My Little Thoughts

Today, I am full of sadness.  Sadness and internal organs.  But mostly sadness.

Why am I sad? you ask.

Or maybe you don't.  In which case we're not friends anymore so give me back my ball and I want to go home.

Where was I?  Ah, yes, the sadness.

I am filled with sadness because of Avatar.  Avatar, what some could call the "American Idol" of Cinema, both in terms of market share and in the fact that (spoilers) there is some weird singing that goes on at times in both.

But why does Avatar fill me with sadness?

Well, mostly because I wanted better out of it.  Now don't get me wrong.  Like most of the rest of the audience at the IMAX 3D theater where I saw it, I too was at the edge of my seat at many different times throughout, screaming, "HOLY CRAP!" like a 12-year old boy who's just seen someone lit on fire in the middle of a flock of pigeons (and trust me about this situation... I know).

But at the same time that I was screaming "HOLY CRAP," I was also having an internal debate with myself.

I can multitask.  For instance, right now I am both typing AND avoiding work.

Back on task: the debate.  My debate was whether Avatar was going to turn out to be the kind of HOLY CRAP movie that bears up under repeat viewings and requires HOLY CRAPpage upon each and every one, or whether it was going to be the kind of HOLY CRAP movie that Titanic (another 16-hour long movie by Mr. Cameron) turned out to be: the kind of HOLY CRAP movie where you scream HOLY CRAP throughout the movie, then when you go to see it again, you say Holy Crap? in a kind of befuddled way because you are wondering where the totally amazingly frickin' awesome movie that you saw the first time disappeared to.

Sort of like the Phantom Menace.  I saw that, LOVED it.  Went back to see it the next weekend.  COULDN'T STAND IT.  What was the difference?  Well, the first time I was so exuberant about the return of the epic space opera from my childhood that I didn't even notice it lacked a few things, like story, narrative, believable characters, and dialogue that didn't cause spontaneous diahrrea.

So do you see where I'm going with this?  Because unfortunately Avatar, while no Phantom Menace (I think God sent a flock of doves into the sky the night that movie was released as a sign He would never again punish the world on such a scale... like the flood/rainbow thing, only Phantom Menace was, of course, much worse) is not one I'm going to want to see again.

I mean, thrills?  Yes!  I was totally surprised a couple of times.

But now I know where the thrills happen.  Surprise exits, stage right (in glorious IMAX 3D).

Story?  It has been well-documented by many academics (or at least by some of my friends who pass on chain emails like they'll be killed if they don't) that you can watch Pocahantas and get the same story in about 1/16th of the time.

Which leads me to the other problem: the pee break.  I'll say no more, but there has been many a great movie that is wrecked by my inability to "hold it" all the way through.  Titanic at least had an extended nude scene that I could use as a 45 minute pee-break (PG13... really???).  But Avatar has no such benefits.  Or at least, not of the human variety (I'm pretty sure there are some fairly naked aliens in the movie, but I don't know if that counts).

And so we get to the final piece of the sadness (and internal organs) that is me today: I like Cameron's work.  I cannot think of a single thing he's ever released that I didn't like.

But I used to LOVE it.  Back when he was a "no one" or just a "someone" instead of "king of the world."  Back when he had to take suggestions from other people and actually listen to them, rather than just laugh, flash a billion dollars at them, offer to have them murdered, and then laugh again as they fell silent.

Now, I'm a screenwriter (side job - but it does pay at times), so I know that the process of going through "creative meetings" where everyone has different ideas how to get from A to 9 can result in frustrations.  But I also know that some of my best ideas have come out of those meetings, and in them I've also been notified of some of my biggest story flaws.  Why?  Because I'm still a "nobody," and so I still have to actually LISTEN.  And listening is what you have to do if you want to be a great - not just decent - storyteller.

Believe me, if we're talking effects, Cameron truly IS King of the World: he is one of those rare directors that not only understands how to integrate technology into his films, he understands the technology ITSELF.  The difference is subtle, but important.  He is a maker and and inventor and innovator of superior calibre.  One thinks of Walt Disney as someone who had similar vision in pushing the envelope where it came to merging creativity and technology, and as someone who, if the technology didn't exist, either made it himself or teamed with someone to get it made.

But still.  Movies shouldn't just be about effects... unless they should.  Those of you who have read earlier posts of mine about Transformers and GI Joe will know that I am a firm believer in the idea that dumb movies can be brilliant in their own dumb way.  But the difference is that neither of those movies pretend to greatness.

Avatar does.

And does it succeed?

On the first viewing?  Yes.  An all-around, no holds barred yes.

On a technological level?  Yes.  Forever.  This is a ground-breaker.

As a movie to be watched and savored and loved, viewing after viewing?

I think you know the answer.

So does my spleen, which has been removed to make room for the sadness.

It's the last day of a decade, and so I find myself somewhat introspective.  Thinking about what has mattered most and least to me in these last ten years.

Oddly enough, when I tried this exercise, I found it was very hard to remember what has mattered least to me.  There's a lesson to be learned there, I'm sure.  But it doesn't matter much to me.

At any rate, I heard a news report this morning saying a Poll by a reasonably believable polling group had found that 2 out of 3 Americans think that this last decade has more or less stunk (I'm paraphrasing for dramatic purposes).  They had a number of reasons, and of course there are the top two that everyone knows about:

Yes, I know that it was released in 1999, but I believe the malaise that it caused leaked over well into 2005 and 2006.

 

And the other cause of the public demonization of this decade was, of course:

I don't think that there has ever before been a decade where two such beloved franchises have been struck such crushing blows by "follow up" movies.

Actually, I would have let Indy 4 get by with a "pass" except for the scene where he hides in refrigerator to escape a nuke.  I get it: the fridge is lead-lined, so no problem with radiation.  But then add on to that the fact that he's at ground zero, the nuke goes off, the fridge (with 92-year old Harrison Ford inside*) goes flying through the air for several miles, so fast it PASSES A CAR THAT IS CONSUMED BY THE EXPLOSION, and then Indy basically rolls out of it and says "Ow" with no other ill-effects.  And this is RIDICULOUS, because as we all know, refrigerators from that era couldn't be opened from the inside, so he would have suffocated.  How could the producers and writers have missed this logic gap???

And so what do we have?  What do we have? We have twin bases of hope in the end of the 20th century - the fact that the Force is out there and the Ark of the Covenant is in good hands - utterly decimated in the first years of the 21st century.

No wonder people think the decade has stunk.

Plus there were some people who died of various causes for some reasons that I could probably remember if I cared to but I don't because I'm still so friggin' upset at the revelation that the mystical, magical "Force" is really caused by some kind of interstellar microbe.  It's not an archetypical metaphor for religion, it's closer to space herpes: "Hey, baby, check this out."  "Wow, your lightsaber is really... bright..."  "Yeah.  It's the force.  That's what it does, baby."  Or how about "May the Force be with you," now it's like saying "I hope you catch cold."

 

Sucky.

And so the United States swirls downward into a fog of depression.  The only way out, logically is to either eat a bunch of brownies or go buy a bunch of houses and high-end electronics that we can't afford. And who really likes brownies that much, right?

So in a nutshell, it's all Lucas's fault.  I'm not saying he's EVIL, but perhaps he is a little bit evil (see the difference: all uppercase is like Hitler; all lowercase is just Manson or something small potatoes like that).

On the upside, this year I personally did see some good:

 

I knocked a guy's tooth out in a fight (it was a friendly one, and the dude didn't even know it until after someone gave it to him... which means I won't be fighting him again, because people who don't even notice the loss of a tooth due to a swift uppercut scare me, but still it was a cool macho moment).

 

I managed to remain out of the hospital for heart attacks (I'm 35 and a lawyer... this is a miracle).

 

Neither of my children impregnated anyone or became impregnated out of wedlock (yes, they're only 3 and 5, but kids grow up so fast these days).

 

And my wife is as beautiful as ever (which could be interpreted as a bad thing, since that tends to highlight my rapidly declining facial state when we stand together).

So on the whole, I'd have to say I personally have come out ahead.  I'm still inhaling following every single exhalation (that's the secret to living forever - now you know).  I have my health.  It's not good health, but it's mine (until universal healthcare takes it away from me).  I have a wonderful family and a wonderful extended family.  I have over 600 friends on Facebook, and am fairly certain I've actually met over 20% of them.  I wrote a book that my wife loved and that has had over 125,000 hits on its website in the four or so months since its launch.  I've written this column on a (semi) regular basis, and helped a few people to laugh, a few people to think.

Yes, Lucas did his best to destroy our souls.  Yes, we face challenges (albeit smaller ones) in our domestic situations and in the war on terror.  Yes, all of this happened in the last decade.

But in the last decade we also re-discovered Robert Downey, Jr.  The Dark Knight made almost as much money as it deserved.  People kept praying and working for peace in lots of parts of the world, though some had different opinions of how best to achieve that peace.  Most of us - the great majority, I believe - managed to be good people, good citizens, good neighbors, good friends.

We, as a race, are still alive.  A triumph in itself when you consider our prediliction for self-destruction and the ability we now have to achieve it on a complete scale.

I breathe in.

I breathe out.

I breathe in again.

May we all do better this New Year than we did last.  And may we view that exhortation not as a way of saying "last year was terrible" (after all, none of the Star Wars Prequels or the Crystal Skull came out this year), but rather as an opportunity to look back at our blessings (there will be no more Star Wars prequels), to review our failings (some of us continue to watch the Clone Wars series), and to do better next year.  To feel better.  To BE better.

Triumph lies not in being the best.  It lies merely in being a little bit better today than you were yesterday.  And so, no matter what happens externally, triumph is always within our grasp.

Happy New Decade everyone.

I only say 92-year old because he looks better at his age than I do at mine, which is so unfair it borders on one of those ancient Greek God-style curses.  On me, not him.  Jerk.

I was listening to NPR today.  I do that.  I also listen to "talk radio."  Basically, I listen to the crazies on the left until I can't stand it any more, then I switch to the crazies on the right until I can't stand THAT anymore, then I go back to the left, then right, left, right... it's like a masochistic hokey-pokey (and believe me, it DOES "turn me all around").

At any rate, one of the senators from my state (I can never remember their names, so I just call them "Crazy #1" and "Crazy #2") was talking about the healthcare reform that is being pushed through Congress right now.  The details of her statements in their entirety are lost to the foggy mists of my memory, but I do remember her talking about one issue that is really beating people up: the whole whether abortions get funded with federal money, and if so, to what extent thing.  Less than her own particular stance on the subject, however, what struck me was one particular choice of words she used in one monologue.  I'll paraphrase her diatribe below:

"Blah blah blah blah blah blah PRO-choice blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah ANTI-choice blah blah blah blah blah blah."

Again, that's a paraphrasing.  I may have gotten some of the words wrong.

What struck me about the ones I remembered for sure, however, were that they were so clearly calculated to "spin" the other side as rotten, evil, and stupid.  After all, who could possibly ally themselves with someone who is ANTI-CHOICE???  Satan, perhaps, or maybe the guy who wears the hockey mask and is always killing naked campers.  But other than them, only a moron or a Certified Child of Beelzebub (or "lawyer" as we call them in the free world) would be ANTI-CHOICE.

And, lest any "PRO-CHOICE" person get their noodle in a knot, I've also heard other speeches from the other side of the political aisle that go something like this (again, paraphrasing):

"Blah blah blah blah blah blah PRO-life blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah BABY-killers blah blah blah blah blah."

Once more, based on the wording alone you have a clear choice: be right, or join a game of Texas Hold-'em with Hockey Guy, the Father of Lies, and members of the American Bar Association.

Now I want to make one thing clear up front right now (funny how I'm making it clear "up front" halfway through my column...): I'm not talking here about which side of this particular debate is right, or which side is wrong.  That's an article for another time and another place.  What I do want to pick on a bit is the fact that both sides of this debate - and a lot of others - have essentially created a situation where it is impossible to even sit down and talk with the other side, because we've all resorted to name calling before coming to the table.

I mean, really, would it hurt Crazy #1 if she had said, ""Blah blah blah blah blah blah PRO-choice blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah PRO-life blah blah blah blah blah blah"?  I mean, would any rational human have heard those words and thought, "Egad!  Methinks she goeth over to the other side!!"  NO!  So what's the harm in using the other side's preferred term for itself?

And of course the harm is that people worry that in so doing they partially legitimize that side's point of view.  I've heard a similar argument go like this: "Israel is a state, an actual country, and Palestine is just a group of people or at best a geographical region, so calling them 'Palestinians' gives them an equal footing with 'Israelis' tantamount to conferring admitted national status on them."

And so another chance at moderated discussion is destroyed before even being begun... and because of nothing more than a "righteous indignation" over nomenclature.

I am appalled.

As a seven year old child, if I had determined I would never talk to a friend again because he insisted on calling me "freckles" (I have none - or at least, very few), my Mom would have called me an idiot (in nicer terms) and probably tried to set up a play date.  Similarly, I was taught from a young age to be a gentleman... and that that meant you called all females older than or close in age to you "Ma'am"... unless they didn't like that, in which case you called them whatever they preferred.

That is my ultimate point.  That is my ultimate rant here.  We can't even call each other by our preferred names.  How ridiculous is that?  How crazy have we become?  How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Roll?

In case you weren't aware, I have a weird name: Michaelbrent.  I would bet you any sum of money you want that I am the only "Michaelbrent" on earth.  And I prefer to be called Michaelbrent.  Mostly because that way if someone calls asking for "Mike" and I don't recognize the voice, I can hang up on them because I know it's a telemarketer reading my name off a list.  But if one of my friends wants to call me Mike, I'm amenable.  Heck, he or she can call me "Susan the Bangy-Haired" for all I care, as long as it's not something inherently nasty or pejorative.

Which, of course, is what the politicos are doing more and more... calling each other nasty names.  Or at least calling each other names that they know the other side does not like to be called, which amounts to the same thing.  And again, what does that result in?  A stupid fight that keeps anyone from even getting to the table and discussing the real issues.

Hypothetical: all baby seals are dying of baby seal-itis.  All people in the free world agree this is a tragedy, because baby seals are cute and also you can make great shoes out of them (don't ask me how I know that, just trust me).  So a convocation of world leaders is called together.  Two solutions are proposed.  One side calls themselves the "Adopt-A-Baby-Seal" group, the other side calls themselves the "Feed-A-Baby-Seal" group.

BUT... (remember, I always have a big, fat but...) the "Adopt-A-Baby-Seal" group insists on calling the other side the "I'd-Rather-Die-Than-Live-With-A-Cute-Baby-Seal" group, and the "Feed-A-Baby-Seal" group calls the other group "Hateful-Seal-Starvers."

How many people out there in interweb land think this convocation of world leaders is going to happen now?

[crickets chirp]

That's right.  It ain't.  Just like we're never going to have any kind of movement on so many of our own domestic and international problems until we can at least agree to treat each other civilly.  And that doesn't just mean saying "please" and "thank you," it means calling each other by names we know the other person prefers to be called.  Because I hate to say it, but if my argument is so weak that it won't survive me calling the other side by the name it prefers, I deserve to lose.

What they don't know is... every night, I come in and eat the M&Ms. It's like the elves and the shoemaker, only in reverse.

Thanks, I appreciate it. (ha!)

That's why I try to underachieve as much as possible. That way you get inured to that problem.

I love Decemeber. It's my second favorite month after December.

Is the real estate office really a cardboard box? Because sometimes I tell my family I'm going to the law library when in reality I'm going out to hide in a cardboard refrigerator box. I just assumed everyone does it.

Hmmmm.... okay, done pondering, GIVE ME PRESENTS!

Be glad that it's always something. If it stops being always something, it starts being always nothing.
That means you're dead.

As in, you have a huge water mammal gaining on you? How WOULD you get into that predicament?

It's funny, but that kind of thing isn't as rare as it used to be.

Keep it to yourself, big guy. Remember the restraining order.

Because I drug you each night. You just don't notice because I'm stealthy. And a ninja. And invisible.

You're a hateful, hateful man, Matt. Makin' us all feel bad.
I did a pull-up yesterday.
Okay, it was more of a pull-down. But the Pop Tarts box was REALLY HIGH so I'm counting it.

"plotting" for Christmas? Somehow those two things don't seem like they'd go together... unless you're the Grinch who Stole Christmas.

And now (for those of you who haven't already given up), you should be thinking "WTF?" (meaning, of course, "Where's The Fudge?" Answer: there is none. Give it up already.)

But seriously, what the heck was all that?

Well, I'll tell you. But first, a random-seeming segue that will seem less random after I'm done. Stick with me just a little longer.

Fourteen years ago I returned from a two year stint as a missionary in Paraguay, South America. It was a great time, especially if you like flying cockroaches the size of a Cap'n Crunch box. It was also a great time for the "interweb" as it's come to be known. Unfortunately, the areas I was living in usually didn't have phones, let alone computers. So when I returned, all this interweb stuff was new. In fact, several friends sent me cryptic letters while I was in South America, referencing things like "emails" and "chatrooms" (actually they were called "muckrooms" back then), and other jargon-y sounding things that I did not understand at all and chalked up to the fact that most of my friends were drug addled lunatics. Well, not most. Okay, only one. I'm looking at you, Vinnie!

At any rate, when I returned from my missionary time, after getting a full body scrubdown and being coated with lime to prevent the spread of my South American cooties to anyone else, my parents took it upon themselves to show me the joys of the interweb.

My dad was an English professor. That meant all-access time at the university computer lab. My parents "signed me on," gave me a "user name," and suddenly BAMMO! I'm talking to some guy in Norway whose username is something like Gorbladt or Shrimschirver or something equally Dungeons and Dragons sounding.

Even so, it was amazing! I was talking to Gorbladt! All the way in Sweden! (I know, I said Norway before, but I honestly don't remember which it was. Someplace with lots of tall blonde people, so either one of the Scandinavian countries or Beverly Hills.)

Gorbladt and I "chatted" as the techies called it for a good half-hour before my fingers started cramping and I realized that I had to stretch (meaning pee). So I said my fond farewells to my new best friend Gorbladt, promised to "muck into him" again real soon, and stood up.

And here is where I stopped in my tracks. No, I hadn't wet myself. It was something else this time. I looked around and realized that I was in a room full of college students.

Let me say that again: I was in a room full of college students.

Some of you may not be getting the inference here, so I'll just come out and say it: I'd just spent the last half hour making life-partner attachments to a guy in a foreign land (Beverly Hills) who insisted on telling me that his "alignment" was "good/chaotic" who I would NEVER SEE AGAIN while sitting in a room full of people that I could actually touch, make real friendsies with, and would probably be seeing in class at some point, since I was going to start school there in a week or so.

I actually got goose-pimples. The threats to my social life and my sanity were so clear that the next time I got on a computer to use email or a chatroom was when it was mandated by one of my teachers: I didn't want to get sucked in to a virtual world full of "people" who were no more than fictitious avatars made up by folks I would never really get to know... and at the expense of time that could have been spent making a real difference in my immediate community, in the world that I actually physically touched day by day.

And so now we circle back to my list of weird one-liners. What was all that? It was my last few entries on Facebook. Fourteen years after my abandonment of what I saw as a freakish misuse of time and social output, I no longer even "chat" with Gorbladt: I am reduced to one-liners that would have made Dan Quayle blush back in the day when people actually made fun of him (you younguns may not remember such a time, but before he became inconveniently truthful he had a knack for sounding inconveniently dumbful).

Where am I going with this (far too long) essay. Well, first of all, I'd like to point out that I did classify it under the "ultimate randimosity" tag, so you should have known what you were getting into.

But blame game aside, my point is that we've become a society of lonely people whose only hope for finding friendship resides in a little white box (or thin overpriced laptop if your a Mac cultist - er, user). Ask yourself this, as you read this column: when was the last time I Facebooked, or Tweeted, or Digged, or Goobahed,* or Whatevered?

Now, ask yourself: if you are at work, when was the last time you went into the office/cubicle next to yours and asked your coworker something about their family, their school, their religion, their politics, their LIFE? If you are at home, do you even know your next-door-neighbors' last names? If they have kids? Have you taken them cookies?

Don't get me wrong. I don't think we should abandon all things electric and go back to beating on one another with clubs to determine which one gets the cave-girl with the most teeth (though I do have a club and have been practicing... you never know). But I do think that the balance of our lives has shifted. We complain about being stuck inside in a cubicle or office all day, then go home and voluntarily stick ourselves in a room with no one but Gorbladt for company.

Think how many hours a day you spend using a computer for silly little Tweets or Facebook entries. I'm not telling you to stop. But I am asking this: if you spent one tenth of that time on making the world a better place, what could you accomplish?

I'd write more about this, but I think that question is a good note to stop on. I'm going to log off and talk go ask my boss how his mom is doing.

 

*That one was made up. But I've already trademarked the name, so no stealing.

So I've been thinking a lot recently.

No, stick with me: it's true.

More specifically, I've been thinking about the now over eight-year-old "war" on terror, and how President Obama has been pressed to make a decision as to what military strategy we're going to take in that war.  Presumably it's going to be something different than President Bush was doing, because doing more of the same is going to amount to a tacit admission that Bush actually got something right (shock, horror!), and that's not something that the Democratic Party would like to have as a campaign slogan going into the next round of elections.

But Pres. Obama does have some tough choices to make, particularly because we have a few differences in this "war" that we've never had to face before.  One is that we're not facing any kind of "standard" army.  Sure, in Vietnam there was guerilla warfare, but we've never seen the kind of cell structure that the terrorists today are using as a method of maintaining fluidity and anonymity.

Another thing is that we have a confusion about precisely which "bad guy" we're supposed to be taking on: the Taliban?  Al Quaeda?  Katie Couric?*  When we think of the "great" war movies, which ones come to mind?  I'll bet if you listed your top 10, at least seven of them would be about World War II.  And there's a reason for that: it's the last war we fought where there was a clear-cut "bad guy" (something Americans require), and a clear cut "good guy" (something Americans long to be).  In the present "war" there's a lot more ambiguity.  I mean, most people agree that the Taliban and Al Quaeda are a pretty nasty pair, but there are other nasty folks out there, too.  Why not fight them?  Why these two?  And of course, there's always the vocal minority that says that we're just making things worse the more we fight these groups: that the very fighting inspires necessary collateral damage (i.e., innocent dead people), which then gives these fundamentalist groups that much more propaganda fodder to work with.

And one more thing that distinguishes this war from World War II, World War I, the Civil War, or any of the other "great and noble" wars that the US has been involved in:

We're not all in.

By that I mean that President Bush and his administration stressed "business as usual."  Condition Orange?  Go about your normal lives, because not doing so means the terrorists win.  President Obama and the mainline press today seem to be leaning toward this same strategy, at least inasmuch as there is about twice as much news coverage on Sarah Palin's new book as there is on anything happening to our soldiers on the battlefield.

But that's not how wars are fought.  Or rather, it's not how wars are won.  In WWII, we had Boy Scouts going door to door collecting tin cans and other scrap for the troops.  We had paper drives where people would give up diplomas and family records to support "the cause."  We had young men - boys, really - being drafted or even volunteering to participate in a war that was a clear-cut case of good-vs.-evil.

Were there political ramifications?   Certainly.  FDR probably wouldn't have stayed in office for four terms without WWII giving the nation a need for a stabilizing feature in the White House.  Did both the West and the Soviet Union see opportunities to profit by Hitler's fall?  Certainly (and one can only wish that Churchill had played a greater part in the final peace talks - we might have had a much shorter Cold  War).

But those were not the point... at least, not to the "Everyday Joes" who were fighting for - and dying in - the war.  No, the point was that evil was being done, that if left unchecked it would eventually come to threaten our homes... and they were all in for stopping it.

I'm speaking in generalities here, I know.  Of course there were deserters.  Of course there were dissenters.  But the nation, the media, the industrial machine as a whole got behind the war... and won it.

So as Pres. Obama deliberates what the strategy should be for this war, may I put forth this option: don't make it a "business as usual" war.  Speak, not of less sacrifice, but of more.  Call, not for less in the way of personal commitment, but for more.  "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."

If it were me, I'd probably call for more boots on the ground as quickly as possible.  I'd also re-instate the draft.  But not what we usually think of as the draft.  Rather, I'd have the federal and state government set up a series of service and support centers where people would be required to come in and work a certain number of hours per week.  Are you a doctor?  Then you're either shipping over for a month to give training not to our troops, but to village and town doctors, or you're going to a service and support (S&S) center to answer fax questions about medical issues as they arise.  Are you a lawyer?  How many of these emergent "democracies" are strugglnig with rule of law?  Either you ship over for a month to give one-on-one support and advice (not training - we aren't better, we're just there for help when asked), or you report to an S&S center a few hours a week for a year and go over legal questions that local and federal magisterial officers may have about how to make a democracy run.

Firefighter?  Think they couldn't use basic FLS (fire-life-safety) training in a lot of places?  Go for a month, or do your S&S time for a year.  Work for the Department of Water and Power?  Geez, don't even get me started: that's probably the most valuable of the bunch.

In other words, we'd be providing on the minute assistance for our friends in Afghanistan and Iraq and all the good people who have been misled into thinking that we are The Great Satan (or words to that effect).  We'd be showing them that we're all in, that we're not going away, and that we have more to give than the others who offer paradise in exchange for a suicide run at a mall full of innocent people.

Folks, contrary to the headline for this piece, war is never fun.  We've been trying to make it so... or at least make it convenient and unobtrusive.  Which means we've been trying to raise fear in the hearts of our enemies while never raising passion in our own.  There's a word for this.

It's called losing.

*Don't laugh.  I'm fairly certain she's the spearhead for an alien invasion.  Reliable sources (my Alpha-Bits) told me so.