Dreams Do Come True

Despite our mounting national debt, a faltering economy, and non-stop rhetoric about tax relief and tax shelters and tax fairness, President Barack Obama and the United States government have proven that dreams still can come true--for little boys.

Just yesterday, my son, a four year-old dreamer who enjoys Wii, board games, and long walks on the beach, proclaimed he wanted a rocket ship for his birthday. "You think that's cool, little guy," I said. "Check this out." He watched with glee as I showed him a YouTube video of a space shuttle launch and pictures from Mars.

So forget making the dreams of middle class families come true by investing in education, health care, and help for small businesses. Let's launch rockets. I'm shocked that the Tea Party faction of the Republican Party or Libertarians aren't frothing at the mouth to lecture the president on his lack of fiscal restraint. I'm shocked that Mitt Romney's campaign isn't jumping all over this as a waste of government money at a time when government waste and cutting departments is at the top of the list of discussion points for this election.

Why is that?

Well, it's because our country is currently being run my males. Males that are still trying to make their childhood dreams come true. We spend like crazy on really cool, top-secret military gadgets without many conservatives railing against it. There's stuff going on at the "Groom Dry Lake location" (Area 51) that may have nothing to do with aliens, but still costs billions of dollars and is so classified that even top military leaders aren't even in the know.

Why don't we hear calls to shut that place down? Because it's cool. If it's not flying saucers, it's really cool James Bond shit going down there. It's like a living, breathing GI Joe movie. Why do we even have NASA? That whole race to space thing with the Soviets is long over. Does anyone really think finding out that there were microscopic organisms on Mars billions of years ago is going to help us right now? Can't we wait, say, another million or so years, once we get the budget balanced, to go play Star Wars? At least use the technology to give us those flying cars that sci-fi movies have been promising for decades.

And when the terrorist did that despicable act back on September 11th 2001, destroying the symbol of American financial excess, what did we do? We got ready and started planning to rebuild our symbol of financial excess to show those terrorists that America will not compromise on it's excess. This is the country that brought you super-sized value meals, for crying out loud. You're not going to get us to reign ourselves in with one act of terror. Basically, those in charge are reinacting that time their big sisters knocked down their LEGO castles and they had to rebuild it bigger and better to show just how little her knocking it down really mattered to them, as they held back the tears.

Sometimes I feel like we're in a perpetual summer vacation, 104 unending days of building crazy contraption after crazy contraption as if funding was just as unending. Isn't your country a little broke to be sending a robot to collect dirt from Mars? Yes, yes it is. Where is Perry anyway?

What would happen if we cut the military budget for R & D by, like, half. And don't try hiding behind some $250,000 chair or $9000 box of paper clips either. As Corey Taylor of Stone Sour put it, "Classified, my ass; it's a fucking secret, and you know it!" And then we eliminate NASA all together. Just cut it. Then we just buy the little boys running this country a freakin' XBOX or let them go to some classic toys convention and buy all their old Star Wars and GI Joe action figures back. Maybe we get them sparklers or a jar to catch bugs in or something. I don't know. Can we please put an end to them putting us further and further in debt just to play their little preschool games.

So next time you want to complain about cutting "entitlements" or education or healthcare, please take the time to look at all the places we could be cutting if they weren't so cool. I mean, old people, teachers, and doctors are just so...well, lame. Why would our society value those losers.

Who knows? Maybe a woman president wouldn't be so bad?

Watch Phineas and Ferb help Baljeet build a portal to Mars

Ten Years

A poem in honor of the one day, if I had the chance, I would go back and erase...

Ten Years

Ten years of heartache. A nagging limp or chronic breathing condition. A child, now an adult, wondering why Daddy still hasn’t come home. Rage. Non-stop cranes and jackhammers rebuilding a grave. Still forgetting that she won’t be there when he rolls over. Guilt. Replays on screens. A recorded voice announcing, “Let’s roll.” A message from Afghanistan.

Ten years of life. Ten years of freedom. Ten years of beauty from sea to shining sea. Ten years of camaraderie, generosity, and service. Ten years of love. Ten short, fearless years.

Ten years ago they attacked the fabric of our lives. That fabric endured, wiping our tears, dressing our wounds, streaming across our skies in a brilliant red, white, and blue, announcing to all:

We will not give up.

We will not give in.

We will not die.

Ten years later, the souls of the fallen still whisper to us through glorious stars and stripes…

Never forget.

Train Wrecks

A fan fell to his death in Texas. I watched the video on YouTube. A few times. I'm such a sick bastard. I've also watched the video of that dude the song "Hey Man Nice Shot" was based on...some politician that blew his brains out on live television. I imagine the JFK assassination is one of the most watched videos of all time. So, why? Is it that "at least it wasn't me" feeling we get when we laugh at someone that just tripped and fell down the stairs? I thought about it, and then gave up. I don't know. But I can't stop looking at this shit, even if I regret it afterward.

When I was about seventeen I went to this party. There were like twenty or thirty of us crammed into this small living room in a "not-so-nice" part of town. There was a special room for the kids who were smoking "tree," which I avoided because I was such a goody goody. Anyhow, what happened is my friend Pat brought this video simply called "Sick." He explained it as a compilation of scenes from the most twisted scenes he or his cousin or somebody could pluck out of various pornos. We're talking some sick shit. We're talking a man screwing the body cavity of a frozen turkey, girls stuffing immense eels up their unmentionables--that's right, I said eels--guys with sheep, girls blowing dogs, you name it. And you know what, every single one of us watched this, laughing our asses off, trying to one-up each other with the best pun. We talked about it for months. A whole group of friends watched this with joy--not that we were turned on, but we had fun with it--and most people individually would never even admit to knowing such things could happen let alone watch it happen. Awesome.

How many times have you watched the video of 9/11? How many specials and documentaries have you watched on that horrible day? There's been three movies that I know of. It's started working its way into fiction. It's even been used as a small, off-hand plot point in movies. We're obsessed. Slipknot has a song called "Disasterpiece," and I think that might be the best way to describe these events in our lives that we obsess over but all agree are terrible. As far as creating a terrible tragedy, these shocking moments are the masterpieces. So perfectly awful, we can't help but gawk.

I'm currently reading Murakami's "Coin Locker Babies." Boy did this guy get that. Maybe it's just Japan in the eighties got it, who knows. But from the first paragraph, we're seeing things we just don't even want to acknowledge exist. And it's told so naturally, as if these things happen every day. Well, they probably do, folks. Sad but true. The book even goes as far to make a comment about this phenomenon of which I speak. Murakami predicts reality televsion by having a man blow his own mother's face off in front of live television cameras. The result, his brother's album skyrockets on the charts and sells like there's no tomorrow. We love this shit.

I'm trying to capture that obsession with what we see in these train-wreck, rubber-necker moments in my new book. The only thing is, when we see these snippets in the media, we rarely know the whole story. Murakami shows that nicely in his book. We gawk at the guy that fell to his death at a baseball game, but do we even think about his family, what else he does. We will, someday when someone writes a feature about him or more likely there's a ninety second clip on Sports Center. But while he's falling, do we wonder what he was thinking, if he was trying to land safely, or if he was just flailing in a blind panic? What a terrible moment. And don't get me wrong, I'm just as bad. I watched it three times. From different angles.

My book will try to explore the real world behind the headline-driven media of today. Think the media's obsession with pinning Columbine on the video game and music industries. There's always more than meets the eye. In order to see anything, you logically have to be missing something else. There's always something behind what you're seeing. Who's to say which is more important. I'm excited about this book. I'm excited about the story behind the story. Keep gawking!