July 19th, 2006 by Hoopleton

It’s called a domino effect. It’s when one incident in the world causes another, which causes another, which causes another, which eventually leads to total collapse. During the Cold War the term was used to describe the fear that if Communism spread to one country, it might infect a region, and eventually the world. Today, it’s used to describe the probable road to World War III.

In the current world, that would mean Israel attacking Syria, which it says is supplying Hezbollah with missiles. Syria would go to war, and Iran might then join in the conflict. The US would come in on the side of Israel and from there the dominos would fall.

Of course for the domino effect to work, those involved would have to be completely ignorant to the dangers of the developing situation. They would have to be so incompetent that the framers of the Munich accords would seem like world-class statesmen.

Thank god George W. Bush is our president. A lesser man might have our armies bogged down in Iran’s back yard. A lesser man might be so inflated with ego that he would refuse to see the finer points. A lesser man might not even give a shit. Yes, thank God we have George W. Bush. He takes his job seriously. He’s a decider. He makes decisions all the time! God bless you Mr. President. Yes, a lesser man might not be too bright. A lesser man might be tactless and arrogant. But not our old George. Our super duper President is a man apart. He’s got a great sense of humor. People wanna have a beer with him in a bar. People like the cut of his jib.

You might not agree with him, especially when he breaks or decides to change the law, but at least you know where he stands. He doesn’t flip-flop. He doesn’t change his mind at all. The man doesn’t read for that very reason. CNN? What’s that! No one can influence our man!

God keep you strong George W. God keep you strong. If anyone one can do it, if anyone can keep those dominoes erect, he sure can!

Disclaimer: the preceding is intended to be read with extreme sarcasm, preferably to the sounds of Nick Drake’s Mayfair.

In case George W. Bush is reading this: sar·casm (särkzm) n. A cutting, often ironic remark intended to wound.

Oh, and George, in case you’re still unsure: i·ro·ny (ironee) n. The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning.

Hmmm… should I define literal? This might take a while…

July 18th, 2006 by Hoopleton

The choices we make in life define us. They wrap around us and confuse us. What seem like simple choices at any one moment can alter everything. And the old adage is true, what goes around comes around. Everything comes back eventually.

Love works in a cyclical manner too. We tend to fall in love with people who are not in love with us. Who are in love with people who are not in love with them. We tend to want to have the things we cannot have. We long for relationships that are doomed right out of the starting gates. Some of the greatest art in the world is about this very thing. The circle. The loop.

I was driving though my industrial urban metropolis the other night. The darkness was washed out in the yellow light of the street lamps. The heat shimmered off of the asphalt. The streets were lifeless.

I pushed the car a little, down a few side streets, seeing if there were people wandering as aimlessly as I was. Kindred tortured spirits. Wondering, just like I was, if there existed somewhere else a person suffering from the hardships of the same undiagnosed disease.

The choices we make in life define us. Sometimes these choices are very small and seemingly harmless. But I know that even the smallest mistakes can often close doors that we have yet to find. All I can do now is sit idly by and let this life rock past. Bumping and grinding my way through, wondering if there is a point at all.

There has to be a point, doesn’t there?

Maybe the point really is love. Maybe all that great art is true. Maybe that is truth. But then what is love? Can you feel it for a person you’ve never met? Can you ever know love if and when you find it? I like to believe that I was in love once. I know I was.

At this moment people, people who look for love, who do love and have loved are dying in a would-be war on the Lebanese-Israeli border. More are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. More are dying all over the world in wars and mass killings. Is that about love too? I think it might be. Part of me, perhaps, hopes it is.

The choices we make in life define us. I suppose all we can really expect from the short time that we have, is to make the choices that are right for us.

July 11th, 2006 by Hoopleton

There’s this old man that I know by way of passing on the street each day. Each time, at a different time of the day. Sometimes we may exchange a word, but most often we just walk right past one another without even the expected glimmer of recognition. Yet this old man is hard to ignore. It’s not that there’s anything especially unique about his appearance. It’s not that he has a deformity or a palpable sadness about his eyes. He looks like just about any old man you’d think to pass on the street.

What draws me to him, I think, is the fact that he seems to never really be going anywhere, or returning from anywhere. He just sort of wanders the streets. Aimlessly. Almost hopelessly. And it’s not that he’s poor. His clothes are always new and well cleaned. It’s not that he’s lonely. He never looks it. I think what it is, is that his wandering seems completely devoid of any purpose or any pleasure. He seems caught in a strange loop. It’s almost as though he was thrust out of his own and now somehow finds himself unable to return. It’s almost as though, time has gone on without him and he is left just to walk along the streets.

I imagine that this is what life is like for Fidel Castro, the Communist leader of Cuba. At one time a great man, perhaps? At one time, certainly, a revolutionary icon. Army green and a cigar in his mouth. Allied with the Soviet Union and challenging United States supremacy. And today? A bit of a joke perhaps. A curiosity of a world long dead. A man that time has seemed to leave behind.

It must be lonely to be Castro. It must be lonely when the entire world seems just to be waiting for you to die. Once a “great man” now reduced to a morbid trivia question.

Already an entire cabal of American sponsored committees and think tanks worth hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars exist for the sheer reason that soon Fidel Castro might die. Just today President Bush (that still sounds strange) pledged 80 million dollars toward boosting democracy in Cuba. All across the financial world investors and realtors wait with tepid excitement for the day that they could scoop up thousands of acres of prime beach property in and around Havana. US companies are eagerly awaiting the rush. Already Cuban exiles, sitting in Miami with bags packed and one-way tickets ready, await to burst through the gates to claim their place in what promises to be a new American-inspired democracy. A new Cuba! A new land of opportunity!

They can see it already. Havana as it once was but better. Bigger! Louder! The Paris of the Caribbean with a little bit of Disney magic. Pseudo-white marble, Vegas-style resorts so expensive that actual Cubans won’t even be able to step through the doors. An American playground similar in scope to Cancun, but far greater in ambition. Free markets and tourist dollars. Cuban cigars flowing out of quaint big-tobacco sweatshops and into the finest Manhattan boutiques. And Castro would even be there too after death. He’d have to be. What is Cuba without Castro? Sure, he wouldn’t be the leader of the country, but a Cold War era mascot. Fidel on a t-shirt? Fidel on a hat? Castro impersonators posing for pictures with fat kids from Omaha.

It must be lonely being Fidel Castro. Just like that old man I pass each day on the street, the Communist leader of Cuba must know that he has nowhere left to go. All he can do is wander. All he can do is wait. Everyone else is waiting too. But unlike that old man on the street, Fidel must also sense that his legacy, just like that of Che, is bound to be left behind as a registered logo. As just another mascot for the forces he had hoped to fight against.