The Answer is Why

I read an article for a class today about the "bird flu" threat, and I realized something. Speculating about a bird flu pandemic is like thinking about the odds of NASA’s next spacecraft exploding; estimating the probability is much too scientific.

An article from The Futurist emphasizes an increasing threat of “bird flu,” which is allegedly “spreading across the globe.” It says this influenza virus has individual strains – one that acts like the “virus’ fuse” and another “like gunpowder in a stick of dynamite.”

Jesus, is it going to blow me up?

According to the article, bird flu has caused 123 deaths. Based on this statistic, I can see a “pandemic” is a bold prediction for this kind of virus, especially since only one strain (HSN1) affects humans, while many other sub-types exist that primarily kill birds themselves. Furthermore humans cannot transmit the disease to each other, barring some new mutation of HSN1. So how could HSN1 compare with more deadly viruses like HIV, which the World Health Organization says has killed about 25 million people?

The article admits bird flu has not infected many people, but it says fatality rates have been “extremely high.” Essentially, this means 123 deaths out of 217, at least according to its own statistics. The article argues that steps to preventing bird flu outbreaks rests on the shoulders of health organizations like the WHO. It suggests the benefits of an “influenza surveillance” system that would require people reporting any outbreaks of bird flu. The article goes on to call this a “weak link” in protection against the disease, as the primary concern should be with producing new vaccines. However, it credits the HSN1 virus with the capacity to adapt to vaccines, while it stresses the need for producing them for possibly “several million people.” Our fears are “credible,” the article says. The outbreak could occur “any time and anywhere” and it is projected to “spread rapidly.”

When I was a freshman in college, my Human Biology professor laughed at the bird flu outbreak in Asia, and she demonstrated it to be a fear tactic employed by the US Government and the health organizations. I cannot speak to the likelihood of a bird flu pandemic, but I can easily argue that more discernable threats exist around the world. In this world, we think we can justify killing millions for the sake of our national interests, but when the threat is a “virus,” suddenly the death is random and un-called for. I definitely believe that cases like bird flu are used in the media to heighten are fear of minor threats, while distracting us from the real catastrophe of war, AIDS, abuses of human rights, etc…. I may not be a scientist, but at least I can see the difference between 123 deaths and hundreds of millions.

I'm beginning to wonder if humans deserve to live. I don't think we should be exterminated or anything, but I do think we take up too much space. In fact, humans (according to a total measure of biomass) constitute the most physically invasive animal on Earth!

Additionally, animals tend to be very cute and likable, as is the case with pandas and cudly koalas... and hummingbirds, squirrels, rabbits, chipmunks... the list goes on forever...

What have we done for animals to keep them safe and thriving? And petting doesn't count.

Now, normally I am pretty cynical, and I usually think nobody cares about animals (especially people who are allergic to them), all the time being a hypocrite (aka "not doing anything"). Contrary to my pessimism, and according to my research, we have successfully prevented a lot of human impact on animals. However, animals are in more danger than ever.

This journal entry (written for no reason in partcular) will briefly explain both good and bad measures we have taken to reduce human impact on animals.

First, the GOOD:

Humans have prevented SOME extinction, in some cases taking a small dozen of a species and repopulating them everywhere. We have tried to provide more area for habitat, and we have created some reduction of toxic chemicals. Commercial farming has taken off the pressure of wildlife population. Also, we have created wetland legislation that protects wetland animals.

Then, the BAD:

A central problem of impact on animals is the loss of their natural habitat. Overall, we have increased the number of endangered species by taking away their habitat. Can you imagine someone bulldozing your home without warning? There are a whole host of indirectly related issues: pollutants, black market trading, planned killings, and the increasing harvest of the oceans. Also, Americans have seen An Inconvenient Truth and the average person now accepts the huge threat of global warming and the effect it will have on all vegetation and animal life...

It's fucking scary.

In the 60's, people got serious about the Civil Right's Movement. Surely, there is still racial and gender-related tension in America, but we have come a long way haven't we? We still need to protect our civil liberties, but there is another popular movement which needs to take place that focuses on sustainabilty in the environment. The environment is all we have to continue our way of life.

As it turns out, squirrels and chipmunks aren't the only ones in trouble...

Who thinks Steve Irwin deserves criticism from animal rights’ groups? Who thinks it’s fair to blame his death for the stingray killings? Who, according to the most popular theory, thinks he actually rose from the dead and did the killings himself? Come on, let me see a show of hands…

The man is dead… Steve Irwin is dead!

As if Steve Irwin fans are saying, “Yeah, well if you really love Steve Irwin, then I urge you to join the crusade against evil stingrays. So far, ten stingrays have been killed in holy battle, their sinister barbs taken by the sword. Will you join me? Rise up children! Rise up! Exterminate the stingrays; the entire species must be wiped out!”

Fans of Steve Irwin enjoy animals. They don’t want to kill them.

In fact, I bet ONE person is responsible for the killings, or OK, maybe a small group of people. Imagine a small group of people – say five people – deciding to kill some stingrays.

I believe the War of the Stingrays has taken casualties on both sides… and the brutality ends here…

However, the issue of maintaining wildlife habitat depends on sustainability in the environment, not preventing murder. Steve Irwin, like other wildlife conservationists, traveled in his lifetime to Africa, Asia — worldwide, actually.

His message was to protect the land and resources which sustain animal habitats. Does this sound like an evil guy?

Today's topic...

Big business and governmental organizations which spend billions of dollars on fighting drugs and even more billions of dollars on funding prisons, while a small fraction of our federal budget is dedicated to health-care and the education system.

The war on drugs makes a considerable mess of our budget and it brings attention away from the war, which is indeed the highest expense of our federal budget. If legal drugs are abused more than illegal drugs and they pose more danger to our health anyways, why is the media silent about it? Can’t both issues share at least equal importance?

Then again, perhaps drug-use itself contributes to a needy lifestyle, whereas most medical drugs just cause a few side-effects and the occasional stroke. Maybe it is superior to abuse legal drugs, even though it’s technically more dangerous. After all, true drug addicts withdrawal from society completely and become criminals, whereas doctors and businessmen pop pills and drink sour whiskies because they have to handle stress.

Or maybe the solution is to look closely at the problem. The problem is not making something legal or illegal. The problem is the addiction itself. Whether it is alcoholism or heroin-addiction, addiction is the problem. It’s illogical to blame drug addiction for social and economic suffering, because it is social and economic policy which changes a nation, which provides human sustainability – including the availability of health-care, education, and social mobility. Drug addiction ruins the lives of individuals, not a whole nation.

Does this make sense to anyone?

Did you know that The U.S. Government and our media organizations purposefully promote fear of illegal drugs, even though legal drugs cause more damage to people?

The Drug Enforcement Agency has determined that thousands of doctors give prescriptions to addicts and dealers, yet less than 1% of the anti-drug budget goes toward this issue. Meanwhile, people abuse prescription drugs (often mixing pills with alcohol) and go to the emergency room more than people who abuse cocaine, marijuana, heroin, and LSD all combined.

The drug-scare began when Nixon unleashed undercover agents in the seventies with the direct purpose of jailing drug-dealers and drug-users. Television played along with the drama with shows like “Hawaii Five-O” and “The Mob Squad” with strong anti-drug messages. Before Nixon, however, drug abuse was not a primary political issue.

By the time George Bush came to presidency however, drug-abuse was “the gravest domestic threat facing our nation today.” In 1989, George Bush held up a plastic bag with “EVIDENCE” written on it; this was supposed to be bag of crack-cocaine seized by the FDA, when in fact it was purchased by a group of agents from a young crack-dealer who lived in Washington! However, according to Bush, according to the whole nation, it was this kind of “candy” which was “murdering our children.”

Drug abuse has declined considerably in this country, and yet the primary chemical substances which are killing Americans include perfectly legal substances. Cigarettes are a good example. It is more addictive than illegal drugs and kills more people. However, the government doesn’t link drug abuse to death. It links drug abuse to complicated social issues like poverty. If all of the government’s policies favor the wealthy, which is a small fraction of the population, poverty and homelessness don’t make any sense – so how can the media confront the issue? The prevailing argument is that drug addiction causes poverty.

Bill Clinton was the first president since Reagan and Bush to have a liberal drug policy. By his competitors, he was called a weak baby-boomer president, when in fact only a small fraction of the baby-boomers were so-called “flower children,” and even less were actual potheads. During the Clinton Administration, a panic erupted about the use of Rohypnol, which was coined a “rape-drug,” even though tests had determined alcohol as the leading drug associated with rape. When Clinton fought his legal battle against Paula Jones in the late 90’s, even more pressure came upon him to fight this type of drug. Finally, he signed an anti-drug bill which enforced harsher laws against so-called “roofies” so that he could simultaneously win the moral battle against sexual assault and drugs.

I can forgive Bill. I still wish he was my president.

Nobody wants to be called stupid, but I must admit I have been ignorant most of my life. People tell me I’m being too hard on myself. ‘You’re not stupid,’ they say. Ok, so I came out of the womb, and I didn’t have a chance to learn right away, but let me say that I had my chance in Elementary school to think about reality, but I never got around to it.

Now, what is a synonym for stupid? Perhaps I could find something less harsh. Ok, unintelligent. No, that’s worse… wait, I have the perfect synonym for stupid… uninformed.

I’m not stupid. Actually, my DNA seems to favor becoming an intellectual, but what about the years I wasted reading self-help books about personal psychic powers? Or what about all the time I spent strumming on guitars or going to the movies, only to see fictional characters blow cars up? Surely, I should have been watching CNN and the history channel all that time.

Man, it's depressing. I feel like a robot finally coming to terms with the concept of a soul.

I want to make a collection of tricks. Not magic tricks. I mean nasty tricks, or types of deception… or, what do I mean? Ok, I mean lies. Wow, there are synonyms for everything!

According to organizations, corporations, news media, and conniving politicians, the term is different. The tricks usually mean politicians and newscasters throwing facts and statistics around like baseballs, emitting politically correct garbage from their heads that doesn’t explain anything and yet seems to express some mysterious justifiable concern. However, it never seems clear what plan is actually being proposed by these politicians, and rarely do we see these plans in action, unless it involves going to war.

Now, of course, just like any other upper-class white Christian growing up in the Corn Belt, I was tuned into many local and regional interests, but I had no time for books, and I was too young to venture out on my own, so I was basically stuck with the political ideology of my family and my naïve peers, also under the control of their parents. But really, that was okay. If you are a Christian in the suburbs of the Midwest and you have lots of money like I did, life is a kind of innocent utopia – until you lose your religion of course. When you lose your religion, all hell breaks loose… literally! When I lost my religion, it struck me that money and comfort become guilty pleasures without the belief they are the Lord’s blessing.

From the day I became a spiritual agnostic, I knew I had to explore the world, but I didn’t know where to begin. I have discovered, throughout many years of confusion and ignorance, the key point to understanding something is to acquire all knowledge pertaining to a single point of interest and to physically explore that interest, that is avoid most, if not all, secondary information.

Nobody can know everything nor go everywhere, and therefore we can’t have an opinion on everything. Maybe we feel ashamed we don’t know everything – it just doesn’t seem American to not have ALL of something – unless we’re proud of our appearance, in which case we flaunt our sexuality to compensate for our ignorance – this act of compensation makes the clothing industry thrive. If we look beautiful, it’s easy to ignore how ugly the world is.

The American public finds this kind of optimism virtuous. Meanwhile, Americans seem more comfortable with laughing about the war, as opposed to normal responses like crying, screaming, yelling – the sounds war victims in Iraq or Afghanistan make when they are bombed, shot at, or systematically tortured.

If we can’t establish a meaningful platform for discussion about war, our culture finds we mine as well laugh at it. And if we can’t understand the atrocities of war itself, how can we be affected by it, when it is fought entirely outside our borders? Most of us give up on becoming knowledgeable. We claim it’s to difficult, or we say ‘I can’t do anything about it, so why should I waste time worrying about it?’

It’s a cliché, but knowledge is power. It helps us choose what we buy, what we do, what we think about, what we say, what we experience– it changes everything, our complete interpretation of the events that surround us. We are what we think, and usually we must think before we act. We must A) decide what we care about and B) decide who we trust. Do we trust the corporations? Do commercials on television convince us we are buying products from good and decent corporations, who give their workers fair wages, benefits, and working conditions? Do we trust the product itself?

We could ask ourselves questions all day, every day– just simply by becoming curious enough. However, the majority of Americans do not seek knowledge. We allow knowledge to come to us. We allow the morning news on television to go directly into our English bran muffin and strong cup of coffee. We would rather trust the media but criticize the government; it’s easier, and besides it is more entertaining and less time consuming to watch television as opposed to becoming part-time investigators. There is usually not the time, energy, or even the knowledge for the average American to do real research. It is our choice to become knowledgeable or dumb, but it is never too late to learn something; it can only be too late to react.

Knowledge is one thing. Emotion is something different, also very important. Are we angry at the war? Do we really want it to end? Or do we secretly approve of weakening the Third World and obliterating any chances for their infrastructure or a so-called democracy in progress? The sad thing is, I don’t think people even think about it either way. It’s not that Americans want people to suffer. I don’t think Americans are that sadistic. It’s just that war is not thought about or talked about. It’s like other types of trauma, like rape for example. Rape victims often deny in their own minds that they’ve been raped. It doesn’t reach the surface, even when the circumstances are appropriate for it to be dealt with. It’s just bottled up. I think someday America is really going to be in trouble, and we will finally talk about issues such as foreign imperialism and a situation like global warming, but this will likely only occur when our survival is at stake, if for example Florida is half-covered in water, or the world gets caught up in a another missile crisis.

The time to react to these problems is now, before things get nasty. Like many other people, I've been tricked, and I’m not sure what to do or where to go. It’s a tough decision to make. I think the only reasonable course of action is to better understand the world by becoming a part of it, which doesn’t mean buying $200 denim jeans from Urban Outfitters or taping reruns of American Idol. It means something else, but nobody really knows what. I think we are intimidated by the control economy and politics has over us. At the very least, we still have control of ourselves. Shouldn't that be a starting point?

People are afraid of what can change. What if I lose my job and I live on the streets? What if I grow old and my significant other doesn’t want to fuck me? What if the world blows up tomorrow and we all live in a nuclear winter until everyone dies from radiation sickness? To keep jobs, we join labor unions, which are weak and have been virtually disappearing over time. To fight old age, we buy expensive clothes, accessories, hair products, etc… and none of us look any better. None of us embrace aging and death, which according to some world religions, is a sacred necessity – while in the meantime we try to stay afraid of God. Our country’s reaction to the atom bomb entailed one of the greatest outbreaks of paranoia and fear in our history, and the hysteria continues today with the current “War on Terrorism.” We're a culture of fear, and it's sickening.

Why do we choose to be afraid of things we know nothing about? Why do we sense that a man on the sidewalk – just because he looks angry or suspicious, or perhaps because he happens to be black – intends to mug us? The answer is that our nation’s media is dedicated to reminding us of this possibility. The show Cops, which shows violent crimes exclusively, I think is a good example of media paranoia. We see simulated deaths on television everyday, and we barely react at all, because we call it fake. We call it television, where nothing actually happens.

Meanwhile, we harbor a fear of death in our day-to-day life, because we are exposed to the possibility of violence in television. If it happened on television, why can’t it happen to us in real life? This is our line of reasoning. This is our fear. Instead of becoming more educated and outspoken about violence, we internalize the fear, and we place the trust in our “democracy” to protect us from violence, when it is the American government which commits the most heinous acts of violence in the world!

Sometimes we fight back. We make laws. We make guns legal. We put criminals into prison, sometimes truly bad ones. Yet, prisons are not full to brim as they are because of violent people. Prisons are full of nonviolent dopers, drivers, and deadbeat dads. The majority are drug-dealers, the criminals who direct all this federal spending toward prisons. Then you consider a little thing called “The Defense Budget” and we need to think to ourselves, this is costing us our health-care and a decent education system (I know I didn't learn anything in high school). Wait, these geezers in congress our ripping us off! If we do not have health-care or a decent education system, and meanwhile, we go into debt, just because of a little plastic card that has our signature on it, where does that leave us? Life shouldn’t be such a huge risk.

The corporations and the banks are well-off because we are in debt, and we are in debt because we think money buys security. The truth is that security does not have a price. It’s a state of being, an attitude. The phrase “national security” should be used to describe a relaxed and open minded American people. It means we are secure, self-assured, and confident. Most of all, it means we are not afraid.

Peace is Chaos


Love is a quarrel

Peace is chaos

Avoid embrace

Embrace avoidance


Love is a quarrel

Kissing is preferred

To self-rubbing


Fascination is cardboard

Curiosity is a reward

Particle Physics is complicated.


Opera is magnificence

Spyglass is magnification

Fascination is cardboard

Sherlock Holmes smokes salvia.

Peace is chaos

Gertrude Stein is my mother (on absinth)


Quietness is wise

Stability is disguise

Peace is chaos

Curiosity is a reward


Poetry is saucy (when dipped in vernacular)

Life is delicious

Unpredictable is life

Life is unpredictable (Cmin7- Gmin7)


These stars are the great blazing kings of the sky!

Humans are the signal-fire

The universe is a gaping vagina-

Inside: the city of Troy


God is the clitoris.


Tomorrow is victory

Tomorrow is defeat

Tomorrow has 50 sides mentionable:

1. criminal tomatoes
2. fishy sarcasm
3. red wine
4. damp toilettes
5. filthy bubbles
6. the number 6
7. the number 8
8. the number 10
9. the number 12
10. the number 10
11. multiplication
12. subtraction
13. loftiness
14. underground symmetry
15. Wagner
16. Artaud
17. Bertolt Brecht
18. the proscenium arch
19. the apron of the stage
20. the tanginess Swan Lake
21. the rupture of corny laughter
22. the jabbiness of JAB
23. eruption of plaque
24. a coughing vignette
25. vivaldi's thumb
26. mozart's left ankle
27. brilliance in the form of molten soup
28. divine drive
29. fear
30. hope
31. possibility
32. the green light
33. red light
34. blue light
35. fish sandwiches
36. a dozen eggs
37. a wandering poet
38. footprints
39. noggins
40. pencils
41. and paper
42. automobiles
43. decisive skies
44. speckle-snow sidewalk chums
45. accidental highs
46. intentional highs
47. disillusionment past the corner
48. leaves of grass
49. warmness
50. upward thumbs

tomorrow is a solitary
wrangler
of a poet

tomorrow has no idea
who I am
or what I'm going to do
once I meet?

him or her:
tomorrow

someone is going "all in" on tomorrow?

someone
and
tomorrow

will risk 400 dollars in poker chips

that some curvy creek
might flash a horny smile

or that some rock
named Harold
or perhaps
Harold's grandfather -
GRANDFATHER BOULDER
(The esteemed steam-engine
Freighter
Magi/Veterinarian)
Will speak some sort of vinegary pronouncement.

Tomorrow is worth 40 dollars.

Yesterday is worth
A self-squeeze of the bum.

society.

read the poem.

Matt is playing a video game. Miles is asleep. I am trying to imagine a poem.

Nothing is mystical about waiting for love. Mystical is surprise is SUDDEN.

I could have GOOD LUCK somehow if I exceeded previous expeditions

SUDDEN

"is there anything that can be done? You don't just do living for fun. He picked up the sun like a gun and lost his mind. God said you're fined and he said that is fine."

Mario Sebastian strolls everywhere, follows me, is me - he is the phantom of trash.

I am infected with melody.

talk as hard as possible.

My betta fish are inspiring.

"I should like to say that Lonny? intellectualizes his spirituality, as is seen in the spiritual methodology of Buddhism - the dispelling of ignorance and thus irrational desire, in Lonny's case the desire to be published. This is perhaps why Lonny's first book was entitled The Psychology of a Buddhist Drug Addict? which is in a bottle somewhere in the Pacific Ocean."
- Jerry Tucci



Chapter 1: Just a Dream

Lonny is exiting a theatre with his mother and his half-brother Jerry Spinnacle. He has just seen a play directed by Fernando Lucas, George Lucas' 12th child and struggling heroin addict. The play is called The Unfortunate Prostitutes.

In the parking lot it is raining heavily, mercilessly. The sky is mulatto and speaks the occasional downpour of golden harmony-juice.

Lonny grabs his half-brother's hand and leads him toward the car, shielding his head with a book entitled The Vault of Literary Trash Terminology. Jerry Tucci also accompanies the Tonkels- he is there when they arrive in a black corvette, in the passenger seat. Jerry has not seen the play?

While Lonny drives the black corvette, his brother is in the backseat, fondling an action figure, Captain Monstrosity.

Lonny's mother drives separately from Lonny and the two Jerrys. She drives a white van which Lonny must follow. Through the torrent of rain, Lonny loses track of her.

Behind him there is complete darkness and streaks of pouring rain - no van anywhere! The faces on the drivers ahead are angrily angry and spewing spoiled MILK!

The traffic proceeds at 65-70 mph.

It is a splashy pool on which everyone hydroplanes? and no one has fear as their expression, only anger as their expression.

"There she is!" screams Lonny.

The van pulls on Lonny's left shoulder, and inside there is a ghoul with the face of a shadow! Same van! But a devilish driver! The driver is cartoonish and jiggling like gelatin, weaving in and out of traffic, finally beyond Lonny's sight.

Meanwhile, the car seems to be winding up a mountain, making greater incline each moment.

Meanwhile, green cows with heart-rimmed shades are buzzing by.

Meanwhile, snot is dripping from the nose of Captain Monstrosity, the action-figure, which makes Jerry Spinnacle cry.

The cars will not slow down and the darkness behind is chasing!

Lonny glances at the speedometer. 70. 75. 80. 85. 90. 95. 100. 150. 200.

"I know where we are going," says Lonny. "I'll get us home."

But before Lonny can become conscious and navigate - escape the turmoil of a drunken dream - he is climbing windy stairs which wrap a bumpy sequoia and observing no car within sight. Lonny's half-brother has vanished.

Jerry slips both by slurring his speech and slipping from the rock and his grip, trilling his R in the word "Woooorrrrrrld." Lonny grabs Jerry by his hair, holding him for approximately .5 seconds before "whoops."

this picture is entitled "armpits"

This weekend will taste like vinegar and candysauce.

and new icons


miles monster

( more pictures )

February 1st, 1005

I'm not in my right mind to write anything and I never will be. But what I write, may nevertheless, bear truth.

It can equal the truth, fool with the truth, juggle it into oblivion.

This trash - trash as a whole - the whole heap of it? this trash is not burdening any truth, this trash is only celebrating small truths, this trash is passionately stupid.

On the front page of the Indiana Daily Student, an IU female student - a protestor of the protestors of this war - is raising a poster-board that says, "Aren't you supposed to be in Canada?" She? Adriane Dunlap, IU College Republican. She's already graduated, yet she's a junior. "You are either with us or against us," says George bush, sipping on rum and coke and patting Adriane on the back. "Now? as for abortion?"

Poor Bloomington. Idealism tries to nestle itself here? but the world at large is repeating the same habit of history. We are holding our own signs? "No Justice, no Peace, USA out of the Middle East!"

I am told we have a Peace Action Coalition, among others. "Bring our troops home, end the occupation."

I try to imagine us leaving Iraq. What would this incur? What if? we just walked away? What if we left the dead bodies, abandoned our tanks, walked WEST

If only we could
Admit
We fucked up
Big time

If only we could admit
We can longer think of a
Reason for being in the Middle East

Nations cannot leave each other alone
We all want to join together
And form economical coalitions

But this is only poetry
This is only poetry
You can't even make a goddam living off of poetry.

There is a headline that reads: "Act like Adults, not Politicians."

Speaking of politicians, did you hear about Hillary Clinton? She collapsed on the floor yesterday after complaining about a stomach virus. She fainted just before giving a speech.

Anyways? she's alright.

Here is the scene: she arrives at a Catholic College were she is about to speak about healthcare. She faints before she can utter a word. I think we all know why she fainted, don't we? Healthcare, come on!

(there is also an article in the Health and Science section on how a tattoo creates permanent scar tissue)

Speaking of politicians, did you hear about Hillary Clinton? She collapsed on the floor yesterday after complaining about a stomach virus. She fainted just before giving a speech.

Anyways? she's alright. She arrived at a Catholic College were she was about to speak about healthcare. I think we all know why she fainted, don't we? Healthcare, come on!

(there is also an article in the Health and Science section on how a tattoo creates permanent scar tissue)

I'm not in my right mind to write anything and I never will be. But what I write, may nevertheless, bear truth.

It can equal the truth, fool with the truth, juggle it into oblivion.

This trash - trash as a whole - the whole heap of it? this trash is not burdening any truth, this trash is only celebrating small truths, this trash is passionately stupid.

On the front page of the Indiana Daily Student, an IU female student - a protestor of the protestors of this war - is raising a poster-board that says, "Aren't you supposed to be in Canada?" She? Adriane Dunlap, IU College Republican. She's already graduated, yet she's a junior. "You are either with us or against us," says George bush, sipping on rum and coke and patting Adriane on the back. "Now? as for abortion?"

Poor Bloomington. Idealism tries to nestle itself here? but the world at large is repeating the same habit of history. We are holding our own signs? "No Justice, no Peace, USA out of the Middle East!"

I am told we have a Peace Action Coalition, among others. "Bring our troops home, end the occupation."

I try to imagine us leaving Iraq. What would this incur? What if? we just walked away? What if we left the dead bodies, abandoned our tanks, walked WEST

If only we could
Admit
We fucked up
Big time

If only we could admit
We can longer think of a
Reason for being in the Middle East

Nations cannot leave each other alone
We all want to join together
And form economical coalitions

But this is only poetry
This is only poetry
You can't even make a living off of poetry.

There is a headline that reads: "Act like Adults, not Politicians."

Speaking of politicians, did you hear about Hillary Clinton? She collapsed on the floor yesterday after complaining about a stomach virus. She fainted just before giving a speech.