“My Kingdom will survive only insofar as it remains a country difficult to access, where the foreigner will have no other aim, with his task fullfilled, but to get out.”
- King Abdul Aziz bin Saud, c. 1930
Boy, if that was true back in 1930 then I’ll venture to say that in the almost 80 years since then they must’ve been working tirelessly to perfect their finely honed objective in Saudi Arabia…
Protectionism. What an ugly word. It strikes a tone of anxiety in a song of fear, conjuring images of caged rats, each lashing out individually in frightful fits, ultimately helpless when pitted against a striking viper. A pointless endeavor, especially in the world of the 21st century, where connection is everything and everything is connected. In today’s world, a state and a people left to grow only from within will develop as well as a Star Trek geek playing World of Warcraft in his mother’s basement.
We’ve gone too far with our urges for interconnectedness to slam on the brakes now. As the world becomes more mobile and global, access will be paramount to development and obstacles to connectivity should not be tolerated. It’s disturbing then, to see that so many travel hubs like hotels and airports still try to charge complicated fees for internet access.
It used to be that you could tell how much a person travels for work by their mileage accounts, or their hotel points, or if all else failed, the wrinkles and bags under their red, sloppy eyes. However, you can now tell who’s been around by looking at the list of wireless networks to which one has connected, or attempted to connect.
And if wireless connections were whores at port, I’d be a goddamn sailor.
–
And speaking of whores, let me get to the point of this little rant. Even as times are changing, outdated notions of a quick profit are being attempted in the spirit of capitalism and Adam Smith’s fucking invisible hand.
There was a time not too long ago that in order to compete for the business of business, hotels offered their corporate guests free internet connections with either a DSL line in the room or in some cases even a direct T1 line. But you’d be connected - on the grid, as it were. You know — in the parlance of our times.
But then came T-Mobile. And Swisscom. And, fucking, Joe’s corner WiFi, or whatever. Like a wildfire it spread. Today, in hotels across Europe and North America you can get a whole box of exotic teas, coffees, water bottles, towels and even a nice desk set, if you pack efficiently. Just for checking in. I’m not advocating theft of hotel property, you understand — I’m just saying it’s an easy option.
But you can’t get free internet.
Which is weird. You can get it in hostels. You can get it at bed & breakfasts. You can get it at mom & pop cafes, though not at places like Starbuck’s. And of course, god bless the few and the proud who still keep their wireless signals open and blissfully unencrypted to those wandering on the streets, unafraid to check for good souls.
Obviously there is a dollar to be made by letting a single company have exclusive ownership of your wireless real-estate. But there’s something about free WiFi that can keep people lounging in a place indefinitely and I’m not sure why these large hotels and café chains aren’t on board with the concept yet. It’s the reason why I can sit in a dingy, grimy dark pub in London that smells of greasy sausages and spilt ale and have breakfast, lunch and tea while I work. It’s also why no matter how nice the scene from a café on the Zürich waterfront, if they’re going to charge me 80 CHF for the day, I’ll be moving on, thanks.
I’m not normally optimisitic for the future, but in this economy, I can’t help but hope that there will be massive investments into infrastructure, like there were in the 30’s after the Great Depression. They built highways and bridges and I hope that in a way, so will we. There is a lot of work that needs to be done to the current internet infrastructure and we are due for a a revamp of the hard lines if we are going to advance in this endeavor. Otherwise we’ll be stuck with Al Gore’s invention and Orin Hatche’s tubes for another few decades.
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People, people, people…
PEOPLE!
There are some truths that we must recognize and stop talking about so that we can move on to the good stuff. Luckily, you’re all primed to hear about them because they have to do with THE ISSUES - which you love - and that’s what this election in November is going to be about.
Right? Right.
Abortion
It’s pretty obvious to anyone paying attention at this point that Roe v. Wade will not be repealed without some kind of voodoo on the Supreme Court. It would be a travesty to the American Way of life, but not because it goes against our values, necessarily. Roe v. Wade has become like Fenway, like Thanksgiving, like Drive Thru’s, like Labor Day Sales, like hot dogs and watermelons and like frivolous lawsuits. It’s an American Institution. You can’t get rid of Roe v. Wade. What the hell would we bicker about pointlessly in presidential races?
So, seriously, shut up about abortion. It’s legal, and besides, the President of the United States is just about the least powerful peg on the totem pole when it comes to changing the constitution. Even Franklin, Adams and Hamilton agreed on that. Hell, even Ahnold has more sway with that document than does the Prez. The best chance the chief executive has is to stack the deck, and that’s only if you get lucky like W. and have 2 freaking seats give way to you. In a matter of months. Weird.
National Security
It’s pretty obvious to anyone counting the ciphers at the NSA that National Security has been mostly an efficient way to make my tax dollars go from one magical place to another magical place as inefficiently as possible. We could’ve been more efficient in wasting so much money as what we spend on the TSA: we could’ve put it all in a pile in the middle of the desert and taken a match to it.
Furthermore, the disaster of national security, aside from the poor planning, poor execution and poor response, is really the fact that the mentality of people has now changed to one that more closely resembles frightened hamsters than Americans in pursuit of their life, liberty and/or happiness. Seriously. You can cause panic, fear and a total disruption of commerce simply by putting an empty briefcase at a street corner. Or you can hang a circuit board with wires hanging from it on electrical wires around a city. Or you can leave a note in the seat back pocket of an aircraft saying that there’s a bomb in the airport.
Watch how people react. It’s insane. Frightened rats make more sense in their flee tactics and threat assertions. We suck at that kind of thing.
Health Care
It’s pretty obvious to anyone that has lived abroad or been injured abroad while traveling that American health care is the shite of the civilized world. Embarrassingly complicated, impossibly expensive and totally overrun by insurance companies and staff infections, and god help you if you use Kaiser Permanente. I mean, you may as well just amputate your own head.
Ideas float rampantly in political campaigns, but if you pay attention, no one has ever really got hold of one of these “ideas”; not really. Promises are made like it was an algebra problem, but it always falls short on explaining anything. It’s not impossible, I’m sure. But with 300 million people, nothing’s really easy. Obama’s new plan is no different, though the man can sure tell a good story, eh?
I feel like buying some health care already.
Foreign Policy
It’s pretty obvious to anyone looking out instead of just looking in that the world is a big place, and that America doesn’t fill up anywhere near enough of it to behave the way it does. Being abroad has shown me that if there’s such as thing as “stark contrast” it’s what you see when you put the “typical” American image that the world has come to have next to the image of an American who has traveled. The world seems to think (mostly rightfully so) of bumbling idiots that are as loud as they are rude, unrefined and totally despicable animals of no taste or class. But American’s who travel, who have a chance to look back as they leave borders behind are almost unanimously disgusted by their brethren. They think very much like Europeans, that America is doomed and there’s nothing the world can do about it. Which is too bad, I should say, because the place had so much potential.
Economy
It’s pretty obvious to anyone paying a mortgage or taxes or dividends or just about anything that the economy has tanked. And I don’t mean like, a cycle, where if you just sit tight this thing will get figured out in 5-6 years and we can all go back to day trading while at work, shopping on amazon while driving down the road and checking out the nicer rims on the other Explorers who all pay the same $1.40 for gas.
No, no. This was a bad time for the US to fall flat on its face and drag the civilized world with it and the consequences will be more than just the sum of its parts. We have finally gotten past the Chinese Olympics (which everyone has already forgotten by now) in which China came out of the economic underground flashing the ownership title of all of our debt in its left hand and a fisted up can of whup-ass in the other. And everyone knows China is right handed.
While we distract ourselves and spread what little worth our economy has throughout the middle east in pointless ventures that haven’t had a hope of success in 5 years, China, India and Russia are being smart and silent. Europe can’t protect America because it’s got its own problems. Last week in Edinburgh I saw a comedian from the Isle of Mann poke fun of the housing market and those in it. How much more “rising of the proletariat” can you get? I mean, the Isle of Mann! Who’s ever heard of that place and they’re taking the piss out of the entire rest of the continent for getting swept up in this mess.
By the time this is done, not only will America be paying at least what it is now at the pump, but we won’t even have gallons anymore. Ever heard of the metric system? I suggest everyone take a steep course in Mandarin and look up the word “meter”. We’ll all be seeing it a lot more very soon with the learning curve that is around the corner.
Iraq
It’s pretty obvious to anyone paying attention at this point that Iraq will not have a pretty ending. Or even a clear one. And won’t somebody stop this shit about it being about supporting the troops? Wars aren’t about supporting the men and women you send to die. War is about something else. What do we do to mitigate a war? Do we provide equipment and healthcare for the fighters? Do we provide proper funding to the cause? Sure. If this were actually a war and not a terribly mis-guided joy ride on the taxpayer’s grandchildren.
How about supporting them by saving their lives and bringing them home, not by saving the egos of their leaders. Do I REALLY have to be the one to say that?
Global Warming
It’s pretty obvious to anyone paying attention at this point that we will not reverse this carbon problem. We should’ve been doing something about it in 1993. And only now are we even having discussions about it, and they’re not even productive. It’s still a talking point. That’s it, man. We’re fucked. The republican’s refuse to even use the term, “global warming” and the democrats are too incompetent to make the issue visible beyond some powerpoint slides and and green posters. Polar bears are melting (because, you know, they’re made of ice. I bet you Michelle Bachman would buy that) and we have people who think that unrestricting industry is more important than maintaining a sustainable growth. And no action.
You can have the congress set out resolutions upon resolutions about 50% of cars produced in the US must have 20% fewer emissions by the year 2156 or whatever, but that’s not action: it’s theater. You know and I know that nothing will happen except that there will be more hybrid commercials. And don’t even get me started on those damn things.
The End
It’s pretty obvious to anyone paying attention at this point that the options are limited, like always. John McCain is either a habitual liar or else that he has his memory systematically erased by Karl Rove every night before bed. Unofficially, of course. The corollary to that is that everyone in the mainstream media seems to have no capacity for short term memory. Don’t you people record the shit he says and then contradicts less than 24 hours later? Weren’t you there both times he said diametrically opposing things?
Yes, yes you were. So why don’t you stop him and point out his contradiction on the spot? Why don’t you get him on track when you ask him about his 7 houses and he replies with a POW story that sounds more like Abe Simpson drolling on about an incoherent and unrelated story? And why stop just because he gets visibly angry? Why don’t you just warn him before the interview that if he tries anything funny that we’ll put a stink bomb under his kitchen table, but that we won’t tell him which one it’s under?
What Else
It’s pretty obvious to anyone paying attention at this point that…
Oh, what the hell? Screw this shit - let’s have the hope. Sure. Have it. Fill your mouth with it like whipped cream or Velveeta from the bottle. Roll around in it like bushels of hay and make all the love you want, or don’t want. John McCain is either an idiot or a lying bastard and we’ve had enough of both for too long. Obama is not perfect, and he’s fucked up big on at least one occasion that I can think of off the top of my head (I’m looking at you, FISA Bill). And Biden… he ain’t perfect either with his big mouth and politician’s smile that I’ve so learned to distrust. But an Obama-Biden ticket… that’s some sweet sugar we’ve been so long without. We’ve been putting up with the bitter taste of Zombies and Frankensteins and recoiling in the sour shower of corruption and lies and outright thievery that we’ve forgotten the taste of real honey.
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Well, it’s happening again. Remember Ed Meese? Remember Ronald Regan? Fuck, man. The gall of the administration in power to lie to our faces is more and more unprecedented every day, and that’s not saying little. These guys lie and cheat and steal and rape and pillage at every turn, and statistically, even YOU can’t be bothered to care.
And that’s the way it is. Isn’t that nuts?
And that’s not even what irks me the most or what drives other, less-restrained lunatics to drive hammers through windshields or the offices of Comcast. No, no. It’s that they do it so tactlessly, blatantly, for the record. They’re not lying to get away with it; they know they will. They’re lying because that’s next on the agenda.
Let me illustrate with a transcript of the questioning of the current attorney general, Mike Mukasey in connection with the allegedly illegal wiretapping of US Citizens without a FISA court approval. Magic that the Congress is actually taking this on, but are they really? Or are appearances just what’s next on the agenda? You decide:
By the way, I recognize that some of my readers may need a little background. FISA stands for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It’s an act from 1978 that says that there are special courts that can make a judgment about whether US citizens can have wiretaps planted on them. The provisions were enacted to prevent an abuse of power by the executive branch after the Watergate investigations revealed the nature of some of the data collection methods used on American citizens. Imagine that: checks and balances. Brilliant.
Allegedly, President Bush first tried to circumvent the FISA thing by getting rid of the act, sort of. When that didn’t work, he would’ve simply ignored them completely. This is what the former attorney general, what’s-his-name, Alberto Gonzalez went to see a sick man in the hospital about (the then attorney general, John Ashcroft): to try to get him to say it wasn’t so. Now the senate is looking into this.
Incidentally, here is some more background before the schpeal:
- Article II powers are those specified explicitly in Article II of the constitution, which describes the office of President of the United States. Listed among these powers is NOT the ability to change laws as he sees fit.
- Arlen Specter is a Republican Senator from Pennsylvania, and is the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
- Mike Mukasy is the current attorney general. For those that don’t know, the attorney general is like, the ultimate interpreter of the law in the executive branch. He knows his American Law. Or at least, he should.
Ok. Here it is. You judge and decide:
SPECTER: Is there a legitimate argument that the President has Article II powers to undertake such conduct?
MUKASEY: There are a number of concepts in your question, including whether he has authority to undertake torture. Torture as you know is now unlawful under American law. I can’t contemplate any situation where this president would assert Article II authority to do something that the law forbids.
SPECTER: Well, he did just that in violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. He did just that in disregarding the express mandate of the National Security Act to notify the intelligence committees, didn’t he?
MUKASEY:I think we are now in a situation where [that issue] had been brought within statutes, and that’s the procedure going forward.
SPECTER: That’s not the point. The point is that he acted in violation of statutes, didn’t he?
MUKASEY: I don’t know whether he acted in violation of statutes.
SPECTER: Well, didn’t he act in violation of FISA? Expressly mandates you have to go to a court to get an order for wiretapping. There’s really no dispute about that, is there?
MUKASEY: It required an order with regard to wire communications, when that was a surrogate for foreign communications — for domestic communications. When foreign communications became something that traveled by wire.
SPECTER: I’m not talking about foreign communications. I’m talking about wiretapping U.S. citizens in the United States. Terrorist Surveillance Program undertook to do that. Well, not getting very far there, let me move on to…
Three things are particularly jolting about this exchange. Firstly it’s that the question is never answered. Secondly it’s that in liu of an answer, Mukasey is given reign to spit talking points that might, to a dumb enough person, make him and the administration look like saints. Thirdly, is the ever-shrinking size of Arlen Specter’s balls that he lets this guy get away with all of this gibberish with a wave of the hand, a “pssshhhh, I’m not getting very far here, let’s move on”…
What? You’re a senator. You own the floor. You’re the chair of the fucking judiciary committee. You have time… no, you MUST take the time to fish it out of this guy; in there, you OWN him. Fucking make it work, Specter. Jesus.
Now, if you’ll permit me (and you will, because it’s MY blog) I’ll go over that again, this time interspersing my comments within the text of the script. If you’re already tired of this instead of so furious you’re ears are burning and your neck might explode, feel free to stop reading and not vote at all. This is clearly not for you.
SPECTER: Is there a legitimate argument that the President has Article II powers to undertake such conduct?
MUKASEY: There are a number of concepts in your question, including whether he has authority to undertake torture (what? who said anything about torture? Mukasey is throwing this in to divert attention from the question). Torture as you know is now unlawful under American law (not that anyone seems to mind that). I can’t contemplate any situation where this president would assert Article II authority to do something that the law forbids.
SPECTER: Well, he did just that in violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. He did just that in disregarding the express mandate of the National Security Act to notify the intelligence committees, didn’t he? (note: a direct question)
MUKASEY:I think we are now in a situation where [that issue] had been brought within statutes, and that’s the procedure going forward (you’re not crazy or unintelligent: that last sentence did NOT make sense. This is no accident and is actually quite easy to do. Watch: it’s a matter of unparalleled precedent, sir, to invoke the quantitative acts put forth by the 101st congress that will ensure the continuity of this moment in history. The terrorists would be delighted if we did nothing with respect to the aforementioned invocation and besides, think of the children! Are you against the children or for the terrorists, Senator? See how easy that was?).
SPECTER: That’s not the point. The point is that he acted in violation of statutes, didn’t he? (note: another direct question. Also note that the previous direct question has not been answered and yet nobody has called him on it. This is important)
MUKASEY: I don’t know whether he acted in violation of statutes. (keep in mind he’s the attorney general; if he doesn’t know, no one does. Also keep in mind that there’s no reason not to know, and that it’s his JOB to know, and that in all honesty, he DOES know and we all know that he KNOWS.)
SPECTER: Well, didn’t he act in violation of FISA? Expressly mandates you have to go to a court to get an order for wiretapping. There’s really no dispute about that, is there? (very direct question, and simple, too.)
MUKASEY: It required an order with regard to wire communications, when that was a surrogate for foreign communications — for domestic communications (these guys suck at keeping the record clear). When foreign communications became something that traveled by wire. (that wasn’t even a complete sentence)
SPECTER: I’m not talking about foreign communications. I’m talking about wiretapping U.S. citizens in the United States. Terrorist Surveillance Program undertook to do that. (here it comes… he’s going to condemn him…) Well, not getting very far there, let me move on to…
***
(… again… WHAT? You’re going to stop there? Who’s paying you to do THAT?)
uuuuuggggggghhhhhhhhhhh.
I don’t know what to do anymore.
—
Let’s talk about security for a second because at least that’s far enough away from the primaries that I’ll keep the vomitus in. Hidden by the cloud of musty knee-jerk journalism that is draped over other matters, I’ve been reading some miscellaneous articles concerning the new government bureau that is actually hated more than the IRS: the TSA.
Now, the ineptitude of the TSA are numerous as they are nonsensical. Any one who’s ever passed through airport security knows this with no need for background knowledge. But you can’t weasel it out of anyone in charge because… well, because one of the reasons they’re in charge is because they won’t say anything about how it works. That’s what keeps them in charge. Frustrating.
But they keep their operatives in check by rigorous testing, they say, and here I think an interesting point can be made. According to TSA records as partially verified by CNN (not that they hold much credibility with me, but let’s roll with this for now), the standards are rigorous and the testing is often.
Ok. So the testing is good… let’s assume that much. Now let’s talk about what’s real and what’s not: failure rates and false positives.
I might’ve written about this before, but in any case, let me summarize. Some people will argue that catching 1 terrorist in a population of 1 million makes the whole operation worth it. Good for them. Let’s assume, then, that the rate of false negatives is 0%, which it isn’t in real life, not by a long shot: just look at how many guns, swords, components and all kinds of other things that could be potentially dangerous but aren’t get past the net. But let’s assume it is.
That’s not the whole equation. You have to look at the rate of false positives as well, because that will come up much more frequently, and will ultimately disrupt your security system much more. Any disruption in the normal flow of the system will make it more vulnerable during the time it takes to get back on track. So you may catch 1 terrorist in a population of 1 million, but if you’re busy stopping people with toothpaste, water bottles, nail clippers, or even box cutters to the point that the majority of the people you question are released, then chances are you’ve let actual threats through while investigating the wrong targets.
In other words, if you’re spending time catching people who are not a threat, that’s time and resources taken away from catching people who are a threat.
It’s been previously reported that the rate of false positives in the TSA borders around 99 to 99.9%. The TSA might even be good at what they do: but they’re still doing the wrong thing the wrong way.
As a supplement, here is an article by Bruce Schneier that sums up a related theory nicely:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/security_vs_pri.html
By now you should be coming to the sad realization that a lot of the money we pay into our taxes is either swallowed up by corrupt interests or else largely thrown straight into the toilet.
…yeah.
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At the moment I am on my 37th hour of perpetual consciousness following an all-nighter of every museum in Amsterdam and then a red-eye to Madrid. I am sitting at the tiny hotel desk scribbling this note frantically while outside the night is slowly turning to dawn. It’s 5:10 in the morning and decent people are not awake, which is why I am still writing and not running to save my life. A shit storm is about to blow the windows of this room.
I want to get this down fast because I don’t have a lot of time before I have to get out of here. It won’t take long to pack, since all I have on me are the clothes on my back a couple of notebooks, a novel I’ve already read and a violin case with a cheap Chinese fiddle inside. I don’t know why I’m bothering with the violin; it’s not like I play the damn thing. But it’s a perfectly good fiddle and it did cost someone about a hundred euros. My laptop broke down a couple days ago so I didn’t bother dragging it out to Madrid. They lost the rest of my luggage somewhere between Amsterdam and Munich so at least it’s their problem now. I won’t have to carry anything and will just have to figure out how to find it later. With any luck I can get them to ship it straight to me, though not at this hotel… not anymore.
What I could use right now is a little more time and some clarity - I need to think. But I can do that on my way out of here, I guess, which needs to be soon. I could also use a map of the city marking police stations and cheap hotels and perhaps some deodorant. All of these items are, by the way, in my lost bag which is in the capable hands of the Lufthansa ground staff at the Munich regional airport for some inexplicable reason.
The issue of the moment is that they’ve messed up my hotel reservations here and I’ll have to be leaving a day earlier than I’d planned, which is a hassle and and normally they would be forcing me out of the hotel this morning to make room for another paying guest. Normally I’d also get until 10 or 11 am before I had to leave; the typical check out time. But not now.
No, Christmas will come much sooner this year for the strong-armed Spanish bell boys of the NH hotel in Madrid. Those kids will have to do more than just carry luggage today. When they come to check me out of the hotel they’ll be wanting more than just my credit card and signature and if I’m still here I am not going to enjoy it.
God, it’s going to be messy: when they walk into the reception area today and see the bar reduced to shattered martini glasses and peanuts strewn with the shards all over the floor they’re going to have a suspect on their minds and that suspect is going to bear a very strong resemblance to the man in room 403.
I am that man.
There will be a lot of explanations requested and reimbursement required and I want no part in either. I’m a busy man and become very frustrated by having to explain why the bar is destroyed with peanuts on a Tuesday morning, especially this early. And that may be just the best-case scenario, the civilized scenario - and I’m not counting on it. This is, after all, Spain, a nation of hard-headed Catholics, Moorish-Visigoths who run with bulls and stomp on wood. They are people who see ripping the necks off of geese and using the sinewy toughness to slide down a foxline over a lake as a constructive way to pass the time on a Sunday. What they will do with me here, I can’t imagine.
–
I couldn’t sleep last night after 4 am. It happens often, especially in my line of work and it’s not altogether a healthy thing, but what the hell? I didn’t decide to be what they call a road warrior for the health of it. I had wandered downstairs, hoping to sneak into the breakfast buffet and get some carbohydrates in me while I read from Kurt Vonnegut’s Slapstick. When I found the place locked and not a soul in the reception to help, I sat at the bar in the hall between the breakfast buffet and the reception desk. The bar was relatively small, mirrored and had several shelves of glasses and only a few with bottles.
The peanut jar was open so without thinking, I grabbed a handful and lined them up on the bar. I started flicking them at the mirror for no reason other than that’s what seemed like the right thing to do to peanuts that are lined up. Like anxious foot soldiers they stood at attention on a bar at four in the morning. I would aim at the bottles that jumped out at me, the blue Bombay Sapphire, the green Tanqueray, the yellow label on the Cutty Sark, and whatever marketing splash Absolut recently dreamed up.
When I hit the first glass and knocked it off the shelf, it very naturally smashed on the floor into a thousand little pieces. I was certain it would have awoken half of the hotel or at least someone who would care enough to storm into that hallway to find out what animal had gotten into the bar and chase it away with a mop. I was sure they’d be shocked but I was also paranoid - as I said, I haven’t slept much in the last two days.
I didn’t hear loud and fast footsteps headed towards me right away with Spanish calls of “what the hell are you doing, you fiend?”, but I grabbed a bottle of Contreau just the same, reasoning that it would do some good damage with it’s hard angles and rectangular corners, should it come to that. I waited by the desk at the reception, crouched below eyesight and thought up all kinds of stories I could use before I had to get violent.
But nothing happened. Nobody had been disturbed by the shattering and I started thinking of pushing my luck. After a short time I went back and lined up a whole slew of them on the bar, my troops ready and willing. At first I flicked them indiscriminately, more out of anger and spite, content in my knowledge that I had time to flick the peanuts and surprised by my own impulse and unwavering hate, bent on lashing out at a hotel bar in a very dark part of the night. But then I started getting efficient, choosing more solid peanuts, kernels with both halves or else the ones with a slight curve underneath so that I could get my finger under it and provide enough lift to hit the top shelf.
Before long I had improved my aim down to bottle caps and just above the center of gravity of the martini glasses. I was mindlessly destroying the place. It only took about 10 minutes of fun to lay it all to waste. Not complete destruction, mind you, but certainly beyond cheap repair. I’m normally not a violent person but this morning I was pushed over some line for some reason; the feeling was genuine. It lacked a plan, a coherent line of thought, but not enjoyment. This was a truly twisted act that would cause someone a lot of work, a lot of grief, some debt and perhaps some anger, and the worst part about the whole affair is how much I liked it.
–
I think that I could explain where the desire for hopeless violence came from, especially given their attitude towards kicking me out when the mistake was theirs. I could rationalize it with the fact that I resented being kicked out of their hotel before I was good and ready to leave. But I couldn’t justify the destruction of their bar. That was an act of irresponsible malice that normally should have no business in a civilized society and anyone crazy enough to actually do such a thing should probably be locked up and guarded by rottweilers.
Wait. Whoops. Did I say that?
Well - in any case. It sure felt good.
But as I said, I don’t have a lot of time and soon some poor Peruvian woman will walk into the hotel to vacuum and dust and sweep before the actual staff arrives. Her usual routine will be torn when she sees the disaster this place is in and begins to fear the attackers are still on the premises, which I hope to God that I’m not. She will be filled with confusion, make the motion of the cross on her chest and mumble out a prayer of some kind. But with any luck she’ll snap out of it and start with the vacuuming, getting most of the peanuts, thereby erasing the evidence of my presence down to shards of glass, perhaps seen as a common break-in. They won’t discover that there’s nothing missing but the broken glasses for at least a couple of hours and by then I think I can be at another hotel across town where these guys will give up on me. Madrid is a very large place.
There an obvious lesson in this, but it applies more to them than to me. That lesson is to never leave the bar open with the peanuts out. I’m pretty sure it can be metaphorically applied to a great many situations.
Madrid, Spain — November 2007
Alberto Aguillera NH, Room 403
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Dear America,
I hope this finds you well, but from the sound of things reaching my ears this is not the case. The noise is relentless, it seems: cabinet members and loyal bushies resigning like there was a bonus in store for them (or maybe a private sector job with 6 times the salary), international blunders from foreign policy to economics to French cuisine when president Sarkozy visited Main only to get a hot dog or a hamburger, his choice.
Everywhere I go, people seem to hate you. And it’s not a mild dislike either — they really hate you.
I met a man in Paris on the metro recently. He was nice enough, willing to speak English though my guess is that his first language was something else, like Arabic or Farsi or something. He had a strange hat made of a long piece of cloth and he wouldn’t take it off, and he wore a vest, sort of like the one my father does when we go on vacation except that this guy’s vest was covered in string what what looked like red silly putty and candles. Weird. You should’ve seen his beard!
Anyway, he said he was going to the airport to do…something to the Americans there (the bus went over a bump just then and I didn’t catch what he said). I wonder if he meant that he was going to help people get cabs since he speaks a similar language to taxi drivers, but I doubt it. He said he was going to go meet someone named Ala. I don’t know if he found his friend…the airport there is crowded with Americans and that could make finding someone very difficult. I guess his friend would probably be wearing the same strange hat and would probably not look like most of the Americans there.
In any case, you should’ve heard this guy go off - he was really pissed-off at a lot of things about you. He kept going on about Saudi Arabia, Israel, Palestine, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and a few other countries I don’t think you’ve heard of. I remember you had said that you don’t read or watch the news because it’s so unpleasant so you probably don’t know what I’m talking about, but you might want to pay attention to this round. Just change the channel next time 24 is on and watch anything else. I think you’ll get a sense of what I’m talking about.
He said you had been there, in this country he was talking about, or perhaps that you were there now. I can’t remember. Now, I know that doesn’t make sense since you’re still cushed up between Mexico and the scummier part of Canada, where you’ve always been. I must’ve misunderstood him over his friends who were chanting something I didn’t grasp. One of them was filming it though, so I might have made it onto a home video somewhere - in which case, hi Mom!
Ok, for now. You probably stopped reading many paragraphs ago. There’s more though, and you should look into it. Tell captain cuckoo bananas over there to wisen up and pay attention to the world, for your sake. You’ve been a good friend and I’d hate to see you worse than you are. Look around to Russia, to India, China, the Middle East, Africa, and South America. Look to your friends also, and don’t try to screw them over because of some oil in some very harsh and terrible places. Or because of things like French fires. I mean, really. Listen and work with them. Grow up.
Most importantly, look in yourself and see what needs fixing, what needs replacing and what needs a good spring cleaning. Pay attention.
Foolishly hoping for the best, I remain,
Disillusioned Few
PS. You know that home video I mentioned earlier? They put it on TV! I didn’t catch the news segment it was on but I’m told it was on a network called Al-something. I was on TV! I’m famous!
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