The long and winding blog

"I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I've lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment." (John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley)

In the spirit Jack Kerouac's On the Road or Charles Kuralt's travelogs, we're heading out on a one day mini-trip after breakfast. Not to see the likes of Chicago's "hootchy kootchy joints" as described by Kerouac. No, today is a kind of warm-up run for bigger things to come down the road as summer begins unfolding soon.

No, no encounters with hootchy-kootchy girls or boppy jazz joints today. Instead, we're heading for Alamogordo, New Mexico. About 80 miles up the road, Alamogordo's brightest hour came in the riotous pre-dawn nucleonic moment of July 16, 1945. That was the morning a mysterious blossom unexpectedly sprung from the desert floor just west of that sleepy little town reminiscent of some 50's black and white movie shot on the cheap.

And as suddenly as the first atom bomb sprouted and bloomed, it just as suddenly faded and died, leaving its withered flower to drop its dying petals across the once more peaceful, still slumbering landscape.

In driving there, I do so in the spirit of "thinking I will find something wonderful just around the next bend," ala Charles Kuralt's travels.

I had not intended to blog this morning, but after the way the day "blossomed" for me on the web, I felt very sullied. Hence the need to blog, as a cathartic effort in response to internet encounters that made me feel like some sleezy Hollywood gossip queen digging for dirt.

As most of us know, the president will buy free air time tonight to tell the nation once more of his support for the sanctity of marriage as expressed in the senate's Defense of Marriage Act that would amend our constitution against the onslaught of gays and lesbians so threatening the American way of life.

DOMA doesn't have a prayer in hell of passing as CNN tells us. It's just an election year ploy to get American's homophobic minds off their stagnating economy, bankrupted treasury, the war, illegal spying, illegal torturing, and other minor issues like disappearing jobs and pensions and insurances of all kinds that cost more and more but insure less and less.

You know what I'm talking about, from homeowners insurance against hurricane damage that is denied because it doesn't cover damage by wind, or maybe by water, or maybe both. Of insurance companies, and not your doctors, deciding what medical procedures are warranted, allowed, or will be reimbursed. Or simply cancelling your insurance if you have the fucking audacity to get sick, have an accident and submit a claim. That's because in the ultimate capitalist society, insurance is unaffordably expensive yet pays nothing to its insureds. Everything's excluded, just don't miss a premium or you're cancelled.

And industry will regulate itself, much like Worldcom, Exxon, Tyco, Enron if we only let it. And if we won't, they'll just take over the government. (FLASH! They already have.) No wonder any cure for cancer would be suppressed. There's too much money to be made draining people's life's savings from them before they die. And where's the incentive to cut back on oil consumption and diminish the onslaught of global warming? Ask Exxon or Condi Rice's old employer, Chevron. But I digress, don't I? That's why I need to get the hell outta Dodge today.

And in the vein of Bush's defense of marriage tonight, there are stories circulating around. Stuff like our secretary of state oil tanker, Condoleezza Rice in April '04 exposing her Freudian slip by referring to president Bush as her husband. It's taken on new significance in light of the rumor circulating that Laura left the white house for at least one night last week because of her disgust with the ongoing Bush-Condi relationship.

And from there things really went downhill. I'm going to spare you the even far more sordid details. Why make you feel as dirty as I'm feeling right now? Why make you feel, as I, some need to get out of town, run away from yourself in an effort to find yourself.

But on the rumors of the Bush affair, I read one commenter say if we could just get Bush to now say under oath he's not boinking Condi (and if it turns out he is), we can hire a Ken Starr-like prosecutor, spend $50-60 million and impeach that son of a bitch. That's just wishful thinking, of course, because as we remember from the congressional 9/11 inquiry, Bush is smarter than that. He never testifies to anything under oath. Bush is above oaths.

But tonight he'll remind us how he supports the sanctity of marriage. And if I'm lucky, really lucky, I'll still be somewhere between home and New Mexico. Because after my readings this morning, I really feel cheap, really dirty. And I really need to get out of town. And while I hadn't intended to post this morning before leaving,I do so as a kind of mind purgative.

Perhaps as Steinbeck reminds in his Travels With Charley, "One goes, not to much to see but to tell afterward." In that spirit I venture forth. To escape. To perhaps tell afterward.