Clues

Courtesy of Tom Tomorrow's blog, the business aspect of Bush's wannabe war. It doesn't get any more blatant than this.

And in the Sunday New York Times, a whole new way of looking at work. And it's not pleasant. (Note: Use salon as username and tabletalk as password)

And I may not be writing about Bush, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to point you in the direction of someone who is. Check out Ted Rall's latest vision through a geopolitical looking glass and decide whether you should laugh or cry. For you folks trolling through the archive, it's the Sept. 25 column.

This may not happen to you, but when I looked up the Rall column, I got a pop-up ad for Saudi Arabia, asking me if I wanted to know about how spiffy the kingdom is, in a United States-frame of mind, of course.

Right. Like people who regularly read Rall will have their minds changed by a small and annoying pop-up ad from an oil-rich nation which controls the U.S. like a drug dealer.

French Word of the Day

a propos de bottes (ah proh poh duh boht): "Speaking of boots"; by the way; to change the subject completely.

Digging out

Okay, first things first.

Oct. 6, in a major city near you. Protest the White House's march toward war. Remember, march peacefully and don't give the media any "black-clad anarchists smashing store windows" fodder. That's so 1999 Seattle.

Second on the menu tonight you have to go back to the Sept. 23 entry to understand this.

I wrote about this blog run by a guy named Bob, who wrote on said blog several razor-sharp observations (I called them "Rules") on the state of blogdom, mostly how the majority of blog content, from pictures of cats to animated icons to bad poetry, are clogging the bandwidth with crap.

So, after reading Bob's entry, I posted my response and Bob, last person whom I would have expected, posted a message on my "Comment" board. Here it is:

To be fair, never clled 'em rules. They were just some notions I was aking people to consider.

Anyway, I'm pleased as punch that anything I did could cause someone to cite Sturgeon's Law. I've been looking for a link on that. I dimly remembered it from a Vonnegut book, but a link to the actual quote is much appreciated.

State of delay

Hi.

I've been really busy lately, which explains why the blog hasn't been updated.

The big news is yesterday I had a phone interview with Nintendo that went really well. So well, in fact, that the big N wants me in for a real interview today. Plus I have to fill out an application and take some kind of editing test. Fun. I'm not keen on those things, but I suppose I have to take them if they want me to be a copy editor. Wacky, huh?

I've also gone into silent running because of a) "The Civil War" on PBS and b) I've been second-guessing myself on what I should put here. I know...it's my blog, my rules. Yet, I would write a draft of something and then seriously reconsider. I wrote something about Al Gore's recent speech, and then I wrote about the Xbox/Rare makeover of Joanna Dark. Neither are truly insightful or great pieces of literature, I thought, so I shelved them.

Maybe it has to do with Ol' Bob's acid-penned Blog Rules (see the previous posting), but I can't seem to find anything vibrant to write about. Plus, the whole Civil War thing has been eating into my time. You know how it is...what's a Blog compared to Sherman's March to the Sea?

Anyway, I have the face-to-face interview today. I have to find a decent interview outfit and do all my super secret squirrel planning at my current job so I can leave early, change and get to Nintendo while making sure no one at my work knows what I'm up to.

So, that's where it sits. I should just stop thinking so much and return to posting whatever I want. I do think I need to be exposed to more things in life, besides Bush, Iraq and the left-leaning sniper-commentary found in the message boards at Salon.com. Maybe I'd write about more interesting things and, besides, I've written everything I can about Iraq and Bush and
politics. It's time to move on.

French Word of the Day

de nouveau (duh noo voh): anew

More

Peter Gabriel's new CD is amazing. You can listen to it 100 times and always hear something new, startling and remarkable.

Your mission, should you choose to accept...

Hey, guess who has a phone interview for a copy editor gig with Nintendo of America? Go ahead...guess?

Yee-haw! Gonna post this entry, play a bit of Diablo 2 to relax and then brush up on my grammar skills before "Civil War" comes on.

Wow.

Rules of the road

Okay, to fully understand what I'm talking about, you have to go here and read this guy's list of Blog Rules.

Huh...well, okay then.

I think the writer misses going the next logical step: the inevitable blog crash coming in a few years, just like the coming crash of the massively multiplayer online role-playing games. Let's face it, as far as blogs go, there's a finite number of readers simply overwhelmed by the vast amounts of blogs out there and, to borrow from Sturgeon's Law, a great majority of them are crap. Eventually, this blogging craze will go the way of the dodo and the dotcom industry, the latter collapsing due to uncontrolled growth and depleted bank accounts. For all we know, the companies that host our blogspaces will soon wither under the strain of tremendous operating costs. Or they will vanish when they have to jack up the price to keep everything going and the bloggers jump ship with their wallets intact.

However, right now, the blogs mean something to people. The blog is a release valve, a writing exercise, an artistic play space, whatever. Look, I'm not saying my blog is any great shakes. In fact, I violate a couple of Bob's rules greatly. However, this is my place. If you like it, great. If not, thanks for stopping by. Blogs, in my mind, are just alpha-release thoughts anyway. No one is honestly going to make a living doing this. Personally, I'm trying to find my voice and get into the habit of writing on a daily basis (despite being married and chasing my resurgent "Diablo 2" dragon all over again). Other people, well...they write about politics or boyfriends or whatever. Like what Bob said, it's the quality of the author that makes all the difference.

I always think it's strange that we bloggers are all people sharing points of view that were never solicited. Discounting whatever you pay for online access, the blog you are reading is free. In fact, I'm probably shelling out more money putting this together than you are reading it. So, why am I doing it? Well, I have some habitual craving to throw words at you. I can't explain it, because I think that if I do, it'll all go away. Not being one to dispel magic, I craft up sentences and ideas, throw in a couple links and grind them through the Blogger text editor and...viola...you get a textgasm...all roughly written and clumsily edited because the "Civil War" was on PBS last night competing for my attention or something. And remember, when people write about their daily lives, there’s no guarantee that their lives are going to be constantly interesting.

Hmm…looking back, it's hard to steer this boat away from getting closer to "self-justification island," so I'll slow it down. When people blog, it's an extension of whatever they are thinking about at the time. It's a cross between a dream journal and the movie "Rashomon", documenting things through their point of view and shoving them up on some HTML truss.

Interestingly, I see a lot of people who blog paste comments on their blogspace with the caveat that "this will probably suck, but..." or "I don't know why I'm writing this...", almost disarming the reader into thinking that what they are about to read is unworthy of their time, so you've been warned. What is it about the blog that makes people afraid to post but yet operate a blog? Are we afraid of blogs? If we are afraid, why are we planting homesteads in blogspace to begin with?

(Note: Maybe it's to share juicy tidbits like this. By the way, the sound you just heard was a million lust-driven geeks on the Web exploding in fantasy-ecstasy.)

Are we doing the blog thing because everyone else is? If so, I think those bloggers will be first out of the pool when the blog craze crashes. Serious bloggers will seek high ground elsewhere and continue writing because it’s what they do.

And I wonder how many animated icons and personality quizzes got sent ol' Bob's way after he posted his rules.

I will say this, though. Ol' Bob, Mr. Happy Pants that he is, made me think about my blog. And about how lucky I am in my marriage. Both are living things I try to concentrate on daily, tinkering with the alchemy to make them better, more vibrant and more rewarding.

Coming soon

Tomorrow, the video game "Star Fox Adventures" for Gamecube hits shelves, along with a new CD by Peter Gabriel. Alas, yours truly can only give money to Mr. Gabriel this time around and will have to rent Fox McCloud's latest pixilated romp.

French Word of the Day


toujours perdrix (too zhoor pehr dree): "always partridge"; too much of a good thing.

An informed electorate

It's a bit old, and it's been passed around a couple other blogs, but I wanted to chime in a bit.

It looks like the folks at the FOX network want to make the important trivial by creating a candidate to run in a 2004 TV-presidential election. That's right: As part of the whole "reality television" sideshow circus that is the death of our culture, FOX wants to bitchslap the already fragile state of American politics by sending in some random joker to make whole election process, I dunno, more entertaining.

Tom Tomorrow speculated that maybe Ralph Nader could be the candidate. Hell, it'll probably be the only way we'll get a third party with any sort of voice in the 2004 election.


For now, I'm content to marvel that television networks will do anything for ratings or co-opt any part of American culture in order to feed the beast of reality TV. Although, I guess it's not as desperate as TV producers in Argentina who have a reality TV game show where the winner gets a job.

Speaking of prizes, and backtracking to the FOX candidate again, what would happen if, say, the candidate won and went on to higher office? Honestly...were guys like Reagan and Sonny Bono and Fred Thompson, all former actors, a shadow of things to come? What about Clinton and his constant use of the polls to decide his course of action? When are we going to have our first wholly created and groomed and marketed presidential candidate? Okay, I meant real ones, not ones from movies.

But, to be honest, FOX isn't alone. The premium cable network HBO is planning a reality show based on a person chosen to be a theoretical 2012 candidate.

It's kinda depressing that the candidate backed by the network built on "MASH" reruns and "Toughman" competitions won't face off against the candidate backed by "Sex and the City" and "The Sopranos."

I suppose though I should be asking the real questions about the upcoming 2004 TV election:

• Will the "American Idol" winner moderate the debates?
  
• Will past "Survivor" winners be the campaign managers or spin doctors?
  
• Will the kids from "Real World" or "Big Brother" be the traveling press corps?
  
• Will the election be held via a nationwide call-in vote via "American Idol"? Answer: Actually, there’s a good chance! Get those speed-dialers ready
  
• Who will investigate the inevitable vote tampering in Florida: The hunks from "Temptation Island" or the women from "The Bachelorettes in Alaska"? (Note: Both were FOX network shows)
  
• If the FOX candidate wins, and the presidential ratings go south, will the winner be impeached or cancelled next season?
  
• Will the TV vote percentage be higher than the average voting rate?
  

What the hell?

Caught this from Tom Tomorrow's blog.

Story here. Snip below.


The American secretary of state, Colin Powell, has said the United States will find ways to stop weapons inspectors going back to Iraq unless there is a new United Nations Security Council resolution on the issue.

Addressing a Congressional committee, Mr Powell said the Security Council must spell out to Iraq the serious consequences if it fails to co-operate with the inspectors.

The BBC State Department correspondent Jon Leyne says the US is in effect giving an ultimatum to the Security Council.

The development came as the chief UN arms inspector, Hans Blix, told the Security Council he hoped to have an advance party in Iraq on 15 October.


We really, really, really want to go to war, don't we?

In other video game war news

Blizzard announces its new game, causing a traffic tie-up on the Web in the process.

The game is called "Starcraft:Ghost", and it's already causing a fervor on the Web. It looks to be a major sidestep for Blizzard, better known for strategy games. "Ghost" looks like a shooter, and it's not out until late 2003, far too late to placate Bush's fevered war dreams.

Excuse me, I need to call my Senators.

You should, too.

Shall we play a game?

Those crafty worker bees at Blizzard are up to something, and at 5 p.m. (Seattle time) today we'll get to find out what's the latest addiction the company is brewing.

Seriously, games by Blizzard are God's way of telling you that you have too much time on your hands.

The mystery game looks like some kind of sequel to their space-based strategy game "Starcraft." In the game, you play one of three races vying for galactic domination. Each race has its strengths and weaknesses. You must manage your troops and resources to plot the best strategy for winning. Think "Rock, Scissors, Paper" meets "Risk" in outer space.

Rumors around the Web hint that it'll be a first-person shooter set in the "Starcraft" universe. Others whisper something of a massively multiplayer online game set in the "Starcraft" universe, with people all over the world playing as Terrans, the animal-like Zerg or the techno/psi-savvy Protoss.

Myself, I dunno; I'll have to wait, too.

Personally, I'm looking forward to "Baldur's Gate" and I'm really hot for "Jedi Outcast" for the Gamecube. Both appear to be coming in November.

I like to think I'm not a violent guy. I'm not a fan of football or wrestling and I've grown out of action films. That said, "Jedi Outcast" looks outstanding. You get a lightsaber. And force powers. You get to slice stormtroopers with your lightsaber and fight evil Jedi in big, bad-ass swordfights.

Yes, I'm a geek, I know.

But video games like "Jedi Outcast" allow me to experience my childhood dreams of becoming a Jedi, even though I would have been a horrible Jedi. I was really hyper as a kid and I think the Jedi police would have weeded me out of training on the first day of school...just after they caught me running around with my Fisher-Price training lightsaber screaming "Respect My Authority!" Yeah, I would have been carted off to the Jedi temple cafeteria, serving out the rest of my days dishing out the daily special.

You know, I wonder if during the Jedi purge, did the Empire also knock off the Jedi fry cooks, dishwashers and dry cleaners or just force them into a life of catering and cleaning servitude. If they did kill them, it seems like a real waste of manpower, if you ask me.

Deja vu, all over again

I kind of talked about this a couple days ago.

And again, I don't mean adult games should be filled with grittiness, tons of blood or naked people. Games for older audiences should be just smarter and bigger. It's one thing to make a guy being blown up with a rocket launcher look realistic and gory; it's another to create a game where you defeat a villain with your wits. Again, I refer you to my "Prisoner" game idea. (Scroll down to Sept. 15 and 16)

The writer of the article does have a clever ending, too. Hits it firmly on the head.


Message board chatter about such games has been generally dismissive – and often mocking. Thanks to the Internet, anyone (of any age) who wants to see a naked woman doesn't have to look too far. As a result, they're not looking to their games for that. Instead, they're buying titles in hopes of discovering something that's easy to learn, but not too easy to win; something that tells a good story, but offers immersive, addictive gameplay.

It's the fun factor that sells, not the flesh factor.

Two for you

Hey.

First up, today is my wife and myself's 39-month anniversary. Woo!

Second, BBC News online has this neat forum brewing where people can pose questions to a former U.N. weapons inspector. I'm just gonna watch, having not enough knowledge to ask a in-depth question. Besides, the examples BBC gives are good enough for me.

That shouldn't stop you, though. Go here.

Cynical thought of the day

Does anyone else think those protestors who chanted against U.S. war with Iraq when Rumsfeld was talking to the House Armed Services Committee were a plant?

I mean, it was perfect timing and the protest allowed Rumsfeld a good launching point to talk about that "it's not inspections but disarmament."

Still, for a few seconds it was electric to see those demonstrators halt Rumsfeld's speech...and do it on live CNN. It seems like security should have weeded them out. They had large banners and everything. Hmm. It all seems...I dunno...a bit staged.

I hope I'm wrong.

And isn't Donald Rumsfeld just one smug little weasel?

Still, it gives proof that there are people who don't want war, and that there hasn't been a dialogue with the American people about a military invasion of Iraq.

I only read it for the pictures

The whole Iraq/U.S./U.N. brouhaha explained in a four-panel cartoon.

A funny 'toon about that whole waitress/terrorist prank thing.

Foreign policy made E-Z

I think what we're all watching in regard to Iraq is a live-action version of Elmer Fudd hunting Bugs Bunny. Bush, of course is the dim-witted, light bulb-headed hunter and Saddam Hussein is the most crafty of all hares.

Seriously though, now that the U.N. getting ready to put weapons inspectors back into Iraq, will Team Bush back down? If the inspectors find no weapons of mass destruction (and say they didn't get jerked around by the Iraqi government; they got full and free access and everything), will Team Bush be satisfied? Will Team Bush get pissed off and march into Baghdad anyway? What would the U.N. do? Will Team Bush ask for more demands, eventually forcing Iraq into a set of demands it can't meet, thereby giving the U.S. the excuse it needs to attack?

Whatever happens next, you can thank Saddam Hussein that Bush's little war won't happen before the 2002 elections. By January 2003, Bush may be looking at a Democratic Congress that, one hopes, will curb the White House's power, crippling Bush until he can be voted out of office in 2004.

I don't think Saddam Hussein will be a jerk and yank the rug out from under the U.N., the global body that's helping him buy time. Frankly, it'll be awfully embarrassing for Team Bush if the U.N. inspectors come out and say Iraq is free of weapons of mass destruction, thereby short-circuiting a war to boost Bush's (and CNN's) rating. And I'm sure Hussein would love to see the son of the man who tried to oust him a decade ago get a lot of grief in the press when the U.N. finds no weapons in Iraq.

Yet, the U.S. and Great Britain will pound holes into Iraq anyway, weakening the country for the hell of it. Call it a consolation prize for the barbarians at the gate.


...just watch what you say

According to the Daily Howler, a site that loves to crucify the media for apparent abuses of bias or shoddy reporting, that story about the three guys who made a terrorist prank last week has taken an odd turn. I'm not sure how much I trust the folks at Daily Howler (think of them as "The Onion" after a steroid rage), but this could be an interesting case of they said/she said.

Are we going to believe three students of Middle-Eastern descent or a waitress? Who's telling the whole story here? Who has biases and who heard what? If the story of the bombing joke turns out to be false, and the waitress made things up in her head, then the government's whole "be vigilant and report anything suspicious" is going to be worthless. As I wrote a couple months ago, what's going to stop people from calling in tips based on prejudice? The whole information gathering process for law enforcement and anti-terrorist activities are shot to hell.

Here's a different analysis (read: more objective and less fire-breathing) of how the media mis-covered the whole "terrorist prank" story.

What the neighbors are thinking

By the way, on the right side of the BBC News home page there's a neat primer on what countries are for or against war with Iraq. Look for the "Who wants war?" graphic on the right-side rail.

A geeky sci-fi afterthought

Anyone remember that classic "Star Trek" episode where Kirk and some lizard leader are transported to some desolate planet to duke it out? The winner has his ship survive. The loser dies, along with his crew. Anyway, Kirk and the lizard have no help except for what they craft out of their surroundings. The lizard uses boulders and Kirk (in a pre-MacGyver state of mind) pieces together a crude firearm out of a hollow tube and some handy gunpowder components that are handily lying around.

If Bush wants Saddam Hussein so damn bad, let's send Saddam Hussein and Bush to some godforsaken hole, like the Australian Outback, and have them fight. If Hussein wins, the U.N. will drop its sanctions and leave him alone. If Bush wins, Iraq becomes the 51st state.

Simple. No costly war. No innocents dying. No yellow ribbons. No mawkish country tune to play over footage of soldiers departing for war.

French Word of the Day

Faits divers (feht dee vehr): "news in brief"; short news items.

Yeah, right

P.S. I’m sick of writing about Iraq, Bush and all the blatant moves by my government to throw peace out the window. I need to get back to writing fiction and posting it here. Yet again, like any recovering addict, I’m going to stop taking my drug. I’m going to stop writing about Bush. I’m going to go clean and sober.

But that’s really easy to say when the needle is still in your arm.

Pre/post

You know, it just occurred to me why you don't see a lot of visible protest against the impending invasion of Iraq. Sure, there's dissent in the press and among citizen groups, but you don't see massive street protests, like in 1990-91 (protests which yours truly took part in as a wide-eyed college freshman). Protests give the impression that if a bunch of you got together and marched through the streets, you'll generate enough momentum to your cause that the powers-at-be would hear you and change policy.

This time around, I don't think anyone is protesting because they know it'll be futile. Team Bush has already made up its mind about invading Iraq. It's merely a matter of time.

Well, it turns out that Iraq itself is leading the antiwar movement, most likely in a desperate attempt to save its own hide by allowing in U.N. inspectors back into Iraq.

Golly, I bet this must really piss off Bush, all eager to attack a stubborn Saddam Hussein, and then, poof, all the war plans are on hold. Although I'm not sure how glad I should feel that war isn't imminent. On one hand, there won't be a rapid explosion in anti-U.S. terrorism caused by an invasion of Iraq and you can scratch any thought of the U.S. acting like madmen by going against the world's wishes with their little war. On the other, I can envision Bush grinning from ear-to-ear, congratulating himself on pushing Iraq into letting U.N. inspectors back into the country. Team Bush will probably carve this into a victory and, emboldened, the U.S. will push other countries around to meet its ends.

Depends how you look at it, I guess. I'll see it as a pragmatic win for international law and a victory for negotiation and peace.

Anyway, I planned on writing this earlier, just after Sept. 11, but I got tired after writing my essays. I needed to take a break and I didn't want to write about Team Bush, which I end writing about, despite all my protests and plans to the contrary. Every time I think I'm out, they pull me back in.

Okay, no more quoting Al Pacino tonight. Consider this my pre-one week after post-9/11 anniversary recollection essay.

How I Spent my Sept. 11

Woke up after the second alarm on my radio. Turned it off just before I comprehended the NPR coverage. Stumbled out of bed. Went to do some yoga in the living room. Dodged the news stations. Tried to find safe harbor on the Weather Channel, but it too was taken over by One Year Later coverage. Just what do meteorologists have to do with terrorism? Well, I didn't stick around to find out. I returned to yoga with G4, the video game channel, keeping me company. Happily...nearly blissfully, G4 didn't cave to 9/11 anniversary programming.

Had breakfast, showered, dressed myself and kissed my dozing wife. Driving to work, I skipped NPR for KEXP, which kept talk to a bare minimum and only recognized the day by playing songs about New York or with artists from the Big Apple.

Traffic sucked. Everyone was slow and cranky, perhaps on edge from too much drive-through espresso and self-imposed scary shadows of terrorists who like anniversary bombings.

Only saw a small smattering of flags on the back of vehicles. The flag-waving explosion just after Sept. 11, 2001 has a tepid echo on this anniversary.

No one called me at work, which I like. I get a lot of phone calls for the features wing of the newspaper I work at. Maybe people were too spooked to use the phone, fearing that's how those crafty terrorists will strike next.

My co-worker came in a little after 10 a.m., fresh from her domestic partnership paperwork signing with her lesbian partner. She rolled in, smiling. "I'm hitched."

It was on the way to work that I forgot to get her and her partner something to celebrate this grand occasion. But just what do you get a lesbian couple who are now domestic partners? Flowers? A tea kettle? The complete works of Margaret Atwood? Argh, the pressure. I'm so bad in social settings. Drop me in front of a first-person shooter, however...

Listened to a lot of Moby, whose birthday is Sept. 11.

In a fit of Diet Pepsi madness, I submitted this blog to The Weblog Review. I don’t know why I did this. Maybe I’m desperate for attention. Maybe this introvert is ready for an audience. There’s a knot in my stomach: Geez, what if my site sucks? What if I’m just a rambling fool with a blog template and mediocre copy-editing skills? Oh well, I’ll have to clean a few things up. Company is coming over in a few days to review my swanky pad o' text.

Filed all my articles before deadline. Got in my car and drove home. Traffic was the usual for the biomass of workers leaving Seattle at 4:30 p.m. Slow in parts. Drivers forgetting which lane they want. Drivers looking for that extra couple feet of road to creep up on despite a traffic stoppage.

Again, the radio was locked on the alternative music channel.

Among the things I saw driving home:

• Inside a Persian-Mediterranean grocery store, a Middle-Eastern couple with their gaze transfixed at a point up on a wall, something I could only assume was a television.
  
• An incredibly stylish young blonde woman who looked like she chose her perfect-fitted late-summer casual outfit to match her ruby-red Walkman headphones.
  
• A sign for "Couples Get in For Free on Wednesdays" at my local nationally franchised strip club.
  

Welcome to the Village

Hi. It's Monday, about 9:20 a.m. I've cleaned up some errors in the text. I wrote the essay last night after a long day and should have given it a better edit. (I was dreaming when I wrote this, forgive me if it went astray).

Also, as I was driving into work today, I came up with the perfect game for older players, players who want to play something else besides the first-person shooter/extreme sport/sword-and-sorcery/RPG juggernaut current out there.

Ever see the cult classic television show, "The Prisoner"?

"The Prisoner" was a program about a mysterious government agent who, after a fiery resignation, gets kidnapped and sent to a bizarre compound called "The Village." There, the agent, given the moniker of "Number 6," is grilled by his captors to give up the reason why he quit. By hook and by crook, they try to drag the information out of "Number 6," who is always scheming to escape. Just when you think "Number 6" is about to pull one over on his captors, the rug gets yanked out from under him and things never appear as they seem.

Avant-garde to this day, "The Prisoner" was a groundbreaking show that explored free will, paranoia, the human determination to rise above, and man versus a faceless bureaucracy. It was a thinking man's James Bond, and there hasn't been anything like it on television since.

Take the engines behind "Prisoner of War" and "Morrowwind," add a dash of "Myst" and the trust/fear factor in "The Thing." Put them all in a blender, mutate them into an advanced state and, bingo, you have the game version of "The Prisoner." You, as "Number 6," struggle to figure out how "The Village" works and piece together who really is in charge. You risk allegiances with shady fellow prisoners and gather items and information on how to escape your confines.

"The Prisoner" would feed on the wave of television nostalgia, attract the cult following who watched the show and provide players with one hell of a puzzle box to solve. And I'd be in line to buy it the day it came out.

Keep your "Max Payne" and your "Super Mario Sunshine."

I am not a number. I am a free man.

This is your life

Okay, I think the good folks at Nintendo are seriously trying to shoot themselves in the foot.

I just wasted about three hours with the new game "Animal Crossing" today. Over the course of last week, I spent all of an hour with the new "Turok: Evolution" and a few days taking the new "Super Mario Sunshine" for a spin. "Animal Crossing" and "Mario" are Nintendo-exclusive, meaning that if any other gamer wants to those games, they have to shell out the bucks for a Nintendo console.

I was a big fan of the Nintendo 64, the precursor to the company's current Gamecube. I still have it in my closet, even if the games are simpler and more crude on the graphic level. When Nintendo announced the Gamecube, I was looking forward to a whole new generation of gaming and games: smarter, prettier and able to go in new directions.

Instead, Nintendo's last three outings are just the same old crap: "Turok" is a horribly ugly first-person shooter, "Mario" is a souped-up rehash of "Super Mario 64" but with a horrible in-game camera scheme and "Animal Crossing" is Nintendo's most clumsy game to date.

In "Animal Crossing," you play...well...yourself. Your avatar journeys to a small town where you set up your home. It's all in very cutesy-cartoony style with you looking like a cross between "Parappa the Rapper" and a Viking. Immediately, you come to a town (with a name you make up) and try to find lodging and to start a new life. Within a couple minutes, I was saddled with a mortgage and a dead-end part-time job as a delivery person.

That's right. The game is about working off a debt by delivering packages and working for a raccoonish shopkeeper (yes, raccoon...told you it was a cartoon). Of course, I find out that I'm working so hard that the raccoon fires me because there's no more work. So, I'm out on my pixelated ass, trying to come up with the money to make mortgage payments by selling fruits and begging townspeople for work. I sock away the rest to help pay for decorations for my hovel. Meanwhile, I have townspeople who don't have jobs for me, but keep hounding me for letters from me. Shit, I'm right here, you dumb humanized hippo-cow, what the hell do you want? *sigh* Can't make a living as a writer, even in the pixel world.

So, I'm hustling to make money and decorate my pad (just like when I got out of grad school), I have to take care of my mortgage (just like right now), I have letters to write (well, exchange this for instant messages, e-mail and phone calls to mom) and then I have the option of writing in my "Animal Crossing" journal (just like my blog).

Great. For $50, I'm playing a cartoon version of my life.

But this game just stumps me. I mean, it's easy enough. However, it's the subtext. Granted the game isn't teaching you how to frag another person or showing you the best way to chop up a zombie, however there's something unsettling about "Animal Crossing." Maybe it's the underlying message of having to help people constantly as an item-toting lackey. Maybe it's unusual purpose of playing a character who needs to pay off a mortgage and get a job, most likely a boring occupation that you can quickly lose.

I think the worst thing about the game just who is this marketed for.

Imagine, you're a kid playing this game. Does a mortgage and getting fired sound fun to you? If you are an older gamer, do you want to play in a cutesy-poo arena with games like "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City" about to hit? Or, better yet, do you want to play a game that involved hustling to make money after getting fired, mirroring a reality where corporations are downsizing every day and people are scrambling to make house payments? Where's the fun in that? Games rarely make the player so dependent where s/he has to do something so mundane as decorate an apartment, write letters or pay bills. Games are larger than life for a reason: Players want to escape. Remember: the popular "Sim" series has the player acting as God. It's faux-life...just like "Animal Crossing," but the "Sim" series is more omnipresent and omnipotent. Nearly every game gives the player some special ability that sets him or her apart, some power or weaponry. The game implies you are special and at the center of the universe. "Animal Crossing" just makes you a cog in a machine, bending to people's wills and trying to make everyone happy.

And what do you do at the end of the day in "Animal Crossing"? You go home and play vintage Nintendo games on your virtual TV. In a postmodern twist, you are playing a video game as a person playing a video game. Your avatar is having more fun than you are. At least s/he's playing "Donkey Kong"...you are along for the ride, controlling the avatar's hands on the gamepad.

To be fair, the big appeal of "Animal Crossing" is the ability to swap you town with the towns of other "Animal Crossing" players. Akin to an interactive scrapbook or an aquarium, you can show off your home and its furnishings, possibly unlocking new features in your version of the game. Still, I'm not sure if that's a big selling point for me, viewing the handiwork of people who have also been turned to servitude and debt.

I'm giving Nintendo until the release of the new "Legend of Zelda" game. Then, I'll figure out what to do with my video gaming future. I'm really let down by the video game industry, at least on the Nintendo end of the spectrum. I was hoping for something more "adult," and no, I don't mean something with nudity or another "Max Payne" I'm-a-pissed-off-cop-gone-rogue gore-fest shoot-em-up. No, I wanted something larger in scale, deeper in nuance and longer in gameplay. Something like "Morrowind" or "Myst" or even the upcoming "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic," only bigger in design and risker in storytelling.

Look, I grew up on video games. Honestly, no one owes me anything for my years of allegiance except for the understanding that the first generation of video gamers are growing older and want bigger, more mature and imaginative games to play. Although I love a good first-person shooter, I need something more....maybe like a graphic version of the old "Infocom" puzzle games. The only one that springs to mind is "Ico" for the Playstation system.

Yes, I know video games are a big business and if "Halo" and "Super Mario Sunshine" sell a zillion copies, then game companies, eager to find the next killer app, will pump out "Halo" and "Mario" clones until that well runs dry. I love explosions, but I need plot and characters and puzzles. Sure "Mario" has that in droves, but frankly, the little plumber has worn out his welcome for me. I need more.

It's sad to see, growing up and out of a market that I dumped a lot of money and time into. You give something attention and follow it and plunk down cash and here you are...just turned entered into the third decade of life and left out in the cold, watching from a muddy distance as the young turks playing with lights and sound in the castle you helped build. It sounds like a great party, but your name is on the guest list no more. There's rain on the face and a slump in the shoulders. You've been played for a fool and you're just too old.

French Word of the Day

jeunesse doree (zhuh ness doh ray): "gilded youth"; affluent young people.

Major cajones, minor brains

Geez, guys. This is not the time to pull a prank regarding terrorism, especially when you're of Middle Eastern descent.

Snip below.


Three medical students of Middle Eastern descent who were stopped as suspected terrorists on Alligator Alley early Friday morning remained detained after they were overheard in a Georgia restaurant vowing to make America ``cry on 9/13.''

Federal sources involved in the investigation said they believe the three men - all U.S. citizens - were playing a stupid joke on another restaurant patron who gave them a suspicious look.

All three were on their way from Illinois to take medical training in Miami.

In the absence of any real data...

That groovy cartoonist Tom Tomorrow posted this on his blog and I can't resist passing this along.

Snip below. It's from Tuesday.


Senior intelligence officials acknowledged today that the government had not compiled an updated, cross-agency assessment of Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons capacities, although the Bush administration is pressing for a quick statement of support for military action against Saddam Hussein.

Intelligence officials, responding to repeated complaints from Senate Democrats, said today that they were working on the authoritative document. The last such thorough assessment on Iraq's clandestine weapons was produced about two years ago, Senate and administration officials said today.


Go read Bush's speech to the U.N. today and then read the above article and then tell me why Team Bush is so hot and heavy to hit Iraq. You can't have it both ways: You can't say Saddam has weapons of mass destruction and then have your intelligence agencies say they don't know what WMD Iraq has.

And keep in mind, this is all on the heels of former United Nations weapons inspector Scott Ritter getting roasted by CNN for daring to suggest that Iraq isn't that big of a threat. I mean, it's not like Ritter spent time in Iraq looking for WMD or anything.

Oh, wait.

Sheesh. I've really fallen off my "I'm not going to write about Bush" wagon.

Today is not Sept. 11, thank God

Hi.

Sept. 11 is over. Spent the day at work, dodging the press coverage. I'll write about what I did yesterday later. I have a few fires here at work I need to control first.

Anyway, I caught Bush's speech to the United Nations this morning. In case you missed it, here's a transcript.

I think a lot of people were looking forward to this speech. Finally, we were going to hear what Bush's case was against Iraq. We would hear evidence on a global stage which would drum up support for Saddam Hussein's removal as the head of Iraq. Make no mistake, Saddam is an brutal ruler and he should be removed, but Bush didn't present evidence why. Bush talked in generalities, trying to pump up the U.N. into taking part in Bush's crusade. After all, Bush reasoned, Iraq was thumbing it's nose at U.N. resolutions. Hey you, foreigners, Bush was saying, aren't you just hot under the collar?

Myself, I thought it was a good rah-rah, "do the right thing, but don't look at the details"-type of speech. Bush missed a few things though.

• Regarding the regime change, Bush didn't talk about what would come next as far as putting democracy in place and rebuilding what would be a shattered nation
  
• Bush didn't provide direct evidence linking Saddam to terrorism or even Saddam to currently possessing weapons of mass destruction
  
• Between patronizing phrases and attempts at creating guilt trips on the U.N., Bush taunted the U.N., essentially saying, "Saddam Hussein is dissing you. Are you going to take that?"
  
• Bush did not make a call for an international coalition
  
• Bush did not offer other options besides a military one
  
• Bush made it clear that the United States was going to go after Iraq, and the U.N. could come along if it wanted to
  
• Bush did not talk about the destabilizing effects an attack on Iraq could bring
  
• Bush did not mention that the current Vice President did business with Hussein a few years ago, thus giving Hussein the technology to rebuild Iraq
  
• Bush failed to mention that when Iraq attacked Iran, it was with backing of the U.S., who used Iraq as a proxy warrior during the Cold War
  

Where there's a will...

(Note: This is my final 9/11 essay. I think I've said enough about it, just like everyone else these days. I'm planning on avoiding the television tomorrow. You should, too.)

In case you missed it today, the U.S. government raised the national warning state from "elevated" to "high," meaning the government is on a heightened state of alert against some threat we don't know about. The state of rising tenseness stemmed from unspecific warnings from Team Bush about possible terrorist attacks on the Sept. 11 anniversary, when trained killers cut a scar into the capital of the world. So, the government is positioning itself to do whatever it can against the terrorists. We don't know how the killers will strike; we don't know how the authorities will respond. Meanwhile, we, the potential targets, have to be more aware of suspicious people and activities around us.

Personally, I exercised my vigilance by buying some flowers for my wife, a box of Twinkles, some cookies and milk. I figure if all hell breaks loose tomorrow, I'll call in sick and watch the end of the world on BBC America. Mayhem, with an English accent.

I guess I should be more concerned by the threat of terrorist attacks, but I'm not. It's not that I'm overwhelmed by the news reports; I work at a newspaper. I scroll through misery every morning. No, I think I'm just used to change. Humans are remarkable adapters. We've settled into nearly every climate and have a home on every landmass. Shoot, right now there are people living in space, floating around and getting use to the idea of food in packets and restraining yourself to use the toilet.

Back on earth, it's a lot more complex with the threat that someone across the globe is putting a plan in action that will end with the detonation of a suitcase nuke at the base of the Space Needle. Or the Sears Tower. Or the Transamerica Building. Or...well, you get the drift. Pick a landmark and unleash the grim reaper.

And strangely, I never pondered how the plotting mind of terrorist works until I met a seven-year-old boy at a party.

A few nights ago, my wife and I were at a party up on Queen Anne Hill in Seattle. It wasn't anything wild, and I, avoiding grown-up talk, spent most of the time with Will, the seven-year-old son of one of the partygoers. On the floor, in a corner, he drew wild Rube Goldbergian blueprints for wild inventions, the purpose of which wasn't clear, but at one point a hamster was involved in the generation of electricity. You know, wild stuff that only kids can think of before the world stomps in and tries to teach them to not be so weird. Sharp, intuitive and a big fan of the Discovery Science cable channel, Will drew up crude plans that, without his knowledge, nailed the essence of the Internet and videoconferencing. I felt bad for him, destined to grow up to find out half your inventions have been done already.

Anyway, as the party was winding down and my wife was tugging at my sleeve to go home, Will and I were trying to figure out how to gather energy while in space to make space travel to the center of the galaxy possible. Will, undeterred by the bounds of logic, speedily drew solar panels and engines and cosmic rays and it hit me. Eventually, we will be hit hard by terrorists, and it’ll be harder than the World Trade Center.

We're going to get hit somewhere vital, whether it be in an information center, water filtration plant, a transportation hub, food...something. If a seven-year-old can come up with wild ideas about getting cable television into your home or describe videoconferencing, then someone with schooling, patience and blind hatred will figure out a way to get at some nerve center of this country. The terrorists have time on their side, maybe money.

Keep in mind that the people who did the Sept. 11 attacks, the ones in the planes, they pulled off a mind-bogglingly complex operation. Nineteen men brought a nation to a grinding halt using nothing more than box cutters and a hybrid of traditional terrorist tactics of suicide bombing and airplane hijacking. The people who did this lived in the U.S. for years, training and living their lives until one day they got the call and steeled themselves with the they hatred they carried so stealthily for years. One day, someone's neighbor, someone who paid the bills and obeyed stop signs, helped other like-minded allies take over four planes and three of them hit their targets. All the time, they were ready to kill, and not one wavered or dropped a dime on his cohorts.

But back to the motivation for a second. Motive is everything, and it's the least examined aspect in this one-year anniversary media orgy. Why did the terrorists hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon? Besides the oft-repeated naive analysis that the terrorists "hate us because of our freedom," what answers have been given for the target selection? What do the terrorists want? Terrorism is the tool by one group to get another group to pay attention to something. On 9/11, America got a wake-up call that the world was more complex and dangerous than we thought it was, as Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist David Horsey points out. We now have to pay attention to what's being done in our name around the world. What happens in one isolated country will find its way back home.

It's easy to want to go back to the past and remember that awful day, and by doing so we'll end up trapped in the dead, thinking of the dead and living in the past tense. But the past has happened; it's the future we have to worry about.

So, now what?

This is what we're living with in the United States these days: A forever war with attackers who could strike anytime and a 24/7 siege mentality. Like the Brits during the Nazi bombing of London or any Israeli or Palestinian, I suppose I just got used to it. If I gotta go, I go. In the meantime, I pay my bills, pet my cats and try to be nice to my wife.

Of course, it doesn't help that the United States is being led by a guy who colors his foreign policy coloring books with black and white crayons. It doesn't help that he's surrounded by people who really, totally, completely, must-have-to bomb Iraq. It doesn't help that, in our names and our tax dollars, we have lost some fundamental civil rights and countless civilians have been killed in Afghanistan, including some in the most heartbreaking of circumstances.

We're a world poised on war, forgetting that in this war on terror, we're going to lose because you can't bomb out hatred and revenge. You can't bring peace into a world at the point of gun. We’ll never be able to stamp out terrorism as long as serious underlying problems remain unaddressed and someone somewhere is willing to blow himself up to make a point, score points with his God or because he thinks there's no hope.

And yet, I have hope.

I draw hope from the most unlikely of sources: Sept. 11, 2001. One of the most grisly sidebars to an otherwise terrible event came with the story of people jumping out of the burning World Trade Center buildings to certain death. Why they jumped, what motivated them to plummet earthward, will remain a mystery only solved by our own deaths. Were they hopeless or did they see some glimpse of heaven and jumped to follow it? Did they believe they could make it or where they afraid of death by a consuming fire? We are left with these chilling questions.

But one story, summed up eloquently by Brian Doyle, made us all think about the ultimate expression of love. A pair of jumpers were seen holding hands as they jumped. Again, we don't know the full story. Maybe one was trying to pull back the other from jumping. Maybe they hastily formed a joint suicide pact to face the end together. No matter what the preface, their grasp said more about the better angels of our nature than any candlelight vigil or mass-market slogan. In the end, two people found each other and said, "I won't let go of you, no matter what. Whatever comes, I'll be here for you." Using the most tactile of senses, touch, they formed an embrace of comfort, a final intimate sacrifice that comforted them high above concrete streets as they fell to their eternal reward.

I draw hope from that. I believe that, deep down, we do love each other. We can rise to the worst occasion, giving comfort up until the end. Our love is ceaseless. Our concepts of compassion are boundless and yet simple. No matter what transgressions the pair may have committed in their lives as a single unit, together they proved that humanity isn't doomed to the constant cycle of hate, blood, revenge and misery. There is a better path. Hopefully, it'll take less than a disaster to bring it out of us.

Tomorrow, of all days, my lesbian coworker and her partner are signing domestic partnership paperwork. While it wasn't done in some grand gesture to take back the Sept. 11 date from the shadow of destruction (it was to make sure her partner had health insurance while she went to law school), it's a bit of celebration in the air anywhere, a sign that life goes on. Every year, for as long as they are together, they will celebrate Sept. 11 as the date of their union. To paraphrase the wizard Gandalf from "The Lord of the Rings," such a thing is reassuring in these dark times.

I suppose that is what's going to save us in the end. We're going to go on and set up our own lives. We'll find each other, love one another and try to forge a future together. We'll have fights, we'll have setbacks, but invest in each other, hoping kind words and loving actions will sprout a chain of compassion and trust.

Sept. 11, 2001 wasn't the end of anything or the beginning of a new era. We've always had strife and war and one ideology trying to snuff out another. What has changed is the means of destruction and the names of the major players. What hasn't changed is that life still will go on. You can be afraid of some phantom menace out there ready to blow up a bomb or you can side with a more hopeful outlook. You can see that peace is obtainable and a peaceful future is possible, albeit through a lot of hard work and occasional failures. Thanks to global communication and the Internet, we can see misery all over the world in full color and in real time. We know about trouble spots and famine and ethnic hatred. We Americans finally woke up on Sept. 11, 2001. We know we need to fix our ravenous consumer culture. We need to fix our foreign policy. We need to fix the environment, both the natural one and the one of discourse between peoples, religions and cultures. The United States was credited with helping turn back fascism during the Second World War. We can do great things when challenged, and there is no greater challenge before us than our world right now.

To paraphrase Gandhi, we should be the change that we seek. And, to tell you the truth, I'm really damn tired of being scared.

It's time for a change.

Picking Nits

First, the set-up. Story here. Snip below.


WASHINGTON -- On the eve of the Sept. 11 anniversary, the Bush administration decided Tuesday to raise the terror alert level for the first time to code orange, signaling a high danger of attack, a government official told The Associated Press.

The official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, said the decision would be announced at 1 p.m. EDT by Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller and Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge.

The official declined to give the reason for the change in the status, although U.S. intelligence officials have been saying since the weekend that there has been an increased amount of chatter among al-Qaida sympathesizers.

The FBI issued a warning that became public Monday asking operators of computer networks, utilities and transportation system to be wary during the anniversary this week of the suicide hijackings that leveled the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon.


And then the punchline. According to the Homeland Security Web site, the color is still yellow...same as it was when the color-warning system was installed months ago. Here we go, big brouhaha over the warning system, 9/11 anniversary jitters running higher, big change in color for the first time, and the damn official site isn't updated.


Update

Looks like someone caught on. The warning has been changed from the vague "Elevated" to the omnious and vague "High."

Making 9/11 pay

Where I work, we get a lot of advance copies of things. We get advance copies of books, usually uncorrected proofs and wrapped with bland paper covers. Our TV critic gets next month’s television episodes, rough cuts with no background music or featuring a rolling timecode in the corner. The music critic gets boxes of promotional CDs, most never opened.

With the one-year anniversary of 9/11 coming fast, the critics have been flooded with 9/11-related stuff. Our book critic has been hit worst of all, I think. According to a recent article, he’s been facing down more than 150 books connected some way, shape or form to 9/11.

It’s like garbage. Once you pick up a piece by the side of the road, you suddenly notice every other scrap of paper, errant plastic bag or discarded soda can. Without warning, you’re surrounded. For me, it happened one recent Saturday in a book aisle at a nearby store. Row after row of books by journalists, policy experts, even the widow of one of the hijacked airplane victims. Books full of eyewitness accounts. Tomes staffed with pictures. It’s all there, covering every angle of an event so documented it’s the literary cousin to an eclipse, blocking out the original event itself and all trying to grab your attention and vie for your memories and heartstrings.

And that’s the trouble with the 9/11 nostalgia trade. Besides the fact that a grim majority of victims are still buried at the Pentagon, a Pennsylvanian field and at the World Trade Center site, 9/11 belonged to all of us in global proportions. Those with access to Webcast or TV caught the towers falling and countless replays of the planes hitting the towers. Those without television read account in their newspapers. Those without the printed word traveled the information by word of mouth, no doubt seeing the anguished reaction of the listener.

Like the premise of the Akira Kurosawa film "Rashomon," everyone will take something different away from the event: Love, disgust, hate, fear and hope. You can’t mold that into a shape, put it into a box and try to sell it. Sept. 11, 2001 will forever be, for living Americans, one of the most frightening moments that we’ve collectively lived through. It symbolized vulnerability, pain and fear along with brotherhood, sacrifice and love.

And people merely near the Twin Towers have their stories, brushes with death and the yearning to be close to fame in a fame-driven culture, but it's the destruction and the loss of those in the towers we come back to...and there's our desire to know their stories. Maybe it was to prepare us for our own demise. Did they feel pain? Did they find peace in the closing moments of their lives? We want to know, because we grafted our lives onto theirs. Through live TV, transference took place. What if we were in the towers?

And so, we line up to by crap, stamped with images of the burning towers or maybe some fireman hoisting the American flag at the World Trade Center site, recalling images of Marines on Mount Suribachi. Valor, glory, honor, hope in the face of unbelievable losses. All perfectly crafted to tug at your heart and clean out your wallet.

Is this the way the dead want to be remembered? With a T-shirt or a song? Can one woman, wife of the man who drove the words "Let’s Roll" into our lexicon, seriously expect to be the voice for the 9/11 victims and their families with her new book? Of course, these are all trick questions. The dead are dead. They don’t care how we remember them. We only buy souvenirs to show off to each other where we’ve been. With 9/11 memorabilia, we’re showing off that we’re proud of America and that we will "NEVER FORGET," and we have the $20 T-shirt to prove it. We buy the crap to soothe our souls, to take part in the mass acceptance movement called patriotism. We have $50 coffee table of 9/11 disaster photos to take over when the shirt becomes too threadbare, like the tattered flags on our SUVs.

But remember, a souvenir, especially something like a book of pictures, is trying to make you see what it wants you to see. You aren’t remembering your own experiences, but grafting your memories into the handiwork of competent photographers, skilled layout artists and hand-working editors who are crafting not what to remember, but an experience of an event…a "best-of" scrapbook of 9/11 dust, mayhem and pain. It’s the hideous side-effect of the "NEVER FORGET" mantra: You won’t be able to forget, but you won’t have your own memories either. Like the androids in the film "Blade Runner," you’ll have built-in memories from someone else’s life.

How much memory is enough? Should we each buy the rights to one name, one history of the 9/11 deceased? Shall we carry their names around in our wallets? Should we buy books and videos whenever they are offered on television or at the store? What about those in New York City who lived through the nightmare watching the towers come down in their neck of the urban woods? Are they exempted or should they have to buy double to soften feelings of survivor guilt? How much is enough? When have we done our part to materially remember 9/11?

Every year, usually the day after Thanksgiving, there’s something called "Buy Nothing Day," a campaign by those concerned about our bloated consumer culture that goes into a blasphemous overdrive as the holidays approach. People are asked to refrain from the buying spree for one day, instead putting their money and energy elsewhere.

Instead of going out on Sept. 11 and spending $20 or more on the one of the legion of Sept. 11 books or commemorative items(including that by-proxy new Bruce Springsteen album) drop some cash to a charity. Make it 9/11 related, if you want, maybe Amnesty International or UNICEF. The environment needs your help. Or you can give locally to your local women’s shelter. Don’t turn 9/11 into a seller’s market. Treasure your memories by not swamping them with glossy images or ghost-written words or share them with friends and family. Give them a hug and remind them you love them. It’s your call. Don’t let anyone tell you 9/11 has an official spokeswidow or song or book. Your views matter, too.

But no matter how you remember 9/11, I think the best thing to do is ask "Why did this happen?" and "What can be done to peacefully curb terrorism around the world?"

While some will wrestle with the sudden loss of loved ones due to 9/11, the rest of us on the fringe continue to struggle with questions of faith and safety. That’s the true souvenir we got on 9/11. And no amount of collector’s editions of newspapers, books by the unofficial widow of 9/11 or special anniversary T-shirts will mask that cold fact.

And yet I wouldn’t say all the mementos associated with 9/11 are for profit or designed to be "the definitive collection" of something.

A couple days ago, I got a flyer from the American Red Cross thanking me for my donation after 9/11, an act duplicated by zillions of others. It’s a simple mailing. Unfold the envelope and inside, on an 8.5" by 11" sheet is a thank you from the Red Cross CEO. Unfold it once more and on the 11" by 17" sheet is a crude but heartfelt crayon drawing by a child named Katie, who drew a picture thanking the Red Cross for helping those displaced by the Sept. 11 attacks.

I could be cynical, thinking that it was a carefully crafted by an art department to make me go "awwww," thus making me shell out more dollars to a charity eager for cash. Instead, for some reason, I didn’t throw out the flier. I’m holding onto it, glancing at it as I write.

And I write, I figured out why I didn’t toss it into the recycle bin. It wasn’t begging for my attention with pictures of firemen or the smoldering ruins of the World Trade Center. It didn’t have an American flag or yell at me to "NEVER FORGET!"

Instead, it just said thank you. Thank you for lending a hand without question in our nation’s darkest hour in years.

You’re welcome.

Lie Part Two

The link I have below has been updated. Now, the lead of the story is that Iraq could arm itself with nuclear weapons in a few months, assuming it gets some help from other sources.

The bits where Bush distorts the truth for his own end are the fourth and sixth news nuggets down.

Lie

Tom Tomorrow spotted this for his blog. I'm passing it on.

Story here. Snip below.


Seeking to build a case Saturday that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction, President Bush cited a satellite photograph and a report by the U.N. atomic energy agency as evidence of Iraq’s impending rearmament. But in response to a report by NBC News, a senior administration official acknowledged Saturday night that the U.N. report drew no such conclusion, and a spokesman for the U.N. agency said the photograph had been misinterpreted.

Godfightclub

When the 9/11 attacks occurred, people around the world (definitely across the United States) poured into churches, temples, synagogues and mosques to send silent pleas to their God; pleas for justice, pleas for peace, pleas for love and pleas that the dead find their ways quickly and painlessly into His reach.

Some, as you can read in the link above, questioned the mercy of God that allowed fully-filled and fueled airplanes to slam into filled skyscrapers. Why didn’t God stop the buildings from falling down? Why did God just sit by and let this happen? Simply put, where was God?

I’m not going to address where God was on Sept. 11, 2001. I can’t answer for God.

But what’s more important, or maybe more tangible is the question of why faith became so bastardized to turn words of wisdom and love into a weapon of mass destruction. We can’t put God on trial, but we can answer for our own actions done in his name.

The world is now poised to fight a war between the West and Muslims. After 9/11, the lines grew larger and clearer: There is a Jihad against the United States, and the “holy war” had taken a new and horrifying brutal turn.

All religions require surrender of some sort, whether it be surrendering money, time or your will. Adopting a religion is the part of a spiritual journey, when you divine path is laid out before you in some holy writ. As in relationships, you give up a bit of yourself for the joy of merging into something better. Arguably, it’s supposed to be a peaceful journey, which is why we were so shocked to hear Islam connected to such terrifying and bloody acts. For Americans, it was a chilling fact that the word of the Islamic God was being used to have people empty themselves of love and compassion and be replaced with a singularity of hatred and revenge…all for a paradise beyond this world filled with feasts and attending virgins. What sort of religion is this, Americans thought.



I don't know if I feel anything toward Muslims. Yes, there are Muslims who hate us Westerners, and I'm not about to get into who started it...an argument that reaches back to The Crusades and possibly beyond. I think if some American madmen drove a plane into Mecca, there would be a lot to answer for. As an American, I'd feel ashamed. As a former regular church-going Christian, I'd say though that I wasn't surprised.

Every religion has the ability to be taken way too seriously. Anyone can dive too deeply into the pages of any holy writ and lose one's mind. Anyone can twist and turn scripture to suit their own needs, including enslaving or killing whole peoples. Holy books, I think, work best as a poetic device to understanding the divine...it's not something to be taken verbatim and it's something not to be taken internally.

Furthermore, I feel a fundamentalist streak running through the U.S. leadership that is only matched by the angry rhetoric of the Islamic leaders in the Middle East and those who head Islamic terrorist groups. The only difference is the U.S. strain is carefully crafted to public consumption. In the end, there are two major religious powers clashing: the Christian and the Muslim (with dashes of Judaism tossed in on the Christian side). Sept. 11 was yet another stage in this idiotic God fight.

I think the rabid right in this country are just more stealthy in their oppression of women and harassment of minorities and gays and any other undesirables compared to those in hardcore Muslim countries.

I suppose I'm more curious about what's driving this ardent Islam. Is it due to the end of the Cold War? Did it have to do with a sense of betrayal after the end of the Cold War when the superpowers stopped propping up these religious fighters who were used at puppets to fight proxy battles for the U.S. and U.S.S.R.? Does it have to do with the encroachment of the global market, replacing local traditions with Coca-Cola billboards and local temples with the chase for the almighty dollar? Does it have to do with fear or helplessness?

In the U.S., the surge of fundamentalism during the few decades could be traced to the “End Times” brigade saying Revelation is at hand. Talk of the world ending will whip your flock into shape, trying to score some last-minute brownie points with God by following the Word to the letter. But it's a faith out of fear, fear of change, fear that whatever faith you have isn't as absolute with the advent of science and common sense (excuse me? the earth in seven days?). When people are afraid, they'll grab onto anything.

As an aside, there was a time, back when I lived in Houston (early to mid 90s), when I nearly drifted into the whole End Times hysteria. The notion of Revelation coming true terrified me and I thought I wouldn't be one of the lucky ones taken up in the Rapture. I'd watch some Bible Channel when they would broadcast their weekly "End of the World" update (that's not the name, but it was close), detailing how tragedies and other new events signaled the approach of the Four Horsemen. I'd go through Revelation and chart out the path of destruction the unleashed angels would hand out, followed by the suffering of those left on Earth. I can't explain what happened, but something
in me just reoriented itself and told me this was a really shitty thing for God to do, ending the world and all just when we were getting on the right track. I always felt like God was copping-out, just destroying the world by letting Satan show up. What kind of God would let this happen?

Later, I figured out this "End of the World" biz was an ongoing money-making gig, and this generation of "doom" stories just had fancier graphics. A bit more cynically, I figured that this current wave of "doom" stories was cooked up by a bunch of boomers who were going older, growing out of touch and who wanted the party to end with them instead of having their self-gratification culture die at the hands of some Kurt Cobain-fueled upstarts.

But from what I learned from being in the orbit of the “End Times” school of thought was the sense of extremity that hung in the broadcaster’s mouth. It’ was do or die, be saved or burn, face Heaven or burning forever. And you better do it now. You better be a spiritual warrior, always on guard from the forces of Satan. I would be you against the world after the Rapture came. For the “End Times” crowd, the end was always coming, just around the bend.

In a day and age when the fiery spectrum of political books (Bibles of another sort, I suspect) like “Stupid White Men” is facing off against “Slander” for best-selling bragging rights, religion and politics are culminating in their own versions of extreme sports. There's no room for moderation...you have to be old school to be legit, you can never ever apologize, never ever change with the times. Moderation is for pussies because holding onto some religious text is a solid item that gives one power, to give up thinking, to give up wondering why.

I will not apologize for how Muslims treat women, just as I won't condone the odious Promise Keepers movement. All I'm saying is that this form of old-school religious doctrine is poison for anyone. It's all about trying to force control in an ever-changing world. Love, the unconditional kind, is hard. To embrace someone who thinks you are an infidel is the ultimate challenge of one's faith. If you follow one of the Big Three of Faiths, it's the fiercest act of love you can give, besides sacrificing yourself for your beliefs. To embrace like that is to set aside your dogma and realize this alien is your brother or sister somehow...and that's something you don't hear a lot about in our political and religious discourse these days. If you get to know that alien, you'll eventually ask, "Why does my faith leader want me to hate this person?" and that's bad for business when it comes to controlling the masses.

Besides, I imagine that when we died and we do move on to whatever destination that may await us, some supreme being (whether it's god or some wisdom-spouting amalgamation of souls) will look at us a bit crossly and ask, "What the hell were you doing? I sent you down there to get along. Did you really think I'd give you all this nature and poetry and beauty just so you could kill each other in my name? Honestly, I can't leave you alone for a second."

People overdose on faith, I think, ironically, for the same reason people overdose on drugs: They have no hope. They have no joy or love in their lives and they feel that if they are true to this one things, all their pain will be traded in for bliss in the afterlife. From what I understand, conversion to Islam is remarkably easy...you just sit alone and give yourself over to Allah. I think it's the same for becoming "born again," (a revolting theory that says that you can fuck up your life and the lives of everyone around you, but it's okay if you accept Christ in your life at a later date) but I think the latter involves actually confessing to someone about it. A sort of baptizing may be involved, too. Converts talk about being bathed in a warm glow of tranquility when they make the change, perhaps akin to having an emotional/chemical reaction in your brain, like a good cry or learning good news. And of course they'd feel it...they've heard about the cleansing from giving yourself over...it's been wired into their brains. You think, therefore you feel saved.

I suppose, in the end, it's what you are exposed to, whether it be what your parents tell you, what you learn in school, what you hear in church or through the media. All I know is that we humans are suckers for the party line and we can drift in movements, even if the movement is a bad idea upon retrospect. We should learn why hardcore Islam is so popular. We should try to share, not push, our religious beliefs with those alien to us. We should listen. Even if it doesn't work on the first, second or 17th try.

To me, there's very little choice in the matter. Let's consider the alternative: If we don't talk to people with different religions, they're only going to get poisoned by some ideological huckster looking to recruit fodder for another God fight. This time around, all the contenders have nuclear, chemical or biological weapons and someone, somewhere is going to push the button and have a righteous orgasm of joy in how many infidels he killed in a just cause.

And yet, I agree that we have failed many times to get down the basics of talking and listening. My solution only works if we happen to give a shit about the other person. I’m not sure abolishing religion would work either...if religion ever fades from prominence, it'll be how Bruce Sterling (or Aldous Huxley for that matter) once pegged it...through designer drugs which equal the bliss of a religious experience.

In a sad way, we'll only figure this out through trial and error, and with it too many lives. People will always look for something to guide them. They'll come up with their own religions if you take the others away...look at primitive cultures. When people grew terrified of the night sky, they made up grand stories of angels and demons...each chasing each other by way of the sun and stars. We still carry with us the ancient patterns the Greeks made up for the night sky.

No, what drives our ever-creative minds to do terrible things is fear and greed. It's a curse, one I don't think we'll ever be able to wiggle out of. Maybe there is no answer. Maybe we just need to be kind and loving in the best way we can while trying to unlearn all the crap foisted on us by the older generations, the ancient tribal elders who didn't have to live with the threat of atomic weapons or suicide bombers or mad cow disease.

Some days it's hard to have hope. It's easy not to have hope. Some days I don't. Some days I do. Some day I hope that we’ll figure out that religion isn’t a contest where the object is to be the better worshipper.

Maybe we’ll come to see all the common threads that Christianity, Judaism and Islam have. Maybe we’ll find the strength to sit together. And to listen. And to see each other and children of God, even if God we talk to God in different tongues and in different dress. I can’t say when this will happen. I just know that it can happen.

I suppose this is where faith comes in.