Can I kick it? No, you can't.

I Can't Remember Before

"Do you know how long a year takes when it's going away?" Dunbar repeated to Clevinger. "This long." He snapped his fingers. "A second ago you were stepping into college with your lungs full of fresh air. Today you're an old man."

"Old? I'm not old."

"You're inches away from death every time you go on a mission. How much older can you be at your age? A half minute before that you were stepping into high school, and an unhooked brassiere was as close as you ever hoped to get to Paradise. Only a fifth of a second before that you were a small kid with a ten-week summer vacation that lasted a hundred thousand years and still ended too soon. Zip! They go rocketing by so fast. How the hell else are you ever going to slow time down?" Dunbar was almost angry when he finished.

"Well, maybe it is true," Clevinger conceded unwillingly in a subdued tone. "Maybe a long life does have to be filled with many unpleasant conditions if it's to seem long. But in that event, who wants one?"

"I do," Dunbar told him.

"Why?" Clevinger asked.

"What else is there?"

For some reason this week, I was just thinking about how things are and how they've always been. I can't believe how long the past six years have been going on. Even though I know it's not true, it seems like George W. Bush has always been president, like the war on terror has been going on my entire life, and the stripping of our civil rights has just been the inevitable way things are. I have a vague recollection that things were different before, but it's almost like I've been trying to wake up from a dream.

We've always been at war with Eastasia.

I have a keen sense of history, so I know better. God, what a fucking drag these past six years have been. Just watching Congress hand over what little power it still has to our idiot president, and even when they pretend to have backbone, he just issues a signing statement and does whatever he wants, anyway.

I know it's going to end at some point, although the only guarantee that I have is one written into the Constitution. I still think it will be enough.

In the meantime, it is time to start pushing back. I need to go dig old up newspapers, and read stories about balanced budgets, and American prosperity. Oh, and presidential blowjobs being treated as though they actually mattered. Now all we have is a president admitting to felonies in the form of illegal wiretaps on US citizens, and the treason of a vice-president revealing the identity of undercover CIA agents.

But who cares? The stock market is at an all-time high, and if you own shares of Exxon or Halliburton, these are heady times, indeed. Get what you can, patriots! This war can't last forever, unless it continues to be profitable.

This is depressing, and I'm not out to bring you down. Keep your head in the game, and don't forget that this is a great country, and will be greater still once we rid ourselves of the current criminal class running things. Nothing is forever, and that's healthy.

Being awake for 21 hours, however, is not healthy.

Friday, February 02, 2007