Dear Diary,

The cute girl at work spontaneously sat in my lap today. I think it was spontaneous. I know I didn't see it coming. I got all red, and was very embarrassed in front of my fellow employees. I was uncomfortable, and thought about complaining to the boss, but then they would all think I was gay, so I did nothing.

I sit at my desk and I think about George all day. I can't get any work done, because he's always on my mind. I go to all these web sites, and I read all about him, and my heart starts pounding faster and faster. I wonder if anyone else feels the same way. I saw him fall down on a scooter thingie once. That was funny. Boy, I'll bet his parents are embarrassed. His mom's face was all red, but I think she always looks like that. I bet she's nice.

I sat in front of my computer all day today trying to think of something witty or smart to say on kos, but nothing came to me. I'm scared to say anything, because now the people on there are rating what the other people say, and there sure are a lot of smart people on there. Somebody said something about "sophomoric aphorisms" and it freaked me out. My boss's face got real red when he saw that I was refreshing kos over and over again while I tried to think of something witty to say.

I was thinking today about why things are like they are. You know... all fucked up and stuff... and I was thinking about George and all those guys, and about money and war, and about the guys on tv. I think that they are somehow all connected.

It seems like when 9/11 happened, it really scared people. I know it scared the hell out of me. I was glad that my mom wasn't alive anymore, because I know it would have scared her, and she lived far away from me, and that would make me sad. She's better off where she is. But I was thinking how it scared people so bad that some of them went "off the deep end."

The media guys all want one thing above all else. All else. Of course, this is money. I'm sure that 9/11 made them all sad and scared, too, but don't be fooled... the coverage that followed (in the end) was based on generating revenue. The catchy graphics, weepy interviews and the "America Under Attack!" headlines were not there to inform us, they were there to capture our attention, increase our mental connection with one media outlet over another, and in the end, to increase revenue. There's nothing the networks love more than a fantastic tragedy to splash on the screen. In a sense, 9/11 was their collective wet dream.

Meanwhile, the folks at home were scared. The president eventually showed up to calm the masses. This is exactly what people needed at this point. Everyone was waiting for the other terrorist shoe to drop. We needed quick, decisive action to comfort us. We needed to bomb the shit out of someone, and quick. I am generally a pacifist, but I can admit that, at first, they simply could not bomb anyone fast enough to make me feel better. I wondered and cried aloud about why some people would want to do that to the United States.

I don't wonder that anymore. I wish I did.

One day, some ladies that wore burkas got yelled at and chased out of Wal-Mart in my town. Then a man at an Islamic church in my town was beaten up. Then I really got scared. I wasn't scared out of the brown-skinned people, I was scared of the crazy people who were white like me. I wrote a letter to the editor and told everybody to calm down and get their shit together. I said that they were destroying the good parts of America that the terrorists themselves couldn't get to. People wrote back in and said that I was a terrorist myself. A very old Islamic man called my house and said that I was a good man. Now he is my friend. I am proud that he is my friend.

Meanwhile, teh networks were still having a lot of fun printing money. The headlines kept coming, and life was good on Madison Avenue. People being scared is good for business, whether you are a media mogul or a president. When people are scared they watch a lot of tv and they do whatever the president says. After all, he's the smart guy that we all put in charge, right?

By the way, I am sick and tired of people whining about him not being elected. I think that it is detrimental to the cause of getting the dumb-ass out of office to keep bringing up the fact that he got less votes than Mr. Personality. I think everyone is aware of that by now. The only people that rail against it are the ones that are nuts, so why not appeal the the base... Farmer Jones that is well aware of the fact that Douchebag Jr. got less votes than Vanilla Soy. Get over it. Let's move on to the task at hand.

I was also pissed off after the 2000 election, because all the pundiots were going on and on about how the nation was so divided. They claimed that the close vote was a sign that the country was split in two. Guess what? That's bullshit. The vote was that close because we had two dorks to choose from. Two dorks and nerd who couldn't be the president of a chess club. I think that the left-wingers (god bless 'em) voted for Boring Man and the right-wingers (fuck 'em) voted for Asshole, and the other 90% of America flipped a mental coin, plugged their noses and made funny patterns on their voting sheets. This is why the votes were so hard for the computers to count. In the case of punch cards, no one had the strength to give enough of a shit to punch a hole through a piece of fucking paper. In the case of the ballot sheets that you fill in the circles with a number 2 pencil, half of the sheets came back with the circles filled out in heart patterns, or the ZZ Top logo.

So anyway, where was I? Oh yeah.

George asked everyone to get back to their daily lives, but then he had a better idea. He realized that people were doing basically anything that he asked. Heck, his political enemies were so scared themselves that they let him do whatever the hell he wanted.

George got an idea. Or someone put one in his head.

"People like me!" he said to the Man with the Yellow Hat. And everyone around George said that yes, people liked him, and that he was bold and decisive, and that the people had all pissed themselves, and so he could do anything he wanted as long as they were scared.

The men at the tv stations liked scared people. Scary stories and stuff get people to watch tv and stuff. Big, controversial stories mean money for the media, and the media are the ones that ultimately control the masses. That must be why they call it mass media. If they give you poop and say that it is ice cream, you eat it and you like it. Yum.

So George, for reasons that perhaps only he and the Man in the Yellow Hat may ever know, decided that he wanted more war. War was GREAT for George! People liked him when he bombed people that lived far away, especially if they were brown and held rifles up in the air and yelled and shot into the sky and looked scary and said bad things about America, even if they were true. I saw some people in Michigan that did all those things, but they were white, so we didn't bomb them. Plus, Michigan is pretty.

Anyway, the men at the tv were like "cool!" and George was like, "war!" and people were like "kill the desert people! they ride camels and have scarves on their head, and so they must die!" George summoned up a devil that people could recognize... Sadaam. When people in the US hear that name, they go, "oh yeah... THAT guy! He must be behind everything!" If they are ina taxi, and the guy driving is named Sadaam, I bet he doesn't get a tip. THAT is how much people hate the man behind the name. That taxi driver is probably a cool guy trying to scrape by, while some preppy butt-fuck is taking a cab to the Carlton to fuck his secretary, and he stiffs the guy.

Anyway, the tv guys are all hard because they have more great headlines. They love this crazy fucker who runs the country. He's damn good for business! George gives them poop, and they give it to us, because we love to eat other people's poop, as long as they tell us it is dairy-fresh ice cream.

A funny thing happens at this point in the story, Diary.

Here is where a portion of the population starts to realize that their ice cream tastes funny. In fact, it tastes remarkably like poop. Somebody says "Hey, my ice cream has corn in it, and it tastes somewhat like poop" and all heck breaks loose. The media guys and the president say that people who don't like ice cream are puppy-kicking faggots who are out to destroy all that America stands for, and are as bad as the ice-cream-haters that dwell in the desert and plot against us!

Thenn the president has a new idea. The natives are getting restless. There are these rich guys, many of which own these crazy tv networks, and they all have lots of money. They have been making money hand-over-fist with all these scared people eating their poop. The thing is, they want more of that money. After all, you can never have enough. So the president says "Hey, how would everyone like some of their hard-earned money back?" People are like, "Fuck yeah, man... I lost my job last week! That $400 will get me a case of beer and a truck payment!" The president's friends, the poop-peddlers, say "Fuck yeah, man... that $4,000,000 will allow me to relocate my company to Mexico, fire 10,000 people, saving my company $10,000,000, get my wife a new pair of tits and keep that sexy Italian pool-boy I was gonna have to let go!"

Things in D.C. are good again.

This is where people who cared for each other after 9/11 start to turn on each other. It isn't that the people enjoying the dung-flavored ice cream are all bad, it is just that they are scared. Many of them had major meltdowns after 9/11, and they need hugs and lots of ice cream, no matter how bad it tastes. The rich guys are more than willing to sell them all the ice cream they want (but they aren't that comfortable hugging strangers.)

I will try not to say poop or ice cream anymore. I'm starting to feel sick (and oddly hungry) and that metaphor was old as of three paragraphs ago.

So people are in these two camps, or "factions", as fancy kos people say. I don't know if that is a aphorism or not. I'm sorry if it is.

Scared animals do stupid shit. When a deer sees the headlights, it freezes and gets a James Brown Smack Down by a semi. When a squirrel sees a car coming, it runs 90% of the way across the street, then quickly turns and scurries under your tires. Scared dogs bite children. Scared spiders eat their babies. Scared giraffes look stupid when they run. Scared monkeys screech and throw poop at you. (Think about THAT one!)

People are animals, too. When they are scared, they do things like soil themselves, faint, vote Republican and let con men sell them... safety. (You though for sure I was going to say poop-flavored ice cream, didn't you Diary!) In fact, people want comfort so badly when they are scared that they will do almost anything to get it, even if it is fleeting or imaginary. They will even give up... freedom. The president when on tv as soon as he could after 9/11, like 9/29 or something, and he told us that the terrorists would not win, and that our resolve was firm, or strong or something. The fact is, they did better that they could have dreamed. Thanks to one man's incredible greed, we lost. Nice work... BARTMAN!

Think of all the people that have died fighting for our freedoms, from people with pitchforks in the colonies of the 1700s to the young boys who signed up for one weekend a month and took an RPG for the Young Prince. When we allowed the so-called Patriot Act to pass, we no less than pissed on each and every one of their graves. The saddest moment in our history was when we happily gave away the treasure that so many have fought and died to preserve.

Shame on us.

So the rich get richer, Billy-Bob makes a payment and gets hammered on Red, White and Blue, Mrs. Smith serves up delicious apple pie and ICE CREAM for hubby and kids, Rush pops his pills, 9,000 scared people are lost in the rubble... in Iraq... and Tommy from down the block comes home in a body bag.

If there is a light at the end of the tunnel, it is that people who previously thought they were eating... fudge... are now realizing that the funny aftertaste is... liver. (Liver-flavored fudge... is that better?) Now we have eight or nine would-be kings yelling about the fake fudge, which is a helluva lot better than where we were a year ago, when only one or two of them had the taste buds (that means BALLS) to say, "Hey fuck-head, this is LIVER!"

The media guys (liver-peddlers for those keeping score at home) are like "Uh-oh! They're on to us!" And the head douchebag liver king is like "Fresh fudge! Get your fresh fudge here!" and people are going "Ewww!" though many are still eating it anyway, because they think it will make them safe.

So, when you wonder why we are where we are, remember that money is at the root of ALL OF THIS, that we are living in a media-controlled plutocracy (I looked it up on dictionary.com, and it is not, as I had previously thought, a government run by aliens) and that people who are eating liver and insisting it is fudge are perhaps, in the final analysis, more scared stupid than they are evil.

Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and their ilk. They are not scared. They are greedy. They don't believe 90% of what comes out of their own mouths. Do you think they eat the liver and taste fudge? Fuck no, they don;t touch the stuff. What would they have if they didn't spew their lies and filth? They'd have no money and no careers.

Well, diary, I have been writing for two hours now. I need to go make a sundae, take some tranquilizers, and dream about that Cubs/Red Sox series.

Maybe next year.

Theoria.

(Buy a tee shirt. All proceeds go toward my psychotherapy. http://www.cafeshops.com/bushregime)