well better become famous. We didn't come into this country and claw ourselves up from the dirt, sacrificing our health to earn a buck to put a fancy name on your degree just so you can type pretty words and earn an hourly wage.

Maybe I got into the drugs too soon (was that part supposed to come later?). Maybe I lost sight of myself. Maybe the idea of people reading my work is still so terrifying as to paralyze my fingers over the keyboard.

Or, most terrifying of all, maybe it just wasn't in Miss Cleo's cards.

One of the first happy memories I can remember was receiving an empty notebook as a present, and drawing on every inch of every page. When they asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up, I said an artist. I wanted to draw forever.

My parents said nope. My art teacher rolled her cart around to my elementary school desk, slammed down a piece of newspaper paper and after a few of my proudest scribbles, said "I have no idea what that is." I was told to re-do assignments.

Now when I pick up a drawing pencil to paper, I feel like I'm trying to write down my deepest urges and darkest desires in Swahili.

Perhaps I only turned to writing in the first place as my only means of capturing those intense colors my retinas register: the bright red and the dark blue and the image of a yellow balloon bobbing on top of the ocean waves as the sun breaks over them. Just another means to tie down that balloon and tell the world it's there.

But I stuck to writing for so long, that it had to have been in the cards, even if temporarily. So what stopped me?

I think back.
Way back.
And remember the time when I put the pen down, when I stopped trying to finish those documents.
And as I recall,
it was just about the time... when I looked in the mirror, and realized

I had forgotten I wasn't white.

Dear Post Secret,

So what if we shower together? That doesn't make us gay.
You keep me warm at night. It's nothing sexual.
And that one time - we were just drunk. It doesn't count.

We're not gay.

The Looming Tower

I've spent the last few weeks reading The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright. I read it in the few spare moments I can catch, under the glow of the reading light hanging over my bed. Yesterday I fell asleep among the pages of Chapter 18.

I was once told that the best way to study is right before you go to sleep - it increases the chances of recall. Something about the sleep process that compacts the information and fits it tightly into the brain. Something like that...

The last few weeks I've had strange dreams. There's been sand. I've never dreamt of deserts before; I'm from the tropics, I dream of the ocean and palm trees and the gentle rocking of a wooden boat. Now I awake with hazy recollections of Afghanistan. In those quick seconds between the alarm waking me and my standing up to switch it off, my consciousness grasps all it can from the dreams. There are vague, dirty faces, conflict, devotion, pure madness.

Today I awoke with a start and whispered, AllahAkbar.
I was once religious.

It's crazy to think, and I never wanted to admit it, but for some of these boys out there in the training camps, out there on their scrawny own, conquering some measly monkey bars in an attempt to aggress against a world power, it's nothing but pure boredom motivating them to kill. All out murder.

It's the same reason Jackass existed - just a bunch of bored kids with too much energy and no other outlet. In Shiia, the strict religious laws of Islam, even pictures are forbidden. Nothing to masturbate to. No masturbating at all. A sick sexual and emotional repression mixed with a barren landscape leads to the same results.

It's the same reason right-wing Christian conservative Republican Senators leave dirty text messages on little boys' phones and have interracial affairs with transexual minors.

It's the same reason I sometimes dream of taking a machine gun and going wild in some mountainous jungle, in the name of Revolution or the CIA - really in an attempt to shake the routine and give some grander meaning to my boring and humble life. To perhaps be a footnote in the history books.

One scene from The Looming Tower sears itself on the mental flesh:
In the middle of the night, a US plane bombs the hell out of an early Al-Qaeda camp. Sand explodes high into the air, screams fill the night. And when the bombardment is finished, the US plane shines a bright light down. As the insurgents scrambled, the light illuminated the dismembered body parts of their friends and relatives. Gleaming red tissues and dirty bone, illuminated by some rich and powerful foreign entity, hovering above the graveyard. Illuminated by America, a 1984-like superpower, who's intelligence capabilities, according to one person's fearful quote in the book, could go so far as to tell the brand of underwear one wore.

In that moment I understood why - why these kids go out and kill instead of just going out to get molested in the halls of their representative government; or crash camels into each other. In that moment I thought of Orwell and knew why they do it. Living in the dirt there is no hope, living in the shadow of a super power there is only fear. There is no winning.

Might as well strap explosives to your belt before some American soldier straps car batteries to your balls.

Russian Democracy is a Joke

Yes, I have the W.M.D.'s.
No, I can't tell you where they are.

The Soviets would have my head for that.



That's right, I said the Soviets. You'd be a fool to believe otherwise.