...ANYONE STILL WONDERING WHAT'S WRONG WITH OUR COUNTRY?

Maybe it's just me, but I guess I really don't feel comfortable seeing the "president" yukking it up with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. I know they're like, BFF and everything, but it just seems to me that in a country where a teenage girl gets sentenced to lashings and jail time for being gang raped, maybe Georgie boy should try not to be having so darn much fun. I know, I know, he has to suck up to Abdy, since that guy's got all the precious oil we need and everything, and it would probably look bad if Bushy whined and said, "i'm not gonna come out to play in your country 'til you be nice to girls." I mean, Bush has a wife and a mother (or is she his grandmother) and two daughters. How can even that Australopithecene stand for such behavior? I'm no feminazi or anything, but I would bet my entire $305 dollars that if some man had been treated abhorrently in that country (unless of course, we were mistreating them ourselves at Guantanamo Bay--that would be different) and it made the national news circuit, that Bush wouldn't have posed for that prom picture with King Abdullah. He might not have even shown up.

All I'm saying is, maybe taking a stand for women's rights in medieval countries like Saudi Arabia might be a step in the right direction of encouraging freedom and democracy. It might be a little bit cheaper and more effective to defend women than to make threats, search for non-existent nukes, and drop bombs. And even if it were somewhat incendiary to stand up for the female species in a place like that, wouldn't defending women be an inherently more worthy cause than all of our other flame-fanning efforts thus far?

The funny thing about the picture is -- other than the fact that Bushy is holding a sword, and where's Abdy's gift from him by the way?--is his posture. Because, while he's holding one sword, his posture makes him kinda looks like he's got another one up his bum. Nah' mean? But my BIG question is, with all of the tightened new homeland security and TSA regulations, how did Bushy take that sword back with him on the plane? And more importantly, does he have to go through security in his socks like the rest of us?

Weekend Warrior

Well, Dear Readers,
I wish I could tell you that the photograph above was of the nice clerk who rung me up at REI this weekend, but unfortunately, as we all know, it's not. (I bet if that guy worked at REI, they'd be at war with A16 by now, hitting each other over the head with Thermarests and violating the Geneva Conventions by forcing one another to wear zip-off camping pants.)

Okay, I hate to say it, but... My personal rule is that I must admit something shameful at least once every five years, and I think my time is up. So here goes:

In the above picture, that evil ignoramus (if you can be both at the same time,) that man of the wars, the torture, and the illegal spying; the to-hell-with-Kyoto and pretty-please-China- will-you-sit-by-me-at-lunch attitude, actually evokes sympathy from me--much more so than he did when he choked on a pretzel a few years back. I don't know what it is. Is it because I see so much of myself in him in that little piece of celluloid? That Camelbak brand hydration bladder (and matching pack), the iPod headphones, those polarized sunglasses, the sleek red bicycle helmet... Okay, so I won't comment on that inane headband, other than to defend it as mere sweat protection--but sincerely, I think this man has extracted a drop of compassion, nay, solidarity, from my ultra-liberal ticker. You are no doubt begging me why? Well, I'll tell you. I think it's that, in his weekend-warrior, pre-cycling state, that man has been reduced to a vulnerable human being, who needs water, shade, cranial protection (okay that one's up for debate), and itunes, just as much as the rest of us. Suddenly, the term "my fellow Americans" actually means something to me.

So am I switching political parties, or reversing my stance on impeachment? Not likely. But if I were to run into the guy at Yoga Works in the next few weeks, or say, PinkBerry**, or pouring over the New York Times vows section at Peet's some Sunday morning, that could just push me over the edge...



*For the uninitiated, REI and A16 are two sporting goods stores.
** I actually don't really like PinkBerry all that much--in fact, I could produce a tirade about that place worthy of its own blog post--but there is something very liberal and freethinking about it's existence, something which... I can't explain at all.