Blood On the Tracks

"I was burned out from exhaustion, buried in the hail,
Poisoned in the bushes an' blown out on the trail,
Hunted like a crocodile, ravaged in the corn.
Come in, she said,
I'll give you shelter from the storm."

-Bob Dylan, Shelter from the storm,
from the album Blood on the Tracks

 I could have just as easily begun this column with Lennon's quote from A Day in the Life, "I read the news today, oh boy." I have been searching for something topical to write about, and all I found was local tragedies, meaningless repetition and mortgage rates.


I found an article on why marijuana should not be legalized; that is a subject for another time. I found a report of a young mother who decided that murdering her toddlers was a solution simpler than changing diapers. The hot-button issue du jour is the proposed cultural center to be built near Ground Zero, in Manhattan--and, that is an unfit subject for my table, as one of the other editors and I cannot agree on the direction. Perhaps she should hurl a coffee mug at me (a reference to the Kevin Bacon vehicle "He Said / She said"; c'mon get with the minutiae) and then we could film it for a YouTube clip instead of a column.


As always, I digress.


I prefer that life is boiled down to simplicity; sometimes, to do so requires ignoring part of the point of view, which is, of course, a fallacial way to argue. It is easy to pick one side of an argument, ignore the other, and call it good. It also happens to be incorrect by its very definition. So, I am not going to do that.


Nor am I going to submit a column that states that "I have nothing to say"; I always have an opinion on something. It remains to be seen where my mind is today, as I am feeling lazy upon healing from a bad summer cold.


This is also not news-worthy.

Perhaps I should indulge my inner spite-monger and launch a diatribe against illegal Mexican (and Central American) immigrants, because I got an over-spiced burrito in New Mexico. They put boiled pig skin in the damned thing; all of them should be raped and murdered as they attempt to gain access to a decent standard of living. No, wait, that already happens on the border crossing.


Besides, I would then be forced to point out that all of the 9/11 hijackers crossed into the U.S. via Canada. Perhaps it is time for those Maple tree-huggers to feel the wrath of being sodomized by the barrel of an M1A1 Abrams tank. While they're at it, those Canadians can keep their weather, too; how often during winter are we shelled by a sub-zero front "down from Canada" ? Too often. Take Michael J. Fox back, and God Fuck the Queen.

The Burj Khalifa

My solution for the cultural center is simple; send a bomber to knock down the Burj Khalifa (formerly known as the Burj Dubai), and then we (the United States of Amurrica and the followers of the tenets of Islam) would be even-Steven. No muss, no fuss. If we smash their 2,717 foot-tall building into rubble, as was done to our World Trade Center buildings, then the Moslems can have their cultural center near the Ground Zero site. Fair is fair.


The above paragraph was metaphorical, by the way. I am not completely serious. The proposition does have merit, however.