Heads Up, incoming

As an American I can’t help but be thrilled, as I am sure you are, by Lance Armstrong’s incredible win, for the seventh straight time, of some French contest or game or something, in their Frenchy country. But, I wonder, is that news I can use? Or not?

What the heck is news we can use, anyway? This is supposed to be a community newspaper. But what is community news, anyway? Is it just news that happens around here, in the local community? Is it news that makes our community feel good, like the Lance thing? Or is it news that tells us something that we can really use, such as an announcement of “heads up, incoming?”

I say it’s the “heads up, incoming” thing. Let’s take an example. About two weeks ago some terrorists set off three bombs in London, a city in another one of those unpatriotic countries where they don’t recite our Pledge of Allegiance. In fact it’s just above France on the map. Anyway, a week later, on account of those bombings, you had New York police randomly searching the bags of subway users.

Now, I don’t know much about geography. I don’t know the price of tea in China, now that their currency is no longer pegged to the dollar. I don’t know how much wool they mine in Australia, or whether or not they use modern synthetics instead. I’m a good American, so I prefer to mind my own business. But I can look at page 5 of my Funk & Wagnall’s Hammond World Atlas, as I’m doing right now, and I can tell you that Seattle is only an inch from New York, while New York is a whole inch and a half, about, from London!

What that tells us is this: the effects of three London bombings were able to travel, uh, three-fifths of the way here in just one week. So: Heads up! Incoming! You’re only two London bombs away from random searches of your own! Run and hide!

Let’s take a related example. Since the bombings the London police have taken to wearing all black, going around like ninjas, carrying guns, and shooting foreign looking guys who run away from guys that look like ninjas with guns. I would like to say it can’t happen here, but, HOLY-MOLY, our cops ALREADY carry guns, so ANYTHING could push them over the edge! Heads up! Incoming!

If you don’t believe me you should watch your local TV news, like Channel Nine and a Half News at Nine and a Half or whatever. Some guy named Greg or Steve will be talking to some woman named Nancy, say, and he’ll say, “So, Nancy, say, is there something the viewers here in Seattle can do to avoid being shot by men who look like ninjas with guns?” And Nancy, who plays the smart one, will say, “Yes there is, Greg or Steve. Experts around the world all agree that if you are confronted by men who look like ninjas and if they appear to have guns, you should NOT look foreign to them, and whatever you do, do NOT run away.” “That’s good to know, Nancy!” “It sure is, Greg or Steve!”

In fact the House of Representatives, a legislative body that often meets 3000 or so miles from here, has just decided it wants to renew the PATRIOT Act for another ten years. That could help pay for those cool all-black ensembles for our local police, not to mention more guns. I’m betting this is important to my homeless or formerly-homeless, mostly foreign looking, poor to middling-poor, already kicked-down & beaten-around community.

And for those of you who don’t look foreign, I want you to look around you at the foreign-looking people and say, out loud, so loud they can hear you, “There but for the Grace of God go I,” because I’m an incorrigible trouble-maker.

Legged Forces? Ha!

OK, I have a weird sense of humor. I'm not going to tell you I don't giggle during funerals. How could death not be funny? I guffaw at expressions like "hand soap" and "light bulb." Have you ever used elbow soap? No? Are your elbows filthy? What's the opposite of a light bulb? A dark bulb? A heavy bulb? How many Deadheads does it take to change a heavy bulb, man? These things occur to me the instant I hear the words, no matter how often I hear them. I laugh without warning or explanation, and then people around me slowly back away.

So I set forth topics here with considerable trepidation. I worry that the things I find hilarious may be only mildly humorous to my readers. Or worse, I think I might make some crack about some subject, and everyone might recoil in horror, and my friends might have me locked up for my own protection and emergency psychiatric care.

That might happen for example if I wrote this column about Andrea Dworkin and my thoughts on how gay pornography can only do violence to women by excluding them, and how "f*** you" is really a very nice thing to say to someone: "F*** you." "Why thank you very much, I'd enjoy that immensely. And you get f***ed, too." "Thank YOU. You are ever so gracious!"

But this week we aren't going there. We are going to the land of sure-fire universal humor. We are talking about the likes of monkeys riding Labradors, ducks wearing Groucho Marx glasses, and squirrels water-skiing. We are talking about GW Bush's iPod playlist.

What a gift this is! For those of you who were living in a bomb shelter all last week, an aide of our president has revealed GWs iPod playlist, according to a New York Times story. Mr. Blake Gottesman, Bush's personal aide, actually downloaded the songs on the list to Bush's iPod, because Mr. Bush is so busy freeing the world, but we are all certain that the list reflects Bush's tastes, or at least his tastes as understood by someone extremely close to him. So what we have here, boys and girls, is nothing short of the George Bush Rosetta Stone!

Sure, the New York Times didn't publish the whole list. They only teased us with a dozen or so titles and a general description of the rest. But that general description came through the filter of the New York Times, the most respected newspaper in the world of the 90s. If that doesn't make it golden information, it's at least really shiny information.

So what do we know about George Bush now that we didn't know before? Well, for one, he likes "My Sharona," a song about an old perv hot for a much younger girl. So Bush is a letch. We know that the list is heavy on boomer rock and short on R&B, AKA "colored music." Based on secondary sources, we are fairly confident that there is no Elton John, although we are still awaiting confirmation. There is evidently only one female artist on the list.

We are sure of this: if George weren't president he'd be an all-the-time cowboy-hat-wearing crying-in-his-milk ex-alcoholic I'll-buy-your-beer but I'm-on-the-wagon-myself kind of letch. Just like he acts!

Our final conclusion: George Bush is an ex-alcoholic, racist, mostly sexist, homophobic, wannabe pedophile. This information will be very valuable to foreign governments seeking to know how George Bush will react in a crisis. He'd react like anybody you've seen on the Jerry Springer show, only in slow motion.

Now, looking at that assessment, consider this: The US Justice Department and the Bush Administration, through things like the PATRIOT Act, wants to know what YOU read and what music YOU listen to. After their agents have found that out, what would their assessments of YOU look like?