May I Have Your Attention Please?

Due to Increased Security Measures, all passengers will be shot to death in the waiting area.

It’s getting ghastly out there. We often take flight 181 at 5PM from JFK back to LAX. It’s a good time to leave and you get to your house by 9PM. Plenty of time to clean up the piss from all your pets, check the mail, email, put things away, you name it, before hitting the hay.

But that’s just it. Here we are, having our normal lives, flying around, paying the bills, working when there’s work, hoping and writing about a better future and there’s just this infuriating stasis. And what about the kids? The kids are not rising up! Sure, it’s great that the laundry is going and my Energystar appliances are reducing my carbon footprint...I guess...but with Bush & Cheney getting ready to drop bombs on Iran now, we need to do something. And frankly, I’m just too busy with my life to do anything about it or to even know what to do about it. When I was just a wee boy, the Vietnam demonstrators were out in full force. I expect it again. It’s not happening.

We spent some time with my Recognized-by-the-State-of-California-Domestic-Partner Adam’s niece who is in college in Vermont at the very funky and cool Marlboro College, where you get to design your own course of study. These kids seem like a lovely gaggle of patchouli pacifists. Which is wonderful! Maybe that’s the answer to the whole problem. Of course, the side of me that wants closure to this whole war thinks, “One Nuke per Middle Eastern Nation.” Reactionary? Surely. I’m impatient. Obviously, I’m no war policy expert and killing millions of innocents is not the answer. I watched the graduate students of The Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy at Tufts walking seriously into their dorms from my sophomore window. I never even talked to them. They seemed so sad and determined. I wonder what they’re doing now? Are they muscling for change? What the hell is going on? Are their kids in college? What are they going to do?

It’s frustrating to live with this endless badness. I fear for every one peaceful clove smoker at Marlboro College, there are three righteous bomb throwers at Virginia Tech.

Limited resources, over population, greed, and maniacs running the show—and all I care about or even know what to care about is to make sure I get an aisle seat on the flying aluminum tube that is burning its way back to my house. Like the kids, I don’t really know if I have any power at all. It’s so big. Can I have another cup of water without ice?