The Apologist

Dumb Question: Why are gas prices so high?

2008-04-19T22:15:00.001-05:00

Forgotten Iraq

2008-03-26T16:13:00.000-05:00

U.S. news has all but dropped the whole Iraq topic.

The Constitutional Party, without Ron Paul

2008-03-24T15:49:00.000-05:00

Can the revolution continue without Dr. Paul?

What Jesus Meant

2008-03-23T02:33:00.000-05:00

His whole message reduced to a sentence.

Draft Ron Paul

2008-03-21T19:01:00.002-05:00

Please forgive the rather sardonic tone of this video. I'm trying to goad Dr. Paul into running on a new ticket.

To the people on YouTube who have taken offense, believing that Paul should step aside but continue to influence the Republican Party, I couldn't care less about the Republicans. I'm more of a Democrat anyway, or at least, associated myself more with their action profile, but now I feel both parties are phonies.

I'm spoiled for Paul's honesty, and I miss it. I want him on a third ticket. I want him free of all politics that bind the others.

Both parties have lost their way. A third way is what's called for in this age.

Slaughter for the Gods

2008-03-20T16:59:00.000-05:00

Why We Fight

2008-02-08T18:05:00.002-06:00

Vote Ron Paul

2008-02-04T11:36:00.001-06:00

Hillary wants universal health care and thinks Americans should have their wages garnered to pay for it.

Who could blame her? She has money. She may understand that most of us don't, but that doesn't mean she gets it. It takes years of experience to understand poverty. Basically it boils down this: you're broke. See. No moolah.

But Hillary sees a precedent. The federal and state governments have been stealing our gross personal product to fund their illegal wars and worthless domestic programs ever since we've been old enough to work, and they'll keep doing it until the day we say stop it.

We're already taxed to death. Proof: the death tax. Don't die if you can't afford it. The government thinks nothing of confiscating our money before we even see it. We still have to work for free for the first four months of the year just to pay our taxes. If we don't make a lot of money, the government sends us a refund check. But, you see, by then it's too late. We're already in debt, paying 21% on groceries, medicine and hamburgers.

So, by all means, Hillary, pile on more taxes. That's what the American people need. We need to stay in Iraq and threaten Iran, and, as she pointed out in the recent "debate" with Barack Obama. She would not talk to the world's "worst dictators," as Obama has said he would. She would, in other words, ensure the continuity of the American Empire (as would he, only, presumably, face to face).

We need massive reform and repair of our tax system and neither Hillary nor Obama understands this. Both plan to suck the hind tit of the military/industrial complex which has so loyally supported their campaigns. And now, like a bad reality show, the face off: who will be who's vice president?

Most of us know they're all they same. The only politician I've ever seen who's truly different -- honest, informed, realistic, patient -- is Ron Paul.

People keep telling me Ron Paul doesn't have a chance. But this is only true so long as people accept it at face value. It's just something they heard on the TV. Another bald-faced lie like they tell all the time.

Ron Paul's as electable as Mitt or McCain or Huckabee or Hillary or Obama. All it takes is votes and will. And the immediate replacement of all Diebold voting machines.

Getting the Republican nomination is no obstacle. No other candidate has any substance. They bicker over irrelevancies. They only make Paul look even better.

I'd like to see a new party without old baggage. Call it the Constitutional Party. Do over.

The obstacles are all artificial, tricks of mind. A can't do attitude guarantees failure. It's not what built this country.

Make it a Super Ron Paul Tuesday.

Hillary's Secret Strategy

2008-02-04T11:10:00.001-06:00

Slave Rebellion 2008

2008-02-03T16:11:00.000-06:00

The Sonic Superiority of Animals

2008-01-14T23:24:00.000-06:00

How all God's critters except for the humans knew the tsunami was coming; how giraffes communicate; why whales kill themselves, and more.

Chemtrails Over Illinois

2008-01-14T14:54:00.003-06:00

Candidance

2008-01-10T00:01:00.000-06:00

Kucinich seeks impeachment, harder

2008-01-09T02:09:00.001-06:00

Why Impeachment is off the Table

2008-01-09T01:20:00.000-06:00

Evildoers

2007-12-09T18:45:00.000-06:00

GOP Debate #4

2007-08-06T11:30:00.000-05:00

CW FISHER.
Unanimous: Repo Candidates to Keep Bush Doctrine.

The three major Republican candidates, as named in advance by the seven media corporations, have all promised to build on the Bush doctrine: preemptive war of terror, the turning of Iraq into a US territory, the Patriot Act, NSA wiretapping, removal of habeas corpus -- all this and more would remain under the "leading" GOP presidential candidates: Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, and John McCain. Giuliani insisted “you do not achieve peace through weakness and appeasement.” Romney agreed, stating it's “critical for us to win this conflict," without describing what a win would look like. McCain contended that the troops "are making progress, and we are winning on the ground,” further insisting that we "must win… and we will not set a date for surrender, as the Democrats want us to do.” The sole dissenter was the self-described Champion of the Constitution Ron Paul, whose campaign remains ignored by the mainstream media but continues to be the favorite of The People, simply stated the obvious: "We're losing this one. We shouldn't be there. We ought to just come home."

Chertoff gets "feeling"

2007-08-03T12:36:00.001-05:00

CW FISHER
Why does America's Homeland Security director, who's also an Israeli citizen, feel another terrorist attack coming in his gut?

Michael Chertoff has a highly sensitive gut. He should maybe lay off the Mexican. Because right now his gut is screamin' at him. Another big terrorist attack is coming! He doesn't know where, he doesn't know when, he doesn't know how, why, or who's going to do it, but it's coming this summer, baby, and it's going to be a blockbuster! Fortunately for all of us single-citizenship Americans who have no place else to run to, nobody's paying any attention to him. Our reaction? Honey, let's take the kids to Six Flags. Go quietly. He may not notice. We don’t need him going red.

Now a little Shakespeare, in prose form, to better reveal the true flow of Hamlet's famous speech.

HAMLET: To be, or not to be--that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune Or to take arms against a sea of troubles And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep-- No more--and by a sleep to say we end The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep-- To sleep--perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub, For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause. There's the respect That makes calamity of so long life. For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of th' unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscovered country, from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprise of great pitch and moment With this regard their currents turn awry And lose the name of action. -- Soft you now, The fair Ophelia! -- Nymph, in thy orisons Be all my sins remembered.

Virtually Human

2007-08-02T18:09:00.001-05:00

CW FISHER
At what point do we become what we plug ourselves into?

I worry about us sometimes. I'm talking about the human race. I see so many people these days -- in my mind -- sitting in front of their computers, imagining they have friends all over the world. They wake in the morning, they talk to their friends. They go to work, they still talk to their friends. They come home from work, they don't even take their clothes off -- they're talking to their friends. Is it a bad thing? Of course not. It's always good to have friends. But... are they really real?

There is a feeling that has no name when you discover that the person you thought you loved so much turns out to be of a different sex, a different weight, a different dress size, pant size, nothing is right -- and how can anyone have brown hair who has no hair? These embarrassing moments are what make online relationships so risky. Perhaps people get hooked on the endorphins, on the risk of getting involved, of trading secrets, and being intimate through typing.

I have often thought that if you really look at a person who’s sitting in front of computer you will see a perfect picture of a person doing absolutely nothing -- save for an occasional tap with his finger. It's frightening. Watch yourself. Put your video on and watch. Put up a mirror -- I know it's old-fashioned -- but look at yourself. Sitting there. Relating in a relationship.

These observations are not intended to dismiss, disrespect or diminish in any way healthy online relationships, and I'm sure there are many such friendships that have bloomed under the tree of truth that is sometimes the product of partial anonymity.

My only purpose here is to remind folks like, well, like me, that real relationships, face to face relationships, can never be supplanted by anything virtual. Real relationships involve all five senses, six if you include typing. Keeping it real requires some walking around sometimes. Anyway, it's springtime. Take out the earbuds. You're missing the birds. Unplug! And ring up a flesher.

How to Spot a Liar -- Donald Rumsfeld

2007-08-01T22:06:00.000-05:00

CW FISHER
Liars often tell the truth with their face and hands, as the deaf know. This week we commune with the...

...True Lies of Donald Rumsfeld

"I have to be dishonest with you: I'm guilty of many things, and I cover them to protect myself, the presidency, and on down -- all of us could go down. "
"You want a better, more baldfaced and boldface lie? There's only one better, and he's me. "
I'm responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths, and that number only grows!
Taking Iraq will be swift and surgical, permanent and genocidal.
We're never leaving Iraq. We're staying. We own Iraq.
Chickens and fraidy cats, believe me, your dead and maimed children don't matter to us.
For us to continue this illegal war we need to fund the war by excessive amounts, which we launder through Iraq as paper for favors.
To contain the insurgency, we bomb them first and say they did it, then burst into their homes in the middle of the night, make the kids have sex with their parents, and kill them one at a time while they watch -- all our way of saying, Go tell whatever pagan god you pray to that if we see his ass around here we'll fuckin kill him too.
Picture a landscape devoid of Iraqis, teeming with oil fields and military bases manned by a world class military of paid adventurists who invade and hold surrounding states.
Understand two things: first, al-Qaeda is CIA, and second, we don't care who's on whose side, we encourage everyone to kill each other equally, in partnership with the U.S. under the authority of the international moneychangers.
Some see the death of an entire people as a sad thing. We don't.
I'm exhausted from ransacking my brain to plausibly explain stuff that wasn't in my briefing. It is completed.
You are all free to write whatever you wish, and we will continue to detain whomever we wish.
I knew that a missile, I mean an airplane, would hit the Pentagon. We lost a lot of bad people, at the World Trade Center too, because they talked out loud. They don't anymore and that's progress.
Fuck those people. People die. So what? That's the point. They're different from us. We need the room.
I've got both my eyes on you. And when we declare martial law, you'll be first for relocation.
Bullshit, motherfucker. That's all I've got to say, ever. Now get out your crayons and stay in the lines.

CW Fisher

Bush, Cheney drinking again

2007-07-30T17:17:00.000-05:00

CW FISHER.
The US president and vice president are both active drunks again -- and the proof's on video.

Fascism and Alcoholism: do they mix?

If you've noticed a precipitous drop in our president's intelligence over the last seven years, there's got to be a reason. Some have speculated he has early onset Alzheimer's. but nobody, except for CBS's Craig Ferguson, host of The Late, Late Show. has even whispered that drugs and alcohol might have something to do with George Bush's loss of whatever intelligence he was born with.

Watch these videos and make up your own mind. I didn't believe it at first. I thought somebody had slowed down the tape. Then I watched three more devastating videos. It's just about impossible to come up with any other explanation. He's gassed.

Dick Cheney is also a likely alcoholic. Like George B., Dick C. also has DUI in his past. And, like George, Dick became a sudden teetotaler. In the world of alcoholism, this is considered a sign. Watch Cheney bumble his way through the interview, then pay close attention to the interviewer's face when the camera finally cuts to her. Priceless. Tragic.

Watch Bush pour himself a beer at the G8 Summit, then chug it down.

Then check out how Bush handles the first woman chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel. He comes up from behind her and starts massaging her shoulders -- she recoils and spins around, while George skedaddles. What a jerk.

Bush and Cheney have both become hapless, sullen, mean, doggedly stubborn, grandiose and stupid -- all characteristics of wet and dry drunks.

This country has enough problems without having a couple of drunks in the White House. I believe these guys are worth a serious intervention, separate from impeachment, which has also has come due.

CW Fisher

Ron Paul Still Leads Google hits

2007-07-18T18:50:00.001-05:00

Ron Paul is the first invisible candidate to ever hold a commanding lead in the only poll that matters : Google hits.

Talk about unbiased, Google is it, at least as far as hits are concerned.

You can see the numbers for yourself by googling the candidates. Then read thir total hits in the header.

That's it for the science part, the rest is a bit flabbier.

This an update from a poster I made a month ago. Ron Paul got even bigger, Hillary holds a distant second, Obama and Mitt switched places, Giuliani stays where he is at the very bottom along with Kucinich. I haven't checked the other candidates.

The rest of the non-science part is that I limited my search to the first and last name. This is because when I searched Ron I got a billion people who weren't Ron Paul. Hillary, on the other hand yielded far more hits than Hillary Clinton (28.7m) and the same was true of Mitt (75.8m, which beats Ron Paul), and Rudy (an alarming 27.7m). However, just as there are many Ron's, there are also many Rudy's and many Hillary's (and most of them are named after her).

CW Fisher

Chemtrails over Dekalb Illinois

2007-07-15T15:45:00.000-05:00

CW FISHER.
We were walking the dogs and looked up. Who's spraying us with what?

I'd seen videos about chemtrails on YouTube and was sure I'd seen them before -- long white trails that arch the entire sky before widening out to perhaps 100 times their original size.

Immediately I began to notice them -- usually about 7 seconds before jamming the brakes.

Yesterday as I was shooting these pictures, I wondered: How will this affect me, and my allergies? Should we close the windows? Wear a mask? What's our escape route? Am I thinking fast enough? Can we hide? Do we have a shovel? Can the Democrats save us? What would Ron Paul do? Is this why the sunlight seems dimmer than normal, like there's a partial solar eclipse? Is this why our blue skies are turning white?

What can you do about stuff in the sky? You can't yell, they won't hear. You can't call the authorities. What authorities? Call your mom.

Who's doing this? And why?

Are they trying to kill us? Are we bugs to them? Did we get in their way? Was it something we said?

They're spraying us?

And how come our governments won't give us any answers? How can they flatly deny the existence of chemtrails, and claim these are just everyday contrails? Why are they content to leave us with the distinct impression they're directly involved? If they weren't responsible, wouldn't they be as curious as we are?

These phenomena have been observed in many skies all around the world -- and nobody seems to know what they are.

Chemtrails became commonplace after 9-11. By 2005 they were multiplying exponentially. Today the sky's the limit.

The only people concerned about this are on the Web. You won't hear much about it in the press. Amateurs are testing the residue and finding similar strange particles, some organic, some mineral, odd crystals mixed with micro-filaments of aluminum and barium.

Some chemical residues have caused mold to grow on rocks in the Arizona desert. Mold is new to that environment.

Doctors in California have reported thousands of children and adults missing school and work due to serious upper respiratory problems, nosebleeds, eye trouble.

Some amateurs are theorizing that the purpose of these chemical clouds is to control the weather. But since these clouds don't appear to increase rainfall, we can rule out precipitation as a goal.

Some people believe these silvery vapors reflect harmful UV rays back into space, which lowers the temperature of our increasing warmer planet. Other people disagree, believing that, if anything, these vapors are trapping the earth's heat, much as carbon dioxide is trapped by a greenhouse effect.

Most agree that whatever these things are, they're no good. No matter what the intent of whomever is doing this, it can't be for our benefit, because they'd be bragging about it instead of denying it.

How is it possible that our governments can look into the same skies we all share and say, "What clouds?"

It isn't possible, of course. They know. They're behind it. We're under it. As my friend Chicken Little once said, "The sky is falling!" No one believed him then either, poor thing, even though he was crushed by it.

CW Fisher

Hurry to watch 'Zeitgeist '

2007-07-14T13:22:00.000-05:00

There's a reason why this movie keeps disappearing from YouTube. It exposes our nakedness.

The German word zeitgeist means spirit of the age -- and that's what the movie captures.

In 90 minutes, Zeitgeist presents a stream of information at a pace just below absorption rate, and the result is a shocking revision of the history of man. From the astrological roots of our religions, through the emergence of the ruling elite and its many military and economic escapades, to the almost ubiquitous use of 'false flag' operations to trigger war, it all leads to the doorstep of today.

CW Fisher

Firefighters Finger Rudy

2007-07-12T16:49:00.001-05:00

Bad radios killed hundreds of NYC firefighters while Rudy ran away with the press, spinning stories of heroes, such as himself.

When the NYC firefighters union saw Giuliani become a serious candidate for president, it commissioned a video to tell the real story of Rudy's failed leadership, and urged other American firefighters not to elect this man president.

Testimonies make clear six points:

After radio failures led to the deaths of firefighters during the first attack on the WTC in 1993, Mayor Giuliani failed to correct the problem until seven years later.
The new radios didn't work either -- they were purchased through a closed bid and were never tested.
On 9/11, firefighters were told to evacuate the second tower 30 minutes before it fell -- but 125 men never heard the call.
Guiliani fled his bunker in Building 7 and talked only to the press -- not to command.
Immediately after the gold under building 7 was recovered, Giuliani ordered all firefighters off the scene and turned the site over to FEMA, who dumped the dead in landfills.
Giuliani closed the landfills to firefighters and their families, relenting only after massive public protests.

These are the primary beefs of the firefighters who were abandoned by their mayor before, during and after the worst day in American history. They present compelling reasons why this man should never be president.

CW Fisher

Ripe

2007-07-11T15:20:00.000-05:00

CW FISHER.
Impeachment isn't on the table for the traitors behind 9-11 and the plunder of Iraq. But isn't it too late to matter?

Removing Cheney and Bush from office probably would have very little affect on our post-American future.

When America dissolves in three years, the past will be prologue and the future won't take long to be over.

The real enemy isn't the terrorists, isn't Muslim extremists, isn't even Bush/Cheney. It's the invisible power behind the last presidency of the United States of America.

Clearly President Bush is not in charge of the brilliant and complex plan to destroy America from within before transforming it into a pan-North American state.

George Bush can barely loop a shoelace let alone leap logically. His mental acuity has diminished over his presidency, which is, sadly, more sad than alarming.

The reason it's not alarming is simple: everybody knows Dick Cheney's in charge. He's obviously evil -- look at him -- evil men look evil. Cheney can turn a man's blood to ammonia with half a smile.

But who's behind Cheney? Sure, sure, lots of people: Wolfowitz, Pearl, Chalabi, Rumsfeld, Rove -- but who's behind them? Who convinced the U.S. Congress to go along with all this? Who are these people?

Forget al-Qaeda -- it's CIA.

Forget "the terrorists." They're not real either, at least not the Muslim variety.

We elected the real terrorists, and they hired, conspired and bribed the elite to go along. It's just good business. That's all it's really ever been. Except that now it's about survival. Hence their plan to depopulate.

It's easy to control governments if you control the money supply and distribution. But it's hard to control the people without television, joblessness and war.

The most effective way to tame a society is to alternately terrify them and rescue them until they become so dependent on armed authority they will leap willingly into any cage.

We're cattle now, we sleep standing, we mope around munching, we're bored on our way to slaughter. We won't know what hit us.

Shhhh!

CW Fisher

We, the Flag Burners

2007-07-10T10:22:00.000-05:00

CW FISHER.
We couldn't burn all our flags so we decided to burn down America and start over.

The North American Union is coming in 2010. The treaty to create the NAU from the former United States, Canada and Mexico has already been signed by their countries respective leaders, Bush, Harper and Fox. The U.S. constitution will not be the model for the new government.

The people have not been part of this decision and won't be. This is not to say the news has been hidden. It's all there. See for yourself. It just hasn't made the news because, well, what can you do?

Just tell us where to pay, what line to stand in, and, oh -- where's Holding Area C-13?

CW Fisher

George Forgives, Is Divine

2007-07-03T17:14:00.000-05:00

CW FISHER.
From Killer to Forgiver, George Bush is a new man.

The truly wonderful gift in this miraculous story of Presidential Intervention in the I. Lewis Libby case is just how far old "Shrub" has come since his governor days in Texas, back when he used to brag about putting more prisoners to death than any governor ever, even to the point of mocking the pleas of the very people he was about to kill.

Oh, he was just being funny, it was his way of being tough on crime and getting a laugh while he was at it. In those days, Dubya had tremendous confidence in his sense of humor, partly because everybody always laughed at his jokes, and partly because he was delusional, but some of that was due to his being only recently sober. Dry drunks might go a little too far, like wet ones.

So whether it was 500 or 600 or just 400, doesn't matter, a killer's a killer and how do you deal with a killer? You kill him, give him over to God the Father for sorting, as spelled out in the Good Book, which he has read three times. Cover to cover, three times. Criminals like that are like water under a bridge.

George W. Bush is today a changed man, reformed, sober, solemn -- alarmingly slow -- but present. And yesterday he stood up for once on behalf of a man convicted, stood up and said No! Enough of this, no more! And lo, it was so.

Sweet land o' Libby-tee of thee we sing!

CW Fisher

Bush Commutes, Libby's Free!

2007-07-02T21:53:00.000-05:00

CW FISHER.
Who says freedom isn't free? George W. Bush has bestowed upon I. Lewis Libby the gift of Liberty, commuting his sentence from 30 months, to zero. A Libbytarian, who knew?

Li'l Scooter Libby, who carried water for Dick Cheney until he was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice in the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame, lost his appeal yesterday in federal court. His sentence was stayed at 30 months in prison, $250,000, and disbarment -- until President Bush intervened and got him out of jail free!

Bush knows he's not above the law. He's parallel to it so it's easier to sweep off his desk.

Scoot's still got to pay the fine. And his reputation he might as well kiss goodbye. And now that the poor guy can't practice law anymore -- and yes, they even took that away from him -- how the hell is he ever supposed to pay off all of this money?

What's he supposed to do, lobby?

Holy moley -- can Libby lobby? I think the answer is yes, but he just can't ride his scooter in it.

Congratulations to I. Lewis Libby and the entire Libby family on behalf of all the prisoners of this grateful nation. You give us hope that we too may one day be forgiven as The President has forgiven you. Until then, we huddle.

CW Fisher

Ronpaul's Iowan Jujitsu

2007-07-02T15:20:00.000-05:00

CW FISHER.
Jujitsu advises pulling when your opponent pushes. Ron Paul wasn't invited to a candidate's forum so he threw a party across the street. Guess who pulled more people?

The forum sold 1,200 tickets, but half were no-shows. Ron Paul expected 400 but got more than a thousand.

These are the only measures of popularity Ron Paul is allowed. If it's a spontaneous happening, he might make it to YouTube, but he won't be seen in BigMedia -- where's he's still dead last in the polls, the very last vertebra in the spine, a coccyx, half an inch from an asshole.

Yet... when you google "Ron Paul" you'll see the exact opposite picture. Ron Paul so consistently ranks #1 in total Google hits, by a margin so big over his next closest competitor -- in both parties -- that to describe it takes more than math, it takes metaphors. I've mixed up a few.

His margin is like the overhang on a Frank Lloyd Wright. It's a diving board over an empty pool. It's as indescribable as a UFO -- you feel silly pointing it out because you know it can't be there, and yet. There it is.

You tell me. Am I alone in this? Or just seeing things?

CW Fisher

Go Barack where you came from

2007-06-28T22:21:00.000-05:00

CW FISHER.
I've read Obama's books. I thought they were nice. He could write for Reader's Digest. But he can't be my president.

Today, Barack Obama took a bold stand on the impeachment of George Bush.

"I think you reserve impeachment for grave, grave breeches, and intentional breeches of the president's authority," said Obama.

Sir... just how many graves does a president have to dig?

"I believe," he continued, "if we began impeachment proceedings we will be engulfed in more of the politics that has made Washington dysfunction."

Sir... treason is not politics. It's crime. Crime makes Washington "dysfunction." Justice makes it functional.

"We would once again, rather than attending to the people's business, be engaged in a tit-for-tat, back-and-forth, nonstop circus."

Sir... if you believe impeachment would be a circus, then you're a clown. Nonstop? You weren't around for Watergate, were you? Once things began, they ended quick.

Obama said he's been upset by the "loose ethical standards, the secrecy and incompetence" of a "variety of characters" in the administration.

Loose? Who's side are you on, sir? You want loose? Watch Loose Change. You call this band of criminals "characters?" Such a nice, clean young man. Joe Biden was right about you. You'd be the perfect presidential patsy, so nice you are. Don't want to be too tough on those characters.

"There's a way to bring an end to those practices, you know," he said. "Vote the bums out. That's how our system is designed."

No, sir, not true. Our system is designed to impeach any elected official who violates his oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. We, the People, have a legal obligation and a moral duty to impeach, especially in the presence of such a high degree of presidential malfeasance.

If we ignore it, we'll get more of the same. The only way to stop it in the future is to stop it now.

We never got the chance to see Richard Nixon face justice. Ford pardoned him to spare the country any more of "our long national nightmare." The result? More of the same. Spurious presidential behavior, rampant adventurism, secret wars, crime, crime, crime.

No, Barack, you don't vote the bums out. You throw them out.

Take a few more years. You may fill out that suit eventually, but not yet.

CW Fisher

The Self-Evident Paul

2007-06-28T10:11:00.000-05:00

CW FISHER.
Why would Ron Paul want to be Ronald Reagan when he's already Thomas Jefferson?

Paul, like Jefferson, holds certain truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and about ten other things he listed later.

Like Jefferson, Paul takes his orders only from the Constitution of the United States. He serves the republic in his public life, his Creator in his private life, and keeps the two separate.

Thom was against direct taxes; so is Ron, and so is the Constitution, and so is the Supreme Court, which struck down the income tax Americans all pay. There are three reasons why we continue to pay this illegal, unconstitutional income tax: a) nobody told us, b) if we don't pay the IRS will call the ATF who'll kill us, c) we have no choice but to pay because the government withholds it -- steals it -- right out of our paycheck. Legal or illegal, why split hairs?

Ron Paul is an excellent, and important writer. Jefferson wrote a bit himself: the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights -- seems so quaint these days. Paul's writing, by contrast, is vigorously relevant. He grasps issues in the fist of the constitution. His writings are truthful and terse. He is recommended reading, and will be for centuries to come.

While his fellow presidential candidates gamely take on every "political litmus test" -- from abortion to stem cell research to school prayer -- Paul sweeps them all back to the States where they belong. Phew! Easier than anybody thought possible, and all without passing a single new law. The doctor calls for regular elimination.

He feels the same way about public education. He wants the federal government to drop out of school. He wants them to take their tests, take their military recruiters and corporate sponsors, take all their money that never comes, and get the hell out.

Foreign policy -- he wants an end to meddling, covert and overt. He'll end illegal wars of aggression by simply implementing the Constitution.

Like Thomas Jefferson, who detested Alexander Hamilton's idea of a powerful central bank, Paul detests its present-day counterpart, the Federal Reserve. Yes, it's unconstitutional, yes, it's illegal, but what's really alarming is the fact that it doesn't even officially exist -- the amendment was never ratified because the Supreme Court struck it down. Paul sees "the Fed" for exactly what it is: a purposely misnamed international banking cartel that rules America by controlling the flow of its money -- which it prints without oversight, at will. They have, in other words, a license to print money. Hence, their power.

Paul is cagey enough to know that these guys are more powerful than the U.S. government. Among other holdings, they own it. He knows he can't just yell Constitution at them. They won't lay down; they'll ignore him and declare martial law.

But Paul has something they don't have, which is goodness, plus knowledge, plus wisdom. He's a quaint country doctor, a gentleman, not rich, not gentrified, just a good citizen, like Jimmy Stewart, who went to Washington on principle and voted that way.

He's also savvy enough to know he must capture the public's attention -- which isn't easy when you're up against Paris Hilton and Anne Coulter in the same news cycle -- but that's his challenge. He has to show his movie of what America would be like if the constitution were restored.

The internet has democratized our politics, and this is a legitimate threat to Big Media, which is ultimately powerless over the will of the people to seek truth and reject lies. Even Fox viewers are proving there's a tidal pull toward truth.

We can't elect Ron Paul unless he wins the nomination, and the only way he can win it is to be swept in by a great tide.

Like Jefferson before him, Paul carries a message of liberty by birthright and government by minimum. Like Jefferson, he defines government by what it isn't, by what it can't do, by what it mustn't.

When Ron Paul's call to liberty begins to resound in the American soul, the people of this nation will rise and overnight become the most powerful force on earth. It can be done, but only with overwhelming unity. Then anything's possible.

Link:
The U.S. House archived papers and speeches of Congressman Ron Paul

CW Fisher

Ron Paul's new nickname is...

2007-06-26T13:12:00.000-05:00

Last week I asked for nickname suggestions for the poorly named Ron Paul. Two advisers were so outstanding that I am including their entire lists. The rest of you were so bad, I had to crumple that part of my computer and throw it away.

From Peter Lekousis of Chicago, Illinois

Ron Paul Stiltskin
Mrs. Paul's Fishstick
Da Doo Ron Ron Paul
I. Ron Paul
Reginal Ronpaul St. Cyr

From Brian Oglesbee of Wellsville, New York

Ron Ingamok
Ike Arrumba)
Lou Scannon
Midas Welby
Hal Aluya
Dr. Zorders
Deke Lassify
Nick Cullendime
Mike Untree Tizzadi
Ray Zurbern
Owo Izmi
Björn Toulouse
Ron Paul Sansachance
Upton O'Goode
Holden Court
Olden D. Kreppit

Thank you all for your participation. Personally, I like Ron.

CW Fisher

John Wayne Giuliani

2007-06-24T15:02:00.000-05:00

He was, on that day, "America's Mayor," selfless, self assured, even swaggering, but there was a reason he was calm -- he was in on it.

The only necessary evidence is what Giuliani didn't do.

He didn't ask obvious questions. He didn't wonder why he had to leave his bunker in WTC Building 7. Somebody said the towers were going to collapse, and he skedaddled-- but he never wondered how they knew the towers were going to fall. Why didn't that news surprise him? Why wasn't he outraged? Is anybody that cool?

No, Rudy had a script to follow. He was to stay close to the media, direct traffic, and cough. Incurious George played like he was reading My Pet Goat. Shadow President Cheney slipped away to his secret cave to rule the world and play with the buttons. But the ever affable Giuliani worked it out by working the crowd, gladhanding, meeting voters, showing courage, charisma, and yes, even humor all through America's worst day. He acted almost triumphantly, like he just had a big debut on Broadway and everything's coming up roses.

Giuliani's second term was drawing to a close, but he was so popular now. And so, on behalf of all the people who so desperately needed his almost supernatural calm, he made the decision to find a way to remain on as a Mayor by special appointment. Mussolini couldn't have done it better.

While FEMA was hauling away the evidence from the worst crime in the history of man, Rudy Giuliani focused on media coverage. While FEMA was gathering up the neatly cut steel girders and placing the 18' lengths on the beds of waiting trucks which then paraded single file to the Jersey docks where it was put on a boat and sent to China -- China -- Rudy Guiliani, former prosecutor, shook hands.

Rudy has nerve, if nothing else. It takes nerve to wear an FDNY hat on the very day you killed 500 firemen. This man is dangerous, and, because of it, he's inevitable. From America's Mayor to America's President, he'll make the leap handily, because he knows he serves his country at the pleasure of America's Government.

CW Fisher

Party on, Ron

2007-06-23T14:57:00.000-05:00

CW FISHER.
Having been excluded from a public tax forum in Iowa sponsored by a nonprofit organization which is required by law to invite all presidential candidates, Ron Paul chucked it and planned his own party to celebrate "life and liberty" immediately following the forum.

Finally we have a candidate for president who can think on his own. Paul's campaign staff initially took a rather ham-fisted approach. After searching the office for their invitation, thinking they'd missed it, they called the sponsoring group (Iowans for Tax Relief, and Iowa Christian Alliance) and got a rude, blunt reply: You're Not Invited.

This pissed off Kent Snyder, Paul's campaign manager, who fired off a letter to his supporters asking them to flood the opposition with phone calls and email. Snyder then went on local radio to tell his side to Jan Mickleson of WHO News Radio 1040 in Des Moines.

Mickleson succeeded in locating the jerk who runs ITR, who was furious that Ron Paul handed out his home phone number, whining like a bully who got himself sucker punched. His wife, his children, the horror.

Snyder patiently explained that he copied the same information that ITR prints on its own Web site.

Fortunately, a cooler head prevailed -- probably Ron's -- and he used jujitsu: he pulled rather than push back. And now it's a party.

This is exactly how I want a president to think. Somebody says you can't go this way, he goes around it, makes a left, gets over it, moves on. Sanity is so... sane. Isn't it?

If you want to make the party, it starts around 4:30pm, Saturday, June 30, at Hy-Vee Hall, Room C, Iowa Events Center, 730 Third Street, Des Moines, Iowa. The first 500 people get free food and drinks.

By the way, in my nicknaming contest for Ron Paul, the best, so far, is Ron Paul Stiltskin.
CW Fisher

Naming Dr. Paul

2007-06-22T16:23:00.000-05:00

CW FISHER.
This is not a fanzine, I'm not a teenage girl. Enough about Ron Paul.

Let me tell you what I hate about Ron Paul.

If you call him by his last name, people automatically assume Paul McCartney. So you're forced to call him Ron Paul, a vowel and a consonant from Rupaul.

Other than that, I like everything about Ron Paul. His teeth need cleaning. That's bad. Mouthwash and chewing gum can take care of that. On the other hand, it's charming; dirty teeth reflect modesty. "Reflect" is the wrong word.

The way he pronounces "world" used to bug me (we're-old), but you have to have stuff for the impressionists. Vaughn Meader did Jack Kennedy before he became President Kennedy. Impressions always boost the brand. Think of Dubya next to his Dubya double.

As Ron Paul gains fame, he should have no problem picking up nicknames.

Dr. President... Doctor No... Doc. Doc drives doctors crazy, especially when it's preceded by "What's up?"

Certain names we can never call Ron Paul. Ronny's used up. Paulie is just stupid, like that guy in Rocky.

President Paul is out, for reasons of alliteration-- sounds like a Disney role for Don Knotts. And if you want a name that really pops the microphone, try President Paul.

JFK had JFK. LBJ his LBJ. Ron Paul's middle name is Ernest -- an understatement -- and that's his REP. Could be something there. Could be said our rep is what's at stake here.

But "Rep" brings to mind a salesman who's all shoeshine. And R.E.P. is too close to R.I.P. R. Paul is too near to R. Crumb. And just plain Paul sounds too apostolic.

Even Dr. Paul is out -- too close to Dr. Phil. And any doctor who uses his first name is a phony egomaniac with low self esteem. Besides, Dr. Paul isn't a head doctor, he's a vagina doctor.

Obygyn-Kinobi?

Ideas? Thoughts? Suggestions? Leave a comment.

CW Fisher

Just Following Orders

2007-06-21T13:08:00.000-05:00

CW FISHER.
When Ron Paul, my new hero, sent me an email saying that he was again being excluded from a political event, I piled on, as requested, and spread my outrage across the internet (which, for me, is about two dozen people). I even made a picture, such was my enthusiasm.

Then somebody left a comment, saying, in effect: Pull the drama. It's a private event by a private club. They can choose who they want and reject who they don't.

And the Homer in my head said, Doh!

It's possible to endorse a candidate without sacrificing critical thinking. Campaign management will always ask people like me to spin their message. The problem with this story was that it lacked a wolf. No wolf, no story. I told it anyway, and for that I'm sorry.

My revelation doesn't alter my respect for Dr. Paul. I plan to share these paragraphs with him, to warn him against allowing his staff to put him in a house of wood. The house he lives in is made of bricks, known as the U.S. Constitution.

This is what I like about Paul. He puts principles over personality, which is how he wins every argument against the figureheads dreamed up by marketeers.

Victimhood suits cowards, not heroes. So. Scratch that. Never mind. Nothing is happening here, go back to your homes. And go shopping. You know. For Rudy.

CW Fisher

Ron Excluded Again!

2007-06-20T07:36:00.001-05:00

CW FISHER.
Why is Iowa shutting out Ron Paul from a forum on tax reform among Republican candidates?

As Dr. Paul would say, "That's a good question."

Is it illogical to assume that one of the nation's foremost scholars on the subject would be included in such an important debate?

Who the hell wants to hear what Mitt Romney, Sam Brownback, Mike Huckabee, Tommy Thompson and Tom Tancredo have to say about it?

Besides their mothers.

CW Fisher

Keywords to Doom: R-- P---

2007-06-19T14:35:00.000-05:00

CW FISHER.
Want to fry your blog? Write about R.P.

I can't use his name because my traffic is rapidly approaching zero, but let's just say he's a presidential candidate I've been promoting on my site.

Giggle, the search engine -- purposely misnamed here to thwart my further ejection -- apparently tried to remove the candidate's name in an alleged attempt to kill his popularity with the American people.

After the Republican debates, when Fix News was forced to report that the pariah candidate was beating all the other shills by a margin of massive proportion which climbed above 85%, the seven media giants conspired to remove him from the field of candidates.

When the Seven eliminated R.P. from its polls, big surprise: Mitt soared to the top, with Rudy right behind.

Then certain bloggers noticed a curious phenomenon on Giggle. After the second debate, R.P.'s total hits soared past 3.5 million, a cumulative total that can't go down, since there's no such thing as negative hits. But after the third debate, his hits fell to 1.7 million.

My own hits fell proportionately -- massively and suddenly. So I decided to check the numbers on Giggle and see for myself where the candidates stand in total hits as of June 19, 2007.

TOTAL HITS

John McCain (R) ....................10,800
Mike Gravel (D) .................1,230,000
Dennis Kucinich (D)...........1,320,000
Rudy Guliani (R) ...............1,700,000
Barack Obama (D) ............2,150,000
Mitt Romney (R) ...............2,750,000
Hillary Clinton (D) ............14,400,000
R.P. (R) ..........................46,000,000

R.P. beats his next closest competitor, H.C., by 31.6 million hits.

This would seem to exonerate Giggle, but doesn't explain MY hit loss. And, after all, isn't that why we're all here, to make CW Fisher the next King of the Internet?

R.P. may be losing the "polls," but he's still number one in American hearts. It's going to be a long time before I trust polls, and the news, in general.

I suggest you do as I've done: eliminate television as your news source. Because they lie. When their own ratings begin to sink, their advertising dollars will shrink, and their tune will either change or die, rest in peace.

Giggle was once a great thing made up by two guys. It was a threat to the Seven, so they bought it.

Americans need a reliable news alternative, but I don't know what that would be, or whether it already exists. If you know, please tell me, and I'll promote it on my hitless blog.

Weep not for me for I shall return. I'm thinking of slamming my candidate in my headlines in the hope I'll pass muster, but keywords are internal, so I'm doomed. Pardon me, sir, might you spare a bullet?

CW Fisher

The End of News

2007-06-16T14:57:00.000-05:00

CW FISHER.
I stopped paying attention to "the news" about a month ago, and I feel much better. I didn't stop watching because all the news was bad -- it wasn't anywhere near as bad as the news on YouTube and StumbleUpon, which is more trustworthy than the mainstream, although it requires salt.

No, I stopped watching the news because it was boring me to death. When nothing's ever new, there's a point at which it ceases to be news.

Take, for example, the Gonzales hearings. Isn't it odd that he hasn't been flushed by now? Instead it's the same steady drip, even as evidence mounts of mass misdemeanors and constitutional treason, Bush supports his man and that's that. When justice is dead at the very top, it's just a matter of months before the middle and the bottom die too. That was years ago.

Have you figured out yet that we're not leaving Iraq because we're never leaving Iraq? You wouldn't know it by the news. According to the news the Democrats are really trying hard to extract us -- it's just that that mean old Mr. President is just so gosh darn stubborn! Good God, what bullshit. Don't you think they're all in on it? Even if they're not, the effect's the same.

When an occupier builds an "embassy" that's larger than the Vatican, when it takes over the oil fields, destroys the economy, sends medical professionals packing, refuses to deliver surgical tubing to hospitals, still hasn't restored electricity to anywhere near pre-Saddam levels, goes house to house in the dead of night slaughtering whole families one at a time after molesting the children while their parents watch, a practice prescribed and fiercely defended by Dick Cheney, you know we're not leaving. We're depopulating Iraq because it's our country now, and Iraqis are in the way, the way Indians used to be. We've got an oil route to build from the Caspian Sea through Afghanistan, Iraq and Kuwait to the Persian Gulf. We're not leaving. We're never leaving. Iraq belongs to America now.

But you won't learn that by watching the news. You can only get it YouTube and StumbleUpon. Or Alex Jones of Prison Planet and Infowars.com.

Forget Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Bill Maher; they're funny and reasonably dead-on, but only by comparison to the rest of TVland, which is to say they're way behind the curve, and paid to be.

Forget Kieth Olberman too, although he's the Outrage champion and his essays are worth printing and hanging up, and, yes, his bravery is evident, especially since he's been hassled by men in suits on at least two occasions, and once detained for more than 12 hours. But after Olberman got a 5-year contract hosting Countdown on MSNBC, I've noticed a subtle shift in his attitude. Watching his banter with Chris Matthews after the second Republican debate, I had the sudden sensation that Kieth is slowly settling into the glamor of stardom. And while he not yet succumbed, he's heading for it. Even his outrage is getting tired. Maybe this is what happens when a brave citizen becomes a branded celebrity. MSNBC positions Olberman as a more believable antagonist of the status quo, but when a man who speaks truth to power is employed by the very power he's speaking truth to, the man is talking to his boss. Just doing his job.

News is in the illusion business. First they scare the shit out of us, then they serve up something soft and satisfying, like Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Anna Nicole Smith. Bimbo eruptions were never the sole domain of Bill Clinton. They're distractions, inventions of news/entertainment divisions. Whatever jiggles hypnotizes.

Everything is a distraction from what's really happening. Remember when Leslie Neilsen, as Lt. Drebin of Naked Gun, told the crowd, "Nothing is happening here!" as a fireworks factory exploded behind him? It's like that.

Things are not what they seem. Worse, no one alive has experienced a day when this was not so. We know this today thanks to The Freedom of Information Act, and You Tube. Instead of watching the news, spend time learning the Real American History.

If you have the feeling that something is wrong but you don't know what it is, that nothing adds up, if you wonder, after all the blaring acts of treason by a shadow government that still no one dares mention the word "impeachment," if you've wondered why even Ron Paul thinks impeachment is not an appropriate remedy for the Bush administration (even though he voted to impeach Clinton), you have to wonder if you're the only one.

You are not the only one. By a long shot. Turn off the disinformation. Search out the truth online. It's there. Look for it. And pass it on.

CW Fisher

How to Elect Ron Paul

2007-06-15T20:24:00.000-05:00

CW FISHER.
Ron Paul is no fool. He knows he won't win the Republican nomination. He's aware they'd rather drink cyanide. He says he won't run as an independent (something about being a "spoiler"), but he could be convinced. Like I said, he's no fool.

If he ran in a 3-way race, he'd win. If he can beat nearly two dozen candidates, he'll clean up against three. Even if he's not on the ticket, he could win as a write-in. And write-ins are impossible to fake. For the price of writing his name, the revolution is underway.

IF....

If the electoral college doesn't mind. If the Illuminati will allow him to lead. If our well-endowed congressmen don't follow him. If he's not taken down by the IRS with help from their enforcement arm, the ATF. If he's not assassinated. You get the idea. I don't mean to be morbid. But we must pay attention to American history and to our present situation, which is beyond perilous: we're in freefall, awaiting bottom.

The odds are stacked against Ron Paul, regardless of whether he wins or not. But he's our only best chance to take back our country. Never in our nation's short history has a third party been so required. Clearly, the Democrats have proved their alliances are not with the people. The Republicans may be worse, or they may simply be the bad cop. The whole process is the same premise as Hannity and Colmes, only in macrocosm. The system is not only corrupt, it's phony. For a quick tally of congressional phoniness, simply count the toupees. Huge hair = vanity = narcissism = insecurity = insincerity.Actors.

I honestly believe Ron Paul should go Indie. But I think he needs to surround himself with like-minded candidates of either party, strict constitutionalists, and help boost them into a brand new Congress. From this wider pool, he can select his cabinet.

I also think Dr. Paul should visit heads of state from all over the world -- well before the election. He will need the world's support, because nothing short of the peaceful revolution Dr. Paul prescribes can defeat the invisible forces now threatening every human being on Earth. This is not to imply that Ron Paul should run for World President; on the contrary. His message should be the same: that the rules of law, as described by the U.S. Constitution, will be obeyed in the Paul administration, which means the beginning of the end of American wars of aggression, the end of American support for global corporatism, and the end of the world banking system as it has existed since the Wilson administration -- shooting high, but hey, who knows once things get started where they might lead?

Go to Ronpaul2008.com to download signs, buttons and other printed materials. And send him money before June 30!

CW Fisher

Hanging with Ron Paul

2007-06-14T14:22:00.000-05:00

CW FISHER.
I was buying my first suit for my first "real job." The salesman, an impeccably dressed Italian man, was on his knees, making soap lines on my cuffs for the tailor, when he asked which way I hung.

"Excuse me?"

"Which way do you hang?"

"--I don't..."

"Right or left?"

"I'm not..."

"Your package."

"I'm not gay."

He sighed deeply, rose slowly on aching knees. "Sir, for comfort. Display. For the ladies."

Oh.

I've been asked this question many times since, not so much in the sexual or sartorial context as political. And I've always felt the same confusion. Because I don't know which way I hang.

My grandparents were Democrats on one side, Republicans on the other. My parents voted for Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon. I voted for Carter, Reagan, Dukakis, Clinton, Gore and Kerry. And now I'm going for Ron Paul.

What's that make me? Schizophrenic?

I'm nothing. A neither/nor. To me, party politics is a puppet show. Party conventions are Sockpuppet Superbowls. Not like the old days when they were marionettes -- which were much more lifelike but hard to control. Sock puppets get right down to it, distracting with their right hand while the left hand digs in your pocket. The secret to most magic tricks is in the other hand.

The best magic is the kind that has no trick. It's the magic we feel when someone appears in the midst of mayhem, who calms us with truth, who gives us hope, but more than that, relief, because the truth is a fast-acting medicine that strengthens our immunity to bullshit. The truth does indeed set us free.

Truth is the weapon of the people and the constitution is our shield. Truth is the only way we'll ever get our stolen liberties back.

Ron Paul calls himself the champion of the Constitution. He knows how he hangs. Neither/Nor. Get to know him, and spread the word.

Links:
Ron Paul on The Colbert Report
Ron Paul on The Daily Show
Ron Paul on Lou Dobbs

CW Fisher

Save Ron Paul

2007-06-12T22:54:00.000-05:00

CW FISHER.
Remember when Howard Dean made an overnight killing on the Web and vaulted to the top of the heap?

That's what Ron Paul needs now.

Ron Paul is our only hope of restoring the constitution of the United States of America. That's because he's the only candidate upholding it.

Honesty, modesty, knowledge and wisdom are rare qualities in a leader, and this is true for all times. Ron Paul embodies them all.

If you don't know Ron Paul, you need to see Ron Paul. But you can only see him on the Web (and who knows how long that will last?). You will not hear about Ron Paul on the networks. You will not hear much about him on the radio. Or in the papers and magazines. Dr. Paul has been erased.

Yet... how it it that this invisible candidate, this deleted man, continues to win by a wide margin every phone-in poll that has followed all three debates?

The revelations of phone polls come quickly and in vast numbers, yet these numbers do not flood but merely stream into neat graphs within nanoseconds. Fox had Ron Paul leading them all at 27% until he was dropped from the crawl. And from our consciousness.

If he had moolah, they'd listen. Money talks. Don't know why. Don't care at the moment. Let's review.

The U.S. constitution is a contract between the American people and the government it elects. In the contract are a bunch of rules that everybody has to follow so we can all get along and everything's fair. Most of it is about powers the government doesn't have. The takeaway is clear: We, the people, we're in charge here.

Obviously, we're not. I mean, look around. Not getting into it. The point: what's it worth to you? Ten bucks? Twenty? To at least send a message that, yes, the constitution is important, and, yes, Dr. Paul is carrying a powerful message full of solutions to the myriad problems we face as a nation among 160 others who all live in a global village that is now threatened by even greater forces from within and without.

We need sanity. Ron Paul can restore it.

Five bucks. Fifteen? Small doesn't matter when the many chip in.

To send a contribution to Ron Paul, click this boldfaced part. By the way, all the hyperlinks above will zip you to different fascinating places related to the sentence in which they appear. All good stuff.

CW Fisher

Is NPR the new FOX?

2007-06-11T15:11:00.000-05:00

CW FISHER.
I'm washing dishes, I'm listening to NPR, part of my routine. Neil Conan, host of "Talk of the Nation," announces his next guest, a man who "hates movie documentaries."

The guest wants to know why he should pay $12 to watch a Powerpoint presentation by Al Gore? He doesn't listen to Al Gore when Al Gore's free. So why would he want to sit in a theater to learn something he already knows? He's depressed enough. He lives in Los Angeles. When he sees a movie, he expects to see some slender female bodies. He doesn't want to see Al Gore; he goes to escape Al Gore. How much Al Gore can this country stand? Maybe people in Vermont want to watch documentaries, but he doesn't live in Vermont, he lives in Los Angeles.

Snap.

I've never turned off NPR in anger. Not once. I save that kind of thing for FOX. I respond poorly to wanton ignorance. I don't put up with it.

I don't tune into NPR to hear something I already know, that America is full of bigots and paid apologists for the Neocon agenda. I avoid these morons who wail on little Al Gore a year after the release of his "movie documentary." Al Gore, unless he runs for president, is a fundamentally dead issue these days. Unless he runs. So what could this be but a form of preemptive war?

I used to tune in to NPR to hear information I couldn't hear anywhere else -- but that's changed. Over the last year, National Public Radio -- which is predominantly funded by the public and should be funded exclusively by the public without federal "assistance" or participation -- has gradually drifted to the right, exactly as planned by the forces of evil.

It started about a year ago, when the right began to pressure NPR to reverse its bias against "conservatives." They demanded fair and balanced representation of their views, and if they didn't get it, they'd pull federal funding.

NPR, in the true liberal style, acquiesced, said uncle, rolled over and did as instructed. Suddenly the Neocon point of view was well represented all day, every day, across every show on NPR. Suddenly thoughtful discourse was interrupted by these snappy mouthed idiots who sole mode of discussion consists of starting fights, sucker-punching, calling names, drowning out, wrecking everything with their schoolyard strategies.

I sent NPR money. Congress reduced its funding anyway. NPR tried harder. Like the little engine that could, it thought it could, it knew it could. And it did.

And it's all downhill from here.

CW Fisher

Sopranos Endtime Prediction

2007-06-10T15:14:00.000-05:00

CW FISHER.
Tonight ends HBO's "The Sopranos," and fans across the internet are placing bets on whether Tony lives or dies. I predict 50% will win, and 2% of those winners will be prosecuted for illegal internet gambling.

Because I avoid lawbreaking since the death of habeas corpus, I will place no bets here. Instead I offer this fullblown prediction of the storyline of the last episode. If I'm right, I win your awe and respect, which is all I ever wanted, since your money means nothing to me, and if I lose, you can continue to ignore me and see if I care, ingrates. First things first:

Tony dies.

Now that that's out of the way, let's see what happens, according to your clairvoyant, CW. The recap:

Christopher dies, Bobby dies, Sil dies, guy-with-glasses-whose-name-we-don't-remember gets away. Highheely psychiatrist sends Tony packing at the moment he needs her most. Tony tells his son AJ, who's deeply depressed, that "he has to go away for a little while," that he "has to be the man now and take care of his mother and sister," in what is mandatory monologue for this kind of mob movie. AJ whines about his timing, so Tony roughs him up and leaves the crybaby to choke on his own snot. Tony goes into hiding in a house somewhere in Jersey with his remaining crew, which includes the still-alive Pauly. Tony retreats to a bedroom, and removes from a Hefty bag a double-barreled shotgun, which, as he lays back, seems to almost put in his mouth, but instead lays across his chest, waiting, as we all are, for the inevitable end.

That's where we left off. What happens next is anybody's guess. And here's mine.

Carmela, Meadow and AJ are secreted away with Bobby's family. AJ emerges from his stupor and makes a decision to recruit his two wannabe-criminal friends to help him wipe out the Leotardo operation.

Tony reviews his life in the tired but true tradition of flashback, revisiting every moment he snuffed out another life: friends, family, enemies, innocents, he grieves for each of them, and for himself, recognizing fully that he alone is responsible for all of it. Intuitively knowing his end has come, his Catholic faith makes a miraculously reappearance, but his guilt, stunningly apparent, prevents him from unlocking the door to any hope of redemption. We see where this is going.

AJ and his friends, heavily armed, breach Leotardo's security and wait for their moment, but when it finally comes, AJ is paralyzed. His friends come out shooting. One's killed, the other badly hit. AJ steels himself and kills the rest, except for the injured and unarmed Phil Leotardo, who, in his death speech, convinced AJ not to squeeze the trigger. Instead, AJ squeezes his eyes shut, and, in the black behind his eyelids, we hear the shot that makes him a made man.

AJ drags his friend, barely alive, out of the house, into the trunk and onto the sidewalk in front of the emergency room, then tears off to bring his dad the news that it's over, that they're moving away, that he wants no part of this, that's it's final. Just one problem: he has no idea where his dad is. AJ calls Paulie repeatedly, but Paulie won't pick up, knowing as he does that getting the kid involved is the last thing Tony needs.

Now begins the final minutes, which, in a kaleidoscopic style, shows the final moments of each cast member. Each of them will die, either by the violence of the gun, or the violence of HBO ending its epic story of a man against himself. Either way, it's certain death for a lot of careers.

AJ races, Paulie keeps ignoring his calls, Carmela sobs alone on the floor the foyer of the castle she and her husband built, Tony continues his morbid review.

Finally Paulie answers his phone, tells AJ to stay out of it, and hangs up. AJ calls back, Pauly picks up, the kid spills the news and gets directions.

Racing through the streets, AJ runs over a couple pedestrians. A few blocks later, he kills another on purpose. He's made the jump: he's a killer now. May as well act like one.

Tony, tripping on peyote in the desert outside Vegas, witnesses the miracle of the sunrise. Raising his arms in triumph, he roars an answer to the sun itself: "I get it!"

AJ arrives, but shortly into his excited debriefing, there's a blast from upstairs. As they all scramble up the stairs, we stay on AJ's face in slow motion. When he finally enters the bedroom, we hear what we already know, that Tony, having mistaken AJ's arrival for Leotardo's, denied his killers the satisfaction. AJ's eyes gradually peer through his father's body to see his oncoming future. He is the new head of the family, and it's a choice that can't be undone.

Behind him comes Phil, who puts his hand on AJ's shoulder and mutters the last line: "Eh, what are you gonna do?"

That's my prediction. We'll see if I'm a genius or a giblet in a matter of hours.

Dr. President

2007-06-06T16:19:00.000-05:00

CW FISHER
If Ron Paul appears to have an uncanny sense of how to fix America, it's only because he has read the pamphlet called the U.S. Constitution.

The fact that Dr. Paul is the only candidate of either party to consistently vote in strict accordance with the constitution throughout his ten terms in the House makes him the only candidate qualified to undo its vivisection.

Only President Paul would have the will to kill the Patriot Act and end the NSA wiretaps; and only President Paul would put his shoe to the butts of every neocon, every corporatist and every evangelist currently camped in the lobbies of the people's offices.

Today, as our country's constitution lies bleeding in the street; we, the people are in grave danger of extermination. And Ron Paul is the only candidate I see with a snowball's hope of saving the republic.

Dr. Paul, in adhering to the principles so clearly outlined by the founders, brings precise solutions to the full spectrum of issues -- some that have plagued America so long they're institutions -- among them, abortion, school prayer, and, inexplicably, evolution. Paul would send all these issues back to the states where they belong.

Paul's keen eye for what is and is not constitutional is our best and perhaps only weapon in the fight against the many deadly threats to America, currently attacking our country on several difficult fronts.

Terrorism, says Paul, is a crime issue. The war in Iraq is illegal. Illegal immigration is, er, illegal. Income tax is illegal. The 101 year old practice of allowing the Federal Reserve, a privately held, secretive corporation with almost no supervision by the U.S. federal government, to print currency out of thin air, which gives it the power to inflate and deflate the dollar to their immense profit, must also end. As must America's unwillingness to join the world neighborhood's response to climate change.

Out of all the many presidential candidates, Ron Paul is the only one who is morally insulted by the ignorant and even inhuman concepts of preemptive war, torture and door-to-door "sweeps."

I believe Dr. Paul could be elected easily, but I can't yet imagine the miracle required to get him nominated by the Republican party.

It is true that third-party candidates tend to spoil elections, blur mandates and produce winners unwanted by as much as two-thirds of the people. However, given his wild, if slow, success in the Republican debates so far, it is quite possible that Ron Paul could win an astonishing plurality.

While the media continues to ignore him, the Web is paying rapt attention. His crossover appeal is enormous. After the second debate, Fox viewers vaulted him to the number one position immediately -- with 27% in a field of ten -- and this figure, in subsequent weeks (once his message had a chance to percolate on YouTube), has now risen above 60 percent.

Given these outstanding numbers, he could win big in a three-way, even without mainstream media, even in spite of it.

Meanwhile, what can we do?

We can flood the net, carry the word, put up signs, talk to neighbors, attach his videos to our email, play Paul Revere and get on that horse.

We CAN elect President Paul!

Phony baloney troop support

2007-01-18T18:22:00.000-06:00

CW FISHER.
I clearly remember the moment I realized a terrible darkness was falling over America. It was sometime in 2002 in an e-mail exchange with a friend.

Bush and Cheney were making a case for war with Iraq. I wrote that I was troubled by the idea of using the armed forces to fight terrorism. I called it a "Redcoat" strategy, like marching your guys in neat rows and everybody's got a big bright X on their back which looks just like a target to the patriots--which is what we call them now--in the bushes. The British, I reasoned, for all their military superiority, made excellent targets. All the Americans needed was the will -- which they had in spades -- plus some bushes, plus a dogged ignorance of proper military conduct, and victory was as clear as a road full of dead invaders.

The neo-American army that took on the British weren't patriots or insurgents, they were just citizens defending their homes with guns and pitchforks -- the very types of people you never want to mess with.

I said that beating up Iraq might make us feel better -- it's always nice to have somebody smaller than you to pick on -- but it was the wrong thing to do and that the plan would backfire. I called it playground politics, and a dangerous diversion from the harder job of intercepting bin Laden and dismantling his network.

I saw Bush's saber rattling as the angry response of an immature bully who'd been punched from behind. Somebody was going to pay -- and there he is, Saddam Hussein, a man who'd been missing from the international stage for more than a decade, resurrected out of thin air, behind it all. Odd, I thought. But this was before people were dying by the dozens every day in payment for what turned out to be one enormous lie, so it was easy for me to simply chalk up Bush's behavior to the grandiosity of a typical dry drunk: big talk plus big balls equals big mistakes.

My penpal submitted to me the following response in full: "I support our troops."

I was dumbfounded and said so by saying nothing.

How deaf, dumb and blind could this intelligent person be to misconstrue my thoughts as a slam to the troops? I chalked it up to a.m. radio. We left it at that.

Five years later the few remaining Bush apologists in Congress are now suggesting that the "Democrat party" is scheming to punish our troops, who are desperately calling for backup, by denying them much-needed reinforcements, using our troops as hostages to win their political argument with the president -- a deflection of logic every bit as shallow and grotesque as the bromide of my penpal about supporting the troops.

The Bush administration has proved adept at one thing: repeating every lie one at a time until the opposition finally just gives up. This has been their only successful strategy.

Anybody who still thinks that supporting the troops has something to do with yellow ribbons is in a rapidly receding minority -- and Americans don't like to be left alone. We move in packs. It's us versus them and you don't want to get left out of a game like that. This is the moral architecture that guides our thinking.

I do support our troops. I especially support the idea of protecting them from harm. I support the idea that the US Army immediately equip all armored vehicles with anti-RPG devices which are currently available from the Israelis. My idea for supporting the troops starts with protecting them from unnecessary or avoidable injury or death.

I do not support the mission of our troops. If any of our troops take offense to that, I'm sorry, I won't apologize.

I find our mission in Iraq fuzzy, as fuzzy as a penicillin laden piece of moldy bread such as one might find in the back of one's refrigerator. Real fuzzy.

I do not support our troops in their mission to make war on innocent peoples under changing pretenses, especially when there is ample evidence that the United States may actually be engaged in assisting the Shia government in an ethnic cleansing of the Sunnis in Baghdad.

The time to leave is now (as it has been for some time now). And there is such a thing as a graceful exit. I call it a Grand Disappearance. How do you disappear an army? Change their clothes.

Bush Stays Course

2007-01-16T08:18:00.000-06:00

CW FISHER.
Although I haven't been posting recently, it's not because I haven't been writing. It's just that whatever I write seems to become instantly obsolete. I've been following around a crazy man with a notepad, and my notes make no sense. This is because I've been following around a crazy man.

If the news seems to be changing so fast lately, it's only an illusion. Because really none of this is new. The so-called "surge" isn't new -- this will be the fifth time Bush has surged troops between Afghanistan and Iraq, back and forth, like plumbing - somebody flushes while you're in the shower, you feel it.

The only thing new about this particular surge is that this is what Bush came up with after two months of listening to us. He stayed the course. It pissed us off. That's what's new. The reaction of ordinary Americans. This isn't about Republicans or Democrats anymore.

What irritates me is that all of this was so easy to predict -- and I say this with great authority, since I predicted all of it (and I have the archive to prove it). So hear me now.

The President of the United States is out of control. He is a danger to the world, a danger to America, a danger to you and to me and he must be removed from office immediately.

He is currently in the process of starting a war with Iran, a war America cannot win, a war it could likely lose, and catastrophically, if we keep letting the madman to drive the car.

America needs to assign someone else to the task of making things right with the rest of the world again, someone who can cool things down a bit, because America is vulnerable and its military is occupied overseas.

Removal of Bush -- and Cheney -- puts House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the presidency, and if she were to appoint Barack Obama secretary of state, America might have a shot at salvaging its world citizenship.

America has already lost the war in Iraq. We're dead but we don't know it. We're in the Cambodian stage of acceptance, where the president, whose main concern is his library, tries to find some way to save face for a few years until he can get out of office, that's the main thing, no matter how many young men and women have to die, no matter how many children and families have to be blown to smithereens, the main thing is for the president to protect his legacy.

America, in the eyes of the world, is the enemy. That's not my opinion. That's the way it is. I don't like it any more than you do. I'd like to change that. But that takes the immediate removal of George Bush from office. Until that happens, this will all continue.

America buried

2007-01-03T15:35:00.000-06:00

I hereby resolve to never make another New Year's resolution again. It seems like only yesterday (although it was the day before) that I made a commitment to blog every day. Sadly, yesterday whizzed by without a positive thought in my head, forcing me to remember the reason why I quit daily blogging in the first place. I had determined that publishing negativity was a form of violence in itself and I did not want to add to an already too violent world.

The problem isn't finding something to talk about. The problem is finding a way to speak positively about such overwhelmingly negative events.

Take for example Saddam's sudden burial. The very first headline I saw regarding his execution was the revelation that he'd been buried. At first I thought they put them back into that hole they found him in, but when I realized they killed him first, I was sickened.

I'm against the death penalty under all circumstances. In my view, nobody has the authority to take another's life, especially the state. When a state executes a person in the name of its people they render all its people complicit. Co-murderers.

Some people argue the case against the death penalty by pointing out how often the convicted turn out to be innocent. Good point, but my view doesn't extend that far. My view stops before the question is even asked. My view says we simply do not have the right to kill except in self-defense.

Ironically, self defense is a good argument for the execution of George W. Bush. The man who, as governor, holds the record for most executions stayed, is the man most eligible for an ironic twist at the end of a rope. I say this on behalf of 3000 Americans who died on 9/11, 3000 Americans who died in Iraq, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have died as a direct result of America's illegal invasion of a sovereign country.

My hope for 2007 is that Senator Joe Biden's hearings on the Iraq war will lead to impeachment that will result in George W. Bush's removal from the presidency, and furthermore, that his conviction in civil court will result in life imprisonment with no possibility of a presidential pardon.

As much as I admire the youthful enthusiasm of Barack Obama, I cannot support his candidacy for president of the United States because he is against the impeachment of President Bush. I understand his desire to be a "uniter, not a divider," but to walk away from this responsibility is to send a message to the despots of the future that you can do whatever you want and get away with it.

No, you can't. No, you can't. No, no, no, you can't. Not in a free society.

Sadly, America isn't a free society and truly never has been. Our brief time as "the greatest country in the world" is over. Our greatest perils are yet to come. We will pay for our adventures in Iraq for decades or more with money, with blood, and all our accumulated power. But George Bush will likely see a different kind of justice. He will face his demons on the golf course. He will agonize over the contents of his library -- whether to include My Pet Goat and that book by Jean-Paul Sartre he read with the title he could never remember.

But we the citizens of this once great nation America will pay his debt as we are paying it now and we will suffer again under future American presidents be they Republican or Democratic, black or white or both. Because we the people have failed to remember what we were required by law to learn in civics class: that the government is of, for, and by the people -- who are us.

Hereby resolved

2007-01-01T23:42:00.000-06:00

Every New Year's Eve I get the urge to resolve myself to making some small change that, by the end of the year, and by virtue of daily baby steps, will place me on the equivalent of some new continent. Some years are more successful than others.

The worst resolution I ever made was in 1994 when a friend convinced me to quit smoking "with him,"as if it's possible to quit smoking "with" anyone. This is something one does alone, or, in my case, to others, specifically to my family. By the end of the first day my wife and all three children had each individually elected to knock timidly on my door with a cigarette in one hand and a match in the other for the purpose of reestablishing tranquility.

This year, cigarette firmly in hand, I do hereby resolve the following:

that I shall blog every day, whether I have anything to say or not, not for you, but for me, for without blogging my brain becomes mush, and a mushy brain is the devil's oatmeal;
that I shall eat oatmeal once a day, for oatmeal is the perfect turd former, and perfect turds are the bricks that build the road to good health;
that I shall avoid sugars, especially high fructose corn syrup which sweetens most soft drinks, on a hunch that it's making me fat;
that I will stand up straight on a hunch that it's making me stooped;
that I will fix my fence, paint my house and run 5 miles a day.

Running will be a challenge so long as walking remains a challenge, but I believe there are ways to induce running -- crime for example --that will make breaking into a sprint seem as natural as self preservation, even as it destroys my hips.

Death by two headed monster

2006-12-13T16:56:00.000-06:00

CW FISHER.
I keep thinking about James Kim, the young father who recently died in a frozen ravine in the mountains of Oregon while seeking help for his young family who was stuck in their car which was stuck in the snow in the deep woods which he drove into on purpose after missing his turn.

And I keep wondering how it came to be that these intelligent people could make such monumentally stupid decisions.

Forget for a moment that they weren't from around here. They had come from San Francisco to Portland for Thanksgiving and were on their way home when he, after missing a turn off for the interstate that would take them through the mountains, decided that a backroad mountain pass would be almost as good, if not more scenic.

He who takes the road less traveled through the mountains in November might be an independent soul but is definitely an idiot.

What did he expect? Eight miles in, they got stuck in the snow. Perhaps as a counterweight to their original bad decision, they then made a series of bad non-decisions. First they wasted time, more than a day, sitting in the car, consuming their remaining food. Once that was gone, Mrs. Kim nursed her two small children. Sometime after it became apparent they wouldn't survive without food, which was now -- shockingly -- gone, it must've dawned on them that just sitting there didn't seem to be yielding much of a result.

So James Kim made the fateful decision to leave his family on foot, wearing only a light jacket, sweatpants and tennis shoes, with a general plan to seek help.

His decisions could fill a pamphlet on How to Die.

I'm not a survivalist but I was once lost in the deep woods of Vermont for more than eight hours and I found my way out by following logic. I reasoned that water rolls downhill, that it will find the valley and gather into a stream which will eventually flow under a bridge on which there will be a road and eventually a car that might stop and pick me up if I stand in the middle of the road waving my arms -- which I did. It worked. Had I known that bears also enjoy following streams, I may have reconsidered my strategy, but I would still be lost.

My particular strategy might not have worked for James Kim. I was lost in summer, and the mountains of Vermont are generally less daunting than those of Oregon. but what saved me would have saved him. What saved me was 15 minutes of logical thinking.

If James Kim had taken a 15 minute break from panic he would have built a fire -- a big bonfire with lots of smoke sends a clear message to any passing helicopters. We are here.

Instead, he set off from the car in a different direction from his own tire tracks. If he wanted to find the road, the place where they lost their way, why didn't he simply follow his own trail of breadcrumbs?

This man wrote for Wired Magazine. It's an easy assumption that he was technically savvy enough to have heard somewhere that cell phones send out a unique signal even when they're turned off. That's how his wife and children were found. That, and her flapping an umbrella. Smart lady.

She nursed the kids, she flapped the umbrella, she didn't leave the vehicle. Did she have anything to do with the bad decisions that put them in that situation?

Somehow I doubt it. Some husbands and wives, especially when one is driving and the other is "navigating," become a two headed monster under siege by itself. Under these conditions many a poor decision is made, and worse, defended. And because the driver has the greater power, the "navigator" is ultimately wiser to keep her mouth shut in the broader interest of general safety.

I wasn't in the car that day after Thanksgiving. But 15 minutes of logical thinking brought me to the conclusion that, when one dumb decision brings an avalanche of supporting bad decisions, a two-headed monster is doing the thinking.

Think Iraq. The two headed monster in this case is George Bush, as the driver, and the American public, as the navigator. We're going through the mountains, we're making our own road and eating up all our food, and when we can finally go no further, we'll just sit here awhile and eventually, when it seems prudent, venture out in our slippers calling hello.

Yet 15 minutes of logic would make it very clear that America can have very little effect on the civil war now raging in Iraq between the Sunnis and Shiites, that this war is bigger than Iraq and wider than all Islam, and that America is standing in the middle of it, helpless, irrelevant and utterly ignorant of the true nature of the conflict in its midst or of its historical, religious and cultural roots. America, in its tennis shoes, thinks it got Iraq into this mess, and thinks it can get it out, but is doomed to be found frozen at the bottom of a ravine.

And while President George Bush is currently taking a 15 minute break for logic, the problem is he's still in the car. If we could just get him to walk off in some direction or other we could maybe unfurl this umbrella.

McDonald's customers value taste and early death

2006-12-12T02:00:00.000-06:00

Trans fats are now banned from New York City by the Department of Health as a way to prevent 500 deaths a year, which they say are directly attributable to the consumption of trans fats.

My introduction to trans fats was more than a decade ago when McDonald's Corp., then a client, was testing it. Trans fats represented an exciting opportunity: a virtually maintenance-free vat frying system. The old way required filtering the oil every night after hours in a dangerous and tedious process. McDonald's saw a way to significantly lower their costs and reduce risk.

Of course every opportunity has its dangers. The biggest danger to McDonald's was the fact that customers didn't care for the taste, and taste, at McDonald's, was everything, or so it was said. There was another danger farther out there, this one involving health -- little was known about the effects of trans fats in the human body -- but McDonald's monitored those discussions.

Even though taste was most important at McDonald's, they went ahead anyway because food cost was pretty important too.

And when the reports began to pour out that trans fats were indeed not so good, and especially for all the people it was killing, McDonald's took up humming.

Denmark passed a law that said no trans fats and McDonald's complied. New York passed a law and McDonald's will comply.

But McDonald's will not stop using trans fats elsewhere because of... taste.

Taste, according to McDonald's, is the most important thing to their customers, and their customers prefer the taste of trans fats.

Those 500 people who die every year are all New Yorkers. Worldwide figures haven't been compiled. But we're talking about a body count of near tsunamic proportions.

McDonald's used to love to count things, how many burgers it had served, how many times they could go to the moon and back. They talked wistfully of such things as if they secretly believed that, one day, burgers might fly.

But when it comes to bodies, McDonald's doesn't count. They don't stack, they don't fill stadiums, they don't compare them to the height of Sears Tower, they ignore the whole thing. It isn't them.

It's the customer. The customer wants that taste. That hydrogenated trans fat taste.

That's what they're saying now. And that's why trans fats, at McDonald's, will remain there until the very day that people like you refuse to eat it anymore.

Liar Identification

2006-12-05T23:51:00.000-06:00

CW FISHER.
There are two kinds of people in this world: honest people and dishonest people. Of the honest people there are, again, two kinds: the newly born and the recently deceased.

Of the two kinds of dishonest people, the huge majority are well-intended folks who might tell a dozen itty-bitty lies a day in varying shades of white to gray, consciously or un-. Some of these lies are kind, like not telling the boss she has a bugger on her cheek; others are about survival: smiling at a person you hate, or ignoring someone to get their attention; some lies are to the self, designed to preserve some illogical but pleasureable behavior. None of them all put together would kill a tse-tse fly

The second kind of dishonest person is the same as the first only significantly moreso. Extremely dishonest people are usually found in leadership positions, in crime, government, business, religion -- the most powerful liars work in all four areas simultaneously. Although honest leaders are probably in the majority, the dishonest ones do a disproportionate amount of damage, and are difficult to identify because they tend to present themselves as above reproach. Which they are, by design, until they get caught.

There are two kinds of caught liars. The kind who admit it, and the kind who deny it. The ones who admit it are preferable, but troubling, because, well, because they're liars.

The second kind of caught liar, the one who denies, is by far the more entertaining of the two, for the more evidence presented, the more bizarre their explanations become.

My family was recently duped by a con man who made off with a considerable sum up our money for an investment scheme that didn't exist. After many months of listening to his explanations for the holdup, it suddenly became clear: this was a holdup. Suddenly the only possible explanation that made any sense at all was that everything he told us was a big fat lie.

Usually by the time the victim figures this out the criminal is long gone, but in this case the criminal was a neighbor. So I invited my neighbor into my office for a chat wherein he admitted the whole thing was a lie from the beginning. In the days following he left several incriminating voice mails admitting he scammed us and promising to make it right -- somehow -- but he had absolutely no money and could not pay it back at this time or in the foreseeable future, therefore would I accept his Hummel collection?

I brought the tapes to the police. He has appeared five times before a judge, and sought and received five continuances, which cost money because lawyers are required. Obviously he has the money.

How could this have happened to me, an intelligent person, and even worse, to my family, who are even more intelligent than I am?

It happened because my neighbor was above reproach. He wasn't just an honest person, he was the most honest person I'd ever met.

My message to you is this: We are trained to see people as they want us to see them, and we allow people their fantasies about themselves perhaps in barter for their ignoring our fantasies of ourselves. But if you meet someone who seems too good to be true, that someone is likely a liar on a massive scale and if you get involved with them you will be their victim and you will pay, pay, pay. And they won't. And that's the truth!

Look instead for deeply flawed people with a good sense of humor. They're safe, they're trustworthy, and, if you ever need extra money, they're easy marks.

MDI 73: Microwave-safe suit

2006-12-04T23:12:00.000-06:00

The US has a new "less lethal" weapon at its disposal for dispersing crowds. It's a microwave on a truck. Swept slowly over a crowd, "the sheriff," as it's affectionately called, gently roasts demonstrators, causing their contact lenses to adhere to their corneas, causing their eyeglasses to severely burn the temples and bridge of the nose, causing 3rd degree burns wherever jewelry is found, and best of all, causing a stampede -- basically all without killing anybody, although the stampede, well, you can always blame that on the crowd. They're told to disperse, not run away. So the trampled are plausible collateral.

Originally developed for Iraqi crowd control, the sheriff, it occurs to us, would be equally effective for American crowd control, or for simple day-to-day control of its citizenry, should the need arise -- although the threat alone would likely be sufficient.

And now, because the US is also working on a portable model which can be carried by one man, effectively making him a super persona non grata wherever he goes, it begins to occur to us that these weapons could be a very very bad thing in the wrong hands, and the wrong hands are the only hands that would use such a weapon.

The question is how can we protect ourselves? We'd like to go to the demonstrations but the sheriff will be there. We'd like to go to the ball game, but what about the rogue wavers? Should we stay home?

My grandmother used to carry in her purse a rain bonnet that folded up to the size of a pack of gum. She opened it once and it sprang out like an accordion. Something like that is what is needed, only bigger than a bonnet -- it's a bonnet for the whole body -- and of course it's made out of some space-age material that protects against microwaves.

Don't look at me like that. I'm not a scientist. I'm just an idea man. Obviously microwave safe materials exist, we use them all the time. All I'm saying is one that's flexible. Then they can wave us all they want. We'll just wave back. Until they start shooting us.

I don't know what the defense is against the sheriff, but if you look at the truck, it appears that the beam is bouncing off a metal plate. If that's true, and microwaves can be deflected, that could mean a shield could bounce the microwaves right back at the sheriff, and of course anybody in between who happened to have not had the foresight to bring a microwave bonnet in their purse or back pocket.

Ray guns. Can you fight ray guns with ray guns? I wonder if it's wise. Here's to a less lethal future.

Also published in The Million Dollar Ideation Project.

Offended flashers won't show

2006-12-03T14:43:00.000-06:00

Celebrity slut Paris Hilton backed out of her planned appearance with former pop star Britney Spears at the Billboard Awards after objecting to the jokes written for her about her peer's spreading reputation for flashing her crotch.

"Britney Spears is not a 'peer.' In the whole two weeks we've been best friends she never peed on me once." Ms. Hilton then slowly uncrossed her legs for the cameras and left the pressroom aghast.

It was only a matter of time before the vagina monologue became a dialogue. Paris couldn't keep the trend going all by herself and probably feels she owes her less famous friend a debt of gratitude for validating the most interesting thing about her. Crotchless women who don't know how to sit in the presence of cameras are always interesting, especially when their exposed genitalia is the only thing that's interesting about them. Together, these two women are twice as interesting as they used to be.

Hillary Clinton is said to be exploring the viability of crotchlessness. Even if the doubling of interest is only half true, it could still be a huge boon to her popularity while keeping her safely out of the presidency.

They say this all started with Sharon Stone, but I think it started with Bill Clinton. And it won't be ending soon. Mothers, don't let your daughters wear dresses for awhile.

Skyscapes

2006-12-02T22:57:00.000-06:00

This is what happened after I started pointing my phone out of my car window at interesting skies. It gives me something to do when I'm driving and the results are often surprisingly good. I know it sounds dangerous, and it is, but the chances of you coming in the opposite direction just as I'm snapping a picture and veering into the left lane are pretty remote.

Double Your Intelligence Instantly!

2006-12-01T15:10:00.000-06:00

Neononverbalizationizing: The New Science of Silence
CW FISHER

Scientists have long known that people talk too much and listen too little, and indeed much of the general public is beginning to catch on to it as well. Go anywhere and ask anybody if this is not true: you'll get an earful. But you won't listen!

The best way to get smarter -- quickly -- is to close your mouth and keep it closed, as many an old joke and proverb go. But keeping one's mouth shut can be extremely difficult. It can actually be easier to close someone else's mouth. But we can't have that, because somebody's got to do the talking. Otherwise we're just standing there.

Nobody likes silence. It's uncomfortable. Even deaf people don't like silence. They'd rather flutter on about nothing. It's what people have always done in all cultures through all time. This chatter is part of socialization, but because it's our most readily available tool, chatter is always loaded with subtext (lies) for the purpose of disguising insecurities. Chatter is how we chisel out our version of the truth. And the truth is, frankly, we're better than you.

Therefore, he who fears his chest is concave will know more about sports than you. She who fears she's ugly and undesirable will talk shockingly dirty in mixed company. All of us, if we're allowed to go on too long (which is rarely permitted), will keep spinning wool into gabardine until there's nothing left of us but a pile of dirty laundry -- our own -- for your examination.

Keeping our mouths shut is a lesson most of us are doomed to learn over and over for the rest of our lives. But with proper training you can achieve mandibular compression for extended periods and become the one person remaining in the room whose self-respect is still intact while the other dingleballs are still yimyammering away about beauty schools and pitching stats.

Neononverbalizationizing is all about the conversion of negatives to positives, of turning disadvantages to advantages. When your opponent pushes, you pull. Using his own momentum, you yank him to defeat. This can all be done with out uttering a word. All you have to do is know how to wiggle your eyebrows.

I fell on all this when I was getting people to open up on video. It's frightening what people will admit to in the presence of a willing ear. Even with a camera rolling.

I found that I could twist my face to say all sorts of things, like, Really? and Tell me more, and That's unbelievable and No way! and I'm confused, explain slower. All done with eyebrows. I was listening with my entire face.

I began to encourage a random blowhards to let it all out. Such deep holes they dig. And I was right there to nudge them over the edge, with only an eyebrow.

Try my whole face technique at your next party and you'll be the most fascinating person of the evening. They'll call you brilliant and persuasive; you'll lift an eyebrow. They'll insist-- no, no, you are! You'll roll your eyes.

Things get much better from there.

If you're a man, you'll leave with the woman with the implants, but behind her will be three or four enraptured tagalongs, and yours is the short one in the shadows inside the largest coat you've ever seen where there is buried a rare gem whom you'll impregnate through eye contact, scoundrel.

If you're a woman, you'll go home to your cat, thank you very much, since you might be shy but you're no slut, and before you even put the key in the door you'll hear the end of one message and the beginning of another -- call after call, one after the other -- marry me and I'll give you Monoco, camp with me on the beach tonight, let's go to Arby's -- the first one you call back is Mr. Wright.

Genital Watch Expands

2006-11-30T15:26:00.000-06:00

The streets adjoining Rodeo Drive are cocked with pockets of paparazzi, ready at the first whiff to tear after the passing vagina of Britney Spears.

Twice this week, on two separate occasions, the first with her sponsor, Paris Hilton, the second while alone at a gas station (yes, she gassed her own car), Britney Spears, former pop star and mother of two, purposely revealed her naked genitals to the general public and anyone else who might be interested, including, someday, her children.

It was a trend begun by Paris Hilton (although many men in prison today would argue with that). But while Britney may be a va-johnny-come-lately, her participation itself is a powerful endorsement of casual flashing that will influence millions of young women to do the same.

Hygiene, bygiene.

With civil war raging in Iraq, this is welcome news. It's good to see somebody smiling, even if it's vertical. After Abu Ghraib, we can't be shocked. Islam may require women to cover their faces, but over here we think they take things too far. Our women show all their rosy cheeks. The labia is the new cleavage.

While the reasons for this shift are complex and profound, it has less to do with alcoholism than may appear at first blush. Scientists believe (remind me to add that to my Wordkill Wishlist) that flashing is a desperate bid for attention by self hating egomaniacs, which puts former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at the top of the watch list.

Since you asked

2006-11-29T19:25:00.000-06:00

CW sends ABC solutions for Iraq
We've come a long way in a month. Now the mainstream press is asking the public at large for their ideas on fixing Iraq. Having blogged on this very topic several times in the past over the last four years I have my points all numbered and ready to go.

Drop trou. The Iraqis themselves showed us exactly how to "disappear" an entire army by simply losing the uniform. Then adjust your troop levels at will. Some could be sent home while others, disguised in robes and burqas remain behind to eventuate positive change (see number two).
Ratchet up and reverse the rumor mill. The reason civil wars are so uncivilized is because daily discourse becomes uncivil to the point where people are killing each other, and it's personal. American forces, under cover, would have a mission to reverse ill will and replace it with goodwill by means of flattery, perjury, mis- and disinformation to keep the enemies off-balance. When one enemy reads that another is quoted in the newspaper as admitting he's a terrible adversary, on the one hand, but on the other, probably the best singer in all Baghdad, the first enemy is disarmed and will, if not immediately, eventually return fire in like manner, perhaps commenting on his rival's cunning, or his delightful sense of humor.
Cut Iraqi into three countries. Give the north to the Kurds, west of the river to the Sunnis, east of the river to the Shia. This could halt the civil war in its tracks and would likely be the end result of war anyway. Getting it over with would allow them to get on with rebuilding their own new countries.

Regarding the United States and its "interests," which are actually the interests of Halliburton, it would be wise to whistle and leave quietly and behave nicely knowing that a trial for war crimes is only an indictment away.

While I was out

2006-11-20T11:30:00.000-06:00

CW FISHER
It's been almost two months since I last wrote. I had become so angry at America I had to go away to heal myself. When I came back America had done the same: healed itself. Praise God, and pass the turkey. What a difference an election can make.

The American people had not gone missing after all. It was the journalists who had gone missing. But in the end, Americans did not believe what journalists had been telling them they believed.

Bloggers, like me, have a very small audience. Mine is now so small, due to my absence, that I can now say anything I want with impunity. Fortunately, I'm sick and tired of my own impudence, and vow to speak with more reverence for manners.

A recent graphic in Newsweek shows dramatically that Democrats have controlled Congress for many decades; the last ten years of Republican rule were an anomaly launched with Newt Gingrich's contract with America, then electioneered into being by Karl Rove and the religious right. Seen in this context, it's clear the Republicans were making up for lost time. They had two jobs: the great undoing followed by the great redoing.

And here we go again, only now it's the Democrats turn. What will they undo and redo?

Fooled Again

2006-09-29T10:07:00.000-05:00

CW FISHER
I was ill and it was hard to blog so I wrote an opera. When I returned to blogging, I came back different. Madder. I have never used the F word in my writing for reasons too fucking numerous to list, but suddenly I was working fistfuls of fucks between syllables and daring you, yeah you, to suck in advance my daily special in the event you disagreed -- all in the spirit of simply getting somebody's attention.

I got hate mail, lost some friends but kept it up. And along the way I like to think I learned a few things. I discovered I'm not un-American after all, I'm anti-un-American, ashamed of us all, sickened that we're even discussing torture let alone enacting it into law after this big phony show by Sen. McCain yields a loss which is sold in the press as a gain for Highroad, America -- and we buy it because we don't frankly give a fuck if it's a fake to protect George Bush and the entire U.S. government against future allegations of war crimes, as if that'll work. And it will, of course, already has. Frankly. We're happy to simply believe we stood up for something. That We Made a Difference.

McCain's got the time to make a cameo in The Wedding Crashers, and he's got time to make a cameo on The Senate Floor. Self promoting phony.

Sadly, the brightest and bravest Americans, and there are only two of them, are both comedians. Bill Maher and Jon Stewart have just enough courage to scrabble up the hill and almost touch the monolith ..before running away giggling like monkeys. I understand their first job is to make us laugh, to see, like monkeys, that it's okay to touch the monolith, and then to do like monkeys -- only human beings are not monkeys, and Americans aren't even descended from them. Plus they don't give a fuck, they move on. I'm still standing at the side of the hole that swallowed a plane and vaporized 47 people but didn't singe the grass. I'm waiting for one honest man, or both, to come right out and say it: that the world is America's gitmo to be done with as a few people please. But maybe I expect too much of our comedians.

I do not expect anything of the mainstream press since the death of journalism. I haven't seen a journalist since they were first embedded in 2001.

Today's googlized news offers us the same three carefully placed paragraphs in 37 languages. We haven't noticed yet because, who scrolls? You don't scuba when you surf.

Bill Clinton goes off on Chris Wallace last week -- and it's shocking. Shocking to finally hear the truth. It's even more shocking the next day when you see a small part of it out of context, punchline to a sendup by a newshour "host."

Everything's shocking these days. That it took Clinton five years to speak out, that's shocking.

You'd think all this shock would come at the expense of some awe, but no. I'm in shock, still, over 9-11, staring in holes. There's something fishy about two airplanes vaporizing on the same day, one in Pennsylvania, the other in the Pentagon.

There's something fishy about not two but three towers spontaneously falling at the speed of gravity due to a fireball of office furniture.

I don't need to hear the engineers' explanation or watch their animations -- because I can't get that far. I can't get past those disappeared planes. All those vaporized people.

Where did they go? Were they ascended up into Heaven?

You see. So I am stuck on a fundamental question. I am irritated by secondary questions, such as why the question fails to ignite much curiosity, but I am transfixed to the fundamental issue of vaporization and the transmogrification of matter, though I'm often reminded that that part of the parade has passed.

It's like I see dead people. I've tried to talk to them but they appear intent on eating me. The only place I do not see dead people is in that hole in Shanksville. No plane, no paper, no people.

I feel like poor Zapruder. Like it's gonna be a long parade before traffic starts moving again. I watch it in slo-mo but fast forward to the end. It's all a grassy knoll.

Except for that hole.

Oh, and that one too. And that one.

Why Bush Remains

2006-09-15T23:19:00.000-05:00

CW FISHER
George Bush controls the soul of America and nothing can be done. Because if Bush is ejected, Cheney's inserted. Check and mate to checks and balances. Bush is irreplaceable, unimpeachable, and has a brother with presidential ambition.

Will America find its lost courage and send this evil presidency to its own private Guantanamo? Perhaps once it's figured out how. Here's a clue in two words: Spiro Agnew. Sounds like Latin but it's Greek. Spiro Agnew, for the new historians, refers to the name of an American vice president under Richard Nixon who was whisked out of office on charges of tax evasion in order to make room for a more suitable replacement for the soon-to-be-exiled Nixon. Congress installed Gerald Ford, Nixon went to his own private Hanoi. No trial, no sentence; no muss, no fuss; he was simply shouted out, and America was cleansed.

Sadly now there's a new stain on the presidency. But it's only sad so long as we believe it's chocolate. So long as it's chocolate it's a mere shame, like a spoiled party dress. Laundry is, after all, dirty by definition. It's no secret that humans leave stains where they sit, and that presidents are human. Some stains, like Nixon's, are said to have stained the presidency itself, while others, like Clinton's, stayed on the dress.

Bloodstains are a different thing entirely. And this president has left a trail of it, none of it his, since before he emerged out of Texas. As governor he executed with glee, taking out nearly 600 men and women, guilty as sin without a second glance, kill em. He took his show national then all around the world, twice.

America still has time left to do the right thing and take back its country. But if we wait it out the opportunity will be lost. It's wrong to whistle past graveyards while bodies are still being brought in.

When Americans decide it's over, it'll be over. And it'll be fast.

They reproduce!

2006-09-08T13:34:00.001-05:00

CW FISHER.
All it takes is one locust to show the world how edible it is and suddenly it's suppertime. In the morning you wake up with a horrible stomachache, you look around and see an eaten world, you gasp, burp, and smell the grass on your own breath. Yes, you guilty jerk, you let the lies in, you let the lies out. You swallowed it, you spread it. Nice going. Grasshopper.

I often wonder why it took me so long to call these spades Spades. Why did it take me five years to suddenly see clearly that 9-11 could not possibly have happened the way we have been deliberately led to believe it happened? Why? Am I dumb? Or am I deluded?

Have I gone round the bend? Did I see one too many YouTube(TM) movies? Am I really suggesting that The U.S. Government is engaged in a coverup? Have I lost the Mother Ship?

Who am I kidding? If I spent more time studying New History, I'd know that conspiracy theories always rely on the improbable idea that any government is capable of pulling off something so difficult. I'd know I'm a lunatic in advance, and could have spared myself a lot of unnecessary typing.

Why can't I get it through my thick head that terrorists, specifically 18 al Qaida funded terrorists under the direction of Osama bin Laden were solely responsible for this horrible series of perfectly executed acts on the very day the entire air force had been sent away for war games?

Why is it so hard for me to believe that the US government had no prior knowledge of what was about to happen on September 11, 2001, but that the same government knew exactly what happened just 72 hours later when they released the pictures of all 18 men? Sometimes our government nails it. That's all. In this case, all 18 terrorists were identified, their stories were made known and haven't changed much since. They left a clearly marked trail of paper, videotape and eyewitnesses, Congress wrote a book about them, the case is closed! What's wrong with me?

Why do I think this case warrants further investigation? These weren't just routine plane crashes that the FAA would investigate thoroughly. This wasn't Lockerbie, where they completely reassembled the aircraft just to see what happened. These crashes were historical events on the scale of Pearl Harbor. These crashes occurred on sacred ground where monuments will be built.

Yet I callously disrespect the memory of the innocent dead, I insult the sanctity of their privacy. What dying person would want the world to hear their last desperate cries for help? I wouldn't. I wouldn't want anybody to know what really happened. It would have been too horrible. I would have wanted you spared.

Yet still I wish. I wish because I wonder. Why are these tapes sealed? Why can I read a transcript, but I cannot hear the real thing? Do you see how bad I am? My own government knows me well enough to know that I can't handle the truth--I'd break down in a puddle right there. And I appreciate my government looking out for my sensitivity, and for confiscating all those video recordings of the Pentagon being hit by a missile, I mean airplane.

You see? Why am I still asking questions? Is it medical? Do I have a chemical imbalance? Should I Talk To My Doctor?

I used to just wonder where everybody else was. Where's CNN? ABC, NBC, CBS, etc? Where's my backup? Oh, they come out now and then. They shoot, then go under cover again. It's weird.

What scared away the press? Were they cowed by inclusion, by being pronounced 'embedded,' as if that's a compliment? Was it the Daniel Pearl thing? Afraid if they talk too much, they'd lose their head? Couldn't be.

Was it the anthrax that somebody sent those big talkers like Tom Daschle and Tom Brokaw? Must have worked because they went away. But we forgot about the anthrax even before they were finished terrorizing us. Americans just aren't interested in mail. It really has to blow up. We didn't even notice when the anthrax investigation led to the United States Army. Yawn, we said.

So what scared the press? Could it have been all those unidentified guys with cameras who still take pictures of protesters, bloggers and out of line journalists? There could be something to that. Works for me. Email is enough to freak me out sometimes. Certain anonymous comments have been dissuasive, even for me, for a while. But that can't be it. America's not a nation of chickens, and neither is its press. We don't go to sleep when they pull a blanket over our cage. Do we, Tweety? Tweety?

Having written for a living I remember certain incentives for writing clearly. If you write for TIME, for example, it pays to remember your boss is Bugs Bunny and AOL. Journalists caught in this increasingly common predicament wisely opt for prose too thick with equivocation to be mistaken for opinion.

Paycheck signers who are publishers tend to get what they need in order to protect the franchise that is writing the checks, and the moment you understand this is the moment you will understand why your prose is so flabby.

This is probably the best explanation for the absence of heroes in the press. It explains why there are so few of these formerly very obnoxious types sticking their microphones where they don't belong and asking what the president knew and when did he know it.

Paycheckism might even explain why the mainstream peers are adding to the disinformation stream by marking the fifth anniversary of the day Bush attacked America with their own handmade propaganda. Everybody wants to re-revise history now that Bush has shown the way. It's fun, and easy.

But I'm so terribly ashamed of myself, for while my paid brothers and sisters are off promoting their local affiliate's 9-11 tribute to the brave whatevers, I'm still wondering when they're finally going to pull Flight 93 out of the ground.

Crikey, not Steve

2006-09-04T23:39:00.000-05:00

Steve Irwin, "Crocodile Hunter," is dead at 44, killed by a Sting Ray he was frolicking with while taping in Australia yesterday. The ray flicked a barb off its tail into poor Steve's heart muscle and shot poison through his body while he, true to his own character, ripped the barb out of his own chest and died in a spurt of blood. Which is to say he died as he lived, with enthusiasm.

A Memorial Day for Labor Day

2006-09-04T15:56:00.001-05:00

CW FISHER
Sellebrate your big day off, American Laborer, as if you still existed. Drink beer, eat brats, take your antacids, but go to bed early because you've got work in the morning!

Fall asleep knowing that the minimum wage still holds as it has for nine years, defying both inflation and gravity, and know you're in good hands as long as you don't wake up.

Show up as if you had a contract or an actual fulltime job with real pay and honest-to-god benefits that show up when you need them, and pray the illusion holds through your retirement and untimely death.

But if you think Labor Day was created to honor the American Laborer you should know something. It all started by accident when a government worker mistyped "arbor."

No profitable government honors labor. Where's your thinking cap?

Your grandfather, who had the courage to form unions, fought not for dignity but for pay. Grampa wasn't stupid. He knew about talk, he knew that talk wasn't cheap, it was expensive, and it came out of his pocket. He just wanted a day's pay. He didn't want a debate. He wanted his money. And when it still wouldn't come, he decided he wouldn't either. And only thus did the motherfuckers cough it up. That's how it works to this day, and that's why the American labor force, which no longer exists, no longer demands proper payment. It doesn't exist.

Grampa was long on courage but short on foresight. If he only knew what would happen when the fates granted his one wish: that his grandchildren might be spared his own humiliations and get themselves a college degree. Jesus, Grampa. You missed it by this much. Thus were all his hardwon dollars sucked back into the septic, and thus was bred this turd economy where laborers are for laughing at.

Mencia, who features his own mind on television, tells us we should walk into McDonald's and ridicule these people who are too stupid to know that you're not going to get anywhere in this country without a college degree.

Laborers are for firing. Reagan's legacy was to show us that to strike is to self-terminate. Problem solved. We like our thinking caps snug as ski masks.

Brat?

A Fascism Statement

2006-09-02T01:06:00.000-05:00

CW FISHER.
Rumsfeld's History Lesson: It's 1938. Islamo Fascists are running amok in our streets, signing up Youth, blowing up not only themselves and our children but our sacred institutions, our Y, our Piggley-Wiggley -- and any so-called American that that refuses to see the truth is a Chamberlain. Appeasement? Never!

What a goddamn puppetshow this guy is. Ashcroft was bad, but Rumsfeld. We are witness to one very very poor player fretting lines taught him by others while struggling to hide his great doddering stride into fullblown dementia.

Who writes his stuff? Hm, Dick Cheney. Try Islamo Fascists. Islamo? Why Islamo? Try it. Islamo? Try it. Islamo. You're right. Got a ring to it. Told you. Islamo. Like it.

If these people weren't so evil they'd be funny, like on a show. But this is not a show. This is not a show. This is not a show.

L'il Dub learned up all his line too sho nuff, reciting em all over the worl, Islamo-Fascists-
Islamo-Fascists-Islamo-Fascists, like promoting a new Wham-O product, a pocket fartpad, a hoopla hoop. But gosh, ain't he cute lately, like a little monkey, so cute. Reg'lar people. Good people. Doin' his job. The Decider. Reading up on old Camus, that rascal, him and that old Peter Rabbit.

President Cheney speaks out of the side of his mouth for a reason. He learned from the sins of the father, doesn't want us reading his lips. Remember, he gave the shoot down order. The one his military wouldn't obey? It's in their book, The 9/11 Omission. Swing low, sweet Cheney-o.

Faces of Fascism

2006-08-31T14:29:00.000-05:00

CW FISHER
While George Bush works up his folksy banter, his criminal partners Cheney and Rumsfeld have renamed Islamic Terrorists "Islamo fascists" and are giving speeches to inform people like me that my days of aiding and abetting are numbered. The only co-criminal still silent is CIA operative Tim Osman, who now goes by his given name, Osama bin Laden.

Rumsfeld, speaking to the American Legion, suggested that I need to study my history, meaning I should watch The History Channel more carefully, which can prove anything he says through computer animation. That three towers collapsed from their own weight, that an airplane vaporized in the Pentagon, that another nose-dived so deep into the earth we still haven't found it, that a small group of non-pilots piloted commercial jetliners when even pilots don't pilot commercial aircraft anymore. Computers do, like the ones that come up with all this heart-stopping animation.

Proof by Animation is today the tool of choice for manufacturing truth. Animation makes my Photoshops look silly and fake. Mt. Bushmore -- haha, very funny, Mr. Bloggo-Fascist, they seem to be saying, but you're just a phony and a liar.

I know I am, but then I won't be hanging from an Oak tree on the White House lawn, will I?

As to Folksy George, did you catch his rambling one-on-one interview in Katrinaland with MSNBC's Brian Williams, Peter Jennings's living twin? With a few rebuilt homes in the background to commemorate the federal government's progress in just a single year, Mr. Bush defended his summer reading list of some fifty books, including something by Camus -- Camus -- rhymes with Shamu (the whale) for those who prefer biographies of George Fucking Washington. Brian, the hard-hitting journalist, hit hard. Which book? he pressed. Hey, said our president, that was two books ago! Affable assholes fare better than mere assholes. But fucking liars lie about everything indiscriminately, even the books they say they read.

The lie is the idea that Bush cares about America and the lives of its citizens. He doesn't, and it's clear. Spike Lee, Sean Penn, Ray Nagin--these are people who care. You can tell by what they do and don't do. And one thing they didn't do on the anniversary of the murder of New Orleans was talk about their summer reading.

The charge is treason, the remedy execution. I am against capital punishment and always have been, but you can't win em all. Job One is to string these fuckers up. Then we'll talk to Howard Dean's Democrats about their plans for saving us -- if we can still find a politician willing to "serve," given the sudden rise in stakes.

(Correction: Osama bin Laden's CIA name was "Tim Osman," not "Tim Osland").

Shit Hits Fan: Americans think it's chocolate

2006-08-26T15:13:00.000-05:00

CW FISHER
I'm not doing coy anymore. From the moment a jet hit the South Tower I smelled a very dirty diaper indeed. And five years later my country's a septic field.

Listen.

George W. Bush is directly responsible for 9-11. We know this. He's the President of the United States, responsible for everything that happens in this country. I'm not saying he planned 9-11. He didn't.

Dick Cheney and his assistant Donald Rumsfeld planned 9-11 while Bill Clinton was poking Monica with a Cuban and defining what is was. Bush was brought in as a shill and guaranteed his elections.

The plan was to focus the world's attention on a catastrophic event that would allow Halliburton to walk into Iraq, take it, and use it as a base for the taking of the entire oil-rich region.

They did it for the same reason dogs lick their own balls. Because they can. When the Joint Chiefs are in your pocket, the world is yours and the rest of us become guests, or, if we insist, detainees.

America is already under martial law. It will be declared the moment we realize it. If you think your own eyebrows aren't already in their crosshairs, keep your eyes closed, whatever you do.

Look.

If you allowed some moron at the airport to confiscate your mouthwash you're already a co-conspirator.

If you think it's OK to ground a trans-Atlantic flight because a 10 year old boy throwing a tantrum says he has a bomb, you are licking the blades of the shit-filled fan.

If you still think America's theft of Iraq has anything to do with terrorism, you should enlist because I'd rather have you there than here, believe me.

If you refuse to believe 9-11 was an inside job because you refuse to look at the mountain range of evidence, you, dear former reader, are no patriot but a traitor, the refuse of our teeming shore and the clog in our toilet.

I'm not going to spoon feed you anymore evidence in the hope you'll gradually come around to "my" way of thinking. It is neither my thinking nor ours that did this, but the will of the Master, Cheney, and the willingness of his assistants Rumsfeld and Bush. If you need evidence, google 9-11 in the video section. It's a benign search. Google Video, "9-11." Up comes a library of motion pictures from thousands of cameras that will show you in slo-mo what you could not, or would not, see before. If you google '9-11' from its home window you'll get nothing. If you google '9-11 conspiracy theory' from its home window, zip again. You have to go to Google Video. And when you do, please note the disappearance of all the phony hero tributes. It is now solid with 'conspiracy theory.' Democracy in action. There it is. If you're too afraid to watch, just count the pages. Go to the tenth page and see what you get. Page after page of the truth of what happened, as clear as a day in September. And aren't you ashamed still clinging to your quaint ideas of terrorist sleeper cells? The sleeper is you. The cells are CIA. Osama's a CIA operative -- still -- after all these years -- and if you think I lie, look it up yourself. I am not your link to truth. That's a do it yourself job.

If you're one of the paid protesters who said "Too soon!" with the release of the major motion picture "Flight 93," you need acting lessons. You need to watch one American citizen clinging to the side of the South Tower. Pick one. Woman or man. Pick one and follow their descent to the pavement. Listen to all those pops. Rewind and watch it again. Now see it from their perspective. Long drop. Hell of a way to go. Zyclon B would be better. That pop you hear as she or he hits their personal ground zero is your innocence. Bush did this and Bush is proud of it and Bush is getting away with it because you are letting him. Not me! You. This will all be over the moment you wake the fuck up.

If I'm so smart, how come the mainstream press doesn't know about any of this? They do. They know far more than I do. It's just that the mainstream press is comprised of people like me and you, folks with families, people who want to continue to be alive, or even better, marginally free. Scared people. And so, for them to speak out, they must be crafty. They have the choice of saying almost nothing, like TIME and Newsweek have done, or they can poke a toe in the water like CNN, which uses polls to do its editorial page. Did you know that most Americans believe Islamic terrorists had nothing to do with 9-11?

Most journalists, bloggers and people in bars have been maintaining a crafty kind of silence wherein we communicate with keywords and euphemisms and depend on the outrageous antics of lesser cowards like Bill Maher and Alex Jones to dance around this burning truth in the center of our nation's camp. And I appreciate their efforts but I'm waiting for yours.

Freedom is absolutely free. We are born with it. Freedom is about NOT being locked up. Freedom is about NOT letting your mouth be shut by bullies. Freedom is about NOT having police show up at your door for no declared reason other than they don't like you. And if you think I overstate, you have not been reading my blog, and you will be next.

Now.

If you still think Joe Lieberman was a Democrat, raise your hands, no, both hands, and put them over your head, and get down on your knees and lie flat on the floor. Joe Lieberman is a Republican who ran for President as a Democrat. A traitor to his own.

Now it's votin' season again. Midterm congressional elections are upon us. Democrats are rubbing their hands, smelling victory, putting on their bibs.

No, no, no, no, no. America, do not let this happen. Trust no existing candidate from either party. They are conspirators. Throw them all out. Replace them with a write-in.

I propose the creation of a stealth political party known only vaguely as the Write-ins. And I challenge you to choose a local candidate to represent you, a person with no government experience, no political ideology or affiliation, and no money other than what they owe the bank. That person, and only that person, can save America from itself and the world from America.

And when those folks come up for re-election, throw them all out and start all over again until this once great Citizen State is restored.

But be goddamn sure to keep throwing them out or they'll start believing it's a full-time job and that we're their employees.

Mass Idiocy

2006-08-22T09:55:00.001-05:00

CW FISHER
I get tingles when President Bush speaks out about defending freedom and democracy in Iraq. Someday, after we win this war, perhaps America will again enjoy freedom and democracy. For now, these trivialities must be set aside. To defeat our enemy, which is terrorism, we must act as one and be of one mind. Dissent is unaffordable.

Today it's un-American to speak out against our government. We can grouse on our porches but not in the square. We can whisper concerns but we dasn't be blunt. It's perfectly legitimate, as Mr. Bush points out, to have questions, but to keep asking after we've been given the answer is unproductive. There comes a point when those who speak up must stand down.

The true reason we fail to speak out is because we are cowards.

Cowards have two choices. They can cut and run, or they can stand and fight. The choice on the left is shameful (though harmless), while the choice on the right is honorable (though harmful). Of course, in war, harming enemies is the point; harming ourselves is the price. Both choices -- cut-and-run or stand-and-fight -- are rooted in fear, but only one confiscates our God-given free will.

Soldiers don't ask why. Citizens in times of war are expected to do the same. Tell us what, we'll do it. But if we all start asking why, we'll defeat our own objective.

But what if you don't agree with that objective? Should you close your mouth and wait patiently until it's over? Hope for the best? Cheer yourself, knowing the meek will inherit everything? Fuck no!

Failure to ask why leads inevitably to mass idiocy, mass hysteria, mass murder, mass destruction, mass extinction. Failure to ask why is how Germans, not Hitler but Germans, could exterminate Jews.

Failure to ask why, by eliminating thinking, is what makes the unthinkable possible. It's how a governor of Texas could execute 500 people and smirk about it. It's how the same man could put his face on a plan for a new world order that divides us and them by rich and poor.

My clock stopped yesterday at 4:12. As I got hungrier it remained 4:12. As it got darker it was still 4:12. It wasn't until I consulted a tiny clock in a far corner of my screen that I discovered it was 8:38.

The time is 8:38.

Chucklin' with the Prez

2006-08-21T10:41:00.000-05:00

CW FISHER
How the press loves to chat and laugh with this American President, the self-described "thoughtful guy" who "listens to people."

I am listening to him on NPR as I type. Tony Snow's done a heck of a job showing him how to make a reporter feel special. So special, they leave on tiptoe, lighter than air, just like the questions they toss. Everyone gets a Presidential Wink. And a chuckle.

"The Democrats," said Bush, "and again I repeat," (yes, he really does), "they're just as patriotic as I am, but they want to leave Iraq before the job is done! And if we do that the war's gonna come home!" If he's said it once, he's said it a thousand times. And if a thousand isn't enough, he's happy to repeat it. Again.

The American Press is sadly no more. If Bush is a moron, the press represent his lackeys. I kept waiting for somebody to ask what happened to the plane in Shanksville. Remember? How there was no plane? I think it was like, September 11, September 12th? 2001 some time. The day a small army of CIA operatives boarded four airplanes to create the illusion they were real flights, so DOD could pilot two jets by remote into WTC Tower 1 and Tower 2, land one in Cleveland and place a smokebomb in a predug hole, and let's not forget that Tomahawk missile that slammed through the Pentagon leaving a... hole.

But nobody asked that one. They were having fun! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Off My Cloud

2006-08-17T13:42:00.000-05:00

CW FISHER
Fucking Microsoft thinks it's so fucking important that it can install its critical updates in the middle of the fucking night and then reboot my fucking computer while I'm sleeping, which guaranfuckinteess that I'll never again see whatever was on my screens when I turned in.

Should I just accept the fact that Microsoft eats my homework?

Okay, sure there's a way to turn off the default but I keep forgetting. Sue me. I'm a fucking artist, not a shareholder. I don't back bullies and I'm impolite to thugs. This goddamn piece of shit company Microsoft, this talentless, purposeless monopoly stopped earning its success decades ago. It's time to get off the fucking stage.

I'm not concerned about Dollar Bill Gates. He's irrelevant now, retired and too rich to have much sense of proportion. He's as generous as he is greedy, characteristics like hot and cold. They both come out of the same faucet. Narcissism is like water only wetter, and how it loves its own reflection.

Bill Gates and Bill Clinton showed up at an AIDS conference, made a grand entrance in spotlights, waving back and forth to a standing O as if they were some kind of heroes.

Yet the audience of scientists came out complaining. Too Hollywood they said. Children are dying of AIDS they said. We flew here to fix a problem, sweep aside the clutter, shoosh the noise. Instead they got infotainment. Scientists are not children, and they're certainly not children who are dying of something that most people above the poverty line think we already cured. They're smart and poorly dressed, entertained only by incomprehensible things, too gripped by the challenge before them to stomach the distraction of two has-beens who never really were to begin with, who remain in their state of non-being for the purpose of publicity. What this has to do with Microsoft is nothing.

I have a critical update for Microsoft: fuck you. I'd like to turn you off and on and see how you like it. Because it's not just my machine you reach out and fuck with in the middle of the night, the time of most burglaries. You did it to my best friend, the lady who sleeps beside me, the saint who takes care of me and tells me not to swear so much. Nobody fucks with my wife, motherfuckers.

Her computer's in our bedroom. She leaves it on for white noise. A few nights ago, out of the blue, make that black, sometime after I finally fell afuckingsleep, a full orchestra dramatically announced that Microsoft was shutting down her fucking computer!

I jumped three feet and bounced a beloved dog onto a hardwood floor, because, see, we'd been listening to music earlier and had the speakers cranked, so what a surprise to hear that familiar triumphant flourish blasting on 8. The only time I hear that song is when I'm forced to reboot because I accidentally used a Microsoft product. The song never represented triumph to me but defeat. If fear has a theme, this is it.

So. Yes. It is alarming to be thrown into the orchestra pit, especially out of a fresh fallen sleep, heart pounding won't stop sit up wonder what the fuck? Did I dream that? I hoped so. It made so much sense, metaphorically.

Had to be a dream. But my blood was still pulled into my center. I'm fearing a ghost, a heart attack, my own sanity, fear itself. I could feel my pulse in unusual parts and could hear it in my feet. I probably felt like that guy must have felt who was arrested at his home without warrant or charge and hauled off to jail for blogging wrongly--he writes for the American Free Press. This happened recently in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, USA. Home of Sears, Roebuck & Co. Not 40 minutes from my own doorstoop.

Hits close to home for me because I remember Hoffman Estates when it was a few roads in a prairie. I was born and raised Sears, Roebuck. I was a Sears kid when my father, J.N. Fisher, worked on the west side of Chicago at Homan and Arthington, back when he and Nat Daniel of Danelectro fame came up with the famous Silvertone Electric Guitar With Amp In Case, Mick Jagger's first guitar -- he still plays it -- because, as all guitar players know, it's the ugliest, cheapest built, best fucking rocknroll guitar ever. Today my son Curtis Dan Fisher sells these classics and just became an eBay Power Seller, rock on.

Anyway. Microsoft. I was there when my dad moved into Sears Tower, and I myself moved into The Tower for 19 months, working on the 27th floor, writing scripts on an IBM Selectric, burning Winstons out of the exact same ashtray I use today, looking for a clever lead for my next film, The Sears Craftsman Sander Grinder ("for sanding... and grinding!"). These little gems were narrated by the likes of Bill Kurtis, Joel Sebastian, Clark Weber, Harry Elders. Great people actually. I crossed paths with Bill Kurtis many times over 26 years. Today, if I saw him, I'd say, "Hey, Bill!" and he'd say, "Hello! There," but only because I shaved my head.

What this has to do with Microsoft or the detained blogger is this. Sears was a client of mine for 19 years. Our relationship ended when Sears tumbled out of the sky to smoke and dust -- figuratively. Somehow my motivational communications tools destroyed the place Where America Shops. The company fled to reboot in Elsewhere, Illinois, the hapless Hoffman Estates, more concept than village.

Today, Hoffman Estates is a vast corporate wasteland of cubicles inside of glass boxes surrounded by parking lots and roads that lead to bedrooms in communities that appeared in the middle of the night as if put there by Microsoft. So yes, I did feel like that guy who was mocked and threatened by several Hoffman Estates police officers for expressing his liberal ideas. I'm sure his heart was overbeating too. After all, false imprisonment is not exactly against the law anymore. Some people act like they can say any damn thing they want on the internet, but they can't. There's a war on that now. And the cops have the right to do any damn thing necessary to serve and protect those they are serving and protecting.

They tore down Abu Ghraib and put it in my own backyard.

But it's cool! I like cops. I really do. I watch the show. Cops are fun to talk to. I'm actually writing an opera about cops. They used to stop in for coffee when I worked the night shift at the corner store. Smart, mellow, decent people.

That is until the cops began stopping by my house at all hours of the day and night to ask me why I called 911. This happened more than a dozen times over two months. The same guys and gals I used to chat up for hours, there on my stoop, flashlights in my face, acting like we'd never met, always with the same opening line: "You called 911." Not a question but a statement. Never less than two cars or two cops. The first time there were eight cops. I said the first time what I said the other times: "No, I didn't call 911." "Well, somebody did." "Well, wasn't me." "Bring the other occupants to the door." "It's just my wife and she's sleeping." "Wake her up." "She works in the m--" "Sir, you are this close to a search, get your wife, now. Because you called 911 and we are investigating."

I closed the storm door, not the main door -- I didn't want the cops to feel I was shutting them out -- then I woke up my wife and watched her descend the stairs in pain, cursing her MS and every stupid cop ever born. My heart's pounding in my socks. She's just pissed, God bless her. She told them the same thing I did only she didn't let them interrupt her other thoughts on the matter, leaving me to apologize proudly for her and try to chew the fat on the stoop. But they had no plausible explanation for why my phone automatically dialed them, so we left it at that.

It happened again the night after that, and the night after that, then they took a night or two off, hit us again, then came back early in the morning, then around lunchtime, then back to the night shift.

Always the same bullshit. You called 911, no, I didn't, yes, you did. I called Verizon many times and had them out on three separate occasions, then I dropped the landline altogether, went to cell phones only -- and still they came, stirring up the dogs, curiosifying the neighbors, spreading my reputation like oleo.

One fine evening when all the neighbors were out walking their dogs, playing volleyball on their front lawns, kids weaving in and out of driveways on their bikes, three squads stopped by. I was doing some yard work and greeted them heartily for all the neighborhood to hear: my friends, the cops, were stopping by for a joke or two from the ever charming CW. I called them by their first names, walked up to them with the relaxed body language of one who's too cool, clapped one of them on the back, went right into the joke they came for. They were, in fact, smiling, as all polite people do when they sense somebody's about to tell them a joke. And I said:

"It's another phantom line crossing!"

Buh ha ha ha! they said, on cue.

"Hey guys," I said, smiling large. "Today this stops. Completely! I am embarrassed for you! And I feel your frustration, forced as you are, by law, to come out here to my place every time my phantom phone calls you. Thank you for coming anyway, even though you know and I know that I have no phone no more! I have no wires! I tore them out! See them flopping on the side of the house? And so it is scientifically impossible that my phone is calling 911. It is not. So! It's time to meet with the Chief. We got to bring this to the attention of the community so we can build a case to make this shit stop and never happen again! We got to shut this game down!"

I paused to let it soak in. They were mighty confused. None of them said a word, but the question on their mugs was clear: Who we goin after?

Pause, pause, pause, then: "I'm talking about Verizon!"

"Yeah!" they said. They were down with that. Damn phone company wasting their time. The Japanese call it saving face. I call it calling a bluff. They never came back again.

I think. It's been 10 months or more. We'll see after I post.

This busting into my bedroom thing has got to stop. Back to fucking Microsoft. I didn't know if I heard that music or not, but one thing was certain: my wife didn't heard it, and she's a light sleeper. Me, I roll like a log. My legs are jumpy as a sheep going over a fence. But once I drop off, I fall at the speed of gravity, much as the World Trade Center Towers 1, 2 and 7 dropped so mysteriously on that fateful day we attribute to Osama bin Laden, whom the U.S. government miraculously fingered almost immediately, even with pictures of them what done it, whole story fully intact within a week, down to the phone calls from the passengers of Flight 93 as it dived and disappeared but never crashed. Point is, that's how I fall asleep. I sort of crash, but not literally, like Flight 93. I land in Cleveland instead, which is almost as bad, ba-dum-bum.

So I dreamed it. Look at the wife, look at the dog, poor thing's having a little heart attack of her own down there. Yeah, it had to be me. I'm kind of a nutcase anyway. It was funny almost. I vowed no more bean burritos before bedtime.

Just then I hurt my neck really bad when I jerked it. The Microsoft Power Up song burst out of black.

Such a mix of mixed emotions I had. Instant relief. I wasn't crazy. Or under attack. The cops weren't at the door. It was only Microsoft rebooting my wife's computer for her convenience.

In the 3+ years I've blogged and more than a thousand posts I've posted, I've pretty much NEVER used the F word. I was taught to come up with something better.

Then I saw Deadwood on HBO, couldn't understand what the fuck anybody was talking about, examined it On Demand and discovered to my delight I'd been wrong all along. Fuck is the most powerful and flexible word in the English language, a root that is host to innumerable variations of tense and type, with new ones entering the stream hourly. Fun to say, fun to do. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!

If you don't hear from me for awhile, I'll be in jail. Or the doghouse for swearing so much.

Fat people having fat babies!

2006-08-12T00:47:00.000-05:00

CW FISHER
A recent study suggests that fat people are tending to have fatter babies -- news that rocks the scientific community, who knew there was a connection! Especially shocked are the offspring of the stupid.

"They say" that people are getting fatter all over the world, but they don't know why. This is because they lack courage and common sense. People befatten after prolonged exposure to beef tallow.

It's no longer uncommon to see enormous Frenchwomen, fabulously dressed, waddling about with Twinkie on their cheeks. Or tiny Japanese, round as blowfish. Or even the Australian, once so rippled and fit, now rippled with fat.

What's going on here is we have fed the bears, and the bears are us. When food became instant, when sugar became a staple, when animal fat was the one thing we could not do without, except for salt, which was in everything to make us thirsty for more sugar! What do you expect? It's the plan. This should not be a surprise.

The only sure way to eat healthy is CW's Don't Buy It Diet. If it comes in a package, don't buy it. If it's put in a bag and handed to you through a window, don't buy it. Learn how to cook, and do cook. And when you cook, cook what the hell you want and eat it all up. You won't get fat. Then do the dishes.

Plot foiling growth industry

2006-08-10T13:55:00.000-05:00

CW FISHER.
Imagine a world where terrible things almost never quite happen due to the uncanny abilities of government plot foilers.

For the price of an imaginative story, any government could become the savior of its people overnight.

Bush claimed a foiled plot saved Los Angeles but dropped the assertion when pressed for details. Britain did a better job when it imprisoned 22 terrorists with plans to bring down multiple trans-Atlantic flights between the UK and US.

The plot, said to involve liquid explosives, is probably real but could just as easily be fake. Who'd know the difference? Once you've got the story, all you need are suspects. Pluck them off the street, put your word against theirs, they meet their fates and everybody wins.

In today's foiled plot, the enemy is toothpaste and toiletries, any liquid or gel that could be mixed with another to create an explosion big enough to rip a plane out of the sky.

The mind immediately thinks Listerine, but current guessing is on gel explosives such as those seen on TV. Smear this on that and voila! Kaboom! It's just that easy.

On any given day an infinite number of events did not happen. Why not celebrate the best of them?

GI Joe tanks

2006-08-09T07:29:00.000-05:00

CW FISHER.
Connecticut Senator Joe Leiberman (D) took a ride to oblivion at the polls yesterday, losing to a challenger from his own party, Ned Lamont.

This is what you get for being Bush's favorite Democrat. As a longtime supporter of the Bush/Cheney wars, Joe Leiberman got his ass shot off, leaving incumbants from both parties to reexamine their own reelection strategies. Perhaps it's unwise to trumpet their support for a war most Americans don't want.

Preemptive Hindsight

2006-08-08T08:20:00.000-05:00

CW FISHER
First of all, I apologize for my apocalepsy. I'll be typing along and have an apocalyptic seizure -- happens all the time. But I'm going to try to get through this post without destroying us all in the end.

Let's say the scientists are right and the earth is getting hotter. This could eventually mean our current housing might no longer be appropriate for all our comfort needs.

Which sounds like a marketing opportunity to me. But then, what do I know? Obviously I'm wrong or someone would have jumped on it by now.

If the scientists are right, it's almost too late to think about retrofitting your house for what's to come. And if the politicians are right, we'll get to it, but right now there's a war on, an election coming up, Abramoff trouble, constituent backlash on Net Neutrality, whatever the eff that's supposed to mean, although we know what it means, it means big money for nothing and some of it belongs to them they think.

So it's more rewarding and interesting to follow the politicians and also you don't sound like Chicken Little.

But let's just say we were listening to the scientists. Then we'd say Hm. If the world begins to experience mounting catastrophes, then the infrastructure of civilization might begin to break down, beginning with energy and its distribution. Gas and natural gas rely on trucks and pipes; electricity blacks out easily and stays out longer than ever; cell phones go dead. We know this from Katrina and other disasters.

So wouldn't it have been cool if we'd forked over a few bucks for solar roof panels? Because then we'd have energy. For free.

If I had three wishes for you and your family and me and mine it would be these.

Solar Roof. Everybody in the world with an interest and a roof would go down to Wal-Mart with their government voucher and pick up their near-cost solar panels that install with a few nails.
Reusable water supply. At a minimum, every person should have a personal drinking water filter that converts urine to potable water. Another unit handles dishwater, bath water and laundry water. If toilets don't flush, use plastic bags draped over a camp toilet of 5-gallon bucket, knot the bag tightly.
Boat. Noah's neighbors thought he was nuts, but they don't even have descendants. Since floods happen quickly, wouldn't it be great if the boat was ready and loaded? And wouldn't it be nice to have a tent cover with a water catcher?

There are lots of other goodies that are nice-to-haves. Like a crank radio. You can get one from the U.S. government sometimes if you go to Somalia. Sometimes they drop from the sky. Or you can wait until Wal-Mart has them.

Okay, I have to stop now because I can't stand it and I'm about to go apoco again. But at least you didn't die this time.

Be Your Own Savior!

2006-08-05T13:04:00.000-05:00

CW FISHER.
When the coasts go and the survivors push inland they're going to need water, food, medicine and shelter immediately. Will their governments come to the rescue?

No. Governments will not rescue us--not because they're incompetent (they are), or because they didn't plan (they didn't), but because they can't.

Plastic bags can rescue us. Drinking our own urine will rescue us. But our governments will be the first ones out. No reason to get mad. They're just doing what we should be doing, namely, saving ourselves.

There is a point on the scale of natural disasters beyond which no government can manage the chaos, because there is no government. Enough ants could lift an elephant if only they didn't get squished.

Katrina reduced New Orleans to a swamp overnight, but it took weeks to sink into our collective minds that some disasters are just too big to do anything but (excuse my phrase) cut and run, like George Bush's government could be said to have done. People of authority were the first ones out of the city; people with none were left behind. That's how it's going to work next time too.

Global warming is a local problem. And ultimately it all comes down to you, or, in my case, me.

Your survival, and the survival of your family, will depend on your ability to get along with others. If you are deficient in this area, cross yourself off.

If you do as Ted Koppel advises and put up a vast store of food and water, you may feel silly leaving the bulk of it behind. And when you run out of gas, you'll eventually accept that you have to walk. What you need most is heaviest: water. Food and medicine will be free everywhere while supplies last. Money will be toilet paper. Shelter will be scarce, guns ubiquitous (but eventually harmless since ammo is finite). Wherever people gather will be the stench of rotting bodies and human waste. The smell alone will lead the migration as people try to get away from each other. Every last Holiday Inn will be booked. The first killer to sweep over the population will be dehydration, followed by infectious disease. Starvation and murder probably won't have a chance to get started before the masses are reduced to more manageable groups of, say, fifty.

How should these few remaining survivors be advised? I would say dip the ends of your kitchen matches in candlewax to waterproof them. And bring something to finger, like a rosary. Find water first. Eat plants. Dig deep into high ground. If you find a cave, seize and defend. Carry lots of plastic bags for pee, poop and bodies.

And yes, drink your pee if it's all you got, or die. It's how desert people survive, even today. It's safe if it's fresh. Let it run a second to flush out surface bacteria, then drink it down with confidence. You used to swim in it, breathe it, drink it before when you were in your mama's womb: her bag of "waters" is just a big bag of pee. So get over it, and live on with a good story for your grandchildren.

Drunkheart

2006-08-02T02:45:00.000-05:00

CW FISHER
It's not surprising Mel Gibson's an alcoholic. Lots of people are. Some have actually stopped drinking forever, but they're all dead. The rest have to make a daily decision to either stay sober or go back to the good old days, blitzed on Blatz, when life was a dream, literally, and the effect of one's own actions nullified, void. Bliss is the sound of a pop top.

Alcoholics who stop making a decision to not drink eventually decide they can have one, but only one -- two tops -- and then push away. Done. Go home, go to bed, wake up, work, fine. Never have another. Or. See how it goes.

One day at a time is a great slogan and a fine way to live, but one really bad day can wreck years of sobriety and damage a lot of lives quickly. So it's instructive to watch Mel G. acting like any old drunk on the street, which is exactly what he is. He's played the role so often -- like the I'm-getting-drunk scene in every Lethal movie, that it's hardly a stretch for him or us.

Alcoholics, active or not, share certain traits with astonishing regularity. Actives are louder, larger and drunker than others. Nonactives are quieter and smaller than they used to be, but it doesn't take much to fluff up in new ways. Not drunk, just dangerously nuts.

Drunks are often dreamers, highly intelligent, creative people who may be overachievers, underachievers and/or both intermittently. Either way they may act as though they have something to prove to someone, or everyone, or maybe just to themselves, or to their dad, or mom, or, hell, the mailman. With some drunks like Mel, it's prove, prove, prove.

Some drunks get on that Road to Recovery and make a left at Higher Power. Some may actually begin their ascent into heaven. Sometimes it's just typical grandiosity, which is a big word for big talk that is most often applied to drunks by other drunks, but is sometimes real. Mel, for example, made a grandiose movie about his HP, specifically about his deity's BTK-style death scene, hours of death, forcing his audience to kill Christ again and again! Harder! Jesus Christ, drunks go too far .

Drunks like to get sober and keep walking as if nothing happened, but it doesn't work that way unless you know somebody. Otherwise you can do your best and hope that one day society may allow your return. It happened to Mel before. It happened to George Bush.

George Bush came back twice! Yet nobody calls George Bush an alcoholic simply because George Bush himself admits to no such thing, except to say he did quit drinking and he credits his Lord and Savior, who's not exactly a "higher power," but God Himself, the one, the only, not so gory as Mel's. George sees himself as a man of God to whom the rules of nature do not apply. And so, therefore, do we.

George Bush is not an alcoholic and cannot be described as grandiose, maudlin or brutally engaged in a fight to the finish in his heart with his father. George Bush might have choked on a pretzel once and passed out and hit his head, but that was a pretzel, wasn't even a beer nut. So what if he made the decision to welcome Mexican migrant workers to come share in the abundance of the American Dream because his nanny, the woman, as he described her, who raised him, was Mexican, and the Mexican people are a strong, moral, family-loving people? So what about his insane position on Iraq, which is to stand still and insist we're winning? Winning what? Magically, George Bush is not an alcoholic, but he's one hell of a magician. Some people say he made two planes and three buildings disappear on a single day. A month later it was an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.

Another trait alcoholics share, especially the unschooled, untethered freelancers: they lie a lot.

America is safe because George Bush is far from an alcoholic. Far from it. We should all leave Mel alone and focus on avoiding George. Just don't make him mad. We can all do that until he's out of office, can't we?

Kick her out of bed

2006-07-24T05:36:00.000-05:00

CW FISHER
"Men who sleep alone are smarter." Last week hundreds of articles from all over the world smacked us across the face with it. Cuddly men are dumb.

What crap. I sleep with a woman and three dogs and I hate it but it doesn't make me stupid. It's the woman's idea. I can sleep wherever I want but I'll never rest. The dogs are small. So's the woman. I shove, I nudge, roll, sigh. It's peaceful when they're all asleep.

Last night I couldn't sleep so I got up and thought I'd blog -- but about what? Maybe this. But a search of Google News revealed most of the articles had already evaporated. There was nothing left but fluff, cutiepie pieces poking the author's own sleepmate, Suburban Sunday stuff. Sort of like this.

I don't know who did this study, or why they didn't bother to check the women, but as a PR vet I can tell you that the words "recent study" are often code words for "press release."

If undisturbed sleep makes the brain more efficient, then men who sleep in disturbance-free environments will have more efficient brains. That's not a study. That's a no brainer.

If we remove all the men from the women, what happens to the women? Do they get smarter too? Or just more pissed off? If I were getting more sleep this article would be a lot better. I'm going back to bed.

Reply from: God

2006-07-20T15:05:00.001-05:00

To: the kids.

I heard somebody pray for peace and was so delighted I decided to respond. Peace I love. I'm so tired of these prayers for victory I can't tell you.

As to the three great religions competing for "God's Hometown" as you put it, I'd be lying if I didn't first mention how flattered I am for all the attention. I used to have a jealousy problem, back when every dime store carried pocket gods, but we've all come a long way since then.

You Muslims, Jews and Christians have all got it exactly right. I am God. Just me, man. And I love you all! Look at you fighting over me! Blowing yourselves up for me, how committed you are, and so cute to think I'd be pleased to find your bloody remnant on my door stoop.

I love you people! But if you knew who I am -- if you understood what I've been telling you, if you stopped looking for me in books and just shut up a minute and listened to me you would learn that you are indeed on your own and have been from the start.

Oh, I hear you all right. But I already told you what I want. And when I start seeing it, maybe I'll dole out a miracle or two, but that's a conversation for later.

If any one of you really believed Jerusalem is where I live you would never enter the city on your feet and you would not be capable of lifting a weapon. You would simply fall powerless where you stood, then get up and return to your families who need you a lot more than I do. Because I don't need you at all!

Everybody out of the pool is what I say. Turn the Holy Land into a park. And give me a high ticket price to keep the crowds reasonable. And close after dark. And no vending machines.

Israel won't like this. Nobody will at first. But I have plans. I'm redecorating! And I promise that all survivors will be grateful!

I don't like to spell things out. It's never been my style. I try to send you signs but you keep missing them and running the wrong way. Here's a hint: migrate!

Or how about this: learn to love. Because you're doing it all wrong. You should see that by now. It requires attention and care, just like I'm giving you right now.

It kills me when people say I'm killing you. Not all of you! I'm improving you. You should see what I did to the Neanderthal! Ice ages and meltdowns and droughts and volcanoes -- repeat -- for 200,000 years I did that! But the result was you.

You dying people are so dramatic, you think you're so important, but to me you're like cells, you flake off, big deal, wash the sheets. I see only one of you. Really you're all the same to me. You worry too much.

And the way you kill each other all the time, like cancer cells you're behaving! This useless gnawing of your own corpse is an obsessive waste of time and material. I keep telling you that. But I gave you free will. I don't want it back. I moved on.

And besides, I'm not displeased. I know you can't help it. You're not as "advanced" as you think. But you're getting there. Soon you'll leave your starter planet for bigger, better quarters, and eventually you'll come to more logical conclusions.

For now, have at it. Turn me into a theme park! And bring the kids!

-G.

Dear God

2006-07-19T16:51:00.000-05:00

Greetings from Earth! Having a terrible time! Wish you were here!

Good Lord, it's getting hot down here! Texas is combusting, California's self starting, Colorado is beige, the color of kindling, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security admitted these seasonal wildfires have always been a side effect of the global warming trend created by Al Gore.

No offense, God, but would you mind? Right now is not the best time for your acts, to be blunt. Have you seen what they're doing to each other in Lebanon and Israel? It's the Holy Land, man! Three Great Religions competing for God's Hometown, and now we've got war circumnavigating the whole world. So please.

You can see how important it is to win such a war. There's so much at stake. Our whole way of life. Our principles. Freedom. Rights. All that. See? This is the big one, Lord, and we need you on our side. Our side.

It's the least we can expect. We've been so loyal to you down through the years. Far more loyal than the infidel, or the insurgents, or whatever they're calling themselves now. It makes us sick to hear them talk about you as if they're related to you or something! They must all be killed, as you know, in your name, of course, and when the last of them are dead, you will get full credit, and you know we're good for it. But we do ask your patience.

Until our enemies are dead, could you spare us some better weather? You can still do your tsunamis, but do them on them. You want bigger, better hurricanes, fine, go ahead, just spin them on the bad guys.

And could you please do something to squelch the leaks and disinformation regarding these rumors of the end of the world? Honest to God, Bird Flu? You can't be serious: a pun? Arctic cruises? The price of drinking water? Where are you going with all this, Lord, because it will kill us you know.

Just one last thing on your to-do list. Please protect us from doing anything to protect ourselves from what we know it going to happen because we don't want to frighten the kids or panic anybody. There's a war on!

Amen.

Three 9-11 Mysteries

2006-05-14T23:20:00.000-05:00

CW FISHER
Do you still think al Qaeda had anything to do with 9-11? I don't. And here's why. (movie)

No plane hit the Pentagon.
No plane crashed in Pennsylvania.
The twin towers didn't fall on their own.

The Pentagon. Apparently we were all so busy watching the towers fall that nobody noticed the Pentagon was struck by a Tomahawk missle rather than a commercial jet which has wings, engines and human bodies aboard, things that don't "vaporize" as authorities claimed. Yesterday, more than four years after 9-11, the U.S. released two security camera videos of the "plane" hitting the Pentagon. It was widely hoped that the footage might give us a glimpse of the "jetliner" that struck the building. The first clip shows the tip of what the Pentagon calls the "nose cone" of the airplane, which appears narrower and closer to the ground than most planes seen at most airports. The next frame shows the impact and subsequent explosion. The second video clip shows the explosion, but the "plane" is obscured by a bike rack.

Flight 93. Enjoy the movie, but ask yourself: Where happened to the plane? The only footage that exists of the crash site shows only a black ditch. No wings. No fuselage. No debris from luggage and seats. No bodies. Then what about the "Let's roll" guy, the hero who led other passengers to overtake the cockpit and achieve a hero's victory? Never existed. None of the famous brave cell calls took place. Cell phones don't work at those altitudes.

Twin Towers. What are the sparkles on the towers as they fall? Examine the footage. Twenty feet below the leading edge of the tumbling towers, you'll see sequential detonator explosions. They are especially visible on the shaded sides of the buildings. We are asked to believe that the weight of the building caused it to collapse so elegantly, just as smooth as smooth can be. But the problem is physical science. Then there's the question of 7 World Trade Center, the much shorter adjunct building which housed gold bars, and the records of several key investigations of Wall Street traders.

Stop whatever you're doing and watch this.

Bush comes to shove

2006-05-13T06:01:00.000-05:00

CW FISHER
Now that it's George Bush against the entire world, you'd think he'd start losing confidence. Yet the man is only hitting his stride. Each passing week brings stranger news.

Tap Scam. Last week, an outraged Congress discovered the Bush administration had actually tapped not just a few Americans but virtually every phone in the country, just as George Bush was announcing his choice to head the CIA: one of the principal architects of the tap scam which was the brainchild of the National Security Agency. NSA is only a small part of a sprawling new system of cooperative spy agencies bundled under the cozy roof of Homeland Security -- spies helping spies. Used to be only God and Santa Claus knew when you were naughty or nice. Now if you don't call your mother on Mother's Day, Ma Bell's going to call Barbara Bush. What this has to do with the phony war on "terror" is this: nothing.

Icut and Iran. Iran has nuclear ambition, plus uranium. Iraq doesn't even have electricity or gas. The U.N. sees a threat in Iran, inspects it. Bush sees a threat in Iran, insults it. So the president of Iran writes Mr. Bush an 18 page letter about Jesus and reasonableness. Bush didn't read it, but gave a garbled bite, something about Iran having to learn how to behave.

Can't Beat the Bushes. As George's poll numbers hit the twenties, he was holding his brother Jeb's hand aloft, saying he thought his little brother'd make a great next president. Meanwhile, only miles away, alligators were tearing old ladies in half. Do we really want a president who's a former governor of a failed marsh?

I clearly remember Osama bin Laden, giddy after his great success one Tuesday morning, telling us to watch: America would defeat itself. Maybe so, big shot, but how would America know? It's too busy defending the homeland -- Iraq. Defeat itself? Ridiculous. We don't have the time or manpower. Back in America's Original Homeland, gabillions of ruthless Mexicans have rushed over the border and seized our jobs--it's a national emergency on the scale of homosexual marriage, just in time for midterm elections. Some believe the real threat to our borders is seawater. Not unless hurricane season coincides with an election it isn't.

George Bush says he's the decider. It's catchy, but wrong.

I'm the decider, George. Me. The name on my mailbox, the numbers on my phone bill. I am that one piece of chad stuck in your throat you thought was a pretzel.

And I've decided the only person on the planet with the slightest chance of putting this world back together again is Bill Clinton.

Hillary can be senator. Bill Clinton for President.

AT&T hijacks Internet

2006-05-01T16:28:00.000-05:00

Ma Bell's moving back in -- and she's pissed.

CW FISHER
If you're under the age of 35 you probably have no memory of "Ma Bell," the popular name for AT&T, which once owned every foot of telephone wire from handset to phone to wall to post, and then from pole to pole across America. She even owned the phones in our homes; we could only rent. It was the classic definition of a monopoly, and all America knew it long before their Congress admitted they knew it too. But the hands of Congress were tied, unfortunately, to AT&T's pockets, which were deep. Against such overwhelming force, the United States was powerless.

Things changed. Cellular technology was on the horizon. Computers promised an "Internet" of some sort that we'd use for everything from checking movie times to gathering "personalized" news to sending "electronic mail." When it became clear that Ma Bell's wires were about to become unnecessary, her pockets got shorter and Congress dropped its pretense of monogamy. The useless old bitch was chopped into parts and scattered.

She reassembled. Now she's in our kitchen. And she wants to know where her money is. She used to have it all and now she has none, and this is not acceptable. What she wants is a toll. She has proposed a law.

This is what American companies do now. They write the laws and pay off the congress to sign it.

And the law says, essentially, that if their competitors expect equal treatment using their software and services, they are mistaken. They have to pay the toll or their customers will get extra slow service. Maybe Google doesn't work right anymore. Maybe your blog goes down a lot or doesn't load.

According to MoveOn.org, this legislation is a week away from being signed. I signed their petition to Congress and sent it along to all my friends as they asked, and I ask you to do the same. It takes two minutes, less time than it takes my blog to load.

Suicide Prediction

2006-04-18T18:15:00.000-05:00

Look for anger, not sadness.

CW FISHER.
We had another train suicide recently in DeKalb, Illinois. A 21 year old man stepped in front of a Union Pacific just before sunrise on Good Friday.

I'd heard quite a bit about this fellow in the days before it happened. My son worked with him, and I know most of his co-workers, so I heard quite a bit. How hostile the guy was. How he went to party, got drunk, and told everybody he wanted to walk into work with a shotgun and kill all the employees and customers and himself. How he told the boss that if he didn't get more hours he'd have to quit, and she took that as his resignation, and he left work and killed himself later that night.

Train suicides are common in this town, though it's been almost two years since our last, and I wrote about it then too. Back then we were the train suicide capital of the world, it seemed. Our tracks were strewn with the body parts of jilted brides and failed students and drunks who couldn't sober up. Then it stopped. Now it's started again, and all night long the trains crawl through town blasting their horns like Gabriel calling souls. And so the whole town thinks of this young man often.

But we don't talk about it and we don't remember the guy's name. When he was alive, we didn't like him. He was a cocky little prick, worked in a convenience store, surly, abusive, mean. Just another pissed off asshole. So we don't miss him much, we don't need his kind. Life's hard enough without complainers. Maybe that's what trains are for. And convenience stores, maybe they're like a lint filter that catches these pricks and holds them until their train comes.

Harsh? Maybe. But these are the judgments of the infallible. His customers didn't like him and they're never wrong. Nobody liked him, and they piled on. It's fun. As long as you're playing with the lives of people who don't matter, you can get away with anything. I know this because I had this guy's job once, tapped the same register and saw the same faces, and they didn't like me either.

My cop friends tell me that when a train hits a person at 80 mph you can hear the pop over the engine. The head goes straight up, the limbs go left and right, the torso is dragged. Trains hit with such tremendous force that even your name is shattered, your entire life story is compacted into a single sentence. It begins at the end forever.

Spotting Train Takers. No one commits suicide without the encouragement of depression. It's always there before the terminal event. Depression is actually more powerful than a train. It clings to the corpse, gets all over the emergency crew, the cops, the engineer especially, and when the horns moan at night it gets all over us too. Depression is a serious, common, highly infectious terminal illness. Suicide is a violent crime, an act of passion, anger, madness maybe, but maybe not, because despair is something different from mere crazy, and far more real.

We think know how to spot a taker, but we don't. The drug companies have trained us poorly, but very thoroughly, so that we now think of depression as a sad but cuddly malingering bad mood for which there's no excuse any longer thanks to pharmadope. That's not depression; it's something else entirely. It's a distraction while the real killer gets away.

Forget sadness. It's too hard to see, too easy to hide. The killer is angry, and anger's hard to hide. Anger wants out.

Think about it. Killers don't mope. They explode into action. They don't 'contemplate.' That's for Attempters, a separate category. Trainsteppers don't leave notes let alone doubts.

So what am I saying? Am I saying we could have saved this kid if we'd been a little nicer?

Of course.

Yes I am. That's my message. We could have saved this kid if we'd been nicer. If we'd seen through him. But we couldn't. Because nobody helps the pissed. We're not supposed to. We are pissed by the pissed, and we piss on them at every chance, and when they're dead, we piss on their graves. Pissed off people just piss us off. And that's why they almost never get help. Even their doctors hate them.

Should we sneak up behind these people with nets? Shoot them with tranquilizer guns? Lock them up?

It would mean civil war.

The problem isn't just here in my hometown. It's all around the world. What society anywhere in the world today can't be described as "angry?" Maybe it's a pandemic. All we know is the pills aren't working. And probably never did. The moment we started slinging pills we stopped talking. What's been lost is talk. You can't take a pill as a replacement for love, compassion and human contact But we think we can. And our thinking is what give our pills their power.

Judas Iscariot Exonerated?

2006-04-07T15:00:00.000-05:00

Judas, betrayer of Jesus, was set up. By Jesus!

CW FISHER.
The ongoing saga of Jesus Christ took an irretrievable step into the surreal on The National Geographic Channel with the release of The Gospel of Judas, a project funded by the National Geographic Society.

Get this: Jesus takes Judas aside and essentially says he needs a favor to speed things up. Go to the cops and show them where we're camped. They'll hate you for the rest of time, but you'll be the greatest disciple in my book. Then he says go and claps him on the back. Essentially.

I hate to jump right to the point, but if you'd watched the TV show you'd be jumpy too. It took them an hour to prove the document is real and another hour to dance around the implications. According to the NGC, the shocking part is that poor Judas betrayed no one, that he was loyal to Christ, loyal beyond all human measure, so committed that he obeyed the command to turn over "the man that clothes him," as Jesus referred to his bodily vessel.

Pretty shocking. But that's not what shocks me. I'm happy for Judas of course. He'll make a great new patron saint for the falsely accused. Judas could even one day unseat Jason and Justin as the most popular baby's names. He's got a shot. I see an HBO series. Pathos everywhere, like guts. So Judas is squared away.

But now Jesus takes the hot seat. If Jesus whispered this request in Judas's ear, he becomes the mastermind of his own murder. For me, this takes a lot of the fun out of it. It's like hearing the magician tell the trick. Where's the deity in it? He could heal the blind and lame with mud but to turn himself in he had to sacrifice not the life, not the reputation, but the soul of his so-called closest friend (he threw this phrase around a lot) for all time? What an asshole.

Sorry. I'm woozy. After Christ's spectacular execution, thousands of his followers followed him to their own deaths, which, as Jesus before them, they seemed to almost encourage. Nobody was easier to kill than a Christian, or more satisfying. Ask St. Paul, who used to hunt them down and pull them out of their homes and kill them in the street -- until God, or a stroke, or a blinding flash of the obvious hit him like a lightning bolt.

Look at the Middle East today: nothing's changed but cars for camels. You still have religions piled on top of each other like layers in a landfill. Now you have suicide bombers dying in imitation of others for the purpose of seeing heaven. According to The Gospel of Judas, Jesus made similar promises of heaven to Judas, perhaps as a way to soften him up. Realtors do the same thing when they stand in the backyard of a dump and talk about barbecue.

If you want to get somebody's attention, tell them they'll live forever. Then hit them with any if you want. If you bite this apple, if you pray this way, if you give me all your money and your life. Who can resist? Tempting!

You say yes, it's bon voyage, congratulations! A couple of handsome Roman soldiers lift you up, the crowds roars, they set you down in a glowing red iron chair, you scream, the audience approves and the entire arena is gradually filled with the alluring aroma of barbecue.

Pope John Paul II used to rail about the 'culture of death,' his euphemism for America. He was right, of course, we shouldn't watch The Sopranos.

But this 'culture of death' has deep roots. It's the first thing you see when you walk into a Catholic church. Up front, hanging over us, there he is, the dead guy. Jesus. How much more graphic can you get?

If he could say, hey turn me in, could he have also said, hey get me off this thing?

I'm asking questions that would have gotten me killed in any one of the last twenty centuries somewhere in the world. Like I said, it's easy to kill Christians. But I'm just asking. Not saying. Nobody knows exactly. Just roughly. In matters of faith, roughly is better.

What hurts most is seeing Jesus Christ as Tony Soprano and Judas as Christophuh. It's a setup. A hit. I hate it, it sucks. Other details are equally weird. Jesus laughs a lot and appears as a child. Often. One time he walks in on his disciples praying and laughs at them! The guys are appalled but he keeps laughing. When he finally stops he gets dead serious and tosses off some comment about them all praying to the man upstairs while he's standing in the next room.

That's a little creepy. If we had to narrow down forty gospels to four, Judas might be one to cut. Jesus unmedicated. Makes me shiver.

If you like commercials followed by summaries followed by a snippet of content followed by a teaser for the next snippet followed by commercials, you'll enjoy this two hour presentation on the National Geographic Channel. Personally I don't. I'd rather be a tetherball.

But I do thank the National Geographic Society for preserving these Gnostic texts, and I do hope they'll continue. For me, the more gospels the better. Whether I want to look or not.

Eh, politics

2006-04-04T11:15:00.000-05:00

CW FISHER.
A friend mentioned he'd been reading my blog, then changed the subject. I let him go on a minute then stopped him because I couldn't help it. "So, what did you think?"

"Think of what, your blog? Eh. Politics."

Then he went on with his prior thought, but whatever it was I wasn't listening. I was struck by the familiarity of that phrase, "Eh, politics." I was counting the number of times I'd heard it from friends, family, people I actually know, in specific reference to my blog. "Eh, politics." I was up to eight when I interrupted him, demanding, in a nice way, some clarification.

He said he liked my personal stuff, like when I blog about summer camp, the kybo and whatnot. I understood what he meant. He's a terrific guy, I've known him all my life, consider him less a friend than brother. And I trust his opinion of my writing more than anyone else's, mainly because he's generally so complimentary. He's a chef by trade, and to be praised by him is better than being stuffed and served with sauce. His praise transcends reality, puts me in orbit around myself. He read my novel, Book of Lies, before it was The Man That Bounced, and when he finished it, in one sitting, he ran three blocks from his house to mine and burst into my office without knocking. "Best book I ever read!" he announced. Not that I believed him -- not that he lies -- but I sucked it up like a camel and I draw from it still.

Eh, politics is what you say when your ennui is too heavy for words in English. You say eh, politics when the subject matters to you not at all. Eh, politics means you didn't read it. It's what you say when the truth is too ugly. Eh, politics says you suck.

After a few decades of writing for money I thought I had a thick hide. I can write for months without encouragement, but certain kinds of discouragement I find more difficult, especially now that I write for free. When my efforts are swept into a "politics" bin, I myself feel swept. Brushed. I myself have not been shot but rather my dog, Politics, who lies dead at my feet, my beloved pet whom I was just wagging, Polly.

Early on I learned to never mention the fact that I blog to anyone who exists in 3-D. Several family members had strong and immediate opinions and may still, with the general idea being that I'm wasting my time. I think of them every time I post, knowing they're right, knowing I can't help it. I chose to use my real name. What I write here doesn't stay here. I can't deny I blog. If they click me I'm caught.

I can stand not writing for money, but I cannot stand not writing for readers. And since I can't seem to stop writing, I blog. As much as I love the people I love (and I do love them all very much), I'm not blogging for them and I'd prefer they not read me, and if they do, I'd rather they keep it to themselves because I'm an embarrassed old man who's easily frightened by compliments and insults alike.

Generally I don't ask questions at the end of a post because I don't often attract comments and I don't want to learn that I'm talking to myself. For the same reason I almost never check my site meter. I don't want to know.

But just this one time, I'll risk it. What do you think? Should I go Personal? Political? Both?

And while I'm asking, just how screwed up IS my HTML?

These are my "Do-I-have-cancer?" questions: the ones I always have that I don't dare ask.

Well? Do I?

Comparing Apples and AARPs

2006-04-01T02:06:00.000-06:00

CW FISHER
Apple Records, the label founded by The Beatles, is suing Apple Computer for trademark infringement -- and not a moment too soon.

There's no doubt that Apple Computer brought down the Beatles -- Yoko had nothing to do with it -- but timeliness must play into the equation somewhere, because it all went down 20 years ago today Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play. And here's Billy Shears, singing out of tune and starting trouble.

Lawsuits. Such a handwiping word. Yes, but names matter. To be more accurate, marks matter. How long before McDonald's figures out they own exactly half of Steve Job's Mac franchise?

This kind of logic could ignite a series of trademark suits and countersuits that would be fun to watch. But why wait? Let's fan a few flames.

One of the first things I learned when I turned fifty was that AARP stands for nothing. Absolutely nada. It used to stand for the American Association of Retired Persons but somebody pointed out that he wasn't retired, and somebody else cracked an eyelid and said yeah! and before you knew it everybody was all cranked up about this retired persons business, because everybody knows meddling's a full time job. And so it was resolved. Whatever AARP stood for, these "retired persons" had nothing to do with it. Then they took a nap. And that's how AARP became AA.

The drunks went crazy. First of all, they weren't drunks, and second, that name was taken. Enter American Airlines, hands on hips, cool logo on a lapel pin: AA. But look closer at that logo. Aren't those actually Golden Arches in blue?

Don't get cocky, fat boy.

The Motorola Bat Wings have been around longer than you, Mickey D's. And speaking of Mickey... is that D for Disney?

It is true that Ray Kroc was forced to retire Speedy Service, the happy waving walking waving neon hamburgerman that said zzt, zzzt, because of his uncanny resemblance to Speedee Alka-Selzter, who was much
younger and rumored to be clay, not that it mattered. McDonald's insisted they looked nothing alike, that the fact that they had the same name was coincidental, and the association of their food with an anacid unfortunate. They lost. But this face-off was the event that created Ronald McDonald, originally Willard Scott, now generally fiberglass or cardboard.

Meanwhile, AARP bleeds, chopped in two, doesn't know its head from its ass or even what to call itself in a press release. All because somebody said old people could do it. Man oh man, were they ever wrong. They shuffled off to the porch, beaten and depressed, but before they even made it out of the kitchen, they completely forgot where they were going.

By default they were now the American Association.

But it felt too broad. Wasn't that what America used to be? And what about their expansion plans overseas? Was it wise use the word American in a place such as, well, elsewhere?

They searched for a more appropriate acronym. Avenues of Advancement of Real old People came close, as did Anti Aging Rowdy Pholks; quite a few liked Adults All Resting Peacefully; only seven went for Age Action Real Politick, but they wanted it real bad and were willing to take hostages to dinner.

In the end it made no difference, they went with AARP, just AARP, which stood for nothing -- sounds so damning to say so, but true nonetheless. AARP means nothing.

It worked for Seinfeld. And the talents of Britney Spears and Jennifer Lopez. Lots of people are good at making a big deal about nothing. I'm one of them.

But to make it part of your name? I'm AARP, I mean nothing, I'm just a sound, like a very loud belch -- AARP?

If it's a word and not an acronym, why do they put it in caps? Why didn't they go with Aarp? It's classy, understated, it treats the word like a word, not an acronym, and it becomes the root for many aarplike words in the future. Such as Aarper, Aarpist, Aarpy, Aarpistic.

When I was a kid and my parents needed to say something privately, they spoke the "Arp language," where the arp syllable precedes the vowel, as in: "Larpet's abarpandarpon tharpe karpids arpat tharpe starpop sarpign." Your Aarp membership would entitle you to speak the official language of the wiser generations, and provide the rest of us a reason not to listen.

AARP, meaning nothing, has now divided itself into four meaningless parts to better cope with four distinct age groups within its membership of not retired people, creating a separate magazine for people in their fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties. People in their nineties have taken the whole thing very hard and will take to the streets when the van gets here. Relatives of the recently deceased have now joined the fray, wondering what happened to their subscriptions, prompting AARP to question whether they should open their membership to the dead, which is not a bad idea since 1% of them remain extremely wealthy.

Rest in peace RP. As for the Apples, you guys work it out.

Easterphobia

2006-03-31T19:44:00.000-06:00

CW FISHER
I gave up Easter for lent. I had to. Because I hate everything about Easter, baskets, bunnies, candy, dresses, wooly suits, SRO churches full of phonies, fake grass, pastel colors in general, anything made by Paas, easter eggs, jellybeans except black ones, everything. Relatives, ham, cloves, all of it.

Wait. I love my relatives, it's their traditions I hate: they interfere with mine. The Big Effing Easter Egg Hunt, for example. Used to be at our house, and every year I'd make a mad dash to get rid of a winter's worth of dog crap before the moms got there.

What's so pagan about hiding food products in the mud where the animals do their business?

Easter, obviously, is the holiest Christian holiday, our day of brand differentiation when we rise above the cheap shots of competing brands to say bring it on, Jews, take your best shot, Muslims, make fun of our cloven ham -- but you're not getting any.

It's all about resurrection. The Passion of the Christ reappeared just as Mel Gibson said it would. Of course, these days everybody says I'll be back, even former California governor Gray Davis said it. He hasn't made good on it yet, but then again neither has Jesus.

Easter in the Cathlic Church is all about Christ's victory over death, which explains the overkill. Mass becomes massive. If one song is good, twenty are better. You love a parade? Let's have a parade right now, and now let's bring out the girl's tumbling team! And now, the boys! Let's everybody tumble for Jesus!

The tumbling thing actually happened. It was the year we arrived two hours early because somebody wanted get a good seat, the year I lost the use of both legs because the pew was too hard and the crowd was too thick to get up and stretch, the same year I thought my bladder would explode. I remember what it was like when I saw that line extending from the restrooms, and I remember every bump from the ride home and the relief I felt on finally letting it go.

That's what Easter is to me. Relief. The relief of knowing it can't last forever. Easter, thank God, is but a simulation of eternity.

Public Nakedness

2006-03-29T15:29:00.000-06:00

CW FISHER
We were late for swimming lessons. My stomach was twisted up like a wet towel. Mom pulled up to the Y, told me to find Grandma a good seat by the window and that she'd pick us up in an hour. So Grandma and I shuffled in slow motion across the narrow expanse of blacktop. We climbed the curb and raced through the doors of the YMCA until our feet came to the shore of a vast carpet across which was a chair where Grandma would ultimately drop. Through the glass on the far horizon I could see the girls and boys already poolside and clustered in clumps according to sex, and I pondered the obvious fact that I would be the last one in the pool, emerging alone with sixtysome eyeballs examining my bony, veiny, perpetually blue body.

We were just beginning docking procedures when Grandma said, "Now wait," which meant I was about to get a dreaded tip. Grandma wasn't old, she was only in her fifties, about my age now, but she'd had a bad stroke, lost her speech, and after Grandpa died she came to live with us, and she always insisted on slipping me money, always on the sly. Any refusal to accept, while expected, was refused. "Now wait," she said again, getting ready the battleship Purse in which her wallet lay snapped and loaded with secret compartments full of who knew what, could be fives, could be a twenty, more likely a buck. I never knew for sure whether she knew what she was giving me so I always checked (Holy gosh gramma, five dollars? Are you sure?). I buffed it up so she'd feel good about it, but the truth was I hated the ritual, was embarrassed by it, felt compelled for some reason to keep topping my last performance, maybe because the truth was so incredibly dark: that I would pay her to stop. "Now wait," she dug. I winced in gastric pain as my adrenals spat instructions: the one on the left said fight, the one on the right said flight, and I stood in the middle cooing thank yous.

"A dollar? Thanks, Grandma! Gotta go!" And I was gone. In a single bound around the corner, two more into the locker room, the blessedly empty, strangely improved locker room. My clothes were off in a blink, swimsuit at the ready, when I caught in the mirror a glimpse of myself, the Before picture. I puffed out my ribcage and exposed my blue veins like Superman I imagined, then listened to the quiet. The instructors were instructing. I could miss that, I thought.

I 'd never taken a shower in the mens locker room before. I was too short and didn't appreciate where my face stopped. But now. Ooo baby. Unlimited hot water. I stood like a stone, a waterfall I was, with no sister to bang on the door, just me, alone, ancient as a god of the rain forest, not shivering in some freezing swimming lesson.

And then I heard my name. Then again only louder. And again! I shut off the water and ran out. "Here!" I said. "Present!" Everybody turned. A whistle blew. "Hey! You can't come out here like that!" I looked down. The girls screamed. It all happened so slowly I had time to glimpse Grandma laughing behind the glass. It was the only time ever that I was glad for her aphasia.

A few weeks ago my hard drive crashed. While it was being fixed I used a different machine, but my blog looked funny for no reason, so I fixed it. When my original machine came back, my blog looked funny again, completely out of whack, and that's when I realized I'd resized my blog based on the highest possible screen resolution, which meant my blog was screwed up for two weeks, featuring gigantic type for super old people. Only one person, Karma, mentioned it. Apparently the rest of you never heard of karma. But now the world knows my secret. I look stupid naked.

Wrath of Ra

2006-03-24T03:13:00.000-06:00

CW FISHER
You're watching Lost when the screen suddenly stutters off and on just as the Balloon Man is finally giving the Bald Guy and the Beardy Doctor a key piece of information that might very well have resolved one tiny piece of this sprawling jigsaw puzzle but you don't know what it is because all you heard was "cereal?" "kill y" and "OO!"

You grab your phone and punch your friend but she's out of range and so's everybody else and you've only got one bar. You go online but Firefox won't start, try your laptop but Google keeps telling you to wait a sec. You go to bed with the problem unsolved--unresolved in microspeak--but in the morning, when your radio goes off--meaning on--at exactly 5:15 as usual, it's rain, just rain, a waterfall maybe, the shower? But when a large human voice booms a brief oo you awaken, punch the clock, and blink, lost on the very edge of your own bed, feel like it's raining all over the world.

You start the car and a waterspout crashes through the windshield that would have killed you instantly if it hadn't been the radio. Shorn of all communications you're more perturbed than alarmed but you feel great relief when you learn, long before you arrive at work, that you are far from the only one. You can read it on the faces of people in passing cars because they're reading your face and you're all reflecting back the same question: Who took my radio?

Faces that would otherwise be glued to the television are now unglued and in the streets, clogging the highways, people pulling over just to talk until roads become parking lots and talk becomes rumor. Word of mouth makes a bold return as news is passed mouth to mouth like herpes, apartment doors are banged on, old folks drug out, kids taken out of school, the happiest day of their lives, there's a big yellow sun in a big yellow sky, but the moms hold them tight and keep trying dad who still hasn't made it to work.

By now the whole neighborhood knows it's terrorism, or an attack by Japan, but the people on the road begin losing interest in the entire topic the moment they start keeling over. Word comes up it's just the sun, a solar flare, big one, no doubt, of the kind that occurs seasonally, every forty years or so, but this, well this gigantic solar wind first took out the satellites and now it's irradiating Earth and cooking its various Earthlings, including you, from the inside out.

Being smarter than average you're one of the first to dive under your car where you stay for weeks, surviving lesions and dehydration through the generosity of the many people around you who had more water than luck.

Miserable scenario, this, but two thoughts. First, you survived, so it wasn't such a bad scenario. Second, I might have exaggerated the part about being cooked alive. Earth's atmosphere still does a good job of protecting its critters from radiation, overall. I just wanted to get your attention because I'm mad about Lost.

However, if you're still interested, this is what the scientists are predicting.

Dread the Kybo

2006-03-22T14:35:00.000-06:00

CW FISHER.
"Keep your bowels open," said the counselor twice. "Keep your bowels open."

We were only nine. It was a strange and frightening message, and the very first thing we were told on arriving at summer camp, hundreds of miles from home. "If you do not keep your bowels open," he warned ominously, "you will suffer!"

I was already suffering and had my hand up, which he ignored. Skylar had a feather hanging from his whistle which distinguished him from Lumpy, who didn't. The whistles made them both counselors, but the feather made Skylar chief of the Oneida, which I'd just learned was my tribe.

But a terrible mistake had been made. I was supposed to be in the same cabin as my best friend, Gary, but they put Gary in with the Cheyenne by mistake. Which was why my hand was up.

"You will use the Kybo three times a day!"

Somebody asked him what's a kybo, and Skylar shouted: ""Keep your bowels open!" We all took a half step back. Whatever this kybo turned out to be it wouldn't be good. Nervous juice was pouring into my guts.

"If," shouted Lumpy, "you hear this sound..." We listened carefully. Birds twittered above us. Somebody ran into the bathrooms. We heard a cymbal crash followed by a roar finished off with a high-pitched ghostly moan. It was seven in the morning but we were all ready to bolt.

"If you hear that sound," continued Lumpy, walking around us slowly, making eye contact one by one under the smiling gaze of Skylar the elder, "you'd just better hope you can run faster than the other guy, because you can't both make it out of that little door at the same time."

We lined up at the kybo and they let us in eight at a time and timed us with stopwatches so we'd get out of there before the kybo woke up. I learned that by standing at the end of the line I could avoid the entire experience, and I was successful for ten days, at which point I was forced to visit the nurse as I could not stand straight.

The nurse had a real bathroom with a toilet and a door, plus she had no stopwatch or feather or sadistic sense of humor. She made me tea and gave me books to read as I opened my bowels for the first time in 10 days. We talked between the door.

"Did you ever get chased by the kybo?" I asked her.

She had no idea what I was talking about, thought I said 'cowboy,' which only scared me more, so I dropped it. But as I was leaving, I tried out the code. "Keep your bowels open," I said meaningfully.

"I will," she promised.

Part of me wanted to warn her, but another part said hold off, what if she laughs at you. So I held it in. I had four more days, but I had the confidence of a kid who'd made it for ten. The kybo could kiss my ass.

I've held this in for 45 years. If you're thinking of sending your kid to summer camp, remember the kybo, and try to break it to them gently. Yes, the kybo exists, we know this, we accept it. But it comes not from the toilet but from the mouths of assholes and should therefore not be feared but wiped.

Have you seen Mrs. Christ?

2006-03-21T23:37:00.000-06:00

CW FISHER.
Dan Brown, author of the bestsellingest book ever, The Da Vinci Code, is on trial in Britain for stealing the ideas of another bestseller, Holy Blood, Holy Grail.

I happened to read both books right before the suit was filed and was astonished when the court agreed to hear the case. I thought you couldn't buy that kind of publicity.

The central idea in both books -- that Jesus was a family man who survived crucifixion and escaped with his wife Mary Magdalene to the south of France where their progeny survives -- is not a new idea.

And it wasn't a new idea in Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ.

The only time this idea was new was when it was first told by the Gnostics in the first century. These ideas have been covered up ever since, codified and secreted away, denied in whole and in part by the Holy Catholic Church for reasons having to do with its own survival.

Proofs of this scenario have been spun like spiderwebs across two millennia, but the proofs don't belong to the authors either.

Holy Blood, Holy Grail is a disaster of prose, a thick book written by three researchers covering 20 centuries of clues, rumors and secrets in the sprawling style of a doctoral thesis. Good though. Because the book is an original attempt to put all the disparate clues together to form a plausible idea -- that a secret organization, the Priory of Sion, long associated with the Crusaders who sought the Holy Grail, was the key protector of the true grail, which is not exactly a carpenter's cup but a chalice of a different sort: a vagina. That's even better than the golden fleece.

Dan Brown thought so too, and he and his wife set out to reproduce it as a comic book, sexing it up with Da Vinci's famous encrypted paintings, and adding a few codes of their own to further clutter available misinformation. The literary result is a movie in print. Nonstop action. Chase scenes through the Louvre. Sound bite factoids passed back and forth in the ratatat he-she style of The Thin Man.

The Da Vinci Code is a thin book. Pap. But it does a fantastic job of presenting an array of evidence in an unforgettable way. Both books told the same story, but it's fifty pounds of feathers versus 50 lbs of bird seed. One's easier to carry.

Neither is the final word, but together they've began a broader discussion, continued in Gary Wills' What Jesus Meant, which argues that Christ wasn't a Christian, that he would have hated the church created in his name, that he was a radical who commanded his followers to hate their own mothers and brothers. The stuff you read and find yourself saying Jesus Christ!

Ideas are stolen all the time. Every time a new ear hears it, theft occurs. Retold, it is both improved and destroyed. It's easy to see how Peter the Rock could bungle the Church and let it fall into the hands of a publicist like Paul. It's easy to see the Apostles as former fishermen gone bigtime, protecting their turf, careful of who they let in, dodgy as Sopranos. And it's logical they resented women since they shut them out of their club almost completely, and still do.

The only exception to the no-girls rule is Mary, Mother of God, but that's because she was first known as Isis, Mother of God. She came up out of Egypt, made her way to Rome, hit the pagans like a hurricane, can't be made to go away -- last seen at Lourdes. Unless you bought that toast on eBay.

It could be a great relief get off the cross. It would make it easier to focus on the commandment to love one another as we love ourselves, because it's hard, and we don't love ourselves let alone anyone else, not well anyway. Maybe two thousand years celebrating suffering clouded our vision. It's not impossible. The fishermen were chronic bunglers, babblers and babies before they got the Holy Spirit. Some of it must have slipped through.

Bystanding

2006-03-16T07:51:00.001-06:00

CW FISHER
A great speech never comes easy, unless you let it.

The former U.S. Surgeon General under George H. W. Bush was receiving an award for putting iodine in the world's salt supply, which drastically reduced blindness in children. Dr. Antonia C. Novello asked me to draft her remarks and after a few attempts we had a gem. On the morning of the ceremony we met in the rehearsal room and she introduced me to her husband, who, by his own description, was better known as the brother of Don Novello, a.k.a Father Guido Sarducci on Saturday Night Live. The man looked and sounded more like Ricardo Montalban, and I realized why Fr. Sarducci's accent was so funny: he was a Spaniard speaking English with a fake Italian accent! I said this out loud to deafening silence. "No, no," he eventually said, "my brother speaks very good English."

Mr. Novello then handed me a piece of paper and asked if I could get it into the teleprompter, explaining that, as he was looking over my draft, which was very good, by the way, he kept feeling he was missing something, so he gave it a shot and he hoped I wasn't disappointed, and I told him I'm only a midwife, I'm not a mother, not even a brother or a husband for that matter and I invited his wife, who was the client of my client, to stand on the "X" and give it a read.

She was magnificent. A dozen people broke into applause. Dr. Novello herself was near tears, arms full of imaginary roses, but her husband was bothered by just one thing. The room focused on his finger, which he waved toward Ernie the prompter guy. "I would like for you to insert," he intoned, eyes closed, "the following.

"Please, before the last graph. Lord," he said, "let us not be victims!"

It was an extraordinary climax, his wife agreed, and it was kept. "With one addition!" she said. "And let us not be perpy traitors!"

Her husband grabbed his chest. The room applauded with enthusiastic uncertainty. The prompter guy looked at me. Dr. Novello turned to me with fisted hips and asked me what the hell was a perpy traitor. I spelled it for Ernie and she read it again. "Lord," she commanded, "let us not be victims! And let us not be perpetrators!"

"And let us not be..." said her husband.

"And let us not be..." she repeated, looking at me. The room looked at me. Her husband also looked at me. My client looked at me.

"Hesitant?" I offered.

People used to remind me that I was hired for moments like this. But I wasn't about to ruin Mr. Novello's moment, and I read the situation correctly. "But above all!" he shouted, "let us not be bystanders!"

And so her message was writ: Lord, let us not be victims, let us not be perpetrators, and above all, let us not be bystanders.

The only line I wrote was the one that brought the house down. Thank you.

This prayer that spontaneously combusted into my script always made me feel sorry for God. What's he supposed to do? If he can't let us be victims or perpetrators or bystanders, what's left? Mr. Novello?

Lost Drive

2006-03-07T00:28:00.000-06:00

CW FISHER.
I'm reminded today of the computer's first name, which is Personal.

I was there when the PC was born, and I specifically recall my reaction on first hearing its name. I thought it was premature to get so chummy. I feel vindicated.

I have taken personally everything my many personal computers have done to me over the years, and today I take personally its theft of my art and soul. Two days ago the ghost in the machine gave up and blew away, taking with it my art, my pictures, my music, my books, blogs, card game, email.

My Computer killed itself.

These things are never expected, but there were signs, looking back. I tried to install a new security system is all, just another innocent try at anything not Norton. It extracted, installed, rebooted and boom. Came up Chinese. Everything all spelled out in Wingdings.

My Personal Computer doesn't know me anymore. My password means nothing. Suddenly I'm a Nobody to My Best Friend in the Whole Wide World, just another schmo trying to get past the bouncer. Tightening. Muscle. Tension. Racing. Heart. Call son! flop on floor.

( Duck! And Cover! )

In seconds I am deep asleep but dimly aware my son is on it, yanking the hood, ripping its guts out, refibrilating it, whacking it with a penlight, I see the whole thing in sound before I submerge into something close to coma, or maybe Tacoma, I've never been either place.

It's been three days now. Pers is elsewhere, on his back, opened up, harvested. Perhaps My Documents will be recovered with tweezers. Perhaps My Adobe Photoshop brand images will repixilate. And my novels, and the opera I've been writing for six years.

My son is a genius, have I told you that? He even looks like young Dr. Frankenstein. A mad genius who has created for me a computer of astonishing intelligence from mere parts that's better than the whole of my former significant other, and he tells me there's an even smarter machine coming tonight! And guess what? It's Personal! It's old Persy! Regutted!

I'm a little hesitant frankly to invite the traitor back into my office but if he still has that play we were working on I could let bygones begone.

But I'll put my faith in My Personal Son. Curtis Dan, you are the man.

Leaving Earth

2006-03-01T20:46:00.000-06:00

CW FISHER.
Like flies on a window, man is driven to escape: seeing a sea, he needs to sail it; a sky, he's got to fly. His greatest drive is neither sex nor sustenance but curiosity -- this insatiable need to know. The heavens taught him time, the stars navigation, the rest was divvied between science and religion, and in terribly short order man burst into outer space and began searching other planets, almost within a single tic mark on the scrolling timeline of species.

Consider now the convergence of two unlikely events: first, the quickening death of our current planet, and second, the realization that there are thousands of other earthlike planets out there, coupled with our ability to get to them.

We'll talk about the death of our current plant some other time when I'm in the mood. For now, accept it. It might not happen in your lifetime or your great grandchildren's, but the fact is it's already happening.

Moving on to other planets. They exist, they are plentiful, and NASA has already chosen five planets most like earth in terms of size, age and distance from a star similar to our sun in size, age and intensity. When these criteria match, liquid water becomes a good probability, and a breathable atmosphere more likely. We're going there. Get used to it.

Blink and you will see near space commercial travel, New York to Tokyo in 20 minutes. Blink again, international space stations and colonies on the moon. By the third blink we'll be traveling in and out of our atmosphere via the space elevator, essentially a hoop that circles the earth to which tubes hang from space to the earth. Heat is not an issue; the barrier is broken without friction. It's a 12 minute ride to a space station. Ship to planet elevators could be used to get on and off other planets without burning up. Imagine what all this will mean to oven cleaning.

All this searching all these years and that's all it was? Searching? Caesar, Constantine, Hannibal, Columbus, all searching, and for what?

Maybe for this, the ultimate way out. Didn't we just always know the earth was going to do this? Yes, we did. We wrote about it. It's all through the Bible. It's Superman's story. Ancient stuff. Like every Star Trek ever made. Corny as hell but there you are, watching. And where's Kirk when you need him? Off doing Geico.

Quantum physics is only marginally better understood than it was 100 years ago when Albert Einstein pulled it out of thin air, except that we now have no doubt that it works and that it's true, and that its promises are nearly within our grasp: the promise of limitless, free energy, the promise of time travel, the possibility of one day finding our true place in the fabric of the universe, whatever that is.

Something huge is happening that we are failing to see clearly, maybe because if we saw it we'd be paralyzed by it. Nevertheless it's true. Life exists on other planets; we're shopping for a new house; we're going to have some wacky new neighbors. And you'll like it there. There ends the good news.

The rest of us will be left behind to defend our caves and wells, hunting by night what scant meat is worth the expense of our own calories. Speech will be the first to go, as it only attracts attention. "Oo oo" is enough to scurry any brood from the path of that big old, lit up, sword swinging Jesus on a white horse sumbitch come racing through here all hours. But when we gaze up into the stars, we'll be filled with ancient knowledge, that somewhere out there we knew somebody sometime or something. We're sure of it. And we'll start all over again to prove it.

Panic!

2006-02-25T14:55:00.001-06:00

You're typing but you keep making mistakes. It's a cha-cha: backspace, fix, type and stumble. Concentrating, you stop breathing; your fingers curl up and stiffen, your lips tingle, your arms feel alien and unreliable, suddenly you're standing, lungs pumping, heart's racing, brain's screaming Run!

What's happening to you? Nothing, of course. It's happening to me. I'm just putting it in terms you'll understand.

You're in a restaurant enjoying a light dinner with someone you've known all your life. Your salad comes. You sigh contentedly and dig in. But the fork keeps missing. Concentrating, you forget to breathe. You keep trying, it keeps getting worse. You put the fork down, smile like you're resting, but your face is numb and clearly you're not resting, and besides, nobody 'rests.' You try again, the spoon this time, your finger and the spoon, two hands plus the spoon. You bring your head low to the plate and try to sort of sweep it into your mouth -- not because you have no table manners, not because you're starving, but because you refuse to be defeated by whatever it is this feeling you have turns out to be. Of course, you are in a restaurant, and the look of alarm on your boothmate's face should be telling you the same thing your pounding heart is telling you, which is Run!

What are you doing? Well, I don't know, and I don't care, I'm getting the hell out of here and whatever you do is your decision.

I've enjoyed almost a week of panic attacks and I have to tell you something. It's true what Bush says. You can't hide. You really cannot hide. And neither can I.

Cheney rampage nothing new

2006-02-14T16:23:00.000-06:00

CW FISHER.
They drove in silence to where the quail had been decaged and coveyed, then tromped a few yards and aimed. "Hey, Wittington," said the vice president, and as his companion turned, Dick Cheney blew his head off.

Or meant to. It was a quail shotgun. Any more gun would destroy the quail, along with the illusion they were eating their own kill. So what if he pulled the trigger? He was just kidding. Ah, let's go.

Leaving the 78 year old lawyer to die, the vice president vowed to give him a cell call once he got back to Washington.

This kind of thing, unfortunately, is nothing new for Dick Cheney, who enjoys these brief roadside hunting trips no matter how badly they turn out, able shrug off such incidents with a cheerful bit of philosophy: "They had it coming anyway."

Of greater concern now are the unsubstantiated but increasing frequency of reports that Mr. Cheney has been torturing hunters in the White House basement for the past six years. Cheney denies the allegation, saying only that the next person who repeats the rumor will be tortured in the White House basement.

Wiretraps

2006-02-13T15:09:00.000-06:00

CW FISHER.
Midway through a Newsweek article about the congressional hearings on NSA domestic wiretapping it suddenly hit me: it's all crap. The White House got caught listening in our phone calls and seized on the issue. Yes! they said, it's true! And we'll do it again!

Why the enthusiasm? Maybe because domestic wiretapping is the only domestic program Bush can push. Maybe they went on the attack because that's what you do when you can't retreat. Or maybe... they created the whole thing as a distraction from more pressing issues.

Like what the hell we're going to do about New Orleans where Americans are still waiting for federal help.

Federal help is the real issue the feds are ignoring, and the issue is far broader than just New Orleans or just George Bush. Global warming guarantees more and worse disasters ahead. Meanwhile, the secret's out: Don't depend on the fed. Homeland Security, FEMA, the National Guard -- they are not there, they are blue air. Little more than unexecuted plans. Heavily funded proposals. Otherwise empty space.

The National Guard has never been larger -- it's just that they're in another nation right now. Making sure they don't get electricity either.

The roots of the underlying problem are easy to find: government. But fixing the problem will never be easy. "The government" thinks it can fix itself with hearings. It can't. Hearings only help "The Daily Show."

The government can't fix itself if the government doesn't exist, at least not as we know it. Washington is a layer cake decorated with monuments, but under the frosting is where the cake is. This is where the real power is said to lie. But then again real power lies. So who knows for sure what happens under the frosting?

The issue isn't wiretaps but wiretraps. The issue isn't executive power but executive payola. Who is our government working for?

There's a gathering realization that America doesn't belong to Americans anymore, that it's owned by unknowable corporations with invisible motives who do as they wish and as they see fit for purposes concealed and reasons unrevealed, which, under scrutiny, make no logical sense until seen through the lens of payment for services rendered.

Deep Throat long ago advised us to follow the money, and money, even today, remains a good leader, talkative and motivational. And even today powermad people do incomprehensible things. Where they used to only bug each other, now they can bug us all, plus pick us up and torture us. We can either bug em back or become a nation of Oliver Stone clones.

I'm not terribly worried about domestic wiretaps. I don't care if Bush wants to hear me order a pizza. I've heard plenty of other people's cell calls, usually in grocery stores, and trust me, nobody says anything of value. I've seen people standing all by themselves in canned goods explaining step by step to the Hormel Chili how they poked that bitch at Steak 'n' Shake. And conversations like these are taking place right now all over the world. Have at it, George.

But George. Man, there's no way you've got the algorithm to make it happen. Not even if you seize Google and takeover Yahoo. You're government.

Here's a plan. If it rains, seek shelter. Help your neighbors. Cooperate or perish. If you're waiting for help you are the problem. And remember: anybody using the phrase "the blame game" is playing it.

Cartoon Wars

2006-02-09T21:45:00.000-06:00

Addicted to Lies

2006-02-01T20:46:00.000-06:00

Dear Reader: Please excuse Curt for not writing about the President's State of the Union address sooner. He didn't know where to start. Signed, Curt's Mom

CW FISHER.
Days after George Bush laid out his vision for America's near future most of us remain on the far shore of the sea of excrement he spewed during his long and windy SOU. By the time he got to the part about the American oil addiction, it was already deep, but for Bush to claim we're addicted to oil is like a saloon owner calling his own patrons a bunch of drunks. Where will it lead? He gets on the bar and says he's going to turn the joint into an ice cream parlor, how's that? Does he mean it? No. It's just his way of saying: I wish you'd appreciate me.

Surreality is George Bush, Texas oilman, recovering alcoholic, American President, stating in his State of the Union address that America's oil addiction is a serious problem that we, as a nation, must face together. Wow. A nation drops into the sofa, talks one at a time.

From the mouth of George II: alternative energies, hybrids, hydrogen, wow! Then he moved on to other cheap promises. Freedom isn't free, but talk still comes pretty cheap.

Moments of surreality in a Bush speech are easy to spot. First he looks directly into the camera and lies in the form of a punchline, then he holds our gaze as the applause water runs. The humorlessness of his deadpan begins it. With apparent unawareness of irony, he states, stares, blinks, stares -- but something after the blink cues slo-mo and the voice of Michael Moore.

Do we detect in this beady-eyed president the thumbprint of surrealist Karl Rove? Before there were yes men there were no men, briefly. But while the ascent of the yes men was rapid, their predictability was immobile. Having risen to the top, they roosted, cooed and lulled our leaders into trying out their biggest ideas with the casual detachment of trying the dip. Along came Rove, and suddenly Yes meant No. And the dip was still good.

So we're going over to hydrogen, folks. And we're not going to talk about domestic surveillance right now, but if we had to, we'd say we're doing it because we can. If it bugs you, it's your problem.

Maybe what George W. Bush is really trying to say is something akin to what Abraham W. Lincoln once said: You can fool some of the people some of the time -- but if you don't try just because they say you can't fool all the people all the time -- then you won't fool anybody. So which would you rather have?