An open message to my colleagues:

I’m sitting here in my cubicle holding my balls. I had been (unbeknownst to me) putting someone else’s balls in my mouth, but no longer.

Now I’m sharing my own balls with the rest of you.

Come on over to my cube if you want to put your hands on a pair of sweet, sweet balls.

I was busy digesting the latest round of Iranian bluster the other day when a horrible thought intruded onto my consciousness. What if President Bush really doesn’t care about the potential consequences of detonating nuclear weapons over Iran? What if he’s fundamentally okay with the idea of a Middle Eastern conflagration that could spiral out of control, because he’s fulfilling his perceived role in God’s plan to bring about the Apocalypse?

Hear me out for a second before you dismiss this as a baseless, Bush-hatin’, liberal fear-mongering ploy. I may be “liberal”, whatever that is supposed to mean, and I definitely oppose most of this Administration’s policies, plans, positions, goals, and actions, but I’m not a knee-jerk dissident.

Consider, if you will, the following facts and observations:

• The concept of the Rapture is visibly and increasingly popular with evangelical American Christians.
• Bush has massive support from most evangelical Christians.
• Bush describes himself as born-again, and generally moves within that evangelical milieu that is a superset, if not the birthplace, of contemporary believers in an imminent Apocalypse.
• The Administration seems to have made a hash of Iraq, doesn?t seem to be offering any solutions beyond a half-assed occupation, and is now making ominous noises in Tehran’s direction, of the same sort that preceded our invasion of Iraq.

But of this, so what?

I wouldn’t have made much of those points either, until I remembered the question he fielded on March 19:

“Do you believe this, that the war in Iraq and the rise of terrorism are signs of the apocalypse? And if not, why not?”

What bothers me is that he didn’t answer the question. It clearly rattled him to have to come up with an answer over an open microphone. Taking transparent pains to say neither “yes” nor “no”, he replied:

“The answer is, I haven’t really thought of it that way.. Here’s how I think of it. The first I’ve heard of that, by the way. I guess I’m more of a practical fellow.”

What does that mean, that he’s a “practical fellow?? I heard this on the air and you could practically hear the sweat breaking out on his brow as emitted a decidedly unpresidential hypventilatory laugh while madly shifting mental gears, trying to come up with a suitable piece of nullspeak. He wriggled and groped, ultimately evading the question altogether.

Don’t just take my word for it, though: listen for yourself (the question about the Apocalypse is a little past the middle of the audio segment). Listen to it and then try and tell me that you can’t immediately percieve the equivocation.

Add Ahmadinejad (a rabid nationalist and general ideological chum of the oppressive, regressive, and reactionary clerics that hold power in Iran) to the mix, potentially armed with atomic weapons. I think you’ll agree with me that most of the solutions to this formula have an outcome of “Oh, shit”.

It’s my sister’s birthday this weekend, and, true to form, I’ve only just become dimly aware that I haven?t so much as purchased a card yet. But what should I get her? A live cockroach brooch? A bottle of fascist wine? Perhaps a purse, vest, or “twin” bag fashioned from synthetic human skin?

Maybe I should just go with a tasteful or understated piece of art.

That is to say, if she invites me over. I wonder why I haven’t recieved an invitation to her party yet.

I should have bought new tires about a year ago. But did I? No.

Well, today I paid the price for my sloth.

I was driving to work this morning when the car started vibrating. I was under no illusion that it wasn?t a flat tire, but I was, I thought, ready to deal with it. I pulled over to the shoulder and inspected the tire. It was absolutely flat. Throwing open the trunk, I found the spare tire, a tire iron, a jack handle, and? that was all. No jack. Crap!

I remembered that I had a can of tire gunk, so I rummaged through the emergency bag until I found it. Perfect! Now, I figured, I could at least limp home on a gunked-up tire. I set about emptying the can of gunk into the tire. I watched as the can emptied its contents into the tire, waiting for signs of inflation. Nothing. The pressure in the can died, and the tire was still completely flat.

As it turns out, a chunk of the sidewall about the size of a child’s fist blew itself out. No amount of gunk would fix that. Defeated, I called the Auto Club, which sent a truck out with a jack, and got me in enough shape to slink back to home base.

The irony of it all is that I had gotten up this morning with the clear thought ?Today is the day I will finally buy new tires?. Silly me, I thought it was just a conscious decision, not a prophecy.

My buddy Nate in Japan forwarded me a piece of spam the other day which was comprised of a bunch of randomly-selected words held together by random articles and prepositions. Garden variety stuff really, though sometimes you can pull amusing phrases out of them. This is what he sent:

wartime infringement goods surprise, warship hat vibrant a contrition would an burlap. perceptibly driver’s license a of periodic pelt chord steel moose winnings detriment stepsister as subjunctive the totter sweaty a basement, with l a think,. of!!! amiably vestige to portal bruise, as glassy making romp roost. as rudder bade revealing to strapless, reunion shrink-wrap snot, passage, and sinus dwelt allege perpetrator in quorum frisky, nobleman tremendously pro rata superhuman upwards aptitude slum primal videotape, pathologically cooking, as as born gear the barracks, with have pall a of align subscription a yelp threaten would Presbyterian in that breed puffy, swivel. entertainment it conceit unrest a obstinacy, hardhearted airily plant and bagel suffice it accommodation portray, to reckless air, to in loiter in catch phrase penknife picnic of as purvey literate aroma an librarian opponent a genealogical, was swum, punch on migration, descend hunker at

He personally felt that “strapless, reunion shrink-wrap snot” was outstanding prose. For myself, I’m wondering what “slum primal videotapes” are. Probably old episodes of the Jerry Springer show.

I must say, however, that the message does not “purvey [a] literate aroma”. Not, at least, to my delicate (read: effete) sensibilities.

As always, I am inspired to write haiku whenever one of Nate’s messages from far Nippon. arrive in my inbox. I wrote a few, limiting my vocabulary to the words in the spam message, with the condition that each haiku actually describe something or tell a story. It would be too easy to simply select random words; after all, didn’t the spammer’s software do that already? Initially, I tried my hand at being serious, but that didn’t last. Here?s the first three I wrote.

That’s as far as I got before I remembered my corporate masters expect me to work for my paycheck.

I’m already psyching myself up to purchase a new Mac this year, what with the release of Boot Camp and all, and especially after seeing some guy show off Half-Life 2 on his Intel iMac. My intent has been to wait for whatever is going to replace the Power Mac G5 line and then make my final decision, but I might be buying a new system ahead of schedule. My trusty 1GHz G4 iMac may have bitten the big one. It no longer boots, just goes straight to a kernel panic, whether booting from its hard drive or a system CD. from the diagnostics I’ve run, I’m pretty sure the video is shot. If so, I have to have the logic board replaced. I might be making my purchase ahead of schedule.

Good thing I have it backed up to tape.

Despite my compulsion to purchase new toys, purchasing anything worth more than a couple hundred dollars requires a few months of mental preparation: I’m a cheapskate by nature, and screwing up the courage to open my checkbook isn’t an easy thing. I like it even less when things like hardware failure force my hand.

But still: there’s nothing like the delicious smell of new electronics.