Slacker

Posts have been a little infrequent lately because Troutsky has been re-proletarianized. Thats right, the wife finally got tired of me sitting around all day researching the phenomenological implications of sixteenth century culinary arts and said if I was so damn interested in cooking I could go work in a kitchen! Thats a joke but I really did find a wierd job working in a school cafeteria. Low pay, hard work, screaming second graders, the whole catastrophe. Im the only male on the crew, schlepping fake- cheese nachos and tuna casserole until the fishing season comes along.

So, did anyone else catch those Coca-Cola commercials during the Sooper Bowl celebrating how far the civil rights movement had progressed? To the point where two black coaches had reached the mountain top and one of them had a bucket of Coke product dumped on his head. And the almost all black players reminding one of Fredrick Douglas or Stokely Carmichael. They were very serious commercials in a very un-serious crowd. Coke Kills, in Columbia, in India, probably other places of which I am unaware.

Then I heard some pundit say "the point we are at in Iraq is like the Superbowl in the 4th quarter." Well, yeah, except at the end of a football game everyone shakes hands and goes to take a shower, whereas in a civil war they kill and torture each other and destroy everything. John McCain called the Democrats position on a non-binding resolution "intellectually dishonest", an interesting turn of phrase considering what we know about pre-war "intelligence" and Scooter Libby, secret rendition and torture and on and on and on. A billion dollars every seventy two hours. Whatever.

I would never try to equate the bombing campaign in the final stages of the Vietnam "conflict" with anything associated with the "surge" strategy but it seems there is increasing reliance on Hellfire missles and rockets, somewhat indiscriminate killers when trying to win hearts and minds. Do you remember the picture of the little Vietnamese girl, clothes burned off, arms outstretched, stumbling toward the Life Magazine photographer after being napalmed? My wife is going to Vietnam next month, by the way, on a three week delegation with Thich Nhat Hanh (a Buddhist monk) to try to help heal some of those spiritual wounds.