The Iraq Elections Will Magically Melt Evil Hearts

Why is it every time some motherfuckers get killed in Iraq the news media shits out headlines like these:

• Mosque Bomb Kills 14 Ahead of Election
• As Iraq Election Nears, Violence Increases
• Can Iraqis fight bombs with ballots?
• Iraq vote nears; 5 bombs kill 27
• Baghdad Car Bombs Kill at Least 26 as Election Nears
• Bombs rock Baghdad in run-up to election

I think it's a bit irresponsible for the Media to frame the election as the season finale of Terrorism. I hate to break it to the dumb motherfuckers of the world, but there will be violence in Iraq AFTER the elections too. Hold off on booking a two week vacation at Iraq's Club Med on January 31st. In fact I think the safe money is on Iraq still being all fucked up on January 32nd, 33rd and 34th.

While some of these bombings are specifically targeting election workers, I doubt that is the only motive. It seems to me terrorists enjoy blowing shit up. They do it on a pretty regular basis, and they appear to be very good at it. Despite the fact that their 401k plan is a lot shittier than mine, they still manage to blow up to work every day. In the last two weeks I've had a bit of the old writers block. I've been pissed off about a lot of things, but I lacked the energy and words to crank out an article about it. Terrorist don't seem to have this problem, unfortunately there's no such thing as Terror Block.

I'm sick of hearing about the "run-up to the election." the only thing that appear to be running up are medical bills and body bag orders. Fuck the fake-ass elections. Here's what White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan has to say about them:

"You've heard directly from our military commanders that there are still a few areas -- well four of the 18 provinces, I guess -- where there are still ongoing security challenges, where the terrorists and Saddam loyalists are continuing to carry out violent acts,"

Four out of 18 provinces? Sweet! What McClellan fails to mention is that those 4 provinces include the city of Baghdad and about 44% of the country's population. And whichever way the election goes, there's still gonna be motherfuckers in beige camouflage with M16s walking around shooting shit up and telling folks to move along. I wonder if January 30th will be celebrated in Iraq the way we celebrate the fourth of July here in America. A roman candle and some sparklers would seem redundant in the face of all the other shit exploding on a daily basis.

Old School Bullshit

Sometimes in order to go forwards you have to backtrack a ways to find out where you made a wrong turn in the first place. It seems like we've done gone wrong in a couple of different ways that would require lots of explanation, and this is a silly website whose contents you'll forget as soon as you click over to blacksonblondes.com, so I'll keep it brief and good fun all at the same time.

I'm not sure how it got on my brain the other day, but it seems like people didn't used to be so afraid of each other. Maybe that's wrong, maybe we were afraid of each other in different ways, but it seems people weren't so disconnected and afraid of each other. Maybe human history has sucked at all times in different ways, but we can speculate can't we?

Everybody's afraid of each other these days. You got Amber Alert, Megan's Law, plastic wrap over medicine bottles. Needles in Halloween candy, etc etc. Every nanny is gonna beat up your child, every priest is going to molest your son, every gay guy with three names is gonna kill you and put your head in a freezer. And these is even before we get to the new school fears of Al Queda, Al Mushroom Clouds and Al Radiation From Cell Phones.

Everybody's afraid of the opposite sex. With a little help from Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill you can't have any fun at work anymore. I don't know what it was like working before those hearings, I think I worked at Burger King at that point, but I do know that you can't have any fun at work anymore. Everyone's afraid of each other. Everyone's a victim or a victimizer.

People used to hitchhike and now they don't. I think it's even illegal to do it now. Don't hitchhike y'all, somebody's gonna pick you up and make sweet love to your corpse. Everybody is creepy, don't talk to strangers, look out, watch out, don't trust anybody, your neighbor is dangerous, Jason's gonna get you, Freddy's gonna get you, there's a goddamned shark in your water.

Maybe I haven't done enough research, but it seems to me that there was a more placid time when people had a little more trust in their neighbor and had a wider ring of people they thought of as their neighbor. People weren't so afraid of each other. Maybe some people in power thought it in their advantage to make people afraid of everything. There's that book "The Culture Of Fear" by Barry Glassner that talks about how the evening news makes everybody afraid of everything. Somehow the people in power thrive when the rest of us are building bombshelters out of duct tape. When people are afraid of their neighbor, they're not seeing the real dangers. People are so afraid of street crime, they totally miss the white collar crime that does way way more damage.

This is a lot to go into and I'm totally glossing over a lot of things and I haven't said anything funny since "...blacksonblondes.com" but I think it's a legit idea. I remember seeing people hitchhiking back in the day and I think I remember seeing my parents pick up hitchhikers from time to time. Mostly because the hitchhikers were my neighbor with alzheimers who had wandered off, but that's not the point. The point is most mutherfuckers are not rapists, murderers, dangerous, or thieves. People are afraid of each other and have isolated themselves from everyone except the characters on their television set. Fear fear fear fear fear fear fear. I miss verse 1 of "We Didn't Start The Fire" and I'm tired of verse 3. Am I the only one fatigued by all this fear-mongering?