Man is just a very large virus.

On the final day of 2008, I revealed my New Year's resolution here on Dada's. In it, I concluded by saying, "I promise to be less optimistic. I promise to be more careful about what and whom I do(n't) love...and certainly, I will be less cheerful."

Well sometimes, like in a previous blog below The Remake You'll Never See....," I seem to stray from my gloominess. This may leave readers thinking I've softened, that I'm becoming almost happy despite all that's going on around us. Hence, it's good to take a moment to remind myself of the unshakable aura of doom and despair that surrounds humanity; to remember the underlying premise of Dada's Dally, that we are living in the middle of a very, very large mass extinction and provide no rational model to justify our exemption from all others that may be endangered or vanishing around us.

That's why I'd like to share today a portion of Elaine Meinel Supkis' blog entitled, Viral Flu: Earth's Oldest Trojan Horse-Invaders. It dovetails nicely with Dada's basic premise. But as its author suggests below, in talking about the Black Plague and, despite the gloominess of all that was unfolding, it was no reason to totally abandon the Ship of Silliness. (NOTE: Dada does not think the swine flu is all it's cracked up to be.) There is still time for merriment and celebrations.

So if I sometimes seem to stray, to smile, or appear happy, don't mistake it for a weakening resolve that all about us is collapsing. Man is just a very large virus.

Viral Flu: Earth's Oldest Trojan Horse-Invaders

Running around in panic because of a viral surge is useless. You can’t easily hide from it. Sometimes, we must endure unpleasant visits from our fellow living creatures. Viruses are living things, by the way, just as we are. So is bacterium, plankton, etc. All single celled creatures once ruled this planet and used all of its resources for multiplying and dividing. We cannot banish them.

Looking at humans on a more cosmic scale, we are identical to them: we are in the middle of the final stages of our own, epic ‘hockey stick’ growth cycle and are heading towards a crash. As do all living things that end up maxing out natural resources. All of us fear death and understandably so. But Death will visit, invariably. Even the greatest religious figures who found religions die.

Even the very gods die, when the Zodiac stars shift over the eons. We cannot live life in fear of death. During the Black Plague, a truly noxious death visitation, people decided to stop wailing and crouching in fear and began to do the opposite. And the urge to celebrate, have fun and live even as death swings its scythe is one of the more admirable parts of our psychology. Animals, when they get sick, just lie down and passively die [except when they have rabies, another viral innovation that has a mere single celled entity driving its victim to work on behalf of the virus!]. Humans defy Death.

The remake you'll never see, you'll just live it.

Recently I rewatched the movie No Country For Old Men. I grabbed this scene from it because I liked the ominous mood it provoked in me. In this particular scene, Carson Wells (as played by Woody Harrelson) was in the foreground crossing the street, heading for his hotel in the background. I painted him out. It didn't change the uneasy mood for me. Perhaps that's because I know what happened next.

Carson Wells was a relaxed laid-back hit man kinda guy tracking the ultimate brutal unleashed sociopath, Anton Chigurh, "an emotionless, compassionless killing machine," (Javier Bardem). And this is the scene just before Wells discovered the prey he was tracking, Chigurh, had been tracking - and just found - him!

I didn't like this movie much. That's probably because it was so successful at leaving me with a very unsettled, you-can-never-relax feeling throughout. Which is a lot like life on Earth these days.

I think if they broadened the scope of No Country For Old Men today and remade it, they might rename it No Country For Old Men, Women, Children or Anybody Else. And if the old sheriff of calm, meticulous manner as portrayed by Tommy Lee Jones in the original, were to be cast in the role of reflective and reassuring president Barrack Obama in the remake, the outcome would still be the same. Extremely disturbing.

But maybe that's just me. Yet I wake up each morning with the same feeling, that I'm in the movie No Country For Old Men, Women, Children or Anybody Else. That's pretty ominous. And it's getting darker daily!

Creating a nation to be proud of!

(Note: I was working on another blog, but a couple of items from Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! totally deflected my attention from what I was doing.)


KEEPING AMERICA SAFE!

A Paris to Mexico Air France flight was ordered not to fly into American airspace on April 18. Reason? Air France had a passenger on board who is on the US no fly list. Who? Columbian journalist Hernando Calvo Ospino. What had he done to make the no fly list? Apparently his writings are sometimes critical of US policies in Latin America.

While Ospino is not a terrorist, it appears the US no-fly list can be used for other purposes like protecting America from writers of dangerous thoughts critical of the US. (Note: Ospino is a contributor to a leftwing French political monthly magazine.) And while no landing in the US was scheduled for the flight Ospino was on, the no-fly list sends a strong message to brazen Air France and all other airlines who think they can fly just any journalists over the heads of Americans!


KEEPING AMERICA BEAUTIFUL!

After discovering the dead body of a 14 year old El Salvadoran girl in the Sonoran Desert in February 2008, Dan Mills, a member of No More Deaths, a humanitarian organization, started leaving gallon jugs of water along known migrant trails in southern Arizona. As a result, the US Fish and Wildlife Service ticketed Mills for littering. Mills refused to pay the $175 fine and appealed.

Last month, his appeal was denied. A district court ruled the "water jugs, left in the refuge, constitute garbage."

Apparently, it has been determined by the American court system the 2000 victims who didn't make it across the desert in the last ten years are more bio-degradable than those damn unsightly plastic water jugs.

Giddy-up horsey, giddy-up!

Dada wishes to thank MH (another fellow "Texan") for this link.

Cool through the ages!

I called my nephew yesterday. He's a tad less than a year and a half younger than I. Growing up, we were always cool (or so we thought). As evidenced by this photo, we predated the Blues Brothers my more than thirty years!

But our phone calls have fallen off from multiple daily conversations of elation or gloom shared in reaction to the stock market back in the late 90s -- early 2000s. We can't afford such luxuries now. Mostly because, besides being retired, the turn of the century stock market's irrational exuberance has long since sobered and evaporated. Three or four calls per day have now become 3 or 4 per year.

The occasion for my most recent call was an impending surgery (somewhere between major and minor) my nephew is undergoing tomorrow. To check in. To listen. To let him know we're with him in thought and spirit. And, I guess, to reaffirm, despite all this time, that no matter the miles that separate us or years since our paths forked and went down separate pathways, we're still connected.

I think it's only natural when reconnecting at such moments to ponder whether there'll be sufficient common ground to carry the conversation.

Growing up we discovered many common things we shared a fascination or love for: Fire, smoking, alcohol, cars and, of course, girls. You see, wherein our hormonal fluxes of the 50s and 60s gave us those wonderful shared interests of GTOs, military MOSs, ETSs and, of course, T&As. But there was a period of time we fell into silence. That was during the late 70s. It lasted into the 90s. I think of that period as *the missing years.*

But then came the bubble years of irrational exuberance and we rediscovered common ground in the stock market in the form of EPSs, IPOs and IRAs.

Yet, that all crashed and we fell into silence once more. So it was only natural to worry if we'd ever be able to find anything to talk about when I called yesterday outside his looming surgery and the good old days. Any such worries I may have entertained vanished within seconds of conversation's beginning.

I realized the adolescent focus on boobs and butts has simply shifted. We're now into more intimate things like bladders and prostates. Conversations of T&As have simply evolved into talking of PSAs and MRIs.

Sunday - Mesilla - Amy Goodman (or "Make Tacos Not War")

Sunday Mrs. Dada and I ventured up to (formerly sleepy) Mesilla, NM. It's a favorite place, a kind of 19th Century state of mind being laid siege by 21st Century reality, i.e., the encroachment of "civilization" and "progress," most often mistaken as partners rather than accomplices.

The occasion was Mesilla's 15th annual "Border Book Festival." Our goal was to catch their featured guest, Democracy Now's host, Amy Goodman. Amy is a member of our national news media, with one exception: no one owns her as they do the other members of that *club* on which so many, many Americans rely for objective, reality based, unbiased news. (Choke!)

The event was held at the La Mesilla Community Center and we were very fortunate to be joined by dear friends Border Explorer and "Tom and Brenda." The event was a great success, judging from the sell out and undoubted violation of local fire codes. (The Dadas arrived very early as you can tell by the missing crowd in the background. This assured very good seats.)

I snapped this picture of Amy shortly before she spoke. She is shown here applauding something her presenter, Steve Klinger -- publisher of the local independent Grass Roots Press -- had just said. Steve said a lot of good things, prepping the audience for Amy. His impressions of Amy's excellent talk are posted over on Grass Roots Press. I was going to report on some of what Amy said, but Steve did such a fine job, I find it unnecessary.

One point Amy made, however, I should like to mention here:

“Embedding has brought the media to an all-time low. Embedding reporters is trading truth for access.” In other words -- my own, not Amy's -- the asses of special interests are crammed full of the heads of mainstream media embedded "up in their nether regions."

photo courtesy of Doug Wagner (as updated by Dada)

No better illustration of embedding was the story yesterday from Glenn Greenwald, as picked up over on Information Clearing House, about David Barstow's Pulitzer Prize awarded this past Monday. But you won't hear his name or the subject of his stories on NBC, CNN, Fox or others about the Pentagon and its ass-sucking "news" network's whose military generals with their *expertise* propagandized us into war while many of those same generals were on the payrolls of war industry profiteers. And yet, it's an ongoing story that NBC and others would like you to just forget about by not reporting on it.

But so much for old news, new news, endless news. After her presentation, Amy signed books for admirers outside on the porch of the Community Center as the throng lingered, hesitant to depart the experience they had just intimately enjoyed.

I browsed around inside the Book Festival before adjourning to the High Desert Brewing Company with our friends for a debriefing of what we had all just experienced. As a souvenir, I went away with the following T-Shirt as memento of the occasion. It's just like the one Amy Goodman had been presented by this event's organizers.

Amy Goodman day in New Mexico

Heading to up to Mesilla, NM this morning for another "date" with Amy Goodman. Sadly, Amy will be moving on to two more cities she's scheduled to hit today (Silver City & Albuquerque) meaning she won't be able to join our small contingent for an IPA at the High Desert Brewing Company afterward.

FILE PHOTO

Dada assisting "Democracy Now!" host, Amy Goodman, during a book
signing at Taos, NM in April, 2005. (Note: This photo was taken just
before Amy, tremendously charismatic in person, turned to me and
uttered those words I'll never forget, "Beat it before I call security!")

Forgive -- by popular request (from one person), Dada reposts here 25 random things about himself previously posted on FaceBook

1. Dick Gregory once sat next to me and slapped me on the knee.

2. I almost drown myself (and some pretty young woman) while doing the backstroke in the deep end of the pool when my hand suddenly became entangled in the top of her two piece suit. In the army at the time, I didn't know dying could involve such panic, yet pleasure. I think that helped develop my appreciation of good irony. That was the closest I ever came to death during the Vietnam war and I knew if I was a cat, I'd probably just spent my second life.

3. A day before a formal dance I'd asked my girlfriend to, I still didn't have anything to wear. I prayed for a way out of it. Later that morning I began to realize my prayer had been answered when we learned JFK had been assassinated. Shortly afterwards, it was announced the formal dance the next night was canceled! (I'm so really, really sorry John. For you, and all of America.) Lesson: Be careful what you pray for!

4. As a boy, me and a couple of chums tried to blow up a train trestle but the six stolen sticks of dynamite we had left weren't enough. Or maybe we just didn't place them in the right strategic places. (Thankfully.) We learned the bad thing about dynamite is, it makes a lot of noise which makes people suspicious about what's going *BANG*!

5.The first girl I asked to marry me was so I could draw army quarters allowance (I offered to split it with her.) Thankfully, she had more sense than I and turned me down.

6. The second day on my new army job as a pay clerk, the afforementioned girl (in #5 above) was assigned to our office. She kept asking me questions about work. I kept answering, "Ah, I don't know." She thought I was dumber than mud.

7.I saw Jan Berry (of Jan and Dean) backstage, shirtless. Because of his arm paralysis after his car accident, his partner Dean Torrance was helping him change outfits between acts.

8. Knowing we were having chicken pot pie for dinner, I pulled a long feather out of my bed pillow. At the dinner table, I snuck the feather to my mouth in a napkin. My next bite of pie, I exclaimed, "What the .... ?" as I pulled the feather out of my mouth. My brother-in-law made folk lore of the incident until I confessed the truth to him many years later.

9. I had an international bachelors party. It included three states, two nations, and one enormous hangover.

10. As an officer's pay clerk in the army, I had a Captain who was a doctor at the post hospital. Bored stiff for lack of patients, he asked if he could remove a mole from my arm, just for practice. Incredibly, I consented. It was during the surgery and Doc's schtick with his medic aides I learned where they modeled the character "Hawkeye" for the TV series M*A*S*H. I'm sure he went on to be a great field doc in Vietnam.

11. Very young, my mother entered me into a baby contest. I won the blue ribbon for "Personality Baby." Some weeks later my parents were summoned by a major Hollywood studio to bring me in for a screen test. The telegram arrived late after being forwarded to my family in Oregon where we had just moved. My life has been mundane ever since.

12. My folks, being from Wisconsin raised me to be a a lifelong Green Bay Packer fan, even though I could never, ever live in a place where people sit outside in 0 degree weather to watch a football game. Also, I became a lifelong USC Trojan fan, not because I attended there or could ever afford to. It was just something that happened in my childhood rebelliousness, rooting against my parents favorite college team, Wisconsin (yeh, Madison, WI, another place where people sit outside in 0 degree weather watching a football game).

13. My philosophy (since missing my chance at Hollywood stardom at the age of 3) has always been: "In everything you do, strive for a high degree of mediocrity. Rather than doing one major thing really, really well, it's better to do a lot of little things "pretty well."

14. Suspecting reincarnation might be a possibility, it may be that many of us aware of the Mayan calendar ending in 2012, chose to come back to Earth at this time just to see what happens three years from now. Only, just in case many of us don't make it past 2012, I chose to come back sooner (like way last century) than later (like in the 80' or 90's), just so I could get the most of my this time's carnations worth.

15. In commuting across the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges twice each day, I carried an air mattress in the backseat of the car. I figured if Edgar Cayce was right and the *Big One* hit while on one of these bridges -- and I had the fortune to survive the fall to the water below -- I would have a 'leg up' on everyone else. This made me the brunt of many of my friends/neighbor's jokes.

16. After a day of picking beans in an Oregon bean field, I learned a major physics lesson as a teenager. Preparing to return home standing in the bed of a pick-up truck, I pounded on its roof and yelled at my nephew inside who was driving, "Gun it!" He did. Fortunately, as I drifted towards the tailgate and fell backwards over it, my knees caught on it. Watching the pavement (upside down) rush past just inches from my dangling head, I knew if I was a cat, I'd probably just spent my first life. (And remember, a body at rest tends to stay at rest.)

17. In 1990, Mrs. Dada introduced me to an 'old' classmate of hers, Academy Award winning "best supporting actress," Diane Wiest (for Hannah and Her Sisters) in an elevator in Dallas. It was at my wife's high school reunion. I mumbled, stumbled, muttered and stuttered through three floors of elevation with Diane before, (thankfully) the elevator doors opened. (I'm pretty sure -- to this day -- Diane Wiest thinks Mrs. Dada married an idiot.)

18. I believe you should never, ever, feel smug about yourself, or something you or someone else has done. There are powers that be just waiting to squash your smugness, especially if you broadcast it aloud. As example, most often a jinx occurs when a kicker is to attempt the game winning field goal and an announcer acknowledges, "He hasn't missed a kick in nine playoff attempts." This hasn't happened to our last president yet, but I'm still waiting.

19. In all the animal kingdom, I believe as a species, humans are the major axis of evil to all others. (This conflicts drastically with my love for people -- not to be confused as a love of their species.)

20. I could never, ever, imagine a world without dogs.

21. In the 80's, I sold a drawing I'd exhibited in a local art show for $185.00. Last year I discovered that drawing on the internet, somewhere in New Jersey for sale for $45. (Hell, the matting and frame cost more than that 25 years ago.) This is why I seldom feel smug.

22. During a walk with my father at a very early age, I was told the dove we encountered was a "coo-coo-bird." When encountering the same kind of bird during a walk with my first grade class, and the teacher asking if anyone knew what kind of bird that was, and I responding, "A coo-coo-bird!" only to be told that was not right, lost all faith in my father. Only 40 years later, after realizing he was a pretty great dad, did I confess this to him.

23. On a hike up the Athabasca Glacier in Alberta, CA, I walked into a stiff head wind beyond the tourists until all alone. It was a magic moment in which I was determined to walk into oblivion until I heard a strange droning sound. It was a "bus" on snow tracks full of Japanese tourists. I am now positive I am on slides and in photo albums of many Japanese aboard that tracked snow vehicle.

24. Disgruntled on my way down from the glacier mentioned in #23, I decided to throw a Canadian dollar into one of those deep blue-green crevasses. For a coin that wouldn't be discovered by anthropologists for thousands of years hence, I decided to make a wish for world peace. Reconsidering at the last moment, I exchanged the $1.00 Canadian for a 25 cent piece. As a result, peace never happened which explains why anthropologists, thousands of years from now, won't discover the $0.25 Canadian I threw in a crevass on the Athabasca Glacier in 1989 -- most likely because there won't be any anthropologists alive then.

25. Being the first to arrive at the tiny Taos bookstore (before my wife and family from Oregon), I opened the door and boldly asked of the proprietor, "Do you allow illiterates in here?" She replied, "Why yes! We have many books with pictures in them!" at which point I turned to my relatives outside and said, "It's ok, you can come in." (They did, to the chuckles of all inside.)

There's one other random thing I haven't mentioned, but that would make 26.

Oh woe, what is America to become?

We have recently learned that Obama is destroying the U.S. by remolding it into a Socialist state. This scares the hell out of me.

But now, with focus on Bush era interpretations and decisions that "legalized" (er, sorry, authorized) torture, we learn those very techniques were the same techniques used (and formerly abhorred and condemned by the U.S.) by the old USSR, Communist China, and North Korea.

Well, thank God we got rid of the republicans in the eight year plus march toward a U.S. Communist state.

Now we must worry about the God-damned democrat-Socialists taking over the country!

Cynicism takes a holiday.

The following comes from forty-seven year old Susan Boyles who "lives with her cat, called Pebbles -- 'I've never been married...never been kissed,' " that Susan Boyles and, boy, does she knock 'em dead!

Enough of the nattering nabob of negativism! Today I'd like to share one of the most uplifting YouTubes I've had the pleasure of ever watching. Hope you enjoy it too! It left me in tears. (Sorry, no YouTube embed permitted.)

I'm not QUITE mad as hell, so I'm gonna take a little more of the shit!

I don't think corporate America -- more specifically, the banking industry which helped create our current economic morass -- should profit off of our misery. But apparently, our government representatives don't mind (or really give a shit that YOU should care).

I'm talking about the 30 states that use banks and credit card companies to distribute to you your unemployment entitlement in the form of debit cards for which recipients of said benefits are learning -- if they don't pay attention -- those "guardians" of your entitlement -- will exploit any and every situation to nickel and dime you and millions of others out of what is a small gold mine for them in the form of $.50 fees if you inquire of your balance, or $1.50 for making more than one withdrawal of your unemployment money in one day!

To the 30 states where Bank of America and others participating in and contributing to the extortion of unemployed workers, I should just like to say, "Congratulations!" To the other 20 states where this isn't yet an accepted practice I'd just like to chide, " C'mon, you laggards, what the fuck's holding you up? Weak lobbies not shilling out enough to your representatives??!!"

And to all Americans tolerating these extortionists: "Congratulations! Your endless patience (despite being laughed at or scorned by citizens of other nations) is incredibly admired by most ('don't make waves') Americans. Thanks for amazing me at the endless quantities of shit Americans will swallow, will tolerate !

(Oh, and while at it, let me express for BofA and others profiting from your wonderful tolerance, "Thank you!")

Happy Easter!

HAPPY EASTER TO ALL!

El Paso's new federal courthouse under construc-
tion, brought to us by the government that killed
its goose that laid the golden eggs (the taxpayers).

What's the opposite of "And another one bites the dust?"

Last October 2nd Mrs. Dada and I had the rare opportunity to 'cross the electronic line.' I'd received an e-mail from occasional commenter here at Dada's blog (and others). It was from a ball of light. He said he would coming to Las Cruces, "Would you like to get together," say, at The High Desert Brewing Company? This made me a little suspicious. He knew my greatest vulnerability, i.e., an inability to refuse a chance to go to the HDBC.

Unsure if a ball of light's intentions were honorable, I arranged to have witnesses present. I invited "Tom and Brenda" in case I was walking into a political ambush (i.e., ambush as in assassination). Turns out I wasn't.

The four of us spent a very pleasant couple of hours getting to know a ball of light. Yesterday I got to know him even better. That's because I visited his new blog, his -- dare I say it? -- inaugural ball of light?. (Yeh, I know, I could just hear you moaning "Ugh!" as you read that.)

But what I read there I later read again to Mrs. Dada when she got home. "I'm in total awe!" she said afterward, echoing my very reaction.

Please, please, if you have the time, please drop by a ball of light's anastomotic synchrony and read his first blog, Namaste Lily Raine. I'm very sure you won't be disappointed. You may even discover a new candidate for inclusion on your blog roll.

Yesterday was Good Friday. For Dada, it was a bad mood day (as attested to by some of the comments I left around the internet). I wish I had visited a ball of light's blog sooner. It would have made the day far better!

One never stops learning.

Just because senator Obama ascended to the presidency doesn't mean he stopped learning, i.e., in 2007 this Illinois senator opposed Bush's funding requests for America's Afghanistan adventure.

Now, less than 3 months in office (and one has to assume, after his "orientation" from the Powers That Be), Obama today asked congress "for $83.4 billion for U.S. military and diplomatic operations in Iraq and Afghanistan." As noted by a White House spokesman this is "needed this time because the money will be required by summer, before Congress is likely to complete its normal appropriations process" (for further war funding, no doubt).

BREAKING NEWS: American Debtors To Be Shipped to China as Indentured Servants!

The following I found side-splitting funny. Of course, it'd be more so (and less infuriating, really), if it described what part the people who brought about this entire mess will serve in rectification of our gross over-indulgence besides sending most all of us to China or France. (Dada suspects we've been spared that part because it's far too gruesome and French-like for tender American sensitivities and insouciance - which by the way is ebbing -- "Thank God!") If you can overlook that, I hope you can enjoy.....

NOTICE:

The federal government announced today that all Americans in foreclosure, past due on credit card debt or in bankruptcy, will be shipped to Beijing to work off America's debt to the Chinese.

China accepted a hard driven bargain by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today which allows for every American to help pay off our national debt to China by working for two dollars a day as a domestic servant, in rice paddies or coal mines.

Since 98% of the the American national debt is caused by heterosexuals, only heterosexuals will be shipped to China. Gays and lesbians will be sent to the Paris sweatshops of Yves St. Laurent, Karl Lagerfeld and Givenchy, to help pay back what we owe to the French.

Banks and credit card companies will use their bailout money to pay to ship American debtors to China. According to Citibank executives, who asked not to be identified, "it's important that America show the world we always pay back our debts."

Bankrupt American Debtors (B.A.D.) claim they should be paid at least the federal minimum wage but experts on Wall Street said that would only serve to hurt small businesses in China and stunt economic growth worldwide.

Gays and lesbians working Paris sweatshops, however, will be paid French minimum wage, given free healthcare, expense accounts and quaint but fashionable apartments on the Rive Gauche. Experts on Wall Street claim this is the sort of practice that has destroyed France's economy.

French politicians' response was simply, "we will not be sending any French people to work in China."

NOTE: The preceding story courtesy of: Leviticus International, a wonderfully relevant, irreverent and pro gay rights website!

Retirement: It's just not worth it!

Latest study out says American couples planning on retiring will need an extra quarter of a million dollars (!) to cover their medical expenses. Of course, this is probably a conservative figure if we consider the annual cost of health care is increasing even faster than America's slide into oblivion.

The $250,000 additional is based on a bunch of very sound actuarial statistics, the decline of Medicare and Medicaid programs and other extremely dire possibilities I'm sure. But it alerts us to a very sobering point. If one doesn't properly prepare for increasing health care costs in their declining years, any of us could end up dumpster rubbish before our time is up.

Dada suggests, before getting too upset by another retirement affliction like those minor annoyingly vanished 401-K's we didn't count on losing, there may be ways around this latest unearthed financial health care burden. The most obvious being, just don't retire! A $25,000 bill for a few unexpected days spent in the hospital can be paid off in the matter of a few short years if you maybe have an extra job as a Wal-Mart greeter or put in 20 hours a week or more at a Wendy's, etc. In other words, just work until you keel over dead.

Another possibility, you could always simply "borrow" the $250,000 from your regular retirement savings! I realize some may be reluctant to do this as it means they would probably have to cut back on dining out (even at those *senior specials* rates) a couple times a month.

But Dada has another option, one that many might find even more appealing than the alternatives, i.e., outliving your financial viability in the Third World nation the U.S. has become (save, of course, the 2% of those of us getting pornographically filthy rich). Solution? Merely lower your life expectancy.

This could be done simply by offing yourself when you run totally out of funds. Of course, while your government won't admit it, this will please them a great deal because of their burden to you your exit will relieve them of -- providing you some modicum of aid in old age that could be better spent in the Pentagon or paying interest to China on our national debt.

But if it's any consolation, know you will be missed. Sorely. By whom? By the health care and pharmaceutical industries who are always waiting to mine the gold from the body of every elderly or desperately sick person in America.

But you already knew this.....

It's being reported (not here, but in a land far, far away) that in a place called Denmark, at a school called the University of Copenhagen in a place called its Department of Chemistry, that Thermitic Red/Gray Chips have been discovered in 9/11 World Trade Center Destruction Dust.

Apparently -- quoting their scientists, "“We have discovered distinctive red/gray chips in all the samples we have studied of the dust produced by the destruction of the World Trade Center. ...The red portion of these chips is found to be an unreacted thermitic material incorporating nanotechnology and highly energetic. ...The carbon content of the red material indicates that an organic substance is present. This would be expected for super-thermite formulations in order to produce high gas pressures from ignition and thus make them explosive.”

The implications of such news are quite dramatic, but we already knew that at most, suspected it at the least. After all, it is well known the twin towers of the World Trade Center were a huge asbestos ladened economic liability, the quickest solution for which was their immediate destruction. Oh sure, nearly 3,000 people had to die in the process of bringing 'em down, but quoting an old basic training drill sergeant from one night while on maneuvers, "The shortest distance between two points is the quickest way to get there."

Apparently that's the path the Powers That Be chose. It explains the several minutes of dumb-ass expressions on the face of our chief executive as he sat listening to 2nd graders read "My Pet Goat" as some in the towers were opting to jump 100 floors to their deaths rather than face their only other alternative -- the slower death by incineration.

And then there was the added benefit of an excuse to invade a couple of nations in the oil rich Middle East. But then we already knew that at most, suspected it at least.

Today's "sober up!" quote (from yesterday, April 1st -- NO FOOLING!)

I came across the comment posted towards the bottom of this segment (if you read nothing else here, skip this, read that) at Information Clearing House. It was left in response to a piece entitled, "Neo-Cons and Moral Degeneracy." It's sobering. That's because it's brutal. But it's frank.

I then remembered a story on tonight's network news of our First Lady, Michelle Obama, wowing and inspiring a group of young British female students. And as these young women stood in awe and admiration of Mrs. Obama, I juxtaposed that image with the recent headlines, "US drone kills 17 in Pakistan" and "US Military Wants 10,000 Additional Occupation Troops for Afghan 'War.'" And I tried hard to reconcile the outflowing of love for Mrs. Obama as expressed by a group of adolescent English schoolgirls with the actions of her husband, president Obama.

And I'm of the opinion if Mrs. Obama cannot bend the ear of her husband away from the Powers That Be which seem to be dictating many of Obama's most important policies, Michelle Obama is, as all of us are -- as a nation -- in danger of all becoming just another Laura Bush.

Here then is that brutal comment by one who calls himself "Hatred":

"The only thing that will change the American mindset is bloodshed on US soil. Otherwise, generation after generation of dummies will be sent overseas to "fight for freedom" and be cheered on by their clueless mothers and tearfully proud fathers. They'll come back in boxes or bags or wheelchairs and the dopes who thought the whole exercise was a great episode will cook a fucking turkey or some shit and bleat about heroes and the 'merkan way. And then go on about their useless lives. Have these people face the horror that is inflicted on others worldwide for just 15 minutes and there would be a massive sea-change from their ivory-tower view of the other 95% of the planet's population. An American "soccer-mom" quivering in fear of gang rape in her house as shots ring out across the neighbourhood would be sufficient to have her think again about cheering for the obliteration of villages and the destruction of burkha-clad mothers halfway around the world."

**************

(NOTE: As Dada has reminded before yet can't seem to remind enough: "Earth cultures have one basic thing in common: They are all dysfunctional. Once a culture has decided which dysfunctional aspects it wishes to represent, it raises a flag to declare its position, packages its preferred brand of dysfunctionality for consumption at home and abroad, and passes it off as a national heritage to be proud of and protected at all costs." (an alien transcription from "ET 101," the book)

"Give me an 'A'!"

Ah, baseball season is here. Dada muses, "Isn't it great fans of American baseball
can be spotted as far away as London?" Note the above symbol being included on
the eve of the G-20 summit in demonstrator's signs showing their displeasure with
banks while subtly declaring their allegiance to their favorite team, the Oakland A's!

(Dada note: Thanks to D.K. Raed for bringing to Dada's attention the mental
health collapse of NBC News' Chief Foreign Correspondent, Richard Engel, who
apparently went insane from his inability to find the leader of these London Anarchists.)