Homeless Man Dies. Cop Looks for Donut Shop

DALLAS (AP) The body of a dead homeless man was brought in last night. The coroner's office was aghast. "Amazing! It's looks as if he strangled himself! He must have really wanted to die."

Police, however, seemed only annoyed when asked if there would be an investigation. "Who gives a fuck? No one wanted him to live anyway. Christ, I need a donut!"

So this reporter took it upon himself to find a deeper answer. I found a few souls who'd been in contact with him. These were the thoughts on the final days of a nobody named Albert Einstein:

"Doesn't surprise me at all. He'd been deeply unhappy for a looong time. He was smart about science and stuff but couldn't get laid for the life of him."

"No one really knew him. Something was eating at him. No one knew exactly what - even when he told us."

"He always said God wanted him dead. His soul was poisoned."

"He wanted to go. Each day was a monumental effort of will. I'm amazed he lasted this long."

"What the hell, what homeless being has a future anyway?"

Meet the New Butcher, Worse Than the Old Butcher

Several months ago we literally pulled a man in his underwear out of a hole in the ground in Iraq. A few days ago we hung him by the neck. Lord knows I never thought it possible to make a sympathetic figure of Saddam Hussein. It seems the only person really rejoicing about this is our President, bouncing around the White House like a monkey on steroids. Meet the new Butcher of Baghdad.

We killed the "bad guy" but how do you shoot the mentality that put him in power? Now we've opened the Pandora's box of a mad scramble for power. Civilians and Americans are caught in the crossfire. The breakdown has enabled criminals and opportunists for terror to run rampant. Remarkably, there are still those among us who think we know what's best for others. Beware the man who wants to run your life, he seeks only to ruin it.

Don't get me wrong, Saddam was a monster. He recruited fellow monsters to terrorize and exploit the country. But stopping him is not the same as solving the problem. Like the ancient Israelites, the Iraqis chose to have a king to rule them. No one gets to be stupid for free. ("When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the Lord will not answer you in that day." -Samuel 8:18)

So we decided to play God. God turned his back on you, Iraq, but we love you. We are going to save you and you will give us all your oil in return. And then you will thank us! Instead, our President and all his followers have merely transferred the blood from the hands of Saddam to their own hands. Luckily, we know he's going to come clean of this crime and start the healing process.

Wile E Coyote, SUPER Genius

Just in case you missed it, here are some of the top posts of 2006 as voted on by, um, me. Enjoy the genius that is me:

The Three Sentinels of the Alpha Centauri Outpost

"Hi! I'm shit!"

True meaning of Flower Power

Sometimes...

Fisher of Mens' Souls

Enter the Sloth

Oda!

Portrait of the Artist as a Fucker

Good Times

The Trans Am Brat

Sitting on the Edge of the World

"Sitting on a cornflake
Waiting for the van to come."
-The Walrus
John Lennon spoke of when he was a youth he would look in the mirror and his face would "trance into alpha." That made him feel like a freak. And while I don't think I ever had a moment like that, I do know I've had "lost" moments I can explain to no one.

They arrive unexpectedly, when you relax - and at the most inopportune times. Moments when if you were to ask me the time or date or planet or reality, I could not answer you and have it be the truth. You stop, look around, and suddenly in you're in the universe - not some crap job or menial exisitence. It makes you want to live there forever...

One such moment for me happened on a sunny spring day in the oil fields of north Texas. I was just along for the ride with the driver who drained the holding tank of water pumped up with the oil (this has be drained and deposited at a registered disposal facility or the owner can be fined). Sitting out in the middle of nowhere, watching the breeze play with the grass and listening to the constant squeak of the pump, I lost my name.

I could have sat there forever, completely calm and content. I was in a place of dreams. If a flying saucer had landed - if anything had happened - it would have all seemed plausible. Sitting on the edge of the world, you can see into infinity. There was a truth in this moment I did not want to leave. I was timeless...

Reality was shattered by a voice of the world. "Come back," it said. "Life is all bills, bullshit and bothers." It was a sightless voice, seeing only with its eyes. "There's no other reality than what he have made." But having seen the universe, I know better.

Barbarians R Us

Bar-bar-ian (noun) an uncivilized, uncultured person; a brutal, cruel, insensitive person whose behavior is unacceptable.

"The poor you will always have with you." These are the words of Jesus Christ. Perverts will interpret this to mean: "there will always be fuck-ups." And a pervert always needs someone to denigrate. What Jesus was really saying is: "the world will always be unfair."

I hear all sorts of "solutions" to poverty. With over half the world in poverty, obviously none have worked. So far we have tried: government programs, charity, socialism, communism, capitalism, this ism, that ism. You can spend your entire life dedicated to ending poverty and it will only be a band aid, never a cure. The reason all efforts fail is because we concentrate on the symptoms, and not the cause.

"You shall have no other gods before me." There it is again, that pesky ol' First Commandment. Obviously God has no fucking idea how to run a society. You've got to appeal to people's greed! It's the only way! Money first, then God. That's when you can call yourself holy - making that "work".

Problem with that is we really are made in the image of God. It's human nature to care, to give and to reach out to others. In America, if you are not for greed and selfishness, you're a traitor. Our whole society is based on greed and we want to keep it! The irony of course is that that very same greed is what will cost us everything.

We are savages; putting survival up for sale. God in her wisdom put us perpetually at the mercy of one another, to force us to learn to live together. Instead, we merely use that vulnerability for blackmail. Only barbarians build a world set up to reward taking advantage of one another. And we'll always be barbarians as long as survival is up for sale.

It's All Good for the New Year

Our President will be a good and fair man.

The world will be just fine.

Our enemies will become our friends.

2007 will be remembered as the Summer of Love.

The environment will begin it's long journey of healing.

Poverty and hunger will vanish off the face of the earth forever.

Peace will reign supreme. We will beat our swords into ploughshares and our spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not raise sword against nation; we will train for war no more.

We shall turn to love for the answer.

All things will be good.

It's a Bad, Bad, Bad, Bad World!

Here lately I've been trespassing all over the blog of the great Flavia Colgan. I saw her on TV and was fascinated by her. "Who is that woman!" So I googled her and she turned out to be all I hoped for. I even sent her an email which she graciously acknowledged. I love you, Flavia!

Her blog is much different than mine - it's actually read. So I have the chance to interact and chip in my two cents and be heard. My comments are aliased under "Sidney Reilly" and "Haiku Monk". She also does "guest blogs", throwing out others' points of view to be digested. One guest blog was from a punk kid with the tried and true diatribe on the evil of TV. Couched in the tones of a Shakespearian tragedy, he laments a nation of couch potatoes more interested in Britney Spears than the politics of state. Check out Britney's ass below and you tell me what you're more interested in.

I pointed out to my punky friend that there are oh so many more real and alleged evils in the world he forgot to rail against. Here is a listing below (feel free to add your own!):

movies, modern music, pop culture, war culture, the sixties, degenerate youths, video games, uptight yellow-bellied sons-of-tricky-Dicky, Sith warriors, illegal drugs, legal drugs, bad parents, bad schools, bad breath, mislabeling, no labeling, Twinkies, hidden gay cartoon characters (how did we ever win WWII with that cross-dressing Bugs??), big business, small business, busybodies, nobodies, communists, capitalists, sexists, racists, horny haters, horny players, horny priests, enemies of the state, radicals, moderates, pantheists and lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

It's a Bad, Bad, Bad, Bad World!