Category: Short Subjects

“Hello?” I say into my cell phone.

A young woman answers, “Dad?”

“Uh, you have the wrong number,” I say.

“Oh,” she suppresses a laugh, “sorry about that.”

“No problem.”

Recently seen bumper sticker: “If you’ve ever heard that little voice in your head… Jesus hears it, too. You are never alone.”

So where was I when it happened?

I was in the middle of the Island, on a diner’s rooftop, working on an exhaust fan. The fan next to me started to hum lower, as if another motor turned on on the same circuit, so I paused to look at it. A freezer compressor about 20 feet away from me turned off and on, and I said to myself, “It would be a strange thing to put both those things on the same circuit.” Then I promptly ignored it and went back to work.

“Hey! Hey, you up there!” I heard below, but ignored it, since no one could actually see me from the ground due to the height of the facade of the building. I continued to work.

“Hey, guy,” I heard in a thick Spanish accent from just behind me. I turned to look, and one of the diner’s cooks had climbed the ladder and was gesturing downwards. “The lights.” Car horns started bleating on Vet’s Highway, below us.

“Huh?” I said and followed the cook back down the ladder. Sure enough all the lights were off inside. The owner of the diner sees me and says, “Hey, what did you do?”

So for about five seconds, I thought I caused the biggest black-out in the Northeast, or at least the diner-in-Islandia black-out. Then I said, “Nothing. I’m not working on the electricity!”

“Oh,” the owner of the diner said, slowly and thoughtfully. “So what happened?” And the rest is all of our collective stories, so you know as much as I do there.

Some things just do not mi… merge well together. My keyboard got it’s first taste for some tea, Earl Grey, lukewarm, and now several keys no longer fun… no longer work.
It only affe… bothered the lower left set of keys. So, thankfully, only the tse, eks, and see letters are nonfun… not working. Oh, and the lower left option and kommand keys. No biggy, if not for the fa… issue of my website address, MakPhoeniks.kom.

Sigh…

Meanwhile, read this arti… news story on the guys behind the Homestar Runner site.

First of all, there is a story behind my lack of activity on my site that I may or may not share on this very blog. It is full of comedy and tragedy (well, sorta), and an entertaining narrative, if I am not mistaken.
But for now, a link to a move to politicize the Laci Peterson case. It is despicable. I knew it would happen.

If I ever get to do all the things I want to do on this site, I want to start a Cassandra section, where I foretell the future. I knew they’d detain Nathaniel Osbourne as a material witness in the Washington Sniper Case, but, in the interest of full disclosure, I thought he’d still be detained to this day, when he was released two weeks later. I knew Elizabeth Smart was alive, but (still) believed that she left willingly. Oh, there are so many other things that I have predicted that have just not come to pass, but it would still be interesting to what has. One day.

Meanwhile, click on that Laci Peterson link above. This poor woman and unborn child will be exploited for years. Sick, sick, sick.

This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco
This ain’t no fooling around
This ain’t no Mudd Club, or CBGB
I ain’t got time for that now
—Talking Heads, “Life During Wartime”

Sir, turn up the TV sound
The war has started on the ground
Just love those laser-guided bombs
They’re really great for righting wrongs
You hit the target and win the game
From bars three thousand miles away
Three thousand miles away
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
—Roger Waters, “The Bravery of Being out of Range”

The crushing weight of the obvious and inevitable is still less than the overwhelming fear that we have released a catastrophe upon ourselves. I hope it is quick; I hope death and destruction is kept to minimums. We drew a line in the sand, (and erased it, and drew it again, and erased it, and drew it again, ad infinitum…) and now we have crossed it: A war of our own making.

Interesting. Scary, too. Very scary.

It is a good thing that I was born in this country. I love it here. I can go about my normal business, today and tomorrow, with just slight mental damage from the war. America is blessed. Scary, too. Very scary.

Naladahc, once again, has a very though-provoking post on his opinions on the current state of affairs. It is scary, too.

For those of you lucky enough to be in the Long Island area (scary!), please feel free to join me at Münchaba Lounge this evening, where I will be a featured artist. I will try not to freak out about all this war stuff (really scary!).

Onward to victory.

Fast Food Patron: I’d like a fish sandwich, please.

Counter Person: (smiling) Oh, are you Catholic?

FFP: Hmm? Excuse me?

CP: Oh, I’m sorry. It’s Friday during Lent, and you’re ordering fish. I was just asking if you are Catholic.

FFP: Oh, ah, no. (smiles) I never eat red meat. I always order fish.

CP: (disappointed) Oh…

For some reason, this evening I was drawn to the memory of Tiananmen Square back in 1989, and the dull thud of our inaction towards China. Sometimes, I’m afraid to admit, I just don’t understand the big wheels that turn in the American approach to foreign affairs. Ever since Nixon, we’ve been trying to court the biggest abuser of human rights, because it is also the biggest nation of consumers. Now we’re using China as a wedge to get into the hearts and minds of the North Koreans, but China and North Korea are at the lowest point in their own relations with each other since before the 1950s. China is just once again using America as a way to show that they’re a world-team player. And America is still content to see China as a nation of 1.25 billion wearers of Nike sneakers and purchasers of McDonald Happy Meals.

My country paints odd strokes of huge monochromatic color over everything. Don’t these ravenous American (multi-national really) companies realize that China is the largest producer of pirated material? It’s a devil’s bargain.

We become so obsessed with seeing regions or countries or leaders in one way. It’s childlike in its breathtaking naiveté. Current thought would make one believe that there were Iraqis hijackers on the airplanes of 9/11, but there were not. No Afghanis either. A bunch of Saudis though. And Saudi Arabia is the country that exported the Wahabi form of Islamic thought to Pakistan. The Pakistani secret service trained Wahabi clerics and sent them into Afghanistan to successfully take over the country as the Taliban. The Taliban sheltered the al Qaeda and the exiled Saudi, Osama bin Laden. But oil-rich Saudi Arabia is an ally to the United States, according to our doctrine of being blind to real danger.

There is no real relevance to this post to anything current. Except maybe there is. Bush Sr. did nothing in the wake of Tiananmen, and later invaded Iraq to help our friends, the house of Saud, protect their tyrannical hold over their country. Maybe there is.

Heh.