Back in the USSA

Well, it was a grand three weeks, and I even had a delightful flight back, thanks to SeatGuru and a jovial Irish seatmate for the long leg back over the Atlantic and the North American continent. I'm still processing the effects on my psyche and on my physik (a nagging bug of some kind, slowly abating), slogging through the conversion of sound files I recorded around Berlin, reviewing the hundreds of images I snapped, and strutting around in my new black t-shirts that say things like "Feindkontact" and "Kampf gegen Rassismus." I also brought back a stack of CDs thanks to some very cool people in actual record stores (!!!), who, when I expressed my desire to tap into the Industrial music scene and the Berlin techno current, plucked out many, many examples for me to listen to before making a decision. If you are a vinyl freak (I mean for listening, not for wearing, not that there's anything wrong with it), you'd be in heaven. I cannot begin to describe the variety of new and especially vintage vinyl records that can be found in these same record stores and in the many flea markets. I happen to be one of those people who still hangs grimly onto his old records and turntable, despite owning more than one iPod, and I wish the damned things didn't weigh so much--I would have brought back a carload. I still wet my pants when I hear the needle settling in the groove before the first song begins.

Meanwhile, I see that the Larry Craig business is still current, which is really rather appalling (what is it with sex scandals in this country?), and the jello-spined Democrats have equaled in cowardice the brutality and criminality of the Bush administration, and I realize how much easier life here would be if I could just get an inexhaustible supply of Xanax and Zubrowka vodka. Do Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid know that they are the majority party? So what if the Republicans threaten filibuster? Let them do it, fer chrissakes. Bush vetoes a bill popular with 81% of Americans and you can't organize an override (S-CHIP)? What would those Republicans do to you in similar circumstances? Did Tom "Cockroach" DeLay roll over and beg you to quit being meanies?

Oh crap. Now I'm coughing my guts out. Must not get excited. Must not get excited. Think of mountain meadows, wispy clouds, a spotted fawn prancing in a sunbeam...

Getting back to the Larry Craig thing, I have to admit to a mixed feeling. On the one hand, it delights me to see virulent anti-gay Republicans nabbed in sex stings. On the other, it's really a sad testimony to our repressive society that cops have to spend time cruising undercover to bust desperately closeted men seeking sex in public crappers. If only these dudes could be openly gay, perhaps we could--oh, I don't know--stop more murderers, nab more drunken drivers, or stop a few more thousand instances of domestic violence. Still, you've got to love the discord this has created for the Repugs.

Finally, congratulations to Chimpie, who has managed to turn a lesser threat--terrorism--into a greater one as in the possibility of global thermonuclear exchange as he gives Putin perfect opportunities to twist our tail on Iran and Iraq. Has he ever looked at a fucking map? With the oil resources of Russia and the influence of Iran on the Middle East, their unity against the U.S. could really fuck us over. Given Bush's phony masculine posturing on everything, Putin is playing him for a bigger jackass than even I thought Bush was capable of becoming. God, I hope somebody in the Defense Department will tell him that the Russkies still have nukes and can still deliver them well enough to create the end for everyone. I thought Bush saw into Putin's soul? I know that Bush was coked out and drunk for most of the Cold War, but didn't something from the era slip into that grey mush in his skull? And this ought to frost him: Putin has 80 percent popularity as Bush slips toward 20 percent. Of course, like Putin, Bush doesn't really have an opposition party, so I guess he can drag us into war with Iran, then Russia, and then we'll all shake hands with the devil.

Good night.

Out for now. Hope you all enjoyed my absence.