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population explosion of vampires
Friday, September 28 2001
I'm thinking about getting on a waiting list for a new liver while mine is still functional.
I think that if we Americans are forced to give up any rights in the War on Terrorism, we should be simultaneously extended new rights so that our total number of rights remains the same. Call it a "conservation of liberties." Here are some suggestions:
- People are now allowed to sodomize one another if they are mutually-consenting.
- People can take any drugs they want and manufacture drugs for their own use.
- Children can look at any web page they want in public libraries.
- Prostitution is no longer illegal. Neither is gambling of any sort. Call it the Nevadification of America.
- People may marry anyone they choose.
- Child pornography is no longer a big deal. (If you're unsure about whether or not this is a good idea, then close your eyes and in your mind's eye compare child pornography to a collapsing skyscraper full of people or the life of an average child in Afghanistan.)
Yes, in terms of what is important, people's attitudes have definitely changed. No one gets that warm fuzzy feeling they used to get when, with great fanfare, the FBI publishes the names of the latest perverts trapped in its covert AOL-based child pornography dragnet. Russians have been nabbed importing 500 million dollars worth of ecstasy ("a drug used by children at raves, or all-night dance parties")? Come on, can't the kids have any fun anymore? And any evidence that the Russian mob has something to sell other than anthrax and suitcase nukes is the stuff not of despair but of hope.
And about these Middle Eastern people who have illegally obtained hazardous material trucking licenses: I'm sure most of these people are perfectly peaceful, law-abiding individuals. They happen to know how to drive vehicles, so they thought they'd upgrade from driving cabs to hauling freight, and they had a friend who could make it easy for them. If you were to check most cabby licenses, you'd probably find a lot of those are fraudulent too. There's no reason to freak out here.
Have you noticed that everyone actually from Afghanistan calls the country "Afanistan"? This is something that James Michener noted in his book Caravan. The "gh" is silent. You too can talk like an Afan.
Get out a map and look at New York City and its surroundings. The Hudson River resembles the lower reaches of the bowel, with Manhattan being a long, slightly lumpy turd about to pushed down through the rectum of Upper New York Bay past the anus of the Verrazano Narrows and out into the toilet of the Atlantic Ocean.
The Red Cross has collected a spectacular amount of blood since September 11th, but with few injured survivors of the attack, there is no great demand for it. What's the shelf life for human blood? Will it be overprescribed for minor cuts and contusions? Will there be a population explosion of vampires?
Up until the September 11th attacks, I was plagued by a strange neurotic fear whenever I walked around on the streets of Chelsea near my workplace. It was a dread that some large blunt metal object would come flying out of nowhere from behind me, striking me on the back of the head and killing me instantly. I didn't have a sense of what would cause this to happen; it would be a purposeless death caused by powerful irrational forces. Strangely, I had no such fears when I lived in Los Angeles and could even (on one occasion) feel the ground shrugging beneath me. It was more like a neurotic fear I used to have when I'd ride my bicycle down ugly Greenville Avenue south of Staunton, Virginia. Back in those days I used to imagine that all the signs on all the signposts were actually spring-loaded blades situated above hair triggers buried in the sidewalk, waiting to unthinkingly slice me in half.
Two things have been devalued by the collapse of the World Trade Center. The first and most obvious is the value of human life. It used to be that American tragedies needed only reach a couple of deaths before they made for sensational nationwide news. The death of an American was always a big deal, because Americans were important people. People in other countries, well, they had to die in vast numbers before the story would even show up beneath the fold on page 24 of The New York Times, America's newspaper of record. Deaths in other countries were, it seemed, part of the price of not being an American. Whenever a tree fell in India, it seemed, at least a half dozen Indians would be crushed beneath it.
When those two kids shot up Columbine High School and yielded a double-digit death toll, it was time for a nationwide crackdown on the underground cells of freaks and weirdoes in high schools nationwide. Now, though, these sort of tragedies are lost in the noise of our collective hand wringing, sorrow, and difficult-to-direct rage. Since the September 11th attacks, there have been bridge collapses, factory fires, and possibly even the grisly murders of fresh-faced prom queens that in the past would have triggered congressional hearings. But these things don't concern us anymore. Five people died? Pish posh, happens all the time!
The other thing that has been devalued is the quality of public oratory. Showered by rubber-stamp accolades because he represents our single most responsible person, George W. Bush has been especially praised for his stirring speeches. Some have even said that his speeches are among the most moving and convincing ever heard in the entire history of Mankind! Now I understand the motivations of people who say such things, and my heart goes out to those who must make due with George W. Bush speeches as part of their recovery process, but really folks, history is ashamed. His speeches are recorded in perfect digital fidelity and will echo down through the ages, much as Churchill's have over the hiss of his available technology. Sadly, though, the lack of quality in George W. Bush's oratorical style is similarly timeless. By setting such a perfectly-recorded low standard, he has forever injured oratory.
Before I went to bed tonight, I watched Quiz Show, a movie Gretchen had checked out for me to expose me to the acting of John Turturro, who lives only a few doors down President Street. Even my father, who usually pays no attention to pop culture, had been aware of the Twenty One scandal (depicted in this movie) when it went down in 1958. Not knowing much about the scandal or the way television and our culture operated in the late 50s, I hadn't expected the movie to play so relentlessly on the Jew/gentile distinction.
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